Blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

[Guest shiloh357]

1 hour ago, StanJ said:

Despite your condescending response here, you didn't answer it, you deflected. What exactly in the New Testament says that they weren't believers? You haven't presented one yet that shows they were not believers. Not all Pharisees were corrupted or power hungry and not all Pharisees hated Jesus. John 3:1-2; Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”  This is a pretty clear indication that what you're asserting is wrong.

But we are talking about the Pharisees that were there claiming that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of the prince of demons.  I get that Jesus had a few supporters among the Pharisees, but even then, you miss the problem that Nicodemus had with Jesus in that conversation.   He could not accept that He, a scholar and the best of the best a leader in his nation had to be "born again."   He could understand why the common Jew might need something like that, but in his mind, he had made it, he saw himself as being close to God when he was really an unregenerate, hell bound sinner. 

And what Nicodemus said to Jesus was really nothing more than flattery, like the rich young ruler tried to use on Jesus.   The truth is that the overwhelming majority of Pharisees were a corrupt group and were not believers and there is not really any biblical evidence to say they were anything but a very corrupt group of men who were little more than Roman puppets.

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But they obviously weren't Believers by your measure or standard but then again you're not the measure or standard by which believers are categorized. I'm pretty sure I posted the following link already, but please read it and educate yourself;

They were not believers by any biblical standard and that is the standard I am operating by.  There is nothing in their biblical profile that qualifies them as believers no matter how desperately you try to spin it that way.

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What Jesus said was a warning and there is nowhere else and all of the New Testament the that identifies anyone as having committed the unpardonable sin. You yourself have not been able to show it despite your insistence that it's there.

I am not disputing that there is a warning.   I am disputing what the warning was about.  The warning was not "be careful or you will commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit."  They already did that.   Accusing the Holy Spirit of being Beelzebub was an act of blasphemy, and if you say otherwise, it is just intellectual suicide.   The warning concerned the fate of a person who committed that sin, that they had already done.  They had already crossed the line and Jesus was simply letting them know what was in store for them.

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Jesus was talking to the crowd and to the Pharisees in Matthew 12 and he was warning everyone, quoted above, as to what would happen if anyone's did blaspheme the Holy Spirit. He never said YOU will not be forgiven he said anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit WILL not, and as they had not spoken against the Holy Spirit but only spoken against what Jesus had done in a reactive manner and really didn't know that it was the Holy Spirit, they couldn't possibly have blasphemed the Holy Spirit.

You asked to provide where the narrator said they committed that sin.  How does this address what the narrator said?

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There are many many warnings in the Bible that are not a direct result of people having just sinned. You're putting. 1 and 2 together and coming up with 2

No, I am not.  You can pick up any commentary and they say pretty much what I am saying and have been saying in this thread.  Everyone knows that they committed that sin.   You're the only one coming up with this silly notion that the Pharisees were "believers"  and that they had not committed this sin when the Bible clearly states that they  did.    Stop with the absurdity.

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I won't bother continuing to debate this with you as it is obvious you can't be honest about what you did do or didn't do for that matter.

This is a narrative and I demonstrated what it meant in its immediate literary context.  That is the first rule of hermeneutics, and it is the most important rule of hermeneutics.   That is all I needed to do.   I didn't need to break down every Greek word and jump through a lot of hoops.   I don't what it is you expect, but you have some strange ideas about what constitutes exegesis.

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That is absolutely right and being able to rightly divide the word of Truth is the most important thing of all.

And you cannot do that until you have actually engaged the text, and until you stop trying to make up theology that doesn't exist.

[StanJ]

5 minutes ago, RobertS said:

Sorry, but it's already been proven that that is not the case. You do not have to "know" someone to speak against them: people do it all the time.

As for your second comment, they have everything to do with one another; works are a evidence of salvation, and the Pharisees' works demonstrated they were not. James did not teach his own "doctrine" in a vacuum, but what he learned at the Lord's feet and through the Holy Spirit.

Lastly: if it were possible for Christians to commit the "unforgivable sin", then all Satan would have to do is push a believer to do so and make them lose their salvation. In that case, Satan could make every single believer crack with the right stress and defeat all of God's plans. And if you say "Well, God could simply preserve them", then why would God not do so with regular sin?

Sorry, but your arguments do not hold any water, nor are they congruent with a proper hermeneutical reading of Scripture. I think Shiloh357 has the situation pegged correctly.

Nothing has really been proven except that you and Shiloh agree. That doesn't mean you're right it just means you agree. One actually has to know that it is the holy spirit doing something in order for them to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. The only way one can know the Holy Spirit is by having received him and or seen his work.

What James was writing about had nothing to do with Matthew 12 and if that's what you think proper biblical hermeneutics is and I think you better study again. Context is a very important part of exegesis. James was speaking in the context of salvation under the New Covenant and Jesus was speaking in the context of blaspheming The Works of the Holy Spirit. There is no common principle between the two.

Let me guess... You also are a big advocate of OSAS? You give Satan way too much power or credit. Given your logic here, he could fool everyone into denouncing their salvation. The Bible says the human heart is deceitfully wicked above all things. It doesn't say that Satan causes the human heart to be deceitfully wicked above all things. Do you not believe what Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 10:13 or 1 Timothy 1:13?

 

[Guest Robert]

3 minutes ago, StanJ said:

Nothing has really been proven except that you and Shiloh agree. That doesn't mean you're right it just means you agree. One actually has to know that it is the holy spirit doing something in order for them to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. The only way one can know the Holy Spirit is by having received him and or seen his work.

What James was writing about had nothing to do with Matthew 12 and if that's what you think proper biblical hermeneutics is and I think you better study again. Context is a very important part of exegesis. James was speaking in the context of salvation under the New Covenant and Jesus was speaking in the context of blaspheming The Works of the Holy Spirit. There is no common principle between the two.

Let me guess... You also are a big advocate of OSAS? You give Satan way too much power or credit. Given your logic here, he could fool everyone into denouncing their salvation. The Bible says the human heart is deceitfully wicked above all things. It doesn't say that Satan causes the human heart to be deceitfully wicked above all things. Do you not believe what Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 10:13 or 1 Timothy 1:13?

 

After your entire discourse with Shiloh357 and myself, it's become apparent that the only one here who needs to study again is you. According to your thinking then, God cannot be blasphemed by unbelievers because they do not "know Him", and we know that is not the case. The Holy Spirit is God, and one does not have to "know" him to blaspheme Him.

Time and again we have disproved your thinking on this, and you keep devising ridiculous means to 1) make the pharisees seem "saved" when they are not, and 2) make the Christian walk on such a tightrope that one slip, and they lose salvation.

And that is not biblical.

As for James and Matthew: I have connected both passages in the fact that Jesus established that the Pharisees were not saved and that their actions denote they were not saved. James establishes that our works serve as a proof of salvation. The common theme here is "does your walk match your talks?" and with the Pharisees, it did not.  Jesus made it very clear in Matthew that they did not do as they were "a brood of vipers" and bound for hell due to their hypocrisy, and their "fruit" was vile and rotten. That is borne out when Jesus told them about the unforgivable sin, and James in his book later expounds on saying we believe when our works say otherwise. If that is not clear to you, then nothing more can be said to you on this.

I'm guessing you come from a catholic background where salvation is by no means assured and one is always worried about whether they are saved or not. My point was that if one could lose their salvation, Satan would find a way to push someone into it. I'm not debating Paul on anything, but I am debating you on your line of thinking StanJ.

Lastly: I also know that this isn't the first forum that you've tried selling this nonsense on.

[StanJ]

24 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

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But we are talking about the Pharisees that were there claiming that Jesus was casting out demons by the power of the prince of demons.  I get that Jesus had a few supporters among the Pharisees, but even then, you miss the problem that Nicodemus had with Jesus in that conversation.   He could not accept that He, a scholar and the best of the best a leader in his nation had to be "born again."   He could understand why the common Jew might need something like that, but in his mind, he had made it, he saw himself as being close to God when he was really an unregenerate, hell bound sinner. 

So not all Pharisees as you previously claimed but just those that were there? So basically you stereotyped all Pharisees based on those that were present in Matthew 12?

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And what Nicodemus said to Jesus was really nothing more than flattery, like the rich young ruler tried to use on Jesus.   The truth is that the overwhelming majority of Pharisees were a corrupt group and were not believers and there is not really any biblical evidence to say they were anything but a very corrupt group of men who were little more than Roman puppets.

I don't miss any problem with Nicodemus, I believe that what he said was true. You are now casting dispersions on his character without any scriptural evidence, and that my friend is absolutely eisegesis. His confusion was that he took the words of Jesus literally and not figuratively and spiritually. It was confusion nothing else and after his query in v9, Jesus fully answered him in v10-21, with no denial or other question by Nicodemus. Again you are reading into the scripture, something that is not there. 

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They were not believers by any biblical standard and that is the standard I am operating by.  There is nothing in their biblical profile that qualifies them as believers no matter how desperately you try to spin it that way.

You are operating on the modern 21st century standard of understanding as to what you perceive a Believer to be. Remember, proper exegesis is to put yourself in the place of the writer. The writer or what you like to call the narrator did not have your current date perspective on salvation. Even Paul himself did not have that perspective which explains why he wrote what he did in 1 Timothy 1:13, where he admits to blasphemy but not knowingly. Paul was typical of many Pharisees in his day but much more hateful than a lot were, and yet Jesus chose him to be his Apostle to the Gentiles. Now how exactly could Paul blaspheme, and to use your logic commit the unpardonable sin, and then be chosen by Christ to be his Apostle to the Gentiles?

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I am not disputing that there is a warning.   I am disputing what the warning was about.  The warning was not "be careful or you will commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit."  They already did that.   Accusing the Holy Spirit of being Beelzebub was an act of blasphemy, and if you say otherwise, it is just intellectual suicide.   The warning concerned the fate of a person who committed that sin, that they had already done.  They had already crossed the line and Jesus was simply letting them know what was in store for them.

And where exactly in their worst they commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? The warning was right afterwards because of what they said and what did Jesus say right after? His responses in verses 24 to 30 and then he says in verses 31-32;

And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

He recognizes and identifies their slander against him but warns them that the same kind of slander against the holy spirit will not be forgiven and then he reiterates the same thing. Nowhere does he say or imply that what they had just done was actually blaspheming the Holy Spirit. You were reading that into the scripture based on your own doctrinal predisposition.

Even his own family and Mark 3 asks him if he is out of his mind, so are you also advocated that they were not believers and had committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?

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You asked to provide where the narrator said they committed that sin.  How does this address what the narrator said?

That's right I did, and now you're just ducking and deflecting. You're the one that said the narrator identified it.

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No, I am not.  You can pick up any commentary and they say pretty much what I am saying and have been saying in this thread.  Everyone knows that they committed that sin.   You're the only one coming up with this silly notion that the Pharisees were "believers"  and that they had not committed this sin when the Bible clearly states that they  did.    Stop with the absurdity.

I actually have already done this and you completely ignored the commentator and I doubt very much if I posted 20 more links to commentators, that you would accept any of them nor comment on them. The Pharisees were believers in the contextual sense of the old Covenant and the Old Testament and so is Jesus for that matter until he died and rose again, ushering in the New Covenant and the New Testament. There's a distinct demarcation in the scriptures between those two, despite your unwillingness to identify it.

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This is a narrative and I demonstrated what it meant in its immediate literary context.  That is the first rule of hermeneutics, and it is the most important rule of hermeneutics.   That is all I needed to do.   I didn't need to break down every Greek word and jump through a lot of hoops.   I don't what it is you expect, but you have some strange ideas about what constitutes exegesis.

I fact, it's a parable and you have not demonstrated what you say you have, which is evidenced by your continual lack of doing so. I don't have a problem with the translation at all but the wording and the grammar of the English is actually something you're having a problem with. You don't have to use anything as far as my definition of exegesis is concerned, look it up for yourself.

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And you cannot do that until you have actually engaged the text, and until you stop trying to make up theology that doesn't exist.

I have completely engaged to text what you continue to do is enter or add to its meaning, which definitely doesn't allow for sound theology. 

 

[StanJ]

6 hours ago, RobertS said:

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After your entire discourse with Shiloh357 and myself, it's become apparent that the only one here who needs to study again is you. According to your thinking then, God cannot be blasphemed by unbelievers because they do not "know Him", and we know that is not the case. The Holy Spirit is God, and one does not have to "know" him to blaspheme Him.

Not surprising if you and Tyler were the only ones that won't accept what the scripture says but that again that's the way it goes. By the way tag team doesn't work on me.

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Time and again we have disproved your thinking on this, and you keep devising ridiculous means to 1) make the pharisees seem "saved" when they are not, and 2) make the Christian walk on such a tightrope that one slip, and they lose salvation.

I'm not the one that's trying to make the Pharisee you seem saved because that is a modern New Covenant terminology that you and Shiloh insist on using... What I'm saying is that under the old Covenant they were believers. Don't expect to use words and then have people understand what you mean when you're not saying what you mean. There are no Christians in the Old Testament or before Jesus died but there were believers and many of them lived in Israel. One of the main tenets of hermeneutical exegesis is understanding what you're reading in the time and place into the audience it was intended for, which apparently you and shilo can't do.

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As for James and Matthew: I have connected both passages in the fact that Jesus established that the Pharisees were not saved and that their actions denote they were not saved. James establishes that our works serve as a proof of salvation. The common theme here is "does your walk match your talks?" and with the Pharisees, it did not.  Jesus made it very clear in Matthew that they did not do as they were "a brood of vipers" and bound for hell due to their hypocrisy, and their "fruit" was vile and rotten. That is borne out when Jesus told them about the unforgivable sin, and James in his book later expounds on saying we believe when our works say otherwise. If that is not clear to you, then nothing more can be said to you on this.

Jesus never established that Pharisee for not saved his tablets that sound Pharisees were hypocrites and evil in their intent. Again you not understanding the vernacular used in Matthew to convey the situation is your problem not mine. James has nothing to do with what's going on in Matthew 12 and again this just proves but you don't know the hermeneutics you say you do. Bringing in other scenarios and situations where Jesus spoke to the Pharisees about different issues and using the word you to try to apply it to this situation is definitely not proper hermeneutical exegesis. Please look up the meaning of the phrase.

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I'm guessing you come from a catholic background where salvation is by no means assured and one is always worried about whether they are saved or not. My point was that if one could lose their salvation, Satan would find a way to push someone into it. I'm not debating Paul on anything, but I am debating you on your line of thinking StanJ.

You and shilo do share one bad habit... You constantly deflect and avoid pointed questions. How does whether or not I was ever a Catholic have anything to do with your belief in OSAS or do you not believe what Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 10:13 or 1 Timothy 1:13?

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Lastly: I also know that this isn't the first forum that you've tried selling this nonsense on.

You know me from another site and want to lecture me on honesty and you can't even be honest yourself? What exactly are you afraid of?

 

[StanJ]

4 hours ago, eileenhat said:

Excerpt:

"The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, (Matthew 12:32; Mark 3:28) consisted in attributing to the power of Satan those unquestionable miracles which Jesus performed by "the finger of God" and the power of the Holy Spirit. It is plainly such a state of wilful, determined opposition to God and the Holy Spirit that no efforts will avail to lead to repentance. Among the Jews it was a sin against God answering to treason in our times."

http://biblehub.com/topical/b/blasphemy.htm

Just because William Smith was a good lexicographer does not mean that he was a good Greek scholar or that he understood how to properly interpolate the Greek. Along with many others, Smith made the mistake assuming that Jesus did not heal people himself, but that the Holy Spirit did which is strange given that he was also a believer in the Trinity. If Jesus was God incarnate why would he not be healing people himself? Matthew 12:22 states Jesus healed the demon-possessed man. And if we are to believe that the Bible is inerrant and absolutely true then why would he disagree with this and imply or think that it was the Holy Spirit that healed the demon-possessed man and thus the Pharisees were blaspheming the Holy Spirit, when clearly Jesus said firstly that denigrating him would be forgiven?

Edited September 16, 2016 by StanJ

[Guest Robert]

Concerning your previous comments: I stand on what I have said. Notwithstanding your condescending and supercilious manner, the point has been proven and you stand in error. Save one point:

Catholics generally live in terror of not knowing they are saved (I am a former one myself and knew many who felt the same way), and are convinced others cannot know they are saved either.

 

1 hour ago, StanJ said:

You know me from another site and want to lecture me on honesty and you can't even be honest yourself? What exactly are you afraid of?

I was giving you a chance to come clean; apparently, you want to continue with cheap shots. As you wish;  all I had to do was look up the info on Google, specifically your username and the title of the thread.

What, did you think you were invisible or something?

You are a member at christianityboard.com, where you posted this nonsense as well http://www.christianityboard.com/topic/23129-new-thoughts-on-the-unforgivable-sin/?p=284313

So with that: I am done communicating in any form with you. You are not honest in your debates, arguments or anything else. You continually attack others and insinuate they are incompetent when you are demonstrated to be in error, and only wish to foment discord and uncertainty here. But your points have been reproved countless times over, and the readers may make their minds up about your claims.

 

RobertS out.

 

Edited September 16, 2016 by RobertS
found link

[StanJ]

19 hours ago, RobertS said:

Concerning your previous comments: I stand on what I have said. Notwithstanding your condescending and supercilious manner, the point has been proven and you stand in error. Save one point:

Catholics generally live in terror of not knowing they are saved (I am a former one myself and knew many who felt the same way), and are convinced others cannot know they are saved either.

 

I was giving you a chance to come clean; apparently, you want to continue with cheap shots. As you wish;  all I had to do was look up the info on Google, specifically your username and the title of the thread.

What, did you think you were invisible or something?

You are a member at christianityboard.com, where you posted this nonsense as well http://www.christianityboard.com/topic/23129-new-thoughts-on-the-unforgivable-sin/?p=284313

So with that: I am done communicating in any form with you. You are not honest in your debates, arguments or anything else. You continually attack others and insinuate they are incompetent when you are demonstrated to be in error, and only wish to foment discord and uncertainty here. But your points have been reproved countless times over, and the readers may make their minds up about your claims.

 

RobertS out.

 

Yes well the Pharisees stood on what they said as well but look how far got them. As far as me belonging to another site, that's well known. What you probably don't know is that there are others from that site that are also on this site except they don't use the same name as they do on the other site. I for one have never been ashamed of my first name, nor showing people what I look like. You apparently like to live in an anonymity so you can get away with your ad homonyms. This style of attack is typical for those who can't support their beliefs with proper hermeneutical exegesis. You keep saying I've been reproved yet you can't even show where that is let alone how that is. There are always people that disagree with my point of view but there are very few people that can prove me wrong, mainly because I only state what the Bible shows and not from a doctrinal bias like you do. I would be very happy to not have to hear from you again. Thank you.

Edited September 17, 2016 by StanJ

[woundeddog]

ya know---- some people are so annoying its really hard to keep their well being  in prayer

[StanJ]

25 minutes ago, eileenhat said:

Since Jesus existed as a human, he rested in spirit as we do, when we come to God.

Actually he was not solely human, Jesus existed as a hypostasis of God and man. Heb 1:3 

Matthew 12:15 & 22 are just two of many verses in the gospels that show Jesus healed.