The Unforgivable Sin: Not Merely the Sin Not Repented of

Recently I was watching a popular YouTube pastor’s conversations with college students on one of his many sidewalk preaching Q&A sessions on a campus.  One student’s protests against the obligation towards the moral order echoed through several videos and resurfaced from several students from time to time.  In short, the protest can be articulated as bewilderment and offense at the imposition of God who requires your love and service or else He will throw you into the pits of Hell.  Love and service with a gun to your head is unjust, the protest concludes.  While the conclusion is correct, the premise is false: it presupposes that left to our own devices we are happy, and that unless we deviate from what our natural desires are we will have torture inflicted upon us.  The correct premise is the opposite: that left to our own devices we want the good (known through the moral order in the natural law), but are naturally in a state of torture anyhow because of our inability to fully live according to it or raise our prayers to God.  In short, the natural state of man is fallen and in need of forgiveness; this is the background we must have in order to understand the “unforgivable sin”.

Aristotle states (and I paraphrase) that man acts towards what he judges to be the good in that moment; I usually sum this up by saying no one wakes up and says “I really want to do something stupid today”.  This itself is borne by the “evil is a hole in your sock” principle of Augustine, i.e., that existence is good, and so if something exists it can only be evil because of a twisting or inappropriate application of the good of the thing (again, paraphrase).  Even if one were to desire something evil because it was evil, they do so because of some perceived good.  Because of our darkened intellect we are not very good at perceiving what is really good, or the effect of what evil we commit has on both the continued darkening of our intellect and in our relationship with God, our heart’s true desire.  In short, because of the effects of original sin and the consequences of our own individual actions we are bound by fetters to “the whole mystery of iniquity (Dominum et Vivificantem, paragraph 48)”.  It is only by direct intervention of the Holy Spirit that we are convinced of our sin: it is He who “helps human beings, human consciences, to know the truth concerning sin, at the same time enables them to know the truth about that righteousness which entered human history in Jesus Christ”.

The Holy Spirit does not coerce, though: He inspires, beckons, and guides.  In this He is appropriately depicted as both Fire and Wind; His Being and attitude towards man is best encapsulated by Aquinas who concludes the best description of the Holy Spirit is the Love of God, suggesting that this may be the only description that really reflects His nature.  Because of this Love, the Holy Spirit neither leaves man bound within his own sin nor coerces him into accepting the forgiveness.  This being said, forgiveness (not to be confused with Mercy) requires two things: convincing of what you have done and remorse for what you have done.  While Mercy is a gift, completely outside of the receiver to petition for or obtain on his own merit forgiveness must be asked for.  It is an act of Mercy at the moment of intervention of the Holy Spirit who tries to convince us of our sin, an attempt to “introduce [us] into that righteousness which is in Christ Jesus” which is until that moment completely foreign and unreachable to us, beyond even our realization of need for it.  Forgiveness on the other hand is granted upon our conversion and contrition, requiring an act and a response on our part.  What then is the unforgivable sin?  The one which we refuse to see as sin and continue to hold as really good.

The Holy Spirit beckons to us and convinces us of sin.  A rejection of this conviction is therefore a direct violation against the Holy Spirit Himself and results in a person who cannot cultivate a conversion or response to God because he continues to reject God.  He not only “rejects the ‘convincing concerning sin’ which comes from the Holy Spirit and which has the power to save” but he also  “rejects the ‘coming’ of the Counselor - that ‘coming’ which was accomplished in the Paschal Mystery, in union with the redemptive power of Christ’s blood: the Blood which ‘purifies the conscience from dead works’ (DeV, paragraph 46)”.  In this act of rejection of the Holy Spirit the actor literally redefines the good in an invincible way to his own mind.  He refuses to acknowledge his own need for forgiveness because he rejects the unlooked for Mercy of God in its entirety from the Cross to his own life.  In this we can see a similarity to the student’s protests I mentioned at the beginning: this truly is the man who deems himself capable of happiness and goodness left to his own devices, even harboring animosity and contempt at the suggestion that he needs any outside intervention in his life.  

The unforgivable sin is not merely that sin for which the actor does not seek forgiveness but is the sin that the individual compounds within his own soul at his rejection of the Holy Spirit.  The sin now becomes not only the particular act (which will not be forgiven because reconciliation will not be asked for) but the rejection of the Holy Spirt as well (which cannot be forgiven because the actor cannot see his own folly).