Commentary on Matthew 12:32 - in 2 Parts
(Part I: Dissertation, followed by Part II: Objections)
Part I: Dissertation
"And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come." DRB.
This proclamation, made by Christ in the Gospel of Matthew, regarding blasphemies committed against the Holy Spirit, has been a source of confusion amongst Christians for centuries. These words, taken simply at face value, have terrified many an unstudied believer into thinking their souls will be immediately damned for committing such a act, with no possibility of redemption. Playing off the popularity of that belief, there is even a website where atheists can go to mock it by publicly blaspheming the Holy Spirit and officially registering themselves as permanently irredeemable. And that is a very odd, stupid and telling thing for an atheist to do, since the very act of doing it shows that in their hearts they really do believe.
But while it is the height of insanity for an atheist to subliminally hold this view, for Christians, given that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, it may not actually be so bad. And that may have partially been what Jesus had in mind when He said it. Still, anyone who's taken the time to really study the Bible knows there is something seriously wrong with that interpretation.
Drawing from the ancient written traditions and the entirety of Sacred Scripture, the Catholic perspective (which I have known for many years to be the correct perspective) holds that, as long as there is a breath in our bodies, it is possible to repent of any sin and be redeemed from it, no matter how grave the sin, or who it's committed against. But how do you reconcile that position with Jesus's words in Matthew?
After a lot of prayer and research on the matter, I have come to realize that there must have been a subtle, but huge, difference between what Jesus's original audience understood Him to say and what we understand today. A new translation seems like it may be warranted to give us moderns a better feel for what He was really saying. And the most obvious and straight forward resolution sheds light on not just what Christ said about sins committed against the Holy Spirit, but also on what He said of sins committed against Himself.
The solution lies in accepting that the word, forgiven, must have had a slightly broader meaning in its original language at the time it was spoken. That is, when His audience first heard what Jesus was saying, to them the word we have been translating as forgiven, was understood to mean unconditionally forgiven. Inserting this fix [shown in brackets] into the verse yields …
"And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be [unconditionally] forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be [unconditionally] forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come." DRB (slightly paraphrased).
Problem solved. Blasphemies committed against the Holy Spirit will need to be repented of (just like most any other sin). But as effective as this solution is in reconciling Church teaching with Scripture on sins committed against the Holy Spirit, it is also the cause of some serious heartburn for those who've been brought up to accept on face value what the unamended verse says about sins committed against the Son of Man. And that is the main reason I have posted this commentary, to make clear (from Scripture, tradition and logic) to those who don't like this result, that this amended translation really is what Jesus meant when He spoke of sins committed against Himself.
To be begin with, you cannot have it both ways. If you accept that this really is what Jesus meant with regard to sins committed against the Holy Spirit, then you are stuck with what it now also says of sins committed against Christ. That is, you can't legitimately apply the amendment to the second half of the verse and not apply it to the first.
But that's OK, because it's exceedingly logical that this should be the case. Jesus did, after all, tell us in many places that we are to unconditionally forgive all sins committed against us. If someone asks us to walk a mile, we are to walk two. If they ask for our cloak, we are to give them our shirt as well. And how many times are we to forgive? Seven times? No, seventy times seven times, or in other words, every time. So we know what is expected of us.
But being Christians, we also know in our hearts that our Master is not a hypocrite (not while He walked amongst us, and not ever). And there is no suggestion in Scripture that He ever did a hypocritical thing. Hypocrisy, in fact, was also maybe the biggest complaint He had against the religious leaders of His time. And He was not gentle in His condemnation of them for it. So we can have utmost certainty that He would never ask us to do anything He wouldn't do Himself.
And we further know from Scripture that He is the one who will be presiding over us at the last judgment. He earned that right at Calvary. It follows, therefore, that at that final judgment we will not be held accountable for anything we said or did against Him, personally. That is, if our sins against Him are the only thing barring our entry into the promised land, He is not going to stand in the way.
But I have intuitively known this for most of my life and not just by the sheer logic of it, either. It is especially apparent when conjoined to Christ's words in Luke 23:24, where we see Him making good on that promise by forgiving His executioners from the Cross. Now if He can forgive them, after all they put Him through, how much more should we expect Him to forgive any of the lesser sins committed against Him. For Christ to conduct Himself otherwise would seem to conflict with everything else we've come to know of Him.
I mean just consider what they did to Him, yet He gave them no resistance and opened not His mouth. They scourged Him mercilessly, and put a crown of thorns on His head, a crown I'm guessing He could have easily taken off any time thereafter. But He didn't. It was our gift to Him, so He wore it without complaint. They gave Him a heavy Cross to carry expecting Him to shun it. But to their chagrin, He embraced it, made it His own. And when they stripped Him and nailed Him to it, His arms outstretched and forcing Him into the most vulnerable position imaginable, was He not telling us the proper attitude that we too should have toward the world? Let it do to us as it will, it has no real power. And did He not top it all off by forgiving them all for what they did?
Given all that, are we to seriously expect that at our final judgment He is going to suddenly tell us, gotcha!? I was just kidding about all that unconditional forgiveness and selflessness stuff and now you are going to pay for every bad thing you ever said or did against Me? The question is so ludicrous, I don't think I should even have to answer it.
But as obvious as this may be to me, I have also found many others who are not so easily persuaded. And this is understandable, I guess, especially for those who may lean a little too heavily on the Old Testament's eye-for-an-eye prescription for justice and a little too lightly on the New Testament's turn-the-other-cheek prescription that was intended to supplant it. But, even for Christians, when you love someone who's been wronged (especially if the crime was heinous) it can enrage you when the person or persons who did it are given a free pass. It is natural to want to protect the ones we love from what we perceive to be an injustice. And it is that same sentiment that motivated Peter to try to talk Jesus out of going to Jerusalem. But we all know from Matthew 16:23 what Jesus thought of that idea.
So as hard as it may be for some of us to wrap our heads around, Jesus has no need or desire for our protection (not in His time, nor in ours). From Christ's perspective, when we try, we are thinking as man thinks, not as God thinks. But that is probably the subject for a different commentary. For this one, and because of the firestorm of objections this stance has caused in a discussion group site I frequent (some of those objections valid), I've been forced to refine the argument.
So there is a caveat that needs to be added to the original statement. And it kind of jumped out at me from a commentary I read on Matthew 12:31-32 written by the renowned 4th century Church Father and Doctor, St. John Chrysostom. Below is an excerpt from that commentary. It begins with him speaking as though from Christ's perspective to those who crucified Him.
"'Now as to your blasphemies against me, before the cross, I forgive them: and the daring crime too of the cross itself; neither shall you be condemned for your unbelief alone.' (For neither had they, that believed before the cross, perfect faith. And on many occasions He even charges them to make Him known to no man before the Passion; and on the cross He said that this sin was forgiven them.) But as to your words touching the Spirit, they will have no excuse. For in proof that He is speaking of what was said of Him before the crucifixion, He added, 'Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Ghost, there is no more forgiveness. Wherefore? Because this is known to you; and the truths are notorious which you harden yourselves against. For though ye say that you know not me; yet of this surely you are not ignorant, that to cast out devils, and to do cures, is a work of the Holy Ghost. It is not then I only whom you are insulting, but the Holy Ghost also.'"
So, in connecting Christ's words in Matthew to His words on the Cross (as this great saint has done), we not only see Christ offering the same forgiveness we are called to offer, but we can also now understand why. It's because they know not what they do. In other words, the reason Christ differentiates between sins committed against Him and the Spirit is because all acts by the Spirit are miraculous and obviously, therefore, by God. Sins committed against Christ, however, are another matter as they cannot be considered sins against God if the sinner does not recognize His divinity.
So that is the caveat, The unconditional forgiveness provision applies only to non-Christians. Any Christian who sins against Christ knows that they are sinning against God and must, therefore, repent of it.
And when non-Christians stand before Him to be judged, our Lord and Master (to His great credit) is not going to hold anything they have said or done against Him personally get in the way of (or cloud) His just judgment. He will look instead at what is in their heart and how they conducted themselves on this planet. Did they endeavor to know God and love Him (to the best of their understanding of who He is)? And did they try to love their neighbor as themselves? These are the criteria they will be judged by. And what they called themselves, in most cases, will have zero relevance.
But these are just a few of the many arguments that favor this position. The others are more appropriately discussed in the Objections section of this Commentary. In conclusion of this section (this being the first commentary of many I now plan to post) it is appropriate to say something on how it came about.
I have always been good at figuring things out. My main strength is that I have a very logical mind. I'm good with numbers too. And both have served me well in my engineering career where it was often my job to oversee the design and construction of some very complicated chemical production facilities. In that capacity I was also tasked to identify and rectify every potential problem associated with those designs and translate it all into language anyone can understand. And in consideration of the fact that one small oversight in those designs or in the communication of those designs can lead to people losing their lives and/or clients losing millions in construction overruns, I took my job very seriously and became, as a result, quite good at it. It was an excellent training ground, teaching me how vitally important it is to understand every detail and consider every contingency when issuing a design for implementation.
And while some may disagree, those skills I developed as an engineer have made me a pretty good biblical exegete, too. At least I think they have, as they have helped me tremendously in reconciling a great many difficult Scriptures with magisterial teaching. My particular interest is in those Scriptures that most people have given up on as irreconcilable and simply now ignore. And as I have found when looking at them anew through an engineer's eyes, hidden insights are sometimes exposed that bring the whole Scripture back into the light.
It's a great technique. But it's certainly not the only technique (or even the best). And it's not perfect, either (nor am I, of course). So sometimes I get stumped. And when it happens, I've found (as have many others) that the writings of the Church Fathers can be exceptionally helpful. There aren't many things in Scripture they haven't thought of or commented on. But before going there, I've also often found it expedient to engage others in the discernment to see if they can set me straight or, in the least, point me in the right direction.
Moreover, just getting my thoughts out of my head and into the open, through dialoguing, is sometimes the only way to make sense of them. And the technique I've found best for sparking such a dialogue is to demonstrate what happens when you take the face value interpretation of a difficult Scripture to its logical startling conclusions. And that is precisely what I did with this Scripture, Since I was getting nowhere with it on my own I posed the following question in that Facebook discussion group I mentioned.
"If every sin committed against the Son will be unconditionally forgiven (Luke 23:34) and any sin committed against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven (Matthew 12:31-32), is it logical and/or correct to conclude that the only sins Christ's death redeemed us of are those committed against the Father? Just wondering."
Judging by the number of likes and the wows it received, I think some people got what I was doing. Others, though, actually thought I was advocating for that position, attacking it for its novelty and me also for simply posing the question. But that was to be expected and I responded to them in kind. The one thing that wasn't expected, however, is that the bulk of the arguments I got were focused against the one statement in that original question I knew to be right, that sins committed against Christ will be unconditionally forgiven. I have known this to be true since I was a child. Even as an atheist I understood this had to be a defining attribute of the God-Man. And that part of the question really isn't novel anyway (as was being claimed). At its core is a very simple truth known from the dawn of Christendom. Christ is not a hypocrite.
Armed with that, and only that, I had no reservations about stepping into this fray, as I already knew the outcome. It didn't matter to me that I hadn't yet researched it fully, or that I might make some mistakes along the way while I talked things through, as that is the reason for and nature of dialoguing. It also didn't matter that I did not, at the time, know of a Church Father who espoused it. These things didn't matter, because I knew whatever our infallible teaching authority may have to say about it, that it would not (and could not) conflict with the base premise. Accepting, therefore, that simple rock-solid truth, by faith alone, I also knew (from many past experiences) the Holy Spirit would eventually step forward to fill in the blanks. And once again He did not disappoint.
So to those who continue to object, I recommend you begin your objection from the same first principle I started with. And if your conclusions have strayed in any way from it, you can know with certainty you've followed the wrong path. This is also the first issue that needs to be addressed in any contrary argument, because, until it has been satisfactorily resolved, there is really nothing to be gained in looking further.
Nevertheless, in the spirit of fair play, the objections I have received to date are addressed in the second portion of this commentary. And any further objections will be added as they are received. They are listed in no particular order, and many have been consolidated and rephrased for the purpose of brevity. If I have in any way misrepresented an objection let me know and I will revise it. All objections in their original form can be found in John Martignoni's periodical newsletters #403, #405 & #406 and in the thread I posted on 6/23/21 at the John Martignoni & Bible Christian Society's Facebook discussion group site. Comments and additional objections should be made to the new thread I have started there dated 10/13/21.
Part II: Objections
Objection 1: The Roman Catholic Catechism, paragraph #597, states …
The historical complexity of Jesus' trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles' calls to conversion after Pentecost. Jesus himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in following suit, both accept "the ignorance" of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their leaders. Still less can we extend responsibility to other Jews of different times and places, based merely on the crowd's cry: "His blood be on us and on our children!", a formula for ratifying a judicial sentence. As the Church declared at the Second Vatican Council: "[N]either all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his Passion. . . [T]he Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy Scripture."
"Well, if not all the Jews of Jerusalem at that time, nor the Jews of today, can be charged with those crimes, than neither can the non-Jews. So, when Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” He is speaking of those Jews who can indeed be said to be responsible for the crimes against Jesus, and only of them in that instance. And this is in direct conflict with your position."
Response to Objection 1: This objection is a little complicated, so the last paragraph of this objection, which demonstrates, I think, the main thrust of the argument is reprinted verbatim as it was originally written. And if I am understanding it correctly, the objector has arrived at what he believes is the logical conclusion that Christ's forgiveness on the Cross extends only to those involved with His execution. And this he believes is in direct conflict with the position being put forth here. And while I am not sure this is a logical deduction, nor that it is conclusive to infer such a meaning from a non-magisterial document, I will not argue the point.
It is sufficient to say, it is difficult to believe Christ would unconditionally forgive all that was done to Him at Calvary but quibble over significantly lesser offences. And while I may be accused here of taking undue liberty with Scripture for extending Christ's intent beyond Calvary, when you connect it with the more general statements He made in Matthew (found also in Mk 3:28-29 and Lk 12:10), there is no longer any liberty being taken.
Objection 2: All sins, no matter who they are directed against, are offences against God. They must, therefore, be repented of before forgiveness can be obtained.
Response to Objection 2: I agree completely with the first and provisionally with the second sentence of this objection. Applying that provision [in brackets] to the second sentence, the amended objection reads …
All sins, no matter who they are directed against, are offences against God. They must, therefore, be repented of before forgiveness can be obtained [unless, of course, the Son (or any member of the Trinity), personally asks the others that they show mercy for a specific offence, and they accede to His wishes].
I think most would agree this a reasonable amendment. And Jesus, seemingly acknowledging the truth of the first sentence in the objection, did specifically ask the Father (and the Holy Spirit, by implication) to do that for sins committed against Him at the Cross. Objection noted and resolved.
Objection 3: The position being put forth is novel. No one in 2,000 years has ever said it. It is, therefore, highly unlikely to be true.
Response to Objection 3: I think this objection was levelled mainly at the original question in its entirety. And as regards the absurd conclusion it arrived at I do agree. Not so regarding what it said about sins committed against the Son (and the only part of the original question I was arguing for). St. John Chrysostom has already been shown to have held this view. Below is the testimony of another. It is an excerpt from a commentary on Matthew made by Theophylact of Ohrid (an 11th century, Bulgarian Archbishop venerated by the Orthodox Church and considered by many Eastern scholars to be the finest commentator on the four Gospels after Chrysostom).
"So, then, know that he who blasphemes the Son of Man, seeing Him living as a man, and says that He is a friend of harlots, a glutton, and a drunkard because of those things which Christ does, such a man will not have to give an answer for this, even if he does not repent. For he is forgiven, as he did not realize that this was God concealed. But he who blasphemes the Holy Spirit, that is, the spiritual deeds of Christ, and calls them demonic, unless he repents, he will not be forgiven. For he does not have a reasonable excuse to slander."
I am not sure I agree entirely with his reasoning, but he certainly seems to me to be drawing off Chrysostom, here. And what he may lack in that saint's eloquence, he makes up for in clarity. Blasphemies against the Son of Man, according to Theophylact, are not only forgiven but will not even need to be repented of, if the blasphemer does not recognize Christ's divinity.
So that's two examples. And there may be others. I've not researched it extensively. And it is nice to have some company. But, as was stated earlier, there is nothing to fear if no one has ever written it before. What if the Church Fathers had adopted that attitude and not written anything out of fear of stepping over the line? What treasures would we have lost? St. Paul and the Apostles too could to have been similarly squeamish. But they weren't, thank God, so our New Testament consists of not merely 4 books, but a whopping 27. As St. Paul once told the Ephesians, the Church is likened to a building whose foundation is Christ and the Apostles. But every building is a great deal more than its foundation. And I cannot believe it was ever God's intent that we just mull around in the basement.
Objection 4: The position being put forth suggests that it is possible to sin against Christ's human nature without sinning against His divine nature, which is absurd. You cannot separate the two natures. Christ was not schizophrenic.
Response to Objection 4: This objection was raised to an intermediary position I held while I was still working this out. And it is the imprecise language I was using to describe my position that instigated it. There is no point in defending a position I no longer hold, however, so I will weigh the objection against the position being put forth here. And on that I will assert that there is no attempt being made here to split Christ in two. The differentiation being made is entirely in the heart of the sinner. If the sinner recognizes Christ as God, his/her sins fall into one category. If not, they fall into another category. And Christ remains the same in either case. Objection resolved.
Objection 5: The position being put forth conflicts with Matthew 25:31-46, where at the last judgment Jesus specifically condemns those who neglected to give aid to the needy, noting that in so doing they sinned against Him.
Response to Objection 5: This is the objection that made me realize there was something lacking in my original position. And trying to resolve it has led me to the refined position I hold today. So many thanks to those who pointed out this incongruity.
And the resolution is now quite simple. The people that are being counted with the goats can be divided into two camps; those who, while living, did not recognize Christ's divinity, and those who, while living, did. In either case, when they neglected the needy they were neglecting Christ, just as He said in these verses. But those in the first camp are condemned simply for the sin of neglecting the needy. Those in the second camp are condemned for the sin of neglecting God.
Those in the second camp are likened also to those who say, "Lord, Lord," in Matthew 7:21. They claim to be Christians, but their behavior says otherwise. And it is their claim to be Christian that is their greatest downfall. Putting it in other scriptural terms, "If they were blind, they would be without sin. But since they say, 'they see', their sin remains." (John 9:41, tense altered for clarity). In any event, by this understanding, there is no longer any conflict. Objection resolved.
Objection 6: The position being put forth conflicts with a prophecy Christ made concerning His betrayer, in Matthew 26:24.
Response to Objection 6: The prophecy in question, "… but woe to that man by whom He [the Son of Man] is betrayed. It would be better for him if he had not been born," strongly suggests that Judas didn't fare too well in the afterlife. And there really is no conflict if we assume that Judas, being one of the twelve, was fully aware that Jesus was God when he betrayed Him. But I am not so sure he did. And John Chrysostom doesn't seem to think so, either. In his commentary he expressed his belief that no one fully recognized Christ for who He was until after He rose from the dead.
But Judas's great sin, the one he is being condemned for, according to many theologians, is the sin of pride, not treason. He convinced himself (with the help, of course, of someone whispering in his ear), that His crime was so great it could never be forgiven, not even by God. And in hanging himself his prophecy became self-fulfilling. He turned a sin that he'd committed against someone he did not fully recognize at the time to be God (a sin he might have actually been unconditionally forgiven for because of his ignorance) into a sin that he knew was unquestionably against God. And he died in that state of arrogance. Either way, there is no conflict. Objection resolved.
Objection 7: The position being put forth suggests it is possible to sin against one member of the Trinity without sinning against all three.
Response to Objection 7: And this one, I admit, had me going for a while, because those who were making this objection were so adamant of its relevance. On further reflection, however, I see that this was a red herring. So I concede that even though, to my knowledge, it has never been definitively declared by the Magisterium, it does make sense and is very likely true that you cannot sin against one member of the Trinity without sinning against all three. But that does not in any way effect this position.
As was already stated in the response to Objection 2, the position concedes that a sin against one member of the Trinity is a sin against all three. And Jesus seems to have acknowledged and addressed that reality on the Cross. That is, in the many proclamations Christ made throughout the Gospels, He speaks in most as though He has the sole authority to make them. But in His words of pardon, we see Him bringing the Father (and by implication, the Spirit) into the equation. And it is reasonable to assume He did so to show They too were involved in the decision. So did They accede? Good question. And it's dealt with in Objection 8.
Objection 8: Simply because Jesus asked the Father to forgive His executioners it does not necessarily follow that He did. And it is not unprecedented that the Father might turn His Son down, as that's exactly what happened the night before at Gethsemane.
Response to Objection 8: If Christ chooses to unconditionally forgive any sin committed against Him by those who are ignorant of who He is, and He asks the Father and the Holy Spirit to treat those sins the same way (as is suggested He will do in the various Scriptures already mentioned) why should it be assumed that they wouldn't comply with such a magnanimous gesture? The Father turning the Son down at Gethsemane is an exceptional case applied to an extraordinary situation and we see no other example of Christ's requests being denied in Scripture. Any rational person, therefore, is forced to conclude that, although it is possible, it's not very likely.
But that's not the end of it. There are other, bigger, reasons to reject that hypothesis. For one, from a strictly legal perspective, since the Scriptures so heavily suggest these sins will be unconditionally forgiven, it might be hard to prosecute someone who accepted it as true. Now, tying up legal loopholes was not the main reason Christ came to live amongst us, of course. But it is one of the consequences. No sinner, for instance, can later say to Him, "Hey, you didn't know what it was like down here." Given that, it would be kind of odd, I think, if He didn't plug the holes in every potential defense while He was here.
But that is just a minor point. Much more important is what it tells us of our obligation to unconditionally forgive transgressions committed against us. If we do as we've been instructed and forgive those transgressions, while at the same time smiling on the inside knowing that the perpetrator is really going to get it after they die, where is the merit in that? True forgiveness, as Christ has shown us, is to ask God to forgive as well. And we cannot (and should not) harbor thoughts that God might not honor our requests.
So whether the other members of the Godhead honored Christ's request or not, They obviously want us to believe They did. And that really seals the deal on this objection, because if God wants us to believe something, we need to believe it. But more than that, since it is totally out of character for God to ask us to believe something that isn't true, we can take it to the bank that Christ's request was granted. Logic demands it. Objection answered and resolved.
Objection 9: This objection is also a little complicated, so I have reprinted it verbatim, in its entirety, as it was originally written.
"You have failed to take note of the historical/theological context in which Jesus speaks these words in Matt 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-29, and Luke 12:10. Jesus is speaking to an audience that has not yet been informed of the nature of the Godhead. They do not know of the Trinity. They do not know of the dogma of one God, three persons. So, when He talks about sinning against the Son of man as opposed to sinning against the Holy Spirit, what He is talking about, in general, is sinning against man vs. sinning against God. He is not talking about sinning against God the Son vs. sinning against God the Holy Spirit. They had no concept of God the Son vs. God the Holy Spirit. The “Holy Spirit,” for them, was the same as the Father. The Holy Spirit was merely a manifestation of the one person Who was God - the Father. They knew nothing of three persons in God.
1 Samuel 2:25 says, “If a man sins against a man, God will mediate for him; but if a man sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” That, essentially, is what Jesus is saying when He talks about sinning against the Son of man vs. sinning against the Holy Spirit.
So this division you have between sins against the Son vs. sins against the Spirit vs. sins against the Father is a false division. You sin against God (all 3 persons) or you sin against man. Period. In Matthew 12:32, Jesus is speaking specifically to people who didn't believe Him to be God. It needs to, therefore, be understood in that context and that His words do not apply to believers today."
Response to Objection 9: And I agree with almost everything being said in this objection. It seems to get very close to the same position being espoused here. But then at the end, instead of grabbing for the gold ring, it tails off onto a dispensationalist-like path by saying that Jesus's words in Matthew 12:32 do not apply to believers today. This is apprently how he reconciles Christ's words in that verse with Church teaching. He ignores them.
But Christ is God. And He knew everything that was going to find its way into Matthew's Gospel. And to suggest He would have said something, He knew was going to be recorded, that would not apply to people everywhere (believer or not) is kind of nutty, I think. It's also kind of dangerous to be just chucking out Scriptures here and there because they don't sit well with your personal beliefs. And from the great arguments I've heard from this objector in other matters, I am a little surprised he would go down this path.
But there is nothing in what is being claimed of that verse in Matthew that would not apply to all people today, anyway. Jesus is basically saying (as this objection starts to say, and John Chrysostom has already said), that if you do not recognize Christ's divinity, your sins against Him will be treated as sins against any other Christian. And as we all know, the model Christian forgives every sin committed against them without condition and, per Objection #8, asks God to forgive those transgressions, as well. Should Jesus be considered a model Christian? ... Well then, there you go. Objection addressed and resolved.
Objection 10: Jesus was full of condemnation for the Scribes and the Pharisees in their attempts to trip Him up, calling them whited sepulchres and a brood of vipers and asking them how any can escape damnation.
Response to Objection 10: This is probably the weakest objection of the lot simply because when you look at all the verses where Jesus is condemning the Scribes and the Pharisees, His anger towards them is not about what they said or did Him. It is about their hypocrisy and how they have failed the people they have been charged by God to serve. And the only place in Scripture that He does acknowledge their sin being directed against Him is when they got Him crucified. and He forgave them for that (even though they did not ask for it). Objection addressed and resolved.
Objection 11 (anticipated): The position being put forth seems to be in conflict with Christ's words immediately preceding Matthew 12:32.
Response to Objection 11: The actual Scripture reads as follows …
"Therefore, I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven."\\
And since the qualifier, unconditional, was used to clarify Matthew 12:32, it must also be applied to Matthew 12:31. The amended verse reads …
"Therefore, I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be [unconditionally] forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be [unconditionally] forgiven."
And in so doing the second half of the verse pretty much says the same thing as in verse 12:32, so there is no discrepancy there. It is the first half of the verse then that the qualifier seems to be messing with, but not really. What Christ is saying here is basically what He repeated in the next verse but with greater clarity. The sins Jesus is speaking of that will be [unconditionally] forgiven men in verse 12:31 are once again simply those sins committed against Him.
The one seemingly important difference, however, between the two verses is that, in verse (12:31), He speaks of blasphemy and every other sin that could be committed against Him. But in the following verse 12:32, He speaks only of blasphemies. It might be argued, therefore, that the first statement specifically applies to transgressions committed against Him while He walked amongst us. And since blasphemy is really the only way we can sin against Him since His Ascension, the second statement applies only to Christ in His post-Ascension state. But whether this understanding is correct or not, it does not appear to have any relevance to the original objection, which has already been noted, addressed and resolved.
Objection 12 (anticipated): The position being put forth requires adding words to the Bible, a practice the Bible adamantly condemned (Rv 22:18).
Response to Objection 12: The Word of God is perfect. But the human languages He's employed to communicate His words to us are not. This solution is not, therefore, about trying to add something new to the Bible. It is about trying find the best words to translate what Jesus has already said into modern English. And when you do that you are forced to take liberties, because words in one language in one historic time period will often have subtly different meanings in other languages at other periods. Several words sometimes need to be empoyed to convey the same meaning of one word in one language to another. And sometimes even that only gets you close to the correct meaning.
Every translation that we use today, even the so-called literal translations, have had to take these liberties to account for the differences between languages. And many examples could be cited. So, to sum this up, no attempt is being made to add something new to the Bible. It is merely the employment of a common convention used by Bible translators to bring out the true intent of words that are already there.
But to be clear, I would never advocate for actually inserting the word "unconditionally" into those verses in some new translation of the Bible. The Sacred Scriptures to me are hallowed ground and I certainly don't feel worthy to mess with them. And if the Church in her wisdom has never dared to do such a thing (even though she must have been sorely tempted to do it with some verses to keep people from going astray), far be it from me to think otherwise.
So all I am really trying to do here is give people a logical means of reconciling those Scriptures with church teaching. And I leave it to them to accept or reject the resolution. Actually changing the wording would be the equivalent of trying to force a theology on them. And that being something the Church has never done, it is something I strongly oppose, too. Objection addressed and resolved.
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Commentary excerpts by St. John Chrysostom and Theophylact of Ohrid
obtained from the Patristic Bible Commentary website available at …
https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home.
Posted October 13, 2021.