I’ll help you out …

Source: John Piper “BEYOND FORGIVENESS: BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE SPIRIT”

In addition to crediting your source, you should indicate what parts of your post belong to Piper, and what parts are your own.
I can see why you hesitate to give him credit–Piper being a Calvinist…

Here’s something that might be useful to you: Copyright and the Internet

Sonia

That is why I said I was not endorsing none of JP’s theological doctrines. I used abbreviations to prevent you taking the focus off the subject of the post and redirecting it that Piper is a Calvinist ( Which I failed to do) People like you, Sonia, will bring up that Piper is an Calvinist which has no bearing of his view of the unforgivable sin or my response to Jason’s commentary. Who cares if he is a Calvinist. Your a Universalist…both of you are wrong.

Thanks Sonia, it is useful, but I did not plagerise. I gave a reference. I may of made a mistake on how I gave and used the reference, but it certainly was not intentional plagerism.

It seems that Aaron is equating ‘not be forgiven’ with unrepentance. Repentance is turning from wrong behavior to right behavior, something the sinner should do. The forgiveness part involves the person who forgives the wrongdoer. A person can forgive someone without the person repenting. And conversely, a person can repent without having the other forgive them. But what Jesus teaches is that both factors need to be involved for reconciliation. Read the parable in Matthew 18 after Jesus tell peter to forgive seventy times seventy.

The sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has to do with not believing God is involved in the miracles, shown in compassion, of Jesus’ miracles, instead attributing the power of Beelzebub. What is happening here is that if the Pharisees contribute all the miracles to Satan, then how are they going to discern the power of God via the Holy Spirit. It’s like not giving the benefit of the doubt to anything Jesus did or teach about. But it is the Spirit which gives life. As long as they held out the unbelief that the Spirit of God is involved, then they could not approach God for salvation. The unforgiveness is perpetual as long as they held their unbelief. But the passage says nothing about not being able to repent.

Actually, I personally don’t care whether Piper is Calvinist or whatever else… it only came to mind as a possible rationale for your obvious intentional masking of the identity of your source (I mean, since you’ve made it clear that you have personally repudiated Calvinism.)

In any case, I’m glad you find the link useful. Now that that’s straightened out, perhaps we should get back to the topic.

Sonia

Sorry, I thought you were trying to be wryly humorous. After all, since I was describing (in the few sentences you actually referred to from me) what you (but not in fact the scriptures at Mark 3 and parallels) call the “unforgivable” sin, it makes sense that you would affirm that description as properly reflecting what you believed to be true (over against what I was talking about, both in the few sentences you quoted from me and in the rest of the material you chose to ignore). Also, you never once obviously quoted anyone else but me (whom you continually called “Jason Pratt” in your reply), and then only a few lines. After making a big whoof at the start of your reply about how you didn’t think it was worth referring to anything other than the few lines you selected.

If it comes to that, even in your reply above you hadn’t actually proven yet that you weren’t rather sarcastically referring at the end to only thinking it was worth quoting a few lines from me in contrast with what you believe to be true instead about what I was describing in those few lines. Who is this OTHER “JP” from whom you quoted a few lines, and where did you quote him (or her?) from, and which lines were they? (It takes Sonia digging later to finally confirm you meant “John Piper”.)

This is aside from the salient points to my bringing up your ‘source’ reference at the end, which stand completely untouched even though you meant another “JP”.

I always thought “BAaron” sounded rather dignified, and even toughly badass, and that it respected your original pseudonym here as “Born Again” in continuity. Which was the explanation I gave for first trying it many months ago, too.

Admittedly, I know you don’t like it (for some completely inscrutable reason. What part of “baron” do you think is disrespectful and immature???) But it isn’t like you’ve given us your actual name to use in any case. (Unless “Aaron37” is your legal name, which you sure haven’t proven in any way.)

I could come up with some actually disrespectful and immature way to call you instead: [size=200]Mod edited, to remove a highly insulting vulgar version of “Aaron37”'s pseudonym, including an obscure but still extremely crude internet joke at the end.[/size] Temp-ban warning to Jason.]

But only someone who was insane would think that it would make me feel justified to do so. And God knows, you give me vastly enough reason to feel justified over you already anyway.

At any rate: yes, I know you don’t like being called BAaron. And yes, that’s why I used it. But calling you by an alphanumerical pseudonym seems far more silly (if I’m going to do that, I’ll just go the distance and abbreviate, which is in fact what I typically do, A or A37); and I am certainly not going to call someone Aaron compared to an Aaron on the board who proves (from the outset) that that is his real name and is actually a competent opponent who takes the time to respect my work even when he disagrees with almost all of it. That Aaron is the one who has earned the right to be called by “Aaron” as a personal name around here, especially by me.

Relatedly, someone who is willing to ignore my rationales for his own convenience, and then accuse me of doing something that he then proceeds to exactly do himself while acting as though that’s perfectly all right (or even something different) when he does it–after having gone out of his way less than two weeks ago to denounce exactly what he’s busily doing at that moment–deserves exactly no consideration from me in regard to such trivialities as which mere internet pseudonym he prefers to be called by.

Yet I graciously called you a very respectable (and even rather awesome) one anyway. Wow, sucks to be you, someone called you a great nickname, waaaah. {cue world’s tiniest violin}

Yeah, I think I’ll just leave the awesome nickname (the “metal” one, as kids on the internet would say these days) in my response, thanks, rather than adjust it to the sheep bleat or some other less respectable pseudonym like some mere alphanumeric designation.

However, I am perfectly fine with adding parenthetical notes to my reply stating I was mistaken about thinking you were referencing me, while leaving my error in view (instead of trying to retroactively hide it like it didn’t exist) and linking to the relevant posts afterward for your corrections (including the one I’m replying to). Who knows?–maybe future readers will even be glad to see how you avoid the real problems.

Well, you’re welcome to focus back on the subject of my posts any time you’re ready! (Instead of explicitly ignoring them, and/or haring off on complaints about being given a different pseudonym than the one you normally use.) Anytime once you’ve recanted or repented of that other post, I mean, where you deride discussion or debate of doctrine among believers as something God does not approve of. As long as you leave that dangling in the background, it’s going to be hard to pretend you’re actually trying to have a serious discussion about anything here instead of (at best) only pontificating about it. (While ignoring the actual serious discussion. As being, for example, “unnecessary rhetoric”.)

“You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit…”

“So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy”

Just read the literal words…

What’s sadder than fighting a losing battle is not even realizing it. Or in the case of knowing but not admitting it, just plain pathetic.

Forgiveness is accessible through repentance, unless you’re Calvinist.

Also, a bit of advice (though it seems you don’t read my posts whatsoever these days) anyone who’s even had a short college session can tell you that that citation was horrible to the point of at least borderline plagiarism. In such a setting you would be severely docked down a few grades and at least called in for a lecture on proper citations if not disciplined, because you can’t tell what’s original and what’s not. Granted, I imagine you couldn’t be as severely penalized in a court of law as someone who didn’t state that they were citing anyone at all, although you didn’t make it abundantly clear that you were in the first place.

I meant, that if merely stating that the Son of God Himself is actually working under orders from Satan is blasphemous, then handing over the Son of God Himself to ones’ own enemies to be torturously slain under the charge of being a blasphemer to God in a shamefully exposed way traditionally understood to be cursed by God, might in a superficial way seem to be rather more blasphemous. But Jesus is prepared to forgive that action, whereas the other action (which wouldn’t seem to go nearly as far) does not have forgiveness (in this age or the age to come).

Something more is in view than merely wrong action, or even a particular category of wrong action. (I don’t think it’s going to be feasible to try to make the attribution of Jesus’ power to Satan’s authority somehow come out crucially worse than slaying Jesus as a damned traitor to God in a way cursed by God. The beliefs involved run against the Holy Spirit very solidly either way.) And I think Jesus says enough, by report, for us to figure out why the wrath of God is coming in one case but not in the other. Which I discussed back in the commentary.

It has to do with setting one’s self against the Spirit of Truth, in a way far more fundamental than the particular way the Pharisees were going about it in that incident: attributing the power of Christ to Satan’s authority. Not doing this (or minor variations thereof), won’t inoculate a person from blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. As pretty much every non-universalist also admits, unless they’re claiming that only people who attribute the actions of Jesus Christ to Satan’s authority are hopelessly damned!–but few non-universalists restrict hopeless damnation to a result of doing only that particular thing.

Ohhhh. I see where the disconnect was. I always thought Jesus was asking for forgiveness for the soldiers who placed him between two common thieves since they had no idea who they were doing that to. Not sure if that’s an intense enough sin to be the one to call out forgiveness over, but the context just seemed right. Do we know then pretty reasonably well for sure which action or set of actions he was calling out forgiveness for?

I guess I didn’t totally see you covering that issue (let’s face it, you’re a mite abstract and even vague at points). I’ll have to comb back over it unless you wanna quote the part you were specifically referring to.

But no, I definitely agree with you about what was more blasphemous.

Which of course is a major point. But which might be extended to others in the area feasibly enough–the GosLuke says it happened as the soldiers were crucifying Him, but doesn’t specifically say He said it about the soldiers. Not everyone among the Sanhedrin or the Pharisee party (not the same groups, although naturally there was some overlap) had to be blinding themselves culpably to what the truth really was.

Indeed, the contexts of the informal trial indicate that there had to be a substantial number of at least partial supporters even among the Sanhedrin, trying to ensure Jesus was fairly questioned. They may have disappointedly decided He was guilty after all, but they couldn’t have been trying to cheat their way to victory. Unlike, for example, Caiaphas.

Technically, of course, if they didn’t really know and understand what they were doing, they didn’t need forgiveness per se, only pardon. (The term in Greek can go either way.) It’s still a gracious, as well as perfectly fair, action for Jesus to do so.

Makes sense. I was actually thinking somewhat the same, although not with quite as much narrative input as you were.

To some, saying that God is love is blasphemy without adding the usual caveats and exclusions. What is blasphemy? People have all sorts of notions about God - is blasphemy to be merely mistaken about God? Is Calvinism blasphemy? Since, ultimately, God IS the author (allower) of evil by their thinking. Blasphemy is ugly depending on how your ears are tuned. But one man’s blasphemy is the next man’s doctrine in service of his God.

A cautious man would say that God IS, and leave it at that. Which begs a thousand questions left unanswered. Is there a human like our ‘cautious man’? No. But there are ‘cautious men’ who have stopped asking or even acknowledging questions that other less-cautious (by some standard) men ask.

And then along comes Paul in Romans and says that men by natural theology can come to know God (and are without excuse) and all that without a word of scripture.

When Christ uses the word ‘blasphemy’, we can see that He means something quite unnatural and the product of religion and which goes beyond error and into a realm of pure chaff and dross, that is, non-existence where there is nothing TO forgive or not.

Ran, Excellent post.

I thought so too Ran.

Incidentally, I should probably clarify that I’m the mod who called a temp-ban warning against me, for suggesting an actually insulting variant of Aaron37’s pseudonym. I shouldn’t have given into temptation and done that (suggest the super-vulgar insulting variant, I mean.) Fair is fair, and I deserve a temp-ban warning for it, so I figured I ought to do it myself to myself.

(I wouldn’t normally make such an intra-post punitive mod-edit giant flaming red; but again, it was against myself, and I don’t think it hurts to point out that I am not morally perfect. That’s part of being a penitent. )

Also, on the topic of A37’s copying from John Piper: on a quick readthrough, it looks like he only copied one sentence (repeated twice by JP). Interestingly, it’s a sentence that doesn’t at all fit JP’s basic Calvinistic theology, but fits Arm theology well enough (although this was written way back in 1984, so maybe he was Arm back then??). So it was an appropriate sentence for A to port over in that regard at least.

(I will also point out that I critted Matt Slick’s article on much the same ground, namely that his attempt at defending a hopeless interpretation for Matt 3:29 and parallels fits much better into Arm theology than into Calv.)

Also, good contribution, Ran.

The word “blasphemy” is simply a transliteration of the Greek word blasphemia, which is derived from two different Greek words: (1) blapto = “to injure, harm; hinder,” and (2) pheme = “to speak; a saying; a rumor.” Thus, the concept of blasphemy is simply to engage in any kind of “injurious speaking.” When one says something with the intent to hurt, harm or hinder another; when one defames and slanders another; when one spreads destructive rumors and malicious whisperings, and speaks in such a way as to bring great, perhaps irreversible, injury to another — that is “blasphemy.” In addition to the noun form above, it also appears in Scripture as a verb (blasphemeo = “blaspheme”) and an adjective (blasphemos = “blasphemous”). Therefore, to answer yet another question posed above, when the Lord talks of “speaking against” or “speaking a word against,” He is really declaring essentially the very same thing, just in somewhat different language. Both are depicting one whose intent is to injure others with what is declared against them. Such intent is blasphemous, by definition of the Greek term.

Ref: Al Maxey ( I do not endorse all theological doctrines of this person)

Surely you mean you don’t endorse all the theological doctrines of this person. There’s a big difference between not endorsing any and not endorsing all.

(If you really didn’t endorse any, that would also include whatever theological doctrines are involved in the quotation you cited from him concerning the theological meaning and application of ‘blasphemy’.)