Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Marcella.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Letter
XLII. To Marcella.
At Marcella’s request Jerome explains to her what
is “the sin against the Holy Ghost” spoken of by Christ,
and shows Novatian’s892
| 892 Novatian, a Roman
presbyter in the middle of the third century, held that the
“lapsed,” who had failed during the persecutions, could not
be readmitted to the church. His sect upheld an extreme moral
puritanism, as is shown in the speech of Constantine to their bishop at
the Council of Nicæa: “Acesius, you should set up a ladder
to heaven, and go up by yourself alone.” | explanation of
it to be untenable. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.
1. The question you send is short and the answer is
clear. There is this passage in the gospel: “Whosoever speaketh a
word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever
speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him neither
in this world nor in the world to come.”893
Now if Novatian affirms that none but Christian renegades can sin
against the Holy Ghost, it is plain that the Jews who blasphemed Christ
were not guilty of this sin. Yet they were wicked husbandmen, they had
slain the prophets, they were then compassing the death of the Lord;894
and so utterly lost were they that the
Son of God told them that it was they whom he had come to save.895
It must be proved to Novatian, therefore,
that the sin which shall never be forgiven is not the blasphemy of men
disembowelled by torture who in their agony deny their Lord, but is the
captious clamor of those who, while they see that God’s works are
the fruit of virtue, ascribe the virtue to a demon and declare the
signs wrought to belong not to the divine excellence but to the devil.
And this is the whole gist of our Saviour’s argument, when He
teaches that Satan cannot be cast out by Satan, and that his kingdom is
not divided against itself.896
If it is the
devil’s object to injure God’s creation, how can he wish to
cure the sick and to expel himself from the bodies possessed by him?
Let Novatian prove that of those who have been compelled to sacrifice
before a judge’s tribunal any
has declared of the things written in the gospel that they were wrought
not by the Son of God but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils;897
and then he will be able to make good
his contention that this898
is the
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven.
2. But to put a more searching question still: let
Novatian tell us how he distinguishes speaking against the Son of Man
from blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. For I maintain that on his
principles men who have denied Christ under persecution have only
spoken against the Son of Man, and have not blasphemed the Holy Ghost.
For when a man is asked if he is a Christian, and declares that he is
not; obviously in denying Christ, that is the Son of Man, he does no
despite to the Holy Ghost. But if his denial of Christ involves a
denial of the Holy Ghost, this heretic can perhaps tell us how the Son
of Man can be denied without sinning against the Holy Ghost. If he
thinks that we are here intended by the term Holy Ghost to understand
the Father, no mention at all of the Father is made by the denier in
his denial. When the apostle Peter, taken aback by a maid’s
question, denied the Lord, did he sin against the Son of Man or against
the Holy Ghost? If Novatian absurdly twists Peter’s words,
“I know not the man,”899
to mean a
denial not of Christ’s Messiahship but of His humanity, he will
make the Saviour a liar, for He foretold900
that
He Himself, that is His divine Sonship, must be denied. Now, when Peter
denied the Son of God, he wept bitterly and effaced his threefold
denial by a threefold confession.901
His sin,
therefore, was not the sin against the Holy Ghost which can never be
forgiven. It is obvious, then, that this sin involves blasphemy,
calling one Beelzebub for his actions, whose virtues prove him to be
God. If Novatian can bring an instance of a renegade who has called
Christ Beelzebub, I will at once give up my position and admit that
after such a fall the denier can win no forgiveness. To give way under
torture and to deny oneself to be a Christian is one thing, to say that
Christ is the devil is another. And this you will yourself see if you
read the passage902
attentively.
3. I ought to have discussed the matter more fully, but
some friends have visited my humble abode, and I cannot refuse to give
myself up to them. Still, as it might seem arrogant not to answer you
at once, I have compressed a wide subject into a few words, and have
sent you not a letter but an explanatory note.903
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
