Biblical commentary on the New Testament - The Christian ...

Matthew XII. 31, 32. 4W
impossible, inasmuch as the susceptibiUty to holy impulses becomes
utterly extinct. Thus the successive stages of sin appear
dependent on the degree of religious culture, and the deeper know-
ledge of things thereby rendered possible. He who has only a general
knowledge of God, can sin only against God the Father. He
who is more advanced, and able to recognise the Son of Man, is in a
position also to reject the deeper and more spiritual revelations of
Divinity manifested in him ;
but he who has experienced in his heart
the workings of the Holy Ghost, may be guilty of sin and blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost.*' Hence a high degree of the knowledge
of God is not a guarantee against sin ; on the contrary, the greatest
sin presupposes the greatest knowledge ;f it is only purity, sincerity,
and humility of heart which, in- every degree of development, afford
such security. But inasmuch as this very disposition was wanting
in the Pharisees, they were 07i the loay toward the commission of
the sin against the Holy Ghost.
Without entering, at present, into a minute discussion of the doctrine
of the Trinity, let us simply conceive of Father, Son and
Spirit, as gradations in the revelation of the Divine Being. The
knowledge of God as the Father has reference to the power and
wisdom ; that of the Son, to the love and mercy ; that of the
Spirit, to the hoHness and perfection of the one Divine Being. He
who according to his progress in spiritual knowledge is able to re-
cognise the holiness and perfection of the Divinity (and that not
merely in imagination, but in reality), and who, nevertheless,
shuts his heart to their influences, nay, calls even holiness unhoHness
—proves that his inward eye is darkness. Accordingly, the speak-
ing against the Son of Man must not be understood merely of speak-
ing against the Messiah's unpretending humanity ;% it must be dis-
tinctly pointed out, that he who so sinned, felt the impression of the
divinity which shone forth in Christ, and yet allowed no room for
* The resisting the Holy Spirit (Acts vii. 51), the grieving of the same (Eph. iv. 30),
even the embittering and provoking of the Holy Spirit (Isa. Ixiii. 10), are still to be care-
fully distinguished from the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which is really the un-
pardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Grashoff (loc. cit. S. 947) considers the
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost as a species of the genus Sin against the Holy Ghost—
a view, however, which does not seem to be countenanced by our text.
f The Reformed theologians taught rightly that the sin against the Holy Ghost is
committed by unregenerate persons, and consists in fact in the rejection of conver-
ting grace, but denied incorrectly that along ^vith this there is with the regenerate the
sin of apostacy (Heb. vi.) The Lutherans maintained rightly the possibility of apostaoy,
but incorrectly confounded this with the sin against the Holy Ghost.— [E.
X This view would be, oii the whole, similar to the one referred to above, according
to which 6 vide tov dvOpunov is =- uvdpuno^. For whosoever really saw in Christ only
what is human, because he possessed no deeper susceptibility for the Divine, sinned no
more in cursing Christ than he would by doing so to any other man. It is the inward
intention, of which, it is true, God alone ia the judge, by which the deed must b©
measured.