Article — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Article Third. On Sins Against the Holy Spirit.
352. According to Sacred Scripture.1 Christ the Lord himself speaks concerning the sin against the Holy Spirit,2 teaching that it is not remitted: But he who shall have spoken against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be remitted to him, neither in this age nor in the future.3
a. By the name of the sin against the Holy Spirit, Christ the Lord designates that sin of the Pharisees by which they attributed to the demon, the unclean spirit, the casting out of demons done by the power of God and known as such, from hatred and malice. Therefore the sin against the Holy Spirit is committed when manifest divine works, which the Holy Spirit works for confirming the faith or for converting sinners, are attributed to the demon from malice of heart.
a. This sin is said to be committed against the Holy Spirit both because a sin which proceeds from hatred and malice is committed in a peculiar way against divine goodness, but goodness is attributed to the Holy Spirit; and because it ascribes to the devil works of the Holy Spirit, of which sort are miracles.
b. Therefore the sin against the Holy Spirit from the mind of the Lord is not any sin whatever which is committed for some peculiar reason against the Holy Spirit, but that one thing described above, when from malice of heart manifest divine works are attributed to the demon. In our time a similar sin is committed by those who, from malice of heart, ascribe miraculous works which are done by manifest divine power for converting sinners not to God but to the forces of nature.
b. He does not say that this sin cannot be remitted, but that it indeed is remissible, yet in fact is never remitted: it shall not be remitted. But he says this either because he foresaw that those who committed this sin would never do penance, or because God in punishment of such great malice decreed not to give them graces so efficacious that they would in fact be converted.
Those do not explain the irremissibility of this sin as is fitting who teach that ordinarily, for the most part, it is not remitted, because those sinning against the Holy Spirit rarely convert themselves; but it must be held that this sin is so excepted by Christ the Lord from the number of others, all of which are remitted, that it is never remitted. But it must likewise be held that in the concrete it can never be established whether someone has committed this irremissible sin, and therefore hope of pardon must never be taken away from anyone, provided he wishes to do penance.
1 Knabenbauer, Commentarius in quatuor s. evangelia (Paris: Lethielleux, 1892), I, p. 487 ff.
2 Matt. 12, 31 f.; Mark 3, 29; Luke 12, 10.
3 Matt. 12, 32. Cf. 1 John 15, 16 f.
353. According to the doctrine of theologians. 1. Any grave sin can be called a sin against the Holy Spirit, insofar as it is opposed to holiness, whose author is the Holy Spirit. Certain sins in species can also be signified by this name, which are committed in a peculiar way against the Holy Spirit, and indeed: a. blasphemy against the Most Holy Trinity and especially against the person of the Holy Spirit; b. final impenitence, which is voluntary withdrawal from God with the purpose of persisting in sin until death and of pertinaciously resisting the motions of truth and grace; c. any sin committed from explicit malice or with voluntary contempt of God and of his supreme dominion.
- From various places of St. Augustine explaining the words of the Lord related above, six sins against the Holy Spirit are numbered by the scholastics, after Peter Lombard and Alexander of Hales: a. presumption; b. despair; c. attack upon known truth; d. envy of fraternal grace; e. obstinacy; f. impenitence.
It is clear that these sins have not been deduced from the words of Christ; indeed among these there is none which agrees with the sin against the Holy Spirit concerning which Christ speaks. But they are called sins against the Holy Spirit because in some peculiar way they are committed against the Holy Spirit.
- Sins against the Holy Spirit are called irremissible; nevertheless those six sins can be called irremissible only in this sense, that they are rarely remitted, and this indeed not because God is unwilling to remit them, but because man, on account of hardness of heart and blindness of mind, rarely disposes himself to true penance.
He who, defining sins against the Holy Spirit according to the mind of the scholastics, wishes at the same time to affirm that it belongs to the nature of the sin against the Holy Spirit that it truly is irremissible, must teach these two things at the same time: a. that the sin against the Holy Spirit is properly only one, namely final impenitence, or voluntary and pertinacious resistance against truth and grace until death; but that the other five are nothing except diverse modes by which impenitence manifests itself, or diverse grades by which man gradually slides down into impenitence. b. He must teach that the reason on account of which this sin is not remitted is situated not in the gravity of the sin, nor in a defect of divine power and mercy, but in the nature of the sin itself, inasmuch as it in fact pertinaciously resists divine grace, and therefore renders remission impossible, since God does not justify one unwilling.