Eternal Sins

In Christian hamartiology, eternal sins, unforgivable sins, unpardonable sins or ultimate sins are sins which will not be forgiven by God. One eternal or unforgivable sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) is specified in several passages of the Synoptic Gospels, including Mark 3:28-29, Matthew 12:31-32, and Luke 12:10.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that, while no sin is absolutely "unforgivable," some sins represent a deliberate refusal to repent and accept the infinite mercy of God; a person committing such a sin refuses God's forgiveness, which can lead to self-condemnation to hell. In other words, one damns oneself by final impenitence (refusal to repent), as taught by Pope St John Paul II:

The images of hell that the Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted... hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God... 'To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining seperated from him forever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell'... 'Eternal damnation,' therefore, is not attributed to God's initiative because in his merciful love he can only desire salvation of the beings he created. In reality, it is the creature who closes himself from love. Damnation consists precisely in definitive separation from God, freely chosen by the human person and confirmed with death that seals his choice forever. God's judgment ratifies this state. 

 The Catholic Encyclopedia defines the "unforgivable sins"-- sins against the Holy Ghost -- as follows: "...to sin against the Holy Ghost is to confound him with the spirit of evil, it is to deny, from pure malice, the Divine character of works manifestly Divine."  The article further states that "sin against the Son of Man" may be forgiven because it is committed against the human person of Christ, which veils the Divine with a "humble and lowly appearance," and therefore such sin is excusable because it is committed through "man's ignorance and misunderstanding."

The Church Fathers considered additional interpretations, St Augustine of Hippo calling it one of the difficult passages of Scripture. St Thomas Aquinas summarized the Church Fathers' treatments and proposed three possible explanations:

1. That an insult directed against any of the three Divine Persons may be considered a sin against the Holy Spirit; and/or
2. That persisting in mortal sin till death, with final inpenitence, as St Augustine proposed, frustrates the work of the Holy Spirit, to whom is appropriated the remission of sins; and/or
3. That sins against the quality of the Third Divine Person, being charity and goodness, are conducted in malice, in that they resist the inspirations of the Holy Spirit to turn away from or be delivered from evil. Such sin may be considered graver than those committed against the Father through frailty (the quality of the Father being power), and those committed against the Son through ignorance (the quality of the Son being wisdom).

St Thomas Aquinas lists, or has responded to, six sins that go against the Holy Spirit:

• Despair: which consists in thinking that one's own malice is greater than Divine Goodness, as the Master of the Sentences teaches;
• Presumption: if a man wants to obtain glory without merits or pardon without repentance;
• Resistance to the known truth;
• Envy of a brother's spiritual fruit, i.e., of the increase of Divine grace in the world;
• Impenitence: the specific purpose of not repenting a sin;
• Obstinacy, whereby a man, clinging to his sin, becomes immune to the thought that the good searched in it is a very little one.

St Thomas Aquinas explains that the unforgivability of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit means that it removes the entrance to these means of salvation; however, it cannot hinder God in taking away this obstacle by way of a miracle.

However, the Church further believes there is no offense, however serious, that cannot be taken away by Baptism, or absolved from in Confessional--that no one, however wicked or guilty, may not confidently hope for forgiveness.  The Catechism says that Christ desires "the gates of forgiveness should always be open to anyone who turns away from sin." As did St Augustine, the Catholic Church today teaches that only dying unrepentant for one's sins is the only unforgivable sin. Indeed, in Dominum et vivificante Pope St John Paul II writes, "According to such exegesis, 'blasphemy' does not properly consist in offending against the Holy Spirit in words; it consists rather in the refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of the Cross," and "If Jesus says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life or the next, it is because this 'non-forgiveness' is linked, as to its cause, to 'non-repentance,' in other words to the radical refusal to be converted. This means the refusal to come to the sources of Redemption, which nevertheless remain always 'open' in the economy of salvation in which the mission of the Holy Spirit is accomplished."

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