Spirit of Indivision

Reflections on Mark 3: 20-30

Excerpt from Scripture (RSV-CE)

Then he [Jesus] went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. And when his friends heard it, they went out to seize him, for they said, “He is beside himself.”
And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Be-el′zebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.”
And he called them to him, and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end.
But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house.
“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” — for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

– On demons –

It seems that one could answer the question of Jesus Christ like this: Satan may cast out Satan by deceit. A greater villain might defeat a lesser one to appear good in people’s eyes and thus gain a position to commit an especially grand evil.

Why, then, did neither Lord nor the crowd mention it? Were people of old that naïve?

No; all tricks known to us were already known to them. The reason is that such a plan would require a degree of cooperation among demons, but they are incapable of teamwork by their very fallen nature.

Demons are individualistic to the point of absurdity, to a metaphysical extreme. A lesser evil spirit will never consent to being expelled by a greater one for the sake of some malum commune, i.e. the common evil. They have no regard for it.

Even the smallest demon, when he seizes a human soul, clings to it like a mite, and only God’s power can tear him out. A stronger demon cannot do this – and moreover, has no need to, since he can simply dwell alongside the first one: “he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself”.

Our sins work in a similar way: we cannot extinguish a small vice by acquiring a larger one. More often, a small vice eventually begets a big one, and they plague the soul together, to its misery.

Satan cannot cast out Satan; evil cannot deliver us from evil. It is God in his mercy who can.

– On blasphemy against the Spirit –

When our Lord cast out the demons by the Holy Spirit, his opponents said it was «by the power of the prince of devils». He responded to that with utmost sternness. The Church teaches, based on his words here and elsewhere in Scripture, that blasphemy against Holy Spirit is a sin that ultimately deprives one of salvation.

But why can blasphemy against the Truth – that is, against Jesus Christ, God the Son, be forgiven, while blasphemy against divine Love – that is, God the Holy Spirit, is unforgivable? Are they not the same one God?

Indeed, in God bonum et verum convertuntur, i.e. the Truth and Goodness are the same. That’s why truth is precious: if we stray from the Truth, we lose the guide to Goodness, forfeiting it, and with it everything else.

Yet in reality not all people are able to love or even perceive truth as much as it deserves. This requires clarity, sometimes education. Many think that truth is derived from authority or power – “might makes right” – and so they cannot fully grasp even the concept of objective truth, let alone its importance.

Such people drift through life never rising above a feeling of loyalty. But even they, misguided as they may be, are not entirely beyond salvation.

Love is different. It is the very core and driving force of every human soul. Even those who are unable to experience love emotionally, still love many things – that is, perceive them as good and strive for them.

But God is the pure and infinite Good. Therefore, if a person comes to take God himself for evil, a fatal contradiction arises, a rift that tears apart the very essence of human being. If God seems evil, the person will defy him. That is the very definition of hell. By calling the Holy Spirit “devil”, the scribes named the flawless Good as evil, and thus drew perilously close to Gehenna.

That is why Catholic teaching on the unforgivable sin is precise and logical. Let’s reiterate it. To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to defy divine Love. Defying God is exactly what a soul does when it chooses hell. A soul that has chosen hell can no longer be saved. Thus, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is indeed an irreparable sin.

May the Lord Almighty preserve us from it.

– Conclusion –

There is bitter irony in the fact that God Incarnate was accused of “having Beelzebub”, and later condemned to death for blasphemy – when it was He who had been blasphemed all along. Our limited human mind seeks only the earthly truth that pleases it, while God’s word is too immense for it.

I do not think much has changed in two thousand years. Chesterton once said that a normal man will appear thin to the fat and fat to the thin: truth is normal, and therefore inconvenient, because distortions become evident in its light. I suspect that if our Lord Jesus Christ were to come again and begin correcting the problems of his Church, some will find him too conservative, others too liberal, and both would be displeased with him. Just as before.

Scripture shows us that blasphemy against Spirit begins with rejecting God’s word. So, if we do not wish to become like those scribes, we must learn to love truth. That is not as simple as it sounds. Truth is sword-sharp and dangerous, but it is only Jesus Christ, the living and eternal Truth, who can bring us to Heaven.

May the merciful God grant us always to see the truth where it is, and never to reject but to embrace it. Amen.

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