Being Catholic Today. Laurence McTaggart
I get.’ The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.
Luke 18:9–14
The point at present is that, even if the tax collector had not said his truly humble prayer, the Pharisee is at fault. His prayer is superficially humble, in that he does thank God for the gifts within him. But it is only half the truth. In fact he uses his virtue as a condemnation of the tax collector. Any demand on our part that God be fair, and punish those evil-doers as they deserve, either condemns us to the same fate (be honest!) or puts us in the shoes of the Pharisee, whose prayer of thanksgiving was counted as sin. So maybe Hitler is in the hottest part of hell. But it is not for us to say that; unless, perhaps, you want to join him.
Let us assume, therefore, a certain resistance to the idea of an eternal sin, and move forward to what Jesus might mean by it. The idea itself is not hard to understand. A woman discovers that her husband has been having an affair with her best friend for the last ten years. How does she react? What is the next step? It depends, of course, on her, her husband, and their relationship. She might just walk out. She might confront him and threaten divorce unless he stays faithful to her. She may file for divorce and seek a punitive financial settlement. She might take his shotgun and murder them both. She may do nothing at all, turn a blind eye, or even collude for the sake of children, reputation or security. Most people, though, would understand if she felt that life could not be as it was before, however much he repents or makes it up to her. A basic trust has gone, and the slate will never again be clean.
We have nearly all had close relationships that have broken up – often for some reason we do not really know – or just drifted apart. Young couples sometimes insist that they are splitting up in order to ‘stay good friends’. Sometimes they can, but usually they don’t. Most of us have had the horrible experience of saying something that really lost somebody’s trust; even without meaning to, the wounding thing is out. It can take a long time to rebuild, and the foundation is never what it was, wish as we may. Human life is full of eternal sins, clocks that will not go back. In contemporary Britain, some criminal offences are eternal in the sense that once committed, they can never be forgotten. Most people agree, for example, that paedophiles may be punished for seeking to work with children. Killers released early on parole sometimes have to be protected from the vengeful public. It seems that human society, to protect itself, has to cast some of its members into the outer darkness.
If the idea of an eternal sin makes some sense, the claim that in the sight of God there are points of no return perhaps does not. Take the maltreated and deceived wife. What if she had a perfect love for her husband? She might know him very well, understand some fact of his character or history that made him unable to cope with fidelity. She might realize how much he needed her there to return to. She might reflect that no husband is ideal, and put the blame on her friend. In other words, she might do all the things we would expect of the loving Father. God is love. He sees our weakness, understands its roots, knows what we can and cannot help. He notes our attempts to repent, and stands, like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, on the road waiting for us. He knows we are fallen, none better, and he knows we are tempted by a former angel of light. And did he not wipe it all away in the death of his Son?
All shall have prizes?
This is a childish way of thinking, precisely what Jesus wants us to abandon. It is like the mad queen in Lewis Carroll’s story who exclaims after a game, ‘All have won, and all shall have prizes!’ Suppose our offended lady does all those things, and puts up with the errant behaviour, while seeking always to draw her husband from it. He is still unfaithful, and he is still, despite all protestations, someone who has been unfaithful. But because she is a good lady, on one view, she treats him still as if he were entirely hers, heart and soul. Some people think that this is what God does with us. He looks at our sins and instead of the guilty sinner, sees his Son. He counts us as righteous; this is the ‘good news’ that God loves us always despite our sins. He casts them into a bottomless sea, and forgets them.
So let us imagine heaven on that basis. We all have the full vision of God, we live in some kind of state surrounded by the light and love of the Trinity; all is for us. We are still sinners, of course, but that is all paid for. We are like compulsive gamblers, and God has agreed to pay all our gambling debts, content that we are having fun. Would this be eternal blessedness, paradise? It sounds to me to be more like this world, and what we have made of it. Or maybe just hell on earth. Sheep may safely graze, and wolves may safely prey on them. The lion lies down with the lamb and eats it for lunch. The infant plays over the viper’s hole and is bitten. The Father takes no notice; his children make of each other a living torment, and the God of love says that all is well. I will not labour this point, but simply recall what we are really promised:
The wolf lives with the lamb, the panther lies down with the kid, calf and lion cub feed together with a little boy to lead them. The cow and the bear make friends, their young lie down together. The lion eats straw like the ox. The infant plays over the cobra’s hole; into the viper’s lair the young child puts his hand. They do no hurt, no harm, on all my holy mountain, for the country is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters swell the sea.
Isaiah 11:6–9
Jesus Christ does not offer a game of ‘let’s pretend’. He offers you the real possibility of being freed from your sins. In which case, there is the real possibility that you will refuse his offer. He will not turn the blind eye, for your sake. His promise is to do what no human alone can do, which is to restore the basic trust that was lost, to make all creation new, so as to have you back with him, whole and entire. In this light, we can understand what Jesus is talking about. The eternal sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, is not a stone cast at the honour of a touchy God. It is your refusal of his offer to give you his love, to teach you how to love him, and your neighbour, let alone your enemies; the offer to fill you with his Holy Spirit.
God will not punish you. But you might; in fact, you do. I’ll try to explain in the next chapter.
Has the Lord lost patience? Is that his way?
Micah 2:7
Of course, it would be very easy for God to punish us. He is the Creator of all things, sustaining in being all that is seen and even more that is unseen. At any moment he could destroy you, rewrite history so that you never were. He could do things undreamed of by even the most expert ethnic cleanser. It would be equally easy for him to free you from your sins, make you perfect, just like that. But he is not going to do either of those things, obvious as they might seem. He has a better idea altogether, though much more difficult and perhaps impossible:
Such is the richness of the grace he has showered on us in all wisdom and insight. He has let us know the mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made in Christ from the beginning to act upon when the times had run their course to an end.
Ephesians 1:8–9
So, what is this plan, and why is it hidden? The two questions have one answer. Let us think for a moment about God as the Creator of heaven and earth. It is hard to imagine what this means. We are familiar with making things, be they kitchen units or works of art and poetry. Parents have the most sublime experience of all in the creation of a completely new person. When we create, it involves assembling or rearranging bits of matter, or thoughts. God, in contrast, created everything out of nothing. This involves two ideas. First, God started it all off: ‘Let there be light’, and so on. On its own, however, this idea does not capture much. God would be like the Queen, in the United Kingdom, smashing a bottle against a ship to launch it, blessing all who sail in it, and that’s that.
The full truth is rather less comfortable, because it brings