What Is the Unforgivable Sin? A Reader’s Guide to GodBlog

What did Jesus mean when he warned about a sin that would not be forgiven?

The expression “unforgivable sin” comes from Jesus’ warning about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The words can sound frightening, particularly when they are separated from the larger questions of forgiveness, repentance, judgment, and grace.

GodBlog approaches many of those larger questions in different posts. This guide brings those discussions together so readers can explore how forgiveness works, what repentance requires, why judgment remains part of Jesus’ teaching, and whether forgiveness can really have limits.

In this guide:

    • Jesus on forgiveness and judgment
    • What Christians mean when they talk about sin
    • The relationship between grace and repentance
    • Forgiving other people
    • Difficult cases where forgiveness becomes morally complicated
    • Why these questions matter when considering the “unforgivable sin”

Related GodBlog reading is linked throughout the guide below.

Why does the “unforgivable sin” sound so troubling?

Jesus is usually associated with forgiveness.

That makes his warning about an unforgivable offense particularly striking.

The warning appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It concerns what the Gospels call blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

It is easy to read those words as though Christianity contains a hidden line that a person might accidentally cross. Someone may then wonder whether an angry statement, a period of doubt, or a religious mistake has permanently placed that person beyond forgiveness.

But the larger teachings of Jesus make the question more complicated.

Forgiveness is one of the subjects to which Jesus repeatedly returns. At the same time, his teachings also contain judgment and moral responsibility.

Understanding the unforgivable sin therefore requires thinking about both.

GodBlog explores that tension particularly well through Jesus’ parables.

Forgiveness and judgment belong together

In Why Did Jesus Teach in Parables?, GodBlog examines the parable of the unforgiving servant.

It is a useful story for thinking about the limits of forgiveness because it contains two apparently opposite ideas.

The servant receives extraordinary mercy from his master. A debt far beyond his ability to repay is cancelled.

But the same servant then refuses to show mercy to someone who owes him much less.

The result is judgment.

This creates an uncomfortable picture. The story presents enormous forgiveness, but it also insists that receiving forgiveness carries responsibility.

The point is not simply:

God forgives everything, so nothing else matters.

Forgiveness changes what is expected of the person who receives it.

That tension is helpful when approaching Jesus’ warning about the Holy Spirit. The warning should not be isolated from everything else Jesus says about mercy. Nor should mercy be separated from accountability.

Related reading:
 → Why Did Jesus Teach in Parables?

What do we mean when we talk about sin?

Before asking whether one particular sin can be unforgivable, it helps to ask a more basic question.

What is sin?

The word can make people think mainly about individual bad actions. Someone lies, steals, betrays another person, or behaves selfishly.

Christian theology has often understood sin more broadly.

In Making Sense of Original Sin With Reinhold Niebuhr, GodBlog considers Reinhold Niebuhr’s attempt to explain sin without reducing it to the story of one ancient act inherited biologically by everyone else.

For Niebuhr, sin is deeply connected with human self-interest, pride, anxiety, and the tendency to place ourselves at the center of the world.

This approach changes the discussion.

Sin is not only a list of forbidden actions. It can also describe the way human beings distort their relationship with other people, with themselves, and with God.

That broader understanding may help with the question of the unforgivable sin.

The problem may not be a single badly chosen sentence.

It may involve a much deeper refusal to recognize truth, accept correction, or admit that one’s judgment has gone wrong.

Continue exploring:
 → Making Sense of Original Sin With Reinhold Niebuhr

Can forgiveness exist without repentance?

This question lies close to the heart of the problem.

If God offers grace freely, does a person need to do anything?

GodBlog takes up that question in Grace Is Not Free.

The title deliberately creates a tension. Christian grace is normally described as a gift. It cannot simply be earned like wages.

Yet a free gift does not necessarily mean that nothing is expected afterward.

The post considers Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s criticism of what he called “cheap grace”—the idea that people can accept forgiveness while refusing repentance, responsibility, or any change in the way they live.

This is particularly relevant to the unforgivable sin.

Perhaps the central problem is not that God encounters one offense too terrible to forgive.

Perhaps forgiveness becomes impossible when a person refuses what makes reconciliation possible.

Repentance requires some willingness to turn around.

A person must be able to recognize that something has gone wrong.

If every correction is rejected and every call to change is dismissed, forgiveness can be offered without ever being accepted.

That is very different from saying that God simply runs out of mercy.

Related discussion:
 → Grace Is Not Free

Forgiveness is not only between an individual and God

Christian discussions about forgiveness can become very private.

We may imagine one person asking God to forgive one personal wrongdoing.

Jesus often makes forgiveness more social than that.

In The Lord’s Prayer Puzzles Me, GodBlog notices something easily overlooked about Christianity’s best-known prayer.

Its language is collective.

The prayer speaks in terms of “us” and “our,” not simply “me” and “my.”

Forgiveness belongs inside a community of people who depend upon one another.

That matters because Jesus links receiving forgiveness with extending forgiveness.

Human beings ask for mercy while living among other imperfect human beings who also need mercy.

The question of unforgivable sin therefore should not be reduced to anxiety over whether someone has spoken one forbidden sentence.

The larger Christian problem concerns how people respond to mercy, truth, wrongdoing, and one another.

For more background:
 → The Lord’s Prayer Puzzles Me

Are there things human beings should not forgive?

Forgiveness becomes far more difficult when we leave abstract theology and consider terrible crimes.

GodBlog explores this directly in Would You Forgive a Nazi Mass Murderer?.

The question forces readers to think carefully about what forgiveness means.

Can one person forgive an offense committed against someone else?

Does forgiveness require repentance?

Is forgiveness the same as forgetting?

Does forgiving someone remove the need for justice?

Can offering forgiveness too quickly sometimes ignore the suffering of victims?

These questions show why the subject cannot be reduced to a simple slogan such as “Christians must always forgive everything immediately.”

Christian teaching places enormous importance on forgiveness. But real situations raise difficult moral questions about responsibility, remorse, justice, and who has the authority to forgive.

The unforgivable sin belongs within this wider problem.

Before asking why God might not forgive something, it is worth asking what forgiveness itself actually requires.

Explore that question:
 → Would You Forgive a Nazi Mass Murderer?

Another difficult example: the Amish and radical forgiveness

GodBlog approaches the question from another direction in Forgiving a Mass Murderer: The Amish.

The post considers the response of an Amish community after the 2006 murder of schoolchildren in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.

Members of the community became widely known for extending forgiveness toward the killer and compassion toward his family.

Their response raises questions very different from abstract theological debate.

What does forgiveness look like after devastating harm?

Does forgiving a wrongdoer deny the seriousness of the wrong?

Can forgiveness exist alongside grief and justice?

The example shows why forgiveness in Christianity is demanding rather than sentimental.

It may require people to resist hatred without pretending that evil did not occur.

That distinction matters when thinking about divine forgiveness as well.

Mercy does not necessarily mean that wrongdoing becomes meaningless.

Related reading:
 → Forgiving a Mass Murderer: The Amish

So what makes the unforgivable sin different?

The Gospel context offers an important clue.

Jesus gives his warning after opponents attribute his work to an evil source.

The issue is therefore not simply that someone commits an ordinary moral failure.

Something deeper is happening.

Good is being described as evil.

A person can make mistakes and later recognize them. Someone can doubt and later reconsider. People can behave badly, regret what they have done, and seek reconciliation.

Those possibilities all leave room for change.

A more serious condition develops when someone refuses even the possibility of correction.

If a person continually rejects what is good because accepting it would require admitting error, repentance itself becomes increasingly difficult.

Under this interpretation, the “unforgivable” quality of the sin does not mean that God suddenly becomes less merciful.

The problem is that the person refuses the path through which mercy could be received.

This connects the Gospel warning with many of the questions raised throughout GodBlog:

    • What is sin?
    • What does repentance require?
    • Does grace demand anything from us?
    • How are forgiveness and judgment connected?
    • Can forgiveness exist when wrongdoing is never acknowledged?

There may not be one simple answer, but these questions help place Jesus’ warning in a much larger theological setting.

Doubt is not the same as deliberate rejection

This distinction is important.

Someone who asks difficult questions has not necessarily rejected God.

Someone who struggles with faith has not necessarily committed an unforgivable offense.

Questions can reflect uncertainty rather than hostility.

In fact, much of GodBlog itself is built around questioning.

Its posts repeatedly examine traditional Christian ideas instead of treating every doctrine as something that should never be challenged.

That approach illustrates an important difference.

Questioning says:

“I am trying to understand whether this is true.”

A hardened rejection says:

“I will not reconsider, regardless of what I encounter.”

Those are not the same condition.

The first remains open.

The second tries to close the discussion permanently.

Why the question is really about forgiveness

The phrase “unforgivable sin” naturally attracts attention because it sounds like an exception.

But perhaps the more important subject is forgiveness itself.

What would it mean for forgiveness to have no connection with repentance?

What would grace mean if nothing ever had to change?

Can judgment exist without destroying mercy?

Can mercy exist without making wrongdoing irrelevant?

GodBlog’s existing discussions do not produce one easy formula. Instead, they approach these questions from different directions—Jesus’ parables, Niebuhr’s understanding of sin, Bonhoeffer’s criticism of cheap grace, the Lord’s Prayer, and real cases of extraordinary human forgiveness.

Read together, they give the “unforgivable sin” a much richer setting.

Guide Summary

The question of the unforgivable sin leads into several larger GodBlog discussions.

How do forgiveness and judgment fit together?
 Why Did Jesus Teach in Parables?

What does Christian theology mean by sin?
 Making Sense of Original Sin With Reinhold Niebuhr

Does receiving grace require repentance or change?
 Grace Is Not Free

Why does Jesus connect our forgiveness with forgiving others?
 The Lord’s Prayer Puzzles Me

Are there moral limits to human forgiveness?
 Would You Forgive a Nazi Mass Murderer?

What can radical forgiveness look like in real life?
 Forgiving a Mass Murderer: The Amish

Together, these posts show that forgiveness in Christianity involves more than simply overlooking wrongdoing. It raises questions about repentance, responsibility, judgment, mercy, and how people respond when forgiveness is offered.

About This Reader Guide

This page is intended as a guide to related discussions already published on GodBlog, rather than a replacement for those original posts.

The short sections introduce the central questions. The linked articles contain the fuller arguments, examples, theological discussions, and personal reflections.

Readers can begin with the question of the unforgivable sin and then follow whichever part of the larger discussion interests them most.

What Are the Nephilim in the Bible? A Reader’s Guide to GodBlog

Who are the mysterious Nephilim mentioned in Genesis, and how should modern readers understand such an unusual biblical story?

The Nephilim appear only briefly in the Bible, yet they have generated centuries of speculation. They have been described as giants, ancient warriors, supernatural offspring, and even creatures belonging to traditions that existed before the biblical text reached its present form.

GodBlog does not currently contain a separate post devoted entirely to the Nephilim. It does, however, explore a more basic question that matters greatly here: How should we read strange stories in Genesis and other ancient biblical texts?

This guide uses the Nephilim as a starting point for exploring several related GodBlog discussions about Genesis, biblical myth, literary interpretation, ancient traditions, and the difference between asking whether a story is literally historical and asking what the story is trying to say.

In this guide:

    • Where the Nephilim appear in the Bible
    • Why Genesis contains difficult and mysterious stories
    • Different ways of reading Genesis
    • Myth as a way of expressing religious meaning
    • The Bible as literature
    • How biblical traditions developed
    • Why mystery should not automatically become modern speculation

Related GodBlog reading is linked throughout the guide below.

The mystery begins in Genesis

The Nephilim appear in one of the strangest sections of Genesis.

Genesis 6 describes the “sons of God” taking human women and then mentions the Nephilim, figures remembered as powerful people of the ancient world.

The passage is remarkably short.

It does not clearly explain who the sons of God were. It does not tell readers exactly how the Nephilim were connected with them. It does not provide detailed descriptions of their appearance or explain their later history.

That absence of explanation has created space for interpretation.

Some readers understand the story literally. Others see it as a fragment of an older myth that became part of Genesis. Still others interpret the figures symbolically as violent rulers or mighty warriors.

Before choosing among those explanations, however, another question comes first:

What kind of book is Genesis, and how are we supposed to read it?

GodBlog approaches precisely that problem in Genesis: The Snake Had a Point.

More than one way to read Genesis

In Genesis: The Snake Had a Point, GodBlog considers two very different approaches to the opening book of the Bible.

One approach treats Genesis primarily as a direct historical account.

Under this view, its events describe things that happened much as the text reports them. Readers then try to determine exactly what each unusual event means within that history.

Another approach sees Genesis as a collection of ancient traditions and stories brought together to explore fundamental questions about God, humanity, morality, obedience, knowledge, violence, and human nature.

The second approach does not necessarily make Genesis meaningless.

Quite the opposite.

A story can express something important without functioning as modern historical reporting.

That distinction becomes especially useful with the Nephilim.

Instead of immediately asking:

“What biological species were they?”

we might first ask:

“Why does Genesis place these extraordinary figures immediately before its description of a corrupt and violent world?”

The second question may bring us closer to the concerns of the biblical story itself.

Related reading:
 → Genesis: The Snake Had a Point

Why are so many details left unexplained?

Modern readers often expect stories to answer practical questions.

Who were these people?

Where did they come from?

How tall were they?

What happened to them?

Ancient biblical narratives frequently work differently.

Important information may remain unstated. Motives can be unclear. Characters appear briefly and disappear. Readers are sometimes required to live with uncertainty.

GodBlog explores this literary quality in Why the Bible Is Subtler Than Homer or Plato.

That article draws attention to the Bible’s habit of leaving significant things unsaid.

The gaps are not always failures in storytelling. They can force readers to interpret.

The Nephilim passage is an extreme example.

Genesis gives us enough information to recognize something unusual and threatening, but not enough to construct the detailed history that many modern theories claim to provide.

Perhaps the silence itself should make us cautious.

If the biblical writer does not explain something, modern readers should be careful about presenting speculation as certainty.

Continue exploring:
 → Why the Bible Is Subtler Than Homer or Plato

Does calling something a myth mean it is false?

The word myth creates difficulty in religious discussions.

In ordinary conversation, calling something a myth often means saying it is untrue.

Scholars commonly use the word differently.

A myth can be a traditional story used to explain how a community understands the world, humanity, God, good and evil, suffering, or the structure of reality.

The historical accuracy of every detail is then not the only question that matters.

GodBlog discusses this directly in A Christmas Message, or Does It Matter if the Bible Is Myth?.

That article considers theologian Rudolf Bultmann’s argument that biblical writings came from a world in which supernatural beings, heaven, demons, miracles, and divine intervention were understood very differently from the way many modern people understand reality.

Bultmann’s solution was not simply to throw away biblical stories.

He wanted readers to ask what religious or human meaning those stories were trying to communicate.

The same approach can be applied to the Nephilim.

Even if the passage preserves ancient mythological material, the next question remains:

What is the story doing inside Genesis?

Related discussion:
 → A Christmas Message, or Does It Matter if the Bible Is Myth?

The Nephilim and a world becoming violent

The location of the Nephilim story may be more important than many modern theories suggest.

The passage appears immediately before Genesis turns toward Noah and the flood.

The larger story describes humanity moving toward corruption and violence.

Against that background, the Nephilim are remembered as powerful figures from an earlier age.

That description can be read in several ways.

Perhaps ancient people remembered legendary warriors.

Perhaps the story preserved traditions about supernatural beings.

Perhaps the figures represented rulers whose power had become uncontrolled.

The text does not settle the question.

But Genesis soon shifts attention away from their identity and toward the condition of humanity as a whole.

This suggests that the author may be less interested in giving readers a catalogue of supernatural creatures than in portraying a world in which power, desire, and violence have escaped proper limits.

The mystery attracts us.

The moral problem may be what Genesis actually wants us to notice.

Reading God as a character in biblical stories

The Nephilim passage also raises questions about God.

Why does God respond to the world as Genesis describes?

What does the flood story say about divine judgment?

Does God react to human behavior, regret decisions, change course, or remain outside the story?

These are not simple questions.

GodBlog explores this unusual way of reading scripture in Stories About God.

That article discusses Jack Miles’ approach to the Bible as though it were a literary biography of God.

Instead of beginning with theological doctrines and then forcing every biblical episode to fit them, this approach asks what kind of character God appears to be within the story itself.

What does God do?

How does God respond?

What changes?

What does the narrative reveal?

That perspective can make Genesis 6 more interesting.

The Nephilim are not isolated curiosities. They belong to a developing story about the relationship between God and humanity.

Explore that approach:
 → Stories About God

How did biblical traditions develop?

Another useful question is how stories like this became part of the Bible.

Modern readers often imagine the Bible being written as one continuous book.

Its history is much more complicated.

Different writings emerged at different times. Traditions were preserved, edited, collected, interpreted, and eventually treated as scripture.

GodBlog explores the larger history of biblical development in A History of the Bible.

That history matters when we encounter a short and mysterious passage like Genesis 6.

A strange story may preserve an ancient tradition whose full background was familiar to early audiences but is no longer available to us.

Later readers then inherit only a fragment.

This may help explain why the Nephilim passage feels incomplete.

The biblical text may be referring to traditions its original audience already knew.

Modern readers do not have that advantage.

As a result, we try to reconstruct the missing world from only a few sentences.

For broader background:
 → A History of the Bible

Were the Nephilim giants?

This is probably the most familiar interpretation.

The Nephilim appear again in Numbers, where Israelite spies give a frightening report about the inhabitants of Canaan. They describe themselves as tiny by comparison with the people they saw.

That imagery helped create the long association between the Nephilim and giants.

But even here, readers should be cautious.

The spies are describing people they fear. Their report is designed to emphasize how impossible conquest appears.

Language about enormous enemies can communicate terror without functioning as an exact physical measurement.

Genesis itself focuses more clearly on power and reputation than on height.

Calling the Nephilim “giants” therefore reflects an old and influential interpretation, but it does not answer every question about them.

Were they children of heavenly beings?

Another interpretation begins with the mysterious phrase “sons of God.”

Elsewhere in ancient biblical literature, similar language can refer to heavenly beings.

Under this reading, Genesis describes divine or supernatural figures crossing a boundary between heaven and humanity.

Their relationships with human women then become connected with extraordinary offspring.

This interpretation became especially important in later Jewish tradition.

But once again, Genesis itself provides very little explanation.

Later writings expanded the story with names, motives, battles, forbidden knowledge, and elaborate accounts of giant offspring.

Those later traditions are important for understanding how ancient people interpreted Genesis.

They are not identical with Genesis itself.

That distinction matters.

Readers should separate:

    1. What Genesis says
    2. What later religious traditions added
    3. What modern writers have added still later

Without that separation, a few mysterious biblical verses can quickly become an entirely different story.

Why modern theories become so elaborate

The Nephilim are especially popular online because mystery invites imagination.

When a text leaves gaps, people naturally want to fill them.

That has produced theories involving hidden races, ancient superhuman civilizations, secret bloodlines, extraterrestrials, and discoveries allegedly concealed from the public.

Such ideas may make entertaining stories.

They are not the same as interpreting Genesis.

The more responsible approach is to recognize where evidence ends.

GodBlog’s discussions of biblical myth and literary interpretation offer a useful principle here:

A mysterious story does not become clearer simply because we add more speculation to it.

Sometimes the intellectually responsible answer is that we do not know.

The Bible can remain meaningful without answering every historical question

Readers sometimes assume there are only two choices.

Either every detail happened exactly as a modern literal reading imagines, or the story has no value.

GodBlog repeatedly challenges that choice.

Biblical stories can be historically complicated and still raise important questions about human beings.

Genesis certainly does.

Its early chapters ask about knowledge, shame, responsibility, violence, jealousy, power, mortality, and humanity’s relationship with God.

The Nephilim belong within that world.

Whether they were remembered giants, ancient warriors, supernatural figures, or something else, their brief appearance contributes to a larger picture of a world becoming increasingly disordered.

That may be more important than knowing exactly how tall they were.

What can we reasonably conclude?

The safest conclusions are modest.

The Bible gives us very little direct information about the Nephilim.

They appear in Genesis and again in Numbers.

They are associated with extraordinary power and with ancient traditions that clearly impressed or frightened later readers.

Beyond that, interpretations multiply.

Some explanations may be more historically plausible than others, but certainty is difficult.

The mystery should not prevent interpretation.

It should encourage humility.

That attitude fits well with the larger way GodBlog approaches scripture: taking biblical stories seriously without pretending that every question has a simple answer.

Guide Summary

The Nephilim open a much larger discussion about how difficult biblical stories should be read.

How should we approach the unusual stories in Genesis?
 Genesis: The Snake Had a Point

Why does the Bible sometimes leave important details unstated?
 Why the Bible Is Subtler Than Homer or Plato

Can a biblical story be mythic and still communicate religious meaning?
 A Christmas Message, or Does It Matter if the Bible Is Myth?

What happens when we read biblical stories as stories about God?
 Stories About God

How did the Bible and its traditions develop over time?
 A History of the Bible

Read together, these posts offer a broader way to approach the Nephilim. Instead of pretending that a few biblical verses answer every modern question, they encourage readers to think about Genesis as ancient literature, religious tradition, and a continuing exploration of God and human nature.

About This Reader Guide

This page is intended as a guide to related ideas already explored throughout GodBlog.

GodBlog does not currently have a dedicated original post about the Nephilim, so the links above do not claim otherwise. Instead, they lead readers toward the existing posts that are most useful for understanding how Fred approaches Genesis, biblical myth, literary interpretation, and the history of scripture.

The short sections introduce the Nephilim question. The linked posts provide the deeper discussions that help readers decide how such a mysterious biblical story should be understood.

Why Was Jesus Baptized? A Reader’s Guide to GodBlog

Why would Jesus be baptized by John if baptism was connected with repentance?

This guide brings together several discussions already found across GodBlog. Rather than treating the question as a separate, simplified explanation of Jesus, it points readers toward the larger questions explored throughout the blog: what we can historically know about Jesus, how the Gospel writers shaped his story, how early Christians understood his identity, and how later Christian belief developed.

In this guide:

    • Jesus and John the Baptist
    • What historians think we can know about Jesus
    • How the Gospels present Jesus differently
    • The difference between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of faith
    • How ideas about Jesus developed in early Christianity

Related GodBlog reading is linked throughout the guide below.

Jesus and John the Baptist

The baptism of Jesus is an interesting place to begin because it belongs to both history and theology.

The Gospels give the event religious meaning, but historians also take Jesus’ connection with John the Baptist seriously.

In How Much Do We Know About the Historical Jesus?, GodBlog considers how little can be established with confidence about Jesus as a historical person. One of the events that receives relatively broad scholarly acceptance is that Jesus was baptized by John.

That makes the baptism especially useful for thinking about Jesus.

The event may be historically probable, but what it means depends upon how it is interpreted.

For Christian readers, it can mark the beginning of Jesus’ public mission. For historians, it is evidence that Jesus was connected with the religious world represented by John. For the Gospel writers, it becomes part of a much larger story about Jesus’ identity.

Related reading:
 → How Much Do We Know About the Historical Jesus?

How much can we really know about Jesus?

Questions about the baptism quickly lead to a larger problem.

How much do we actually know about Jesus himself?

GodBlog returns to this question in Do We Really Know Anything About Jesus?.

There is an important difference between asking what Christians believe about Jesus and asking what historians can establish about him.

Christian faith makes claims about Jesus as the Son of God, Messiah, teacher, healer, crucified savior, and risen Christ. Historical investigation works differently. It asks what can reasonably be established from surviving evidence.

The baptism is therefore useful because it sits near the meeting point of these two approaches.

Something may have happened historically, while its religious significance developed through the way followers remembered and interpreted it.

Continue exploring:
 → Do We Really Know Anything About Jesus?

The Jesus of history and the Jesus of interpretation

There has never been only one scholarly picture of Jesus.

Some writers emphasize Jesus as a Jewish teacher. Others understand him primarily as an apocalyptic prophet. Still others focus on his ethics, politics, religious message, or effect upon his followers.

GodBlog examines this problem more closely in The Quest for the Historical Jesus.

That discussion matters when reading the baptism story.

If Jesus is understood primarily as an apocalyptic Jewish preacher, his association with John may take on one meaning. If readers begin with later Christian doctrines about Jesus, the same event may take on another.

The event remains the same, but our interpretation of it can change according to the Jesus we believe we are looking for.

Related discussion:
 → The Quest for the Historical Jesus

The Gospels are not identical accounts

Another reason the baptism deserves careful reading is that the Gospels do not simply provide four identical biographies.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John developed traditions about Jesus in different ways.

GodBlog discusses this larger issue in A History of the Bible. The article considers how the New Testament writings developed and why having four Gospels gives readers several perspectives rather than one perfectly uniform account.

This is important when interpreting any event in Jesus’ life.

Instead of combining every Gospel into a single version immediately, readers can first ask what each writer is trying to communicate.

Why does one writer emphasize a particular detail?

Why does another tell the story differently?

What does each version reveal about how early Christians were thinking about Jesus?

The baptism is not only an event to explain. It is also an opportunity to see how the Gospel tradition works.

For more background:
 → A History of the Bible

Who did early Christians believe Jesus was?

The question becomes even larger when we move from what Jesus did to who Christians believed he was.

GodBlog explores the development of these ideas in How New Is the New Testament?.

Different New Testament writings emphasize different things about Jesus. Later Christian theology brought these ideas together into doctrines that became central to Christianity.

This matters to the baptism story because readers often approach the event with later beliefs already in mind.

If Jesus is understood from the beginning as divine and without sin, his baptism naturally creates a question:

Why participate in a practice associated with repentance?

The Gospel story can then be understood in several ways—as identification with others, acceptance of a mission, connection with John, or a public revelation of Jesus’ role.

But the larger issue remains worth exploring: how did early followers move from memories of a Jewish teacher to the theological understanding of Christ that later Christianity inherited?

Explore that question:
 → How New Is the New Testament?

Guide Summary

The baptism of Jesus is more than an isolated Bible question.

It opens the door to several of the larger subjects explored throughout GodBlog:

What can history tell us about Jesus?
 How Much Do We Know About the Historical Jesus?

How certain can we be about what we know?
 Do We Really Know Anything About Jesus?

Which historical Jesus are we looking for?
 The Quest for the Historical Jesus

How did the Gospel accounts develop?
 A History of the Bible

How did early Christian ideas about Jesus develop?
 How New Is the New Testament?

These articles approach Jesus from different directions. Read together, they provide a broader picture than any short summary could offer.

About This Reader Guide

This page is intended as a guide to existing GodBlog discussions, not as a replacement for the original posts.

The short explanations introduce the questions. The linked articles contain the fuller arguments, sources, interpretations, and personal reflections.

Readers can therefore use this page as a starting point and follow whichever question interests them most.

Does Spinoza believe in God?

Baruch Spinoza is experiencing something of a Renaissance, not his first.  He goes in and out of fashion.  I attribute the recent rebirth to Gilles Deleuze’s book, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (1988), but so much has been written about Spinoza in the last several decades, and from such different perspectives, including neuroscience and feminism, that Deleuze could just be a part of a periodic eruption of interest. /1/  I return to Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza as a theorist of joy later.  A lot depends on how one translates the Latin word for “joy.”    

My argument doesn’t always fit together neatly.  One might attribute this to my deficient rhetoric.  Or, one might attribute it to the different interpretations of Spinoza that are offered, for example, by Carlisle contra Nadler.  I attribute it to Spinoza himself; he is simply unable to hold to the assumptions about God that his argument requires.   

Continue reading Does Spinoza believe in God?

Do we really know anything about Jesus?

Chagall & ChristDo we really know anything about what Jesus said?  Do we even know that Jesus existed?  

Elaine Pagels recently published what is likely her final work. Certainly it reads like a career summary, Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus (2025). We understand her argument better when we recognize that we know virtually nothing of the historical Jesus beyond two facts.  It is almost certain that he existed, and that he was crucified following the orders of Pontius Pilate, Roman prefect (governor) of Judaea during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, probably in the year 30 CE.  

Other than the New Testament, there is no historical mention of Jesus until Josephus, who wrote about 80 CE, and whose references to Jesus are suspect, since a Jewish warrior who fought the Romans was unlikely to characterize Jesus as a wise man who performed amazing deeds and so forth.  Yet, among scholars there seems almost universal agreement (I’m not quite sure why) that Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (c. 18), constitutes independent if late historical evidence for Jesus’ existence and crucifixion.  Those of a sceptical cast of mind wonder how such an important historical figure as Jesus could have escaped mention from any independent source for over fifty years.  The recently discovered Gospels of Thomas and Peter don’t add much, since they seem to be be second-century creations. /1/ 

Scholars have been remarkably inventive in finding additional sources by parsing the synoptic Gospels and Paul.  While Matthew and Luke borrowed extensively from Mark, the earliest Gospel, scholars posit a hypothetical document called Q, containing material shared by each but absent in Mark.  In addition, scholars posit additional documents, called M and L.  That is, material contained neither in Q nor Mark, but unique to Matthew or Luke.  Of course, all this could be more economically explained by arguing that Matthew and Luke draw upon undiscovered passages of Mark, but scholars want many sources out of three.  

In addition, there are a few passages in Aramaic, such as Jesus’ well-known last words from the cross in Mark and Matthew, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). /2/ Also in Aramaic is Jesus’ command to Jairus’ daughter, “Talitha cumi,” which roughly means “Little girl, stand up and walk.” (Mark 5:41).  There are a couple of other phrases in Aramaic, suggesting that the text is recalling a genuine oral tradition, but this is far from clear.  

Even more creative, scholars have found passages in Paul that read like little creeds or poems that don’t fit Paul’s usage or style, and so are presumed to lead directly back to an oral tradition.   The passages don’t fit Paul because they have a ritualistic quality, and because they contain what are called Semitisms, a grammatical form not found in Greek, but only in Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Aramaic (Ehrman 2015, loc 3305). 

The existence of these separate sources is strictly hypothetical.  All we really know is that the synoptic Gospels were written no earlier than 40 years after the death of Jesus, in the case of Mark, by well-educated Greek speaking men who had no direct contact with Jesus or his disciples.  Paul wrote earlier, and might have known James, the brother of Jesus.  Or might not.  Mark and Luke likely wrote in Rome, Matthew possibly in Judea, or possibly not.  We know so little the tendency to guess is overwhelming.  

Continue reading Do we really know anything about Jesus?

The Book of Revelation Does Not Belong in the Bible

The last book in the New Testament, Revelation, is remarkably popular today.  Few people read Revelation itself, but millions have read a book series called Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days.  Books seven and eight in the series (The Indwelling and The Mark) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list.  The Remnant began at number one on the Times best-seller list (2002).  Roughly 65 million copies have been sold in over forty languages, though only in America has it become a publishing phenomenon.

Rapture

Left Behind assumes an evangelical doctrine called “rapture.”  The term nowhere appears in the Bible, but is the relatively recent creation of  John Nelson Darby, an evangelical Protestant who came up with the term in the 1830’s.  Popularized by Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, and books that followed, The Late Great was the best-selling nonfiction book of the nineteen-seventies.  While the Book of Revelation is not widely read, the attraction of end of the world thinking remains remarkably real even in a secular age.   Dorian Lynskey’s recent Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World, suggests some reasons why.  I’ll return to one of these reasons at the end.  

Rapture claims that at the end of days, all Christians will rise “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”  First Thessalonians 4:17 is an often-cited Biblical source, but its meaning is obscure. /1/  The word “rapture” never appears in the Bible.  Nor does the Book of Revelation say anything about the followers of Jesus being taken out of the world before it all goes up in flames.  

Like all apocalypses, the rapture fantasy can be dangerous.  Older readers may remember Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who stated in testimony before Congress that while it’s essential to preserve our resources for future generations, he remarked that he wasn’t sure how many future generations there would be before the Apocalypse and Christ’s subsequent return.  Casper Weinberger, then Secretary of Defense, agreed. /2/  When you think this way, everything from nuclear war to climate change becomes less significant.  

The Left Behind series loves violence.  In this respect, it is true to Revelation, the bloodiest book in the Bible.   This,  though, is not why there was so much debate over whether to include it in the canon we call the Bible, a book of books.  One thing that troubled the early church leaders was that the book was too bound to what Christians call the Old Testament.  Revelation’s God was a God of power and might, with no hint of God’s willingness to become weak and vulnerable in the person of the son (2 Corinthians 12:9).  For many Christians, not Revelation, but the Gospels teach the true lesson of Christianity: non-violence and love of neighbor in the face of hatred (Matthew 22:36-40).  Barely a hint of this remains in Revelation.  

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Alternative histories of Jesus: four novels

Chagall & ChristAlternative histories of Jesus: four novels

Each of the 4 stories challenges the divinity of Jesus.  Each imagines Jesus as merely mortal; one isn’t sure but wishes he were.   The Last Temptation of Christ, probably the most well-known, I read in college.  The novel has Jesus imagining that he was a man who chose life over sacrifice. This fantasy turns out to be the Devil’s work.  I believe this misses the point of Christ’s dual nature.

The other three imagine that Jesus was fully and only human.  Judas betrays Christ because he forgets his earthly revolutionary mission and begins to imagine that he really is divine.  All miracles are explained away.  D. H. Lawrence’s Jesus is a version of the gardener in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  In it too miracles are either explained away or ignored.  The fourth book, The Testament of Mary, is in some ways the odd book out.  Originally written as a screen play, it is elegant in its simplicity.  Mary looks back on her life as Christ’s mother, and regrets that he chose the to save the world.  Better to have lived his own life, a man so talented he could have done anything.  She is skeptical about the miracles, especially his resurrection, but does not outright deny them.  They just get in the way.

All but The Last Temptation are short, novellas really.  I believe that even the most devout would benefit from reading them, for if Christ was fully man as well as fully God, then one has to say that the man side generally gets short shrift.  If he were not the son of God, the conflict between his two sides (not parts, but aspects of a whole) would have torn him apart.  It should tear us about when we think about it, but we generally don’t let it.  Each novel is fascinating reading; they were well worth my time, and I believe yours.

I’ll tell you about each book, and conclude by elaborating on the great value of the Gospels, as well as thinking about Christ as simply man, even if you believe he is more.  Here I’ll consider Ernest Renan’s influential The Life of Jesus (original 1863), which purports to be a historical, rather than Gospel based, account of the life of Jesus.  It’s not; it’s as fictional as any of the novels we examine.  I’ll explain why this is, and must be, the case.

The Books

The plot of The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis (1960) is a little confusing.  Just as gypsies are about to nail him to the cross, Christ’s guardian angel (actually an agent of Satan) steals him away and transports him to marriage with Mary Magdalene, who is stoned to death shortly after.  The widower Jesus ends up with two sisters, Mary and Hannah, with whom he enjoys a rich family life, including fathering children (pp 445-446).

Judas and other disciples confront him.  Jesus lied; he did not live up to his word to die to save the world.  Christ is torn with guilt, and at the very end awakens from his dream, accepts his mission from God, and dies with the famous words “It is accomplished” on his lips (p 496).

It is clear in the text, and clearer still in the author’s introduction, that Christ’s dying dream of living a normal human life is inspired by Satan.  His guardian angel who saves him from the cross (all illusion) is an agent of Satan.  Jesus’ experience of everyday life as deeply satisfying was a fantasy, sent by the devil.

This doesn’t seem right.   If Christ was truly all man, as well as all God, then the man part would have naturally wanted a family life, a sexual life, a normal human life.  That would be the temptation that the all-God part of him would have to overcome to fulfill his mission.   Not Satan, but Christ himself, is the tempter and the tempted.  That the last temptation is a dying delusion inspired by Satan fails as a full or honest vision of the duality of Christ’s nature.  Kazantzakis may think he is saving Christ’s authentic nature as God, but he sacrifices the mystery of the duality of Christ, the enigma that makes him so fascinating: that he is as fully human we are, while remaining God.*

Continue reading Alternative histories of Jesus: four novels

How new is the New Testament?

How new is the New Testament?

How is it that the Old Testament (OT) seems to predict the coming of Christ?  Was the OT inspired by the God revealed in the New Testament (NT)?  Could be, but an answer internal to the Bible itself is persuasive.  The Gospel writers looked backward more than they looked forward, reinterpreting the experience of Jesus, which none had firsthand, as the fulfillment of OT prophecy.  Almost any statement about a good man who suffered, such as the suffering servant songs of Isaiah 52-53, was put to this use.

The Gospels were written no earlier than 40 years after the death of Christ.  Mark was written in about 70 CE, John about 100 CE.  Educated men wrote them in Greek.  The apostles were uneducated, probably illiterate, who spoke Aramaic.  The Gospels were written to make sense of the fact that the Messiah, who was supposed to be a mighty warrior who would liberate the Jews, died a miserable and degrading death by crucifixion. 

Even that seems to have been predicted by the OT, which says that if a man is guilty of a capital crime “you hang him on a tree.” (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)  Acts refers to this passage three times (5.30; 10.39; 13.29).  The principal goal of the NT was to transform a humiliating death into the liberation of humankind from the grip of death.  The OT provides plenty of evidence for this reinterpretation.

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53.5)

It certainly sounds like the prophet Isaiah was talking about Jesus.  But was he? 

Hardly any passage of the Hebrew Bible is and has been of such fundamental importance in the history of Jewish-Christian debate . . . or has played such a central role in it, as has the fourth Servant Song of Second Isaiah.  Nor has any other passage experienced such different and sometimes mutually exclusive interpretations as this one. (Schreiner, p 419)

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