So yesterday during the sermon, I was flipping around in my Bible. I know I should have been paying attention. I ran across some things and got interested in what is the unforgivable sin. Now I agree with St. Augustine that it is dying in an unrepentant state. I believe that St. Crysanthium says the same thing. What does everyone else say and what does Anglicanism teach. I also know that the 1st Council of Nicea deals with allowing apostates back into the church.
John Chrysostom's homily #41 on Matthew's Gospel had a very helpful explanation of the unpardonable sin. To summarize: In Matt 12, the Jews rejected Jesus, and claimed his powers came from the Devil. In response, Christ told them that "whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." We know from elsewhere in the scriptures that when we repent and turn towards God he forgives our sins. So why did Jesus say their sins against the Holy Ghost were unpardonable? It was forgivable for the Jews to not understand that Jesus was the Messiah, since they had been handed down a defective tradition that expected the Christ to be a rich and powerful warlord. But even in their defective tradition, the Jews should have recognized the work of the Holy Ghost. For them to reject Christ's healings and exorcisms was to reject what they knew was God's work. Their lack of understanding about Jesus was something God might overlook, but not their conscious rejection of God's action through the Holy Ghost. The latter was a deliberate sin that they needed to repent of, whereas the former was an ignorant mistake. The overarching idea is that culpability for sin depends on the extent to which a person understands what they're doing. In short, the unpardonable sin is the one you commit knowingly and refuse to repent for. You can read the homily here: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200141.htm
I'm not so certain that a man's will is fixed at death. Christ speaking of forgiveness "in this age or the age to come" suggests to me that repentance after death is a possibility. But now I'm speaking of things I'm less than certain about. I have trouble separating the assumptions I carry from Greek philosophy (say, soul immortality) with what actually comes from Divine revalation.
I have no doubt that people in the lake of fire for eternity will be repentant, but it will be too late; it is appointed unto man to die once, and then face judgment (Heb. 9:27). To conclude otherwise is to buy into the belief of universalism. Some commentators say that mentioning 'the age to come' was commonly done back then as an admonishment that the Sadducees (who believed there would be no afterlife) were mistaken. The commentators specifically reject the idea that the phrase indicates any sort of 'second chance' in the next life.
I've heard a couple Orthodox pop apologists claim that other Christians believe things like that, but I assumed it was polemic exaggeration. Is it actually considered acceptable in Anglicanism to teach that men who repent of their sins will burn everlastingly anyway? I'm assuming I might be misunderstanding you.
My answer to your question would be NO! It would be very unanglican to hold such an opinion of any deceased individual. Anglicans leave judgment to God concerning the final destination of the deceased and so are unwilling to commit themselves to opinions which may call into question the unbounded grace of God. Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother / sister here departed: we therefore commit his / her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself. Personally, I believe that not only our vile bodies shall be changed, but our vile ignorance also shall be transformed by Christ, according to his mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself. 1 John 3:2-3, 1 Cor.13:12. John 12:32. .
Of course, those who repent and trust Christ in this life are and will be redeemed; they will not 'burn.' To clarify, I'm saying that people who are unrepentant in this life are very likely to repent when they experience the torment of the demons and realize that they failed to believe in God and His offer of redemption. But by then, it will be too late to trust in Christ and to repent of one's unbelief. Some might talk about the "Anglican position" and might try to represent it in some different, heterodox way, but what I've outlined is the orthodox, Christian position, so I'm confident it is the Anglican position as well.
Please excuse my inability to comprehend. It appears you're saying that the souls in hell are likely to repent, but also that it is too late for them to repent. When you say too late, do you mean not too late to repent but too late for God to accept it? If so, are there any sources you can point to that explain this position, and fit it in with the New Testament? Especially a pre-Reformation source if one exists. The only positions I'm familiar with are the possibility of post-mortem repentence and salvation (say, Vespers for Pentecost in the Orthodox Church, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, etc.) or the belief that the will of the soul is fixed at death (Aquinas, Hillary, Augustine, etc.)
The way I see Anglicanism is that we overthrew the errors of the Romans of hte Middle Ages. We have sense kept our Holy Orders and sought more and more to go back to the fathers. Yes their have been hiccups on the way but we keep praying, and searching, and learning. We have reached out to the east and learned from them so while we might not affirm everything from every set of fathers we at least acknowledge that it is a possibility as long as the Bible does not clearly prove against such things or the 4 councils we affirm in the ACNA say otherwise.
Luk 16:19 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: Luk 16:20 And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, Luk 16:21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. Luk 16:22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; Luk 16:23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Luk 16:24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. Luk 16:25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. Luk 16:26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Luk 16:27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: Luk 16:28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Notice that this story was of a certain rich man, not just a made-up character in a story. Jesus said that the man wished to spare his brothers from his terrible fate; I take this to imply that the man was repentant: i.e., he wished he hadn't lived unrighteously. Perhaps too much is being read into my use of the word, "repent," for I have used the word in the meaning of 'to be sorry and regretful.' On reflection, though, one additional component of scriptural repentance involves turning away from the sin for which one is sorry to have done, and it is this aspect that is too late for a deceased person to engage in; after all, a dead person cannot somehow amend the remainder of his natural life by avoiding the continuation of sin in the way that a living person can. Dead is too late for that! Certainly the story of this certain rich man shows us all that a man, once deceased, may feel regret and may wish he could 'do it over' in a better way, but a dead person (like this rich man) is stuck with the fate his actions and beliefs have led him to in the afterlife.
Please elucidate. You are not speaking of purgatory, are you? We know that to be contrary to Anglican doctrine.
Too late for them to act upon their sorrow and feeling of repentance, and too late for God to accept it.
Repentance involves not the admission of guilt or the acknowledgement of fault but rather the confession of death. "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in full view of you, and am no longer worthy to be [allowed to remain alive and] called your son". Confession is not a medicine leading to a recovery. If we could recover - if we could say that beginning tomorrow or the week after next we would be well again - why then, all we would need to do would be apologise, not confess. We could simply say that we are sorry about the recent unpleasantnesses , but that, thank God and the resilience of our better instincts, it is all over now. And we could confidently expect that no one with any shred of decency would not unreasonably accept our humble apologies. But we never recover. We die. And if we live again, it is not because the old bits of our behaviours have been fixed and worked back into position to fit properly again, but because we have died and some wholly other life takes up residence in our death. The only question for the human individual is whether we get it over with right now and die to our selfish 'free will' and live for Christ in resurrection mode thereafter, (with a completely new life), thus avoiding the judgement of a second death, or whether we 'soldier on' in our 'self life' until we have no choice but to succumb to death of the body and reluctantly face our redeemer in resurrection life, with a whole lot of rebellion to answer for. Why is it then that God, who is so forgiving of humanity that in the person of Christ He died reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them, yet when they are finally fully aware of their sinful and rebellious nature and are therefore truly repentant, God is apparently unwilling to forgive them, just because they have at long last finally died, just as He had always predicted they would, all of them? I think that we, none of us living, can be certain that any other one of us, once dead, will be definitely headed for the lake of fire. That is why the service is worded the way it is. It's just as well Rexlion that you probably won't be called upon to read the funeral service over any truly notably unrepentant sinners. The temptation to gleefully pronounce their theoretical firey fate might be just too much for you. .
In the Eastern Churches it is not so settled. There is stories of a saintly woman who prayed her dead brother into heaven. There are also Eastern church fathers who said that you do indeed have a chance to repent after death. I think it is some form of their liturgy at a certain time of year.
The crux of the issue is this: We are saved by God's grace, through faith. When a person comes to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside the person, and he is reborn in spirit; the old has passed away. When a persevering believer's body quits, he (the spirit-man) leaves that body and, since he is already joined in spirit to God, his destination will be God's heavenly kingdom. Those who never come to faith in this life are not saved by God's grace through faith, because they had no faith in God's redemption. Such a person is not joined in spirit to God, and therefore his destination will not be God's heavenly kingdom. The unsaved person has not been reborn spiritually, so his sinful spirit is considered "dead" to God. The unsaved person is not capable of developing faith for salvation in the afterlife. Although he will at that point recognize that he needed salvation, his recognition comes not by faith but by the fact that the knowledge of the reality of God (and of His enemies) is forced upon his consciousness by his new circumstance. Faith and knowing for sure are two very different things. Jesus said, "Those who believe not will be damned." This shows His sense of justice and of fairness: He made a way by which people may freely enter His kingdom (by believing in Christ the Redeemer), and people choose in this life whether they will receive or not. Once they have chosen and have passed from this life into the next, it would be wholly unfair and unjust for Jesus to push them to a different choice by force of new knowledge. If God were going to save people by this method (forcing knowledge of Him upon them), He might as well do so in this life. Moreover, if God were to save those who died in their sins by giving them a 'second chance' in the afterlife, He would make Himself a liar. Jesus already declared that unbelievers would be damned. To go back on His word would be patently unfair to the Christians, too. After all, we left behind the allures of sin, took up our crosses and followed Christ... for what? Could we have spent our lives in wickedness, cursing God for a fool and living for the devil, secure in our confidence that if there even be a God, since they say that "God is love," He will be a compassionate, gullible, weepy sap who will give us a free pass? The "God is sooo full of love, He won't let humans suffer for eternity" concept is absolutely fallacious; in fact it shares characteristics with what the cattle leave behind. Was it God's abounding love that killed all except eight souls in the flood? Was it His limitless love that opened a rift in the ground that swallowed up a bunch of disobedient Israelites? Or is God's love tempered by other things? Lest we forget, people suffer on this earth all the time; if one wishes to argue that God won't send anyone to the lake of fire for eternity, that belief is only a small step to one side from the question, "Why would a loving God permit me to suffer what I'm going through?" The fact is, "life is tough... and then you die." Part of the toughness is, we have a choice to make while we're still in this life; after this life is over, it's too late to change the choice.
You are very nearly where I am on this issue Rexlion, but not quite. "WE are saved by God's grace". That is understood by us to be true, in this present earthly life, only possible through "FAITH", simply because there IS no proof or certainty because God has quite deliberately not provided any. If God had provided irrefutable proof that everyone is "saved" regardless of our conduct toward God or others, then we couldn't be saved by "Grace", we would actually be saved by permissive divine edict. God is "GRACIOUS", not dotingly permissive. Your above statement is at least partially true but needs a nuance sifting out. Those who never come to faith in this life have still been redeemed, still no longer have their sins held against them, still are constantly in receipt of The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, but simply do not either know of that fact or have dismissed it as nonsense. The idea that it is "FAITH" that clinches the deal with God which gets us eternal life, is actually saying we are saved by "FAITH", not by "GRACE". "FAITH" then becomes a type of 'Works' by which WE qualify for salvation. God dying in Christ on a cross and no longer holding our sins against us then merely becomes a conditional offer of amnesty to a few, rather than a victory over death and Satan on behalf of the entire human race. The essence of the Good News of the gospel is that Christ has conquered death for us all [for every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them][/i]. Rev.12:11, Rev.5:9-14. The only factor that "FAITH" plays in this is whether we take part in God's plans for the salvation of mankind in this life, on earth, during our lifetime and death-time, or whether we remain in total ignorance of God's Gracious Nature in Christ until we finally, beyond death, SEE "The Lamb that was Slain". John 6:40, balanced against Mark 8:38. The attitude of both the conscious and unconscious unbeliever is that of the second son in the prodigal son parable. Luke 15:25-32. He questioned the graciousness of his 'Father', making him out to be mean, unkind and ungrateful. That is the only sin that God holds against the unbelieving who refuse to just go on in and join the party he has thrown, gathered round the roast fatted calf and toasting the resurrected 'son', back from the dead. Just the way WE are all drawn round a 'Lamb that has been Slain'. John 12:32. I concede to you though that there IS, according to the book of Revelation, a place for such determined party-poopers, and the roasts in it are neither lambs, fatted calfs or kids. .