Welcome to Form Now. I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute.

And joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, who is a professor of scripture here at the August Institute.

And we're continuing our ongoing Bible study on the Gospel of Matthew.

It's really a delight for each of us to have this show on Forms, where we can just kind of go leisurely and thoroughly through our beloved gospel by St. Matthew.

So last time we left off in the midst of chapter 12, and we were about verse 3031,

where we talked about Jesus speaking about the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

And he talks about this as the unforgivable

sin. And there's a lot of misunderstanding and anxiety around this. What does Jesus mean by

blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? And why is this a red line that was crossed by the Pharisees

and his opponents at this moment in the story. So let's start off, Michael,

with the context. So the context is so important because Jesus has been performing exorcisms,

all right? And what's happened is Jesus casts out demons and the Pharisees hear it and say,

well, he's only doing this because he's in league with Satan,

basically. And as we explained last time, that doesn't make any sense. And Jesus points out,

okay, well, if the only reason I can cast out demons is because I'm in league with demons,

then how is it that your sons are casting out demons, right? I mean, are you saying your sons

are in league with demons too? That doesn't,

come on. Obviously, this doesn't work. So then it's in this context that Jesus talks about,

every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven.

What is Jesus talking about here?

Well, there's a wonderful treatment of this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

In Catechism number 1864, right, we have a treatment of this.

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