Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Hans Von Campenhausen (1903-1989) on the "Sin Unto Death" in 1 John 5:16-17

  

. . . the ‘sin unto death’, as is today fairly generally agreed, refers to the sin of apostasy. The brotherly duty of intercession is expressly suspended in this particular case; for the apostate is no longer a brother, and the man who has abandoned the faith and plunged back into the heathenism is truly lost. Hence it is here and here alone that the promise that prayer will be heard (1 John. 5:16), which within Christianity itself is valid without restriction of any kind, finds its limit. Hebrews speaks explicitly of those who have tasted the heavenly gift, been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and then have nevertheless fallen away: it is impossible to ‘renew’ such people again to repentance. This means what it says: it is impossible to bring them back to repentance, not, it is impermissible, if they should come to repentance, then to pronounce their forgiveness. The meaning of ανακαινιζειν here is attested specially in Hermas, Sim. IX, 14, 3. Hebrews too, therefore, considers that there is no prospect of the conversion of those who have once apostasied. (Hans Von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries [trans. J. A. Baker; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1969], 223 n. 41; note that Von Campenhausen does not believe, as some Protestants do, that the "sin unto death" means a sin that leads to physical death; instead, it is one that results in a person forfeiting their salvation)