HANES, Timotej: The problem of the unpardonable sin in the ew Testament, pneumatologico - hamartological view. [Master thesis] / Timotej Hanes. - Charles University in Prague. Hussite Theological Faculty; - Supervisor: Prof. ThDr. Ján Liguš, PhD. - Degree: Master. - Prague : HTF UK, 2011. 91 p. The thesis discusses the problem of the unpardonable sin on the based on the text from Matthew 12:31-32. Its goal is to give the reader a better grasp of this problem and to be able to create his own opinion about it. It tries to accomplish the goal by offering as accurate picture of the perception the New Testament books authors had on this problem as possible using a detailed exegesis of the text mentioned above. In the second part, the thesis compares the results of the exegesis with the perception various important people of Christian history had on the unpardonable sin. In the empirical part, the thesis studies what this perception is among Christians these days and it tries to suggest some changes, that could contribute to conforming this perception to the biblical one as much as possible. Key words: the unpardonable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, exegesis, biblical view

<p>In early modern Sweden, intentional blasphemy was regarded as one of the most serious crimes one could commit. Blasphemy was termed “Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae” – “a crime against Our Heavenly Majesty” and was subject to the death penalty. From the 1680´s it was possible to be pardoned from death sentences already delivered by the courts of appeal by applying to the “Judiciary Inspection”, (Sw. Justitierevisionen) In early modern times the definition of blasphemy was influenced by the medieval scholastic view according to which God was perfect. The sourcematerial for the present thesis are 110 petitions for mercy in cases of blasphemy that came up before the council during the period 1680-1789. The cases studied can be divided into the following categories: Blasphemy against God, blasphemy against the sacraments, deliberate assignations wiht the Devil and “other blasphemies”. There was no Church law in Sweden before 1686 and a common law for the whole country did not exist before 1734. The Bible´s ten Commandments where added as an appendix to the already existing medieval laws, reiterated in 1608. An individual found guilty of blasphemy underwent both secular and church punishment. At least nine individuals (we lack information about some cases due to material that has been lost) where not pardoned by the council. The secular punishments included death by beheading or burning at stake, when the sentence was reduced some kind of corporal punishment – running the sauntlet, flogging, imprisonment on a diet of bread and water or a life time of labor. Church punishment was public shaming and meant that the accused had to sit on a special chair in church during the services and publicly ask God and the members of the congregation for forgiveness. This kind of punishment was meted out in Sweden until the late 18th century.Blasphemy is a complicated act that should be defined according to the norms of the society in which it occurs. There are two processes that have to be taken into considerations when studing the crime of blasphemy in early modern Sweden – the centralization of the government and the unification of the church according to the Lutheran creed.In the early modern society people lived in what has been called a “religious culture”, where religion was self-evident, collective concern. Within this context atheism, in the modern meaning of the word, was supposedly unimaginable.The theoretical framework of the study is inspired by Peter Burke’s theories of the reformation of popular culture. Measurements taken by the elite have usually been regarded as active and aggressive, while popular culture has been regarded a homogeneous passive mass that adjustes itself to demands from above. One of the primary aims of this thesis is to study how verbal statements, actions and attitudes reflected popular conceptions that could either be close to or far distant from the learned ideas of the elite. By dividing popular attitudes discerned in the cases studied into four groups corresponding to a kind of mental strata, a more varied image of popular culture is achieved. Blasphemy in early modern Sweden was a crime committed mainly by men, especially when it comes to expressing ideas about the Devil or attempting to contact him. Very few women were accused of blasphemy; of 117 individuals accused, only nine were women.</p>

In early modern Sweden, intentional blasphemy was regarded as one of the most serious crimes one could commit. Blasphemy was termed “Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae” – “a crime against Our Heavenly Majesty” and was subject to the death penalty. From the 1680´s it was possible to be pardoned from death sentences already delivered by the courts of appeal by applying to the “Judiciary Inspection”, (Sw. Justitierevisionen) In early modern times the definition of blasphemy was influenced by the medieval scholastic view according to which God was perfect. The sourcematerial for the present thesis are 110 petitions for mercy in cases of blasphemy that came up before the council during the period 1680-1789. The cases studied can be divided into the following categories: Blasphemy against God, blasphemy against the sacraments, deliberate assignations wiht the Devil and “other blasphemies”. There was no Church law in Sweden before 1686 and a common law for the whole country did not exist before 1734. The Bible´s ten Commandments where added as an appendix to the already existing medieval laws, reiterated in 1608. An individual found guilty of blasphemy underwent both secular and church punishment. At least nine individuals (we lack information about some cases due to material that has been lost) where not pardoned by the council. The secular punishments included death by beheading or burning at stake, when the sentence was reduced some kind of corporal punishment – running the sauntlet, flogging, imprisonment on a diet of bread and water or a life time of labor. Church punishment was public shaming and meant that the accused had to sit on a special chair in church during the services and publicly ask God and the members of the congregation for forgiveness. This kind of punishment was meted out in Sweden until the late 18th century.Blasphemy is a complicated act that should be defined according to the norms of the society in which it occurs. There are two processes that have to be taken into considerations when studing the crime of blasphemy in early modern Sweden – the centralization of the government and the unification of the church according to the Lutheran creed.In the early modern society people lived in what has been called a “religious culture”, where religion was self-evident, collective concern. Within this context atheism, in the modern meaning of the word, was supposedly unimaginable.The theoretical framework of the study is inspired by Peter Burke’s theories of the reformation of popular culture. Measurements taken by the elite have usually been regarded as active and aggressive, while popular culture has been regarded a homogeneous passive mass that adjustes itself to demands from above. One of the primary aims of this thesis is to study how verbal statements, actions and attitudes reflected popular conceptions that could either be close to or far distant from the learned ideas of the elite. By dividing popular attitudes discerned in the cases studied into four groups corresponding to a kind of mental strata, a more varied image of popular culture is achieved. Blasphemy in early modern Sweden was a crime committed mainly by men, especially when it comes to expressing ideas about the Devil or attempting to contact him. Very few women were accused of blasphemy; of 117 individuals accused, only nine were women.

À l’avènement de Charles Ier, le tribunal de l’Inquisition faisait l’objet d’une intense controverse juridique. La cour fut contrainte, pour assurer sa survie, de choisir les leviers de son institutionnalisation. Or, entre 1516 et 1556, la pérennisation du Saint-Office s’était accompagnée d’un élargissement sans précédent du périmètre d’attributions inquisitoriales. L’analyse, dans une première partie, des conditions de l’exercice judiciaire dégage les caractères de la juridicisation à l’œuvre. Ces évolutions prolongeaient la consécration de l’autorité de la chose jugée inquisitoriale impulsée entre 1507 et 1516. Au moyen des garanties fonctionnelles – double degré de juridiction et collégialité – ainsi que du contrôle a posteriori des actes, l’Inquisition put répondre à la controverse juridique. Par le biais d’une étude du traitement de la question mahométane et des blasphèmes, la seconde partie présente les modes d’application de la juridicité ainsi définie et met en évidence l’émergence d’une fonction administrative. Parce que l’Inquisition s’était mise au service d’une police religieuse, elle inaugurait des aménagements procéduraux inédits. La cour était désormais investie d’une fonction de connaissance afin de garantir l’ordre religieux. La troisième partie dégage les caractères de l’action inquisitoriale face aux nouvelles hérésies. En suivant la piste du scandale actif et passif, l’Inquisition formalisa l’illuminisme, quadrilla le territoire par la régulation de l’évangélisme érasmien et surveilla l’émergence des nouveaux foyers hétérodoxes espagnols tout en investissant les matières relatives à la discipline de l’état ecclésiastique et à l’édification des fidèles. / When Charles I came to the throne, the Spanish Inquisition became the subject of an intense legal battle. In order to ensure its survival, the Court was obliged to find ways of institutionalising it. As it was, the establishment of the Holy Office was accompanied by an unprecedented expansion of the role of the Inquisition. The first part of this work looks at the conditions of the judicial system and how these defined the way in which juridicisation developed. These developments confirmed the consecration of the authority over things deemed inquisitorial, that had been initiated between 1507 & 1516. Through functional guarantees – a double level of jurisdiction and collegiality – and through powers of judicial control, the Inquisition was able to react to the controversy. By way of a study of the treatment of the Mohammedan question and of blasphemy, the second part describes how the jurisdiction was applied, and shows how an administrative function developed. As the Inquisition put itself at the service of religious police, it led to novel ways of adapting existing procedures.The third part shows how the Inquisition acted in the face of new heresies. The Court was henceforth empowered with a right to know, to enable it to guarantee religious order. By actively and passively fomenting scandals, the Holy Office formalised Illuminism, established control of the territory by regulating Erasmian evangelism, and kept a lookout for the emergence of new pockets of heterodoxy in Spain; at the same time it developed the tools needed for a disciplined ecclesiastical state and the edification of the faithful.

La tesi affronta la problematica dell'intervento penale a tutela della religione in Italia e Gran Bretagna, concentrandosi in particolare sulle fattispecie “tradizionali” di vilipendio, bestemmia e blasphemy. La sezione prima prende in esame essenzialmente il profilo storico della disciplina penalistica e confessionale a tutela della religione mettendo in luce la nascita, l'evoluzione e la conformazione dei delitti di religione nei due ordinamenti sino alle soglie del XIX secolo. La seconda sezione, invece, analizza il diritto moderno e l'attuale configurazione del vilipendio, della bestemmia e delle religious offences, in una prospettiva di diritto comparato, nel contesto contemporaneo del pluralismo, della secolarizzazione e della dimensione “europea” del fenomeno religioso e delle libertà ad esso connesse. La peculiare posizione giuridica della canon law della established Church of England nell'ordinamento britannico ha reso necessario inoltre uno sguardo sullo status della blasphemy nell'ambito delle doctrinal offences, con lo scopo di studiare le reciproche influenze tra le religious offences nella common law e quelle previste nell'ordinamento “interno” alla Church of England. Le chiavi di lettura concettuali che emergono dalla ricerca sono: il rapporto tra “sistemi di diritto ecclesiastico” (relazioni tra Stato e Chiesa) e scelte politico-criminali a tutela del fenomeno religioso, l'evoluzione del bene protetto e del fondamento della tutela penale nella giurisprudenza dei due Paesi, i modelli di tutela penale (alternativa tutela speciale/tutela comune), i recenti sviluppi del “diritto penale di religione” ed infine il problema della laicità in rapporto alla tutela penale del fenomeno religioso. / This work aims to study the criminal law providing for the defence of religion in Italy and Great Britain, focusing upon such traditional criminal conducts as “vilipendio”, bestemmia and blasphemy. The first section deals with the historical reconstruction of criminal and religious law protecting religion, in order to give an account of the origin and the evolution of the legal provisions concerning the religious offences within both Italian and British legal systems until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The second section examines the legal provisions, stipulated in the modern and contemporary ages, of the offences of “vilipendio”, “bestemmia” as well as British religious offences, in a comparative law perspective, within the framework of pluralism, secularisation and the European dimension of religious freedom. It has been necessary to study the legal provisions concerning blasphemy also as to doctrinal offences, in order to explain the peculiar legal status of the Canon Law of the Church of England, as well as to understand the mutual influences between the religious common law offences and the doctrinal offences in the domestic law of the Church of England. The main conclusions of this research work concern the connection between “the Ecclesiastical Law systems” (that is, the systems of State-Church relations) ad the choices of the legislator to protect the religious dimension; the evolution of the legal content as well as of the rationes of the criminal law within the Italian and British jurisprudence; the patterns of criminal law (seen as an alternative between special and general protection); the recent developments of the concept of “religious offence” and the problem of the relations between secularisation and the criminal protection of religion.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 caused political statements and academic reflections principally on the danger to constitutional principle of french laicism and republican values, without detriment to the references to freedom of expression and other rights as to the relationship with terrorist attacks in november 13 in Paris in the same year. The purpose of this work is the understanding and application of this constitutional principle in the present circumstances in France. The point of reference is the legal basis, the recent national jurisprudence and consideration of this in the international legal community. / El atentado contra Charlie Hebdo en enero de 2015 provocó declaraciones políticas y reflexiones académicas sobre, principalmente, la amenaza que significó para el principio constitucional de laicidad francés y los valores de la República, sin perjuicio de la mención a la libertad de expresión y otros derechos, así como a la relación con los ataques terroristas cometidos el 13 de noviembre en París en el mismo año. El objeto de este trabajo es la comprensión y aplicación de este principio constitucional en las circunstancias actuales en Francia, tomando en cuenta sus fundamentos jurídicos, la reciente jurisprudencia nacional y la consideración sobre este principio en la comunidad jurídica internacional.

Cette thèse propose une lecture juridique, politique et sociale de l’application de la loi anti-blasphème de 1965 dans le plus grand pays musulman du monde, l’Indonésie. Plusieurs controverses sont apparues ces dernières années concernant la nature de la loi sur le blasphème dans la vie religieuse de la société démocratique indonésienne ; cette loi correspond-elle à la prévention des abus en matière de religion et/ou de blasphème, comme il est mentionné explicitement dans son titre, ou bien concernerait-elle plutôt la restriction de la liberté de religion et d’expression en matière religieuse ? En avril 2010, après le procès contrôlant la constitutionnalité de cette loi, une décision de la Cour constitutionnelle indonésienne a établi que la loi examinée ne correspondait pas à cette seconde lecture. Si cette loi a bien pour objectif de restreindre la liberté de religion ou d’expression en matière religieuse, selon la Cour, cela ne signifie pas que cette forme de restriction est inconstitutionnelle dès lors que la Constitution de 1945 en vigueur s’accompagne d’une restriction légale au respect ou à la sauvegarde des valeurs religieuses en particulier, à côté de la moralité, de la sécurité et de l’ordre public. Toutefois, les débats et les tensions au sein de la société concernant l’application de cette loi perdurent sans relâche. Les défenseurs des droits de l’homme maintiennent que l’existence d’une telle loi anti-blasphème est contraire à l’esprit de la démocratie. En revanche, les défenseurs de la censure religieuse s’obstinent à affirmer que cette loi est nécessaire pour éviter les conflits religieux. À travers une analyse de son contenu juridique et de sa mise en application, nous considérons que la loi anti-blasphème de 1965 a visé en premier lieu à entraver le déploiement des courants de croyance spirituelle locale ou des courants mystiques javanais qui, dans une certaine mesure, sont considérés par les musulmans en particulier comme une menace pour les religions existantes et pour la désintégration du pays. Dans un second temps, nous verrons que l’existence de ladite loi est davantage destinée à restreindre le nombre des religions reconnues par l’État d’une part, et à réprimer les courants religieux « dissidents » ou « hétérodoxes » d’autre part. Si les actes jugés comme blasphématoires, parmi lesquels figure la diffusion d’interprétation religieuse « déviantes » de l’orthodoxie, sont des infractions sanctionnées, ce n’est pas la loi anti-blasphème de 1965 qui sert de référence, mais l’article 156a du Code pénal qui trouve son origine dans ladite loi. Ainsi, la loi anti-blasphème de 1965 est plutôt utilisée pour restreindre la liberté de religion et de conviction au sens large, alors que l’article 156a du Code pénal est chargé de limiter la liberté d’expression en matière religieuse. En Indonésie comme ailleurs, le renforcement de l’application de la loi anti-blasphème va de pair avec l’émergence des groupes religieux radicaux qui veulent voir triompher leur conception totalitaire d’une liberté d’expression bridée par le respect de la foi religieuse. Ces derniers utilisent de cette loi non seulement à des fins religieuses, mais également à des fins politiques, notamment celle déstabiliser un régime « laïque » ou bien d’étendre leur influence. L’objectif de cette thèse est non seulement d’analyser la nature de la loi anti-blasphème de 1965, mais aussi de proposer une perspective alternative pour aborder les conflits juridiques en Indonésie concernant les deux droits fondamentaux, à savoir le droit à la liberté de religion et le droit d’expression. La thèse vise alors la prévention des conflits juridiques en la matière et ainsi qu’à trouver un équilibre entre les libertés concernées. / This thesis proposes a legal, political and social reading of the application of the blasphemy law in the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia. Several controversies have emerged in recent years regarding the nature of the blasphemy law in the religious life of the Indonesian democratic society. For instance, disagreement remains with regards to the intent of this law, i.e., whether it really aims at preventing misuse of religion and/or acts of blasphemy, as explicitly mentioned in its title, or whether it intends to restrict the freedom of religion and religious expression. In April 2010, after the examination of the constitutionality of this law, the Indonesian Constitutional Court ruled out the second possibility. The court further argues that even if the law has an unintended effect of restricting the freedom of religion or religious expression, it is not against the constitution since the 1945 Constitution is accompanied by a legal restriction to respect or preserve religious values in particular, as well as morality, security and public order. However, the debates and tensions within society regarding the implementation of this law continue unabated. On the one hand, human rights defenders persist in saying that the existing anti-blasphemy law is contrary to the spirit of democracy. On the other, defenders of religious censorship persist in resisting that this law is necessary to avoid religious conflicts. Through an analysis of legal content and its implementation, I argue that the blasphemy law of 1965 initially aims to hinder the development of the local spiritual belief stream or Javanese mystical groups, which to some extent are considered by Muslims in particular as a threat to existing religions and a source of disintegration of the country. Further, I maintain that the existence of the above-mentioned law has the tendency to restrict the number of religions officially acknowledged by the State and to repress “dissident” or “heterodox” religious movements. If acts considered blasphemous, including the "deviant" religious interpretation of orthodoxy, are punishable offenses, it is not the anti-blasphemy law of 1965 that serves as a reference, but the article 156a of the Penal Code, which has its origin in that blasphemy law does. As a consequence, the blasphemy law of the 1965 is rather used to restrict the freedom of religion and belief in the broad sense, while article 156a of the Penal Code is applied to limit the freedom of religious expression. In Indonesia, as elsewhere, the strengthening of the application of the blasphemy law goes hand in hand with the emergence of radical religious groups intend to promote their totalitarian concept of freedom of expression restrained by respect for the religious faith. The latter make use of this law not only for religious reasons, but also for political reasons, including destabilizing a secular regime or extending their influence. The thesis does not only aim to analyze the nature of the blasphemy law of 1965, but also to propose an alternative perspective in understanding and solving the problem of the legal conflicts in Indonesia pertaining to the two fundamental rights, namely the right to freedom of religion and expression. The thesis also seeks to find a balance between two freedoms and to propose preventive measures that can be adopted in the aforementioned legal conflicts.

The presence of atheists within the Muslim world has begun to receive global attention after a number of cases in which atheist bloggers and writers in majority Muslim countries were killed for criticising Islam. The rise in number of Arab atheist Facebook groups has sparked conversation about the rise in number of atheists across the Arab world, and to what extent the use of social media platforms has facilitated this. This study examines 2 such Facebook groups and aims to explore the way in which social media platforms can be used to bring a geographically diverse group of people together to form a collective group identity, and to provoke societal change. The research was conducted using qualitative data, gathered using open ended interview and survey questions, alongside quantitative data which was gathered from closed survey questions and raw survey data in an attempt to understand how communication technology is used by these groups to form a collective identity among their members and to achieve shared objectives. The study lies within the frame of new social movement theory, with particular focus on the ever evolving role which online communications can play in developing aspects of a given society.The results showed that social media had given members from both groups the ability to share experiences, develop a collective identity, and utilise their new found visibility to provide the voices of atheists in the Arab world with an authority which they had been lacking. The study found that the freedom for atheists to unite online in large number was exposing closeted atheists as well as practising Muslims to opinions which would not have been as vocalised in the real world. The freedom for both parties to involve themselves in the group has reflected some of the difficulties faced in the real world, but has importantly opened up a dialogue and is working toward the acceptance of atheism within majority Muslim societies.

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