“Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.”
He said this because they were saying, he has an impure spirit — the narrator's clarification grounds the blasphemy saying in the specific accusation of the Jerusalem scribes. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not a general category of particularly bad sins but the specific act of attributing the Spirit's work to Satan. This is important for pastoral care: the person genuinely worried that they have committed the unforgivable sin has almost certainly not committed it — the concern itself demonstrates an openness to the Spirit's witness that the scribes' hardened accusation lacks. The unforgivable sin is the settled, persistent, deliberate demonization of the Spirit's activity.
Church Fathers on Mark 3:30
The meaning of the example is this: The devil is the strong man; his goods are the men into whom he is received; unless therefore a man first conquers the devil, how can he deprive him of his goods, that is, of the men whom he has possessed?
The Lord has also bound the strong man, that is, the devil: which means, He has restrained him from seducing the elect, and entering into his house, the world; He has spoiled his house, and his goods, that is men, because He has snatched them from the snares of the devil, and has united them to His Church.
Or this is meant; that he will not deserve to work out repentance, so as to be accepted, who, understanding who Christ was, declared that He was the prince of the devils.
Read all 6 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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