Ignorance and eternal punishment

[ehcks]

If Christianity were somehow correct, and their god real, why would anyone not already know this? Why would the god of the Bible keep itself secret except for being preached about by other humans?

 

[Craig B]

Of course they have. Twice, in fact. The Catholics determined that both faith and works were required, while the Protestants determined that faith alone was how people were to be saved.

More than just a mere twice. Look at the huge dispute between the modernists and the reactionaries in the RCC over whether one must be in the Church to be saved. Is that "faith" or a "work"?

In this dispute the traditionalists may call upon powerful support from pre-Conciliar pontiffs and other teachers, by the way.

 

[pharphis]

Thanks for all the input, especially from leumas for all the bible verses showing various contradictions and/or ambiguity

 

[Bikewer]

There's even more....According to the NT Scholar Bart Ehrman, the Gnostics had the notion that the OT God was an insane rogue god, and that JC's real purpose was (by way of his "secret knowledge") to show people the way back to the REAL gods.
But not everybody....Only those with the "spark of the divine". I suppose this could be construed as the Children Of Israel....But I don't believe there were any instructions for determining who had the spark...

 

[Craig B]

There's even more....According to the NT Scholar Bart Ehrman, the Gnostics had the notion that the OT God was an insane rogue god, and that JC's real purpose was (by way of his "secret knowledge") to show people the way back to the REAL gods.
But not everybody....Only those with the "spark of the divine". I suppose this could be construed as the Children Of Israel....But I don't believe there were any instructions for determining who had the spark...

Most Gnostics took the opposite view, and were strongly opposed to Judaism, because it promoted the evil creator of the world as the Chief God, which Gnostics denied.

While anti-Semitism (in the sense of intense dislike of Jews) was not uncommon in the ancient world, it was probably among the Gnostic sects that the most radical form of anti-Semitism originated — the view that the Jews are the representatives of cosmic evil, the people of the Devil. (The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, p. 186)​

That's a Jewish scholar, the late Hyam Maccoby. I think he's right.