Originally posted by Maddogkull
Who knows the god of the bible might be real, but not exactly how they portray him in the bible. Remember the bible was written by man. Men make A
LOT of mistakes. A god would not send a good person to hell because he did not believe in a guy who existed 2000 years ago.
From a theological perspective, yes he would. God gave Abraham his covenant, his personal connection and promise, and that covenant followed to
Abraham's descendants, the Jews. If you are Jewish, and you follow Jewish law, including making proscribed sacrifices, you continue to have the
blessing of God's covenant.
For the rest of us (which is everyone, I suppose... after the destruction of the Temple, I'm not sure anyone can continue to accurately make Torah
based sacrifices) our connection to God and his covenant is through Christ. When we accept Christ and his sacrifice for us, we are accepting God's
covenant. If we don't accept him, we have no connection and no promise from God.
Remember, Christ's first commandment is to love God with all your heart. If you don't, theology says that you're out of luck, because no one is
saved by their own works ("being good") but through the blessing of God's covenant.
On the other hand, if the Catholics are right, if you're not super evil (or super good,) you'll get a chance to change your tune in purgatory, so
those "good" people who didn't know about Christ, or followed some other path, will have an opportunity to accept God's blessing once they're a
bit clearer about it. Though I suspect that if you knew about Christ, but flatly rejected his salvation, you might be out of luck.