I just state this here as something that I only recently realized explicitly, and which seems important.
That, in all of scripture, there is no instance of the God of the Old Testament, or Jesus Christ in the New Testament, making somebody wholly-good - for example by divine creation, or by a miracle.
This strikes me as evidence that this cannot be done.
And this, in turn, seems to have implications for understanding the scope and nature and possibilities of reality.
For example; the necessity for Jesus Christ, and his making possible post-mortal resurrection to Heaven - is exactly that this was the way (presumably the only way?) that Men could be made wholly-good.
**
Note: An exception, for some Eastern and Western Catholics (and not derived from explicit scripture), and apparently developing from the early 300s AD; may be Mary the mother of Jesus. Mary has sometimes been regarded as uniquely wholly-good from her conception: ie the assertion that Mary was created free from all sin.
While I have great sympathy with "Mariolatry", and believe its advent did Christianity and people significant good overall; nonetheless; nonetheless a belief in Mary's absolute goodness seems - Very Obviously - to create stark and lethal contradictions for Christianity.
Because if Mary could be created perfect before Jesus; then there was no necessity, no qualitative requirement, for Jesus.
In other words; if God could make an immaculate Mary; presumably God could have populated this world entirely with immaculate persons, each as-good-as Mary*. There would thus be no need for salvation, no need for Jesus.
*The assumption would then be that such a God "could" have done this, but evidently did not - raising the killer question of "why not?".
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