Maimonides on Heretics: Do people with mistaken beliefs merit the world to come?
Clarifying seemingly contradictory statements from Maimonides on his attitude towards heretics. Looking at how others, (particularly the Kabbalists) viewed Maimonides' attitude toward people who have erroneous beliefs. And the importance of correct belief vs correct intention.
Rabbi Chaim Rapoport is an author, educator, lecturer and expert Judaic scholar.
© Copyright, all rights reserved. If you enjoyed this article, we encourage you to distribute it further, provided that you comply with Chabad.org's copyright policy.
More in this section
-
53:21Freedom: Are We Programmed?
-
54:26Souls on Fire
-
1:00:39Rambam: Introduction Part 1
Mistaken belief? Dear sir, forgive me if I offend you. I think that a mistaken believe is as nonexistent as a true believe. The word believe says it all.
It sounds like you never listened to the lecture; it's actually a pretty strange comment in the context of what the speaker talked about! XD
Thanks. But mistakes are made in e.g. arithmetic. A, more or less, arbitrary person can check. Believes are not mistaken. The outcome of the judgement of the mistake depends on the belief of the person.
On 1+1=3, (semi modules excluded) I cannot build a bridge. On a different assumption of belief I can still believe.
I on my turn think it strange to use "mistaken" in the combination of belief. The sentence is syntactical ok, but its semantics is meaningless.