A Purgatorial Debate
An earlier debate (Irons in the Fire) has diverged into two distinct topics, so I am breaking this one on purgatory into a separate post. The other, original topic (hierarchical authority structures in the church), continues in the original post.
Rick wrote: "Purgatory is the device by which Catholics deal with the seeming cruelty and harshness of Hell existing within God's perfect will. It sets the stage for a variety of works-related salvation practices, putting the brunt upon the living do good deeds for the souls of the departed and motivating the faithful to good works to shorten their own stays in an unpleasant place. Of course, just beyond purgatory lies Hell, so beware. For evangelicals, the device by which we deal with Hell is grace. We can take comfort in knowing that our departed loved ones, while not perfect or even necessarily good, were able to receive the unmerited favor of God by trusting in God's son. Since we can't know the hearts of people, we can't know that anyone is in heaven or hell, but we can imagine anyone in either place."
I reply: The ideas of purgatory as being a setting for any sort of stage for "works-related salvation practices" and that "just beyond purgatory lies Hell" are where the crux of the error, as I see it, lies. According to Catholic doctrine, a soul in purgatory is only bound for heaven. That soul has been irrevocably saved, so there is no stage set for "works-related salvation practices." Hell is not a possibility. No amount of works by people still on earth, and no amount of suffering by the soul who has chosen hell (or heaven) can revoke that decision, because once outside of time, decisions are eternal.
The formal Catholic teaching on purgatory is this: "All who die in God's grace and fellowship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." (From the Catechism of the Catholic Church)
Rick wrote: "We can take comfort in knowing that our departed loved ones, while not perfect or even necessarily good, were able to receive the unmerited favor of God by trusting in God's son."
I reply: This is what Catholics believe also, and why the concept of purgatory makes such good sense.
Rick wrote: "Purgatory is the device by which Catholics deal with the seeming cruelty and harshness of Hell existing within God's perfect will. It sets the stage for a variety of works-related salvation practices, putting the brunt upon the living do good deeds for the souls of the departed and motivating the faithful to good works to shorten their own stays in an unpleasant place. Of course, just beyond purgatory lies Hell, so beware. For evangelicals, the device by which we deal with Hell is grace. We can take comfort in knowing that our departed loved ones, while not perfect or even necessarily good, were able to receive the unmerited favor of God by trusting in God's son. Since we can't know the hearts of people, we can't know that anyone is in heaven or hell, but we can imagine anyone in either place."
I reply: The ideas of purgatory as being a setting for any sort of stage for "works-related salvation practices" and that "just beyond purgatory lies Hell" are where the crux of the error, as I see it, lies. According to Catholic doctrine, a soul in purgatory is only bound for heaven. That soul has been irrevocably saved, so there is no stage set for "works-related salvation practices." Hell is not a possibility. No amount of works by people still on earth, and no amount of suffering by the soul who has chosen hell (or heaven) can revoke that decision, because once outside of time, decisions are eternal.
The formal Catholic teaching on purgatory is this: "All who die in God's grace and fellowship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven." (From the Catechism of the Catholic Church)
Rick wrote: "We can take comfort in knowing that our departed loved ones, while not perfect or even necessarily good, were able to receive the unmerited favor of God by trusting in God's son."
I reply: This is what Catholics believe also, and why the concept of purgatory makes such good sense.
posted by Ernesto at 7:20 PM
17 Comments:
Is it safe for me to surmise (from the first post) that this is a forum where, at least in part, you gentlemen intend to discuss/explore the differences/similarities between Protestantism and Catholicism?
If that is so, may I ask what you have read that may be pertinent to this pursuit? It appears you have read some of Lewis and Chesterton (very good). But perhaps not anything of theirs that directly pertains to the question at hand?
Regards
Yes, in part, and ...
Not sure I understand your question ... are asking for a complete bibliography of everything I've read, over an entire lifetime, that is relevant to a discussion of differences in Christian faith traditions? Including history, literature, theology, apologetics, popular religious books, magazine articles, tracts, etc.? If so, I'm not likely to have time (or recollective powers, or perhaps vanity) to compile such a list.
If, on the other hand, you're asking for some favorite books (perhaps as recommendations?) on this topic, I could probably do that for you. Please clarify.
Thanks Ernesto. Just trying to get a feel for where the discussion is. It sounds like it has been going on offline for a time.
How about this: What are the four or five most helpful books/articles/documents you have read that have given you the deepest insight into the controversy?
Ah, understood.
1. Orthodoxy, G. K Chesterton.
2. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics
3. Apologia Pro Vita Sua, John Henry Newman
4. On Being A Christian, Hans Kung
5. Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Keating
These are in no particular order of importance. The two books that were crucial in my return to Christianity after a decade, at least, of serious materialism, were On Being A Christian, which tipped the scales to belief for me, and Apologia Pro Vita Sua, which tipped the scales for Catholicism. After that, all else seemed to reinforce those two initial positions. (Including Lewis, who despite not being a Catholic, seems to reinforce my Catholicism every time I read him.)
Another really key piece of reference for me on this debate is Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present. An excellent limning of Luther, the Reformation and Counter Reformation.
Lovely. Rick?
Rick's characterization of purgatory makes it sound like the spoonful of sugar by which the medicine of God's justice goes down, so Ernesto was right to call him on that oversimplification. I understand purgatory as, in Peter Kreeft's phrase, "heaven's waiting room." And, of course, it's implied by some passages in the Book of Maccabees (which Protestants don't accept as part of the Old Testament canon)
To respond to Ernesto's reaction to my statement on Purgatory, I confess a lack of "book learning" on such matters, but I'm tempted to stick to my guns. If purification is required to enter Heaven and a certain level of impurity is sufficient to keep one from heaven, then it seems fair to assume Salvation takes place on a balance with a tipping point.
The quote from the Catechism highlights where I think the dispute is really centered. Are certain good works required to be among those who die in God's grace and fellowship? Purgatory may not be the final statement on the nature of salvation, but it's a pretty powerful impetus to works. Are not acts, gifts and prayers for the departed offered to speed or ease the passage of a soul to Heaven?
I know that Lewis described every choice that we make as a choice to one extreme or the other, a step toward hellish damnation or heavenly bliss. I know that he leaned towards purgatory as a concept. I accept his picture of our binary relationship to the spiritual realm. That was the problem that Christ died to fix, because perfection is more than just a tipping point one way or the other. Purity allows for not a taint of contamination. If Purgatory exists, then everyone goes there. If Christ's sacrifice was sufficient, then no one needs to.
BTW, the evangelical corollary to Purgatory is summed up in an undefined system of heavenly rewards: stars in one's crown. The thinking goes that believers all go straight to heaven, but there is some kind of ranking once there. I'm sure this is more wonderful than just a system of celestial scout badges. Maybe it's simply the ability to relate to God on more levels, to serve him more completely. Anyway, that's the carrot approach to the same mystery to which Purgatory is a stick.
Both of these ideas seem to me to be efforts of theologians to eat something bigger than their heads. Maybe a spoonful of sugar helps that go down as well.
Here is the difficulty, in these matters, as I see and experienced them. We all tend to be patriotic. That is, we fiercely defend our home turf. What is needed, in order to make a truly just judgement is the heroic effort to see the other side as the other side sees themselves (not as any particular individual, who may be in great error, but as a wise and informed representative of any particular tradition would see things). And that, I maintain, can hardly be accomplished without study.
I was compelled to look at this question in a unique way. In fact I came to the realization that perhaps Protestantism was built over an abyss before I even began to wonder about anything else.
I will give one instance, and if you care to go on we can. I thought exactly as all Protestants think regarding the invisible church. The church is all who believe. But when I began to examine this I realized that this may not be the whole story. There is certainly a sense in which it is true.
But, the startling historical and biblical fact remains that this is a distinction that was never positited before Calvin. There is no such distinction in the New Testament, in fact the very opposite emerges clearly. Jesus founded one visible church led by the Apostles.
The Church embodied this universally in the Nicene Creed, which all Christians confessed. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Now this 'one' aspect of the Creed must be confessed in the same manner as the Fathers intended. And what was intended was a confession that most certainly implied one visible Church. Nothing else would have entered their mind.
Calvin, in the Institutes, realized what was at stake and developed, for the first time, the doctrine of the visible/invisible church. He had to in order to justify seperating from the one visible Church. He had a motive. Now I am highly suspect of ideas that one is forced to create in order to shore up what would otherwise be crumbling foundations.
Proceeding along these same lines the whole Protestant movement discredits itself. The foundation propogates disunity. If you disagree you start your own church or denomination. Now, the Lord is certainly the Author of Unity, not disunity. Something is dramatically wrong. Could Luther have gone to far? Did he have the Authority to separate from the Church and start his own sect?
Rick wrote: "If purification is required to enter Heaven and a certain level of impurity is sufficient to keep one from heaven, then it seems fair to assume Salvation takes place on a balance with a tipping point."
That seems a bit like saying if I invite you over for dinner and ask you to wipe you feet on the mat as you come through the front door, I've created a works-based system to keep you out of my house. Or maybe more accurately, it's as if you showed up at my house wearing a big wooden yoke. You come into the mudroom and I say to you, "please, come into the house! You're welcome." You try and go through the inner door and realize you don't fit. You've been welcomed, you made it to dinner, but there's a logistics issue about actually getting you in the door. You have to take your yoke off. Some other guest waiting to get in might give you a hand, or you might just stand there looking silly until I do it for you. Either way, there's no chance you'll be uninvited at that point.
I just can't see how this has anything to do with a works-toward-salvation scheme.
Here's another analogy: I invite you over to look at my art collection. You come in, enter the gallery and we're standing there looking at the paintings and you say, "Hey, I don't know what you see in all this junk." That's when I notice you're wearing really dark sunglasses. I tell you you're going to have to take off those glasses if you're ever going to be able to appreciate the art. You reach up and take them off.
The idea of purgatory is that you died in a state of grace, having repented of and been forgiven for your sins. But you might be left with an "affection" for some of your sins. This affection for sin is the yoke or dark glasses (to follow my earlier analogies) that must be removed before entering heaven.
Are there Christian denominations that believe that after we repent, if we repent properly, we are left absolutely no affection for or temptation to sin? This would seem to be contradicted by all observable behavior of just about all people, all the time, forever.
Affection for or temptation to sin is not sin itself, and shouldn't prevent someone from reaching a state of grace and being welcomed into heaven ... but it's hard to imagine something as skuzzy as affection for sin making it into the beatific vision...
FYI
Presbyterian Church Historian Mark Noll on Differences in Converts
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/
I have found this to be profoundly true.
Sorry I'm falling behind on my responses. It's been busy at home and at work. I'll take the last note first, since I think it's easiest. (Visit the linked site for background on my comments).
There are a number of reasons why there might be more intellectual or scholarly converts from Evangelical camp to the R.C. People tend to grow more conservative and authority-focused as they age. The average intellectual would tend to quickly soak up all the literary oxygen in the typical E. church, simply because it's not an intellectual body. It's more based in community, emotions and instincts. Birds of a feather flock together. Bookish Christians will be attracted to the church with the biggest and oldest books. You guys (just about everyone else who has posted or replied on this site) are much more of the intellectual world than I. I haven't read the books you have and much of my reflection upon the humanities comes from watching the Simpsons.
I don't embrace the Bible so intellectually. I don't think it has to exegeted to be understood for all practical purposes. I tend to exegete for fun and with a sense of adventure, not to validate my worldview. I do look to scripture for affirmation and correction and try to accept both whenever I find them, but so much of the Bible seems designed to defy easy summaries. This could either mean that it requires an overarching authority to explain it, or it could mean that, like anything living, it wasn't designed to be pinned down.
I feel secure within this environment, i.e. my soul has found a resting place. I'm intellectual and curious enough to not be content just resting, but I don't feel a need for some kind of quantum church leap. Those who pass through the ecumenical membrane do so due to some kind of pressure. The nature of the fluid on either side no doubt dictates the direction of the flow. High achieving individuals will tend to flow to higher areas of organization. Good intentioned slackers like myself will tend to gravitate to more spontaneous and flexible environments.
Ernesto said, "That seems a bit like saying if I invite you over for dinner and ask you to wipe you feet on the mat as you come through the front door, I've created a works-based system to keep you out of my house."
What I'm saying is similar to that, except substitute "soul" for "feet." My understanding of the Catholic idea is that the soul can be more or less clean upon death, requiring more or less additional cleaning. The more you clean up yourself, the less cleaning you need upon death to be acceptable to God. It seems by extension that there is a state of filth that disqualifies one from purgatory. If this is a naive notion on my part, then perhaps there is less distinction between our faith traditions. For the evangelical, no one is clean enough to approach God and if purgatory exists, then we all need to spend time there. How does this jibe with the Catholic thought? The Evangelical view is that no amount of self-cleaning in this world can make one fit for heaven, but that Christ's perfect sacrifice was sufficient to cover for each and all our sins.
Somehow, either way, we are transformed into suitable beings for Heaven. Evangelicals trust Christ to make them suitable. Catholics seem (to me) to specify a variety of acts that "work" toward making one suitable for Heaven. If Catholics agree with Evangelicals that faith in Christ is all we need for salvation, then I'm willing to concede purgatory -- I'm prepared to encounter some surprises when I die -- but I don't see the need for it, any more than I see the need for a boot brush to turn my rotting tennis shoes into roller blades.
I didn't answer one of Ernesto's questions and it might clarify my position to repeat it here.
"Are there Christian denominations that believe that after we repent, if we repent properly, we are left absolutely no affection for or temptation to sin? This would seem to be contradicted by all observable behavior of just about all people, all the time, forever."
The conversion process isn't finished until death, so the observable behavior would not be visible on this side of the veil. The fact that no one has ever properly repented in this world testifies to the fact that we require grace. What we are debating is just how amazing is that grace.
Also, regarding the distinction between the affection for sin and the sin itself. If affection for sin is some kind of "shape" of the soul that needs remolding and not an act of the soul (either thought or deed) then it seem reasonable that God could simply reshape us into Heavenly beings without putting us through some kind of ordeal. If the sin itself is alleviated without any guilt, why can't the vessel be repaired without some kind of conscious suffering?
Maybe God does choose to "regroove" each individual upon death. But that would be the case with everyone and the role of the church in the process becomes vague. My history books tell me the Catholic Church has used such concepts as tools of control in the past and where there is power there will always be the temptation to abuse or coerce.
If the goal of the Church is simply to make people as suitable as possible for Heaven, then that differs very little from the Evangelical position which is to assist the believer in pleasing God more completely in this life and thereby to collect treasures in Heaven.
Perhaps these ARE semantic distinctions.
Finally, Binx, I've been pondering the points you've made and will get back to you soon. Bear with me.
"There are a number of reasons why there might be more intellectual or scholarly converts from Evangelical camp to the R.C"
But Rick, surely you would admit that just because something is plausible does not make it true. What I have found is something very different from what you posit. These great converts (Chesterton, Newman, Soloviev, Bouyer, etc.) were not merely intellectual (by the way the Faith doesn't strike me as an either/or with regard to intellect and devotion, one may of course be merely intellectual or merely sentimental, both of these are terrible errors) they were also profoundly in love with Christ and often converted at a very great price.
The key is not intellectual power, but depth of perception, not mere intellectual genius but grasp of the Truth. Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, were all powerful intellects, but they didn't have eyes to see. There are genius' everywhere. The great converts (and those who convert because they think it is true) are so valuable as a witness precisely because they are the only ones who have shown a committment to follow the Truth wherever it leads them. What they realized was not that their respective tradition was void of the means of salvation but that it wasn't the fullness of all the Lord intends for his people. And that is what I certainly want: the fullness of Christ. I want devotion, prayer, contemplation, social justice, the depth and width of truth that is in Christ, unity, divinely instituted Authority, the Eucharist, Tradition; all are indespensible if we want all the Lord promised, why settle for less?
"If Catholics agree with Evangelicals that faith in Christ is all we need for salvation, then I'm willing..."
Just a point of clarification. There may be many 'Catholics' who teach any number of bizarre doctrines, the only thing that matters is what the Church holds to be true, and this has, in 2000 years, never changed. Note that I said 'changed' not 'undergone development'. Every doctrine of the Church is implicitly contained in the deposit of Faith. The doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere found explicitly in the New Testament, neither is the doctrine that Christ was fully human and fully divine. But they are true and vital and implicit.
This is why history is so important Rick. If you don't know why the Church had to formulate these doctrines, and they most certainly had to, then it all seems purely academic. The heresies that threatened to destroy the Church in her first eight centuries had to be defeated. The gnostics, Arians, Marcionites, Monophysites, very nearly destroyed the Church in various places and times. There wasn't even a New Testament to defeat the gnostics! The Marcionite heresy is, in part, what drove the Church to establish a Canon.
Now back to your quote above; one is forced to ask which Evangelicals taught that faith 'is all we need'? Wesley didn't teach that, Calvin didn't teach that. Wesley taught a sort of Arminianism. Calvin taught double predestination (you are either elect or damned and there ain't nothin you can do). Baptists teach one thing, Anabaptists another. The fact is there is no 'Evangelical' understanding of salvation. The norm is doctrinal anarchy. Is that the means the Lord left for his people to sojourn in the earth?
That aside, I think a way to overcome all of this is to center on Jesus' teaching of the Vine and the Branches. This is certainly consistent with a Catholic understanding of salvation. Christ is the Vine, we are the branches. Do you have faith? Great. Do you bear fruit, all is well.
It would take a long time to flesh out all of the details. A great book that does just that in a very balanced way is Johan Mohler's Symbolism. It boils down to this: most Evangelicals think of salvation as an event, the Church teaches that it is an event and a process. Your life must bear witness to your faith, if it doesn't your 'faith' is dead. This is exactly what James taught.
Three quick points ...
Rick, you wrote: "My history books tell me the Catholic Church has used such concepts as tools of control in the past and where there is power there will always be the temptation to abuse or coerce." Sure. But that applies to any church, social structure or relationship, no matter how ostensibly nonhierarchical.
You also wrote: "If affection for sin is some kind of "shape" of the soul that needs remolding and not an act of the soul (either thought or deed) then it seems reasonable that God could simply reshape us into Heavenly beings without putting us through some kind of ordeal."
Consider the "reasonable reshaping" purgatory if you like -- nobody has a good handle on what the "ordeal" might or might not be. In the end, the concept of purgatory refers to the logistical need for that reshaping process. The painful ordeal is part of the idea of purgatory because change, and in particular, purging or cleansing change, is painful here on earth. But maybe it's not in purgatory. I also don't think time concepts are important to the concept of purgatory, because God is not bound by linear time and we can assume souls on their ways to Heaven wouldn't be bound by it either. Which makes concepts like "on their ways" sort of placeholders for phrases we don't have to describe conditions we can't imagine.
Third ... I know you too well to believe that "aw, shucks, I'm not an intellectual the way you guys are" stuff, even if you believe it of yourself ... If intellectual implies a degree of intellectual curiosity and broad and deep range of book learning ... of which you have both ... you are one. I, however, more qualify as a dabbler ... shucks. What's interesting is that you'd make the argument that one would be more likely to find intellectuals in the Catholic Church, when a typical anti-Catholic canard insists that Catholics are a bunch of folks so stupid and intellectually uncurious they are willing to let someone else (the Pope, the Church) do their thinking for them. I appreciate you flipping that one on its head!
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