I was reading Jerry Walls’ lovely piece on purgatory for class. Thinking about it has made me realize that given that all who are in heaven are morally perfect, and almost nobody is morally perfect before death, we have the following options:
Almost no Christians end up in heaven.
There is purgatory after death during which character changes.
There is instant and radical character change at the moment of death.
There is a temporally extended and empirically invisible sanctification just before death, probably with time being subjectively stretched.
I think it’s tempting to think of purgatory as an odd Catholic addition to Scripture (though there is 1 Cor. 3:15, of course)—maybe even for a Catholic to think that. But consider the other options.
Option (1) is super pessimistic. It doesn’t make the Gospel really be the Good News it is.
Option (3) is at least as much—and perhaps more so—a theological addition to Scripture as purgatory may seem to be. It’s compatible with Scripture that there is such a sudden moral transformation, but so is purgatory, and both of them are major divine actions going over and beyond what is expressly given by Scripture. Both are suprising, I suppose. Of the two, however, the instant moral transformation seems a lot less in keeping with God’s usual way of proceeding with us. Presumably, being instant, this moral transformation is not something we could have much cooperation in. And it feels a bit odd to think that we struggle over many years to grow morally—and then in an instant it’s all fixed. It makes one wonder why we bothered to struggle. (On the purgatory story, the struggle makes sense, because purgatory does not exempt one from effort.)
Option (4) is also a theological addition to Scripture. It has the advantage over (3) that it is not instant, and hence is more in keeping with God’s typical way of proceeding with us. But it has the serious disadvantage of appearing to be rather a skeptical hypothesis—especially when it is not actually announced by God that that’s what God does for most people. Moreover, while I certainly am open to God using the period just before death for moral transformation, there is something odd about this being how God normally proceeds with Christians. For often the period just before death is naturally unsuited to moral transformation: the mind is falling apart as death takes the body. God could choose that difficult moment, but it doesn’t seem to fit well with a picture of a God who likes to make grace build on nature.
If I were a Protestant, I think would definitively reject (1), and then I would be inclined to suppose that (2) is somewhat more likely than either one of (3) and (4).
Although Protestant, I am somewhat sympathetic to the notion of Purgatory. But I'm not sure that this argument works. One potential issue is that I think Roman Catholics are already committed to something a lot like (3), for various reasons!
ReplyDeleteFirst consider the fact that (according to the traditional RC view) persons in Purgatory are incapable of sinning, even slightly. This is already an extremely abrupt spiritual transformation, of at least our volition. Imagine if you somehow learned about a Christian on Earth that (after some particular moment in their life, several years previous to their death) they never committed even the slightest venial sin. You would probably think that this person was incredibly holy, and quite possibly a rare candidate to skip Purgatory altogether. But RC theology seems to be committed to the view that we achieve at least this level of sanctification instantly after death. To me, this transformation raises about as many questions, as the purification that occurs on the traditional Protestant view. In any case, you need to explain, not why a normal earthly person would still need Purgatory, but why a person whose will is already completely holy would still need Purgatory.
Second, consider the traditional RC view that persons who die shortly after water baptism (without any intervening sin) will go directly to Heaven without experiencing Purgatory. Despite the fact that these persons presumably do not have a fully developed moral character, and (if baptized as an adult) likely also retain (after baptism and before death) many bad habits resulting from their previous life choices. Once again we see that Catholics are already committed to an instantaneous and radical character change following death, and (in such cases) they agree with Protestants that no Purgatory is necessary, due to the merits of Christ etc. The disagreement is only about whether this applies to some of the saved, or all of them.
Third, while the Jerry Walls article did address this somewhat, I don't think he did full justice to the point that death is already, considered in itself, a pretty radical transformation. For instance, in a traditional afterlife metaphysics (involving some type of dualism, and an intermediate disembodied state), death represents the complete (though not permanent) loss of one of our metaphysical constituents. If you think that a substantial part of explaining our post-conversion attachment to sin, is due to the biological imprinting of various pathways in our brain, then presumably the complete loss of the brain---something so significant to our thought processes, that Naturalists think, not entirely without reason, that it implies the destruction of the entire person---will result in an enormous (and probably unimaginable to us, as we are now) change in our mental lives. Of course, this does not automatically imply total sanctification, or even salvation. But I think a naive ``business-as-usual'' view, where our current discursive mental life simply continues post-mortem in an immediately recognizable form, is off the table.
I would also note that the New Testament is constantly talking about our salvation, not so much as a gradual process of moral improvement a la pagan philosophy, but more as a "dying to sin, and rising again with Christ", with the promise that all those who die with him will also rise with him. While to some extent, regeneration involves participating in this spiritual death/rebirth before we physically die; if this is to be more than just a metaphor, it seems to me to suggest that our physical death is an essential part of the process by which we are ultimately saved, not something irrelevant to it. This doesn't automatically contradict Purgatory, but I think it invalidates an argument that we should believe in Purgatory on grounds like `death isn't sufficiently radical'.
I think Aron's argument is correct.
ReplyDeleteThose who die directly after baptism, go directly into heaven. But:
CCC 1264: Yet certain temporal consequences of sin remain in the baptized, such as suffering, illness, death, and such frailties inherent in life as weaknesses of character, and so on, as well as an inclination to sin that Tradition calls concupiscence, or metaphorically, "the tinder for sin" (fomes peccati); since concupiscence "is left for us to wrestle with, it cannot harm those who do not consent but manfully resist it by the grace of Jesus Christ."66 Indeed, "an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules."
So the existence of purgatory cannot be reasoned to based on these moral imperfections that we have, because those are still present in the person who just got baptised. But they are there due to the fallen flesh, not due to a defect in the soul, wich has no defect in a state of grace.
And bodily death takes care of that.
Based on this, the main reason for the existence of purgatory is simply the required statisfaction for the temporal punishment of sin. (Baptism remits temporal consequences, confession does not)
I've found out from this video that this is the actual Catholic understanding of purgatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIhJ7NblE6w
The sanctification-talk was very appeling to me, but I think it has serious problems.
As another example, Catholic Encyclopedia does not even bring up the sanctification aspect,
only temporal punishment and venial sins.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm
In the Confessions, after the death of Monica, St.Augustine describes praying for the forgiveness of her sins committed after her baptism, and also describes the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice for the same reason. He does not seem to mention any sort of character change.
Of course these are just some examples, but the question is: does the understanding of purgatory as a means of 'character change' even have precedent in the tradition?
The creator of the video I linked seems to present some pretty convincing quotes that if anything, it is contradicted by the tradition.
So It seems to me that we would also hold to 3.
All very good points.
ReplyDeleteTwo quick responses:
1. Even IF the Tradition doesn't say that character change happens in purgatory, it does not, as far as I know, deny it. However, the Catechism talks of "purification", and Aquinas in De Malo 7, after considering the objection that there is no change of will after death says: "In the future life there is no essential change of the will, namely in regard to the end or in regard to charity or grace; nevertheless there can be an accidental change owing to the removal of an impediment, for that which removes an impediment is an accidental mover, as is said in Book VIII of the Physics." So even Aquinas allows for some sort of a change of will in purgatory.
2. I am OK with the idea that there are some cases where instantaneous sanctification happens, as long as they are in some way exceptional cases, rather than the vast majority of cases. The case of dying shortly after baptism might be seen like that.
I have always been confused by purgatory. It seems that it is described as a temporal process but how can that be if the soul is separated from matter? From what I understand matter is what individuates forms and gives them their location in space and time. Maybe there is just one atemporal state in which our character is changed from what it was prior to death?
ReplyDeleteTrevor: Matter presumably does give location in space to souls, but I think there is an internal time in substances which is not due to matter.
DeleteWhat about plenary indulgences? They also wipe the temporal punishment.
ReplyDeleteI think the point is that in the case of someone dying right after baptism, it's not that God causes an instantaneous sanctification in the person, but rather that there is simply no need for it, because the state of one's soul is already perfected by sanctifying grace. The fact of them being baptised+not having done anything else forms a complete and sufficient explanation for why they go to heaven, an act of special, instantenous sanctification by God would be an overdetermining factor. This seems to me a plausible reading of the relevant parts of the CCC.
Maybe it's not fair to characterize (3.) as a character change-
after all, it's just the removal of impediments (concupiscence etc.) that flow from the fleshly nature.
Purification I think comes from the root of purgatory, so I do not think the use of that word supports any specific view.
I'm open and sympathetic to a change of will in purgatory, but It's not clear to me how exactly
it would be necessary or how it would work, in light of the point about baptism.
I think that the claim that moral imperfection in heaven is impossible could be contested.. I consider a picture like in CS Lewis' The Great Divorce, where flawed people enter into Heaven, still half entrenched in their vices, and by progressing deeper into it and spending more time in it rapidly shed their sins (that is, for those who ultimately choose to stay and be in Heaven rather than immediately return to Hell). In the big picture, those who have been in heaven for any considerable duration of time would be perfected, but there would be a brief 'warm-up period' of rapid sanctification in the first days.
ReplyDeleteI consider the thief on the cross as an example of someone who was not morally perfect who presumably did go straight to heaven, unless the time reference from Christ was metaphorical.
Bernhardt: The Catechism does say that a necessary condition for a plenary indulgence is "the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, even venial sin". You're pretty close to perfect if you've got that!
ReplyDelete