Purgatory
Vatican painting, c. 1610
Angel freeing a soul from Purgatory
Most Protestants are satisfied with
a division of the Afterlife that has only two destinations for
the souls of the dead. Those who
are "saved" before they die go immediately to the everlasting
bliss of Heaven. Those who aren't go immediately to a Hell of
everlasting torture and suffering. Each denomination has its own
set of criteria for what a person must do to be saved. For some,
a simple verbal acceptance that Jesus is Savior is viewed as
adequate. For others, this needs to be followed by baptism. For
still others only a life led according to the strict dictates of
the denomination will qualify the believer for Heaven. Thus a
person who was at one time "saved" who then "backslides" into
sinning may find himself destined for Hell instead of Heaven.
For some groups this backsliding would be of the nature of "big
sins" such as adultery or stealing. For others, it can include
lesser transgressions against denominational standards. At the
extreme, this can mean men having hair too long or women having
hair too short! And at these extremes, the idea seems to be that
only those who have managed to "purify themselves" completely
before death will be worthy of Heaven.
The Roman Catholic Church offers an
interesting alternative to this view. From the earliest
centuries, Catholic theologians speculated on what God required
of believers in order to admit them to Heaven. It seemed to them
that only the totally pure could enter the presence of God. But
they realized that humans were, by nature, incapable of such a
level of purity. Even a blot such as a tiny bit of vanity, or
grumpiness, or a failure to totally trust God at all times,
would be viewed as less than perfection. Yet it seemed
incomprehensible that such things, in a person who really did
desire to serve God, could send them to Hell. And thus over time
they developed a solution to this dilemma: a third destination,
Purgatory.
The English word Purgatory comes
directly from the Latin word for this place, purgatorium.
It is based on the same root word that means a place of "purging" or
place of "purifying." The basic underlying idea is that the
"forgiveness of sins" provided by the blood of Jesus and
acceptance of Him as Savior is not the same as being totally
"purified" from the blot of the sin on one's record
and on one's character. Salvation
through His blood only changes the ultimate destination
of the person from Hell to Heaven. Every single sin, however
great or small, committed by a person still requires that
a penalty be paid by that person for that sin. Only when that
penalty has been paid, and the individual's character has been
totally purged of the flaw, will the person be pure enough to be in
God's presence.
During the lifetime of a devout
Roman Catholic, he will regularly go to "confession," where he
will admit to a priest any serious ... "mortal" ... sins he has
committed, as well as any more minor ... "venial" ... sins. For
every sin, the priest will order him to do a certain "penance,"
a penalty that will remove the debt for that sin. Centuries ago
this sometimes included very public humiliation. But in the 21st
century, it primarily consists of various kinds of prayer and
other acts of religious devotion. This whole process, of
confession and penance, is referred to as the "act of
reconciliation."
If a person dies without having
confessed a mortal sin, he is commonly believed to be on his way
straight to Hell. But venial sins are another matter. He may even be unaware of many "minor" sins
he has committed. They will not have earned him the destination
of Hell. But their results
still require purification.
And all the
sins he has committed and confessed to and done penance for may
still have left lingering effects on his character that will
need to be dealt with after death. Thus it is viewed that a person who
dies will very likely require much "purging" before he can enter into God's
presence.
From this reasoning developed the
doctrine of Purgatory, the place where all this purging is to be
accomplished. The earliest descriptions of the theory of the
existence of such an "intermediate" place between Earthly life
and Heaven were quite vague. But over the centuries it acquired
the same level of lurid details as that describing Hell. And
thus by the Middle Ages it became a favorite topic of writers
and artists. The fourteenth century Italian poet Dante included a whole section on it in his poem The Divine Comedy, in between
the section on Hell, L' Inferno, and that on Heaven,
Paradiso. Even though the souls in Purgatory are believed to
be ultimately on their way to Heaven, the punishments that they
must endure in Purgatory can be as "cruel and unusual" as those
envisioned for Hell. The examples in the section on Purgatory in
Dante's poem are somewhat milder than many other depictions of
the suffering of those in Purgatory. In Dante's vision, each
type of sin that particularly beset a human in his earthly life
merits a very special punishment in Purgatory:
Envy
http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/purgatory/04envy.html
The envious shades are seated
together, leaning against one another and against boulders.
Their coarsely woven cloaks are similar in color to the
plain appearance of the rocks. Since they derived pleasure
from seeing other people brought low, the envious are now
deprived of sight in an atrocious manner: their eyes are
sewn shut with iron wire. With tears squeezed out of their
closed eyes, these souls huddle together like blind beggars
(13.43-72).
Wrath
http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/purgatory/05wrath.html
The souls
purging themselves of their wrathful dispositions are forced
to walk through thick acrid smoke that is darker than night
(15.142-5; 16.1-15). Unable to see the outside world with
their eyes, the penitents experience hallucinatory visions
in which they first "see" examples of meekness (the virtue
opposite to wrath) and then "see" examples of wrath itself.
Artwork of the
Middle Ages and later usually depicts a Purgatory even more
horrific than this, showing the souls suffering in raging fires.
The "Virgin Mary" most often appears hovering over these scenes,
showing pity on these souls, and perhaps sending angels to free
some of them upon completion of their time of purification.
17th century
19th Century
The most
unusual aspect of the doctrine of Purgatory is that the length
of time that souls must spend there can be shortened by the
efforts of living humans on their behalf. The living can say
prayers for those in Purgatory and do acts of devotion to be
"credited" to their account.
At one time, it
was also thought that the amount of time one had to spend in
Purgatory after death could be shortened by paying money to the
Church through one of its representatives for an "indulgence" in
this lifetime.
From the
Wikipedia.org article on Indulgences:
In Catholic
theology, the salvation made possible by
Jesus allows the faithful sinner eventual
admittance to Heaven. Baptism forgives all
of the baptized person's existing sins; any
sin committed after baptism incurs both
guilt and a penalty that must be addressed.
These are the sins addressed in
reconciliation. After reconciliation, the
temporal punishment for sin remains. This
punishment may be remitted in Purgatory, or
by indulgence. The granting of an indulgence
is the spiritual reassignment, as it were,
of existing merit to an individual requiring
that merit.
Indulgences occur when the Church, acting by
virtue of its authority, applies existing
merit from the Church’s treasury [the
heavenly "collection" of merit earned by the
good deeds of the great Saints, including
willing martyrdom, beyond that necessary to
counterbalance their own sins] to an
individual. The individual gains the
indulgence by participating in certain
activities, most often the recitation of
prayers. By decree of Pope Pius V in 1567,
following the Council of Trent, it is
forbidden to attach the receipt of an
indulgence to any financial act, including
the giving of alms. In addition, the only
punishment remitted by an indulgence is
existing punishment, that is, for sins
already committed. Indulgences do not remit
punishment for future sins, as those sins
have yet to be committed. Thus, indulgences
are not a “license to sin” or a
“get-out-of-Hell-free” card; they are a
means for the sinner to “pay” the “wages” of
sin.
Indulgences are
"plenary" or "partial”:
"Plenary"
indulgences remit all of the existing
temporal punishment due for the individual’s
sins. An individual can only earn one
plenary indulgence per day.
"Partial" indulgences remit only a part of
the existing punishment.
Before the
Second Vatican Council, partial indulgences
were stated as a term of days, weeks,
months, or years. This has resulted in
Catholics and non-Catholics alike believing
that indulgences remit a specific period of
time equal to the length of the soul's stay
in Purgatory. This was not true, rather the
stated length of time actually indicated
that the indulgence was equal to the amount
of remission the individual would have
earned by performing a canonical penance for
that period of time. For example, the amount
of punishment remitted by a “forty day”
indulgence would be equal to the amount of
punishment remitted by the individual
performing forty days of penance.
The original
reasoning for the "days" notation was, in
the early days of the Church, a person's
only means of returning to the state of
grace was performing penances equal to the
actions he had committed. Because a person
may not receive Eucharist while not in a
state of grace, he must perform these
penances if he wished to be Catholic.
However, because some people had been
professional thieves, prostitutes, or some
other sinful individual, he would have to
undergo hundreds of years of penance to get
remission for his sins. To alleviate this,
the Church instituted certain actions or
prayers which would cleanse him for the
amount of time noted.
In addition to remitting punishment for the
individual's own existing sins, an
individual may perform the actions necessary
to gain an indulgence with the intention of
gaining the indulgence for a specific
individual in Purgatory. In doing so, the
individual both gains the indulgence for the
soul in Purgatory, and performs a spiritual
act of mercy.
As noted above,
there was a time when indulgences could be
purchased with money by Catholics from religious
authorities. It was this practice, and its
extreme abuse, that directly led in part to the
rebellion of Martin Luther and the Protestant
Reformation.
There is a
tendency in recent decades for Roman Catholic authors to
downplay the details of Purgatory within Catholic doctrine:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Roots_of_Purgatory.asp
Some imagine that the Catholic Church has an elaborate
doctrine of purgatory worked out, but there are only three
essential components of the doctrine: (1) that a
purification after death exists, (2) that it involves some
kind of pain, and (3) that the purification can be assisted
by the prayers and offerings by the living to God. Other
ideas, such that purgatory is a particular "place" in the
afterlife or that it takes time to accomplish, are
speculations rather than doctrines.
But it has been
less than a century since the topic was addressed with much more
passion by Roman Catholic writers. For instance, the following
excerpts are from a popular religious booklet by a Catholic
Priest, Paul O' Sullivan, published in 1936.
Read Me or Rue It
"Have pity on me, have pity
on me, at least you my friends, because the hand of the Lord
hath touched me. " (Job 19:21).
This is the touching prayer
that the Poor Souls in Purgatory address to their friends on
Earth, begging, imploring their help, in accents of the
deepest anguish. Alas, many are deaf to their prayers!
It is incomprehensible how
some Catholics, even those who are otherwise devout,
shamefully neglect the souls in Purgatory. It would almost
seem that they do not believe in Purgatory. Certain it is
that their ideas on the subject are very hazy.
Days and weeks and months
pass without their having a Mass said for the Holy Souls!
Seldom, too, do they hear Mass for them, seldom do they pray
for them, seldom do they think of them! Whilst they are
enjoying the fullness of health and happiness, busy with
their work, engrossed with their amusements, the Poor Souls
are suffering unutterable agonies on their beds of flame.
What is the cause of this awful callousness? Ignorance:
gross, inexplicable ignorance.
People do not realize what
Purgatory is. They have no conception of its dreadful pains,
and they have no idea of the long years that souls are
detained in these awful fires. As a result, they take little
or no care to avoid Purgatory themselves, and worse still,
they cruelly neglect the Poor Souls who are already there
and who depend entirely on them for help.
...
What is
Purgatory?
It is a
prison of fire in which nearly all [saved] souls are plunged
after death and in which they suffer the intensest pain.
Here is
what the great Doctors of the Church tell us of Purgatory:
So grievous
is their suffering that one minute in this awful fire seems
like a century.
St. Thomas
Aquinas, the Prince of Theologians, says that the fire of
Purgatory is equal in intensity to the fire of Hell, and
that the slightest contact with it is more dreadful than all
the possible sufferings of this Earth!
St. Augustine, the greatest of the Holy Doctors, teaches
that to be purified of their faults previous to being
admitted to Heaven, souls after death are subjected to a
fire more penetrating, more dreadful than anything we can
see, or feel, or conceive in this life.
"Though
this fire is destined to cleanse and purify the soul," adds
the Holy Doctor, "still it is more acute than anything we
could possibly endure on Earth."
St. Cyril
of Alexandria does not hesitate to say that "it would be
preferable to suffer all the possible torments of Earth
until the Judgment day than to pass one day in Purgatory."
Another
great Saint says: "Our fire, in comparison with the fire of
Purgatory, is as a refreshing breeze."
[See the
complete booklet at
http://www.sufferingsouls.com/part3.htm]
In addition to
the desire to solve the intellectual problem of how imperfect
humans at death could enter the presence of God, the development
of the doctrine of Purgatory was likely influenced at least in
small measure by extra-biblical Jewish teachings. Catholic
writers often refer to the following passage in the book of 2
Maccabees as giving evidence of a belief in a time of
purification before admission to Heaven. This book is in the
Roman Catholic Bible as part of the Apocrypha, but is not
considered as being part of the Bible by most Protestants.
12:39: On the next
day, as by that time it had become necessary, Judas and
his men went to take up the bodies of the fallen and to
bring them back to lie with their kinsmen in the
sepulchres of their fathers.
40: Then under the tunic of every one of the dead
they found sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which
the law forbids the Jews to wear. And it became clear to
all that this was why these men had fallen.
41: So they all blessed the ways of the Lord, the
righteous Judge, who reveals the things that are hidden;
42: and they turned to prayer, beseeching that
the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted
out. And the noble Judas exhorted the people to keep
themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their
own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those
who had fallen.
43: He also took up a collection, man by man, to
the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent
it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing
this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of
the resurrection.
44: For if he were not expecting that those who
had fallen would rise again, it would have been
superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.
45: But if he was looking to the splendid reward
that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness,
it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he
made atonement for
the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.
Note that this
doesn't really speak at all of the souls of individuals being
"released" from a place of punishment and purification through
the efforts of the living. It rather speaks of a time of
resurrection from the dead, when the sin that they had committed
in life would still be on their record if Judas Maccabbeas had
not offered a "sin offering" for them, and thus they might be
kept from the Messianic Kingdom.
There also is a
variation on the notion of Purgatory in traditional Jewish
rabbinical speculation on the Afterlife, which may have
influenced Catholic thought. Here is a brief excerpt from an
article on the Jewish view of the Afterlife from
The People's Almanac (David Walleschinsky and Irving
Wallace, © 1975-1981):
After death the impure soul goes to Gehenna (Gehinnom). It is
located beneath the land and the sea and has entrances in both
places. It is immeasurably large, dark, and cold, but within it
are rivers of fire. Here the soul is purged of all defilement
that it has accumulated during its lifetime. Punishments may
consist of being cast into fire and snow or being hanged from
different limbs of the spirit body. The thoroughly wicked remain
here in everlasting disgrace. The ordinary soul need stay no
more than 12 months, during which time it can be helped by
prayers and sacrifices made by the living. (It is an insult to
recite prayers for more than 11 months, because it implies that
the deceased would be required to serve the full term.) Gehenna
is emptied on the Sabbath, and the souls are given a glimpse of
the light of Paradise. Without this respite, they would be
unable to endure the anguish of the other six days in Gehenna.
[Further quotes from this
source are in the article Jewish View
of Hell.]
Although it may be impossible to
trace exactly when these aspects of Jewish speculation arose,
and whether early Catholic theologians were exposed to and
influenced by the ideas, there certainly are distinct
similarities to the concept of Purgatory.
What is clear, however, is
that there is no description in the Bible of either the
Catholic doctrine of Purgatory or the Jewish speculation
about Gehenna as described above. All of the details have
been concocted from the imaginations of men.
This site contains a collection
of articles, on the topic of Hell and the Afterlife, that may
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designed as a systematic, sequential overview of the whole
topic, which can be read like a book.
For those who would like to take
advantage of this perspective of the content, the articles are
arranged in the
Reading Guide as they would appear as chapters in a book, along
with a few reference chapters at the end such as would appear in
a book Appendix.
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noted, all biblical references in this and other articles on the
Is It True What They Say About Hell? website are from the
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Is it true what they say about Hell? website were written by Pam Dewey, with
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