An argument for purgatory

Here is a plausible argument for purgatory.

Start with these observations:

1. Some people end up in heaven even though at the time of death they had not yet forgiven all wrongs done to them by other people who end up in heaven nor had they been performing such an act of forgiveness while dying.

2. An act of forgiveness takes time, and at the beginning of the act one has not yet forgiven.

3. It is impossible to be in heaven without having forgiven all wrongs done to one by other members of the heavenly community.

Premise 3 seems clearly true: the perfection of the heavenly community requires it.

Premise 1 is pretty plausible. It does not seem that a minor bit of unforgiveness would damn one to hell.

Premise 2 is what I am actually least confident of. It is pretty plausible in our present state. But I guess there is the possibility that we can forgive in the very first instant of our presence in heaven, so that the act is already completed in that very instant. Maybe, but it doesn’t seem very human.

It follows from 1-3 that some people who end up in heaven have to initiate the necessary act of forgiveness post-death. When they initiated the act of forgiveness, they were not in heaven. Nor were they in hell, since they ended up in heaven, and one cannot transfer between heaven and hell. Hence, they must have been in some intermediate state, which we may call purgatory.

Here is a difficulty, though. Suppose a person in heaven is wronged by someone on earth
who will end up in heaven. This surely happens: for instance, a parent is in heaven, and their child on earth fails to fulfill a promise they made to the parent. If an act of forgiveness takes time, isn’t there a short period of time before the person in heaven forgives?

I don’t think so. Perhaps a part of becoming the kind of person that ends up in heaven is one’s having engaged in a prospective forgiveness of all who might wrong one (or at least all who might wrong one and yet are going to be a part of the heavenly community, since the argument above only requires one to forgive such persons as a condition for heavenly beatitude). Some have engaged in it in this life, having transformed themselves into perfect forgivers who have always already forgiven, and others need purgatory.

Corruptionism and care about the soul

According to Catholic corruptionists, when I die, my soul will continue to exist, but I won’t; then at the Resurrection, I will come back into existence, receiving my soul back. In the interim, however, it is my soul, not I, who will enjoy heaven, struggle in purgatory or suffer in hell.

Of course, for any thing that enjoys heaven, strugges in purgatory or suffers in hell, I should care that it does so. But should I have that kind of special care that we have about things that happen to ourselves for what happens to the soul? I say not, or at most slightly. For suppose that it turned out on the correct metaphysics that my matter continues to exist after death. Should I care whether it burns, decays, or is dissected, with that special care with which we care about what happens to ourselves? Surely not, or at most slightly. Why not? Because the matter won’t be a part of me when this happens. (The “at most slightly” flags the fact that we can care about “dignitary harms”, such as nobody showing up at our funeral, or us being defamed, etc.)

But clearly heaven, purgatory and hell in the interim state is something we should care about.

A common mistake about hell

A common mistake about hell, often made by both contemporary advocates of the doctrine and their opponents, is the Horrific Thesis:

(HT) It is better not to exist at all, or even not to have existed at all, than to spend eternity in hell.

Given HT, it is easy to argue against hell.  All things that exist, exist by the continual creation of God.  Everything that God creates, or continually creates, is on balance good.  Therefore, nobody is better off not existing.  Hence if HT is true, nobody spends eternity in hell.  

But HT is false.  First, consider its Scriptural warrant.  There is one New Testament text directly related to HT, given in Matthew and Mark:

As for that man [the betrayer], it would have been better [kalon] for him had he not been born [ei ouk eggenêthê] (Matthew 26:24, Mark 14:21).  

But that text simply does not sufficiently support HT.  First, it does not say that it was better for Judas not to have existed, but at most that it would have been better for him not to have been born.  Since Judas had already existed by the time of his birth--I say he existed about nine months before his birth, but in any case surely he existed some time before his birth--the counterfactual taken literally compares two scenarios: Judas being born and Judas dying in utero.  Now had he died prior to birth, his eternal destination would be wherever Jewish babies ended up after death--either heaven or limbo.  On this reading, then, we are told that Judas would have been better off dying in utero and ending up in heaven or limbo than wherever he ended up.  (If he would have ended up in heaven had he died prior to birth, then the text does not even entail that Judas went to hell.  Maybe he would have been better off had he died in utero because then he would have ended up in a better state in heaven or because then he would have avoided purgatory.)  Second, the word kalon might also have been translated as "noble" or "honorable"--in classical Greek that is the primary meaning and the word seems to have that meaning in some New Testament uses as well.  Thus, even if we take the "had he not been born" non-literally as meaning "had he not existed", the text could simply be telling us that it would have been more noble or more honorable for him had he not existed, rather than altogether better.

The other part of HT's Scriptural warrant are the scary descriptions--lake of fire, worm that dieth not--of what existence in hell is like.  But we should read Scripture consistently with Scripture.  And Scripture also tells us of a God who loves all, whose sun shines on sinner and righteous alike, who created everything and it was all good.  Thus we should temper our interpretations of the harrowing descriptions with the conviction that God does not create or sustain in existence that for which it would be better not to exist.

(Objection: Maybe it is agent-centeredly worse for the person in hell to exist than not to, but it is better that she exist than not.  Response: But better for whom or what?  God's activity is primarily guided by love.  When he acts for a good cause, he does so for someone or something.  Is it better for God that the person suffer?  The Christian tradition will not be happy with this reading.  Is it better for others?  But how?  Tertullian suggested that the saved will get joy from watching the punishment of the damned.  But even if he is right, this can only be true if the punishment of the damned has a value independent of the saved watching it, since the saved get joy only out of watching good things.  No, if it is better simpliciter that the person be in hell than not exist, it is better for the person in hell.)

One might ask, of course, if it is possible to have eternal suffering and yet to have a life worth living.  But surely the answer is positive.  One way for the answer to be positive is for Augustine and Aquinas to be right about the value of existence, or at least human existence: this value is such that it is worth existing no matter how much one suffers.  Another way would be if the overall suffering is combined with other valuable features that make the life overall worth living, whether or not the agent feels it to be worth living.  These could perhaps include:

• the intrinsic value of receiving one's just deserts
• the value of knowing various truths (such as that God exists and that one is a sinner)
• moral improvement (though one never actually reaches moral purity)
• the value of useful work
• playing a part in God's plan, especially the justice aspect of it
• etc.

It should also be remembered that an externally infinite length of suffering is logically compatible with the total amount of suffering being finite (though I am not endorsing the view that the total amount of suffering in hell is finite), e.g., due to asymptotic decrease or changes in the subjective flow of time.

We should, in fact, take the rejection of HT to be a part of the doctrine of hell.  For the rejection of HT follows from central theological commitments of the Christian tradition, and doctrines must be understood not in isolation but in the context of the implications for them of other doctrines.  And a fortiori we should not take HT to be an essential part of the doctrine of hell.  If we did that, we would have to absurdly say that neither Augustine nor Aquinas believed in hell, since they rejected HT.

Suppose we reject HT.  Then we can imagine the following.  God is considering creating ten billion people and then making sure, or all but making sure, that they are all saved, whether by means of offering them opportunity after opportunity for salvation, over a potentially infinite amount of time, until they agree, wiping their memories as needed, or by means of eventually canceling people's freedom and making them be saved whether they so choose or not, or by giving them such strong inclinations towards virtue that they are practically certain to do right.  But God might consider the following attractive alternative.  Create twenty billion people instead, where each has probability 3/4 of being saved.  So, about 15 billion people will be saved on this scenario (and so in terms of the number of people saved, it is better than the first scenario).  Moreover, each of these 15 billion people now has a much more serious chance of being damned, and hence her free choice has a greater significance and value than the choices that the ten billion people in the first scenario does.  Now, this scenario is tough on the approximately five billion people who will end up damned.  But these people are at least as well off existing as not, and so as long as God didn't intend them to be damned, and as long as God offered them serious opportunities for salvation, it does not seem that anything problematic has been done by God.  So there seems to be a serious case for God to actualize the second scenario instead--God could have a good reason to do so.  (This argument works poorly if Molinism is true.  Too bad for Molinism.)

Hence, if we reject HT, hell seems justifiable.  And we should reject HT.

Socrates and the problem of evil

Consider Socrates' thesis: any amount of external evils (i.e., anything other than vice or loss of virtue) is worth suffering for any gain in virtue. So if twenty years in the Gulag made one slightly less selfish and did not make one more vicious in any way, then it was all worth it.

As far back as I remember thinking about these things, something like Socrates' thesis seemed obvious to me (not that you could tell from my behavior). The man on the rack isn't happy, but if one were to choose between being on the rack and slightly more courageous and not being on the rack, one would be prudent in choosing being on the rack.

Suppose Socrates' thesis is true. This makes some aspects of the problem of evil rather easier to handle. For rarely are we in a position to know that some evil did not either make the person slightly more virtuous or at least offer the peson a reasonable opportunity to become slightly more virtuous. Even if the evil is something like dying in one's sleep, it is not crazy to think that dealing with this death in purgatory might not have made the person more virtuous.

Of course, there is still the question whether the gain in virtue couldn't have as well been produced in other ways. But perhaps this precisely kind of gain of virtue couldn't have been—and different kinds of gain of virtue are incommensurable.

This is not meant to give a theodicy. Rather, it is meant to be one of those posts where I try to identify yet another tool for the theodicist's toolbox.

Spiritual sickness and spiritual death

There is a temptation for Catholics—also present for non-Catholic Christians but with different terminology—to settle for avoiding mortal sin. After all, if one has living faith and does not reject Christ's salvific grace through mortal sin, one will be saved. So why should one worry about venial sin?

Leaving aside the question of purgatory—for that is not the heart of the issue, but something more in the way of an effect of it—here is one thing that is wrong with this. In a state of mortal sin, one is bereft of living faith, of charity and of Christian hope. One is spiritually dead. If one is not a state of mortal sin, then one is spiritually alive. But surely we are not merely satisfied with being alive.

It would be silly to say: "I shall not go to the doctor. Yes, I have a great big ulcer, but after all, I am alive, and that is all that matters." While there may be contexts where it is appropriate to shout with joy "I am alive!" as if that was all that mattered—for instance, right after one's life (spiritual or physical) has just been saved. But as regards the body, we do not just want life. We want a life of health. One can be alive, but very ill, close to death. There is still reason to have the joy of life—there is a qualitative difference between that life and death—but that is not what we aspire to. (Here, of course, one recalls what Socrates says about how happiness is thought to require health of body and in fact requires health of soul.)

But there is a disanalogy between the physical illness of those who are physically alive and the spiritual illness of those who are spiritually alive. For while this particular physical illness may not win out, our mortal body is after all heading for the grave—perhaps unless the eschaton intervenes.[note 1] But while spiritually ill though in a state of grace, there is reason to hope—not just hope to overcome that particular illness, but to overcome them all, by the grace of Christ living in us. Thus we do have more reason to rejoice over being spiritually alive than over physically alive—but this rejoicing cannot lead to idleness, since after all, how much do we want to prolong our ill health?

Perfection and purgatory

Our Department's (unofficial) weekly Bible study is on 1 John. We meet for about 55 minutes every week. The last three weeks, we've been struggling through 1 John 2:28-3:10 (last week we "covered" only two verses). The dilemma is that the text seems to be telling us that if we are children of God, then we do what is right and love our brother, and if we do not do what is right or fail to love our brother, then we are not children of God. This makes it seem that unless we are perfect, we have no hope of salvation. But we are not perfect (or at least, I am not, and none of my colleagues wanted to claim perfection)—and, besides, 1 John begins by warning us against claiming we are perfect.

I am beginning to wonder if this isn't the right place to bring in the notion of purgatory.

Unique sermon

The first part of today's sermon was quite unique (actually, so were the second and third parts, but it's only on the first that I want to comment). It was on All Souls'. I can't remember any noteworthy All Souls' sermons ever before. I am guessing that they were warm and comforting. But our pastor was quite blunt. The souls we commemorate on All Souls' are the souls who are in purgatory because they loved something other than God more than they loved God (I would add the qualifier: in some respect). They are not to be emulated. We should look forward to meeting them in heaven, but should try to avoid their purgatorial route.