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Purgatory

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Title: Purgatory


1
Purgatory
  • In the thought of Benedict XVI

2
Purgatory in BXVIs Magisterium?
  • The discussion of Purgatory in Spe Salvi was
    Benedict XVIs first mention of the topic in his
    magisterium as supreme pontiff
  • He has referred to Purgatory once since, in his
    Meeting with the Clergy of Rome on 7 Feb 2008
  • For a full understanding of the teaching of
    Benedict XVI on Purgatory in Spe Salvi it is
    therefore necessary to refer to the earlier
    writings of Joseph Ratzinger

3
Bibliography
  • A select number of works will be referred to in
    this presentation before we look at Spe Salvi
  • Introduction to Christianity (1968)
  • Eschatology (1988)
  • God and the World (2002)

4
Basic Characteristics
  • A basic outline will be seen to emerge
  • Emphasis on Purgatory as purification rather
    than punishment or satisfaction
  • The Christological (or even Christocentric)
    understanding of Purgatory in particular
  • Purgatory as the purifying and transforming
    post-death encounter/dialogue of the soul with
    Christ the Judge
  • This encounter as the purifying fire described in
    1 Corinthians 310-15
  • The essentially communal nature of Purgatory
  • An overall affirmative orthodoxy (John L.
    Allen) approach to the doctrine

5
Magisterium on Purgatory
  • Second Council of Lyons (1274)
  • We believe ... that the souls, by the purifying
    compensation are purged after death.

6
Magisterium on Purgatory
  • Council of Florence (1439)
  • "If they have died repentant for their sins and
    having love of God, but have not made
    satisfaction for things they have done or omitted
    by fruits worthy of penance, then their souls,
    after death, are cleansed by the punishment of
    Purgatory also . . . the suffrages of the
    faithful still living are efficacious in bringing
    them relief from such punishment, namely the
    Sacrifice of the Mass, prayers and almsgiving and
    other works of piety which, in accordance with
    the designation of the Church, are customarily
    offered by the faithful for each other."

7
Magisterium on Purgatory
  • Council of Trent (1563) Concerning Purgatory
  • that there is a purgatory, and that the souls
    detained there are assisted by the suffrages of
    the faithful, and especially by the acceptable
    sacrifice of the altar
  • Let the more difficult and subtle "questions,"
    however, and those which do not make for
    "edification" cf.1 Tim. 14, and from which
    there is very often no increase in piety, be
    excluded from popular discourses to uneducated
    people.

8
Catechism
  • III. THE FINAL PURIFICATION, OR PURGATORY
    (Finalis purificatio seu purgatorium)
  • 1030 All who die in God's grace and friendship,
    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.

9
Catechism
  • 1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this
    final purification of the elect, which is
    entirely different from the punishment of the
    damned cf. Council of Florence Council of
    Trent see also Benedict XII, Benedictus
    Deus(1336).
  • The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on
    Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence
    and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by
    reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks
    of a cleansing fire cf. 1 Cor 315 1 Pet 17
  • As for certain lesser faults, we must believe
    that, before the Final Judgment, there is a
    purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever
    utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be
    pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to
    come. From this sentence we understand that
    certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but
    certain others in the age to come St. Gregory
    the Great, Dial. 4, 39 PL 77, 396 cf. Mt 1231.

10
Catechism
  • 1032 This teaching is also based on the practice
    of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in
    Sacred Scripture "Therefore Judas Maccabeus
    made atonement for the dead, that they might be
    delivered from their sin" II Macc 1246.
  • From the beginning the Church has honored the
    memory of the dead and offered prayers in
    suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic
    sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may
    attain the beatific vision of God cf. Council of
    Lyons II.
  • The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences,
    and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the
    dead cf. St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in 1 Cor. 41,
    5 PG 61, 361 cf. Job 15.

11
Introduction to Christianity
  • Ratzingers Introduction to Christianity (1968)
    holds a special place in his bibliography.
  • Anyone familiar with it and with the magisterium
    of Benedict XVI will know that it could be
    appropriately be renamed Introduction to the
    Thought of Benedict XVI
  • It is therefore disappointing that eschatology
    and die vier letzten Dinge (Death, Judgement,
    Heaven and Hell), hardly feature in
    Introduction.

12
Introduction to Christianity
  • except for a single half chapter on the
    Resurrection of the Body, which considers the
    issue under three headings
  • a. The content of the New Testament hope of
    Resurrection
  • b. The essential immortality of man
  • c. The question of the resurrected body

13
Introduction to Christianity
  • The New Testament hope of resurrection
  • deals with the question of the body/soul
    paradigm, and the excitement (at least in 1968)
    among biblical theologians (Lutheran theology in
    particular, Ratzinger notes!) at the discovery
    that the biblical messagepromises immortality,
    not to a separated soul, but to the whole man.
  • Nb. Deals with this again in Eschatology

14
Introduction to Christianity
  • While strongly affirming the theology of the
    immortality of the person, of the one creation
    man, Ratzinger dismisses the idea that a
    body/soul understanding of mans nature merely
    expresses a thoroughly un-Christian dualism
  • Nb. On these issues, Ratzinger takes a different
    direction to Rahner who believes that it is not
    heretical to hold that the single and total
    perfecting of the human person in body and
    soul takes place immediately after death that
    the resurrection of the flesh and the general
    judgment take place parallel to the temporal
    history of the world and that both coincide with
    the sum of the particular judgments of individual
    men and women. Peter C. Phan, Eternity in Time
    A study of Karl Rahners Eschatology

15
Introduction to Christianity
  • The essential immortality of man
  • Ratzinger goes on to explore the immortality of
    the human person in two senses
  • the dialogic (ie. the personal relationship
    into which God draws man Man can no longer
    perish because he is known and loved by God.)
  • the communal (ie. For man understood as
    unityfellowship with his fellowmen is
    constitutive if he is to live on, then this
    dimension cannot be excluded.)
  • Both dimensions are anchored in Christ

16
Introduction to Christianity
  • The dialogic strand in the biblical concept of
    immortality, the one related directly to God, and
    the human fellowship strand meet and join in
    Christ.
  • For in Christ, the man, we meet God but in him
    we also meet the community of those others whose
    path to God runs through him and so toward one
    another.
  • Only the acceptance of this community is
    movement toward God, who does not exist apart
    from Christ and thus not apart either from the
    context of the whole history of humanity and its
    common task.

17
Introduction to Christianity
  • Ratzinger raises the question, much discussed in
    the patristic period and again since Luther, of
    the intermediate state between death and
    resurrection. He answers
  • The idea of the sleep of death that has been
    continually discussed by Lutheran theologians and
    recently also brought into play by the Dutch
    Catechism is therefore untenable on the evidence
    of the New Testament and not even justifiable by
    the frequent occurrence in the New Testament of
    the word sleep

18
Introduction to Christianity
  • the whole train of thought of every book in the
    New Testament is completely at variance with such
    an interpretation.
  • What he means by this is drawn out further in the
    appendix I to his Eschatology Between Death and
    Resurrection.
  • But what hope, then, remains for the human being
    after death, if the distinction of the body and
    soul is thus denied? Luther had at least got to
    grips with the issue by representing man between
    death and resurrection as asleep. But ifthe
    term sleep is meant to express the temporary
    suspension of the existence of a human being,
    then that human being in his self-identity simply
    exists no longer.

19
Introduction to Christianity
  • Ratzinger explains what comes between the
    question and the therefore
  • The existence with Christ inaugurated by faith
    is the start of the resurrected life and
    therefore outlasts death (see Phil 123 2 Cor
    58 1 Thess 510). The dialogue of faith is
    itself already life, which can no longer be
    shattered by death.
  • Phil 123 3 I am hard pressed between the two.
    My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for
    that is far better.
  • 2 Cor 58 We are of good courage, and we would
    rather be away from the body and at home with the
    Lord.
  • 1 Thess 510 Christdied for us so that whether
    we wake or sleep we might live with him.

20
Introduction to Christianity
  • Thus meeting God in Christ and the dialogue of
    faith is the essence of immortality. It begins
    in this life and is the very basis for life
    after death
  • Hence this dialogical relationship must exclude
    any notion of soul sleep in the intermediate
    state between death and resurrection.
  • The dialogue of the soul with God in Christ is
    precisely what gives the soul immortality

21
Introduction to Christianity
  • But what of the other aspect of immortality the
    communal aspect? Ratzinger does not develop this
    at length in Introduction, although his
    concluding paragraphs include the following
  • On the Last Day the destiny of the
    individual man becomes full because the destiny
    of mankind is fulfilled.
  • The goal of the Christian is not private bliss
    but the whole. He believes in Christ, and for
    that reason he believes in the future of he
    world, not just his own future.

22
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • 16 pages on Purgatory in Ratzingers
    Eschatology (1988) first 10 pages spent on a
    review of history
  • But also relevant is Appendix I Between death
    and resurrection
  • Ratzinger then asks What is the authentic heart
    of the doctrine of Purgatory? What is its
    rationale?
  • Immediately he points to 1 Corinthians 310-15.
  • Directly then, he engages with Joachim Gnilka, a
    Catholic New Testament scholar, who in 1955
    published Ist Kor 3,10-15 Ein Schriftzeugnis
    Für Das Fegfeuer?

23
1 Cor 310-15
  • 10 According to the grace of God given to me,
    like a skilled master builder I laid a
    foundation, and another man is building upon it.
    Let each man take care how he builds upon it. 11
    For no other foundation can any one lay than that
    which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if
    any one builds on the foundation with gold,
    silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw 13
    each mans work will become manifest for the Day
    will disclose it, because it will be revealed
    with fire, and the fire will test what sort of
    work each one has done. 14 If the work which any
    man has built on the foundation survives, he will
    receive a reward. 15 If any mans work is burned
    up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will
    be saved, but only as through fire.

24
Gnilka on 1 Cor 310-15
  • G.C. Berkouwer, Sin (1952)
  • In our own time J. Gnilka is of the opinion that
    the 1 Corinthians passage does not refer to
    purgatory and that all efforts to combine this
    text with the fire of cleansing take on an
    essentially false aspect and are therefore
    unjustifiedThe concern here is with the
    dokimazein of ones work (testing Prüfung) and
    is not with the cleansing. But this exegesis
    has no influence on Gnilkas own conviction
    concerning Purgatory The dogma of Purgatory is
    raised above all doubt.

25
Gnilka on 1 Cor 310-15
  • Gordan D. Fee, The First Epistle to the
    Corinthians (1987)
  • This sentence is often seen as expressing a
    purifying element to the judgement, and has
    served as NT support for the concept of
    purgatory. But that is to miss Paul by a wide
    margin.
  • Footnote This understanding of the text goes
    back at least as far as Origen. For the full
    discussion of the patristic data, see J. Gnilka
    He answers his question (Is 1 Cor 31-15 a
    scriptural witness to the doctrine of
    purgatory?) with a No it simply cannot be
    exegetically sustained.

26
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • In Eschatology Ratzinger addresses Gnilkas
    exegesis of 1 Corinthians 310-15 as follows
  • J. Gnilka has shown that this testing fire
    indicates the coming Lord himself rather than
    purgatory According to Gnilka, who here sets
    himself over against the opinion of Jeremiasfn,
    this excludes any interpretation of the text in
    terms of Purgatory. There is no fire, only the
    Lord himself. There is no temporal duration
    involved, only eschatological encounter with the
    Judge. There is no purificaton, only the
    statement that such a human being will be saved
    only with exertion and difficulty.

27
Jeremias Geenna (TDNT)
  • Fn Jeremias Theological Dictionary of the NT,
    Vol 1147 Geenna
  • It may be this Rabbinic conception of a
    purificatory character of the final fire of
    judgement underlies such passages as Mk 949, 1
    Cor 313-15 cf. 2 Pet 310.
  • Mark 949 For every one will be salted with
    fire.
  • 2 Peter 310 But the day of the Lord will come
    like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away
    with a loud noise, and the elements will be
    dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works
    that are upon it will be burned up.

28
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • But it is by following just this exegesis that
    one is led to wonder whether its manner of posing
    the question is correct, and its criteria
    adequate. If one presupposes a naively objective
    concept of Purgatory then of course the text is
    silent. But if, conversely, we hold that
    Purgatory is understood in a properly Christian
    way when it is grasped christologically, in terms
    of the Lord himself as the judging fire which
    transforms us and conforms us to his own
    glorified body, then we shall come to a very
    different conclusion.

29
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • Does not the real Christianising of the early
    Jewish notion of a purging fire cf. Jeremias
    lie precisely in the insight that the
    purification involved does not happen through
    some thing, but through the transforming power of
    the Lord himself, whose burning flame cuts free
    our closed-off heart, melting it, and pouring it
    into a new mold to make it fit for the living
    organism of his body?

30
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • One really cant object that Paul is only
    talking here about the Last Day as a unique
    event that would be hermeneutical naiveté Man
    does not have to strip away his temporality in
    order thereby to become eternal Christ as
    judge is ho eschatos, the Final One, in relation
    to whom we undergo judgement both after death and
    on the Last Day. In the perspective we are
    offered here, the two judgments are
    indistinguishable

31
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • Further points are made in this chapter
  • Purgatory is the inwardly necessary process of
    transformation in which a person becomes capable
    of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of
    unity with the whole communion of saints.
  • The transforming moment of this encounter
    cannot be quantified by the measurements of
    earthly time. It is not eternal but a
    transition, an Existenzzeit, which cannot be
    measured in the time of this age.

32
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • So Ratzingers application of 1 Cor 310-15 to
    Purgatory in Eschatology corresponds exactly with
    the souls dialogical encounter with God in
    Christ as first outlined in Introduction to
    Christianity
  • If, in Eschatology, Ratzinger is dealing with the
    same understanding of immortality as he outlined
    in Introduction to Christianity, we would
    therefore expect to find a corresponding
    reflection on the communal aspect of Purgatory in
    Eschatology.

33
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • At this point we note that the communal aspect of
    Purgatory (that the Church on earth aids the
    souls in Purgatory by prayer and good works) is
    the very point at which the Reformers directly
    attacked the doctrine.
  • They saw it as an offence against Grace where
    human works replaced simply faith/trust in Christ
    for salvation
  • Ratzinger, writing in the German context, is
    almost constantly in dialogue with Protestant
    (Lutheran) theology
  • His Christocentric and communal understanding of
    Purgatory directly addresses this objection.

34
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • Ratzinger begins by declaring that
  • Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some
    kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where
    man is forced to undergo punishment in a more or
    less arbitrary fashion.
  • Purgatory does not replace grace by works, but
    allows the former to achieve its full victory
    precisely as grace.

35
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • He returns to 1 Cor 3 to make his point
  • But in most of us, that basic option is buried
    under a great deal of wood, hay and straw 1 Cor
    313-15. Only with difficulty can it peer out
    from behind the latticework of an egoism we are
    powerless to pull down with our own hands. Man is
    the recipient of divine mercy, yet this does not
    exonerate him from the need to be transformed.
    Encounter with the Lord is this transformation

36
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • It is the fire that burns away our dross and
    re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy.
  • This insight would contradict the doctrine of
    grace only if penance were the antithesis of
    grace and not its form, the gift of gracious
    possibility
  • Indulgences, of course, are directly related to
    the sacrament of penance, and that is where the
    communal aspect comes in

37
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • Prayer for the departed, in its many forms,
    belongs to the original data of the
    Judaeo-Christian tradition about Purgatory. But
    does not this prayer presuppose that Purgatory
    entails some kind of external punishment which
    can, for example, be graciously remitted through
    vicarious acceptance by others in a form of
    spiritual barter? And how can a third party enter
    into that most highly personal process of
    encounter in Christ, where the I is transformed
    in the flame of his closeness? Is not this an
    event which so concerns the individual that all
    replacement or substitution must be ruled out?

38
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • Yet the being of man is not, in fact, that of a
    closed monad. It is related to others by love or
    hate, and, in these ways, has its colonies within
    them. My own being is present in others as guilt
    or grace. We are not just ourselves or, more
    correctly, we are ourselves only as being in
    others, with others and through others. nb. a
    theme from Introduction to Christianity

39
Ratzinger Eschatology
  • Whether others curse us or bless us, forgive us
    and turn our guilt into lovethis is part of our
    own destiny. Self substituting love is a central
    Christian reality, and the doctrine of Purgatory
    states that for such love the limit of death does
    not exist eg. Romans 8. The possibility of
    helping and giving does not cease on the death of
    the Christian. Rather does it stretch out to
    encompass the entire communion of saints, on both
    sides of deaths portals.
  • Romans 838-39 For I am sure that neither death,
    nor lifenor anything else in all creation, will
    be able to separate us from the love of God in
    Christ Jesus our Lord.

40
God and the World
  • In God and the World (2002), Ratzingers
    discusses purgatory in a rather less academic
    approach
  • PS One of the most important elements in the
    faith, which is also among those we find
    increasingly strange and suspect, is the idea of
    heaven and hell, and beyond that, of purgatory.
  • Ratzinger What that means is that death is not
    the end. That is the fundamental certainty which
    is the starting point for the Christian faith It
    means that we have a responsibility before God,
    that there is a judgement, that human life can
    either turn out right or come to disaster.

41
God and the World
  • With regard to turning out right, which is what
    we all hope for despite all our failures,
    purgatory plays an important part here. There
    will be few people whose lives are pure and
    fulfilled in all respects. And, we would hope,
    there will be few people whose lives have become
    an irredeemable and total NO. For the most part
    the longing for good has remained, despite many
    breakdowns, in some sense determinative

42
God and the World
  • God can pick up the broken pieces and make
    something of them. In any case, we need a final
    cleansing, a cleansing by fire, to be exact,
    which the gaze of Christ, so to say, burns us
    free from everything, and only under this
    purifying gaze are we, as it were, fit to be with
    God, and able, then, to make our home with him.

43
God and the World
  • PS That sounds provocatively old fashioned.
  • Ratzinger I think it is something very human. I
    would go so far as to say that if there was no
    purgatory, then we would have to invent it, for
    who would dare say of himself that he was able to
    stand directly before God.
  • cf. Eschatology Simply to look at people with
    any degree of realism at all is to grasp the
    necessity of such a process.

44
God and the World
  • And yet we dont want to be, to use an image
    from Scripture, a pot that turned out wrong,
    that has to be thrown away we want to be able to
    be put right. Purgatory basically means that God
    can put the pieces back together again. That he
    can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to
    be with him and can stand there in fullness of
    life

45
God and the World
  • With our Protestant friends, we share the hope
    that there is a heaven and a hell. The fact that
    they are unable to accept belief in purgatory
    derives in part from the teaching on
    justification. And perhaps we ought not to argue
    nearly so much about it. When it comes down to
    it, we are all glad that God himself can still
    put right what we cannot.
  • Lets look at two examples from our Protestant
    friends which seems to fit with this point

46
Bo Giertz Hammer of God
  • Novel by Bo Giertz, pietist/high church Swedish
    Lutheran Bishop (1905-1998)
  • Curate Fridfeldt But sir, if you do not give
    your heart to Jesus, you cannot be saved.
  • Rector You are right, my boy. And it is just as
    true that, if you think you are saved because you
    give Jesus your heart, you will not be saved. You
    see, my boyOne does not choose a Redeemer for
    oneself, you understand, nor gives ones heart to
    Him. The heart is a rusty old can on a junk heap.
    A fine birthday gift, indeed! But a wonderful
    Lord passes by, and has mercy on the wretched tin
    can, sticks his walking cane through it and
    rescues it from the junk pile and takes it home
    with Him. That is how it is.

47
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory
  • C.S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm Chiefly on
    Prayer, chapter 20, paragraphs 7-10, pages
    108-109
  • "Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so
    spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the
    most compulsive theological case against it would
    deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my
    prayers would survive if those for the dead were
    forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we
    love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with
    God could I have if what I love best were
    unmentionable to him?

48
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory
  • I believe in Purgatory. Mind you, the Reformers
    had good reasons for throwing doubt on the
    'Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' as that
    Romish doctrine had then become.....
  • The right view returns magnificently in Newman's
    DREAM. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved
    soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be
    taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a
    moment longer 'With its darkness to affront that
    light'. Religion has claimed Purgatory. 

49
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory
  • Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it
    not break the heart if God said to us, 'It is
    true, my son, that your breath smells and your
    rags drip with mud and slime, but we are
    charitable here and no one will upbraid you with
    these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into
    the joy'? Should we not reply, 'With submission,
    sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be
    cleaned first.' 'It may hurt, you know' - 'Even
    so, sir.'

50
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory
  • I assume that the process of purification will
    normally involve suffering. Partly from
    tradition partly because most real good that has
    been done me in this life has involved it. But I
    don't think the suffering is the purpose of the
    purgation. I can well believe that people neither
    much worse nor much better than I will suffer
    less than I or more. . . . The treatment given
    will be the one required, whether it hurts little
    or much

51
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory
  • My favourite image on this matter comes from the
    dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of
    life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice
    will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This
    will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer
    than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be
    more fiery and astringent than my present
    sensibility could endure. But . . . it will not
    be disgusting and unhallowed."

52
Spe Salvi
  • And so finally we come to Spe Salvi.
  • Do we find here the same emphases we have found
    thus far, namely Purgatory as
  • purification rather than punishment?
  • the transforming post-death dialogue/ encounter
    of the soul with Christ the Judge (described in
    terms of the purifying fire of 1 Corinthians
    310-15)?
  • essentially communal rather than individual?

53
Spe Salvi
  • The answer is, of course, yes. It is all there
    but with the addition of a new aspect even
    focus namely the role of the doctrine of
    purgatory in the hope for Justice.
  • A stronger emphasis on Christ as the Judge, and
    on Justice as the co-relative of Grace marks out
    the magisterium of Spe Salvi as a slightly
    different nuance in Ratzingers theology of
    Purgatory

54
Spe Salvi
  • 45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate
    state includes the view that these souls are not
    simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the
    parable of the rich man illustrates, are already
    being punished or are experiencing a provisional
    form of bliss. There is also the idea that this
    state can involve purification and healing which
    mature the soul for communion with God.
  • Nb. this is Jeremias over against Gnilka. The
    idea of punishment is there too but more
    dominant is purification and healing

55
Spe Salvi
  • The early Church took up these concepts, and in
    the Western Church they gradually developed into
    the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to
    examine here the complex historical paths of this
    development it is enough to ask what it actually
    means.
  • Since he has already gone into the history of the
    development in Eschatology at great length. Note
    that here he will concentrate on the meaning of
    the doctrine.

56
Spe Salvi
  • With death, our life-choice becomes
    definitiveour life stands before the judge.
  • It would be possible to be sidetracked by the
    similar yet starkly contrasting approach of Karl
    Rahner who viewed death as a moment of active
    final and definitive self-determination (Peter
    C. Phan, Contemporary context and issues in
    eschatology in Theological Studies 55 (1994), re
    1992 Int. Theol. Com. document De Quibusdam
    quaestionibus actualibus circa eschatologiam
    (Eng. trans. Irish Theological Quarterly
    58209-243 document approved by Ratzinger, with
    Gnilka as a committee member))
  • cf. Peter Phans Eternity in Time A study of
    Karl Rahners Eschatology (1988).

57
Peter Phan on Karl Rahner
  • Phan is scandalised that the Commission quoted a
    text from von Balthasar and ignored a work of
    Karl Rahner which is one of the most influential
    essays on the hermeneutics of eschatological
    statements in the history of Roman Catholic
    Theology.
  • Rahner and Ratzinger both represent personalist
    and existential developments of the doctrine of
    purgatory from the traditional picture of a place
    of torment and temporal punishment in
    satisfaction for sin, but Ratzingers theology is
    significantly more Christocentric.
  • This Christological approach makes Ratzingers
    doctrine of Purgatory ecumenically accessible,
    whereas Rahners doctrine tends more toward
    interreligious conclusions such as reincarnation
    of particular interest to Phan.

58
Spe Salvi
  • Benedict XVI then outlines two stark
    possibilities
  • People who have totally destroyed their desire
    for truth and readiness to love In such people
    all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of
    good would be irrevocable this is what we mean
    by the word Hell.
  • On the other hand there can be people who are
    utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and
    thus fully open to their neighbours whose
    journey towards God only brings to fulfilment
    what they already are.

59
Spe Salvi
  • 46. Yet we know from experience that neither case
    is normal in human life. For the great majority
    of peoplewe may supposethere remains in the
    depths of their being an ultimate interior
    openness to truth, to love, to God. In the
    concrete choices of life, however, it is covered
    over by ever new compromises with evilmuch filth
    covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains
    and it still constantly re-emerges from all that
    is base and remains present in the soul.
  • Echos of Eschatology and God and the World on the
    naturalness and human need for Purgatory
  • Here the emphasis on Purification comes to the
    fore. Justice is Ratzingers focus, yet still
    Purification rather than Punishment is his focus.

60
Spe Salvi
  • What happens to such individuals when they appear
    before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have
    amassed through life suddenly cease to matter?
    What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First
    Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of
    the differing impact of God's judgement according
    to each person's particular circumstances.
  • (Here follows the application of 1 Cor 312-15)
  • It provides the Scriptural and Christological
    grounding of the doctrine of Purgatory in Spe
    Salvi
  • It places the purifying fire in the context of
    the final judgement and encounter with Christ the
    Judge.

61
Spe Salvi
  • 47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion
    that the fire which both burns and saves is
    Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The
    encounter with him is the decisive act of
    judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts
    away.
  • He is obviously referring to Gnilkas exegesis,
    but it should also be noted that Protestant
    theologians such as Wolfhart Pannenberg
    (Systematic Theology Vol. 3) and Hans Schwarz
    (Eschatology) cite Ratzinger himself as the
    clearest exponent of this position.
  • Nb. Gaze of Christ already in God and the World
  • This goes right back to Introduction to
    Christianity. This encounter is the heart of
    Ratzingers understanding of purgatory and the
    immortality of the soul.

62
Spe Salvi
  • This encounter with him, as it burns us,
    transforms and frees us, allowing us to become
    truly ourselves. All that we build during our
    lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster,
    and it collapses. At the moment of judgement we
    experience and we absorb the overwhelming power
    of his love over all the evil in the world and in
    ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation
    and our joy.
  • Note A note of pain and suffering (although
    positive) which was not prominent in previous
    writing on the subject.

63
Spe Salvi
  • It is clear that we cannot calculate the
    duration of this transforming burning in terms
    of the chronological measurements of this world.
    The transforming moment of this encounter
    eludes earthly time-reckoningit is the heart's
    time, it is the time of passage to communion
    with God in the Body of Christ.
  • The familiar point of Purgatory as transitional
    and transforming moment of encounter/dialogue
    with Christ rather than temporal or of any
    duration.

64
Spe Salvi
  • The judgement of God is hope, both because it is
    justice and because it is grace. If it were
    merely grace, making all earthly things cease to
    matter, God would still owe us an answer to the
    question about justicethe crucial question that
    we ask of history and of God. If it were merely
    justice, in the end it could bring only fear to
    us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so
    closely linked the two togetherjudgement and
    gracethat justice is firmly established we all
    work out our salvation with fear and trembling
    (Phil 212). Nevertheless grace allows us all to
    hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom
    we know as our advocate, or parakletos (cf. 1
    Jn 21).

65
Spe Salvi
  • The judgement of God is hope, both because it is
    justice and because it is grace.
  • This emphasis on hope is, of course, the whole
    focus of the Encyclical.
  • But contra Eschatology, where he was more
    concerned about grace vs. works (with the
    theology of the Reformation in mind), here his
    concern is grace AND justice, since only both
    real grace and real justice together can be a
    source of hope for mankind.

66
Spe Salvi
  • 48. A further point must be mentioned here,
    because it is important for the practice of
    Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the
    idea that one can help the deceased in their
    intermediate state through prayer (see for
    example 2 Macc 1238-45 first century BC). The
    equivalent practice was readily adopted by
    Christians and is common to the Eastern and
    Western Church.
  • Here Benedict comes to the all important and
    foundational communal understanding of
    purgatory.
  • He develops it here even more strongly (and
    poetically note the reference to John Donne)

67
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • the doctrine of indulgenceswas the target of
    Reformation criticism. Luther at first endorsed
    the postulate of purgatorial fire. But because of
    the associated idea of an intermediate state for
    departed souls on which the living can have an
    influence by means of vicarious penitence, he
    then rejected it on the ground that Christ alone
    and not human works can help the soul.
    Reformation criticism did not aim so much, then,
    at the idea of judgement as purifying fire but
    rather at the linking of this thought to the
    postulate of an intermediate state between death
    and the last judgement, as though there took
    place in this state a process of soul purgation
    after this earthly life. Even today modern
    Protestant theology still fixes on this point in
    its criticism of the doctrine of purgatory.

68
Spe Salvi
  • The belief that love can reach into the
    afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving
    is possible, in which our affection for one
    another continues beyond the limits of deaththis
    has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity
    throughout the ages and it remains a source of
    comfort today. Who would not feel the need to
    convey to their departed loved ones a sign of
    kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a
    request for pardon?

69
Spe Salvi
  • Now a further question arises if Purgatory is
    simply purification through fire in the encounter
    with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third
    person intervene, even if he or she is
    particularly close to the other? When we ask such
    a question, we should recall that no man is an
    island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved
    with one another, through innumerable
    interactions they are linked together. No one
    lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved
    alone. The lives of others continually spill over
    into mine in what I think, say, do and achieve.
    And conversely, my life spills over into that of
    others for better and for worse.

70
Spe Salvi
  • So my prayer for another is not something
    extraneous to that person, something external,
    not even after death. In the interconnectedness
    of Being, my gratitude to the othermy prayer for
    himcan play a small part in his purification.
    And for that there is no need to convert earthly
    time into God's time in the communion of souls
    simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is
    never too late to touch the heart of another, nor
    is it ever in vain.

71
Spe Salvi
  • In this way we further clarify an important
    element of the Christian concept of hope. Our
    hope is always essentially also hope for others
    only thus is it truly hope for me too. As
    Christians we should never limit ourselves to
    asking how can I save myself? We should also
    ask what can I do in order that others may be
    saved and that for them too the star of hope may
    rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own
    personal salvation as well.
  • Thus Ratzinger answers the objections of the
    Reformers to the communal involvement in the fate
    of the departed souls.

72
Protestant Objections
  • As such, his theology of Purgatory addresses the
    particular Protestant objections to the doctrine
  • speculation on the intermediate state
  • prayers and actions by the living for the dead
  • a rejection of salvation by Christ alone

73
N.T. Wright and Ratzinger
  • As a side note, N.T. Wrights recent book
    Surprised by Hope contains perhaps the most
    recent significant Protestant scholarly attack on
    the doctrine of Purgatory and notions of the
    intermediate state.
  • See R.J. Neuhaus comments in First Things (April
    2008), and Wrights own comments in the next
    issue.
  • Interestingly, Ratzingers Appendix I Between
    Death and Resurrection in Eschatology addresses
    most of Wrights issues fairly well.

74
N.T. Wright and Ratzinger
  • Ratzinger simply points out that the doctrine of
    the immortality of the soul should not be seen as
    opposed to an authentic doctrine of the
    resurrection of the body, since the Scriptures
    clearly witness to the fact that
  • Human beings live on with the Lord even before
    the resurrection and
  • This living on is not yet identical with the
    Resurrection which comes only at the end of
    days and will be the full breaking in of Gods
    Lorship over the world.

75
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome
  • Fr Pietro Riggi, a Salesian from Don Bosco Boys'
    Town in the catechisms of the Italian Bishops'
    Conference used for teaching our faith to
    children Hell is never mentioned, nor Purgatory,
    Heaven only once... In lacking these essential
    parts of our belief does it not seem to you that
    the whole system of logic which leads one to see
    Christ's Redemption has crumbled? By the absence
    of any mention of sin, by not speaking of Hell,
    even Christ's Redemption seems diminished.
    Today, unfortunately, when the Gospel speaks of
    Hell we priests circumvent even the Gospel. Hell
    is not mentioned. Or we are unable to talk about
    Heaven. We cannot speak of eternal life?

76
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome
  • Pope Benedict XVI You correctly spoke of the
    fundamental themes of the faith which
    unfortunately rarely appear in our preaching. In
    the Encyclical Spe Salvi I wanted to speak
    precisely about the Last Judgement, judgement in
    general, and in this context also about
    Purgatory, Hell and Heaven. I think we have all
    been struck by the Marxist objection that
    Christians have only spoken of the afterlife and
    have ignored the earth. Thus, we demonstrate that
    we are truly committed to our earth and are not
    people who talk about distant realties, who do
    not help the earth.

77
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome
  • Now, although it is right to show that Christians
    work for the earth - and we are all called to
    work to make this earth really a city for God and
    of God - we must not forget the other dimension.
    Unless we take it into account, we cannot work
    well for the earth to show this was one of my
    fundamental purposes in writing the Encyclical.
    When one does not know the judgement of God one
    does not know the possibility of Hell, of the
    radical and definitive failure of life, one does
    not know the possibility of and need for
    purification. Man then fails to work well for the
    earth because he ultimately loses his criteria,
    he no longer knows himself - through not knowing
    God - and destroys the earth.

78
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome
  • In the Encyclical I tried to show that it is
    God's Last Judgement that guarantees justice. We
    all want a just world.
  • But both justice and true guilt exist. Those who
    have destroyed man and the earth cannot suddenly
    sit down at God's table together with their
    victims. God creates justice. We must keep this
    in mind. Therefore, I felt it was important to
    write this text also about Purgatory, which for
    me is an obvious truth, so evident and also so
    necessary and comforting that it could not be
    absent.

79
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome
  • I tried to say perhaps those who have destroyed
    themselves in this way, who are for ever
    unredeemable, who no longer possess any elements
    on which God's love can rest, who no longer have
    a minimal capacity for loving, may not be so
    numerous. This would be Hell.
  • On the other hand, those who are so pure that
    they can enter immediately into God's communion
    are undoubtedly few - or at any rate not many.

80
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome
  • A great many of us hope that there is something
    in us that can be saved, that there may be in us
    a final desire to serve God and serve human
    beings, to live in accordance with God. Yet there
    are so very many wounds, there is so much filth.
    We need to be prepared, to be purified.
  • This is our hope even with so much dirt in our
    souls, in the end the Lord will give us the
    possibility, he will wash us at last with his
    goodness that comes from his Cross.
  • In this way he makes us capable of being for him
    in eternity. And thus Heaven is hope, it is
    justice brought about at last.

81
Luther on Purgatory
  • Confession Concerning Christs Supper (1528)
  • As for the deadI regard it as no sin to pray
    with free devotion in this or some similar
    fashion Dear God, if this soul is in a
    condition accessible to mercy, be thou gracious
    to it. And when this has been done once or
    twice, let it suffice
  • Nor have we anything in Scripture concerning
    purgatory. It too was fabricated by goblins.
    Therefore, I maintain it is not necessary to
    believe in it although all things are possible
    to God, and he could very well allow souls to be
    tormented after their departure from the body
  • I know of a purgatory, however, in another way,
    but it would not be proper to teach anything
    about it in the church, nor on the other hand, to
    deal with it by means of endowments or vigils.

82
Luther on Purgatory
  • Explanation of the 95 Theses (1518)
  • If purgatory is only a workshop of punishment,
    why not call it punitory rather than
    purgatory? For the meaning and force of the
    term purgatory imply a cleansing which can only
    be understood as pertaining to the remains of the
    old nature and sin, because of which those
    persons are unclean who in their affection for
    eathly things have hindered the purity of faith.
    But if by the use of the a new ambiguitythey
    shall say that cleansing here is the same as
    payment, so that then they are said to be
    cleansed when the punishments have been paid, I
    answer It is despised as easily as it is proved.
    But if they shall also despise the idea that the
    meaning of the term includes the cleansing of
    faults, let it be so. I do not dispute it.
    Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that both
    meanings are doubtful. For that reason the first
    meaning has been scattered abroad among the
    people in a distorted manner and with the
    greatest of certainty, especially since the basic
    meaning of the term does not agree with their
    opinion.

83
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology
  • Judgement is put in the hands of Jesus himself
    in person. Here lies the redemptive
    transformation of judgement that goes along with
    Christian faith
  • Footnote Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 206, says
    that we have here the redemptive transformation
    of the idea of judgement which Christian faith
    brought about. The Truth which judges man has
    itself set out to save him.

84
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • The scales thus tip in favour of a view of
    judgement along the lines of the purifying fire
    of Paul in 1 Cor 312ff
  • We must distinguish from this thought of
    judgement as purifying fire the doctrine of
    purgatory, which relates the idea of purifying
    fire specifically to the souls passage between
    death and the final consummation

85
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • On the basis of the dogmatic definitions of the
    councils, it is thus not certain whether the
    premise of an intermediate state is itself part
    of the dogmatic core of the doctrine. Hence
    Ratzinger could formulate the lasting content of
    the doctrine of purgatory without express
    reference to the postulate of an intermediate
    state and in close connection with 1 Cor 312ff,
    stating that the Lord himself is the fire of
    judgement that transforms us, conforming us to
    his glorified body (rom 829, Phil 321).
    Purification is not, then, by this or that force,
    but by the transforming power of the Lord who
    frees and melts frozen hearts by fire to fit them
    into the living organism of his own body.

86
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • There is a footnote to the preceding comment
  • Ratzinger, Eschatology, pp. 229-30 and cf. the
    whole train of Ratzingers argument, pp. 218-33
    also J. Gnilka, Ist 1 Kor. 310-15 ein
    Schriftzeugnis für das Fegfeuer? Eine
    exegetisch-historische Untersuchung (1955).
    Ratzinger takes up the central thought of
    Gnilkas exegesis but uses it in interpretation
    rather than criticism of the doctrine of
    purgatory.

87
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • The Pauline sayings that are adduced are sayings
    about the last judgement, not about a preceding
    process of purification. The same is true of the
    christological interpretation of the image of
    fire in 1 Cor 3. As Ratzinger puts it, Christ the
    Judge is the Eschatos, so that we cannot
    distinguish between the Judge of the last day and
    the Judge after death. Our entry into the sphere
    of our manifest reality is our rentry into our
    final destiny and therefore our being brought
    into the eschatological fire. (Fn. Ratzinger
    Eschatology, p. 230)

88
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • The stress here is on the transformation that is
    effected by the fire that the Lord himself is. On
    the basis of 1 Cor 310-15, Ratzinger argues that
    the central Yes of faith saves, but that in
    most cases this basic decision is covered over by
    much wood, hay, and stubble, and peeps only with
    difficulty through the grid of egoism that we
    cannot put off. We receive mercy but we have to
    be changed. The meeting with the Lord is this
    change, the fire whose burning makes us the
    faultless ones that can be receptacles of eternal
    joy. (fn. Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 231)

89
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • This exposition, which ties the thought of
    purification to purgatory by the link to Jesus
    Christ himself as the eschatological fire,
    detaches the doctrine of purgatory from the
    concept of an intermediate state. It thus snaps
    the link that in the Middle Ages supplied a basis
    for the idea of indulgences and that offered
    ground for Reformation criticism. The doctrine of
    purgatory is brought back into the Christian
    expectation of final judgement by the returning
    Christ. There is thus no more reason for the
    Reformation opposition.

90
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • The judgement that is put in Christs hands is
    no longer destruction but a fire of purging and
    cleansing. What it effects is the change to which
    Paul refers in 1 Cor 1550ff., the transforming
    of the mortal into the immortality. The
    transformation takes place by the fire of
    judgement. It involves the completing of
    penitence, but only as a moment in intergration
    into the new life in fellowship with Jesus
    Christ. (Syst. Theol. Vol.3, pp. 617-19)

91
Pannenberg Systematic Theology
  • The Orthodox churchesrejected the doctrine of
    purgatorybecause ofChrysostoms criticism of
    the Origenistic understanding of the purifying
    fire of 1 Cor 310-15 as a divine education of
    souls that has as its goal the restoring of all
    of them (apokatastasis panton) However, relating
    the fire of the last judgement to the returning
    Christ opens the door to a variety of results
    ranging from the purging and cleansing of
    believers to the total destruction of those who
    persist irreconcilably in turning aside from
    God. p. 620

92
Questions in Eschatology ITC 1992
  • De quibusdam quaestionibus actualibus circa
    eschatologicam (Questions in Eschatology)
  • Prepared by International Theological Commission
    subcommittee including C. Schönborn, and G.
    Gnilka
  • Published with the approval of Cardinal J.
    Ratzinger, President of the Commission
  • Latin original (no english translation) in Irish
    Theological Quarterly 58 (1992) 209-43
  • Followed a CDF document 11 May, 1979 Recentiores
    episcoporum synodi, trans. into English as The
    Reality after Death in Vatican Council IIMore
    Post Conciliar Documents (ed. Austin Flannery)
  • Reliant upon Peter Phan, Contemporary Context
    and issues in Eschatology, in Theological
    Studies 55 (1994) 507-536

93
Phans summary of Questions
  • The resurrection of Jesus is the cause and model
    of our resurrection
  • Eternal life must be understood as a life of
    communion with God in Christ
  • Rejects the theory of resurrection at the moment
    of death (atemporalism no time after death) as
    incompatible with the biblical notion of time
  • This is based on 1) NT texts regarding the souls
    of the martyrs (eg. Rev 69-11) 2) 1 Thess 416
    uses the future tense for the resurrection 3) a
    radical denial of any meaning for time in the
    resurrection does not take into account its truly
    corporeal dimension.

94
Phans summary of Questions
  • Resurrection as a future event connected with
    Christs parousia
  • Therefore affirms the existence of the
    intermediate state, implied in OT concept of
    sheol and NT texts such as Luke 2343, John
    141-3, Phil 121-24
  • The eschatology of souls between death and
    resurrection something that is conscious
    perdures and can be called the soul
  • This is the guarantee of the continuity and
    identity between the person who lived and the
    person who will rise, inasmuch as in virtue of
    such a survival the concrete individual never
    totally ceases to exist.

95
Phans summary of Questions
  • Affirms the immortality of the soul over against
    20th Century Protestant theory of Ganztod,
    total death.
  • Notes that the immortality of the soul has
    traditional support in Lutheran and Orthodox
    traditions as well.
  • Rejects the charge of Platonic dualism affirms
    biblical and Vatican II anthropology of the
    duality of the human person, constituted as body
    and soul.

96
Phans summary of Questions
  • Lex orandi, Lex credendi
  • Invocation of the Saints indicates a state of
    blessedness, of beatific vision prior to
    resurrection
  • At the same time praying for the dead implies the
    existence of a post mortem purificatory phase.
  • The difference between purgatory and hell is
    emphasised. Not only is the former temporary
    while the latter is eternal, but the former is
    characterised by love, whereas the latter is
    characterised by hate

97
Phans summary of Questions
  • Five things can be learned from the Churchs
    liturgy for the dead
  • The resurrection of Christ is the ultimate
    reality
  • Our resurrection will take place at the end of
    the world
  • There is an eschatology of souls
  • There is a postmortem purification
  • The eschatology of souls is ordered toward the
    resurrection of the body.

98
Phans summary of Questions
  • Phan finds four points of disagreement between
    Rahner and the ITC, including
  • Rahners emphasis on the unity of the human
    person serves as a necessary counterpoint to the
    Commissions stress on the duality of the human
    person, and hence is a necessary corrective to
    the Commissions eschatology of souls and its
    teaching on the intermediate state. All
    eschatological assertions, says Rahner, have
    the one totality of the the human person in mind,
    which cannot be neatly divided into two parts,
    body and soul. p516
  • Phan comments Obviously, this principle has
    implications for the doctrines of the
    intermediate state and purgatory.

99
Rahners description of Death
  • Phan comments on Rahners comment that human
    deathis not only something to be undergone in
    a spirit of penitence, but also as a moment of
    active final and definitive self-determination.
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