Rehabilitating purgatory

Arminians like Jerry Walls and Roger Olson have been making room for purgatory in Protestant theology. Rehabilitating purgatory. From what I can tell, there are two motivations for this:

i) Getting more people saved. If they don’t get saved through the front door, what about the back door? Let’s install a back door.

ii) Accounting for how Christians who are sinners on their deathbed suddenly pass into heaven.

I’ll just make a few observations:

i) Since Calvinism doesn’t think God intends to save everyone, death is not an arbitrary cutoff in Calvinism. God saves everyone he intends to save this side of the grave. Indeed, there’s a sense in which the cutoff occurs before they are born: predestination. So there’s no internal pressure within Calvinism to make room for postmortem salvation. 

By contrast, death is an arbitrary cutoff in Arminian theology. In this life, some people have more opportunities or better opportunities to hear the gospel than others. Some never hear the gospel. Others hear the gospel, but by the time they hear the gospel, it’s too late. They have to overcome a hostile bias, due to their prejudicial upbringing or social circle. Even if everyone hears the same message, every listener is not in the same condition to hear it. Everyone doesn’t come to the same message with the same mindset.

So Arminianism is under pressure to compensate for that disparity. For that impediment. If Arminianism is all about “fairness,” then there’s nothing fair about the spiritual opportunities which this life furnishes.

ii) Then there’s the perceived problem of the instantaneous transformation of a sinful Christian into a saint at the moment of death.

iii) First thing I’d say is that this can only be settled by revelation, not intuition. Absent revelation, we know next to nothing about the afterlife. Even if some NDEs are veridical, they tell us nothing about one’s eternal destiny. They may be evidence for postmortem survival, but if so, that only tells us what happens to somebody a few minutes into clinical brain death.

iv) To some extent I think the problem is generated by collapsing the final state into the intermediate state. But when Christians die, although they automatically pass into heaven, that doesn’t mean they automatically pass into a state of undiluted bliss. It doesn’t mean they’re instantly joyful and fulfilled. Take this passage:

9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been (Rev 6:9-11).

Although they made it to heaven, they are still dissatisfied. For things still aren’t the way they ought to be. It’s only in the final state (Rev 21-22) that everything will be the way it’s supposed to be.

v) Finally, I’d like to consider an illustration. Even in this life, there are situations in which we feel instantly better. For instance, there are people who thought they lost something forever. Something they cherished. They feel incomplete without it. Nothing can replace it. There is no compensation. They lose hope. They settle for less. There’s an undertone of sadness.

Then, some years later, they suddenly find it. They rediscover what they thought was lost. That’s a healing experience. At that moment they feeling instantly restored. Whole again. Indeed, they are so overjoyed to find it that they feel better than if they never lost it in the first place.

For instance, maybe a boy fell in love with a girl in high school. But he was too shy to make a move. Too shy to express his feelings. He let the opportunity slip by.

After graduation, they went their separate ways. He never expected to see her again. He always regretted the lost opportunity.

Then, say, ten years later, they accidentally bump into each other. He does a doubletake. He can hardly believe his eyes. Is it really her? All the old feelings come flooding back. 

He drops everything and rushes over to see her again. And he learns from her that she’s still eligible! He never married and she never married. At that instant all the regrets and disappointments melt away. He’s renewed. He couldn’t be happier.

Of course, even that’s temporary. In this life we lose everything sooner or later. Sometimes twice over.

But I think that mundane experience can be a tongue-taste and foretaste of the Christian’s instantaneous restoration when he passes into glory.

There’s no need for purgatory, however refined or redefined.