Purgatory and postmortem evangelism

As always, there are objections. Why can't God just perfect believers upon their death, and then no purgatorial purification will be needed? An answer with which Walls has considerable sympathy is that purification is necessarily a process that the person being purified must go through rather than a quick event the person undergoes. This is reminiscent of Aristotle's 'one swallow does not make a summer' remark -- virtues (and vices) develop via voluntary decisions over time.

It seems natural to associate the notion of libertarian freedom with that of purificational purgatory. A believer who is not ready to enjoy fellowship in heaven lives in company with others in the same situation, and through proper free choices engages in actions that progressively reduce her evil dispositions and strengthen her good dispositions. These mingle with appropriate repentance and contrition. The process may be painful, but is so only because there is no rosy road to final sanctification. Finally the purgatory dweller's character has changed sufficiently that she will be at home in heaven. Heaven would be hell for the unrepentant and unpleasant for the unpurified.

Of course God could deterministically arrange things so that a corresponding process occurred in the absence of free choices. This would raise the question of why God does not just determine people's choices and actions so that they become morally perfect, as well as the question of whether 'determined virtue' is not a contradiction in terms. These are controversial matters, as is the assumption that we have libertarian freedom and must have it in order to be moral agents. The existence of libertarian freedom is an assumption of Wallsian purgatory.

Another assumption is that the imperfect cannot enter heaven. Few, if any, among us have reached perfection when we die. If there is a purificatory purgatory, it will not want for populace. As noted, there is also the view that purification takes time -- is a process that requires the continued willing participation of the person being purified.

There is also the question of whether there are 'second chances' -- whether one who has died an unbeliever can become a believer in a post-mortem existence. The argument for this is that a God of love will do anything short of overriding our freedom to bring us to the sort of relationship that God wishes for us all. This question is in one way separable from the question of purgatorial perfection for those who are pre-mortem believers. One could argue that God's love is expressed through purgatorial perfection without its also being expressed through second chances. Acceptance of the notion of second chances gives support for the idea of a purgatory whose purpose goes beyond purification.

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/32432-the-logic-of-total-transformation/

Notice, that purgatory is a logical extension of the Arminian commitment to libertarian freewill. Likewise, postmortem evangelism is also a logical extension of the Arminian commitment to God’s universal redemptive love.

By contrast, these are not logical extensions of Calvinism. More orthodox Arminians may try to resist where Walls is taking Arminian theology, but they can only do so on pain of inconsistency with their own bedrock commitments.