Sunday, September 29, 2019

Does Purgatory make sense?

1. A common rationale for Purgatory is that are sanctification is incomplete at the moment of death, but sinners can't enter heaven, so we require an interim postmortem state to complete our sanctification before we are ready for heaven. I've argued that I think that relies on a dubious, unexamined assumption:


2. However, it relies on another assumption: sanctification is necessarily a process. It can't be accelerated. There can't be instantaneous sanctification. 

This raises the question of what sanctification is. There are, of course, standard definitions, but let's explore the concept from a different angle. Suppose we view sanctification, or moral character, as a kind of moral perception. Take some examples:

i) I read that someone committed a heinous crime. As a result, I form a negative view of the accused. I later read that he was falsely accused. That changes my view of the accused. And the change is immediate.

ii) Let's take (i) a step further. It turns out that he was covering for an innocent friend. The accused was prepared to face prosecution on a false charge to protect his friend. Not only was the accused innocent, but his action was morally heroic.  

In this case, I don't just change my view of the accused. Rather, I go from having a negative view to a positive view. I now see him as admirable. And, once again, the change is immediate.

iii) Decent people perceive that it's wrong to gratuitously harm a child, physically or psychologically. 

And it's not that they have an inclination to harm children, but that's overridden by their moral perception. Rather, they value children. That, too, is part of their moral perception. They view children in a way that makes the idea of harming them emotionally repellent. They don't need to suppress or resist the impulse to harm children–because they have no such impulse to begin with. 

iv) Another example is the criminally insane. Their insanity generates intellectual misperceptions which, in turn, generate moral misperceptions. If their sanity can be restored, their evil impulses disappear. 

3. If sanctification is a kind of moral perception, which is, in turn, a moral type of intellectual perception, then instantaneous sanctification seems possible if God is able to correct the intellectual misperceptions that twist moral character. 

6 comments:

  1. Augustine believed in a purgatorial moment, isn't that so?

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  2. An assumption of purgatory that Calvinist folks like myself agree with is that we can't enter God's presence with sin in our hearts and with imperfect character based on passages like Ps. 5:4 and Hab. 1:13.

    For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.- Ps. 5:4

    You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?- Hab. 1:13

    But what if that assumption is false? Then the need for purgatory would be falsified. Sanctification might be progressive even in heaven (though sped up much faster). Even Satan was able to approach God in heaven to to accuse Job (Job 1:6; 2:1).

    6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them.
    7 The LORD said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered the LORD and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it."- Job 1:6-7

    Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight;- Job. 15:15

    The assumption doesn't seem to take into real account the Protestant premise and understanding of justification by faith alone on account of the finished work of Christ alone and His imputed righteousness. All three persons of the Trinity dwell within believers even here on earth (John 14:17, 23). We might grieve the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:30), but He nevertheless remains with us (1 John 2:27).

    But the anointing that you received from him ABIDES [or "remain(s)" YLT/WEB] in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie---just as it has taught you, abide in him.- 1 John 2:27

    If this is true on earth, why not in heaven? Having said that, I suspect that sanctification is instantaneous upon death. But even assuming it's false, it seems to me that the Catholic cannot really successfully undermine the Protestant position when taken in an internally consistent way (internal critique). Only with the external critique of assuming a non-Protestant understanding of justification.

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  3. I'm not convinced at all that faults of character are based upon intellectual faults of perception of the truth. But interestingly, I gather that is a very Thomistic thing to say/think. Not that I can cite chapter and verse in Aquinas, but I've heard quite a number of Thomists attribute that type of view to Thomas--that all sin is based upon some kind of mistaken perception of what is true, what is good, etc.

    I've never been convinced that it's true. I think James's "the devils also believe and tremble," as well as our own experiences of a truly evil will, tend to tell against it. There are those--and sometimes we ourselves--who know the truth but simply don't want to do it. Our will is against it. We Christians are somewhat better off because at a second-order level we want to want what is right, but sometimes we just don't. For example, if I want revenge on someone, I may know *quite well* that it will not help anything to murder the person I'm angry at, that it will only make me miserable, that it will not really bring about justice and so forth. But I still have to struggle because I "see red" and find myself drawn darkly to wishing my enemy dead. If I were completely sanctified, that fault of disposition would be gone and I would not have to struggle anymore. I would just serenely will the good. But I don't think that is *simply* a matter of my knowing something or understanding something that I don't right now.

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    1. Oh dear. Comparing my position to Thomism. It'll take two or three shots of Jack Daniels for me to cope with the scurrilous comparison :-(

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  4. Seems like 1 John 3:2 is a slam dunk against Purgatory.

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