Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T02:30:14.966Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

No Heaven Without Purgatory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David Brown
David Brown
Affiliation:
Fellow and Tutor at Oriel College, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If Purgatory is given a role at all in modern conceptions of the after–life, it is likely to be at most of the kind found in Hick and Rahner, in providing a second chance for those of whom it might be argued that they have had no proper opportunity in this life. Apart from its intermediate character, however, this account has very little in common with the traditional conception, whereas it seems to me that philosophical reasons, partly conceptual and partly moral, compel assent to something very much more like the traditional view. This I take to have had two essential features: (a) that it was a place of moral preparation (not trial) for those whose lives and decisions had already destined them for Heaven and (b) that this moral preparation involved some kind of purgatorial (i.e. purifying) pain that was seen as a necessary consequence of the rectification of moral wrong–doing. Three arguments in defence of (a) are offered below. These will help to provide an appropriate framework for the brief defence of (b) which then follows. For convenience these three arguments may be labelled the temporal argument, the identity argument and the self–acceptance argument.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 447 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 447 note 1 Hick, J., Death and Eternal Life (London: Fount paperback, 1979), esp. pp. 414ff.;Google ScholarRahner, K., Theological Investigations (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983), vol. 19, pp. 181–93, esp. p. 192.Google Scholar

page 448 note 1 Defended, for instance, in Boron, L., The Moment of Truth (London: Burns & Oates, 1965), p. 129ff.Google Scholar

page 448 note 2 Pike, N., God and Timelessness (London: Roudedge & Kegan Paul, 1970);Google ScholarSwinburne, R., The Coherence of Theism (Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 210ff.;Google ScholarKenny, A., The God of the Philosophers (Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 38–48.Google Scholar

page 448 note 3 Williams, B., Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 448 note 4 Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses (Classics of Western Spirituality, New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 116, para. 239.Google Scholar

page 449 note 1 Nazianzen, Gregory, Oration 38 (Library of Nicene and Post–Nicene Fathers, Eerdmans, Michigan: Grand Rapids, 1974), 2nd series, vol. 7, p. 346, sect. 7.Google Scholar

page 449 note 2 Op. cit. pp. 96–8.Google Scholar

page 449 note 1 Bornkamm suggests that the catalyst was arguments with Hellenistic Christians in Damascus (Bornkamm, G., Paul, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971, p. 23), while Jung bases his interpretation on the fact thatGoogle Scholar‘fanaticism is only found in individuals who are compensating secret doubts’ (Jung, C. G., Contributions to Analytical Psychology, trans. H. G. & C. F. Baynes, 1945, p. 257).Google Scholar

page 450 note 1 Romans, 7, 15.Google Scholar

page 452 note 1 Lewis, D., ‘Survival and Identity’ in Rorty, A. O. (ed.), The Identity of Persons (University of California Press, 1976), p. 17.Google Scholar

page 453 note 1 As, for example, in Oman's, John classic, Grace and Personality (Cambridge University Press, 1917)Google Scholar and reprinted in many other editions since.

page 455 note 1 Eliot, T. S., Little Gidding, IV.Google Scholar

page 455 note 2 St Catherine of Genoa, Purgation and Purgatory (Classics of Western Spirituality, London: S.P.C.K., 1979), p. 80.Google Scholar

page 455 note 3 As, for example, in Aquinas, , Comm. in Lib. IV Sent., dist. xxi, qu. I.Google Scholar

page 456 note 1 I am very grateful to David Cook, Oliver O'Donovan and Janet Soskice for helpful, critical comments on a previous draft.