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.

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man – but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen).

The hell–fire of life consumes only the select among men. The rest stand in front of it, warming their hands (Erich Heller, ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein: Unphilosophical Notes’).

One of the more popular bedtime stories in our house just now is Horton Hears a Who by Dr Seuss. Horton is an elephant, and unlike the other animals in the jungle, he is capable – thanks doubtless to his large ears – of hearing the faint sounds made by some minute beings called Whos, who live in a town called Whoville on a tiny speck of dust. The other animals think Horton is mad when he talks to the Whos: they take the speck of dust from him and attempt to get rid of it. After a series of adventures Horton retrieves the speck of dust, gets the Whos to shout loudly enough to be heard by the other animals, and so everyone lives happily ever after. In the course of the story, before the speck of dust is taken from him, Horton is walking along and worrying:

‘Should I put this speck down?…’ Horton thought with alarm.

‘If I do these small persons may come to great harm.

I can't put it down. And I won't! After all

A person's a person, no matter how small.’

Romans 7: 14 if. has traditionally been one of the most frequently discussed passages in the whole of the Pauline Corpus. Nevertheless, this pericope has attracted attention more because it is consistently regarded as a crucial part of Paul's theology, than because of its intrinsic exegetical problems. The main issue is whether the ‘split personality’ and the weakness of will (to which explicit reference is made in verse 19: ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’) should be regarded as essential to the life of the believing Christian; or, rather, as characteristic for those who are not ‘in Christ’ and therefore beyond the power of his Spirit. For the systematic theologian, the question of whether the first person singular in these verses should be understood in an autobiographical sense is a subordinate one. However this particular question is answered, we are still confronted by the main issue.

The purpose of this essay is to summarize the contemporary discussion of hermeneutic philosophy and to suggest some possible applications of this discussion to theological studies. To facilitate this summary, we will first clarify the general nature of hermeneutic philosophy and provide the historical background to its theological evaluation.

For some moral philosophers the question ‘Why be moral?’ is fundamentally inappropriate, since it seems to ask for non–moral reasons or motivations for moral action and thus to threaten the integrity and autonomy of morality. Yet the question ‘Why be moral?’ need not be oriented towards discovering non–moral reasons for moral action, but rather towards elucidating what general description of the human condition is most compatible with the fundamental character of morality. Rather than leaving the moral sense as an isolated category of human response, it is relevant to ask what other features of reality it may be associated with and in what general context it can most coherently be situated. The purpose of this paper is to examine the sense of moral obligation as an objective or categorical claim on individual action and to present the thesis that this moral sense is most intelligible within a theological context.

Van Harvey's The Historian and the Believer appeared nearly a century after W. K. Clifford's ‘The ethics of belief’. Harvey is critical of the epistemological supports of religious belief in a way strikingly similar to Clifford's criticisms. But Clifford's view did not go uncriticized in the intervening period. William James for instance used Clifford's essay as a foil for his argument in ‘The will to believe’. Now here is Clifford's argument again offered in twentieth century garb in Harvey's book. That a view so similar to Clifford's can arise again a century later, and after strong criticism, suggests that there is some important integrity to that view, and that that view strikes a responsive chord in the ear of many contemporary human beings. This paper intends therefore to examine Clifford's and Harvey's works in order to uncover what makes their shared view attractive.

The ethical theories often called divine command theories have a long philosphical history. As early as Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, persons – in this case, Euthyphro – were advocating theories that claim such things as whatever is morally obligatory is obligatory because and only because God commands it. There is a range of such theories, however, and offering one description that adequately characterizes them all is very difficult. Some theorists focus on the moral obligatoriness of actions, others on the moral virtue of traits of character, and still others on the moral goodness of states of affairs. Some theorists take God's commanding as creating the obligation (or whatever), others think God's willing an action creates the obligation. Theories concentrating on God's loving, his preferring, and perhaps other states, too, could be advanced. Paul Helm in the introduction to his anthology Divine Commands and Morality regards this sort of theory as holding’…that God does issue commands and that these commands are to form the basis of a believer's morality.…’ And Janine Marie Idziak in the introduction to her Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings writes, ‘Generally speaking, a ‘divine command moralist’ is one who maintains that the content of morality (i.e. what is right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust, and the like) is directly and solely dependent upon the commands and prohibitions of God.’ Rather than spend much time attempting to develop necessary and sufficient conditions characterizing all such theories, however, let us label them all ‘divine normative theories’ and hope that the basic nature of divine normative theories is relatively clear.

Charles Hartshorne is usually regarded as the developer of the theological approach initiated by Alfred North Whitehead. Justification for this view is to be found not only in the central focus of Hartshorne's voluminous writings, but also in his own references to Whitehead's accomplishments. He notes that Whitehead did not regard himself as a theologian, but rather saw his task as that of attempting to reconcile the professedly neutral burgeoning fields of science and the wider ideals necessary to civilized human life. It is in the context of this pursuit that Whitehead makes his extremely suggestive, but tantalizingly vague, comments which provide a foundation for theological reconstruction. According to this approach, two dimensions, or natures, must be distinguished in God, a conceptual primordial nature which structures the possibilities for life and a concrete consequential nature which receives the actualities which result from the possibilities that are realized.