Purgatory

1
Purgatory

• In the thought of Benedict XVI

2
Purgatory in BXVIs Magisterium?

• The discussion of Purgatory in Spe Salvi was
  Benedict XVIs first mention of the topic in his
  magisterium as supreme pontiff
• He has referred to Purgatory once since, in his
  Meeting with the Clergy of Rome on 7 Feb 2008
• For a full understanding of the teaching of
  Benedict XVI on Purgatory in Spe Salvi it is
  therefore necessary to refer to the earlier
  writings of Joseph Ratzinger

3
Bibliography

• A select number of works will be referred to in
  this presentation before we look at Spe Salvi
• Introduction to Christianity (1968)
• Eschatology (1988)
• God and the World (2002)

4
Basic Characteristics

• A basic outline will be seen to emerge
• Emphasis on Purgatory as purification rather
  than punishment or satisfaction
• The Christological (or even Christocentric)
  understanding of Purgatory in particular
• Purgatory as the purifying and transforming
  post-death encounter/dialogue of the soul with
  Christ the Judge
• This encounter as the purifying fire described in
  1 Corinthians 310-15
• The essentially communal nature of Purgatory
• An overall affirmative orthodoxy (John L.
  Allen) approach to the doctrine

5
Magisterium on Purgatory

• Second Council of Lyons (1274)
• We believe ... that the souls, by the purifying
  compensation are purged after death.

6
Magisterium on Purgatory

• Council of Florence (1439)
• "If they have died repentant for their sins and
  having love of God, but have not made
  satisfaction for things they have done or omitted
  by fruits worthy of penance, then their souls,
  after death, are cleansed by the punishment of
  Purgatory also . . . the suffrages of the
  faithful still living are efficacious in bringing
  them relief from such punishment, namely the
  Sacrifice of the Mass, prayers and almsgiving and
  other works of piety which, in accordance with
  the designation of the Church, are customarily
  offered by the faithful for each other."

7
Magisterium on Purgatory

• Council of Trent (1563) Concerning Purgatory
• that there is a purgatory, and that the souls
  detained there are assisted by the suffrages of
  the faithful, and especially by the acceptable
  sacrifice of the altar
• Let the more difficult and subtle "questions,"
  however, and those which do not make for
  "edification" cf.1 Tim. 14, and from which
  there is very often no increase in piety, be
  excluded from popular discourses to uneducated
  people.

8
Catechism

• III. THE FINAL PURIFICATION, OR PURGATORY
  (Finalis purificatio seu purgatorium)
• 1030 All who die in God's grace and friendship,
  but still imperfectly purified, are indeed
  assured of their eternal salvation but after
  death they undergo purification, so as to achieve
  the holiness necessary to enter the joy of
  heaven.

9
Catechism

• 1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this
  final purification of the elect, which is
  entirely different from the punishment of the
  damned cf. Council of Florence Council of
  Trent see also Benedict XII, Benedictus
  Deus(1336).
• The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on
  Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence
  and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by
  reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks
  of a cleansing fire cf. 1 Cor 315 1 Pet 17
• As for certain lesser faults, we must believe
  that, before the Final Judgment, there is a
  purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever
  utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be
  pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to
  come. From this sentence we understand that
  certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but
  certain others in the age to come St. Gregory
  the Great, Dial. 4, 39 PL 77, 396 cf. Mt 1231.

10
Catechism

• 1032 This teaching is also based on the practice
  of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in
  Sacred Scripture "Therefore Judas Maccabeus
  made atonement for the dead, that they might be
  delivered from their sin" II Macc 1246.
• From the beginning the Church has honored the
  memory of the dead and offered prayers in
  suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic
  sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may
  attain the beatific vision of God cf. Council of
  Lyons II.
• The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences,
  and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the
  dead cf. St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in 1 Cor. 41,
  5 PG 61, 361 cf. Job 15.

11
Introduction to Christianity

• Ratzingers Introduction to Christianity (1968)
  holds a special place in his bibliography.
• Anyone familiar with it and with the magisterium
  of Benedict XVI will know that it could be
  appropriately be renamed Introduction to the
  Thought of Benedict XVI
• It is therefore disappointing that eschatology
  and die vier letzten Dinge (Death, Judgement,
  Heaven and Hell), hardly feature in
  Introduction.

12
Introduction to Christianity

• except for a single half chapter on the
  Resurrection of the Body, which considers the
  issue under three headings
• a. The content of the New Testament hope of
  Resurrection
• b. The essential immortality of man
• c. The question of the resurrected body

13
Introduction to Christianity

• The New Testament hope of resurrection
• deals with the question of the body/soul
  paradigm, and the excitement (at least in 1968)
  among biblical theologians (Lutheran theology in
  particular, Ratzinger notes!) at the discovery
  that the biblical messagepromises immortality,
  not to a separated soul, but to the whole man.
• Nb. Deals with this again in Eschatology

14
Introduction to Christianity

• While strongly affirming the theology of the
  immortality of the person, of the one creation
  man, Ratzinger dismisses the idea that a
  body/soul understanding of mans nature merely
  expresses a thoroughly un-Christian dualism
• Nb. On these issues, Ratzinger takes a different
  direction to Rahner who believes that it is not
  heretical to hold that the single and total
  perfecting of the human person in body and
  soul takes place immediately after death that
  the resurrection of the flesh and the general
  judgment take place parallel to the temporal
  history of the world and that both coincide with
  the sum of the particular judgments of individual
  men and women. Peter C. Phan, Eternity in Time
  A study of Karl Rahners Eschatology

15
Introduction to Christianity

• The essential immortality of man
• Ratzinger goes on to explore the immortality of
  the human person in two senses
• the dialogic (ie. the personal relationship
  into which God draws man Man can no longer
  perish because he is known and loved by God.)
• the communal (ie. For man understood as
  unityfellowship with his fellowmen is
  constitutive if he is to live on, then this
  dimension cannot be excluded.)
• Both dimensions are anchored in Christ

16
Introduction to Christianity

• The dialogic strand in the biblical concept of
  immortality, the one related directly to God, and
  the human fellowship strand meet and join in
  Christ.
• For in Christ, the man, we meet God but in him
  we also meet the community of those others whose
  path to God runs through him and so toward one
  another.
• Only the acceptance of this community is
  movement toward God, who does not exist apart
  from Christ and thus not apart either from the
  context of the whole history of humanity and its
  common task.

17
Introduction to Christianity

• Ratzinger raises the question, much discussed in
  the patristic period and again since Luther, of
  the intermediate state between death and
  resurrection. He answers
• The idea of the sleep of death that has been
  continually discussed by Lutheran theologians and
  recently also brought into play by the Dutch
  Catechism is therefore untenable on the evidence
  of the New Testament and not even justifiable by
  the frequent occurrence in the New Testament of
  the word sleep

18
Introduction to Christianity

• the whole train of thought of every book in the
  New Testament is completely at variance with such
  an interpretation.
• What he means by this is drawn out further in the
  appendix I to his Eschatology Between Death and
  Resurrection.
• But what hope, then, remains for the human being
  after death, if the distinction of the body and
  soul is thus denied? Luther had at least got to
  grips with the issue by representing man between
  death and resurrection as asleep. But ifthe
  term sleep is meant to express the temporary
  suspension of the existence of a human being,
  then that human being in his self-identity simply
  exists no longer.

19
Introduction to Christianity

• Ratzinger explains what comes between the
  question and the therefore
• The existence with Christ inaugurated by faith
  is the start of the resurrected life and
  therefore outlasts death (see Phil 123 2 Cor
  58 1 Thess 510). The dialogue of faith is
  itself already life, which can no longer be
  shattered by death.
• Phil 123 3 I am hard pressed between the two.
  My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for
  that is far better.
• 2 Cor 58 We are of good courage, and we would
  rather be away from the body and at home with the
  Lord.
• 1 Thess 510 Christdied for us so that whether
  we wake or sleep we might live with him.

20
Introduction to Christianity

• Thus meeting God in Christ and the dialogue of
  faith is the essence of immortality. It begins
  in this life and is the very basis for life
  after death
• Hence this dialogical relationship must exclude
  any notion of soul sleep in the intermediate
  state between death and resurrection.
• The dialogue of the soul with God in Christ is
  precisely what gives the soul immortality

21
Introduction to Christianity

• But what of the other aspect of immortality the
  communal aspect? Ratzinger does not develop this
  at length in Introduction, although his
  concluding paragraphs include the following
• On the Last Day the destiny of the
  individual man becomes full because the destiny
  of mankind is fulfilled.
• The goal of the Christian is not private bliss
  but the whole. He believes in Christ, and for
  that reason he believes in the future of he
  world, not just his own future.

22
Ratzinger Eschatology

• 16 pages on Purgatory in Ratzingers
  Eschatology (1988) first 10 pages spent on a
  review of history
• But also relevant is Appendix I Between death
  and resurrection
• Ratzinger then asks What is the authentic heart
  of the doctrine of Purgatory? What is its
  rationale?
• Immediately he points to 1 Corinthians 310-15.
• Directly then, he engages with Joachim Gnilka, a
  Catholic New Testament scholar, who in 1955
  published Ist Kor 3,10-15 Ein Schriftzeugnis
  Für Das Fegfeuer?

23
1 Cor 310-15

• 10 According to the grace of God given to me,
  like a skilled master builder I laid a
  foundation, and another man is building upon it.
  Let each man take care how he builds upon it. 11
  For no other foundation can any one lay than that
  which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if
  any one builds on the foundation with gold,
  silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw 13
  each mans work will become manifest for the Day
  will disclose it, because it will be revealed
  with fire, and the fire will test what sort of
  work each one has done. 14 If the work which any
  man has built on the foundation survives, he will
  receive a reward. 15 If any mans work is burned
  up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will
  be saved, but only as through fire.

24
Gnilka on 1 Cor 310-15

• G.C. Berkouwer, Sin (1952)
• In our own time J. Gnilka is of the opinion that
  the 1 Corinthians passage does not refer to
  purgatory and that all efforts to combine this
  text with the fire of cleansing take on an
  essentially false aspect and are therefore
  unjustifiedThe concern here is with the
  dokimazein of ones work (testing Prüfung) and
  is not with the cleansing. But this exegesis
  has no influence on Gnilkas own conviction
  concerning Purgatory The dogma of Purgatory is
  raised above all doubt.

25
Gnilka on 1 Cor 310-15

• Gordan D. Fee, The First Epistle to the
  Corinthians (1987)
• This sentence is often seen as expressing a
  purifying element to the judgement, and has
  served as NT support for the concept of
  purgatory. But that is to miss Paul by a wide
  margin.
• Footnote This understanding of the text goes
  back at least as far as Origen. For the full
  discussion of the patristic data, see J. Gnilka
  He answers his question (Is 1 Cor 31-15 a
  scriptural witness to the doctrine of
  purgatory?) with a No it simply cannot be
  exegetically sustained.

26
Ratzinger Eschatology

• In Eschatology Ratzinger addresses Gnilkas
  exegesis of 1 Corinthians 310-15 as follows
• J. Gnilka has shown that this testing fire
  indicates the coming Lord himself rather than
  purgatory According to Gnilka, who here sets
  himself over against the opinion of Jeremiasfn,
  this excludes any interpretation of the text in
  terms of Purgatory. There is no fire, only the
  Lord himself. There is no temporal duration
  involved, only eschatological encounter with the
  Judge. There is no purificaton, only the
  statement that such a human being will be saved
  only with exertion and difficulty.

27
Jeremias Geenna (TDNT)

• Fn Jeremias Theological Dictionary of the NT,
  Vol 1147 Geenna
• It may be this Rabbinic conception of a
  purificatory character of the final fire of
  judgement underlies such passages as Mk 949, 1
  Cor 313-15 cf. 2 Pet 310.
• Mark 949 For every one will be salted with
  fire.
• 2 Peter 310 But the day of the Lord will come
  like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away
  with a loud noise, and the elements will be
  dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works
  that are upon it will be burned up.

28
Ratzinger Eschatology

• But it is by following just this exegesis that
  one is led to wonder whether its manner of posing
  the question is correct, and its criteria
  adequate. If one presupposes a naively objective
  concept of Purgatory then of course the text is
  silent. But if, conversely, we hold that
  Purgatory is understood in a properly Christian
  way when it is grasped christologically, in terms
  of the Lord himself as the judging fire which
  transforms us and conforms us to his own
  glorified body, then we shall come to a very
  different conclusion.

29
Ratzinger Eschatology

• Does not the real Christianising of the early
  Jewish notion of a purging fire cf. Jeremias
  lie precisely in the insight that the
  purification involved does not happen through
  some thing, but through the transforming power of
  the Lord himself, whose burning flame cuts free
  our closed-off heart, melting it, and pouring it
  into a new mold to make it fit for the living
  organism of his body?

30
Ratzinger Eschatology

• One really cant object that Paul is only
  talking here about the Last Day as a unique
  event that would be hermeneutical naiveté Man
  does not have to strip away his temporality in
  order thereby to become eternal Christ as
  judge is ho eschatos, the Final One, in relation
  to whom we undergo judgement both after death and
  on the Last Day. In the perspective we are
  offered here, the two judgments are
  indistinguishable

31
Ratzinger Eschatology

• Further points are made in this chapter
• Purgatory is the inwardly necessary process of
  transformation in which a person becomes capable
  of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of
  unity with the whole communion of saints.
• The transforming moment of this encounter
  cannot be quantified by the measurements of
  earthly time. It is not eternal but a
  transition, an Existenzzeit, which cannot be
  measured in the time of this age.

32
Ratzinger Eschatology

• So Ratzingers application of 1 Cor 310-15 to
  Purgatory in Eschatology corresponds exactly with
  the souls dialogical encounter with God in
  Christ as first outlined in Introduction to
  Christianity
• If, in Eschatology, Ratzinger is dealing with the
  same understanding of immortality as he outlined
  in Introduction to Christianity, we would
  therefore expect to find a corresponding
  reflection on the communal aspect of Purgatory in
  Eschatology.

33
Ratzinger Eschatology

• At this point we note that the communal aspect of
  Purgatory (that the Church on earth aids the
  souls in Purgatory by prayer and good works) is
  the very point at which the Reformers directly
  attacked the doctrine.
• They saw it as an offence against Grace where
  human works replaced simply faith/trust in Christ
  for salvation
• Ratzinger, writing in the German context, is
  almost constantly in dialogue with Protestant
  (Lutheran) theology
• His Christocentric and communal understanding of
  Purgatory directly addresses this objection.

34
Ratzinger Eschatology

• Ratzinger begins by declaring that
• Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some
  kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where
  man is forced to undergo punishment in a more or
  less arbitrary fashion.
• Purgatory does not replace grace by works, but
  allows the former to achieve its full victory
  precisely as grace.

35
Ratzinger Eschatology

• He returns to 1 Cor 3 to make his point
• But in most of us, that basic option is buried
  under a great deal of wood, hay and straw 1 Cor
  313-15. Only with difficulty can it peer out
  from behind the latticework of an egoism we are
  powerless to pull down with our own hands. Man is
  the recipient of divine mercy, yet this does not
  exonerate him from the need to be transformed.
  Encounter with the Lord is this transformation

36
Ratzinger Eschatology

• It is the fire that burns away our dross and
  re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy.
• This insight would contradict the doctrine of
  grace only if penance were the antithesis of
  grace and not its form, the gift of gracious
  possibility
• Indulgences, of course, are directly related to
  the sacrament of penance, and that is where the
  communal aspect comes in

37
Ratzinger Eschatology

• Prayer for the departed, in its many forms,
  belongs to the original data of the
  Judaeo-Christian tradition about Purgatory. But
  does not this prayer presuppose that Purgatory
  entails some kind of external punishment which
  can, for example, be graciously remitted through
  vicarious acceptance by others in a form of
  spiritual barter? And how can a third party enter
  into that most highly personal process of
  encounter in Christ, where the I is transformed
  in the flame of his closeness? Is not this an
  event which so concerns the individual that all
  replacement or substitution must be ruled out?

38
Ratzinger Eschatology

• Yet the being of man is not, in fact, that of a
  closed monad. It is related to others by love or
  hate, and, in these ways, has its colonies within
  them. My own being is present in others as guilt
  or grace. We are not just ourselves or, more
  correctly, we are ourselves only as being in
  others, with others and through others. nb. a
  theme from Introduction to Christianity

39
Ratzinger Eschatology

• Whether others curse us or bless us, forgive us
  and turn our guilt into lovethis is part of our
  own destiny. Self substituting love is a central
  Christian reality, and the doctrine of Purgatory
  states that for such love the limit of death does
  not exist eg. Romans 8. The possibility of
  helping and giving does not cease on the death of
  the Christian. Rather does it stretch out to
  encompass the entire communion of saints, on both
  sides of deaths portals.
• Romans 838-39 For I am sure that neither death,
  nor lifenor anything else in all creation, will
  be able to separate us from the love of God in
  Christ Jesus our Lord.

40
God and the World

• In God and the World (2002), Ratzingers
  discusses purgatory in a rather less academic
  approach
• PS One of the most important elements in the
  faith, which is also among those we find
  increasingly strange and suspect, is the idea of
  heaven and hell, and beyond that, of purgatory.
• Ratzinger What that means is that death is not
  the end. That is the fundamental certainty which
  is the starting point for the Christian faith It
  means that we have a responsibility before God,
  that there is a judgement, that human life can
  either turn out right or come to disaster.

41
God and the World

• With regard to turning out right, which is what
  we all hope for despite all our failures,
  purgatory plays an important part here. There
  will be few people whose lives are pure and
  fulfilled in all respects. And, we would hope,
  there will be few people whose lives have become
  an irredeemable and total NO. For the most part
  the longing for good has remained, despite many
  breakdowns, in some sense determinative

42
God and the World

• God can pick up the broken pieces and make
  something of them. In any case, we need a final
  cleansing, a cleansing by fire, to be exact,
  which the gaze of Christ, so to say, burns us
  free from everything, and only under this
  purifying gaze are we, as it were, fit to be with
  God, and able, then, to make our home with him.

43
God and the World

• PS That sounds provocatively old fashioned.
• Ratzinger I think it is something very human. I
  would go so far as to say that if there was no
  purgatory, then we would have to invent it, for
  who would dare say of himself that he was able to
  stand directly before God.
• cf. Eschatology Simply to look at people with
  any degree of realism at all is to grasp the
  necessity of such a process.

44
God and the World

• And yet we dont want to be, to use an image
  from Scripture, a pot that turned out wrong,
  that has to be thrown away we want to be able to
  be put right. Purgatory basically means that God
  can put the pieces back together again. That he
  can cleanse us in such a way that we are able to
  be with him and can stand there in fullness of
  life

45
God and the World

• With our Protestant friends, we share the hope
  that there is a heaven and a hell. The fact that
  they are unable to accept belief in purgatory
  derives in part from the teaching on
  justification. And perhaps we ought not to argue
  nearly so much about it. When it comes down to
  it, we are all glad that God himself can still
  put right what we cannot.
• Lets look at two examples from our Protestant
  friends which seems to fit with this point

46
Bo Giertz Hammer of God

• Novel by Bo Giertz, pietist/high church Swedish
  Lutheran Bishop (1905-1998)
• Curate Fridfeldt But sir, if you do not give
  your heart to Jesus, you cannot be saved.
• Rector You are right, my boy. And it is just as
  true that, if you think you are saved because you
  give Jesus your heart, you will not be saved. You
  see, my boyOne does not choose a Redeemer for
  oneself, you understand, nor gives ones heart to
  Him. The heart is a rusty old can on a junk heap.
  A fine birthday gift, indeed! But a wonderful
  Lord passes by, and has mercy on the wretched tin
  can, sticks his walking cane through it and
  rescues it from the junk pile and takes it home
  with Him. That is how it is.

47
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory

• C.S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm Chiefly on
  Prayer, chapter 20, paragraphs 7-10, pages
  108-109
• "Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so
  spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the
  most compulsive theological case against it would
  deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my
  prayers would survive if those for the dead were
  forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we
  love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with
  God could I have if what I love best were
  unmentionable to him?

48
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory

• I believe in Purgatory. Mind you, the Reformers
  had good reasons for throwing doubt on the
  'Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' as that
  Romish doctrine had then become.....
• The right view returns magnificently in Newman's
  DREAM. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved
  soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be
  taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a
  moment longer 'With its darkness to affront that
  light'. Religion has claimed Purgatory. 

49
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory

• Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it
  not break the heart if God said to us, 'It is
  true, my son, that your breath smells and your
  rags drip with mud and slime, but we are
  charitable here and no one will upbraid you with
  these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into
  the joy'? Should we not reply, 'With submission,
  sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be
  cleaned first.' 'It may hurt, you know' - 'Even
  so, sir.'

50
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory

• I assume that the process of purification will
  normally involve suffering. Partly from
  tradition partly because most real good that has
  been done me in this life has involved it. But I
  don't think the suffering is the purpose of the
  purgation. I can well believe that people neither
  much worse nor much better than I will suffer
  less than I or more. . . . The treatment given
  will be the one required, whether it hurts little
  or much

51
C.S. Lewis on Purgatory

• My favourite image on this matter comes from the
  dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of
  life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice
  will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This
  will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer
  than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be
  more fiery and astringent than my present
  sensibility could endure. But . . . it will not
  be disgusting and unhallowed."

52
Spe Salvi

• And so finally we come to Spe Salvi.
• Do we find here the same emphases we have found
  thus far, namely Purgatory as
• purification rather than punishment?
• the transforming post-death dialogue/ encounter
  of the soul with Christ the Judge (described in
  terms of the purifying fire of 1 Corinthians
  310-15)?
• essentially communal rather than individual?

53
Spe Salvi

• The answer is, of course, yes. It is all there
  but with the addition of a new aspect even
  focus namely the role of the doctrine of
  purgatory in the hope for Justice.
• A stronger emphasis on Christ as the Judge, and
  on Justice as the co-relative of Grace marks out
  the magisterium of Spe Salvi as a slightly
  different nuance in Ratzingers theology of
  Purgatory

54
Spe Salvi

• 45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate
  state includes the view that these souls are not
  simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the
  parable of the rich man illustrates, are already
  being punished or are experiencing a provisional
  form of bliss. There is also the idea that this
  state can involve purification and healing which
  mature the soul for communion with God.
• Nb. this is Jeremias over against Gnilka. The
  idea of punishment is there too but more
  dominant is purification and healing

55
Spe Salvi

• The early Church took up these concepts, and in
  the Western Church they gradually developed into
  the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to
  examine here the complex historical paths of this
  development it is enough to ask what it actually
  means.
• Since he has already gone into the history of the
  development in Eschatology at great length. Note
  that here he will concentrate on the meaning of
  the doctrine.

56
Spe Salvi

• With death, our life-choice becomes
  definitiveour life stands before the judge.
• It would be possible to be sidetracked by the
  similar yet starkly contrasting approach of Karl
  Rahner who viewed death as a moment of active
  final and definitive self-determination (Peter
  C. Phan, Contemporary context and issues in
  eschatology in Theological Studies 55 (1994), re
  1992 Int. Theol. Com. document De Quibusdam
  quaestionibus actualibus circa eschatologiam
  (Eng. trans. Irish Theological Quarterly
  58209-243 document approved by Ratzinger, with
  Gnilka as a committee member))
• cf. Peter Phans Eternity in Time A study of
  Karl Rahners Eschatology (1988).

57
Peter Phan on Karl Rahner

• Phan is scandalised that the Commission quoted a
  text from von Balthasar and ignored a work of
  Karl Rahner which is one of the most influential
  essays on the hermeneutics of eschatological
  statements in the history of Roman Catholic
  Theology.
• Rahner and Ratzinger both represent personalist
  and existential developments of the doctrine of
  purgatory from the traditional picture of a place
  of torment and temporal punishment in
  satisfaction for sin, but Ratzingers theology is
  significantly more Christocentric.
• This Christological approach makes Ratzingers
  doctrine of Purgatory ecumenically accessible,
  whereas Rahners doctrine tends more toward
  interreligious conclusions such as reincarnation
  of particular interest to Phan.

58
Spe Salvi

• Benedict XVI then outlines two stark
  possibilities
• People who have totally destroyed their desire
  for truth and readiness to love In such people
  all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of
  good would be irrevocable this is what we mean
  by the word Hell.
• On the other hand there can be people who are
  utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and
  thus fully open to their neighbours whose
  journey towards God only brings to fulfilment
  what they already are.

59
Spe Salvi

• 46. Yet we know from experience that neither case
  is normal in human life. For the great majority
  of peoplewe may supposethere remains in the
  depths of their being an ultimate interior
  openness to truth, to love, to God. In the
  concrete choices of life, however, it is covered
  over by ever new compromises with evilmuch filth
  covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains
  and it still constantly re-emerges from all that
  is base and remains present in the soul.
• Echos of Eschatology and God and the World on the
  naturalness and human need for Purgatory
• Here the emphasis on Purification comes to the
  fore. Justice is Ratzingers focus, yet still
  Purification rather than Punishment is his focus.

60
Spe Salvi

• What happens to such individuals when they appear
  before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have
  amassed through life suddenly cease to matter?
  What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First
  Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of
  the differing impact of God's judgement according
  to each person's particular circumstances.
• (Here follows the application of 1 Cor 312-15)
• It provides the Scriptural and Christological
  grounding of the doctrine of Purgatory in Spe
  Salvi
• It places the purifying fire in the context of
  the final judgement and encounter with Christ the
  Judge.

61
Spe Salvi

• 47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion
  that the fire which both burns and saves is
  Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The
  encounter with him is the decisive act of
  judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts
  away.
• He is obviously referring to Gnilkas exegesis,
  but it should also be noted that Protestant
  theologians such as Wolfhart Pannenberg
  (Systematic Theology Vol. 3) and Hans Schwarz
  (Eschatology) cite Ratzinger himself as the
  clearest exponent of this position.
• Nb. Gaze of Christ already in God and the World
• This goes right back to Introduction to
  Christianity. This encounter is the heart of
  Ratzingers understanding of purgatory and the
  immortality of the soul.

62
Spe Salvi

• This encounter with him, as it burns us,
  transforms and frees us, allowing us to become
  truly ourselves. All that we build during our
  lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster,
  and it collapses. At the moment of judgement we
  experience and we absorb the overwhelming power
  of his love over all the evil in the world and in
  ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation
  and our joy.
• Note A note of pain and suffering (although
  positive) which was not prominent in previous
  writing on the subject.

63
Spe Salvi

• It is clear that we cannot calculate the
  duration of this transforming burning in terms
  of the chronological measurements of this world.
  The transforming moment of this encounter
  eludes earthly time-reckoningit is the heart's
  time, it is the time of passage to communion
  with God in the Body of Christ.
• The familiar point of Purgatory as transitional
  and transforming moment of encounter/dialogue
  with Christ rather than temporal or of any
  duration.

64
Spe Salvi

• The judgement of God is hope, both because it is
  justice and because it is grace. If it were
  merely grace, making all earthly things cease to
  matter, God would still owe us an answer to the
  question about justicethe crucial question that
  we ask of history and of God. If it were merely
  justice, in the end it could bring only fear to
  us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so
  closely linked the two togetherjudgement and
  gracethat justice is firmly established we all
  work out our salvation with fear and trembling
  (Phil 212). Nevertheless grace allows us all to
  hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom
  we know as our advocate, or parakletos (cf. 1
  Jn 21).

65
Spe Salvi

• The judgement of God is hope, both because it is
  justice and because it is grace.
• This emphasis on hope is, of course, the whole
  focus of the Encyclical.
• But contra Eschatology, where he was more
  concerned about grace vs. works (with the
  theology of the Reformation in mind), here his
  concern is grace AND justice, since only both
  real grace and real justice together can be a
  source of hope for mankind.

66
Spe Salvi

• 48. A further point must be mentioned here,
  because it is important for the practice of
  Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the
  idea that one can help the deceased in their
  intermediate state through prayer (see for
  example 2 Macc 1238-45 first century BC). The
  equivalent practice was readily adopted by
  Christians and is common to the Eastern and
  Western Church.
• Here Benedict comes to the all important and
  foundational communal understanding of
  purgatory.
• He develops it here even more strongly (and
  poetically note the reference to John Donne)

67
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• the doctrine of indulgenceswas the target of
  Reformation criticism. Luther at first endorsed
  the postulate of purgatorial fire. But because of
  the associated idea of an intermediate state for
  departed souls on which the living can have an
  influence by means of vicarious penitence, he
  then rejected it on the ground that Christ alone
  and not human works can help the soul.
  Reformation criticism did not aim so much, then,
  at the idea of judgement as purifying fire but
  rather at the linking of this thought to the
  postulate of an intermediate state between death
  and the last judgement, as though there took
  place in this state a process of soul purgation
  after this earthly life. Even today modern
  Protestant theology still fixes on this point in
  its criticism of the doctrine of purgatory.

68
Spe Salvi

• The belief that love can reach into the
  afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving
  is possible, in which our affection for one
  another continues beyond the limits of deaththis
  has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity
  throughout the ages and it remains a source of
  comfort today. Who would not feel the need to
  convey to their departed loved ones a sign of
  kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a
  request for pardon?

69
Spe Salvi

• Now a further question arises if Purgatory is
  simply purification through fire in the encounter
  with the Lord, Judge and Saviour, how can a third
  person intervene, even if he or she is
  particularly close to the other? When we ask such
  a question, we should recall that no man is an
  island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved
  with one another, through innumerable
  interactions they are linked together. No one
  lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved
  alone. The lives of others continually spill over
  into mine in what I think, say, do and achieve.
  And conversely, my life spills over into that of
  others for better and for worse.

70
Spe Salvi

• So my prayer for another is not something
  extraneous to that person, something external,
  not even after death. In the interconnectedness
  of Being, my gratitude to the othermy prayer for
  himcan play a small part in his purification.
  And for that there is no need to convert earthly
  time into God's time in the communion of souls
  simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is
  never too late to touch the heart of another, nor
  is it ever in vain.

71
Spe Salvi

• In this way we further clarify an important
  element of the Christian concept of hope. Our
  hope is always essentially also hope for others
  only thus is it truly hope for me too. As
  Christians we should never limit ourselves to
  asking how can I save myself? We should also
  ask what can I do in order that others may be
  saved and that for them too the star of hope may
  rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own
  personal salvation as well.
• Thus Ratzinger answers the objections of the
  Reformers to the communal involvement in the fate
  of the departed souls.

72
Protestant Objections

• As such, his theology of Purgatory addresses the
  particular Protestant objections to the doctrine
• speculation on the intermediate state
• prayers and actions by the living for the dead
• a rejection of salvation by Christ alone

73
N.T. Wright and Ratzinger

• As a side note, N.T. Wrights recent book
  Surprised by Hope contains perhaps the most
  recent significant Protestant scholarly attack on
  the doctrine of Purgatory and notions of the
  intermediate state.
• See R.J. Neuhaus comments in First Things (April
  2008), and Wrights own comments in the next
  issue.
• Interestingly, Ratzingers Appendix I Between
  Death and Resurrection in Eschatology addresses
  most of Wrights issues fairly well.

74
N.T. Wright and Ratzinger

• Ratzinger simply points out that the doctrine of
  the immortality of the soul should not be seen as
  opposed to an authentic doctrine of the
  resurrection of the body, since the Scriptures
  clearly witness to the fact that
• Human beings live on with the Lord even before
  the resurrection and
• This living on is not yet identical with the
  Resurrection which comes only at the end of
  days and will be the full breaking in of Gods
  Lorship over the world.

75
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome

• Fr Pietro Riggi, a Salesian from Don Bosco Boys'
  Town in the catechisms of the Italian Bishops'
  Conference used for teaching our faith to
  children Hell is never mentioned, nor Purgatory,
  Heaven only once... In lacking these essential
  parts of our belief does it not seem to you that
  the whole system of logic which leads one to see
  Christ's Redemption has crumbled? By the absence
  of any mention of sin, by not speaking of Hell,
  even Christ's Redemption seems diminished.
  Today, unfortunately, when the Gospel speaks of
  Hell we priests circumvent even the Gospel. Hell
  is not mentioned. Or we are unable to talk about
  Heaven. We cannot speak of eternal life?

76
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome

• Pope Benedict XVI You correctly spoke of the
  fundamental themes of the faith which
  unfortunately rarely appear in our preaching. In
  the Encyclical Spe Salvi I wanted to speak
  precisely about the Last Judgement, judgement in
  general, and in this context also about
  Purgatory, Hell and Heaven. I think we have all
  been struck by the Marxist objection that
  Christians have only spoken of the afterlife and
  have ignored the earth. Thus, we demonstrate that
  we are truly committed to our earth and are not
  people who talk about distant realties, who do
  not help the earth.

77
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome

• Now, although it is right to show that Christians
  work for the earth - and we are all called to
  work to make this earth really a city for God and
  of God - we must not forget the other dimension.
  Unless we take it into account, we cannot work
  well for the earth to show this was one of my
  fundamental purposes in writing the Encyclical.
  When one does not know the judgement of God one
  does not know the possibility of Hell, of the
  radical and definitive failure of life, one does
  not know the possibility of and need for
  purification. Man then fails to work well for the
  earth because he ultimately loses his criteria,
  he no longer knows himself - through not knowing
  God - and destroys the earth.

78
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome

• In the Encyclical I tried to show that it is
  God's Last Judgement that guarantees justice. We
  all want a just world.
• But both justice and true guilt exist. Those who
  have destroyed man and the earth cannot suddenly
  sit down at God's table together with their
  victims. God creates justice. We must keep this
  in mind. Therefore, I felt it was important to
  write this text also about Purgatory, which for
  me is an obvious truth, so evident and also so
  necessary and comforting that it could not be
  absent.

79
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome

• I tried to say perhaps those who have destroyed
  themselves in this way, who are for ever
  unredeemable, who no longer possess any elements
  on which God's love can rest, who no longer have
  a minimal capacity for loving, may not be so
  numerous. This would be Hell.
• On the other hand, those who are so pure that
  they can enter immediately into God's communion
  are undoubtedly few - or at any rate not many.

80
BXVI 7 feb 2008 to clergy of Rome

• A great many of us hope that there is something
  in us that can be saved, that there may be in us
  a final desire to serve God and serve human
  beings, to live in accordance with God. Yet there
  are so very many wounds, there is so much filth.
  We need to be prepared, to be purified.
• This is our hope even with so much dirt in our
  souls, in the end the Lord will give us the
  possibility, he will wash us at last with his
  goodness that comes from his Cross.
• In this way he makes us capable of being for him
  in eternity. And thus Heaven is hope, it is
  justice brought about at last.

81
Luther on Purgatory

• Confession Concerning Christs Supper (1528)
• As for the deadI regard it as no sin to pray
  with free devotion in this or some similar
  fashion Dear God, if this soul is in a
  condition accessible to mercy, be thou gracious
  to it. And when this has been done once or
  twice, let it suffice
• Nor have we anything in Scripture concerning
  purgatory. It too was fabricated by goblins.
  Therefore, I maintain it is not necessary to
  believe in it although all things are possible
  to God, and he could very well allow souls to be
  tormented after their departure from the body
• I know of a purgatory, however, in another way,
  but it would not be proper to teach anything
  about it in the church, nor on the other hand, to
  deal with it by means of endowments or vigils.

82
Luther on Purgatory

• Explanation of the 95 Theses (1518)
• If purgatory is only a workshop of punishment,
  why not call it punitory rather than
  purgatory? For the meaning and force of the
  term purgatory imply a cleansing which can only
  be understood as pertaining to the remains of the
  old nature and sin, because of which those
  persons are unclean who in their affection for
  eathly things have hindered the purity of faith.
  But if by the use of the a new ambiguitythey
  shall say that cleansing here is the same as
  payment, so that then they are said to be
  cleansed when the punishments have been paid, I
  answer It is despised as easily as it is proved.
  But if they shall also despise the idea that the
  meaning of the term includes the cleansing of
  faults, let it be so. I do not dispute it.
  Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that both
  meanings are doubtful. For that reason the first
  meaning has been scattered abroad among the
  people in a distorted manner and with the
  greatest of certainty, especially since the basic
  meaning of the term does not agree with their
  opinion.

83
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology

• Judgement is put in the hands of Jesus himself
  in person. Here lies the redemptive
  transformation of judgement that goes along with
  Christian faith
• Footnote Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 206, says
  that we have here the redemptive transformation
  of the idea of judgement which Christian faith
  brought about. The Truth which judges man has
  itself set out to save him.

84
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• The scales thus tip in favour of a view of
  judgement along the lines of the purifying fire
  of Paul in 1 Cor 312ff
• We must distinguish from this thought of
  judgement as purifying fire the doctrine of
  purgatory, which relates the idea of purifying
  fire specifically to the souls passage between
  death and the final consummation

85
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• On the basis of the dogmatic definitions of the
  councils, it is thus not certain whether the
  premise of an intermediate state is itself part
  of the dogmatic core of the doctrine. Hence
  Ratzinger could formulate the lasting content of
  the doctrine of purgatory without express
  reference to the postulate of an intermediate
  state and in close connection with 1 Cor 312ff,
  stating that the Lord himself is the fire of
  judgement that transforms us, conforming us to
  his glorified body (rom 829, Phil 321).
  Purification is not, then, by this or that force,
  but by the transforming power of the Lord who
  frees and melts frozen hearts by fire to fit them
  into the living organism of his own body.

86
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• There is a footnote to the preceding comment
• Ratzinger, Eschatology, pp. 229-30 and cf. the
  whole train of Ratzingers argument, pp. 218-33
  also J. Gnilka, Ist 1 Kor. 310-15 ein
  Schriftzeugnis für das Fegfeuer? Eine
  exegetisch-historische Untersuchung (1955).
  Ratzinger takes up the central thought of
  Gnilkas exegesis but uses it in interpretation
  rather than criticism of the doctrine of
  purgatory.

87
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• The Pauline sayings that are adduced are sayings
  about the last judgement, not about a preceding
  process of purification. The same is true of the
  christological interpretation of the image of
  fire in 1 Cor 3. As Ratzinger puts it, Christ the
  Judge is the Eschatos, so that we cannot
  distinguish between the Judge of the last day and
  the Judge after death. Our entry into the sphere
  of our manifest reality is our rentry into our
  final destiny and therefore our being brought
  into the eschatological fire. (Fn. Ratzinger
  Eschatology, p. 230)

88
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• The stress here is on the transformation that is
  effected by the fire that the Lord himself is. On
  the basis of 1 Cor 310-15, Ratzinger argues that
  the central Yes of faith saves, but that in
  most cases this basic decision is covered over by
  much wood, hay, and stubble, and peeps only with
  difficulty through the grid of egoism that we
  cannot put off. We receive mercy but we have to
  be changed. The meeting with the Lord is this
  change, the fire whose burning makes us the
  faultless ones that can be receptacles of eternal
  joy. (fn. Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 231)

89
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• This exposition, which ties the thought of
  purification to purgatory by the link to Jesus
  Christ himself as the eschatological fire,
  detaches the doctrine of purgatory from the
  concept of an intermediate state. It thus snaps
  the link that in the Middle Ages supplied a basis
  for the idea of indulgences and that offered
  ground for Reformation criticism. The doctrine of
  purgatory is brought back into the Christian
  expectation of final judgement by the returning
  Christ. There is thus no more reason for the
  Reformation opposition.

90
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• The judgement that is put in Christs hands is
  no longer destruction but a fire of purging and
  cleansing. What it effects is the change to which
  Paul refers in 1 Cor 1550ff., the transforming
  of the mortal into the immortality. The
  transformation takes place by the fire of
  judgement. It involves the completing of
  penitence, but only as a moment in intergration
  into the new life in fellowship with Jesus
  Christ. (Syst. Theol. Vol.3, pp. 617-19)

91
Pannenberg Systematic Theology

• The Orthodox churchesrejected the doctrine of
  purgatorybecause ofChrysostoms criticism of
  the Origenistic understanding of the purifying
  fire of 1 Cor 310-15 as a divine education of
  souls that has as its goal the restoring of all
  of them (apokatastasis panton) However, relating
  the fire of the last judgement to the returning
  Christ opens the door to a variety of results
  ranging from the purging and cleansing of
  believers to the total destruction of those who
  persist irreconcilably in turning aside from
  God. p. 620

92
Questions in Eschatology ITC 1992

• De quibusdam quaestionibus actualibus circa
  eschatologicam (Questions in Eschatology)
• Prepared by International Theological Commission
  subcommittee including C. Schönborn, and G.
  Gnilka
• Published with the approval of Cardinal J.
  Ratzinger, President of the Commission
• Latin original (no english translation) in Irish
  Theological Quarterly 58 (1992) 209-43
• Followed a CDF document 11 May, 1979 Recentiores
  episcoporum synodi, trans. into English as The
  Reality after Death in Vatican Council IIMore
  Post Conciliar Documents (ed. Austin Flannery)
• Reliant upon Peter Phan, Contemporary Context
  and issues in Eschatology, in Theological
  Studies 55 (1994) 507-536

93
Phans summary of Questions

• The resurrection of Jesus is the cause and model
  of our resurrection
• Eternal life must be understood as a life of
  communion with God in Christ
• Rejects the theory of resurrection at the moment
  of death (atemporalism no time after death) as
  incompatible with the biblical notion of time
• This is based on 1) NT texts regarding the souls
  of the martyrs (eg. Rev 69-11) 2) 1 Thess 416
  uses the future tense for the resurrection 3) a
  radical denial of any meaning for time in the
  resurrection does not take into account its truly
  corporeal dimension.

94
Phans summary of Questions

• Resurrection as a future event connected with
  Christs parousia
• Therefore affirms the existence of the
  intermediate state, implied in OT concept of
  sheol and NT texts such as Luke 2343, John
  141-3, Phil 121-24
• The eschatology of souls between death and
  resurrection something that is conscious
  perdures and can be called the soul
• This is the guarantee of the continuity and
  identity between the person who lived and the
  person who will rise, inasmuch as in virtue of
  such a survival the concrete individual never
  totally ceases to exist.

95
Phans summary of Questions

• Affirms the immortality of the soul over against
  20th Century Protestant theory of Ganztod,
  total death.
• Notes that the immortality of the soul has
  traditional support in Lutheran and Orthodox
  traditions as well.
• Rejects the charge of Platonic dualism affirms
  biblical and Vatican II anthropology of the
  duality of the human person, constituted as body
  and soul.

96
Phans summary of Questions

• Lex orandi, Lex credendi
• Invocation of the Saints indicates a state of
  blessedness, of beatific vision prior to
  resurrection
• At the same time praying for the dead implies the
  existence of a post mortem purificatory phase.
• The difference between purgatory and hell is
  emphasised. Not only is the former temporary
  while the latter is eternal, but the former is
  characterised by love, whereas the latter is
  characterised by hate

97
Phans summary of Questions

• Five things can be learned from the Churchs
  liturgy for the dead
• The resurrection of Christ is the ultimate
  reality
• Our resurrection will take place at the end of
  the world
• There is an eschatology of souls
• There is a postmortem purification
• The eschatology of souls is ordered toward the
  resurrection of the body.

98
Phans summary of Questions

• Phan finds four points of disagreement between
  Rahner and the ITC, including
• Rahners emphasis on the unity of the human
  person serves as a necessary counterpoint to the
  Commissions stress on the duality of the human
  person, and hence is a necessary corrective to
  the Commissions eschatology of souls and its
  teaching on the intermediate state. All
  eschatological assertions, says Rahner, have
  the one totality of the the human person in mind,
  which cannot be neatly divided into two parts,
  body and soul. p516
• Phan comments Obviously, this principle has
  implications for the doctrines of the
  intermediate state and purgatory.

99
Rahners description of Death

• Phan comments on Rahners comment that human
  deathis not only something to be undergone in
  a spirit of penitence, but also as a moment of
  active final and definitive self-determination.