Anti-Climacus

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: N.T. Wright, in Surprised by Hope, settling a question I had wondered about for some time:

Third, therefore, I do not believe in purgatory as a place, a time, or a state. It was in any case a late Western innovation, without biblical support, and its supposed theological foundations are now questioned, as we saw, by leading Roman Catholic theologians themselves [he earlier references the work of Karl Rahner and Ratzinger/Benedict's Eschatology to this effect]. As the reformers insisted, bodily death itself is the destruction of the sinful person. Someone once accused me of suggesting that God was a magician if he could wonderfully make a still-sinful person into a no-longer-sinful person just like that. But that's not the point. Death itself gets rid of all that is still sinful; this isn't magic but good theology. There is nothing left to purge. Some older teachers suggested that purgatory would still be necessary because one would still need to bear punishment for one's sins, but any such suggestion is of course abhorrent to anyone with even a faint understanding of Paul, who teaches that "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ."

The last great paragraph of Romans 8, so often and so appropriately read at funerals, leaves no room for purgatory in any form. "Who shall lay any charge against us...? Who shall condemn us...? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Neither death nor life nor anything in all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." And if you still want to say that Paul really meant "though of course you'll probably have to go through purgatory first," I think with great respect that you ought to see not a theologian but a therapist.

In fact, Paul makes it clear here and elsewhere that it's the present life that is meant to function as purgatory. The sufferings of the present time, not of some postmortem state, are the valley through which we have to pass in order to reach the glorious future. I think I know why purgatory became so popular, why Dante's middle volume is the one people most easily relate to. The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection from the present onto the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story, here and now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through the sufferings that form the gateway to life. Of course, this means that for millions of our theological and spiritual ancestors death brought a pleasant surprise. They had been gearing themselves up for a long struggle ahead, only to find that it was already over.