Wall Street Journal: Three Cheers for Purgatory, by Joseph Bottum (Colorado):

A moral universe without purgatory would be a thin, desiccated place: metaphysical reality flattened to nothing more than God and the individual soul that must, down the wearisome road, face some grim and final judgment. …

[P]urgatory belongs to a cosmology fitted to human experience. Like angels and the sacraments—like the sense of the world as a battleground between good and evil, in which our souls are observers of their cosmic fight and the objects over which they struggle—the existence of purgatory lends weight and substance to our experience of a metaphysically charged universe. Purgatory matches our sense of faith and fallen nature: our awareness that we can be saved, snatched by God’s grace, and yet still not be ready for heaven.

Purgatory, in the thinking of the old ecumenical councils, is the place or condition in the next world where the souls of those who die in a state of grace but not yet free from all imperfection are scoured of guilt for venial sins and purged of the inclination to sin.

Everyone in purgatory is saved, salvation has come, but that doesn’t mean we need to track into heaven the muck we got on ourselves in life. It’s as much a human desire as a divine one, for the ordinary person’s reaction to the Gospel would be to ask for a chance to wash, freshen up a little, put on some clean clothes, before strolling into the beautiful mansion. In C.S. Lewis’s words, “Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they?”

The biblical warrant for it is weaker than Catholics and Orthodox Christians like to admit.

In 2 Maccabees, Judas Maccabeus offers prayers for the dead—meaningful only if the soul can be aided after death—but Protestants typically consider the book extracanonical. In 1 Corinthians, St. Paul writes that “the fire shall try every man’s work.” A post-death purifying fire seems a process of purgation. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus declares of judgment as prison, “Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.” Old Testament passages speak of the afterlife as a place in which movement in metaphysical position is possible.

Wall Street Journal: Bottum’s Case for Purgatory Doesn’t Persuade, by Carl Trueman (Notre Dame):

Mr. Bottum’s argument is less textual and more emotive. It seems to rest on the claim that the doctrine has therapeutic benefits, such as allowing those who are living to think they can still make a difference for those who are dead. It is analogous to the kind of logic currently deployed in circles where Christianity is being rediscovered because of its cultural benefits.

Yet wishful thinking and therapeutic benefits don’t make something true. Christianity sees its truth claims as objective. I may, for example, find comfort in thinking there are fairies at the end of my garden who can carry messages to departed loved ones or protect my cabbages from pests. That doesn’t mean they exist. The Fox sisters lived in “a world rich with the presence of the dead.” That didn’t make spiritualism true.

We believe Christianity is useful because it is true, not true because it is useful, whether to an individual, community or a culture. Mr. Bottum’s argument, at least in its emphasis on human logic and desire, cuts too quickly to making these the criteria for truth.

Wall Street Journal, The Catholic Case for Purgatory in Scripture, Peter Kreeft (Boston College):

The argument for purgatory “works” only for Catholics, and the argument from the few passages in the Bible that seem to imply it are pretty thin. But there is a stronger argument from three premises that are clear in Scripture: that in this life we are all sinful; that Heaven is “wholly holy,” that nothing sinful can enter it to pollute it; and that there is a great gap between sinfulness and holiness. Since sin is in the soul, not the body, we don’t lose our sinfulness when we lose our body at death.

God said to his chosen people: “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live.” To think we can simply sashay into Heaven as we are without some serious heart surgery is to have a shallow view of both God’s holiness and our sinfulness and selfishness.

God could of course snap his fingers and erase our debt legally. But that would be like a presidential pardon: The criminal still is a criminal; he merely got a “get out of jail” card free. Alternately, God could override our free will so that we no longer have the power or capacity to sin. But that would be like a frontal lobotomy and reduce us to happy animals.

True love wants more than that: It wants love in return. If our soul’s deepest desire is for God, for total truth and total love, but our actions, choices, feelings, and habits aren’t wholly in line with that deepest desire, he takes us at our word and gives us what we most deeply desire by giving those other parts of us a painful scrubbing and a hot shower. We usually die half-baked, so he finishes the cooking, turning up the heat.

That’s nowhere near a proof, but it is a reasonable analogy. Why would God settle for anything less for us? And if our prayers can somehow really make a difference and help our friends on earth, why should they be impotent to help our friends in purgatory?

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