Catholic University of America Press

Chapter Title: Hell, Purgatory, Heaven

Book Title: Eschatology

Book Subtitle: Death and the Eternal Life (Second Edition)
Book Author(s): Joseph Ratzinger
Published by: Catholic University of America Press. (1988)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv131bt06.14

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 VII

Hell, Purgatory, Heaven

I. HELL

No quibbling helps here: the idea of eternal damnation,

which had taken ever clearer shape in the Judaism of the
century or two before Christ, has a firm place in the teach-
ing of Jesus,75 as well as in the apostolic writings.76 Dogma
takes its stand on solid ground when it speaks of the exis-
tence of Hell 77 and of the eternity of its punishments. 78
This teaching, so contrary to our ideas about God and
about man, was naturally only accepted with great diffi-
culty. According to fragments preserved in Justinian and
the Pseudo-Leontius, it was Origen who, in his ambitious
attempt to systematize Christianity, the Peri Archon, first
proposed the idea that given the logic of God's relationship
with history, there must be a universal reconciliation at the
End. Origen himself regarded his outline systematics as no
more than a hypothesis. It was an approach to a comprehen-
sive vision, an approach which did not necessarily claim to
reproduce the contours of reality itself. While the effect of
Neo-Platonism in the Peri Archon was to over-accentuate
the idea that evil is in fact nothing and nothingness, God
alone being real, the great Alexandrian divine later sensed
much more acutely the terrible reality of evil, that evil
which can inflict suffering on God himself and, more,
bring him down to death. Nevertheless, Origen could not
wholly let go of his hope that, in and through this divine

21 5

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 216 The Future Life

suffering, the reality of evil is taken prisoner and over-

come, so that it loses its quality of definitiveness. In that
hope of his, a long line of fathers were to follow him: Greg-
ory of Nyssa, Didymus of Alexandria, Diodore of Tarsus,
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Evagrius Ponticus, and, at least
on occasion, Jerome of Bethlehem also. But the main-
stream tradition of the Church has flowed along a different
path. It found itself obliged to concede that such an expec-
tation of universal reconciliation derived from the system
rather than from the biblical witness. The dying echo of
Origen's ideas has lingered through the centuries, however,
in the many variants of the so-called doctrine of miseri-
cordia. These would either except Christians completely
from the possibility of damnation, or else concede to all
the lost some kind of relief from suffering-in compari-
son, that is, with what they really deserve.
What should we hold on to here? First, to the fact of
God's unconditional respect for the freedom of his crea-
ture. What can be given to the creature, however, is love,
and with this all its neediness can be transformed. The as-
sent to such love need not be "created" by man: this is not
something which he achieves by his own power. And yet
the freedom to resist the creation of that assent, the free-
dom not to accept it as one's own, this freedom remains.
Herein lies the difference between the beautiful dream of
the Boddhisattva (c.f. above VI. I. c.) and its realization.
The true Boddhisattva, Christ, descends into Hell and suf-
fers it in all its emptiness; but he does not, for all that,
treat man as an immature being deprived in the final
analysis of any responsibility for his own destiny. Heaven
reposes upon freedom, and so leaves to the damned the
right to will their own damnation. The specificity of
Christianity is shown in this conviction of the greatness
of man. Human life is fully serious. It is not to be de-

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 2 I7

natured by what Hegel called the "cunning of the Idea"

into an aspect of divine planning. The irrevocable takes
place, and that includes, then, irrevocable destruction.
The Christian man or woman must live with such se-
riousness and be aware of it. It is a seriousness which
takes on tangible form in the Cross of Christ.
That Cross throws light upon our theme from two direc-
tions. First, it teaches us that God himself suffered and
died. Evil is not, then, something unreal for him. For the
God who is love, hatred is not nothing. He overcomes evil,
but not by some dialectic of universal reason which can
transform all negations into affirmations. God overcomes
evil not in a "speculative Good Friday," to use the lan-
guage of Hegel, but on a Good Friday which was most real.
He himself entered into the distinctive freedom of sinners
but went beyond it in that freedom of his own love which
descended willingly into the Abyss.
While the real quality of evil and its consequences be-
come quite palpable here, the question also arises-and
this is the second illuminating aspect of the mystery of
the Cross for our problem-whether in this event we are
not in touch with a divine response able to draw freedom
precisely as freedom to itself. The answer lies hidden in
Jesus' descent into Sheol, in the night of the soul which he
suffered, a night which no one can observe except by en-
tering this darkness in suffering faith. Thus, in the history
of holiness which hagiology offers us, and notably in the
course of recent centuries, in John of the Cross, in Car-
melite piety in general, and in that of Therese of Lisieux in
particular, "Hell" has taken on a completely new meaning
and form. For the saints, "Hell" is not so much a threat to
be hurled at other people but a challenge to oneself. It is a
challenge to suffer in the dark night of faith, to experience
communion with Christ in solidarity with his descent

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 218 The Future Life

into the Night. One draws near to the Lord's radiance by

sharing his darkness. One serves the salvation of the world
by leaving one's own salvation behind for the sake of
others. In such piety, nothing of the dreadful reality of
Hell is denied. Hell is so real that it reaches right into the
existence of the saints. Hope can take it on, only if one
shares in the suffering of Hell's night by the side of the
One who came to transform our night by his suffering.
Here hope does not emerge from the neutral logic of a sys-
tem, from rendering humanity innocuous. Instead, it de-
rives from the surrender of all claims to innocence and to
reality's perduringness, a surrender which takes place by
the Cross of the Redeemer. Such hope cannot, however, be
a self-willed assertion. It must place its petition into the
hands of its Lord and leave it there. The doctrine of ever-
lasting punishment preserves its real content. The idea of
mercy, which has accompanied it, in one form or another,
throughout its long history, must not become a theory.
Rather is it the prayer of suffering, hopeful faith.

2. PURGATORY

(a) The Problem of the Historical Data

The Catholic doctrine of Purgatory received its defini-
tive ecclesial form in the two mediaeval councils which
tried to bring about reunion with the churches of the East.
At the Council of Trent it was reformulated in summary
fashion by way of confrontation with the movements of
the Reformation. These statements already give some idea
of its historical placing and ecumenically problematic
quality. We have already noted (in V. 2 and 4, a.-b. above)
that the New Testament left open the question of the "in-
termediate state" between death and the general resurrec-
tion on the Last Day. That question remained in an un-

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 219

finished condition, since it could only be clarified by the

gradual unfolding of Christian anthropology and its rela-
tion to christology. The doctrine of Purgatory is part of this
process of clarification. In this doctrine, the Church held
fast to one aspect of the idea of the intermediate state, in-
sisting that, even if one's fundamental life-decision is fi-
nally decided and fixed in death/9 one's definitive destiny
need not necessarily be reached straight away. It may be
that the basic decision of a human being is covered over by
layers of secondary decisions and needs to be dug free. In
the Western tradition, this intermediate state is called
"Purgatory." The Eastern church has not followed the
path of Western theology with its clarification of the final
destiny of man. The East clung to that form of the idea of
the intermediate state reached by the lifetime of John
Chrysostom (who died in 407). For this reason, the doc-
trine of Purgatory functioned as an article dividing the
churches at the attempted ecumenical reunions of Lyons
in 1274 and Ferrara-Florence in 1439."° Naturally enough,
the point around which disagreement centered was not the
same as a century later with the Reformers. The Greeks
rejected the idea of punishment and atonement taking
place in the afterlife, yet they shared with the church of
the West the practice of interceding for the dead by prayer,
alms, good works, and, most notably, the offering of the
Eucharist for their repose."l But it was in these customs,
and above all in the celebration of Requiem Masses, that
the Reformers saw an attack on the complete sufficiency
of Christ's atoning work on the CrosS. 82 Given their doc-
trine of justification, they were unable to concede that
there might be atonement in the life to come.
Before investigating the historical roots of the problem
of Purgatory, with a view to arriving at a clearer picture of
the doctrinal issues involved, we must get a firmer grasp on

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 220 The Future Life

the Catholic Church's actual teaching in the three councils

I have mentioned. The texts speak of poenae purgatoriae
seu catharteriae, "purging or purifying punishments,"B3 or,
more simply, of purgatorium, sometimes translated as
"the place of purification." B4 The term "place II is not, in
fact, found in the Latin, though it is hinted at by means of
the preposition "in": in purgatorio. All three councils ap-
proach the task of doctrinal definition by way of a relec-
ture of the preceding tradition. In this process their for-
mulations become more simple and precise. The formula
adopted by Trent is the most succinct of all .
. . . [T]he Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Spirit, has, fol-
lowing the sacred writings and the ancient tradition of the Fa-
thers, taught in sacred Councils and very recently in this ecu-
menical Council, that there is a purgatory, purgatorium, and that
the souls detained therein are aided by the suffrages of the faithful
and chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar. 85

Trent adds, however, an emphatic exhortation to the bish-

ops, urging them to do all in their power to oppose exces-
sive subtlety, curiosity and superstition. Here the protest
of the Reformation against the abuses prevalent in contem-
porary practice is taken up and translated into a message of
reform. However, the denial of the doctrine obscured by
those abuses and the religious practices associated with
them is itself rejected.
The roots of the doctrine of Purgatory, like those of the
idea of the intermediate state in general, lie deeply embed-
ded in early Judaism. Second Maccabees reports that pagan
amulets had been found on the Jewish fallen in the wars of
the period."6 Their deaths are interpreted as a punishment
for apostasy from the Torah. According to the narrative, a
prayer service was held for the fallen: "they turned to
prayer, beseeching that the sin which had been committed
might be wholly blotted out."B7 Moreover, money was col-

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 22I

lected to provide for a sin-offering in Jerusalem. The au-

thor praises this action as an expression of faith in the res-
urrection of the dead. To be sure, the text says nothing
about how one ought to conceive of the purifying effect of
prayer and the "intermediate state" of the sinful departed.
Rather clearer in this respect is the apocryphal Vita Adae
et Evae, a work from the first century of the Christian era,
which tells of Seth's mourning for the dead Adam and of
God's mercy, as proclaimed by Michael.
Rise from the body of your father and come to me and see what
the Lord God is arranging concerning him. He is his creature and
he has had mercy on him.

Yet this mercy incorporates penalty too:

Then Seth saw the extended hand of the Lord holding Adam, and
he handed him over to Michael, saying, 'Let him be in your
custody until the day of dispensing punishment at the last years,
when I will turn his sorrow into joy. Then he shall sit on the
throne of him who overthrew him. 88

In the material presented by the Strack-Billerbeck collec-

tion, part of which goes back to the second century of the
Christian era, there are clear signs of the idea of an inter-
mediate Gehenna, understood as a purgatory where souls,
in their atoning suffering, are prepared for definitive sal-
vation. 89 Here, as in many other ideas about the afterlife,
the Jewish religion had numerous points of contact with
various currents of Greco-Roman religiosity, for which
prayer for the dead had salvific potential. 90 The transition
from early Judaism to early Christianity is, therefore, a
gradual affair. Its phases belonged to the single continuum
of tradition.
Leaving aside for the moment the controversial ques-
tion as to where the New Testament contains traces of the
idea of Purgatory, let us investigate instead the formation

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 222 The Future Life

of the Church's tradition in East and West. As early as the

second century, we can consult such representative wit-
nesses as, in the West, Tertullian (who died soon after 220)
and in the East, Clement of Alexandria (who died rather
before 215). In the history of the doctrine of Purgatory,
Tertullian is known above all for the acts of the martyr-
dom of St. Perpetua, which either were composed by him
or derive from his circle. In a dream, Perpetua sees her
little brother Dinocrates who had died of cancer at an
early age. Dirty and pale, with the cancer sore from which
he died still visible, he stands in simmering heat before a
water fountain which is much too high for him to drink
from. Though terribly thirsty, he cannot slake his thirst.
Perpetua understands the message of the dream. Day and
night, she prays for her unhappy brother. Shortly, in a sec-
ond vision, she is allowed to see him cleaned up, well-
dressed and with his sore healed. He can easily reach the
water now. He drinks at will and plays happily. A. Stuiber
has suggested that this text simply reproduces Late An-
tique conceptions about the sad lot of those who die pre-
maturely. On this view, it would have nothing to do with
the doctrine of Purgatory. Such a destiny is not the result
of guilt: the misery it brings with it cannot be interpreted
as punishment or expiation. 9J But is the right criterion
being employed here? If the fully articulated definition of
Lyons-cum-Florence-cum-Trent is to be the only possible
determination of the concept of Purgatory then one might
well come to a conclusion of the kind just described. But
in so doing, one would deprive oneself of the chance to
grasp something of the structure of the idea of Purgatory
and the historically piecemeal assembling of the elements
that compose it. It is, therefore, more just to adopt J. A.
Fischer's opinion that the essential elements of the doc-
trine of Purgatory crystallized out of the traditional mate-

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 223

rials offered by all three sources: Late Antique sensibility,

Judaism and Christianity. The central feature of it all is
the idea of a suffering on the part of the dead capable of
being alleviated by prayer. The factor of guilt comes into
the picture not because ethics demands it but for reasons
which historians of religion study.92 In Tertullian's Mon-
tanist essay On the Soul a step is taken which leads to the
concept of Purgatory in its proper sense, though even here
we are not dealing with an idea which is straightforwardly
identical with the teaching of the mediaeval councils. Ter-
tullian's starting point is Jesus' parabolic advice to recon-
cile oneself with one's opponent on the way to court, since
otherwise:
... you will be thrown into prison. I tell you solemnly, you will
not get out till you have paid the last penny?3

Interpreting this text in terms of human destiny in the

world to come was made easier by the fact that phylake,
the word for "prison/' was also one of the current terms
for Hades. 94 For Tertullian, who had become a rigorist, the
text meant that the time between death and resurrection
is a time of imprisonment in which the soul has the oppor-
tunity to pay the "last penny" and so to become free for
the resurrection. A new theological rationale is being
offered for Hades, and this rationale "makes the interim
state into a necessary purgatory for everyone. JJ95 Cyprian
of Carthage, dying in 258, removed Tertullian's thesis
from its rigorist context and gave it a new look on the
basis of the tasks of a pastor in a period of persecution. In
this way, Cyprian succeeded in eliminating the pagan ele-
ment. He managed to work out the authentically Chris-
tian form of an insight which, though derived from the
Church's Jewish roots, had earlier seemed equivalent to
Greco-Roman conceptions. Cyprian's contribution set the

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 224 The Future Life

Western Church on its way. He asserted a definitive salva-

tion for those who have died in faith, and notably for the
martyrs. He was similarly clear about the definitiveness of
Hell. His actual pastoral problem concerned the well-
intentioned but weak, average Christians who did not find
the strength to accept martyrdom in times of persecution.
They had carried out the demands of the State religion,
and thus had publicly denied Christ. Nonetheless, they
wished to remain Christians and asked for reconciliation
with the Church. The saying found in Matthew 5, 26
offered Cyprian an occasion for thinking through a pos-
sible continuation of penance in the afterlife. Against the
protesting voices of the rigorists, this enabled him to re-
admit the weak to communion with the Church. Cer-
tainly they cannot, in their present condition, enter into
definitive communion with Christ. Their denial, their
half-heartedness, stands in the way. But they are capable of
purification. The penitential way of purification exists not
only in this world but in the world to come. With this in-
terpretation, that there is purification in the future life,
the root concept of the Western doctrine of Purgatory is al-
ready formulated clearly enough. 96
In the West, the idea of Purgatory developed in its initial
stages with almost no connection with ancient philoso-
phy. Its contacts were, rather, with the beliefs of the
Christian people, marked as these were by the earlier sen-
sibility of the classical world and of Judaism. But in turn-
ing to Clement of Alexandria, we find a very different
picture. Clement's views were worked out in controversy
with Valentinian Gnosis, therefore in debate with the im-
pressive philosophical tradition of the Greek world, and
notably with Platonism and Stoicism. Clement interprets
our theme, and indeed Christian existence at large, in
terms of the notable Greek idea of paideia, "education."
Into this idea, he integrates the gnostic (and, prior to that,

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 225

Greco-Roman) notion of a post-mortem fire of judgment.

This gives him a basis on which to carry out his exegesis
of First Corinthians 3, 10- I 5: a text which also introduces
the idea of a fire of judgment, something we shall have to
look at in a moment. According to the Valentinians, the
gnostic cannot be touched by that fire. It fails to reach him,
since he carries the two extinguishing agents-the water of
baptism and the "Wind/' the Spirit, that can grant him un-
failing protection. The ordinary man, however, called by
the gnostics "hylicos" ("material ones'''' is caught in the
fire's blaze, with results at once curative and destructive.
In place of this two-fold distinction, Clement speaks of
the "purifying" and "educative" power of this fire. 97 He re-
interprets the rather naturalistic Gnostic thinking in more
human and spiritual terms. The process of man's pneu-
matic purification, that catharsis which will fit him for
God, begins with baptism and reaches into eternity.
Clement proved able to integrate into a most compel-
ling synthesis the whole drama of Christian existence: life
and death, immortality, resurrection, the Last Day. In this
drama, there takes place an "ascent" whereby the soul is
transformed into a soma, "body/' of ever greater pneu-
matic perfection. This is a picture which leaves no room
for the distinction between the soul and the glorified body.
The two components melt into self-identity in the glori-
fied subject. The idea of purification after death:
turns out to be, in this context, something of a mediating meta-
physical link between the Platonic idea of the soul's immortality
and the Resurrection. 98

Just as Clement can give a place to the doctrine of the

risen body by his idea of man's ascending transformation,
so he can also create a significant space for the ecclesial
aspect of Christian existence. The process of purification
is, on all its levels, an activity of reciprocal caring. "Even

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 226 The Future Life

beyond the threshold of death, the perfect gnostic can care

for those" who stand beneath him and need him. 99 This
conversion of a naturalistic into an anthropological and
personalist world view gives a new twist to the question of
the Last Day. The true gnostic can celebrate as the Day of
the Lord that day on which he frees himself from an evil
disposition and embraces the gnostic way of life. In this
way, he gives fitting honor to the Lord's resurrection. tOO
However, Clement does not fall into the trap of the idea of
timelessness (considered above). He lights upon a pro-
found anthropological concept of time which allows him
to say that, when the one who is "ascending" reaches the
highest level of pneumatic bodiliness, the pler6ma, then
at that moment he enters sunteleia, "perfection," and
therewith the eschatological "Day of God," the eternal
Today.
This would not be the place to discuss that synthesis of
Christianity and Hellenism which is Clement's philoso-
phy. His vision would certainly have something of value to
offer to contemporary attempts to appropriate the biblical
message in a meaningful and objective fashion-even if it
is bound to a world whose concepts we cannot in many
cases adopt ourselves. What is important for our present
investigation is that, in a quite different context, we meet
again the two basic elements of the idea of Purgatory
whch we saw emerge by a gradual development in the
West. In Clement as in the Western writers, the penance
imposed by the Church is the concrete starting point. For
him as for them, such penance is a process which can and
often must continue beyond the gate of death. For him as
for them, this process points up the difference between
someone's valid fundamental decision, whereby he is ac-
cepted in grace, and the defective permeation of the effects
of that decision throughout the being of the whole person.

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 227

We can also note that, according to these witnesses, the

anchoring of a person in the Church is not something
which death disrupts or destroys. Even when they have
crossed over the threshold of the world beyond, human be-
ings can still carry each other and bear each others' bur-
dens. They can still give to each other, suffer for each
other, and receive from each other. More clearly at Alexan-
dria than in the Western tradition, this conviction rests on
the Pauline- Johannine belief that the real frontier runs
not between earthly life and not-life, but between being
with Christ, on the one hand, and, on the other, being
without him or against him. WI The decisive step is taken
in baptism: while the fundamental option of the bap-
tismal candidate becomes definitively established with
death, its full development and purification may have to
await a moment beyond death, when we make our way
through the judging fire of Christ's intimate presence in
the companionable embrace of the family of the Church.
With suitable modifications, Clement's teaching was
continued by Origen, and found acceptance wherever the
theology of that great Alexandrian was considered au-
thoritative. Finally, and scarcely changed in its central af-
firmations, it was put forward by Gregory of Nazianzus,
whose death occurred around the year 390. 102 Alas: because
the doctrine formed part of Origen's system, it shared in his
downfall. Drawn into the controversy about Origen, it was
dismantled along with his heritage. The crucial figure here
was that of John Chrysostom, a younger contemporary of
Gregory Nazianzen, dying in 407. In his homilies on First
Corinthians 3, I - 17, he rejects the idea of a general resto-
ration, apokatastasis, which had become linked with that
of the purging fire. Chrysostom thus originated the doc-
trine which remains official in the Eastern churches.
These churches, after the elimination of the Alexandrian

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 228 The Future Life

attempt to synthesize Greek and Biblical thought, held to

a somewhat archaic conception. The intermediate state,
"Hades," applies to everyone in the period between death
and resurrection. But this state contains "various levels of
happiness and unhappiness," which correspond to the
different levels of justification and sanctification of the
faithful on earth. The saints intercede for their brethren
here on earth, and we may call on them for their inter-
cession. Through the Eucharist, through prayer and alms-
giving, the living can bring "respite and refreshment" to
the souls in Hades. However, the "unhappiness" to be al-
leviated by such actions is not taken to include a purifying
or atoning suffering. 103

(b) The Permanent Content of the Doctrine

of Purgatory
In the wake of this brief historical sketch, the question
remains: What is the authentic heart of the doctrine of
Purgatory? What is its rationale? In listening in to the
patristic discussion, we had occasion to mention First
Corinthians 3, 10- I 5. For this text, there is a foundation,
Jesus Christ, on which some build with gold, silver and
precious stones, and others with wood, hay and straw.
What each one has in fact built will be brought to light by
the Day of the Lord.
. . . it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of
work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on
the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's
work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be
saved, but only as through fire.

J. Gnilka has shown that this testing fire indicates the

coming Lord himself. Echoing a passage from the prophet
Isaiah/ 04 it is

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 229

an image for the majesty of the self-revealed God .... the un-
approachability of the All-Holy. lOS

According to Gnilka, who here sets himself over against

the opinion of Jeremias,I06 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
purification, only the statement that such a human being
"will be saved only with exertion and difficulty."lD? 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 christo logically,
in terms of the Lord himself as the judging fire which
transforms us and conforms us to his own glorified body, 108
then we shall come to a very different conclusion. Does
not the real Christianizing of the early Jewish notion of a
purging fire lie precisely in the insight that the purifica-
tion 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? And what, in any case, can it mean
in concrete terms when Gnilka remarks that some "will
be saved only after exertion and with difficulty"? In what
does such "exertion" and "difficulty" consist? Would this
not become a merely mythical statement should it say
nothing about man himself, and, more specifically, about
the manner of his entry into salvation? Surely these terms
must refer, not to something external to man, but to the
man of little faith's heartfelt submission to the fire of

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 230 The Future Life

the Lord which will draw him out of himself into that pu-
rity which befits those who are God's? One really can't ob-
ject that Paul is only talking here about the Last Day as
a unique event: that would be hermeneutical naivete,
though exercised in the opposite sense from the type we
considered in parts V and VI of this book. Man does not
have to strip away his temporality in order thereby to be-
come "eternal"; Christ as judge is ho eschatos, the Final
One, in relation to whom we undergo judgment both after
death and on the Last Day. In the perspective we are
offered here, those two judgments are indistinguishable. A
person's entry into the realm of manifest reality is an en-
try into his definitive destiny and thus an immersion in
eschatological fire. The transforming "moment" of this
encounter cannot be quantified by the measurements of
earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and
yet trying to qualify it as of "short" or "long" duration on
the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics
would be naive and unproductive. The "temporal mea-
sure" of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of
existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we
are transformed. To measure such Existenzzeit, such an
"existential time," in terms of the time of this world
would be to ignore the specificity of the human spirit in
its simultaneous relationship with, and differentiation
from, the world. 109
The essential Christian understanding of Purgatory has
now become clear. 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 ar-
bitrary fashion. Rather is it 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. Simply to look at people

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 231

with any degree of realism at all is to grasp the necessity of

such a process. It does not replace grace by works, but
allows the former to achieve its full victory precisely as
grace. What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in
most of us, that basic option is buried under a great deal of
wood, hay and straw. Only with difficulty can it peer out
from behind the latticework of an egoism we are power-
less to pull down with our own hands. Man is the recipi-
ent of the divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him
from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord
is this transformation. It is the fire that burns away our
dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy. 1 JO This
insight would contradict the doctrine of grace only if pen-
ance were the antithesis of grace and not its form, the gift
of a gracious possibility. The identification of Purgatory
with the Church's penance in Cyprian and Clement is im-
portant for drawing our attention to the fact that the root
of the Christian doctrine of Purgatory is the christological
grace of penance. Purgatory follows by an inner necessity
from the idea of penance, the idea of the constant readi-
ness for reform which marks the forgiven sinner.
One vital question still remains to be cleared up. We
saw that prayer for the departed, in its many forms, be-
longs with the original data of the Judaeo-Christian tradi-
tion. But does not this prayer presuppose that Purgatory
entails some kind of external punishment which can, for
example, be graciously remitted through vicarious accep-
tance by others in a form of spiritual barter? And how can
a third party enter into that most highly personal process
of encounter with 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 substitu-
tion must be ruled out? Is not the pious tradition of "help-
ing the holy souls" based on treating these souls after the

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 232 The Future Life

fashion of "having"-whereas our reflections so far have

surely led to the conclusion that the heart of the matter is
"being," for which there can be no substitute? 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 as grace. We are not just ourselves; or, more
correctly, we are ourselves only as being in others, with
others and through others. Whether others curse us or
bless us, forgive us and turn our guilt into love-this is
part of our own destiny. The fact that the saints will judge
means that encounter with Christ is encounter with his
whole body. I come face to face with my own guilt vis-a-
vis the suffering members of that body as well as with
the forgiving love which the body derives from Christ
its Head.
The intercession of the saints with the Judge is not ... some
purely external affair whose success is necessarily doubtful since
it depends on the unpredictable benevolence of the Judge. It is
above all an inner weight which, placed on the scales, can bring
them to sink down'"

This intercession is the one truly fundamental element in

their "judging." Through their exercising of such judg-
ment they belong, as people who both pray and save, to the
doctrine of Purgatory and to the Christian practice which
goes with it. As Charles Peguy so beautifully put it, "J'es-
pere en toi pour moi": "I hope in you for me." 112 It is when
the "I" is at stake that the "you" is called upon in the form
of hope.
This second line of reflection is actually even more
important than the first which, to remind the reader,
turns on the relation between Purgatory and the Church's
penitential practice. Even more important because self-
substituting love is a central Christian reality, and the

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 233

doctrine of Purgatory states that for such love the limit of

death does not exist. The possibility of helping and giving
does not cease to exist on the death of the Christian.
Rather does it stretch out to encompass the entire com-
munion of saints, on both sides of death's portals. The ca-
pacity, and the duty, to love beyond the grave might even
be called the true primordial datum in this whole area of
tradition-as II Maccabees 12, 42-45 first makes clear. 1l3
Furthermore, this original "given" has never been in dis-
pute as between East and West. It was the Reformation
which called it into question, and that in the face of what
were in part objectionable and deformed practices. Here,
then, is where the ecumenical way ahead in this matter
lies, at least as between Orthodox and Catholics. What is
primary is the praxis of being able to pray, and being called
upon to pray. The objective correlate of this praxis in the
world to come need not, in some reunification of the
churches, be determined of necessity in a strictly unitary
fashion, even though the content and rationale of the
Western teaching is anchored, as we have shown, in an-
cient tradition and central motifs of faith.

3. HEAVEN
Christian tradition uses the image of heaven, an image
linked to the natural symbolic force of what is "high" or
"above," in order to express that definitive completion of
human existence which comes about through the perfect
love towards which faith tends. Such a fulfilment is not,
for the Christian, some music of the future. Rather is it
sheer description of what happens in the encounter with
Christ, itself already present in its fundamental elements.
To raise the question of "heaven" is thus not to float free
from earth in a balloon of enthusiastic fantasy. It is to

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 234 The Future Life

come to know more deeply that hidden presence by whose

gift we truly live, even though we ourselves continually
permit it to be camouflaged, and to withdraw from us, dis-
placed by the many objects that occupy the foreground of
our lives.
Heaven, therefore, must first and foremost be deter-
mined christologically. It is not an extra-historical place
into which one goes. Heaven's existence depends upon the
fact that Jesus Christ, as God, is man, and makes space for
human existence in the existence of God himself. 114 One is
in heaven when, and to the degree, that one is in Christ. It
is by being with Christ that we find the true location of
our existence as human beings in God. Heaven is thus pri-
marily a personal reality, and one that remains forever
shaped by its historical origin in the paschal mystery of
death and resurrection. From this christological center, all
the other elements which belong to the tradition's concept
of heaven may be inferred. And, in pride of place, from this
christological foundation there follows a theological affir-
mation: the glorified Christ stands in a continuous pos-
ture of self-giving to his Father. Indeed, he is that self-
giving. The paschal sacrifice abides in him as an enduring
presence. For this reason, heaven, as our becoming one
with Christ, takes on the nature of adoration. All cult pre-
figures it, and in it comes to completion. Christ is the
temple of the final age/ 15 he is heaven, the new Jerusalem;
he is the cultic space for God. The ascending movement of
humanity in its union with Christ is answered by the de-
scending movement of God's love in its self-gift to us. And
so worship, in its heavenly, perfected form, entails an im-
mediacy between God and man which knows of no setting
asunder. This is what theological tradition calls the vision
of God. Thomists and Scotists dispute whether this funda-
mental act is better called the vision of God or the love of
God: it all depends on one's anthropological starting point.

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 235

But in the last analysis, the point of it all is the same: God
totally permeates the whole man with his plenitude and
his utter openness. God is "all in all," and thus the human
person enters upon his boundless fulfilment.
The christological statements made here also have their
ecclesiological aspect. If heaven depends on being in Christ,
then it must involve a co-being with all those who, to-
gether, constitute the body of Christ. Heaven is a stranger
to isolation. It is the open society of the communion of
saints, and in this way the fulfilment of all human com-
munion. This is not by way of competition with the per-
fect disclosure of God's Face, but, on the contrary, is its
very consequence. It is because the Church knows this
that there is such a thing as the Christian cult of the
saints. That cult does not presuppose some mythical om-
niscience on the part of the saints, but simply the unrup-
tured self-communion of the whole body of Christ-and
the closeness of a love which knows no limit and is sure of
attaining God in the neighbor, and the neighbor in God.
But from this an anthropological element does indeed
emerge. The integration of the "I" into the body of Christ,
its disponibilite at the service of the Lord and of others, is
not the self's dissolution but a purification which is, at
one and the same time, the actualization of its highest po-
tential. This is why heaven is individual for each and
everyone. Everyone sees God in his own proper way.
Everyone receives the love offered by the totality in the
manner suggested by his own irreplaceable uniqueness.
To him who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna, and
I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the
stone, which no one knows except him who receives it. 1l6

In this light, one can understand why the New Testament,

and the whole of tradition with it, calls heaven not only
sheer grace through the gift of love but also "reward." It is

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 236 The Future Life

"reward" in that it is a response to this life-way, this biog-

raphy, this particular person with his actions and experi-
ences. The Scholastics took these insights further and gave
them systematic form. Drawing, in part, on extremely ven-
erable traditions, they spoke of the special 'crowns' of
martyrs, virgins and doctors. Today, we are rather more
circumspect where such assertions are concerned. It is suf-
ficient to know that God gives each and every person his
fulfilment in a way peculiar to this or that individual, and
that in this way each and all receive to the uttermost. Per-
haps such reflections should encourage us, not so much
to consider this way or that privileged in the Church, but
rather to recognize the task of enlarging the vessel of our
own life. But once again, this enlargement is not meant to
ensure that in the world to come we have the largest barn
possible in which to store our wealth, but rather to be able
to distribute all the more to our fellows. In the communion
of the body of Christ, possession can only consist in giving,
the riches of self-fulfilment in the passing on of gifts.
The cosmological dimension of the christological truth
we are considering has occupied our thoughts earlier and
in some detail. The "exaltation" of Christ, the entry of his
humanity into the life of the triune God through the resur-
rection, does not imply his departure from this world but a
new mode of presence to the world. In the imagistic lan-
guage of the ancient credal symbols, the mode of existence
proper to the risen Lord is that of "sitting at the right hand
of the Father." It is sharing in God's sovereign power over
history, a power which is effective even where it is con-
cealed. Thus the exalted Christ is not stripped of his
worldly being but, by coming to transcend the world, is re-
lated to it afresh. "Heaven" means participation in this
new mode of Christ's existence and thus the fulfilment of
what baptism began in us. This is why heaven escapes spa-

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 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 237

tial determination. It lies neither inside nor outside the

space of our world, even though it must not be detached
from the cosmos as some mere "state." Heaven means,
much more, that power over the world which charac-
terizes the new "space" of the body of Christ, the commu-
nion of saints. Heaven is not, then, "above" in a spatial
but in an essential way. This enables us to pronounce
upon the legitimacy, as well as the limitations, of the tra-
ditional images. They retain their truth so long as they
evoke transcendence over, and freedom from, the world's
constraints, and the power of love which overcomes the
world. They become false if they either remove heaven al-
together from relation with this world, or if they attempt
to integrate it totally into the world, as some kind of upper
story. Scripture, accordingly, never tolerates the monar-
chical supremacy of a single image. By utilizing many im-
ages, it keeps open a perspective on the Indescribable. In
particular, by announcing a new heaven and a new earth,
the Bible makes it clear that the whole of creation is des-
tined to become the vessel of God's Glory. All of created
reality is to be drawn into blessedness. The world-God's
creature-is what the Scholastics would call an "acciden-
tal" element in the final joy of the redeemed.
Heaven is in itself eschatological reality. It is the advent
of the finally and wholly Other. Its own definitiveness
stems from the definitiveness of God's irrevocable and in-
divisible love. Its openness vis-a-vis the total eschaton de-
rives from the open history of Christ's body, and therewith
of all creation which is still under construction. Heaven
will only be complete when all the members of the Lord's
body are gathered in. Such completion on the part of the
body of Christ includes, as we have seen, the "resurrection
of the flesh." It is called the "Parousia" inasmuch as then
the presence of Christ, so far only inaugurated among us,

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 238 The Future Life

will reach its fulness and encompass all those who are to
be saved and the whole cosmos with them. And so heaven
comes in two historical stages. The Lord's exaltation gives
rise to the new unity of God with man, and hence to
heaven. The perfecting of the Lord's body in the pleroma
of the ilwhole Christ" brings heaven to its true cosmic
completion. Let us say it once more before we end: the in-
dividual's salvation is whole and entire only when the sal-
vation of the cosmos and all the elect has come to full
fruition. For the redeemed are not simply adjacent to each
other in heaven. Rather, in their being together as the one
Christ, they are heaven. In that moment, the whole crea-
tion will become song. It will be a single act in which, for-
getful of self, the individual will break through the limits
of being into the whole, and the whole take up its dwlling
in the individual. It will be joy in which all questioning is
resolved and satisfied.

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