Purgatory and Limbo

A reader writes in (Yay! First time for that!) asking:*

"Bertha said something such as the souls in purgatory are awaiting judgment. I told her that any soul in purgatory is on its way to Heaven. Hildy asked, "What about Limbo?" ...Can you make your next theology topic Limbo/purgatory?"

* -- I have changed the names of the parties involved to protect their identities, and to allow me to use some amusing names in their place.

So, a few questions are involved here:

1) Are the souls in purgatory awaiting judgment?
2) What's the deal with Limbo?

Let's do this!

As to the first question: are the souls in purgatory awaiting judgment?

Answer: negative. A soul in Purgatory has already been judged and is, as the reader correctly said, "on its way to Heaven." What's the deal with purgatory, then? If they aren't waiting to be judged, what are they doing there? The key to understanding Purgatory is right in its name: Purg-atory, as in purgation, purging.

Every human being ends his life either in the state of friendship with God or not in friendship with God. For those who are in friendship with God, for those who fundamentally desire God and whose actions in their lives have reflected that and oriented them toward God, they will get what they want: spending eternity in the blessed presence of the Holy Trinity, beholding their glory (the Beatific Vision).

BUT we must remember that Scripture of heaven says "nothing impure will enter" (Revelation 21:27). Now, though we may die in the friendship of God, we may still have on our souls venial sins or attachment to sin that make us impure. So, before we can enter heaven, this impurity needs to be purged from our souls, via the prayers of the living and the merits of Christ and the saints. (This is why it's so important to pray for the dead! We help them get to heaven!) This state of purgation we call Purgatory.

Think of Purgatory as the "wash room" or "mud room" in your home, where you clean off whatever dirt or grime you picked up outside before coming in to the house.

As to the second question: what's the deal with Limbo?

Answer: Limbo was a solution posed by theologians to a problem they perceived. Follow me: Baptism removes original sin and puts us into friendship with God through Christ. Those who still have original sin on their souls are not in the friendship of God cannot enter Heaven, and are thus bound for Hell. But, the question arose, what about babies who die before they can be baptized? They still have original sin on their souls, but they never had the chance to get it removed, nor did they grow old enough to develop the capacity to choose or reject God by their actions. Does it seem right that these babies suffer Hell for all eternity?

That didn't sit right with people. Such a fate for babies with no personal fault seemed unthinkable with an all-merciful God involved. So, they proposed a solution: a state in which the unbaptized babies would not enjoy the Beatific Vision in Heaven, but neither would they suffer the pains of Hell. (They might suffer the pain of the loss of Heaven, but this would be minor.) This state came to be referred to as Limbo, and for many centuries was taught in the Church as a likelihood.

In recent years, though, the Church has deemed the theory unnecessary. As Catechism paragraph 1261 states:

As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.

This is to say, "We can't say for certain what happens, but we can trust in the mercy of God." But if God has revealed that Baptism is necessary for salvation, how can this be? Catechism paragraph 1257 gives a quotation that gives us the principle by which we may have this hope: "God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments." That is: God has bound us to receive the sacraments, but He, being their Author, is free and able to act outside of them if He chooses. This allows for the possibility of salvation of those who lived before Christ; or those who lived after but never had the opportunity to be baptized, like an inhabitant of 9th-century Papua New Guinea who never heard the Gospel message; or those who perhaps have only ever been given a distorted view of Christ and His Church and reject that distortion and thus are not truly rejecting God or refusing baptism. We deem it fitting of God, our merciful Father, to extend his grace in such a way in the case of unbaptized babies.

Some may hear such an idea and think, "Post-Vatican II claptrap!" I would give two responses to that: 1) I've seen this phrase used at least as far back as Peter Lombard, the 12th-century bishop of Paris and theologian whose Book of Sentences was THE textbook in the medieval Church; and I think it's older, but I can't find an earlier reference. The point is, it's an old and well-received idea. 2) Even the venerable Ludwig Ott in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, written in the 1950s (before Vatican II) calls Limbo a theological assumption (p. 114), and theological assumptions are subject to revision.

So, neither Purgatory nor Limbo are places where souls are awaiting judgment; indeed, the Church does not even really teach Limbo as a theory anymore.

Hope that helps! Do ask follow-ups!

Redemption vs. Salvation

Recently I wrote on how "acceptance" and "tolerance" are often used as synonyms when they really denote two separate ideas. Today I'd like to do something similar, but this time I'll be pulling from the theological lexicon. Let's talk about the difference between "redemption" and "salvation."

We know that "redemption" and "salvation" both generally refer to our being freed from our sins and their eternal consequences. We speak of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, which freed us from our sins, both as his "saving act" and "the work of our redemption." So it would seem like these two words essentially mean the same thing, like "song" and "ditty," or "politician" and "crook." Right?

Well, not quite. Not all crooks are politicians.

Redemption and salvation refer to two aspects or, perhaps, two levels of our being freed from sin. On one level, Christ's sacrifice pays the debt for the sins of all humanity, thus opening the possibility for every single human being to return to the friendship of God, if they have faith in Jesus, repent of their sins, and are baptized (Acts 2:38). Redemption is the paying off of the debt, the paving of the highway to heaven, the printing of the "Get out of Jail" cards.

On another level, when a person is baptized into Christ's death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5), the effect of the redemption is applied to the individual person; that particular person's sins are forgiven them, and that particular person returns to the friendship of God. This is salvation: when you step into the First Bank of Christ and accept the offer of "debt forgiveness," when you take the on-ramp for the highway to heaven, when you cash in your "Get out of Jail" card. Salvation is redemption applied to the individual.

If we equate these two words, confusion can creep in. We remember a few months ago when Pope Francis spoke of how "the Lord has redeemed all of us," and the secular press took that to mean the pope was announcing a belief in universal salvation; that is, the pope said that Christ had given everyone the opportunity to be saved, but the press took that to mean that everyone will be saved. It's the difference between "7-11 is giving away free Slurpees, you just have to go and get one!" and "7-11 is giving away free Slurpees, and they're delivering them to your house!" An important distinction!

Our English language is a hodge-podge of German, French, Latin, Greek, and whatever else the Anglo-Saxons could borrow. This amalgamation has blessed us with over half a million words at our disposal, each with its own subtleties and nuances. Let's use them to the fullest!

What We Forget at Funerals

"Uncle Harry has gone home to the Lord. He's gone on to his eternal destiny."

When we've lost a loved one, we use such phrases to comfort ourselves. While they are right in expressing the Christian hope that death does not have the final word, each of them is missing a key piece of our belief about what happens after we die.

"Uncle Harry has gone home to the Lord."

This says that Uncle Harry is now in heaven. I don't want to be a Negative or Nitpicky Nicky here, but we don't know the fate of any person when they die. None of us can know whether Uncle Harry died in a state of grace, in the friendship of God, with no unconfessed mortal sin; and even if he did, he may well have to spend some time in purgatory, excising those last bits of attachment to sin and making his soul all-holy before approaching the throne of God. There are two potential dangers, then, inherent in this phrase:

1. We fall into an implicit universalism where we assume that everyone will be saved, or at least a near-universalism where we assume everyone will be saved as long as they're basically good and didn't kill anybody or anything. 
2. By assuming they go to heaven right away, we neglect our absolutely essential duty to pray for the souls of the faithful departed, that we might aid their sanctification and help them get from the waiting room of purgatory into their heavenly home. (My girlfriend's family include's a prayer for the dead whenever they pray before meals, which I think is beautiful and practical--then you're sure to pray for the dead three times a day!)

"He's gone on to his eternal destiny."

From hearing this and other similar phrases, you get the sense that our "eternal destiny," our final end, is to spend eternity as a disembodied soul; your ol' body lies a-moldering in the grave, but your soul goes marching on, as though your body were a spacesuit being used temporarily to let your soul function in this alien environment, ultimately separate from you and disposable. But your body is not an accidental attachment to you; it is you. The human person is a composite of soul and body; each is incomplete without the other. You are an embodied soul, an ensouled body. As such, your eternal destiny must also include your body, and that is precisely what we believe as Christians. It's right there in the Creed: "I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." At the end of time, there will be a new heavens and a new earth, and we will have glorified bodies, like Jesus' resurrected body (this is why St. Paul calls Jesus "the firstfruits of the resurrection"), to live with God in this renewed state for all eternity; this is what the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright calls "life after life after death." Spirit and flesh no longer striving against each other, but joined in harmony and integrity, forever enjoying the beatific vision of God Himself, sharing in His very life. That is our eternal destiny.

Don't forget it!

Salvation History in Three Minutes or Less

For those who have trouble keeping straight in their head whether Moses was before or after Jesus, I offer this brief account of salvation history:

In the beginning (and we mean "beginning" in the broadest sense, the sort of beginning that could span billions of years), God created everything, from angels to galaxies to cockroaches, and as creation's crowning achievement, he made human beings, endowed with intellects so they could know God and wills so they could love God and bodies so they could serve God in the material world. Humanity was to live in union with God. But these very first human beings disobeyed God and did the one thing He asked them not to do: they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, and bit off more than they could chew. Their bond with God was broken by their own actions. So God banished them from paradise, and thus began the long, sad story of human death and misery. But even then God planned, in the fullness of time, to restore humanity to unity with Him.

Part of God's plan was to form humanity by establishing a special relationship with certain human beings, making covenants with them. He made a covenant with Noah that He would never again flood the entire earth and would no longer make war on humanity. He made a covenant with Abraham that He would bring forth from Abraham a holy people, a people set apart as God's own. He made a covenant with Moses to let Israel flourish in the land He would give them if they obeyed his commandments and laws. He made a covenant with David that David's descendants would rule Israel as a shepherd tends his sheep and always enjoy God's favor. And after the time of David, through the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, through the captivity of the people in Babylon, through their return to their land, the prophets, from Amos to Isaiah to Jeremiah to Malachi, continually proclaimed God's promises of His covenant, assuring the people that they would one day be fulfilled.

Let's put the contents of these covenants together: God promises to have peace with humanity; God promises to make a holy people; God promises that the people will flourish if they obey Him; God promises that the Son of David will lead this people. God fulfilled all of these covenants perfectly when He Himself came to fulfill them. God took flesh and became man in the person of Jesus Christ, and through his life, death, and resurrection, brought peace between God and humanity, made a holy people of those who believe in him (his Church), gave them the sacraments to give them spiritual nourishment and new life, and became the Good Shepherd who leads his flock.

After Christ's ascension, the apostles spread the Good News of this new and everlasting covenant between God and all humanity, as Christ had sent them to do, traveling to all corners of the known world and building up the Church. (Tradition has various apostles going everywhere from India to Spain to Ethiopia.) The apostles then appointed those who would succeed them in guiding the Church in holiness and teaching the true faith, and those ones in turn appointed successors, so that, two thousand years later, via a sort of apostolic chain of custody, we still profess with the faith of the apostles, and are taught, governed, and sanctified through the work of the apostolic ministry (bishops, priests, deacons).

God keeps His promises.