Purgatory and History 2

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas

About the time of Tertullian, a story arose about two martyrs in North Africa named Perpetua and Felicitas. In it, Perpetua’s brother, Dinocratus, dies, and she has a vision of him in a dream. Dinocratus is in pain with sores on his face, and he is struggling to get a drink of water from a fountain that is too tall for him (since he is a child). Perpetua prays for him that night, and then, she has another vision of him. This time, however, he has a scar where there was an open wound, and the fountain is now down to his navel so that he could drink from it. Many of the adherents to the belief in Purgatory, such as Augustine, used this story to advance their beliefs. Le Goff comments on The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas:

“It is not Purgatory as such that is being discussed here, and none of the images contained in Perpetua’s two visions recur in medieval imagery associated with Purgatory. The garden in which Dinocratus finds himself is almost paradisiacal in nature; it is neither a valley nor a plain nor a mountain. The thirst and feebleness from which he suffers are described as psychological rather than moral defects. He suffers psychic and physical pain rather than the pain of punishment for a wrong, labor rather than poena, whereas the texts that foreshadow Purgatory or that concern Purgatory per se prefer the latter term to the former. The Passion makes no mention of either judgment or punishment.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.50.

Cyprian of Carthage

Another misused passage by Roman Catholic apologists is Cyprian’s Letter to Antonian (Epistle 51). The controversial section reads:

“And do not think, dearest brother, that either the courage of the brethren will be lessened, or that martyrdoms will fail for this cause, that repentance is relaxed to the lapsed, and that the hope of peace is offered to the penitent. The strength of the truly believing remains unshaken; and with those who fear and love God with their whole heart, their integrity continues steady and strong. For to adulterers even a time of repentance is granted by us, and peace is given. Yet virginity is not therefore deficient in the Church, nor does the glorious design of continence languish through the sins of others. The Church, crowned with so many virgins, flourishes; and chastity and modesty preserve the tenor of their glory. Nor is the vigour of continence broken down because repentance and pardon are facilitated to the adulterer. It is one thing to stand for pardon, another thing to attain to glory: it is one thing, when cast into prison, not to go out thence until one has paid the uttermost farthing; another thing at once to receive the wages of faith and courage. It is one thing, tortured by long suffering for sins, to be cleansed and long purged by fire; another to have purged all sins by suffering. It is one thing, in fine, to be in suspense till the sentence of God at the day of judgment; another to be at once crowned by the Lord.”

-Cyprian, The Epistles of Cyprian, Epistle 51.20

http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-76.htm#P5563_1696936

It would not surprise me if someone like Cyprian actually believed in something like Purgatory since much of what would later become Roman Catholic theology was already starting to appear in the Western Church (i.e. priests, saving power of sacraments, etc.). However, as scholars have pointed out, Cyprian was not talking about the hereafter:

“Jay’s refutation of the notion that Cyprian put forth a doctrine akin to that of Purgatory seems to me well founded. According to Jay, what is being discussed in the letter to Antonian is the difference between the Christians who did not stand up to persecution (the lapsi and apostates) and the martyrs. It is not a question of “purgatory” in the hereafter but of penitence here below. The reference to imprisonment has to do not with Purgatory, which in any case did not yet exist, but rather with the penitential discipline of the Church.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.58.

Clement of Alexandria and Origen

The two famous Alexandrians are the progenitors within the Christian Church of the idea of temporal suffering after death. Alexandria was a place where Hellenism (Greek philosophy) and Christianity met and mixed with the inevitable result of the infusion of Greek philosophical ideas into Christian theology (LeGoff, p.52). Clement and Origen’s idea of punishment after death did not stem out of the doctrines handed down from the Apostles, but rather, it came out of their obsession with Greek philosophy and Plato in particular:

“The two theologians were indebted to ancient Greece for the idea that the chastisement inflicted by the gods is not punishment but rather a means of education and salvation, part of a process of purification. In Plato’s view this chastisement is a boon offered by the gods. Clement and Origen deduce from this the idea that “to punish” is synonymous with “to educate” and that any chastisement by God contributes to man’s salvation…Their Platonic idea of Christianity led Clement and Origen to take a comforting view of the matter…In keeping with this attitude, the two theologians give a soothing interpretation of the Old Testament passages in which God explicitly uses fire as an instrument of his wrath...Origen develops to the full the theory of purification, catharsis, which came to him from Plato, the Orphics, and the Pythagoreans.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp.52-53, 55.

But, we should not stop here because the punishment that they had described as ‘Catharsis’, is not the same as Purgatory. The first difference is that even the saints will pass through the fires of judgment (LeGoff, pp.54, 56). Second, this fiery judgment took place on judgment day at the end of the world rather than immediately after death (LeGoff, pp.55, 56). Le Goff points out (emphasis mine):

“Thus, if Origen glimpsed the future Purgatory, still his idea of Purgatory was so overshadowed by his eschatology and by his idea of Hell as a temporary abode that ultimately it vanishes from view. Nevertheless, it was Origen who clearly stated for the first time the idea that the soul can be purified in the other world after death.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.56-57.

Augustine

Augustine is perhaps the great ‘father’ of Purgatory. It was the beliefs of Augustine that caused Gregory the Great to make Purgatory an official doctrine in the Western Church. However, as historians have pointed out, Augustine did not get his belief in Purgatory from any ‘Apostolic’ doctrine that was handed down; but rather, it was the natural conclusion of his beliefs on justification. Le Goff points out that he wasn’t even sure that it existed (emphasis mine):

“Against them Augustine argued that there are two fires, an everlasting fire in which the damned, for whom intercession is futile, burn forever-on which Augustine lays great stress-and a purgatorial fire, about which he is more hesitant. Thus what interests Augustine is not what would one day become Purgatory but rather Hell…Though not entirely clear about whether this category of soul and this kind of fire actually exist or not, Augustine is more explicit about what they are like if they do exist.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.69.

Augustine states this clearly in one of his works (emphasis mine):

“It is not beyond belief that something of the sort takes place even after this life, and there is room for inquiry whether it is so, and the answer may by found (or not found) to be that a certain number of the faithful are the more belatedly or the more speedily saved, through a sort of fire…”

-Augustine’sEnchiridion as cited in Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.72.

However, in Augustine’s doctrine of Purgatory, small everyday sins do not need to be atoned for (LeGoff, p.70). This is in opposition to the Purgatory of modern Roman Catholicism.

Gregory the Great

Pope Gregory the Great used the authority of Augustine to dogmatize the doctrine of Purgatory in the Western Church. As William Webster puts it:

“Once the authority of Augustine established the theology of purgatory and it was given dogmatic expression by Gregory the Great, the teaching was promoted and embellished through the accounts of numerous visions which were accepted at face value.”

-William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), p.115.

The visions and tales of Gregory the Great that were used to promote Purgatory can only be described as mythological and superstitious:

“There is, to begin with, the allure of a tale couched in an attractive complete with plot, fascinating details, “suspense,” and a striking ending…And finally, he settled on a mixture of the supernatural and the quotidian in which bath attendants are ghosts and the vapors of the bath are effluvia of the other world. Gregory, it is clear, had a real imaginative flair.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), p.93.

The absurdity upon which this doctrine was dogmatized in the Western Church shows that its historical credentials are lacking.

Questions and Answers

So, to summarize, I will answer a few questions:

Q. Have the people of God always believed in temporal punishments in the afterlife or that the prayers of the living can purify the souls of the dead in the afterlife?

A. No, the first time that the Jews started praying for the dead was only after the conquest of Alexander the Great who brought Hellenism to the Middle East. As Le Goff states, it did not become prevalent until the first century B.C. There are no records that the earliest Christians believed in praying for the dead or Purgatory, but as Christianity mixed with the Greco-Roman culture, these ideas started making their way into Christian theology. To this day, the Jews and the Greek Church do not accept anything similar to Purgatory.

Q. Did the doctrine of Purgatory originate with the Apostles?

A. No, the doctrine of Purgatory started out in an embryonic form as the doctrine of ‘Catharsis’. Clement of Alexandria and Origen started teaching this doctrine in the late second and early third centuries. The two bishops got their ideas for this doctrine mainly from Greek philosophy and Plato in particular.

Q. If this doctrine isn’t true, then why did so many people come to believe in it.

A. I do not know, but I have a theory. First, the belief stemmed from an unbiblical view of baptism. According to many in the Church after the days of the Apostolic fathers, water baptism removed the sin and guilt of a person and made them a Christian. [See the articles on baptismal regeneration for the refutation of this belief: history and Scripture.] Thus, the theologians of the early church began to see some of their congregation fall into sin frequently, but they still thought that these people were Christians. Therefore, they needed to come up with a way to make things ‘fair’. “Why should he get the same reward as me when I have lived a holy life and he has not?” To accomplish this, they invented a period of temporal punishments for a time proportional to the amount of wickedness that they had done in their lives.

Second, when the Bible was translated into Latin, a mistranslation took place in the meaning of the verb ‘to justify’. They translated ‘dikaiow’ (i.e. to declare righteous) as ‘iustificare’ (i.e. to make righteous). So, theWestern Church saw justification as a process rather than a one time event. Emphasis was placed on how the individual behaves in order to attain righteousness rather than placing an emphasis on Christ and the righteousness that He has attained for the individual. Thus, for the ordinary Christian who was not ‘good enough’ to be a saint, the need was seen for something to complete the process after death so that he/she would be ‘good enough’ to enter heaven. [This is discussed more thoroughly in the articles on justification.]

Lastly, as the Christian Church became more and more popular, more and more people were attracted to it for the wrong reasons. Thus, the nominalism inside the Church increased, and the unregenerate masses still had high views of man and of themselves. It was only natural that the proud hearted would not be put off by a doctrine that stated that one could contribute to his own salvation by expiating the punishment for his own sins.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, some helpful audio on this topic can be found at:

http://www.straitgate.com/webster/

Some helpful online reading can be found here:

http://members.aol.com/jasonte2/purge.htm

http://aomin.org?ChanDeb1.htm