Posted on 05/29/2005 7:55:52 AM PDT by kosta50
BARI, Italy (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI visited the eastern port of Bari on his first papal trip Sunday and pledged to make healing the 1,000-year-old rift with the Orthodox church a "fundamental" commitment of his papacy.
Benedict made the pledge in a city closely tied to the Orthodox church. Bari, on Italy's Adriatic coast, is considered a "bridge" between East and West and is home to the relics of St. Nicholas of Myra, a 4th-Century saint who is one of the most popular in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Benedict referred to Bari as a "land of meeting and dialogue" with the Orthodox in his homily at a Mass that closed a national religious conference. It was his first pilgrimage outside Rome since being elected the 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
There is no "third" state and no temporal purifying fires mentioned anywhere in the Scriptures or teachings of those who understood Greek properly. Some have used Eastern Fathers to show that they agreed with Latins, by incorrectly translating their works. That much is clear from the notes +Mark of Ephesus and other Orthodox Fathers made at the Council in their opposition to the Latin doctrine.
Alexander Kalomiros in his Rivers of Fire, sums up why the Orthodox cannot even conceive of the Purgatory:
But we don't teach a created activity at all. Aquinas again: "The fire of Purgatory is eternal in its substance, but temporary in its cleansing effect." (Summa, Supplement Article II, Q. 1, ad. 2)
That which is eternal is not created, since eternal is "being without beginning or end; existing outside of time."
I'm quoting him in the hopes that you will understand that we don't really differ from you on this doctrine. I am perfectly able to accept as a correct expression of the faith the method and mode of post-death cleansing of the soul, and the assistance in relieving souls from this in the worship of the Church that St. Mark expressed. We don't teach a third place, a temporary fire, or other objections that have been brought up.
no temporal purifying fires
We agree entirely about temporal fires. This is apparently a misconception on your part of what we teach. "The fire of Purgatory is eternal in its substance, but temporary in its cleansing effect." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Supplement Article II, Q. 1, ad 1).
Who can love a torturer?
The "wrath of God" is the projection of the wrath of the sinner towards God onto God's relation to the sinner. The sinner hates God and wishes to be freed of Him and His holy law, but since this is impossible, he feels it, like a petulant child, as the "wrath of God" never permitting him to have his own way.
Purgatory is not a state of torture, but of purification and cleansing. The Catechism says the "final purification of the elect ... is entirely different from the punishment of the damned". St. Thomas in the Summa says: "it is the same fire which torments the damned in hell and cleanses the just in Purgatory" and also "The punishment of hell is for the purpose of affliction, wherefore it is called by the names of things that are wont to afflict us here. But the chief purpose of the punishment of Purgatory is to cleanse us from the remains of sin; and consequently the pain of fire only is ascribed to Purgatory, because fire cleanses and consumes."
The Just in Purgatory are not being tormented or tortured. They are in pain at their own earthly follies preventing them from the immediate union with God they know will be their ultimate lot. It is the difference between the pain of a curative surgery, and the pain of having ones limbs amputated as a form of torture. In any case, the pain of purgatory is from within ourselves, not from God. God is love, not torture.
St. Thomas notes that the pain of purgatory is: "the sense of hurt" and that "the more sensitive a thing is, the greater the pain caused by that which hurts it" and thus the soul being the seat of sensation is very acute to pain. So that the cause of hurt in purgatory is that "the holy souls desire the Sovereign Good with the most intense longing ... and because, had there been no obstacle, they would already have gained the goal of enjoying the Sovereign Good--it follows that they grieve exceedingly for their delay", the obstacle being their own imcomplete penance upon earth (Summa, Supplement, Q 70, Art. 1).
Their own desire for God is the cause of the pain of the Holy Souls, while it is the hatred of God while being in His presence that is the cause of the pain of hell. The former are pained from not being fully united with God, the latter from being unable to completely escape His presence.
I think Hermann is following the lead of the latest Latin catechism and trying to minimize or even back away from the notion of purgatorial fire, while maintaining the Latin conceptualization of a 'state' of purgatory.
He admits the possiblity that as part of a reunion, the West might accept the Palamite synods as Ecumenical. If that were the done, it would be easy enough for the Latins to further back away from the scholastic speculations about 'purgatory' and consider them as a confusion between the particular judgement the Last Judgement.
The Fathers certainly admit the possiblity that some who are saved are nonetheless confined in hades temporarily, to later be lead to Paradise by their guardian angel. (Though hades is not a place of torment, save as the soul with only itself to consider may torment itself with regret or fear of the Last Judgement, but confinement.) The passage from St. Mark of Ephesus's refutations continues to point this out. (And if the Latins want, even after reunion, to call temporary confinement in hades, 'purgatory' for old-times sake, I'm not sure I'd object--they just have to be clear on what's actually going on.)
The only fire that exists in regard to the soul after death is the eternal fire of the Uncreated Energies which will be manifested only at the Last Judgement, when God is all-in-all. "The fires of hell are the love of God," as one of the Fathers said. Whether some who will ultimately shine with that Glory also get a nasty burn as some evil, not drained off with regret and dread in hades or lifted through the prayers of the Church, is destroyed within them in the first moments of the Eighth and Eternal Day, I certainly don't know.
(We honestly don't know a whole lot about that: after all some of the Fathers allow the possiblity that the torments of hell are only subjectively eternal, since ultimately all evil must be destroyed by the fire of Divinity, and although it is heresy to teach that an apocatastasis is inevitable, we are still allowed to pray for one.)
"But if souls have departed this life in faith and love, while nevertheless carrying with themselves certain faults, whether small ones over which they have not repented at all, or great ones for which — even though have repented over them — they did not undertake to show fruits of repentance: such souls, we believe, must be cleansed from this kind of sins" (St. Mark of Ephesus)
Hmmm, that seems quite orthodox to me. Sure he wasn't a contributor to the Douay-Rheims Bible?:
1 Cor 3,11 For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus. 12 Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: 13 Every man's work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is. 14 If any man's work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 15 If any man's work burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.
Commentary:
12 "Upon this foundation"... The foundation is Christ and his doctrine: or the true faith in him, working through charity. The building upon this foundation gold, silver, and precious stones, signifies the more perfect preaching and practice of the gospel; the wood, hay, and stubble, such preaching as that of the Corinthian teachers (who affected the pomp of words and human eloquence) and such practice as is mixed with much imperfection, and many lesser sins. Now the day of the Lord, and his fiery trial, (in the particular judgment immediately after death,) shall make manifest of what sort every man's work has been: of which, during this life, it is hard to make a judgment. For then the fire of God's judgment shall try every man's work. And they, whose works, like wood, hay, and stubble, cannot abide the fire, shall suffer loss; these works being found to be of no value; yet they themselves, having built upon the right foundation, (by living and dying in the true faith and in the state of grace, though with some imperfection,) shall be saved yet so as by fire; being liable to this punishment, by reason of the wood, hay, and stubble, which was mixed with their building.
I don't think I am trying to back away from anything, only state what is understandable and agreeable. St. Thomas reminds us in the Summa "Nothing is clearly stated in Scripture about the situation of Purgatory, nor is it possible to offer convincing arguments on this question."
All the descriptions of the afterlife are figures of an either more blissful or more terrible reality than we can possibly imagine. I think this applies to Purgatory too.
He admits the possiblity that as part of a reunion, the West might accept the Palamite synods as Ecumenical.
Well, its only fair if we are going to ask you to accept the dogmatics of Trent against the Protestant deconstruction of the Sacraments. Certainly, Palamitism needs to be addressed and integrated into the Catholic theological synthesis.
Purgatory is not about torture. It is not about punishment in any sense. It is about healing and sanctification -- the spiritual restoration of the person.
It may help you to consider that, unlike the fire of hell which is an image of torment and utter destruction, the fire of purgatory is an image of purification ("for he is like a refining fire" -- burning away impurities -- remember?), of transformation (fire molds things into new forms), and of warmth and enlightenment. The souls in purgatory do suffer, but it's a suffering of longing for God and being unable to help themselves. It's important to get away from the understanding of fire as purely punitive: even the Catholic image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus depicts the Heart on fire, in that case, with love for ungrateful man.
Catholics believe that purgatory is a necessary consequence of human free will. Even though the beatific vision is an unmerited gift, most of us die with disintegrated personalities, distorted by worldly attachments and the self-inflicted spiritual destruction resulting from our own sinfulness. Of course God could instantaneously tidy this up in a gratuitous act, but to do so would be a violation of his own nature with which he endowed us. We become good through God’s grace, but we have to desire that gift and cooperate with it as it changes us. For God to sanctify us regardless of our cooperation or even against our will would be to annihilate the nature that makes us icons of God in the first place. And remember – free will isn’t just a question of cooperation with grace. In revoking our free will, God would be revoking our ability to love. In gratuitously saving us, God would destroy us, and the beatific vision would be rendered pointless.
If you don’t believe in purgatory, you can’t believe in theosis.
Look at it this way: suppose one person maliciously injures another person. Later, he seeks and receives forgiveness. This forgiveness reconciles the two, but does not remedy the actual harm wrought by the wrongdoer. It doesn't do away with the wrongdoer's contrite desire to make amends, as far as it lies within his power to do so.
Most importantly, it does not remedy the spiritual harm the wrongdoer has done to himself. Because sin tends to harden the heart and become habitual, the wrongdoer -- even after having been forgiven -- will retain an attachment to his old temptation, and will remain vulnerable to falling again. He may try to resist, but the bad old habit will remain, unless it is conquered by a lengthy and painful transformation of the person, by which the integrity of his appetite and will are restored, so that he no longer so harbors a concupiscent hunger, even against his will, for what's evil (think of Paul's words about the war in his bodily members) -- or else by God's external decision to strip the man of his evil propensities so that they will no longer tempt him. As I've said, for God to do this would be to strip him of the God-endowed human nature, according to which we are functional moral agents making choices for God or against him. To strip man of free will would be to make his choice meaningless, and a man incapable of choice is incapable of love. Incapable of love, man would have no possibility of communion with God: as I've said above, his very nature as the image and likeness of God would be destroyed and in the kingdom of heaven he'd be reduced from the high dignity of an adopted child of God, sharing intimately in the inner life of the Trinity, to the status of a house pet -- pampered and cosseted but radically incapable of full communion and heirship in the Kingdom. The Kingdom of Heaven itself would be little more than God's petting zoo -- good enough for muslims perhaps, but not at all the theosis that animates the Christian hope.
So, to repeat: no purgatory, no heaven.
"The Fathers certainly admit the possiblity that some who are saved are nonetheless confined in hades temporarily, to later be lead to Paradise by their guardian angel. (Though hades is not a place of torment, save as the soul with only itself to consider may torment itself with regret or fear of the Last Judgement, but confinement.)"
The Fathers called this The Particular Judgment. Virtually every soul goes through this save those, like the Theotokos, who achieve theosis in this life. Some of the Fathers liken it to a period of waiting, though of course time per se would be meaningless in such a context. Those who have become "like God" or "like Christ" in their lives have a foretaste of the Glory to come at the Final Judgment, while those who have "missed the mark" have a similar foretaste of the damnation to come. This time in hades is not a period of purgation, but it is a time during which we the living Faithful and the saints can pray that at the Final Judgment these souls will become one with God in Glory.
Certainly, as you have said, Reader, the fire image is found throughout the writings of the Father, it being the love of God which brings joy to those who are holy and pain and torment to those who have rejected God; it burns them like a terrible fire. But there is little if any mention by the Fathers in the East of a purging fire after death. Indeed the post death fire mentioned by the Fathers is the river of fire which flows from the throne of Christ at the Final Judgment and is shown on the Icon of the Last Judgment.
If one leaves out the concept of purging fire post physical death, time and of course "indulgences", it seems like the Latin concept of what happens after death is pretty close to ours, but I'm leaving out some pretty large elements.
Kolokotronis said what is essential: Virtually every soul goes through this [Particular Judgment] save those, like the Theotokos, who achieve theosis in this life.
After death we "go" to Hades, where we await to be united with our bodies. If I am not mitsaken, the Orthodox teaching is that Hades is separated into Paradise and Hell, where the souls of the departed go and foretaste their final (eternal) state.
St. Mark of Ephesus, addressing our sins, says that "we believe [our souls] must be cleansed from this kind of sins" but he does not suggest "how" this will be done.
Save for those who have achieved full theosis, and we know only of the Holy Mother of God to be so pure, the rest of us are all going to Hades one way or another. The difference being that some will know there is no way out while others will know their sins are forgiven.
As to how can souls "achieve" theosis without bodily passions is an enigma in need of clarification. The time to change is in the changing world, not in a timeless repose. We know that no matter what we do or achieve we will be saved by God's mercy alone. Just how this will be done is God's mystery.
Someone mentioned prayers for the dead. It was my understanding that the Orthodox pray for the departed to express gratitude to God for having saved the souls of our departed, to exalt His mercy and justice, and not to ask or, God forbid, "buy" favors with indulgencies!
To me personally the idea of the Purgatory allows people to think that not being "good" during life is okay because we will go to "reform school" after life and everything will be okay. The teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ leave no room for such a 'state' or 'place' or possibility.
Since virtually all of humanity will leave this life in flesh with stains of sin, we will all need to be washed or "cleansed" or "scrubbed" or "purged" thoroughly by His infinite mercy, in a manner unknown to us, which God chose not to reveal, because it is not incumbent on our salvation, and not something in which we can cooperate with His Grace.
To our Latin brothers, I ask what evidence is there that there will be "time" involved in this process -- and how does the Church reconcile those sinners whose sins "require" longer "time," who die one day before the Final Judgment, as opposed to those with equal sins who were being purified by fire for centuries? Obviously, time is not the issue. God's Judgment is outside of time.
Orthodoxy teaches that we are judged upon our death on earth and that the essence of that judgment is no different than that of the Final Judgment.
I appreciate your efforts to defend us Latins, but I'm afraid you're misinterpreting St. Thomas. He, like most of the scholastics, taught that the fire of Purgatory/Hell was a material, corporeal fire. The statement that the fire is "eternal in substance" does not prove what you want in any case - he merely means that it will last forever. "Aeternus" can simply mean "enduring, permanent, endless" - the point is that the fire of hell is "everlasting", even though the souls in purgatory will experience it only for a temporal duration. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, lib. 4 cap. 90 he discusses how the corporeal fire of hell can cause incorporeal substances (that is, souls) to suffer. See also Quaestio disputata de anima, art. 21, "Vicesimoprimo quaeritur utrum anima separata possit pati poenam ab igne corporeo".
You're also misunderstanding Mark of Ephesus. When he says "they are kept in hell, but not in order to remain forever in fire and torment, but as it were in prison and confinement under guard", he doesn't mean that they are tormented by fire but just not "forever". He says elsewhere "We affirm that neither the righteous have as yet received the fullness of their lot and that blessed condition for which they have prepared themselves here through works, nor have sinners, after death, been led away into the eternal punishment in which they shall be tormented eternally. Rather, both the one and the other must necessarily take place after the Judgment of that last day and the resurrection of all. ... nor have the second part yet been given over to eternal torments nor to burning in the unquenchable fire."
Fr. Seraphim Rose describes Mark's doctrine, from the homilies against purgatorial fire given at Florence:
In the Orthodox doctrine, on the other hand, which St. Mark teaches, the faithful who have died with small sins unconfessed, or who have not brought forth fruits of repentance for sins they have confessed, are cleansed of these sins either in the trial of death itself with its fear, or after death, when they are confined (but not permanently) in hell, by the prayers and Liturgies of the Church and good deeds performed for them by the faithful. Even sinners destined for eternal torment can be given a certain relief from their torment in hell by these means also. There is no fire tormenting sinners now, however, either in hell (for the eternal fire will begin to torment them only after the Last Judgment), or much less in any third place like "purgatory"; all visions of fire which are seen by men are as it were images or prophecies of what will be in the future age. All forgiveness of sins after death comes solely from the goodness of God, which extends even to those in hell, with the cooperation of the prayers of men, and no "payment" or "satisfaction" is due for sins which have been forgiven.
Because of this rejection of the purgatorial fire on the part of the Greeks, the Council of Florence (wisely) purposefully refrained from defining anything on the question. It now appears that the Orthodox here want to impose their own particular opinions on us, though. Can't we just leave the matter free, as it was in the time of the Fathers?
If a man departs this life with lighter faults, he is condemned to fire which burns away the lighter materials, and prepares the soul for the kingdom of God, where nothing defiled may enter. For if on the foundation of Christ you have built not only gold and silver and precious stones (I Cor., 3); but also wood and hay and stubble, what do you expect when the soul shall be separated from the body? Would you enter into heaven with your wood and hay and stubble and thus defile the kingdom of God; or on account of these hindrances would you remain without and receive no reward for your gold and silver and precious stones? Neither is this just. It remains then that you be committed to the fire which will burn the light materials; for our God to those who can comprehend heavenly things is called a cleansing fire. But this fire consumes not the creature, but what the creature has himself built, wood, and hay and stubble. It is manifest that the fire destroys the wood of our transgressions and then returns to us the reward of our great works. (Origen, P.G. , XIII, col. 445, 448)
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. (St. Cyprian, Letter 51:20)
For it is said: He himself however will be saved, though as if by fire [1 Cor 3, 12 15]. And since it is said, he will be saved, that fire is disdained. So for anyone to be evenly saved by fire, that fire however will be graver than anything a man can suffer in this life. (St. Augustine, in Ps. 37, n. 3)
This punishment under the earth will await those, who, having lost instead of preserving their Baptism, will perish for ever; whereas those who have done deeds calling for temporal punishments, shall pass over the fiery river and that fearful water the drops of which are fire. (Eusebius Emissenus)
When he has quitted his body and the difference between virtue and vice is known he cannot approach God till the purging fire shall have cleansed the stains with which his soul was infested. That same fire in others will cancel the corruption of matter, and the propensity to evil. (St. Gregory of Nyssa, P. G., XLVI, col. 524, 525)
Tertullian and St. Cyrpian of Carthage speak very clearly of indulgences, their granting, use and abuse, in North Africa in the period of AD 200-260. Those awaiting martyrdom customarily gave out writs called "libelus pacis" where they agreed that a share of their sufferings would be on the behalf of some brother under penance, that his penance might be shortened so he could reenter communion.
Tertullian: "Some, not able to find this peace in the Church, have been used to seek it from the imprisoned martyrs. And so you ought to have it dwelling with you, and to cherish it, and to guard it, that you may be able perhaps to bestow it upon others." (To the Martyrs, Chapter 1)
St. Cyprian: "... you sent letters to me in which you ask that your wishes should be examined, and that peace should be granted to certain of the lapsed as soon as with the end of the persecution ... I beg you with what entreaties I may, that, as mindful of the Gospel, and considering what and what sort of things in past time your predecessors the martyrs conceded, how careful they were in all respects, you also should anxiously and cautiously weigh the wishes of those who petition you, since, as friends of the Lord, and hereafter to exercise judgment with Him, you must inspect both the conduct and the doings and the deserts of each one. You must consider also the kinds and qualities of their sins, lest, in the event of anything being abruptly and unworthily either promised by you or done by me, our Church should begin to blush" (Epistle 10.1, 3)
St. Cyprian: "I think I have sufficiently written on this subject in the last letter that was sent to you, that they who have received a certificate froth the martyrs, and can be assisted by their help with the Lord in respect of their sins, if they begin to be oppressed with any sickness or risk; when they have made confession, and have received the imposition of hands on them by you in acknowledgment of their penitence, should be remitted to the Lord with the peace promised to them by the martyrs." (Epistle 13.2)
An indulgence is simply the shortening of the canonical penance in view of the merits of Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints.
Enoch and Elijah both received the same privilege as the Mother of God. St. Matthew also says that after the resurrection, the tombs of the saints were opened and they arose (St. Matthew 27.52-53). Since man is not appointed to die twice (Hebrews 9.27), these must have been taken bodily to heaven also, as St. Paul intimates "Ascending on high, he led away captives" (Ephesians 4.8).
Someone mentioned prayers for the dead. It was my understanding that the Orthodox pray for the departed to express gratitude to God for having saved the souls of our departed, to exalt His mercy and justice, and not to ask or, God forbid, "buy" favors with indulgencies!
The Synapte of the Funeral Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite reads: "Again, let us pray for the repose of the soul of the departed servant of God N., and that to him may be remitted every transgression, both deliberate and indiliberate." The entire funeral liturgy is full of beseeching to "forgive him all his sins" and "grant rest to his soul" etc.
Orthodoxy teaches that we are judged upon our death on earth and that the essence of that judgment is no different than that of the Final Judgment.
Its not clear why you think we believe differently on this point.
Well, gbcdoj, one of your fellow Latins posting later seems to think you are, backing away from the traditiona Latin understanding and that the 'purgatorial fires' are 'material, corporeal' fire.
This (as enunciated by gbcdoj) is certainly the view Orthodox critics of the Latin understanding of purgatory take of the Latin doctrine when it is classed as part of the erroneous notion of 'created grace'.
The view you enunciate seems to be feeling out a middle ground, which may be where the issue will end up should a serious reunion council be held.
Why it is necessary for you to condemn our view as "created grace"? When speaking of the purgatorial fire, we are talking about a continuous Western tradition dating from St. Cyprian and witnessed to by Sts. Augustine, Gregory, and the Venerable Bede (more widely, from Tertullian and St. Perpetua onward we have our belief in purifying pains, as defined by Florence). If those men held the same faith as the Church - and most assuredly they did - then how can we be at fault for believing as they did? Florence recognized that purgatorial fire was mostly a Western tradition, excepting a few Eastern writers - we allow denial of a material fire, so can't we be granted the courtesy of the liberty of believing in it?
If you want the answer, read in full St. Mark of Ephesus's "Refutation of the Latin Chapters Concerning Purgatorial Fire". It is reprinted in English in Fr. Seraphim Rose's The Soul After Death, which ably sets forth the Orthodox doctrines relevant to the matter in their most traditional form (along with some of Fr. Seraphim's idiosyncratic argumentation that interprets experiences reported in non-Christian traditions in light of Orthodox tradition as providing indirect support for the Orthodox understanding).
Yes, isn't that curious? Yet we don't venerate them alongside with her, but only John the Baptist.
The entire funeral liturgy is full of beseeching to "forgive him all his sins" and "grant rest to his soul" etc
At funeral, the soul is about to be received on the third day, so the funeral prayers ask for forgiveness. Orthodox Requiems do no such thing.
In other words, expressing confidence that God, in His infinite mercy, has saved the departed and has granted our prayers for him or her.
If hellfire (and thus purgatorial fire, which is the same) is corporeal, that means it is a creature and was created at some point by God. Since God only created things that are good, this forces us to call hell, hellfire, and eternal death a good thing and a creation of God. But "God made not death" (Wisdom 1.13)
In my own opinion, the judgement God shows in consigning some souls to hell is good, since it is a part of justice, but the actual consignment is evil, as would be its existence as an actual place, since it is contrary to the will of God for any of his creatures to end up there, see as He desires the salvation of all according to St. Paul.
The author of evil is man, because only man can hinder himself from his proper end, which is eternal happiness with God. Man, by hindering himself from reaching the end God intended for him, created both temporal and eternal death. This is also, in my opinion, the cause of hellfire. The wicked man hinders God in acting in him towards the end God desires. At his death, God still brings him into His presence (Revelation 14.10, but the wicked man, instead of being bathed in the light of God, which is His glory and the life of men (Psalm 35.10, St. John 1.4 and Revelation 21.23), dies and is consummed forever in eternal flames, becaue he came into the presence of God, who "is a consumming fire" (Hebrews 12.29) unprepared for the experience. He is "cast forth into the darkness outside" (St. Matthew 22.13), not because he is now apart from God and the light of glory, but because though "the light shines in the darkness, the darkness has not comprehended it" (St. John 1.5).
If the fire may be thought of as corporeal in some way, especially as regards the relation of the bodies of the damned to it after the resurrection, it would be in the same way that the glory of God was manifested to the Patriarchs in theophanies.
God is the Author of the evil of penalty - we therefore conclude that it is not, properly speaking, evil. "God is the author of the evil of pain, but not of the evil of fault" (St. Thomas, I q. 48 a. 6). "I am the Lord, and there is no other God, forming the light, and creating darkness, making peace, and creating evil." (Is. 45:5,7) "Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done?" (Amos 3:6). "These passages refer to the evil of penalty" (St. Thomas, I q. 49 a. 2). He also interprets the passage from Wisdom otherwise than you, saying (Ibid.):
But the evil which consists in the corruption of some things is reduced to God as the cause. ... And thus God, by causing in things the good of the order of the universe, consequently and as it were by accident, causes the corruptions of things, according to 1 Kgs. 2:6: "The Lord killeth and maketh alive." But when we read that "God hath not made death" (Wis. 1:13), the sense is that God does not will death for its own sake. Nevertheless the order of justice belongs to the order of the universe; and this requires that penalty should be dealt out to sinners. And so God is the author of the evil which is penalty, but not of the evil which is fault, by reason of what is said above.
St. Augustine writes against Manicheus similarly:
Thus we say rightly that reward and punishment are both from God. For God's not making corruption is consistent with His giving over to corruption the man who deserves to be corrupted, that is, who has begun to corrupt himself by sinning, that he who has wilfully yielded to the allurements of corruption may, against his will, suffer its pains. Not only is it written in the Old Testament, "I make good, and create evil;" but more clearly in the New Testament, where the Lord says, "Fear not them which kill the body, and have no more that they can do but fear him who, after he has killed the body, has power to cast the soul into hell.'' And that to voluntary corruption penal corruption is added in the divine judgment, is: plainly declared by the Apostle Paul, when he says, "The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are; whoever corrupts the temple of God, him will God corrupt." (Contra Epistolam Manichaei quam vocant Fundamenti, §44-5)
it is contrary to the will of God for any of his creatures to end up there, see as He desires the salvation of all according to St. Paul
Only contrary to his antecedent will, since after consideration of demerits he wills simply that the reprobate be damned (St. Thomas, I q. 19 a. 6; cf. St. John Damascene, De Fide Orth. ii, 29). St. John Damascene says: "inasmuch as He is a just God, His will is that sinners should suffer punishment".
At any rate, my point was merely that St. Thomas taught a corporeal fire of Hell and Purgatory; it would be mistaken to suppose otherwise.
The pious tradition of the Orthodox Church indicates that after she died, the Theotokos was resurrected and taken up bodily to heaven, although as I have pointed out in earlier threads, the services of the Church are a little ambiguous on this score, leaving this as an aspect of her Dormition that is of lesser importance. The Scriptures also seem to indicate that the same thing happened to Moses, although this again is a bit ambiguous.
2. Regarding the saints who rose from the dead at the time of Christ's resurrection, the idea that they must have been assumed into heaven because one can only die once may seem like a logical deduction. This is, however, the same kind of logical deduction that led some Catholics to believe that the Theotokos couldn't have died because of her supposedly immaculate conception, in spite of the clear witness of the tradition of the Church that she did die. Logical, but contrary to the clear tradition of the Church.
There were numerous raisings of the dead, both in the Old and New Testaments, and are we to suppose that all of these therefore must be assumed bodily into heaven? There is at least one case of a resurrection in which the tradition of the Church is very, very clear in the contrary direction, and that is with regard to Lazarus. He was raised from the dead by Christ, and yet there is a clear tradition of the Church of his subsequent death and burial many years later. He had even been dead longer than three days.
3. With regard to the purgatorial flames -- it would seem that at least the experience of these must be temporal, otherwise indulgences would not have been granted for X number of days or years for various prayers and good works by the Catholic church.
It seems as though many of Hermann's views are quite similar to those of the Orthodox, but I question as to how universally held those views are in the Catholic church. We certainly hope that the apparent trend of Catholic theology being reformulated along patristic lines continues. I would add parenthetically that it is fully possible to be in the Church and to hold the faith of the Church, and even to be saints, and yet hold certain views and opinions that are wrong. St. Augustine certainly falls into this category. We have our own saints who are great fathers, but who held certain views that were not accepted by the Church. The fact that the Orthodox Church believes that certain Latin teachings are simply wrong and not a part of the consensus patrum does not at all imply that we would believe that the pre-Schism western writers who seem to have held those views were not saints, let alone that they were outside the Church.
We most certainly do believe that what the departed will experience in eternity are the uncreated energies of God, which are all good. The disposition of each soul will determine whether the direct experience of those uncreated energies will have the effect of bliss and joy, or of "hellfire." The energies of God certainly have an effect on our body as well as our soul, so there is no need to conceive of created corporeal fires to torment the body, even if God were inclined to deliberately torment the bodies of sinners, which we believe he is most certainly not.
From the time of falling asleep until the Last Judgment, we really aren't exactly sure what happens. There appears to be some sort of intermediate state, in which the prayers of the Church still have benefit. We don't know what that state consists of, or what the nature of the benefit is. We know that it is in our tradition to pray and offer the liturgy for the departed. We continue to pray at our memorial services/pannikhidas/requiem services for the departed -- years after they have died. In fact, in our general services for the departed, we pray for all the faithful departed of all ages past.
In those services, there continue to be prayers that God will "pardon them every transgression, whether voluntary or involuntary", prayers that state "having implored for them the mercies of God, the kingdom of heaven, and remission of sins", etc., etc...
These prayers will continue for as long as the Church prays. We really don't know, again, the exact reasoning or effect of these prayers. What we know about the souls after death is made up of bits and pieces of tradition, and any attempt to define this beyond that tradition is quite problematic, because what has been revealed to us is presumably for our benefit, and tampering or defining it beyond that can have the opposite spiritual effect.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.