A Logical Problem for Purgatory? (feat. Gospel Simplicity)

What happens when a thoughtful Protestant YouTuber drops a logical critique of purgatory and indulgences? Jimmy Akin drops a brilliant, charitable response! In this episode, Jimmy breaks down Austin Suggs’s (Gospel Simplicity) challenge, reveals the major shift in Catholic teaching from “satisfaction” to “sanctification,” and shows how prayer, grace, and love beautifully resolve the puzzle. Friendly, deep, and surprisingly unifying — you don’t want to miss this Catholic-Protestant dialogue! Listen now on The Jimmy Akin Podcast.

 

TRANSCRIPT: 

Coming Up

Austin Suggs: So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the Catholic teaching on purgatory and I’ve run into a bit of a dead end. It’s this. Once you introduce the idea of indulgences, the whole logic of purgatory starts to make a lot less sense.

Let’s get into it!

* * *

Howdy, folks!

We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast

 

Introduction

Today I’ll be interacting with a video by Austin Suggs of Gospel Simplicity, which is something I’ve done before.

Austin is a charitable and thoughtful guy, and back in Episode 21, I interacted with a video he’d done exploring an attempt to make sola scriptura more defensible.

Today, I’ll be interacting with a video he did titled “A Logical Critique of Purgatory.”

After he posted the video, I responded to let him know I’d be replying, and he very kindly indicated he’d welcome my thoughts.

Also—in keeping with the thoughtful guy he is—Austin emailed me the script he’d used for the video.

Now, as you heard, he’s been thinking through the idea of purgatory, and he’s run into a conundrum when this doctrine is coupled with the idea of indulgences.

So I’ll explain the conundrum, but first I want to let Austin make clear what he’s not trying to do.

For example, he’s not arguing that purgatory is false or that you shouldn’t believe in purgatory or indulgences.

Austin: I’m genuinely trying to understand, so I look forward to whatever comments, dialogues, or responses that come out of this video. And let me make one clarification from the very beginning. This isn’t a video arguing against purgatory wholesale. It’s also not a video about the biblical or historical arguments for purgatory or indulgences. Those are important questions, but they’re just not the questions at hand. This is simply an attempt to understand the logic.

And he reiterates that at the end of the video.

Austin: Let me once again be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not rejecting the idea that we may need to be purified before entering fully into God’s presence.” In fact, I think many Protestants could affirm something like that, but I do think that when you take the full Catholic system, especially the combination of juritical language about debt, therapeutic language about healing and the practice of indulgences, you end up with a set of concepts that don’t easily fit together. The question isn’t whether or must God purify us, but how and whether our explanations of that process actually make much sense.

In fact, Austin states that he’s hoped that Catholics and Protestants can agree on purgatory.

Austin: My questions actually arose from reading Dr. Salkeld’s book about whether Catholics and Protestants could agree on purgatory with the hope of the answer being yes.

So this is a friendly, sympathetic challenge that Austin is offering, and I hope to offer a friendly, sympathetic response.

Let me begin by offering a brief summary of Catholic teaching on purgatory and indulgences and how the ideas have developed.

 

Catholic Teaching on Purgatory

With regard to purgatory, Church teaching is actually very minimal.

The core of the Church’s teaching on purgatory is formulated in paragraph 1054 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1054

Those who die in God’s grace and friendship imperfectly purified, although they are assured of their eternal salvation, undergo a purification after death, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of God.

We can summarize this teaching as follows:

Teaching on Purgatory

1. The saved who aren’t completely pure at death will be purified before heaven.

Purgatory is simply the name for this purification. As the Catechism elsewhere says:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1031

The Church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.

So if you can agree that the saved who aren’t completely purified at death will be purified before heaven, I’d say that you agree with the doctrine of purgatory. You agree with the essence of the idea.

And so I think not only can Catholics and Protestants agree that there is a purgatory, I think that they typically do agree—at least implicitly.

If you ask most Protestants, “Are some people still imperfect at the end of their lives? Do they still have flaws and imperfection, like temptations to sin?” they’ll answer, “Sure! Of course! I imagine that I won’t be perfect at the end of my life.”

And then if you ask them, “Will these people still be imperfect when they’re in heaven? Will they still have flaws, imperfections, and temptations to sin in heaven?” they’ll answer, “No, of course not! We won’t be sinning or tempted to sin in God’s presence.”

Well, there you have it. Both parties agree, because if some people are imperfectly pure at the end of life but will be perfectly pure in heaven, then between death and heaven there must be some kind of purification.

I thus hold that we can—and usually do—agree that there is a purgatory once this is pointed out.

It’s just a question of what kind of purification there is. In other words, what kind of purgatory? How should we conceptualize it?

Here, there are a number of options.

For example, the mere fact that there is a purification doesn’t tell us that it takes time, and Catholics can be happy to acknowledge that.

God is certainly capable of purifying people in an instant. After all, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:

1 Corinthians 15:51-52

We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

So if you’re still alive at the Second Coming, you definitely will be changed in an instant, and so there is no reason why God couldn’t work such an instantaneous transformation before the Second Coming—between the moment an individual dies and the moment he enters heaven.

We also have an indication of how the transformation at the Second Coming will happen. As 1 John 3:2, says:

1 John 3:2

We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

This suggests that the cause of our transformation will be an encounter with Christ himself. It’s not something extrinsic or outside of our relationship with Christ that will transform us.

It’s an encounter with Christ himself and the application of his saving grace that this encounter will involve that produces the change in us.

Well, just like God can instantaneously transform us both at the Second Coming and at the point of death, God can also transform us instantaneously by an encounter with Christ—both at the Second Coming and at the point of death.

Most Protestants don’t really think much about the purification that happens between death and heaven, but those who do generally understand it in these terms.

And there is no problem with this from a Catholic point of view. In his 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI understood purgatory as a transforming encounter with Christ that can’t be measured in earthly time.

He didn’t impose this understanding as a matter of binding Catholic belief, but he did recommend it for our consideration as an orthodox Catholic way of conceptualizing purgatory.

He wrote:

Spe Salvi 47

Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire [of purgatory] which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves.

He also said:

Spe Salvi 47

It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time; it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ.

So both Protestants and Catholics can agree that there is a purification for the saved between death and heaven—which is the central idea of purgatory.

They also can conceptualize this as being an instantaneous purification due to a transforming encounter with Christ.

 

Purgatory and Indulgences

There’s a second aspect to Catholic teaching on purgatory, which is summarized in paragraph 1055 of the Catechism:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1055

By virtue of the “communion of saints,” the Church commends the dead to God’s mercy and offers her prayers, especially the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist, on their behalf.

We can thus add this to our list of primary teachings about purgatory as well. In addition to the fact that the purification exists,

2. The living can in some way assist those who are experiencing this purification.

This assistance is said to be provided by virtue of the communion of saints, and it only mentions the Church’s prayers, especially the prayer of the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist.

This paragraph doesn’t mention indulgences, but they are mentioned in a paragraph 1032, which says:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1032

The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead

So the Church does understand indulgences as one of those ways by which the living can in some way assist those who are experiencing the purification of purgatory.

Indulgences are a key part of Austin’s conundrum, so let’s spend a few moments on the concept.

Now, indulgences are not something that Protestants believe in or practice in their own community, but they are a distinct issue from the issue of purgatory.

This is important, because Austin says:

Austin: This inquiry started with the following question. If purgatory is truly necessary for the soul’s final purification, how can it also be meaningfully affected by indulgences?

That’s an interesting question, but indulgences are an issue that’s distinct from purgatory.

You can absolutely believe in the existence of a final purification after death and yet not believe in indulgences.

I would thus say that Catholics and Protestants can—and usually do, at least implicitly—hold that there is a final purification or purgatory.

The question is whether—or to what extent—they may also agree about indulgences.

And I think that they agree more than is commonly recognized.

The idea of indulgences is built on several underlying concepts, and we can agree on most of these.

In basic terms that should be accessible to people from a variety of Christian backgrounds, we might summarize the basic ideas that are involved this way:

Key Principles

1. When God forgives a person’s sins, he may leave consequences that the person needs to deal with.

For example, in 2 Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan confronts King David about his adultery with Bathsheba, and we read:

2 Samuel 12:13-14

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has forgiven your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.”

So here God forgives David’s sin, but David still has to deal with the death of his son as a consequence of his adultery.

A second principle is that

2. The purpose of these consequences is to help us grow in holiness.

As Hebrews 12 says:

Hebrews 12:6, 10

The Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

[Our earthly fathers] disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

So—even though God has already forgiven our sins—he still lets us experience negative consequences from them so that we may grow in holiness.

To describe this, Scripture uses the language of discipline and chastisement—of fatherly punishment—and these consequences are by no means fun. As Hebrews 12:11 says:

Hebrews 12:11

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

So God doesn’t discipline us for no reason. He does so specifically so that we can grow in holiness and experience the blessings of that.

Now let’s introduce a third principle:

3. God may help one person because someone else has pleased him.

For example, in Matthew 15, Jesus helps the daughter of a Canaanite woman because her mother pleased Jesus by her faith. The daughter was possessed by a demon, and so . . .

Matthew 15:25-28

[Her mother] came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”

And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

So the Canaanite woman pleased Jesus by her faith, and he helped her daughter by liberating her from the demon.

This leads to the fourth principle, which is that

4. Because one person has pleased him, God may help another person by lessening the consequences that remain after a sin has been forgiven.

For example, in 1 Kings 11, Solomon has sinned, and God tells him he will remove the kingdom from him, but he mitigates this consequence in two ways. God says:

1 Kings 11:11-13

I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.

So God mitigates the consequences of Solomon’s sins—first—by not tearing the kingdom away during Solomon’s day—and second—by not tearing away the whole kingdom.

The reason he does this is because Solomon’s father, King David, had pleased him. He says he won’t remove the kingdom in Solomon’s day for the sake of David your father, and he says he won’t remove all of the kingdom for the sake of David my servant.

Another principle is:

5. An individual who has pleased God may ask him to do this.

In other words, he may say, “Father, if I have pleased you, please help so-and-so with the negative consequences of their sins that they are experiencing.”

Here we’re not asking God to leave the person without holiness. Instead, we’re asking him to help the person attain holiness in a way that involves less discomfort.

Now, you don’t have to have pleased God in order to ask God for something. When Jesus confronts the Gadarene demoniacs, we read:

Matthew 8:31-32

And the demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs.”

And he said to them, “Go.”

Demons definitely haven’t pleased God by their behavior, but when the demons inside the Gadarene demoniacs ask Jesus to send us away into the herd of pigs, Jesus grants their request and says Go.

So you don’t need to have pleased God to ask him for something, but it does help. As James tells us:

James 5:16

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

So if you have pleased God, it helps when making requests.

For example, let’s say that someone you really care about—let’s say, your spouse—has developed an addiction to alcohol or drugs.

Fortunately, they’ve realized that this is harming them, they’ve decided to get off them, and they’ve sought God’s forgiveness.

All that’s great, but now they have to deal with the negative consequences of their actions in the form of withdrawal symptoms.

Now, those withdrawal symptoms could play a valuable role in helping the person avoid abusing drugs or alcohol in the future.

After withdrawal, they might say to themselves, “Wow! That was bad. I never want to go through that again!”

But this isn’t the only way that they could be helped. God could also touch them with his grace in a special way that helps them grow in holiness without these symptoms, or at least without their full force.

And so many Christians would pray for their spouse and say, “Father, please help my spouse. Please diminish or remove the withdrawal symptoms and give him (or her) the grace to get back to sobriety in an easier way.”

That’s a perfectly reasonable Christian prayer, and so there’s nothing wrong with praying it.

Further, if it’s okay for an individual to do this, it’s okay for the church to do it corporately.

Our sixth principle is thus:

6. The Church may corporately ask God to do this.

And we know that the Church pleases God. In Revelation 19:8, we read:

Revelation 19:8

It was granted [the Church] to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

So the Church is depicted as clothed with the righteous deeds of the saints—meaning all of God’s people—and it thus pleases him.

An individual who has pleased God may ask him to help another person deal with the negative consequences of sin, and so the Church—which we know is pleasing to God—can do the same thing.

In fact, if someone’s spouse is known to be struggling with drug or alcohol withdrawal, I’m sure there are a lot of local churches that will immediately start a prayer chain for the person.

Thus far, I don’t think that any of these principles would be objectionable to a typical Protestant. I think we’re broadly in agreement on them.

But there’s one more principle where there might be a bit more disagreement.

The seventh principle is that

7. Church leaders may ask God to do this on behalf of the Church.

The way this principle is often articulated in Catholic circles is in terms of the power of the keys that Christ gave his Church.

He first gave them to St. Peter in Matthew 16:19, and then he gives the power of binding and loosing to the Church more broadly in Matthew 18:18.

We discussed the meaning of the keys back in Episode 42, so you can check that out for more information.

But I don’t think we need to be detained by the idea of the keys and what they represent here, because I think there is an underlying principle that we both agree on and that you don’t have to invoke the keys for.

Namely, that Church leaders may ask God to do things on behalf of the Church.

They obviously do that in individual local churches all the time.

Whether you go to a Protestant or a Catholic church, you’re very likely to see the pastor get up and pray to God on behalf of the whole church, asking God for one set of things or another.

Like, “Father, please help all who are struggling with drug and alcohol addiction,” or “Father, please help all the women considering abortion,” or “Father, please help us preach the gospel to others.”

And the people respond to that, such as by saying, “Amen,” which means “So be it.”

Well, do you have to be present when church leaders pray on behalf of the church?

No, you don’t. Personally, I have an intention to pray for anything that is good, even if I’m unaware of it. God knows about the prayer request even if I don’t, so I entrust him generally with the needs of the world.

So if there’s a child on the streets of Kinshasa who I’ve never met, will never meet, and don’t even know about—and if that child is starving and praying for enough food to survive, then my intention is to be right there beside that child, praying that God will help the child get the food that is needed.

It’s like in the Lord’s prayer, when we say:

Matthew 6:9-13

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

When I say that prayer, I’m not just praying for myself, or the people who go to my church, or specific people I know about. I’m praying for everybody, even if I never meet or know about them.

Well, if I’m praying that broadly, I’m also praying for anything good that the leaders of the Church are also praying for.

What counts for me is not the fact I’ve heard about the need; it’s the fact that the need exists, that God can fill it, and that it would be a good thing for God to fulfill it.

If those conditions are met, I’m implicitly praying for it, whether I know about it or not.

Now, not everyone may think about these matters as cosmically as I do, but I suspect that there are a lot of people who have asked God to do good in the world, even if they don’t know about the specifics of the situation.

I suspect there are even more who would be willing to pray about situations if they only knew about them.

And God knows the willingness of these people to pray about such things, so he can honor their implicit requests.

But even if you confine yourself strictly to those who do know about a particular situation, it’s certainly the case that church leaders can pray on the church’s behalf for particular needs.

So I take it as certain that

7. Church leaders may ask God to do this on behalf of the Church.

This brings us to our eighth and final principle, that:

8. Anyone who has such a need can be helped in this way.

It doesn’t matter if the person is alive or not. We can pray for anyone who needs help, so if someone needs help after death, we can pray for them.

Therefore, given that there is a purification after death, we can pray for those undergoing that purification.

In articulating these principles, I don’t see anything that Catholics and Protestants need to disagree over.

As far as I can tell, we can still be fully on the same page.

But here’s the thing: These are exactly the same principles that are used in indulgences.

Catholic teaching combines these principles into a single, concrete doctrine—the doctrine of indulgences as applied to someone between death and heaven.

Here’s how it works:

A person—let’s say it’s a woman named Sarah—decides to do something to please God. Let’s say, Sarah decides to read the Bible for a while.

Reading the Bible pleases God, so if Sarah does that with a spiritual motive, that ought to please him.

Sarah then asks God—if she has pleased him—to bless someone she has lost—let’s say Sarah’s deceased husband John.

Other people have also been praying for John’s soul, because it’s a natural human instinct to pray for those we’ve lost—as C. S. Lewis pointed out in Letters to Malcom, Chiefly About Prayer:

Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly About Prayer, ch. 20

Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to Him?

And, as he went on to say:

Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly About Prayer, ch. 20

Our souls demand purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, “It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy”?

Should we not reply, “With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.”

“It may hurt, you know”—

“Even so, sir.”

So there is something that Sarah’s husband John can be helped with, and both Sarah and other Christians are praying for him.

The leaders of Sarah’s church may do so as well, corporately, on behalf of the congregation.

In other words, they may add their prayers for John’s soul to Sarah’s. So just like—if Sarah pleased God by reading the Bible, if the rest of the church has pleased God, they may add their prayers to hers.

If God chooses, he may help the person being purified in some way.

And this exact scenario may play out in the Catholic Church—including the part about pleasing God by reading the Bible.

Despite all the sinister legends about the Catholic Church not wanting people to read the Bible, it actually grants indulgences for reading Scripture.

If you check the current edition of the Manual of Indulgences, you’ll see that you can even potentially get a plenary indulgence if you read the Bible for just half an hour.

Catholics would articulate this intervention by the Church in terms of its leaders’ power of the keys, but you can see how—with or without using that concept—the same thing can happen in either community.

I thus think that there’s only a lot of room for agreement between Catholics and Protestants on the concept of a final purification—or purgatory—but also on the idea that we can help those experiencing it, such as through indulgences.

Even though the relevant principles aren’t combined together into a single practice in the Protestant community the way they have been in the Catholic one, they are or at least can be recognized in the Protestant community.

So! Now that we have that as background, let’s get back to Austin.

 

Ways of Explaining Purgatory & Indulgences

When introducing the conundrum he perceives, Austin says this:

Austin: Traditionally speaking, Catholic teaching on purgatory includes two aspects. First, there’s what I’ll call the juridical aspect. This maps onto the language about temporal debt and is frequently associated with concepts like satisfaction, punishment, and justice. Second, there’s the therapeutic dimension. This relates to the healing of the soul, what’s more traditionally called sanctification, and you’ll hear related words like cleansing, purifying, transforming, et cetera. While modern Catholic theologians tend to emphasize the latter, I take it that both are necessary to be faithful to a fully fleshed out, traditionally recognizable doctrine of purgatory.

Austin is correct that different ways of articulating the idea of purgatory have been used in history.

They can be grouped into two major categories, which are often called the

1. Satisfaction Theory—which Austin calls the juridical aspect
2. Sanctification Theory—which Austin calls the therapeutic aspect

So let’s make sure we understand both of these.

 

The Satisfaction Theory

The satisfaction theory frequently involves concepts like debt and how it is repaid.

Like in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer, where we pray

Matthew 6:9-13

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

On this model, we have a debt to God because of our sins, and we ask God to forgive that debt.

But he may not forgive all of it.

To give a human analogy, if a kid in your neighborhood throws a baseball through your window and breaks it, he may owe you $300 to replace the glass—after all the inflation the government has caused.

The kid thus needs to pay you $300 to satisfy that debt.

That’s how satisfaction—and the satisfaction theory—works: You give something of equivalent value to make enough payment for the debt.

Many people use the same basic model to explain the atonement Christ made for us on the Cross.

In the satisfaction theory of the atonement, it’s commonly argued that our sins against the infinite God incur an infinite debt. We can’t pay an infinite debt except by suffering for an infinite amount of time, so if we don’t want to go to hell for all eternity, God himself needs to pay the infinite debt for us.

And that’s what Christ did by dying on the Cross, he made a payment to God of infinite value—or satisfied God’s justice—so that we don’t have to satisfy God’s justice ourselves by spending an infinite amount of time suffering.

There are other ways of understanding the atonement that Christ made on the Cross, but this one was extremely popular in the West—in Europe—during the Middle Ages.

At the same time Europeans were seeking to understand the atonement, they were also seeking to understand how the final purification works, and since they thought they had a satisfactory answer (pun intended) for the Cross, the sought a satisfactory answer for purgatory.

In other words, they applied the concept of satisfaction to both.

So they sought to understand purgatory in terms of satisfaction as well.

One common proposal is that—by sinning—we incur both an Eternal Debt by sinning against the infinite God and a & Temporal Debt by involving finite, creaturely realities in our sin.

Unless we’re forgiven these debts, we will therefore need to experience both an Eternal Punishment in hell and a & Temporal Punishment.

Because of Christ’s atonement, God wipes out the Eternal Punishment, but what about the temporal punishment?

Since it’s temporal rather than eternal, it’s something that will only take a finite amount of time to satisfy, and so historically many western Christians explained the final purification in terms of this temporal punishment.

The claim has then been made that God removes the eternal punishment, but he may leave the temporal punishment—or at least part of it—in place to teach you your lesson and help you grow in holiness.

Like if a kid breaks your window and can’t pay the whole price to get it fixed, you may forgive the bulk of his debt but still require him to pay the part of it that he can pay so that he learns his lesson and grows in maturity or holiness.

Well, if God leaves some or all of our temporal punishment in place, we’ll either need to satisfy the underlying temporal debt in this life or we’ll need to satisfy it in the next, and that’s how purgatory has commonly been understood on the satisfaction model.

I’m simplifying the terminology a bit, but you get the idea.

Now, the satisfaction theory definitely has traction in the New Testament. It’s right there in the Lord’s Prayer, where sin is conceptualized as debt.

And in Colossians 2:13-14, Paul writes:

Colossians 2:13-14

God made [you] alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us.

And in Mark 10:45, Christ himself said:

Mark 10:45

Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So there is definitely language in the New Testament that uses satisfaction as a way of explaining what Christ did.

And we find language indicating punishment in how God deals even with the saved.

Thus in Hebrew 12:6, we read:

Hebrews 12:6

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives

The word Chastises in Greek is = Mastigoó, which means to beat with a whip or lash, whip, flog, scourge.

So you could translate this as the Lord whips every son he receives.

Okay, that’s punishment language, and it fits with the satisfaction model since being punished is one of the ways people commonly satisfy justice.

The satisfaction model thus also came to be used as a way of explaining the final purification or purgatory.

 

The Sanctification Theory

Even though the language of satisfaction has been used in the west as a way of explaining the doctrine of the final purification—and even though the Bible itself uses language consistent with this model—that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to explain it.

In fact, the seeds of a different understanding are right there in the name Purgatory.

This is an English form of the Latin word = Purgatorium.

It’s derived from the Latin word Purgare, which means = To Cleanse, to Purify.

Already we’re in a different metaphor. We’re talking about cleansing or purifying people, not those people paying or satisfying their debts.

If someone owes you money, you don’t clean the person. They pay you the debt or satisfy what they owe you.

Purifying and satisfying are thus two different concepts.

Furthermore, when we look at the language used for God’s action regarding the saved in Scripture, we don’t simply find the language of satisfaction.

Hebrews 12:6

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives

For example, in Hebrews 12, the author also speaks of God disciplining the one he loves.

Here, the word translated Disciplines in Greek is = Paideuó, which means things like to provide instruction for informed and responsible living, educate, and to assist in the development of a person’s ability to make appropriate choices, practice discipline.

Hebrews 12:10

[Our earthly fathers] disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

Similarly, Hebrews makes it obvious that the purpose of this is for our good, that we may share in his holiness.

So this is sounding more like sanctification—or growth in holiness—rather than satisfaction.

Also, recent Catholic theology has been asking how literally some of the biblical imagery should be taken and what God is really trying to communicate with it.

Since God is depicted as a king, and real-life kings punished people with whips and chains—it could was natural for them to think of places where people in the afterlife satisfied justice like dungeon cells where they had punishments inflicted on them from without, like being tortured by demons, though the Bible never contains that specific image.

However, the idea of torture was something that applied to how both hell—which involved eternal punishment—was pictured and how purgatory—which involved temporal punishment—was pictured.

The New Testament also uses the image of fire in connection with hell, where the damned go.

1 Corinthians 3:13-15

Each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

And St. Paul speaks of each one’s work becoming manifest on the day of judgment because it will be revealed by fire.

We know this applies even to the saved because he says that—if you’ve built your work on the foundation of Christ—but if anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

So even the saved will suffer loss in connection with a testing by fire.

Paul says that will happen on the Day—that is the day of judgment—which he assumes is imminent because at this point he believed that the Second Coming was going to happen in his own lifetime and the lives of most Christians.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

That’s why in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, he describes the Second Coming by saying “the dead will rise first” but “we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them . . . to meet the Lord.”

So Paul puts himself and his readers in the group that will still be alive at the Second Coming, so that’s when he assumes they will stand before the Lord in judgment.

It wasn’t until later in his career that Paul realized he would be martyred before the Second Coming, which meant he could stand before Christ in judgment at his death rather than waiting for the final judgment.

In any event, Christians saw the reference to a fiery testing that even the saved will experience in 1 Corinthians and—since most of us will stand before Christ prior to the Last Judgment—they connected this testing of the saved with purgatory.

Both hell and purgatory were thus understood not only in terms of an otherworldly king’s prison—with the torture chambers that it was normal for kings to use—but also in connection with a fiery experience.

And, back in the day, they had debates about whether this fire was literal, physical fire or not, with many theologians arguing that both hellfire and purgatory fire were literal fire.

Others objected, noting that physical fire wouldn’t be expected to affect a soul without a body in the state between death and resurrection, so it must be something else.

The Church never settled that debate, but in more recent centuries, theologians—both Catholic and now Protestants also—have begun to think of hell not as a punishment inflicted from without but as a self-inflicted exclusion from the presence of God.

The New Testament passages that speak of hell as involving imprisonment, torture, or fire are thus understood not as involving literal imprisonment, literal torture, and literal fire but as being symbols of the painful experience of rejecting God as the source of all goodness.

In the same way, Catholic theologians have begun to think of purgatory not as just a less-severe otherworldly prison, with less severe but still literal torture and possibly less severe but still literal fire.

Instead, they have understood these images as suggestive of an experience of purification that frankly cannot be directly understood given the stock of images we presently have in our imagination, which is based on our experiences in this life.

But with the fire understood as a metaphor for sanctifying us—or removing our spiritual impurities—the same way a refining fire that removes impurities from metal.

Like when Zechariah 13:8-9 says that:

Zechariah 13:8-9

In the whole land, declares the LORD,
two thirds shall be cut off and perish,
and one third shall be left alive.
And I will put this third into the fire,
and refine them as one refines silver,
and test them as gold is tested.
They will call upon my name,
and I will answer them.
I will say, “They are my people,”
and they will say, “The LORD is my God.”

So here God uses the metaphor of a refining fire to discuss the testing and purification of his people Israel.

In the same way, many Catholic theologians have begun to understand the “fire” of purgatory as a metaphor for the transforming and sanctifying power of God.

Indeed, as we saw earlier, Benedict XVI proposed that this fire is a transforming and sanctifying encounter with Christ himself.

 

A Point of Disagreement

Austin does a good job recognizing the satisfaction understanding and the sanctifying understanding of purgatory, but I disagree with his assessment when he refers to these two models of understanding purgatory and says this:

Austin: I take it that both are necessary to be faithful to a fully fleshed out, traditionally recognizable doctrine of purgatory.

I would disagree, here. I think that what has been happening is a doctrinal development.

A number of years ago, in the early 2000s, I had a correspondence going with Cardinal Avery Dulles—an American who had been named a cardinal by John Paul II because of his theological contributions.

He was kind of like an American John Henry Newman. He wasn’t a cardinal because he was heading an important diocese; he was a cardinal because of how sharp his theological mind was.

Now, Cardinal Dulles was old school enough that he wasn’t fully comfortable with email, so he had an interesting way of using it.

The way our conversation worked, I would email him, then he would dictate a reply to his assistant—who was a Dominican nun and a research professor in her own right—and I’d get the letter a bit later on through the postal system.

So it was a unique email-and-paper-mail system of communication, and I always had to wait to hear back from him.

Well, one day, I happened to mention—as a minor point in an email—that there appeared to be a doctrinal development happening with respect to purgatory, indulgences, and the idea of temporal punishments.

And WHAM! The next day I have an email in my inbox from Cardinal Dulles. No waiting around for paper mail this time!

In the email, Cardinal Dulles was emphatic. He had noticed the same trajectory in magisterial documents that I had, and he felt very strongly about it.

I gathered that he was a supporter of the satisfaction theory, and he indicated that, yes, the signs of a doctrinal development were present, but he felt it needed to be further discussed.

If I recall his exact phrase correctly, he said that the issue needed to be “Dragged out into the light” and thoroughly discussed.

I admired his passion on the subject. If I had grown up with the satisfaction model, I’d feel the same way.

But—reading the same data as Cardinal Dulles—it looked to me like the Magisterium had already taken a new tack and begun endorsing the sanctification model over the satisfaction model.

It’s now been 20 years (?) since he and I had that conversation, and everything I’ve seen since then has only confirmed that interpretation.

You can see the key steps in this process happening on the magisterial level over the last few decades.

By the early 20th century, the practice of indulgences was robustly developed, and it had been heavily influenced by the ancient Church’s penitential system.

For example, partial indulgences were classified according to a certain number of “days,” “months,” or “years,” and this caused confusion.

Many people assumed that these represented the amount of time off in purgatory an indulgence would produce.

This was inaccurate. The “days” and other time classifications attached to indulgences didn’t refer to time in purgatory but to amounts of penance equivalent to what a person would have done in the earthly Church’s earlier system of penances.

Like if you had committed Sin X, you would be expected to do Y days of penance here in this life.

As an organic outgrowth of the earlier penitential system, there were other complications, and during the Second Vatican Council, a number of bishops requested a clarification and simplification of indulgences.

In 1963, Pope Paul VI commissioned a panel to study the matter. In 1965, the national conferences of bishops were asked to review a draft document. And in 1967, Pope Paul published the apostolic constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina or = The Doctrine of Indulgences.

This document retained the satisfactional language of temporal punishments, but it simplified the practice of indulgences—for example, it got rid of the confusing days, months, and years connected to partial indulgences.

Instead, it eliminated the mechanical, counting aspect of indulgences and focused instead on the interior lives of people and virtues like charity, repentance, and faith.

This was itself a significant step in the direction of a sanctificational understanding of indulgences.

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

The next major magisterial development occurred in 1992, with the release of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Paragraph 1472 states that:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1472

To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin.

There are a few things to note here. The first is that the Catechism has placed the terms “eternal punishment” and “temporal punishment” in quotation marks.

In the present context, this indicates that they are to be understood in an accommodated or analogous sense. They’re not punishments as we would normally think of them.

We know this because the Catechism states that they must not be conceived as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without but as following from the very nature of sin.

So if they must not be understood that way, then they must not be understood as normal, earthly punishments, which are inflicted on a person from without.

In an earthly court, a judge may sentence you to jail, to paying a fine, or—in some countries—to flogging, but in every case, the judge inflicts the punishment on you from without.

Your imprisonment, fine, or flogging doesn’t happen automatically, because of the nature of the crime you committed.

On the subject of so-called temporal punishments, the Catechism states that every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures—or created things.

It says that this attachment must be purified either here on earth or after death in the state called purgatory.

So we’re not going to have unhealthy attachments to created things in heaven. Once you’re in heaven, you’ll have only a modest and appropriate attachment to things like pizza and ice cream, not an unhealthy one that causes you to overeat—if we eat at all in heaven.

The Catechism then says that the purification of purgatory frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin.

In other words, “temporal punishment” is to be understood as the purification from unhealthy attachment to creatures.

This is clearly a sanctification understanding, and the Catechism indicates that we are to understand the older, satisfactional language in sanctificational terms.

 

John Paul II Confirms

This was confirmed by John Paul II seven years after the Catechism was released.

In August of 1999, he gave a catechesis on purgatory in which—without ever mentioning the satisfaction model—he explained it in purely sanctificational terms, stating:

General Audience, August 4, 1999, n. 5

Every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected. Purification must be complete, and indeed this is precisely what is meant by the Church’s teaching on purgatory. The term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence. Those who, after death, exist in a state of purification, are already in the love of Christ who removes from them the remnants of imperfection.

So here purgatory is explained as Christ removing imperfections from us so that we can stand before God.

The next month—in September of 1999—he turned to the subject of indulgences and stated:

General Audience, September 29, 1999, n. 2

The person must be gradually “healed” of the negative effects which sin has caused in him (what the theological tradition calls the “punishments” and “remains” of sin).

So here the “punishments” of sin are the negative effects which sin has caused in a person and which he must be “healed” of.

Once again, the language of satisfaction is being interpreted in terms of sanctification.

He says:

General Audience, September 29, 1999, n. 3

The temporal punishment itself serves as “medicine” to the extent that the person allows it to challenge him to undertake his own profound conversion.

So the so-called temporal punishments are understood as a medicine, not as a punishment in the conventional sense.

He also explains indulgences in terms of the prayer principles I articulated earlier, stating:

General Audience, September 29, 1999, n. 4

The Church has a treasury, then, which is “dispensed” as it were through indulgences. This “distribution” should not be understood as a sort of automatic transfer, as if we were speaking of “things.” It is instead the expression of the Church’s full confidence of being heard by the Father when—in view of Christ’s merits and, by his gift, those of Our Lady and the saints—she [the Church] asks him to mitigate or cancel the painful aspect of punishment by fostering its medicinal aspect through other channels of grace. In the unfathomable mystery of divine wisdom, this gift of intercession can also benefit the faithful departed, who receive its fruits in a way appropriate to their condition.

So—reflecting the prayer element I expressed earlier—indulgences are to be understood not in terms of an automatic transfer but in terms of the Church having full confidence of its prayers being heard by the Father.

In its prayers connected with indulgences the Church asks him to mitigate or cancel the painful aspect of punishment by fostering its medicinal aspect through other channels of grace.

And this intercession applies also to the benefit of the faithful departed.

In other words, the Church prays—on the basis of what Christ and the saints have done that pleases God—to get the person to where he needs to be, and fully free of the unhealthy effects of sins, in the least painful (“mitigate or cancel the painful aspect”) way possible by using other channels of grace.

John Paul II thus confirms the sanctificational interpretation of the language traditionally associated with the satisfaction theory.

And there’s nothing wrong with using that language. The Bible itself uses satisfaction language—including for the saved—as we’ve seen. Remember Hebrews saying that God flogs every son he receives?

The question is how this language should be understood. Is it meant to convey a literal punishment imposed from without or as a transformational process, caused by God’s grace, that flows from the nature of sin itself?

The Catechism and John Paul II tell us to interpret the language in sanctificational terms.

The material that we’ve covered thus far contains what was available when Cardinal Dulles and I had our discussion, but what has happened since?

 

Benedict XVI & Spe Salvi

Thus far, we’ve seen the Catechism and John Paul II saying that we need to interpret the old language associated with satisfaction in terms of sanctification.

But if that’s how the language should be understood, do you need to use that language?

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI published an encyclical on Christian hope titled Spe Salvi, which is Latin for = Saved in Hope.

In Paragraphs 44-49 of the encyclical, Pope Benedict offers a rich exploration of heaven, hell, and especially purgatory.

It contains more than we can go into here, but it’s well worth reading.

I would call attention to a few things it says that are relevant to our discussion.

In the first place, Pope Benedict articulates the doctrine of purgatory without ever referring to the concept of temporal punishment and without using other language that indicates he understands it in terms of the satisfaction theory.

The language he uses to articulate his view is entirely the language of sanctification.

This suggests that—not only should purgatory be understood in terms of sanctification—but that the language of satisfaction is not necessary to understand it.

There’s nothing wrong with using satisfaction language. Scripture itself does that. It’s just that this language is not necessary and should be understood in terms of sanctification.

Regarding the latter, Pope Benedict writes:

Spe Salvi 46

For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul.

Spe Salvi 46

Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God’s judgement according to each person’s particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it.

So Pope Benedict indicates that the language Scripture uses is suggestive of what the experience of purgatory is like but should not be taken as a literal description.

He continues:

Spe Salvi 46

Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because 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” (1 Cor. 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.

He then proposes—without imposing as a matter of doctrine—the idea that the fire of purgatory is a transforming encounter with Christ and his grace.

He states:

Spe Salvi 47

This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire.” But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. . . . At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves.

So this is a purely sanctificational understanding of the final purification.

Benedict then goes on to discuss the fact that the duration of the purification cannot be calculated in terms of earthly time, which we already discussed.

And he then brings up the question of how the living can help those undergoing the purification.

He doesn’t mention indulgences, but he discusses the matter in terms of the basic principles and says:

Spe Salvi 48

Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude, or even a request for pardon? Now a further question arises: if “purgatory” is simply purification through fire in the encounter with the Lord, Judge, and Savior, how can a third person intervene, even if he or she is particularly close to the other? When we ask such a question, we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do, and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. And for that there is no need to convert earthly time into God’s time: in the communion of souls simple terrestrial time is superseded. It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain.

God—who is not bound by time—can thus apply grace to a person being purified, no matter when that purification occurs in terms of how we understand time.

Also note that Benedict only says that my actions for someone can play a small part in his purification.

This is like how—in this life—my prayers may play a small part in helping another person see the truth of the faith and convert.

The ultimate work is done by God and his grace directly on the person’s heart, so we shouldn’t think of our prayers as anything but God giving us a small, cooperating role in the work that ultimately belongs to him.

 

Pope Francis & Spes Non Confundit

In 2024, Pope Francis issued a bull titled Spes Non Confundit, which is Latin for = Hope Does Not Disappoint.

In it, he wrote:

Spes Non Confundit 23

As we know from personal experience, every sin “leaves its mark.” Sin has consequences, not only outwardly in the effects of the wrong we do, but also inwardly, inasmuch as “every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death, in the state called purgatory” (CCC 1472).

Here Pope Francis quoted the Catechism and endorsed its understanding of purgatory as sanctification that removed unhealthy attachments to creatures.

He also comments on indulgences, stating:

Spes Non Confundit 23

In our humanity, weak and attracted by evil, certain residual effects of sin remain. These are removed by the indulgence, always by the grace of Christ, who, as Saint Paul VI wrote, “is himself our ‘indulgence’” (Apostolorum Limina, 2).

So he also understands indulgences in terms of sanctification, where the residual effects of sin are removed by indulgences through the grace of Christ.

It’s also worth noting that—both in regard to purgatory and in regard to indulgences—Francis did not speak of temporal punishments.

He omitted that language and spoke purely in sanctificational terms.

 

Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo XIV has only been pope for around a year at this point, and he has not yet said anything that bears directly on our discussion.

He has encouraged prayer for the departed, and he has announced indulgences. But in both cases, he has done so briefly and—so far as I’ve been able to determine—he has not yet spoken about precisely what the purification involved does.

 

The Magisterium’s Trajectory

The important point that I want us to take away from this is that—even if you set aside what individual theologians have written and look just at what the Magisterium has said—there is a definite trajectory.

In the 1960s, Paul VI revised the Church’s practice of indulgences, simplifying it and focusing it on the person’s interior dispositions, such as charity, repentance, and faith—a step in the direction of a sanctificational understanding.

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1472

To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin.

In 1992, the Catechism said that the so-called “temporal punishment” of sin was to be understood as the purification of unhealthy attachments to creatures and that this punishment must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without but as following from the very nature of sin.

It thus interpreted the satisfaction language of the Bible and the Church in sanctificational terms.

General Audience, September 29, 1999, n. 2

The person must be gradually “healed” of the negative effects which sin has caused in him (what the theological tradition calls the “punishments” and “remains” of sin).

In 1999, John Paul II interpreted the so-called “punishments” of sin as its negative effects from which a person must be “healed.”

And he said that:

General Audience, September 29, 1999, n. 3

The temporal punishment itself serves as “medicine” to the extent that the person allows it to challenge him to undertake his own profound conversion.

This reaffirmed the interpretation of satisfactional punishment language in sanctificational terms.

In 2007, Benedict XVI gave an extended meditation on purgatory in which he dispensed with the satisfactional language entirely and spoke exclusively in sanctificational terms.

Spes Non Confundit 23

Still, as we know from personal experience, every sin “leaves its mark.” Sin has consequences, not only outwardly in the effects of the wrong we do, but also inwardly, inasmuch as “every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death, in the state called purgatory” (CCC 1472).

In 2024, Pope Francis also dispensed with the satisfactional language of punishment and quoted the Catechism’s language about sins entailing unhealthy attachments to creatures that must be purified.

Spes Non Confundit 23

In our humanity, weak and attracted by evil, certain residual effects of sin remain. These are removed by the indulgence, always by the grace of Christ, who, as Saint Paul VI wrote, “is himself our ‘indulgence’” (Apostolorum Limina, 2).

He also spoke of indulgences as removing the residual effects of sin.

And Pope Leo hasn’t done anything that affects the situation.

I thus see a definite trajectory away from a pure satisfaction theory on these matters in favor of the sanctification theory.

The language of satisfaction must be understood in terms of sanctification—as indicated by John Paul II and the Catechism.

And this language can be dispensed with entirely—as indicated by Benedict and Francis.

I thus disagree with the statement that

Austin: I take it that both are necessary to be faithful to a fully fleshed out, traditionally recognizable doctrine of purgatory.

I think we’ve seen a doctrinal development in favor of the sanctification theory.

Doctrinal development involves the clarification of older ways of expressing a concept, and I think that the Magisterium has discerned that the older ways of expressing purgatory and indulgences—in satisfactional terms without the sanctificational context—were problematic.

In part, this may have been for someone of the same reasons Austin points out in his video—and so the Magisterium is now using the sanctification model that is free of those difficulties.

The language of satisfaction can still be used—just as the Bible uses it—but it must be understood in terms of sanctification.

 

The Central Conundrum

We’re now at the point where we can address Austin’s central conundrum.

In his video, he constructs a logic tree that explores both the satisfaction theory of purgatory and indulgences—which he refers to as juridical—and the sanctification theory—which he refers to as therapeutic.

One branch of the logic tree concerns the satisfaction theory, and when Austin explores this, he’s taking it as involving literal satisfaction, not understanding it in terms of sanctification as the Catechism and subsequent sources stress.

If I’m right that we’ve seen a doctrinal development away from the satisfaction theory taken on its own terms in favor of sanctification, that would make this part of the discussion obsolete, so I’ll set it aside.

The other branch of Austin’s logic tree explores the sanctification theory, and so I’ll focus on what he says there.

Austin: I’m going to try to steelman the logic here. Granting that we need to be fully sanctified before entering heaven, the question is how our sanctification could be meaningfully affected by indulgences. To begin with, indulgences are bound up with acts of charity on earth, and we know by our own experience that the love of others often transforms us. When someone shows you Christ’s love, you’re more likely to want to love Christ yourself. In purgatory, souls could be aware of the love shown to them through acts meriting indulgences on their behalf and then be inspired to change. Likewise, we all affirm that prayer truly matters and prayer includes the prayer of the mass. Combine these ideas with the notion of the communion of saints, and we see that what we do on earth is not disconnected from those who have departed this life in Christ. At this point, we’re building toward an argument that states that indulgences, prayers for the dead and masses for the dead all affect the moral internal transformation of souls and purgatory.

This is an interesting line of thought, but it contains a flaw.

If you’ve paid careful attention to the principles I laid out regarding indulgences and the magisterial documents I quoted, you may already be able to see the flaw.

The problem is that indulgences don’t work the way the idea Austin is exploring proposes.

If I’m a soul being purified in purgatory, I don’t look down on earth and see people doing things to please God for my benefit and then get inspired to love Christ more.

I’m not saying that can’t happen, but if it does, it’s secondary.

It’s not how the Church understands indulgences.

And Austin himself sees that there is a problem with this perspective. He goes on to say:

Austin: But there is one problem. Following that logic, there is another person whose acts could bring that transformation about too. His name is Jesus.

And that’s what the idea Austin was exploring was missing: Jesus.

Indulgences aren’t held to be effective because they directly have an effect on the souls in purgatory.

They’re held to be effective because they involve appeals to God, and God is the one affecting the souls in purgatory.

That’s why I spent so much time talking about prayer in laying out the principles behind indulgences, and it’s why John Paul II understood indulgences as involving

General Audience, September 29, 1999, n. 4

The Church has a treasury, then, which is “dispensed” as it were through indulgences. This “distribution” should not be understood as a sort of automatic transfer, as if we were speaking of “things.” It is instead the expression of the Church’s full confidence of being heard by the Father when—in view of Christ’s merits and, by his gift, those of Our Lady and the saints—she [the Church] asks him to mitigate or cancel the painful aspect of punishment by fostering its medicinal aspect through other channels of grace. In the unfathomable mystery of divine wisdom, this gift of intercession can also benefit the faithful departed, who receive its fruits in a way appropriate to their condition.

of the purification though her intercession.

While Austin is still exploring the idea of indulgences involving the actions of people on Earth inspiring those being purified, he identifies a problem with the idea.

Austin: Remember how he said that seeing the love of Christ and others often causes us to be transformed? That’s true, of course. But after death, when we come to see fully the love of Christ, what other example of love could we possibly need that isn’t supplied by the presence of Christ?

And Austin is right that the presence of Christ can fully supply our needs, but this isn’t how indulgences are understood to work.

That’s why I said that—if souls being purified are inspired by the actions of those on earth at all—it’s secondary. It’s not how indulgences work.

But—based on the idea he’s exploring—Austin has encountered a barrier.

Austin: So we’ve hit a problem following the logic with both the juridical and therapeutic routes. This is more or less where I hit a dead end in my thinking about purgatory and indulgences. However, there’s one possible way out of this bind that we should consider here. It has to do with the idea of mediation and secondary causes. That might sound a bit complicated, so let me explain. On earth, the way God often works in our life is through things and through others. For instance, we receive grace through tangible things like bread and wine and communion or water and baptism. Likewise, we are often brought to faith through the witness or preaching of others. In that case, while God is the cause of our salvation, he chooses to work through secondary causes like the people around us to bring about our salvation. So one might argue for indulgences by saying, “See, it’s just God working according to his usual way of doing things.” Or put slightly more theologically, a Catholic might say, “Christ has chosen to apply his grace through the church.

The prayers, sacrifices, and indulgences of the faithful are means by which Christ distributes his grace, but this mediation doesn’t change the fact that it’s all Christ’s grace.”

Austin is absolutely correct that all of this is Christ’s grace. The final purification is an act of Christ’s grace, and any benefits that God sends to us because of the actions of others are also Christ’s grace.

He’s also right that, in this world, God does often send us his grace in a mediated way—that is, through the actions of others.

But there’s still a problem here, and Austin himself sees multiple problems.

 

The First Problem

Austin: I see essentially three problems here. First, there’s the question of whether the logic of secondary causes actually makes sense in purgatory. On earth, I grant that God commonly works through secondary causes. The nature of our physical existence on earth creates a situation in which it is logical for God to work through others to bring us to him. But the same environmental constraints do not apply in purgatory. There we are directly in the presence of God, and we have already in some sense been brought to a saving union with him. The need for mediation and secondary causes then goes away. Still, one might say that this isn’t about necessity, but choice. God simply chooses to apply his grace and purgatory in a way that is consistent with how he does so on earth. Fair enough.

So Austin raises his first objection, which is that God doesn’t need secondary causes in the afterlife.

That’s true, but it’s also true even in this life.

God doesn’t need someone else to preach the gospel to you. Jesus could appear and preach the gospel to you directly.

It’s ultimately a matter of God’s choice—of what he chooses to do—and just like God normally chooses to use secondary causes in this life, he could similarly choose to do so in the afterlife.

Austin thus resolves his own objection, saying, “Fair enough.”

Austin: Fair enough.

But I would note that there still seems to be a problem with how the mediation is being understood.

God  Living Person  Me

The way mediation works in this life, it proceeds from God, who uses some created reality—like another living person—to bring his grace to me.

But that’s not what’s happening in purgatory.

Living Person  God Me

Instead, a living person may pray for me, have Mass said for me, or obtain an indulgence for me while I’m being purified. All of these involve prayer for me, and then God may respond to that prayer by helping me.

Still, Austin has resolved his first problem.

 

The Second Problem

Austin: But now we have the second problem. That is, the logic of mediated grace through indulgences seems to imply that this mediated grace is more potent than Christ’s immediate grace. Let me explain. All who are in purgatory will be saved. If we remove indulgences from the picture, they are all saved through the process of purification that comes about by being in the presence of Christ. This is immediate grace, not in the sense of time, but in the sense that there’s no mediation. It’s directly from Christ. The point of indulgences is to help this process. In the past, theologians were comfortable saying that indulgence has reduced the time spent or suffering faced in purgatory, but today time language is not so much in vogue and suffering language is often downplayed. Nonetheless, indulgences are still held to do something beneficial, and that means that they’re providing something on top of the immediate grace found in purgatory.

But this lands us in an odd position of saying that the grace that comes to souls and purgatory on account of indulgences is somehow more potent than the immediate grace, and that seems theologically suspect. Of course, all grace is ultimately Christ’s. Indulgences aren’t a special category outside of Christ, but if they do something beneficial, they’re doing something that wasn’t already being done. Either they’re more potent or they provide the same grace, but in a more effective way, which would mean that Christ holds this back from souls in purgatory contingent upon the application of indulgences.

I want to compliment Austin here for recognizing that the language of indulgences reducing time in purgatory is not so much in vogue today, because purgatory can be understood as happening instantaneously, in a way that can’t be calculated in earthly time, as Benedict XVI understood it.

He’s also correct that the language of suffering is often downplayed today, but I think this is a mistake.

The world obviously includes suffering—or what’s known philosophically as physical evil.

We all experience physical evil, so it’s obviously something God allows, and we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it.

You can’t discuss the world in any realistic way if you don’t acknowledge suffering as a reality, and that applies not only to this life but also to the afterlife.

Whatever hell may involve, it definitely involves suffering.

1 Corinthians 3:13-15

Each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

And Paul uses the language of a fiery trial even for the saved, saying that some people will be saved, but only as through fire.

The image here is of a person escaping from a burning building.

When I present the idea of purgatory to others, I explain the help that living people can offer in terms of asking God to help the person being purified in some way, and leaving that way up to God.

One way it could be understood is in terms of getting out of purgatory sooner. I don’t think we know how time works in purgatory, so I can’t eliminate that possibility.

And if purgatory does happen instantaneously, God can still reduce the discomfort that the person experiences.

It’s like if you have a friend who’s joined the army and is currently in Boot Camp—or = Basic Combat Training to use its formal name—you can definitely pray for him.

In the army, boot camp lasts for 10 weeks, so he won’t get out any sooner, and boot camp will get him up to a certain level of physical ability and skill, but you can still pray that he reaches those goals with less discomfort than he otherwise would.

God might thus help someone get out of purgatory sooner—if purgatory takes time—or—if purgatory is instantaneous—he might help the person get to where he needs to be spiritually in an easier manner.

I don’t know which of these ways God uses. Maybe he uses both! So I leave that matter up to him.

The problem I see with Austin’s objection is that it still seems to think of indulgences as having some power of their own by God’s grace, and it doesn’t fully embrace the way that prayer works.

I mean, think about why we pray. It isn’t to give God information. As Jesus himself tells us,

Matthew 6:8

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

And yet we’re encouraged to pray. In fact, Jesus even tells us:

Matthew 5:44

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

We also know that we won’t get certain things if we don’t pray. As James 4:2 says:

James 4:2

You do not have, because you do not ask.

So we’re definitely supposed to pray—and we’re not going to get certain things if we don’t pray—but why would that be if we’re only telling God things he already knows? Why would he want us to pray?

The answer is love. As 1 John tells us,

1 John 4:8

God is love.

And love is God’s highest priority.

Matthew 22:37-40

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

The reason God wants us to pray is because of love.

By praying to God, we think about him and our need for him. We’re encouraged to not just think about ourselves but to think about God as the source of all goodness and thus to love him.

And we’re encouraged to pray for others—again so that we don’t just think about ourselves—but instead think about our neighbors and their needs, to will their good by praying for them, and so love them.

Prayer draws us out of ourselves and encourages us to love God and neighbor.

God values love so much that he’s willing to make our reception of certain goods contingent on whether or not we ask for them in prayer.

God will make sure we all receive goods—or graces—from him, but he also withholds certain graces that people could receive if they only ask for them and so love God and neighbor through prayer.

Now, as Austin said, every soul in purgatory will be purified and go to heaven. This is similar to how God has given people in this life immune systems that will handle many diseases, so they will eventually get better from these.

But it’s also true from a Catholic perspective that God withholds certain graces from souls that are being purified that he would grant if people were praying for them, the same way he withholds physical healing from some people on earth that he would grant if others were supporting them in prayer.

 

The Third Problem

Austin: And that brings us to the third problem. That is, we seem to get a kind of two-tier purgatory. Forgive the language of time, but we get something like a fast track and a slow lane. But whether a soul is in one or the other is contingent, not upon something internal to them, but whether or not they receive indulgences on behalf of people on earth. Once again, this creates justice problems seeing as the grace found in indulgences is already available, but isn’t being given for reasons completely outside their control.

I appreciate the sense of justice that Austin is appealing to here.

Specifically, it’s a form of Egalitarian Justice that insists on = Treating Everyone Absolutely Equally.

Suppose I’m sick in the hospital with a painful illness. Sure, maybe my immune system will eventually cure it, and I’ll get out of the hospital.

But laying in the next bed is a guy who has the same illness and is just as sick as me, but he gets out of the hospital early and suffers much less because he has a prayer team at his church praying for him!

How is that fair in the egalitarian sense?

It’s not my fault that I’m not backed up by a prayer team—that people on the outside aren’t praying for me.

Sure, I’ll get out of the hospital eventually, but I’m going to suffer a lot more than this other guy is.

Shouldn’t I get out of the hospital at the same time as the other guy, with the same, lower level of suffering?

That’s what strict egalitarian justice would say should happen.

But that’s not how God works.

He doesn’t enforce absolute, egalitarian justice. He gives everyone what they need, but—to foster the virtues of love of God and love of neighbor—he gives some people extra blessings.

That’s how prayer works—both in this life and the next.

And—even if nobody prays for me while I’m being purified—I can’t complain.

I will get to heaven! I will get to see God! I will get infinite, unending happiness with him.

So—speaking not from the envious perspective I might have now and will need to be purified from but from the loving perspective I will ultimately have—if someone else gets to heaven a little easier with help from his friends, more power to him!—and the friends who cared about him and loved him enough to pray for him.

I thus don’t see any fundamental problem here.

Everyone in purgatory goes to heaven—everyone gets infinite joy—and it assumes a position of envy rather than love to be concerned about the fact that some people get there a little easier.

If I can’t lovingly object to how God handles prayer in this life, then I can’t lovingly object to how he handles prayer in the next life, either.

 

Conclusion

I appreciate the fact that Austin has made a good faith effort at understanding the Catholic viewpoint, and I think there is quite substantial room here for agreement between Catholics and Protestants.

As Austin says:

Austin: However, hopefully this is the beginning, not the end of the conversation.

I’ve now shared my own perspective, so to Austin I’d just like to say, God bless you, brother, and the ball’s in your court.

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God bless you always!

 

VIDEO SOURCES:

Gospel Simplicity’s original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4LYoGJlpcA