Homer,
You wrote:
How is this any different than the Catholic doctrine of purgatory? It would seem to be a distinction without a difference. Although slim, the biblical support for purgatory appears at least as strong.
It really doesn't sound very different from the doctrine of purgatory. The degree of similarity must apparently appear to be very close, in the eyes of some, since the book "
Four Views on Hell" mistakenly included the Catholic doctrine of purgatory as one of the views, where universal reconciliation should have been included. Perhaps it was considerations such as those of the universalists (like Origen) that led the Roman Catholics to create the doctrine of purgatory (while condemning Origen!), as it seems almost to serve the same ends.
"Almost," I say. Not quite. The doctrine of purgatory still allows that many (perhaps most) people may end up in eternal torment. Some, it is argued, at the time of their death, are not "bad enough" to ever deserve that fate, but also are not "good enough" to deserve heaven. For them, there is said to be purgatory. I am not sure whether purgatory is supposed to be a place that brings sinners to repentance, or if it is simply a place where they pay-off their debt to God. I have never heard the Catholic explanation of this point.
I do not hold to universalism, as I have often said. However, as is evident in my posts, I find it to be an attractive and plausible interpretation of the ambiguous data that the Bible provides concerning God's "Final Solution" to the problem of sin. Of the various options, it really is a good solution—seemingly the one most consistent with the revealed character of God, and the only one that really permits the Lamb who was slain to receive the full reward of His sufferings.
I can understand the evangelical objection that, if a man were to pay off his sin-debt in hell, and then be "restored to society" in the new earth, then he would not be there by
grace, like the rest of us. In response to this suggestion, several thoughts arise in my mind (none of them proving anything):
1. (Entirely hypothetically) If a sinner, having been through hell, has paid off his sin-debt, this does not mean that he now "deserves" to have eternal life. Eternal life is still the
gracious and
undeserved gift of God in Christ. It simply would mean that the "legal" obstruction to his receiving that life has had to be removed "the hard way." Once that obstruction has been dispensed with, then God has every right either to welcome him into the renewed earth, or, alternatively, to "pull his plug." If God chose the latter, and the man were made to pass out of conscious existence after paying this penalty, this would not necessarily be a case of depriving him of something he had "earned," but simply of the withholding of a grace that some receive, but which no one deserves.
2. When we use the term "paying the debt," we may be picturing the wrong concept. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the man had been forgiven, but refused to forgive another man. It seems clear that, though his debt had been cancelled, it was on the implicit condition that he go out and extend similar mercy in his dealings with others. This is clear from the fact that the king was able to cast him into prison on no other offense than that he failed to forgive another man. In this latter state, we are told that he was "delivered to the torturers, until he would pay what was owed." But what was owed? His original debt had been cancelled. All that he owed his master was that he forgive his fellow servants.
Thus, the man was to remain incarcerated until he would come to the place of forgiveness. In other words, "paying what he owed" did not consist in a certain amount of suffering or penalty being paid-off, but by acquiring a softness of heart which he earlier had refused to adopt. If he would have reached this place of forgiveness (I think it is implied), he would have then been no longer held by the torturers. His debt (or, more properly, his "obligation") would then be fulfulled. If we envisaged a similar arrangement for hell (in fact, many people think that this parable is about hell, and others that it is about purgatory), then the man who dies with an unpaid sin-debt, has only this obligation: to come to a place of repentance which he had resisted throughout his earthly life. Hell is where he goes until this obligation is met. Upon reaching this place in his heart, his case would then be no different from that of any of us who are now saved (the same experience of repentance was the only way that we got free of our sin-debt), and his restoration to God would be the same as ours—with only the exception that he had resisted it longer and surrendered later than we did. The
grace involved in his salvation would be no less than the grace involved in ours.
3. When Paul contrasts "grace" and "debt" (e.g., in Romans 4), he is concerned that we do not have occasion to "boast" of having taken care of our sin-debt by our own works or merits. Many Christians have come to Christ only after great losses, sufferings and painful divine dealings. For some, these dealings have amounted to a lesser "hell" on earth, without which (it seems) they would not have been broken and brought to repentance. We do not, in their cases, argue that their sufferings have served to purchase their salvation, thus nullifying grace. We recognize, perhaps, that the "price they paid" in coming to Christ through difficulty was necessary to the outcome. Any fear that those who were brought to Christ through more severe dealings than others would then be prone to "boast" of having accomplished their own salvation through works would be unfounded. The more one suffers before coming to repentance, the more there is for them to be ashamed of, because that prolonged and difficult process corresponds to the degree of hardness of their hearts, which, through such means, God had to overcome. The evidence of such recalcitrance would be no matter of boasting, but of shame.
These thoughts are presented only because they occur to me. Obviously, my thoughts have been on the questions of the biblical teaching on hell for a while now, and I am attempting to look at the scriptural possibilities from every angle. I am not saying that any of these suggestions amount to anything like proof of one position over another. I have not received them from reading universalists, and am not sure that they would approve these concepts. They are just thoughts that come to me through thinking.
