Abstract
Purgatory raises many interesting metaphysical, moral, and doctrinal issues. It has historically been a major point of contention between Christian denominations. Purgatory is most identified with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and contemporary Catholic philosophers typically construe the ante-mortem person and the disembodied soul in the hylomorphic framework of Aquinas. We’ll very briefly explore the origins on the doctrine of Purgatory, its biblical sources, Protestant rejection, and some ecumenical reconciliation. Then we’ll focus on the moral and metaphysical puzzles that Purgatory creates. We’ll concentrate upon the philosophical divisions between survivalist and corruptionist accounts of Purgatory. Both camps assume a hylomorphic framework. The survivalists believe the deceased person can persist in Purgatory prior to the resurrection with the soul as his only part. The corruptionists believe it is not the deceased person but just his soul that resides in Purgatory. Corruptionists face certain moral obstacles if the entity purged won’t be the agent of the earlier misconduct. Both sides must confront major metaphysical hurdles explaining the relationship of the soul to the person given that the posthumous soul contributes to thought in a manner quite different than it did when embodied
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Jacques Le Goff (1981: 169) writes that the “Roman Catholic Church honed the doctrine of Purgatory” not just against the Protestants of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries but also against the heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (168–176) and the Greeks of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries (280–288).
- 2.
Protestants don’t recognize the one book that explicitly supports prayer for the dead as part of the Old Testament.
- 3.
Robert Bainton’s (1950: 58) memorable phrase.
- 4.
Lewis defends Purgatory in his 1964 Letters to Malcolm: Choice on Prayer.
- 5.
The satisfaction and sanctification models are informatively contrasted in Walls (2011: 59–91).
- 6.
- 7.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church 1995. Part 1. Sec 1. Art. 12
- 8.
Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Bonaventure claimed that the pains of Purgatory are worse than any person ever suffered in this life. Augustine. Comments on Psalm 37. Bonaventure. Ps. 3 poenit. n. 1. Gregory the Great. IV. dist. Xx. P. 1 a. q. ii
- 9.
Oderberg (2012: 3, fn. 4) agrees.
- 10.
Le Goff (1981: 55) considered Origen a father of Purgatory for he conceived of Hell as a place that one could leave after purification.
- 11.
Parfit alleges that we would have the same concern for the two persons resulting from our cerebrum fissioning and each hemisphere being transplanted into a different body as we would have for the single being receiving our only extant cerebral hemisphere. But only in the latter scenario would we be identical to a post-transplant person.
- 12.
See also Quaestiones de Anima (15c)
- 13.
A plant cutting is another such example of substantial change. The branch of a plant is not a plant. But cut if off and place the cutting in soil and its matter may be reorganized, roots start to grow etc.
- 14.
- 15.
Even if semantic content is external, the person and the soul are related to the same environment.
- 16.
- 17.
Stump (2003: 50–58, 2006: 164) draws upon constitution, Baker (2000) in particular, to illustrate Aquinas’s notion of constitution without identity. Oderberg (2005: 97) explains the detached soul’s relation to the posthumous person with an “imperfect analogy” of becoming mutilated so that “I am constituted by a head as I was once constituted by a whole body”.
- 18.
- 19.
This tack is taken by Mark Spencer (2014). He writes of the person being analogously an animal.
References
Bainton, Robert (1950) Here I Stand: The Life of Martin Luther. Hendricks Publishers: Nashville, Tennessee.
Baker, Lynne Rudder (2000) Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Brown, Christopher (2007) “Souls, Ships and Substances” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 81, 655–88;
Davies, Brian (1992) The Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Donnelly, Maureen (2011) “Using Mereological Principles to Support Metaphysics” Philosophical Quarterly, 61, 225–246
Eberl, Jason (2009) “Do Human Persons Persist Between Death and Resurrection,” Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump. Ed: Kevin Timpe. Routledge: New York.
Edlers, Leo (1997) The Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas. New York: E. J. Brill
Griffiths, Paul (2007) “Purgatory” The Oxford Handbook on Eschatology. Ed. Jerry Walls. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Haldane, John (2001) “The Examined Death and the Hope of the Future” American Catholic Philosophical Association Proceedings. 74: 245–257
Hershenov, David and Rose Koch-Hershenov (2006) “Personal Identity and Purgatory” Religious Studies, 42, 439–451.
Kenny, Anthony (1993) Aquinas on Mind, Routledge: London, England.
Le Goff, Jacques (1981) Birth of Purgatory. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.
Lee, Patrick and Robert George (2008) Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Oderberg, David (2008) Real Essentialism, Routledge: New York.
Oderberg, David (2012) “Survivalism, Corruptionism and Mereology” European Journal of Religion 4:4, 1–26.
Oderberg, David. (2005) “Hylemorphic Dualism.” Social Philosophy and Policy, 22, 2, 70–99
Olson, Eric. (2011) “A Compound of Two Substances.” Soul, Body and Survival, Ed. Kevin Corcoran. Cornell University Press: Ithaca.
Parfit, Derek (1984) Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Pasnau, Robert (2002) Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Rae, Scott and J.P. Moreland (2000) Body and Soul. Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois.
Spencer, Mark (2014) “Personhood of the Separated Soul,” Nova et Vetera, 12: 863–912
Stump, Eleanore (2006). “Resurrection, Reassembly and Constitution.” Die menschliche Seele: Brauchen wir den Dualismus? Bruno Niederberger and Edmund Runggaldier (eds.). Ontos Verlag: Frankfurt, Germany.
Stump, Eleonore (2003) Aquinas. Routledge: New York.
Thomson, Judith (1998) “The Statue and the Clay,” Nous, 32, 149–173.
Toner, Patrick (2006) “Personhood and Death in St Thomas Aquinas,”. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 26: 2, 121–38;
Toner, Patrick (2012a) “St. Thomas on Punishing Souls” International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion. 71, 2: 103–116
Toner, Patrick (2012b) “Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Too Many Thinkers.” Modern Schoolman, 3, 4: 209–222
Walls, Jerry (2011) Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hershenov, D., Hershenov, R. (2017). Purgatory. In: Nagasawa, Y., Matheson, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48609-7_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48609-7_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-48608-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48609-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)