In a ferocious and possibly unsuccessful bid to escape from the brink of World War III, I looked up Austin Farrer on Purgatory. Many Anglicans and for all I know many of you don't like the doctrine, but it's always made sense to me.
How could we not pass through purgation on our way to glorification? The chaff, famously, must be burned away. Anyway, here's Farrer, see what you think:
I say, then, that the teaching of Christ, the nature of our freewill, and the way God deals with us all point in one direction: the loss of heaven is a real danger. Second. I observe that Christ teaches one thing with particular insistence. Men whose moral misery is disguised from them by comfort, pride or success, will find themselves after death a prey to that flame which can surely be nothing but the scorching truth. Third, I see that Christ speaks of the flame as everlasting, as a torment which does not lose its force, or die down. The sinner will vainly wait for it to exhaust itself, or hope to escape from it on the further side. But I do not see that I am forbidden to ask, what then? Cannot everlasting Mercy save from the everlasting fire, or let the irreconcilable perish in it?
The fate of ultimate impenitence is a mystery into which I am reluctant to look. If it overtakes any, I pray they may be few. But looking to myself and the hopes a Christian dares to entertain, I find conscience and moral reason join forces with Catholic teaching, and forbid me to to claim exemption from the burning of that flame. If Dives needed to be stripped, and to suffer the truth of his condition, do not we also?
Perhaps before we suffer it, we may be assured of mercy; perhaps the sight of mercy will make the torment, when we see what a God we have, and how we have served him; what wounds we have inflicted on the souls of our fellows by our egotism and neglect.
Purgatory was rejected by our Reformers, as undermining the sufficiency of Christ's atonement; for it was taken to be the serving of a sentence by which the guilt of Christians was in some way worked off. Such an objection has no force against the teaching, that we have a pain to pass through, in being reconciled to truth and love. And we may as well call this pain purgatorial, having no other name to call it. It seems strange, indeed, that so practical and pressing a truth as that of purgatory should be dismissed, while so remote and impractical a doctrine as the absolute everlastingness of hell should be insisted on. (Saving Belief, P154-155)
Sadly, I'd say that the absolute everlastingness of hell becomes more apparent by the day, but Farrer was focused on Divine Mercy and the white hot, purifying light of God's truth.
We must all pass through this, surely, on the way to sanctification and the green pastures and still waters of paradise. Such is the progress of conviction of sin, repentance, amendment of life, and absolution.
God bless you all,
LSP
