Revelation 21:27

But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, "let down from heaven," [Revelation 21:2] which the apostle also calls "our mother from above;" [Galatians 4:26] and, while declaring that our πολίτευμα, or citizenship, is in heaven, he predicates of it that it is really a city in heaven. This both Ezekiel had knowledge of [Ezekiel 48:30-35] and the Apostle John beheld. [Revelation 21:10-23] And the word of the new prophecy which is a part of our belief, attests how it foretold that there would be for a sign a picture of this very city exhibited to view previous to its manifestation. This prophecy, indeed, has been very lately fulfilled in an expedition to the East. For it is evident from the testimony of even heathen witnesses, that in Judæa there was suspended in the sky a city early every morning for forty days. As the day advanced, the entire figure of its walls would wane gradually, and sometimes it would vanish instantly. We say that this city has been provided by God for receiving the saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all really spiritual blessings, as a recompense for those which in the world we have either despised or lost; since it is both just and God-worthy that His servants should have their joy in the place where they have also suffered affliction for His name's sake. Of the heavenly kingdom this is the process. After its thousand years are over, within which period is completed the resurrection of the saints, who rise sooner or later according to their deserts there will ensue the destruction of the world and the conflagration of all things at the judgment: we shall then be changed in a moment into the substance of angels, even by the investiture of an incorruptible nature, and so be removed to that kingdom in heaven of which we have now been treating, just as if it had not been predicted by the Creator, and as if it were proving Christ to belong to the other god and as if he were the first and sole revealer of it.

He is here describing the church of the future when, unlike at the present time, the evil will not be mixed in along with the good and allowed to live with them. For the good alone will reign with Christ with whom and in whom they will live happily forever, namely, in that heavenly Jerusalem that is the mother of all. Indeed, it says that they are written in the book of the Lamb [to whom] he said, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

It is true that no one enters into that communion of the saints who either refuses to be cleansed of former sin and from the guilt of their parents, or having become filthy after purification refused to be cleansed by the washing of humility and the shedding of tears. Indeed, Judas committed such an abomination, and so does a heretic who worships God deceitfully. However, those are said to enter who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, namely, those whom the heart of a true faith and a firm hope embrace.

And nothing unclean will enter it, etc. He describes the Church of that time, when, with the wicked already separated from the midst, only the good will reign with Christ. But even now, every impure and false person is not in the Church, nor does he see the light of the city of God who hates it, because darkness has blinded his eyes.

QUESTION: Nor hath there entered into it anything defiled. ANSWER: He is describing the Church of that time when, after the wicked have been excluded from among them, the good alone will reign with Christ. But already now, every unclean person and liar is not in the Church, nor does the one who hates the city of God see its light, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes. [1 John 2:11] It is not here, but there that there will be the true healing of the nations, full redemption, and everlasting happiness. Finally, after having at last finished so great and so perilous a work, I beg with insistence, that if any people should deem this little work of mine worth reading, they should also remember to commend the author of the work to the Lord. I have actually quoted a good number of things from the teaching of the masters or from what I remembered from my readings — for we also have as a commandment that we should give back to our lord the talents we received, with the interests. Concerning the knowledge of numbers [...] also a few things [...] different number [...] Bede says [...] is divided into seven sections; and in the fifth rule mentioned in his preface, he says that the trope works with regular numbers, in the trope called synecdoche, where either the whole is meant by a part or a part by the whole. This figure of speech even gives us the solution to that famous question of Christ's resurrection: for unless the last part of the day on which he suffered his Passion is taken as a whole day, that is, including also the previous night; and unless the night in the last part of which he was resurrected is taken as a whole day, that is, including also the then-dawning Dominical day, there cannot be three days and three nights, the time during which he said he would be in the heart of the earth. [Matt. 12:40] He calls “regular numbers” those the holy Scripture commends more notably, like seven, ten, or twelve. By these is usually represented either totality of time or perfection of a certain thing, as for example, as already said, Seven times a day I have given praise to thee [Ps. 118:164] means nothing else but His praise shall be always in my mouth. [Ps. 33:2] What is the number seven taken to mean but the sum of perfection? So the number seven is called perfect because it is made up of the first even number and the first odd number: the first that can be divided and the first that cannot be divided. This is actually why twelve apostles were chosen to be filled with the perfection of the sevenfold grace, for there is a rising from the number seven to the number twelve: when the number seven undergoes a multiplication of its parts by each other, it stretches to the number twelve: for whether four is multiplied by three or three by four, they turn seven into twelve. Therefore, since the holy apostles were being sent to preach the Trinity in the four parts of the world, twelve apostles were chosen, so that they might show by their number also the perfection they preached with their lives and voices. Here you are; you have both, the fulfillment of your request and of your wish. As far as time and place have allowed me to, with God's favor, I have complied willingly, instructed by the apostle, who tells us to be ready to satisfy everyone that asks. [1 Pet. 3:15] I know him who says, Open thy mouth, and I will fill it. [Ps. 80:11] Let us hasten to walk while it is light; the night will come, when no one can walk. [Cf. John 9:4] Let us imitate him about whom it is written, fearing God, and avoiding evil. [Job 1:1]

And he says that nothing unclean and no one who practices abomination and falsehood shall ever enter it, but those who are written in the book of life of the Lamb. "For what fellowship has light with darkness," (2 Cor. 6:14) or a sinner with the righteous of God? whom the Lord in the Gospels also delivered to us as separated by a great chasm. (see Luke 16:26)

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?

On the traditional Protestant view, all the dead are damned or saved. If they are damned, prayer for them is useless. If they are saved, it is equally useless. God has already done all for them. What more should we ask?

But don't we believe that God has already done and is already doing all that He can for the living? What more should we ask? Yet we are told to ask.

"Yes," it will be answered, "but the living are still on the road. Further trials, developments, possibilities of error, await them. But the saved have been made perfect. They have finished the course. To pray for them presupposes that progress and difficulty are still possible. In fact, you are bringing in something like Purgatory."

Well, I suppose I am. Though even in Heaven some perpetual increase of beatitude, reached by a continually more ecstatic self-surrender, without the possibility of failure but not perhaps without its own ardours and exertions--for delight also has its severities and steep ascents, as lovers know--might be supposed. But I won't press, or guess, that side for the moment. I believe in Purgatory.

Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on "the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory" as that Romish doctrine had then become. I don't mean merely the commercial scandal. If you turn from Dante's Purgatorio to the Sixteenth Century you will be appalled by the degradation. In Thomas More's Supplication of Souls Purgatory is simply temporary Hell. In it the souls are tormented by devils, whose presence is "more horrible and grievous to us than is the pain itself." Worse still, Fisher, in his Sermon on Psalm VI, says the tortures are so intense that the spirit who suffers them cannot, for pain, "remember God as he ought to do." In fact, the very etymology of the word purgatory has dropped out of sight. Its pains do not bring us nearer to God, but make us forget Him. It is a place not of purification but purely of retributive punishment.

The right view returns magnificently in Newman's Dream. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer "With its darkness to affront that light." Religion has reclaimed Purgatory.

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."

I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. "No nonsense about merit." The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.

My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am "coming round", a voice will say, "Rinse your mouth out with this." This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But More and Fisher shall not persuade me that it will be disgusting and unhallowed.

Your own peculiar difficulty--that the dead are not in time--is another matter.

How do you know they are not? I certainly believe that to be God is to enjoy an infinite present, where nothing has yet passed away and nothing is still to come. Does it follow that we can say the same of saints and angels? Or at any rate exactly the same? The dead might experience a time which was not quite so linear as ours--it might, so to speak, have thickness as well as length. Already in this life we get some thickness whenever we learn to attend to more than one thing at once. One can suppose this increased to any extent, so that though, for them as for us, the present is always becoming the past, yet each present contains unimaginably more than ours.

I feel--can you work it out for me and tell me if it is more than a feeling--that to make the life of the blessed dead strictly timeless is inconsistent with the resurrection of the body.

Again, as you and I have agreed, whether we pray on behalf of the living or the dead, the causes which will prevent or exclude the events we pray for are in fact already at work. Indeed they are part of a series which, I suppose, goes back as far as the creation of the universe. The causes which made George's illness a trivial one were already operating while we prayed about it; if it had been what we feared, the causes of that would have been operative. That is why, as I hold, our prayers are granted, or not, in eternity. The task of dovetailing the spiritual and physical histories of the world into each other is accomplished in the total act of creation itself. Our prayers, and other free acts, are known to us only as we come to the moment of doing them. But they are eternally in the score of the great symphony. Not "pre-determined"; the syllable pre lets in the notion of eternity as simply an older time. For though we cannot experience our life as an endless present, we are eternal in God's eyes; that is, in our deepest reality. When I say we are "in time" I don't mean that we are, impossibly, outside the endless present in which He beholds us as He beholds all else. I mean, our creaturely limitation is that our fundamentally timeless reality can be experienced by us only in the mode of succession.

In fact we began by putting the question wrongly. The question is not whether the dead are part of timeless reality. They are; so is a flash of lightning. The question is whether they share the divine perception of timelessness.