Eternal Reward Research Articles

The Origins of Purgatory through the Lens of Seventh-Century Irish Eschatology

THE ORIGINS OF PURGATORY THROUGH THE LENS OF SEVENTH-CENTURY IRISH ESCHATOLOGY By MARINA SMYTH Many of the surviving texts associated with seventh-century Ireland deal with eschatology. In general, these texts convey assumptions on the fate of the soul after death that are consistent with the traditional Christian view in late antiquity in the West, namely, that the ultimate destiny of most Christians will not be determined till the great universal judgment at the end of time. To illustrate this point I will adduce the theological treatise Liber de ordine creaturarum and the moral treatise De XII abusiuis saeculi, as well as religious poetry and hagiographical works, and set them in their likely liturgical context. In contrast, the Vision of Fursey and Adomnán's Life of Columba stand out as revealing the strong influence of concepts originating in the early Christian ascetic circles of Egypt. Irish Christians were thus also exposed to the idea that the fate of all individual souls will be determined immediately after death. Awareness and even endorsement of this point of view will have prepared the way toward accepting the novel teaching that a finite period of painful purification immediately follows the death of most Christians. The survival of these two texts demonstrating the presence in seventh-century Ireland of the belief that the final determination of an individual's fate occurs at the time of death draws attention to the radical change in perspective that must have been an essential initial step in the very formulation of the doctrine of purgatory.1 Background From the earliest stages of Christianity it was generally understood that at the moment of death the souls of the very good (martyrs and confessors, for instance) go straight to heaven, and the souls of the very bad go immediately to hell, without any intervening judgment. The terms "good," "bad," "heaven," and "hell" may have been understood in different ways at different times and in different places, but the basic idea remained constant. The more interesting question is: What did Christians in late antiquity think happened after death to most Christians, who were neither very good nor very bad — the boni non ualde or the mali non ualde, to use the terminology 1 It was not until the end of the Middle Ages that the Roman Catholic Church issued formal statements on the doctrine of purgatory, such as the 1336 decree Benedidus Deus of Pope Benedict XII. 92traditio derived from variant readings of St. Augustine's Enchiridion HO.2 The Bible foretold a great, public universal judgment at the end of time, in which the Lord would scrutinize each life, to be followed either by a call to eternal reward in heaven or by confinement to eternal damnation in hell (e.g. Matt. 25:31-46, Rom. 2:5-16, Apoc. 20:11-14). This scriptural teaching soon became incorporated into credal statements.3 Attempts to reconcile this doctrine with the early Christian assumptions mentioned above regarding saintly and evil people led to a more or less conscious fourfold division of mankind: those who would be judged and those who would not, each category being further subdivided into two subgroups, namely, those who would spend eternity in heaven and those who would spend it in hell. This was the common scheme in the Latin West during late antiquity. It is found in the works of Lactantius (fl. 323)," Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 315-367),° Zeno of Verona (d. 371/72),6 Ambrose (ca. 334-99),7 and Paulinus of Ñola (353-431),8 all of whom assumed that the judgment at the end of time would apply only to the "middle" group of those neither very good nor very bad. Gregory the Great spelled out the fourfold scheme clearly in the Moralia in lob, a treatise he had largely completed before he became pope in 590, but which he revised as late as 595: There are in truth two classes, namely, of the elect and the reprobate. But two ranks are comprised in each of these classes. For some are judged and perish; others are not judged and perish. Some are judged and reign; others are not judged and reign...

Indulgences and Saintly Devotionalisms in the Middle Ages

ROBERT W. SHAFFERN* Indulgences, which were (and still are) remissions of temporal penalty for sin granted by the episcopal authority of the Catholic Church, have long been associated with mechanicalism, decadence, and formalism in later medieval Christianity.1 This association originated in the medieval period itself and was, of course, inherited by the Protestant Reformation. Critics such as Jean Gerson (c. 1420) lamented the numbers of indulgences and sizes of the remissions being granted by Christendom's prelates as attack on true penitence and contrition.2 John Wycliffe (c. 1380) and Wessel Gansfort (c. 1489)3 questioned seriously the Church's authority to remit penalties for sin because indulgences lacked scriptural authority, argument that may also be found in the earliest discussions of the Schoolmen. Indulgences, however, remained popular throughout the later Middle Ages despite the eloquence and prestige of these critics, and so historians in recent years have begun to examine the popularity of indulgences as a part of medieval spirituality. In a recent study of the relation between papal authority and religious movements, David L. D'Avray argued that the proliferation of indulgences ought more properly to be understood as a religious movement than as a problem within the later medieval church.4 The traditional perspective, in his view, results from an obtrusive consciousness of the eventual reaction.5 Not only the critics but the enthusiasts must also be heard. To that end, Richard Kieckhefer expressed the need for historians of medieval religion to explore the connection between saintly piety and indulgences in the Middle Ages.6 The medieval saints, who were the models of late medieval devotion and interior spirituality, were zealous collectors of indulgences. At the same time, the saints accepted the need for ecclesiastical mediation in the remission of sin. Church authority itself relied on the intercession and merit of saints who already possessed their eternal reward. Indeed, in addition to the passion of Christ, the merits of deceased saints were invoked to prove the efficacy of indulgences. Papal proclamations of indulgences often called upon the authority ,of Saints Peter and Paul, the two great patrons of Rome.7 For Catherine of Siena, Bridget of Sweden, Peter of Luxembourg, and others, the quest for indulgences accompanied interior conversion to the imitatio Christi. Indulgences and the saints met in several different ways in medieval religion. First, prelates granted indulgences as approval and encouragement to saintly cults. Second, prelates, at the behest of saintly founders, granted indulgences to promote new devotional movements. Third, the saints eagerly sought indulgences for the benefit of their own souls or those of their followers. Medieval prelates granted untold numbers of indulgences to promote the cult of the saints, the oldest expression of popular piety in the Middle Ages. This promotion usually came in the form of indulgences granted for the visitation of a saint's shrine; so the practice of pilgrimage was also crucial. Indulgences were far less likely to be granted to a shrine built in honor of a long-venerated saint, such as a martyr, or apostle, or a late antique bishop such as Saint Martin of Tours.8 Bishops and popes were more eager to support the cult of a newly-canonized saint. Pope Clement V presided at the translation of the relics of the holy bishop Bertrand of Comminges in 1309 and granted unusually liberal indulgence of fifteen years and fifteen quarantaines (one quarantaine equalled forty days) to those who visited the sanctuary on the day of the feast, seven years and seven quarantaines to those who visited during the octave, ten years and ten quarantaines to those who visited on a Marian feast, and three years and three quarantaines to those who visited during the octave of these feasts.9 Pope John XXII thus promoted the veneration of Thomas Aquinas, who was canonized in 1323: So that a multitude of Christians may more ardently and profitably visit Thomas's venerable tomb, and that the feast of that confessor may be celebrated with joy, we, by the mercy of omnipotent God and by the authority of His saints and apostles Peter and Paul, remit one year and forty days of enjoined penance to all truly penitent and confessed, who shall make visitation there seeking Thomas's suffrages on the anniversary of the feast; and to pilgrims who visit the said tomb within seven days immediately following the feast in subsequent years, one hundred days of enjoined penance. …

How Socially Conservative Were the Elizabethan Religious Radicals?

Social historians have long suspected that religious convictions made a difference in the sixteenth century, and historians of the late Tudor religious and political settlements have recently emphasized the differences that advanced forms of Calvinism are alleged to have made. They say that religious radicals—puritans and precisianists, to their contemporary critics—were social conservatives who thought wealth was a blessing and poverty a curse. According to Keith Wrightson and David Levine, the “firmly committed Puritans among the yeomen of the parish” promoted a “sense of social distance” between themselves (“the better sort”) and the less respectable. The 1995 republication of Wrightson's and Levine's study of social discontinuity, Poverty and Piety in an English Village, seemed a splendid occasion to revisit the intersection of religious conviction and social practice and to ponder the precision with which puritanism's supposed contributions to social stratification—and the stratification itself—have been, and can be, measured.Measurements of a vastly different kind preoccupied Elizabethan religious theorists interested in gauging the effects of election and thus discovering whether they and their parishioners had been elected or chosen by God and redeemed. Assurances of election and of eternal reward were difficult to identify, because everything that Christians did or dreamed up was so deplorably flawed. “There remain relickes of syn” in the most righteous persons on earth, William Fulke preached in 1574; Christians desperate for assurance invariably experienced (and measured) those “relickes” as tokens of divine displeasure.

A Reply to Glenn: Fashioning Families and Policies for the Future--Not the Past

I take as my text the wisdom of John Updike: An old world is collapsing and a new world arising; we have better eyes for the collapse than for the rise, for the old one is the world we know.l My thesis is that Glenn's eyes are fixed on a world that's going away, and for which he deeply mourns. His accompanying critique must be interpreted in the light of his myopic visionhis unawareness of the new social worlds that people themselves are inventing. His comments must be seen as a lament that scholars are no longer writing the kind of book he thinks should be written-the sort of book that was published prior to the 1970s. The difference between Glenn and me is in large part theoretical. His view of society in general, and family in particular, seems to be that because social structures are handed down to us, we are thus obliged to preserve them. That was, of course, the structuralfunctional perspective (Old Action Theory) pervading family studies prior to the 1970s (Alexander, 1988). My 1995 book contrasts that view with a more contemporary perspective called New Action Theory, and is in fact entirely fashioned around it (Scanzoni & Marsiglio, 1993; Kingsbury & Scanzoni, 1993). Proponents of this theoretical approach hold that persons continually invent fresh social arrangements, as constrained but also as enabled by their surrounding environments. Because Glenn appears more attune to Old, rather than New Action Theory, he seems to have enormous difficulty grasping the notion of social invention. There is, moreover, a disquieting theme throughout his writings that at best may be taken as an unintended disregard for women's interests, and at worst a backdoor effort to put the brakes on women's historic struggles to gain social justice. Although a mood of imperiousness permeates his entire paper, I am particularly incensed by the smugness of his attacks on the work of our distinguished and influential colleague, Jessie Bernard. I cannot imagine a scenario in which a male sociologist would, in comparable fashion, dismiss the contribution of a eminent male scholar-someone, say, of the stature of Reuben Hill. Although unable to respond, I have no doubt that Jessie, from the vantage of her eternal reward, is bemused by the spectacle of someone who, to my knowledge has never published any books at all (or at least any that I've heard of) arrogating to himself the lofty role of academic muckraker. Not only do Glenn and I follow divergent theoretical paths, we also disagree quite sharply in our methodological assumptions and perspectives. One of the most fundamental canons of science is humility, and I am deeply disturbed by its absence in Glenn's paper. His arrogance and assumed self-importance have virtually obscured the basic [scientific] principle that one can never say that one has proved anything (Anderson, 1971, p. 170). Some time ago, I expressed my concerns to Glenn that his methodology, like his theory, was in desperate need of updating. In 1996, he sent a letter voicing his concerns over my 1995 book in which, among other things, he claimed that I had associated his ideas too closely with those of David Popenoe. I wrote back offering a dialogue over our contrasting perspectives.2 I suggesteda public forum at ASA, NCFR or elsewhere. After reading your papers [Glenn, 1993, 1995, 1996], it seems to me that although we share much in common, we diverge in certain key areas. Some of our differences stem from disparate methodological assumptions. Your plea for an objective assessment of Popenoe [1993] and your assertion that he is correct, sidestep the precise matters Cowan [1993] raises. There is no such animal called objective assessment. Nothing in social science is ever undeniably correct or incorrect-there are merely degrees of validity. Consequently, faith in the methods of the past on which you base your conclusions (as does Popenoe) has become misplaced and might even be naive. …

Religious Orientation and Death Fears

This study was designed to clarify the relationship between religious orientation and death fear, and to test the hypothesis that concern about one's possible fate in an afterlife is positively associated with extrinsic religion but negatively correlated with intrinsic religion. The results indicated that extrinsic religion is positively associated with death fear and more specifically with the ranking of concern regarding one's fate in an afterlife. Intrinsic religion was not significantly related to death fear but was negatively correlated with ranking of concern about fate in an afterlife. Research on the relationship between religiosity and fear of death has not produced consistent results. Lester (1967) has shown that the findings of early studies on the issue conflict with each other. Magni (1973) investigated the relationship between more specific religious orientations and death fear and found that extrinsic religion was positively associated with three measures of death fear while intrinsic religion was negatively correlated with a fear of death scale. Kahoe and Dunn (1975) also reported a negative relationship between intrinsic religion and fear of death but no significant relationship between extrinsic religion and fear of death. In examining the relationship between religiosity and fear of death, it may be useful to differentiate between specific fears as well as between various religious orientations. Choron (1964) distinguished three types of death fear: what comes after death, the event of dying, and ceasing to be. The fear of what may come after death seems to be particularly relevant to religious persons, particularly those of the Christian faith. Feifel (1959) found that the religious person, :in This content downloaded from 157.55.39.181 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 06:19:00 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 74 REVIEW OF RELIGIOUS RESEARCH contrast to the non-religious individual, is' more concerned with afterlife matters. Diggory and Rothman (1961) measured seven' death consequences and reported that concern about, one's fate in a life after death was relatively greater for religious persons: than for nonreligious individuals. The traditional Christian doctrine of life after death with the *alternatives of eternal rewards or punishments may both increase death fear and alleviate it. The doctrine would certainly seem to provide an extrinsic rather than intrinsic motive for religious activity. The present, study was. conducted both to clarify the relationship between religious orientation and death fear, and to test the hypothesis that the specific death concern regarding one's possible fate in an afterlife is positively associated with an extrinsic religious orientation and negatively related to an intrinsic religious orientation.

Milton's Biblical Style in “Paradise Regained”

ABSTRACT In Paradise Regained, Milton employs biblical allusions in several significant ways. Through the very words and phrases of Scripture, he draws into the poem essential details of the encircling framework of Christ's total career and teaching, and he thereby puts the particular episode of the temptations into a biblical perspective. Many allusions recall biblical passages which emphasize Christ's humanity—his diligence in the study of the Scripture, his compassion for all men, and his passion and death. Other allusions serve to point up the superior exegetical principles which enable Christ to make Satan appear foolish in his misinterpretations of the Scriptures. Throughout the debates between Christ and Satan, allusions to the epistles of Paul and to the book of Revelation also provide a structural tension between the restraint and self-discipline needed in this world which are stressed in the Pauline allusions in the poem's early books and the eternal reward or punishment of the next world which is stressed in the allusions to Revelation, which increase near the poem's conclusion. Through his manipulations of biblical allusions, Milton alerts his readers to important nuances of Christ's victory and of the poem's meaning.

A Companion to the Summa: Volume IV, The Way of Life by Walter Farrell, O. P., S. T. D., S. T. M.

BOOK REVIEWS A Companion to the Summa: Volume IV, The Way of Life. By the REv. WALTER FARRELL, O.P., S. T.D., S. T.M. New York: Sheed and Ward, 194~. Pp. viii+ 464. $3.75. The Way of Life brings to completion a theological work of outstanding excellence. This latest and last volume of Father Farrell's Companion to the Summa corresponds to the Pars Tertia and the Supplementum. In other words, it is concerned with the theology of the Incarnation and the Redemption, the Sacraments and the Last Things. In this, as in the three preceding volumes, the author has striven to produce, as he himself expresses it, a layman's edition of the Summa Theologica. He has been eminently successful. Indeed, he has surpassed his objective, for not only the layman but also the priest and the professional theologian will find in the Companion enlightenment and guidance toward a deeper appreciation of the treasures of sacred lore bequeathed to the Catholic Church by the Angelic Doctor. Twenty chapters make up The Way of Life. The first forms an introduction , developing the theme that the human mind craves mystery. The appetite for mystery is so keen that it leaves a man restless, bored in the face of the obvious. Today, however, the mysterious is too frequently looked upon as an insult to man's intelligence, to his courage, to his willingness to work. The truth of the matter is that the study of mysteryparticularly of the supreme mystery, God-evokes courage and love and promotes the substantial progress of the mind by sharpening the intellectual powers. The three previous volumes of the Companion deal with the mysteries of God and of human conduct in its relation to. God; this volume deals with the climax of mystery, the mystery of God made man. The following ten chapters propound the doctrines of Christology and Soteriology according to the order followed by St. Thomas. The fittingness of the Incarnation, the mode of the hypostatic union, the integrity of our Lord's two natures, the perfections of His humanity and its so-called defects -these vital truths centered about the Word Incarnate are accurately and convincingly presented. Then the author explains the mediatorial office of Christ and traces the course of His earthly life in its main events from His birth to His passion and death, with His subsequent triumph in the resurrection and the ascension. One chapter is devoted to the Virgin Mother of God and her sublime privileges, concluding with a striking contrast between Mary as she is portrayed by Catholic faith and theology and the ideal of womanhood prevalent in the modern world. The twelfth chapter, one of the best in the book, entitled "Fruitful 119 120 BOOK REVIEWS Signs of Life," presents the doctrine of the sacraments in general, stressing particularly the truth that a sacrament is a sign. Then, six chapters are devoted to the study of the individual sacraments, the greatest measure of space being given, as would be expected, to the Holy Eucharist. Naturally, the author brings prominently the ingenious reasoning of St. Thomas for the seven-fold number of the sacraments, especially the parallel between the needs of man's physical life and the spiritual needs cared for by the divinely established signs of supernatural life. " The sacraments greet man from the womb, and usher him to his tomb " (p. 265) . Particularly worthy of praise is Father Farrell's exposition of our Lord's presence in the Blessed Sacrament in the mode of substance (pp. 310-313). The last two chapters are concerned with the solemn verities of death, judgment, the resurrection, eternal reward and everlasting punishment. In its proper place Father Farrell treats the subject of the unending torments of heH without any attempt to compromise with modern notions. " It is not surprising that men should shrink from hell . . . What is surprising and not at aU flattering to humanity is that men should shrink from the truth of hell, as if the place of eternal torment could be obliterated by our denial of it. J[t is a triumph of unreason so to deal with any truth; it is the height of...