Faith and Philosophy

published on April 10, 2015

The Jet Lag Theory of Purgatory

Models of purgatory tend to come paired with an operative conception of what perfection consists in. In the recent philosophical literature, two models, the satisfaction model and the sanctification model, have been pitted against one another. The former focuses on innocence before the law and makes purgatory out to be a place where a debt of punishment is paid. The latter focuses on moral character and describes purgatory in terms of character formation. If perfection consists in a certain way of being related to God, however, then there is a third model (or perhaps a particular way of developing the second model) that merits our attention that focuses on relational dynamics.