Protestants and Purgatory

Most Protestant sects hate the doctrine, believing that it violates the premise of "grace, not works, lest any man should boast." They are technically correct, and may prove right in the end. Yet I think that they do not understand the highest understandings of the doctrine and are criticising the abuse, not the use. From Psalm 85:10 - 

Love and faithfulness meet together;
    righteousness and peace kiss each other

Or 

Love and Truth meet in the street,
    Right Living and Whole Living embrace and kiss!

This gave rise to an 11th C (Jewish) Midrash that Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace are the four pillars around the throne of God - or also, that they are the Four Daughters of God, who argue before Him over each soul's* value, and if any of the four were not present (I am wondering what other business they might called away for, singly, not as a group, but have no answer) the trial could not take place.  Thank goodness they have eternity to work things out! - and our evaluations of each other here below should include the consultation of each as well. This is not that different from the simplified version in current discussion, Justice Vs Mercy. Mercy is repeatedly given the nod in the NT as the superior virtue, but I have argued before that Mercy has no meaning except in going through the concept of justice.  Just giving bullies what they want, letting evil men do as they please because "Hey, hey hey!  We're all about mercy here is not just foolish in a worldly sense.  We are, after all, often called to exactly that sort of foolishness. It is evil, and even as Paul says "Why not be defrauded?" Jesus tells the parable of the woman knocking on the judge's door in the middle of the night to get her due. There is in fact a lot of rather alarming Justice in the words of Jesus, even more than Paul, who got the reputation for making the gospel of the kindly Jesus into something harsh.  An outsider would read the texts and come to the opposite conclusion, frankly. Paul lets people off pretty easily sometimes.

So the idea of instantaneous grace is big among Protestants, weighing heavily on such verses as "Today you will be with me in paradise." Yet the idea of some necessity of improvement before we approach the throne of God, some removing of the sandals, some refining in the furnace of Judgement, some fear and trembling seems to be in order, and you find more than a little of it in the New Covenant.

CS Lewis suggests that we might even be asked to participate in this purgation, and we might be desperately willing to do so. The opposite extreme, of putting our feet up on the table and saying "Hey, Yahweh, baby!  Thanks for the grace, huh?  What's for dinner?" Seem a touch more offensive, I would think. To the Fundies who tell you that Lewis wasn't a Christian because he believed in Purgatory and insist "No, we didn't mean that! You are taking this to a ridiculous extreme!" I would say "You're right.  It is a ridiculous extreme.  How does it feel? Man up, dude."

Let me make it easier for modern sensibilities on both sides. If we focus on this Purga-whatever being about learning, of coming to understanding what righteousness and the presence of God are all about, that's going to make more sense to the education-centered cultures we are so immersed in.

I swear there was  short story, or a one-act play, or even maybe an essay I read years ago about a man who underwent a lot of unfairness and persecution, who could have cleared his name at any time by telling what he knew and turning other in but chose not to - for reasons he could not articulate early on but came to understand in the end - because the others had to come to understand their need to turn themselves in, had to painfully come to the resolve to do the right thing, and their guilt at watching him suffer for their sake was part of (I would say perhaps the only?) their self-conviction. Maybe I just made that up and wished I had the skill to write it, but it doesn't quite feel like that.

Let me give back to those popular Protestants the allowance that popular Catholics have not much focused on those higher understanding of Purgatory themselves. The stereotype of works and some almost pointless suffering for 10,000 years in order to be just marginally ready to get into Heaven was not that far from their conception. What the conception is now I don't know, and I don't think most Catholics know either, as I don't see that they mention it much these last hundred years.

*You can see that the Christian idea of Heaven and Hell have slightly penetrated Jewish theology at this point, though I would caution anyone not to assume that this wa linear and that they would have picked up something like our concept "just a few years later" or anything like that.  There were varieties of opinion, mutual condemnations, reformations and counterreformations, just like the rest of humanity has, and we are all-too-familiar with in the Christian church..