Edge of Eternity: Questions & Interesting Facts

Edge of Eternity - Interesting Facts, Information and Q & A provided by Randy

Catholics believe in purgatory. How would you explain that concept/location versus the present Heaven?

This is completely different than what Catholics believe in as purgatory. The present heaven has nothing to do with punishment or suffering. The present is not somewhere between heaven and hell. It is the duration of time between the present life and the future ultimate heaven after the resurrection. It doesn't mean half way between heaven and hell but where we are in between. The intermediate heaven is the common theological term for where we go as Christians when we die and where we stay until the return of Christ and the resurrection.

What do you think about C.S. Lewis’s book A Grief Observed and his views on purgatory?

He’s speaking with a perspective severely limited by his grief. His raw emotion sometimes trumps his actual beliefs with the agony of his grief. In other books he expresses more considered beliefs, while in A Grief Observed he expresses his emotions, and when he speaks of beliefs they are beliefs hanging in the air tentatively (though they likely felt permanent at the time). They are less long-term convictions than the expression of his immediate emotional devastation.

Do you have any good material you can give that addresses the subject of purgatory?

I’ve been searching online for something to help you concerning purgatory, and I’m not happy with anything I’ve found. Some are brief, but too brief, don’t cite sufficient Scripture, and are just too shallow.  

If what I provide from a couple of old systematic theologies below isn’t sufficiently helpful, or if the theology and writing style is too obscure, I would recommend Googling these words, together in one search: purgatory Bible Christian grace evangelical. Then start checking the articles. I checked a number in a different search, but as I said, I wasn’t happy ...