Anyone who’s taken a world literature course will remember the late medieval Italian poet Dante and his Divine Comedy. Most will likely be familiar with Inferno, the first of three books, parts of which are often anthologized; the latter two are Purgatorio and Paradiso. Only die-hard Dante fans or Italian literature students are likely to make their way through all three books. But the Divine Comedy has always been popular, with dozens of translations from the Italian into English over the years.
Most recently, there have been new translations, not of Inferno, but of the middle book, Purgatorio, one by D. M. Black and another by Mary Jo Bang. Black’s translation, though contemporarily modern, is classic in tone and diction whereas Bang’s is somewhat light-hearted, even slangy in parts, though no less accurate in its rendering according to scholarly reviewers.
Dante’s Purgatorio is a mountain on the opposite side of the world from the inferno. In Dante’s version, Satan’s expulsion from heaven was of such force that his fall to earth opened a giant cavity with Satan himself frozen at the earth’s center. The inferno or hell is the place of eternal punishment for unredeemed sinners, with the least serious offenders closest to the opening of the cavity and the most serious ones deep within the earth, closest to the evil one.
Dante’s Purgatorio (purgatory) is the mountainous terrain that had arisen on the other side of the earth caused by the forceful, earth-drilling fall of Satan. Whereas the inferno dwellers regressively follow in the devil’s wake ever deeper into the earth, depending on the seriousness of their sin, the dwellers in purgatory progressively move up and farther away from the base of the mountain toward heaven. But why are they not already in heaven if Christ died for them, or in hell if he didn’t?
Imaginative, But . . .
As wonderfully imaginative as Dante’s spiritual landscape unfolds, we have no mention of purgatory in canonical Scripture, though we do of heaven and hell. Purgatory originated in the twelfth century as a halfway place between eternal perdition and glorification. One can understand the rationale: where there is only nominal faith or a faith of only rational or ritual assent, there may be fear though no assurance of salvation. One’s performance instead of Christ’s becomes the centerpiece, and if that’s the case, we all know there can be no possible measuring up. We’ll always fall short.
Christians who don’t believe there is a purgatory don’t believe we can ever measure up either. But Christ has, and shares with us the righteousness he demonstratively earned on earth and on Calvary, but that we never could, no matter how many years or centuries we were to spend getting purged in purgatory.
A purgatorial theology assumes that there must be a godly righteousness that’s at least partly ours in order to finally be able to enter paradise. Christ’s righteousness, in this view, sets the stage for us but does not complete our righteousness. We have to do that ourselves for ourselves. This runs counter to Scripture where, for example, the apostle names Christ directly as our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), or where in Hebrews we see Christ as both the author and finisher—that is, completer—of our faith (12:2). We bring nothing to the equation in regard to our own righteousness before God.
Our sanctification, then, is also identified as being entirely in Christ, as Paul also writes in 1 Corinthians 1:30. It’s nonetheless an ongoing process that occurs, not after death, but in the here and now, based on the righteousness that’s already purchased for us in Christ and is fully awaiting us in glory (Eph. 2:6–7). After death, it would be too late to purge or expiate any sins.
In a Bind?
Then what if we go to our death while still imperfect? How can we have those imperfections purged if we are Christians, believers in Christ and his cross? The truth is all of us, whether Christian or not, go to our death imperfect. It’s Christ’s perfection that makes us perfect if we are believers. Indeed, it already has. We’re simply waiting to fully inherit it. Christ experienced not purgatory, but hell for us, to bring us with him to heaven. Isn’t there then any purgatory?
One needn’t believe in purgatory to enjoy Dante’s classic. What makes it enjoyable is what one reviewer calls “labors of love”: the residents of purgatory are being purged of flaws and blemishes in order to qualify for heaven, and they fully participate in their own purgation. In Purgatorio, Dante meets a friend, Casella. They try to embrace but can’t, since Casella doesn’t have a human body. After several attempts, Dante’s friend pauses, puts up a ghostly hand, signaling for Dante to pause, and gently tells Dante to dismiss further attempts. It’s a poignant scene, one of brotherly love that’s unable to be fully realized.
This notion of the already-but-not-yet in spiritual life is cast in purgatory, but is that where it belongs? Where there is spiritual life in Christ, there is also brotherly love, and yet, as we well know, our brotherly love in Christ is an imperfect love because we, though redeemed, are still imperfect. The purgatorial nature of the Christian life is not in some midway afterlife, but here.
Italian literature scholar Robert Pogue Harrison, in his review of the two new Purgatorio translations, notes that Dante’s sinners in hell act out the psychology of their punishments, while the penitents in purgatory work through the ordeals of their self-overcoming. This seems right: C. S. Lewis remarked that those in hell are there because they want to be. They’ve completely identified with their sin, and so it literally drives them and their being. But what about the penitent? Isn’t that an identity marker of, not the purgatory dweller, but of the Christian, and in the here and now?
Here and Now
“[Continue to] work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” the apostle wrote to the Philippian church (Phil. 2:12, English Standard Version). He wasn’t writing to anyone in purgatory, but to believers in time, space, and history. It’s not in some preamble to glory, but in the here and now that we are to work through the ordeals of self-overcoming. And we do that not to finally earn a place in heaven, but because we already have a place there and are learning to assert our new identities in Christ, which will be fully revealed there.
A labor of love, according to Scripture, is not some means of suffering endured or exertion made in exchange—as though it were a payment for something else—but a means of suffering or exertion undertaken in order to more fully step into the unearned, Christian identity that’s already ours as believers in Christ, if we are in fact his. This labor of love, then, is a form of dying to the old, natural man so that the new creation might more fully emerge. It’s labor, and it’s our labor, but it’s a sovereignly working engagement of the Holy Spirit with our spirits. It’s love because we do this as a result of loving Christ, which we can do only because he loved us first.
A purgation or purge is a removal of unwanted qualities from something more valuable than the qualities that are purged so that this something might be purified, cleansed, and yield a more perfect version of itself. Scripture repeatedly likens this process occurring within believers to gold or silver refined in the fire. The hotter the oven, the more uncomfortably thorough the purge; the more thorough the purge, the more purified the result.
It’s this that undergirds what the psalmist refers to as going from strength to strength (Ps. 84:7). We leave things off to more fully take hold of that for which we’ve been taken hold of by Christ (Phil. 3:12–14).
There are other scriptural metaphors for the same thing: God the Father as the vinedresser who prunes the vine branches so that they bear more fruit is one (John 15:1–8). God the Father as parent who disciplines us as his sons because he loves us is another (Heb. 12:10–11). If he didn’t discipline us and let us go our own way, what kind of loving parent would he be? But the image of the furnace, hot enough to burn off dross so that only the genuine article is left, is the most consistent one in both the Old Testament and the New. And our own Christian life here should inform us that we don’t go to purgatory to find it.
Gerry Wisz is a writer, college instructor, and semi-retired public relations professional who, with his family, is a member of Preakness Valley URC in Wayne, NJ.