From: ricko@ee.uts.edu.au (Rick Jelliffe)
Subject: Aqunias on faith & purgatory
Organization: University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 08:33:03 GMT
Summary: Purgatory, faith
Keywords: St Thomas Aquinas, purgatory, catholic

This might be interesting or useful to people: 
a reader/poster to this group asked me some questions about purgatory,
& I thought here might be a good place to post some paragraphs 
from St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. I hope it'll help explain what
Catholics mean by the state of purgatory, and how this does not diminish
what Jesus did on the Cross, but in fact is only possible because of the Cross.

The first few paragraphs are needed to define terms.

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(FAITH) 

St Paul defines faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things that appear not."

The act of believing, the act of faith, is the assent of the intellect under
the motion of the will; both intellect and will are involved in the act
of faith. But the virtue of faith is a habit of the intellect. Faith thus 
resides in the intellect which assents to truth and holds onto it 
possessingly. 

Whatever gives a thing a determinateness of being is called, in the 
language of philosophy, a form of that thing. What gives a thing its
essential being-in-itself is its intrinsic form; what comes to something 
from outside, lending perfection or effectiveness, is an extrinsic form.
Now for the virtue of faith has its intrinsic form in being the habitual
assent of the intellect to truth. 

[In general: belief in a God, believing (recognising his word) God, & belief 
(trusting) in God. Fundamentally: belief in Christ as God made man for our
salvation, who died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, opening
the way thither for mankind; and in the Trinity. Practically: in the articles
of faith of the Creeds, as approved by the pope.]

When charity (the grace love and friendship of God) is not in the
soul, faith is not operative; it is lifeless; it is without its 
activating extrinsic form. Such faith is called formless. Thus,
when a person commits a mortal sin, and thereby deprives his soul of
charity, he does not lose the faith, but he renders it powerless 
to get him into heaven; he renders the faith in him formless.

Faith with its extrinsic form of charity is living faith.
Living faith is the first of all virtues, preceding all others. 

-------
(PURGATORY)

The good who love God perfectly will be submitted to no judgement other than
being assigned their reward. The good who are imperfect will be judged as to
their imperfections but will be saved.

Souls fit for heaven go there; souls in mortal sin are, by their own
free choice and decision, assigned to hell; souls in God's grace but unfit
for heaven are detained in purgatory.

Heaven is for those without spot or wrinkle, nothing defiled can enter.
In heaven the blessed will directly see the very essense of God.
Souls remain in purgatory until the preventing obstacle is removed
by eduring the penalties of its state or by prayers and sufferages on its
behalf.
	
THe greater love and desire one has for what is, at least temporarily,
out of one's reach, the greater is the pain at being derived of it.
Now the souls in purgatory have a keen awareness of the great Good 
which they desire; their love and longing for it surpass anything 
experienced in this life; hence their pain is the greater.

The souls in purgatory patiently submit to their penalties, but they
long to be freed from them and to be purified from all that blocks
them out of heaven.
	
The devils in hell have no power to afflict the souls in purgatory.
Indeed, the souls in purgtory have conquered the demons by avoiding mortal
sin or by being contrite for it. The souls in purgatory have actually won
heaven, and wait only till they are conditioned to enter it. The holy souls
are the victors, and the demons the vanquished.	

-------
(Me again) 
Many non-Catholics are confused about purgatory: they see it as something
which bypasses Jesus, the one mediator between God and man. Or they
see it as something somehow connected with earning salvation.

In fact, as I hope the quotes show, purgatory expresses how a SAVED soul
is transformed to be fit for (in the sense of being able to participate in,
NOT in the sense of meriting) heaven. It represents how God's grace 
brings us rotten sinners into our new birthright, without violating our
personality (ie when we die we aren't perfect, yet in heaven we are:
how does God accomplish this without overriding our wills? The state of
us relinquishing our wills is purgatory).

I hope this helps people understand that Catholics believe in salvation
by grace (what God did in Jesus) and living faith: to say that
Catholics have a salvation by dead works is wrong. Of course we should try 
to merit heaven by good works, but we know we can't: and our awareness of
our failure helps us love and appreciate him more.

-ricko

(Please don't write to me  saying Jesus' blood washes total clean: I believe.
Read the quotes: the Catholic notion of purgatory talks about the initial
steps of a saved dead person and how God conforms us for his presence.)