We are justifiably afraid of fire. Fire burns and when things burn they are damaged or destroyed. Fire has ravaged powerful cities such as ancient Rome and seventeenth century London. Wildfires have recently destroyed huge areas in drought-stricken parts of the world, bringing destruction, death and terror to the people who live there. Fire hurts and burns, leaving terrible scars and injuries. Fires destroy our homes and possessions. But the destructive power of fire is also something that can produce life. I was struck recently by the comments of a friend here in Sweden talking about the positive impact of a large forest fire which swept through the forests in the north of Sweden some years ago. It was horrendously destructive, destroying tens of thousands of trees and injuring and killing wildlife and people. And yet my friend, who at that time worked for the organisation that manages the forests, explained to me (an ignorant city dweller) that the forests depend on fires like these to grow and develop. Usually of course the fires are managed and kept within safe bounds and clearly this one wasn't! But the effect of such fires, controlled or not, is to is strip away the dead and old material in the forest, to allow new, young life to emerge. And the trees grow back, stronger and better and the wildlife returns and and forms a new ecology. And life goes on and flourishes better and stronger because of the fires. Something like this effect of fire, the rooting out and burning up of the old and tired, lies as the background for the trial scene in the Testament of Abraham, the ancient Jewish comic novel which describes the attempts of Abraham to escape the inevitability of death. Abraham's angel guide, Michael, shows Abraham what happens to souls after they die and Abraham passes through the gate of heaven at the East of the world, where he sees the souls of the dead being judged. He discovers that their eternal fate is decided partly on the basis of how the record of their lives responds to the divine fire blown from a trumpet held by Puriel, the 'angel of fire'. Their record of actions while alive, their 'works', are subjected to a 'trial by fire'. Good deeds survive the flames. They are clearly made of solid stuff, worthy and true, like a precious metal. Bad deeds are consumed by the flames, burnt up entirely, reduced to ashes. These are the deeds done in disregard for God's Law, the deeds born of selfish desire and Godless passions. So, as the dead and ancient material of the forest which inhibit the growth of the new are stripped away by the forest fires, here Puriel's fire consumes the dead and dying parts of individual human lives. The Testament of Abraham of course is not trying to say that the souls so-judged pass through to Paradise, better and wiser people; rather that those who see their life's work burn up pass directly to a place of horrendous torment and punishment (without passing go!). There is no sense here that these flames are intended to purify the souls who pass through them but, like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter, they decide where the souls belong, in Paradise or in the 'other place'. But it was this very idea of flames that consume the dross, the old, the broken and the godless and leave the good and the new and the Godly unharmed that led some in the early church to imagine that what might happen after death is that souls would face the fire of judgement, not to destroy them but, like the beautiful forests of Sweden, to make them better. It was ideas like those we find in the Testament that led eventually to the birth of the idea of purgatory, to the idea of the flames that purify. In this post we come close to that place where such powerful ideas began to emerge. In the previous post I tried to describe how, in the ancient Jewish comic novel, the Testament of Abraham, the souls of the dead are pictured passing straight through the gates of heaven to be judged by an imposing tribunal consisting of the great and glorious judge, Abel (the murdered son of Adam), a gigantic book, in which all of their deeds while alive are recorded, and an archangel, called Dokiel, who holds a set of balances and who weighs the souls or, according to a different interpretation later in the story, their good and wicked deeds. I tried to explain how Dokiel the 'weighing-angel', came into being as a literary creation (assuming he isn't real!). In the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish writings God is frequently described as the one who can, metaphorically, weigh us the worth of people and individuals, as if He could hold them in a balance. In the Testament of Abraham Dokiel becomes the literal embodiment of that idea. He is God's servant who stands at the heavenly court with a weighing balance in his hand trying the dead by weight! But I suggested that the character of Dokiel was also shaped by the culture in which the writer(s) lived. It seems likely that the work was originally composed in Egypt (probably in Alexandria) which at that time was also subject to numerous influences from Greek thought, and so it is no surprise to see in Dokiel traces of the Egyptian belief that Osiris judges the dead by weighing their hearts in a balance and the Greek mythology of deities holding balances, either to weigh up different destinies or to judge fairness and justice. This was a world in which even the stars above were depicted holding balances (the star sign Libra) as they weighed up human destiny! Dokiel, then, was something of a hybrid, a cultural mish-mash of Hebrew and pagan ideas about how lives are judged at the post mortem judgement. But Dokiel doesn't work alone; he has a partner, an associate who helps him judge the deeds of the dead, not by weighing their 'works' but by burning them! His name is Puriel and we are told that instead of a balance he holds a trumpet filled with all-consuming fire! Before the table sat an angel of light holding in its hand a balance. On his left sat an angel all fiery, pitiless and severe, holding in his hand a trumpet having within it all-consuming fire with which to try the sinners. [Testament of Abraham 12.9-10 Trans. throughout by W. A. Craigie ] Abraham sees that the two angels working in tandem. Souls and/or their deeds are both weighed and burned! The one before the table, who held the balance, weighed the souls. The fiery angel who held the fire tried the souls. [Testament of Abraham 12.13-14] Michael, Abraham's 'angel guide' then explains the function of Puriel in more detail. The fiery and pitiless angel, holding the fire in his hand, is the archangel Puriel who has power over fire and tries the works of men through fire. If the fire consumes the work of any person the angel of judgement immediately seizes him and carries him away to the place of sinners, a most bitter place of punishment. If the fire approves the work of anyone and does not seize upon it, that person is justified and the angel of righteousness takes him and carries him up to be saved in the lot of the just. And thus, most righteous Abraham all things in all people are tried by fire and the balance. [Testament of Abraham 13.11-14] The angel Puriel is fiery and without pity; he holds all consuming fire either in his hand or in his trumpet (or both, if the trumpet is in his hand) and he tries the works of men through fire. It seems that the works of men, their deeds and actions, are placed within the angelic flame. If they are consumed by the flame then they are clearly made of sub-standard material and the soul is condemned. If, however, their actions survive the flames, if the flames don't burn up the deeds, then they are clearly made of something fire-resistant which makes the reader think of a precious, solid kind of material. These souls with the flame-retardant works are 'saved' and taken away to enjoy the lot of the just. The message is clear and uncompromising. "All things in all people are tried by fire". Firestarter!But who is Puriel? Where does he come from and why is he the one given the job of trying all things in all people by fire? Well, it seems that Puriel is the angel who has power over fire, and that's why, naturally enough, he is the one who judges the dead and/or their deeds by fire. It might seems a strange idea to us today but in biblical times it was believed that each of the elements (earth, water, air, fire) was thought to be subject to the control of an angel. Puriel is the 'fire angel'. We can see that intrinsic connection with fire from his name which means 'Fire of God', from 'Pur' the Greek word for fire and 'el' the Hebrew name for God. Puriel is the angel with power over the element of fire. The fire-starter! This belief that angels were in control of different aspects of the creation, is very clearly expressed in the following passage from one of the most influential and widely read documents from the post biblical period, the Book of Jubilees. Jubilees was probably written early in the 2nd century B.C. and according to the number of copies of the book found at Qumran (i.e. the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls), Jubilees was very popular and influential work. Jubilees is a retelling of the story of the book of Genesis and the first part of the book of Exodus, written in such a way that the writer can emphasise his own theological priorities. The biblical book of Genesis says nothing about the creation of angels but for the writer of Jubilees angels held great importance, both as the agents of God and the bringers of sin into the world and so, in the account of the first day of creation, we read about the creation of the angels For on the first day he created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all of the spirits which minister before him. Each part of creation, each force, each aspect of weather and season has it's own 'controlling' angel. This is in line with the biblical idea of the angels who take care of individual nations. Basically, for the writer of Jubilees, God ruled over everything, over every aspect of creation, but He did so through the agency of his angels. The angels were not just messengers, they actually did stuff! They were the heavenly 'civil service'. This was a widespread belief within the Judaism of that time. So, in the following example, from the Astronomical Book (part of the larger work known as 1 Enoch) we discover that there is an angel who controls the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars (which, remember, are large bright objects stored in heaven and which make their daily/monthly paths across the sky or 'firmament'). This particular angel is Uriel, an angel who plays a significant role in a number of post biblical texts. . . . . and the days Uriel showed me . . . he whom the Lord of the whole created world gave commands about the host of heaven for me. And he has power in heaven over night and day, to cause light to shine on men; the sun and the moon and the stars and all the powers of heaven which rotate in their orbits. [1 Enoch 82.7-8 Trans. M. Knibb] So according to the author of the Astronomical Book the reason the sun shines and the moon comes out at night is not due to gravity or any other cosmological principle, nor even because of simple divine 'fiat', but rather because Uriel orders it. He is the angel with power over the heavenly bodies So when we read in the New Testament book of Revelation about the angels holding back the four winds, we should probably imagine that these are the angels who control those winds, the angels who have authority over them. After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Revelation 7.1 NRSV It makes perfect sense then, to find here, in the Testament of Abraham, one angel who has power over fire, and who uses it in the service of divine judgement. The angel of fire was not unknown in post-biblical Jewish tradition as the following example from the Book of Biblical Antiquities shows. Like Jubilees, this is a book which reshapes the biblical narrative to make a particular point. In a story inspired by the biblical story of Elijah, Ahab and the prophets of Baal, the wicked king, Jair, orders everyone to worship the idol of Baal he has made, and when seven righteous men refuse he orders them to be burned alive. Jair is under the mistaken impression that he has the power to decide how and when fire will have its power and effect. He was forgetting that there was an 'angel of fire', a being with God-given authority over fire, who might have a very different perspective on matter. Jair said "Burn them in the fire because they have blasphemed against Baal". His servants took them to burn them in the fire. When they put them in the fire Nathaniel, the angel who was in charge of fire, came forth and extinguished the fire and burned the servants of Jair. But he caused the seven men to escape in such a way that none of the people saw them because he had struck them with blindness. So, Nathaniel, the angel of fire, comes and 'burns up' pretty well everyone and everything opposed to God! The 'angel of fire' turns up again in the book of Revelation. This time he isn't named and his only role seems to be limited to instructing the angel of death (the one with the sickle!) to get to work with the 'harvest'! Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. Then another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over fire, and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, ‘Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe So, the first readers or hearers of the Testament of Abraham would not have been surprised at the presence in this story of a character who has power over fire. Only his name would have new to them - Puriel. Trumpets on fire!So, how does Puriel, the angel of fire operate? Well, according to the text he holds his fire in his trumpet! Before the table sat an angel of light holding in its hand a balance. On his left sat an angel all fiery, pitiless and severe, holding in his hand a trumpet having within it all-consuming fire with which to try the sinners. [Testament of Abraham 12.14-15] In the bible angels are often described holding or blowing trumpets. This inspired the numerous depictions in medieval and Renaissance art of trumpet-blowing angels. They are often to be spotted at the Last judgement, summoning the dead to life! This image was, in part, inspired by passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17 where Paul describes what will happen at the Day of Judgement (and see Matthew 24.30-31 and 1 Corinthians 15.51-52). For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. [1 Thessalonians 4.15-17 NRSV] Here the trumpet has power to raise the dead. " and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first". In the book of Revelation the angels' trumpets are equally (if not more) powerful. The blast of each trumpet unlocks each of the cataclysmic events described in the book: When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. So these are incredibly powerful trumpets, unleashing the events which heralds the end of the world, the destruction of evil and the establishment of God's sovereignty over the whole of creation. So, angels blow trumpets. But in all of these examples trumpets do what trumpets normally do - they make a sound (musical or not). In the Testament of Abraham we don't get the sense that Puriel actually blows his trumpet to make a sound (or if it does, we are not told what kind of sound it makes!). We are just told that it contains the fire by which the dead are tested. For that reason some commentators believe that the text has been corrupted and that originally the text didn't say 'trumpet' at all. Some have suggested that the original text said a 'horn' or a 'box' instead. That seems more rational, it's easier to imagine fire kept in a box or a horn-shaped musical instrument, but then rationality isn't what the writer(s) of the Testament was aiming for. Angels blew trumpets - everyone knew that - and some angels were in control of fire - everyone knew that too - and here he is; the 'trumpet-blowing angel of fire'. Why shouldn't the fire come out of the trumpet (as he blows it?). Nothing else makes sense here - why should poor old Puriel be the only one who has to? Trial by FireIt's worth just reminding ourselves how it works. The fiery and pitiless angel, holding the fire in his hand, is the archangel Puriel who has power over fire and tries the works of men through fire. If the fire consumes the work of any person the angel of judgement immediately seizes him and carries him away to the place of sinners, a most bitter place of punishment. If the fire approves the work of anyone and does not seize upon it, that person is justified and the angel of righteousness takes him and carries him up to be saved in the lot of the just. And thus, most righteous Abraham all things in all people are tried by fire and he balance. [Testament of Abraham 13.11-14] Puriel tries the 'works of men', in other words it is human deeds that he tests, not the souls themselves. In the previous description, the text does say that Puriel tries the souls themselves, just as it says Dokiel weighs the souls. There could well have been two versions of the story: In one version of the story the souls are weighed and burned and in the other it is the deeds which are weighed and burned and in bringing the two versions together the inconsistencies were not ironed out. Staying with the works of men for the moment, it seems that (somehow) they are placed in the fire and how they respond to the fire determines the destiny of the soul. The fire will burn up some 'works', proving that they are made of a cheap, unworthy substance (i.e. that they are unrighteous) but some deeds will remain untouched by the fire - they don't burn - proving that those 'works' are made of better material (i.e. that they are righteous). We are not told how the deeds are burned. Are the deeds placed in the trumpet? Is the trumpet blown so that fire comes out and burns the deeds? How are we to imagine the deeds? Are we meant to think of pages from the great book? None of these questions really matter to the author(s) of the text. What matters is that the actions of human beings are tried, tested by fire. They are recorded in the divine book, they are weighed in the balances carried by Dokiel and they are tested by the fire of Puriel. Purifying FireThe idea of the people of God being tested by fire is a common metaphor in the bible. The people of God are sometimes likened to a metal which has to be refined by fire before it becomes pure. (Jeremiah 6.27-30; Zechariah 13.7-9; Malachi 3.1-4) For you, O God, have tested us; The refining fire in this case is the sufferings to which the people of God are subject. Their afflictions purify them, weeding out the impure elements and leaving the whole stronger and purer. This image of God's people being tested or refined like precious metal is found in the New Testament too. In the first letter of Peter we read Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1.3-7 NRSV The sufferings of God's people, in this case the church, are an instrument of refining and purification. Because they are persecuted their faith becomes 'purer', i.e. more genuine. Punishing fireThere are also many texts in the biblical and post biblical literature where fire is an instrument of God's judgement against sinners, in other words, fire not as purifying but as punishing. We have already seen how the 'angel-of-fire', Nathaniel, burns all God's enemies. Jair is told that the fire will be his 'home' from now on. He will never escape these flames. Some of the references link the fires of judgement with the Day of the Lord, with the coming of the eschaton. Isaiah 66 describes how, on that Day, the godless and wicked will be burned with inextinguishable flames. they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. Isaiah 66.24 NRSV Another key text is the following reference from the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch) which describes the punishment of Azazel, the leader of the rebel angels (the 'Watchers'). And the Lord said to Raphael 'Bind Azazel by his hands and his feet and throw him into the darkness And split open the desert which is Dudael and throw him there. And throw on him jagged and sharp stones and cover him with darkness; and let him stay there forever and cover his face that he may not see light and on that great day of judgement he may be hurled into the fire' [1 Enoch 10.4-6 Trans. Michael Knibb] That text of course has a close parallel in the christian New Testament, in the book of Revelation, which speaks about the binding of the Devil and then his destruction in the great 'lake of fire'. It seems very likely that Revelation was influenced by the Enoch text. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be let out for a little while. . . . . . . . And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Revelation 20.1-3 and 20.10 NRSV A few verses later we read Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. Revelation 20.14-15 NRSV So ultimately all of God's enemies are destroyed by fire. The basis for this, as I explained in a previous post, is the concept of Gehenna, originally the valley outside Jerusalem where the cult of Moloch demanded the sacrifice of children. Later the idea of a valley of fire in which things and people were consumed became an image of divine justice. Now, in God's great reversal, it would be the godless and the false gods who would be destroyed in Gehenna's fires! The valley of fire and lake of fire are close cousins! You can read about the development of that concept here. Discriminating fireWe have seen that sometimes fire is thought of as purifying, and that sometimes it represents punishment. But there is a third important strand of fire imagery in the Hebrew bible and beyond. and that is of fire making a distinction between the bad and the good, between the godly and the ungodly, either within an individual or community or between individuals or communities. In other words the idea in these texts is that fire tests people and works and finds out for God what is good and what is bad. The bad (people or actions) are burnt up and the good (people or actions) survive. This idea of sifting, sorting at the Last Judgement is found in several texts from post biblical literature of both Jewish and Christian origin. In the following verses from the Sibylline Oracles (originally a Jewish text edited and adapted by Christians) it is stated that on the Day of the Lord, everyone will pass through the flames of the 'unquenchable fire'. The righteous will be safe (the fire will not harm them), but the godless will be burnt up by the flames And then all will pass through the blazing river and the unquenchable flame. All the righteous will be saved, but the impious will then be destroyed for all ages, as many as formerly did evil or committed murders, and as many as are accomplices, liars, and crafty thieves, and dread destroyers of houses, parasites, and adulterers, who pour out slander, terrible violent men, and lawless ones, and idol worshipers. This idea that the righteous will be separated from the unrighteous by the divine fire, seems to have been based on the understanding that the godly would be protected and preserved from flames. The best biblical example of this is the story in Daniel chapter 3 of the three Hebrew men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo, who were thrown into the furnace by king Nebuchadnezzar because they refused to worship his statue. But we learn in the story that despite the best efforts of their enemies the fire didn't harm them. The king was so amazed by this sight that he recognised the power of Yahweh. The dramatic heart of the story comes in verses 46-50. The servants of the king stoke up the flames with the most flammable agents they can find so that the flames become impossibly huge. In fact they are so powerful that they burn up the wicked servants of the king. But of course, through it all, the servants of God remain untouched: In the Greek version of the story we read this Now the king’s servants who threw them in kept stoking the furnace with naphtha, pitch, tow, and brushwood. And the flames poured out above the furnace forty-nine cubits, and spread out and burned those Chaldeans who were caught near the furnace. But the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace to be with Azariah and his companions, and drove the fiery flame out of the furnace, and made the inside of the furnace as though a moist wind were whistling through it. The fire did not touch them at all and caused them no pain or distress. Daniel 3.46-50 NRSV So the flames cause the wicked to burn but the godly remain untouched. The angel of the Lord came down and ensured they were untouched by the flames. Was this the fire angel? This reminds us of the story in the Biblical Antiquities where Nathaniel ensures that the seven godly men survive and those attempting to burn them are burnt instead. This same theme is found in the Vision of Ezra. This is a later, Christian work. Like Abraham, Ezra the scribe is taken into the afterlife and the first thing he sees are the fiery gates of hell where he sees two lions emitting powerful jets of flame. As people approach the gates, Ezra sees that some are burnt up by the flames and others are not, they survive. And he saw fiery gates, and at these gates he saw two lions lying there from whose mouth and nostrils and eyes proceeded the most powerful flames. The most powerful men were entering and passing through the fire, and it did not touch them. And Ezra said, "Who are they, who advance so safely?" The angels said to him, "They are the just whose repute has ascended to heaven, who gave alms generously, clothed the naked, and desired a good desire." The fires of the Testament of AbrahamSo at this point it might be helpful to recap. Firstly fire can be a symbol of purification: God's people face trials and suffering but these can be thought of as the refiner's fire which tests and purifies them, just as the blacksmith's fire purifies metal. Secondly, fire can also be thought of as judgement, as punishment: those who deny God, the godless and impious will be burnt up by unquenchable flames. But thirdly, fire can also be both judgemental and refining: it can destroy only the wicked and leave the godly unharmed this distinguishing between them. At the Last Day, God's fire will show who and what is righteous and who and what is not. The basis of this is that the godly cannot be harmed by the fires of judgement whereas the wicked will be. It's only with this background in mind, this recognition that fire could have a variety of meanings in biblical and post biblical texts, that we can really begin to understand what is being said here in the Testament of Abraham. This fire sifts and tests, burning up what is impure and ungodly. It is that kind of fire, the kind associated with eschatological 'sorting'. What is godly survives this fire, whereas what is ungodly and impure doesn't. But there is something new here. This testing and sifting happens at the postmortem judgement of each individual, not at the 'Day of the Lord', the eschatological judgement of the whole world where most of the other references to purifying and punishing fires are imagined. This is quite a remarkable shift especially if I am right in supposing that this work was written sometime in the 1st century A.D. Relatively early in this era people seem to have imagined an immediate postmortem testing by fire of the works of the soul. This, along with the weighing, was believed to determine that soul's eternal destiny Careful how you buildThis passage in the Testament of Abraham might seem revolutionary in its approach to post mortem judgement but it is not unique, at least in the terms and ideas it uses. Another Jewish writer writing in the middle of the first century A.D. also wrote in terms of human actions being tested by fire. That Jewish writer was the Apostle Paul. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul describes a process very like that described in the Testament. He too speaks of works being tested by fire Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw-- the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. 1 Corinthians 3.12-15 NRSV Here we read something which sounds very much like the Testament of Abraham. Paul is writing about the work of the christian missionaries in Corinth. He pictures the church is a kind of building and imagines that each of the apostles or missionaries has used different materials to construct that building. Some of the materials they use are of lasting worth - they are like precious metals or jewels - and some of the materials have no value or worth whatsoever - it is as if someone tried to build a building out of straw or paper. But Paul says one day the worth of the materials each of the missionaries has used will be found out, 'discovered', because the building, the church, will be subjected to fire on the Last Day, at the eschatological judgement. The useless, worthless materials, the wood and straw will be consumed by the flames and the precious metals and jewels will remain intact. In other words, the Day of Lord will reveal how solid and Christ-centred the work of the various apostles and missionaries has been The similarities are obvious but notice the significant differences too. First of all, the context is specifically restricted to the work of christian missionaries in Corinth. This is not a statement about the lifestyles of christians in general. Secondly this is a sifting fire that will happen at the end, on the 'Day of the Lord', not immediately after death. And thirdly, it is not the missionaries who are subjected to fire to test the work but the churches, the buildings themselves! And yet, having noticed these important differences, the two passages do seem to be connected by the use of this theme of the testing fire, the fire that will be used to evaluate the worth of human actions their 'works'. Because of these similarities some scholars have seen a direct link between the two texts, suggesting that the Testament of Abraham depends on and makes use of Paul's ideas in 1 Corinthians while at least one other scholar has suggested a reliance the other way around - that Paul knew and depended on the Testament of Abraham. The idea that one text depends on the other makes good sense of the similarities between the two texts. But another possibility is that both Paul and the writer of the Testament knew and drew from a common source. That makes more sense of the differences between them which as I have suggested are quite profound. Anyone for purgatory?Texts such as 1 Corinthians eventually came to be understood in terms of the growing belief that there could be some kind of post mortem suffering that was not primarily punitive but rather purifying i.e. that there could be purgative suffering in the afterlife. Paul's 'discovering fires' became the fires of purgatory. Purgatory didn't officially become a 'place' until 1254 when Pope Innocent IV announced it's formal existence as part of the afterworld. Dante's great poem the Commedia gave that place a geography and a shape; a mountain on the other side of the world. But long before these two crucial moments people argued that only the very best and the very worst would, at death, be admitted to paradise and hell respectively. The vast majority, it was believed, would have to undergo some kind of purgative suffering, usually conceived as fiery, in order to get them ready for paradise. This could range in length from decades to hundreds of years. The link between this idea and the texts of 1 Corinthians and the Testament of Abraham is that they speaks of fire that discriminates between the godly and the ungodly, between righteousness and unrighteousness. If such flames exist, it might be reasoned, why should they not perform this work after death within the individual. If they burn the dross, surely it might be possible to burn away the dross with which the great majority of us, believers included, meet our maker after death. Neither text suggests a place like purgatory but both could be seen as providing the necessary intellectual stimulus to such an idea. The Testament of Abraham does not suggest the existence of a place like purgatory. The good and bad souls are taken straight away either to paradise or to a place of destruction. There is no in-between state. But the possibility exists of a situation where the book, the balances and the fire produce no clear-cut answer, where someone's good and bad deeds balance one another perfectly. What happens then? Well, that's what Abraham is about to find out and in the next post I will explain how God solves that particular puzzle, with a display of wonderful, overwhelming divine grace. You may also be interested in . . . .
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April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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