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In some forms ofChristianity, theintermediate state orinterim state is a person's existence between death and theuniversal resurrection. In addition, there are beliefs in aparticular judgment right after death and ageneral judgment orlast judgment after the resurrection. It bears resemblance to theBarzakh in Islam.
Early Christians looked for an imminentend of the world and many of them had little interest in an interim state between death and resurrection. TheEastern Church admits of such an intermediate state, but refrained from defining it, so as not to blur the distinction between the alternative definitive fates ofHeaven andHell. TheWestern Church goes differently by defining the intermediate state, with evidence from as far back as thePassion of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their Companions (203) of the belief that sins can be purged by suffering in anafterlife, and thatpurgation can be expedited by the intercession of the living.
Those in the intermediate state have traditionally been the beneficiaries of prayers, such asrequiem masses. In the East, the saved are said to rest in light while the wicked are confined in darkness; thedead can be assisted by prayer.[1] Prayers are said to benefit those inHades, even those who werepagans.[2]
In the West,Augustine described prayer as useful for those in communion with the church, and implied that everysoul's ultimate fate is determined at death.[2] Such prayer came to be restricted to souls inPurgatory,[2] which idea has "ancient roots" and is demonstrated in early Church writings.[3]
TheRoman Catholic Church offersindulgences for those in purgatory, which evolved out of the earlier practice of canonical remissions.[4] Others, such as Lutherans and Anglicans, affirmed prayer for the dead.[5][6]Nonconformist Protestants, such as Baptists, largely ceased praying for the dead. Protestants universally reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, while affirming the existence of an intermediate state, usually termedHades.[7][8][9] John Calvin depicted the righteous dead as resting in bliss.[10]
The early Hebrews had no notion ofresurrection of the dead[11] and thus no intermediate state. As with neighboring groups, they understood death to be the end. Their afterlife,sheol (the pit), was a dark place from which none return. By Jesus' time, however, theBook of Daniel (Daniel 12:1–4) and a prophecy inIsaiah (26:19)[12] had made popular the idea that the dead insheol would beraised for a last judgment. Theintertestamental literature describes in more detail what the dead experience insheol. According to theBook of Enoch, the righteous and wicked await the resurrection in separate divisions ofsheol, a teaching which may have influenced Jesus' parable ofLazarus and Dives.[13]
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In theSeptuagint andNew Testament the authors used the Greek termHades for the HebrewSheol, but often with Jewish rather than Greek concepts in mind, so that, for example, there is no activity in Hades in Ecclesiastes.[14] An exception to traditional Jewish views of Sheol, Hades is found in the Gospel of Lukeparable of the Rich man and Lazarus which describes Hades along the lines ofintertestamental Jewish understanding of a Sheol divided between the happy righteous and the miserable wicked.[15] LaterHippolytus of Rome expanded on this parable and described activity in theBosom of Abraham inAgainst Plato.[16]
SinceAugustine, Christians have believed that the souls of those who die either rest peacefully, in the case of Christians, or are afflicted, in the case of the damned, after death until theresurrection.[17] Augustine distinguishes between the purifying fire that saves and eternal consuming fire for the unrepentant,[3] and speaks of the pain that purgatorial fire causes as more severe than anything a man can suffer in this life.[18] The Venerable Bede and Saint Boniface both report visions of an afterlife with a four-way division, including pleasant and punishing abodes near heaven and hell to hold souls until judgment day.
The idea of Purgatory as a physical place was "born" in the late11th century.[19] Medieval Catholic theologians concluded that the purgatorial punishments consisted of material fire. The Catholic Church believes that the living can help those whose purification from their sins is not yet completed not only by praying for them but also by gainingindulgences for them[20] as an act ofintercession.[4]All Souls' Day commemorates the souls in purgatory. The Late Middle Ages saw the growth of considerable abuses, such as the unrestricted sale of indulgences by professional "pardoners" to release the donors' departed loved ones from suffering in purgatory, or the donors themselves.[21][4]
In the 16th century,Protestant Reformers such asMartin Luther andJohn Calvin challenged the doctrine of purgatory because they believed it was not supported in the Bible. Both Calvin and Luther continued to believe in an intermediate state, but Calvin held to a more conscious existence for the souls of the dead than Luther did. For Calvin, believers in the intermediate state enjoyed a blessedness that was incomplete, in anticipation of the resurrection.Reformed theology largely followed Calvin's teaching on the intermediate state.[17]
Some theological traditions, including most Protestants,Anabaptists and Eastern Orthodox, teach that the intermediate state is a disembodied foretaste of the final state.[7] Therefore, those who die inChrist go into the presence of God (or thebosom of Abraham) where they experience joy and rest while they await theirresurrection (cf.Luke 23:43). Those who die unrepentant will experience torment (perhaps inhell) while they await final condemnation on theday of judgment (2 Peter 2:9).
ARTICLE XVIL OF THE INTERMEDIATE STATE: We believe that in the interval between death and resurrection, the righteous will be with Christ in a state of conscious bliss and comfort, but that the wicked will be in a place of torment, in a state of conscious suffering and despair. Lu. 16:19-31; 23:43; Phil. 1:23; II Cor. 5:1-8; I Thes. 5:10; II Pet. 2:9 (R.V.).
ARTICLE XVII. OF THE FINAL STATE: We believe that hell is the place of torment, prepared for the devil and his angels, where with them the wicked will suffer the vengeance of eternal fire forever and ever and that heaven is the final abode of the righteous, where they will dwell in the fullness of joy forever and ever. Matt. 25:41, 46; Jude 7; Rev. 14:8-11; 20:10, 15; II Cor. 5:21; Rev. 21:3-8; 22:1-5. —1921 Garden City Confession of Faith (Mennonite Anabaptist)[7]
I. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day.[4] Beside these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledges none.
— Westminster Confession 1646, chapter XXXII, Of the State of Men after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead
The neutral historical term for this belief today is usuallyMortalism orChristian Mortalism.[22][23][24][25] The termsSoul sleep[26]Psychopannychism[27] are somewhat loaded by their derivation from a tract (1534) byJohn Calvin,[28][29][30] though use of the terms are not necessarily polemic or pejorative.[31] Both terms may be used together.[32][33]
A minority of Christians, including someAnglicans such asWilliam Tyndale andE. W. Bullinger, as well as churches/groups such asSeventh-day Adventists,[34]Christadelphians and others, deny the conscious existence of the soul after death, believing the intermediate state of the dead to be unconscious "sleep".Jehovah's Witnesses also believe this with the exception of the144,000.[35] In this case, the person is not conscious of any time or activity and would not be aware even if centuries elapsed between their death and their resurrection. They would, upon their death, cease consciousness, and gain it again at the time of the resurrection having experienced no time lapse. For them, time would thus be suspended, as if they moved immediately from death to resurrection and theGeneral Judgment of theJudgment Day.
The intermediate state is sometimes referred to by theGreek termhades, even in other languages. The term is equivalent toHebrewsheol andLatininfernum (meaning "underworld"). This term for the intermediate state is used inAnglican,[36][37]Eastern Orthodox,[38] andMethodist theology.[39][40]
TheRoman Catholic Church teaches that all who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, undergopurification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven, a final purification to which it gives the name "purgatory".[41]
Roman Catholic theologians had given the name "limbo" to a theory on the possible fate of infants who die without baptism. The just who died before Jesus Christ are also spoken of as having been inlimbo until he had wonsalvation for them.[42][43]
InIslamic eschatology,Barzakh (Arabic:برزخ) is the intermediate state in which thesoul of the deceased is transferred across the boundaries of the mortal realm into a kind of "cold sleep" where the soul will rest until theQiyamah or End Time (Judgement Day). The term appears in theQur'anSurah 23, Ayat 100.
Barzakh is a sequence that happens after death, in which the soul will separate from the body. Three events make upbarzakh:[44]
InIslam all human beings go through five steps of age:
According to the native Indonesian beliefs, the soul of a dead person will stay on theearth for 40 days after the death. When the ties aren't released after 40 days, the body is said to jump out from the grave to warn people that the soul need the bonds to be released. Because of the tie under the feet, the ghost can't walk. This causes thepocong to hop. After the ties are released, the soul will leave the earth and never show up anymore.
In some schools ofBuddhism,bardo[45] is an intermediate, transitional, orliminal state between death andrebirth. It is a concept which arose soon after the Buddha's passing, with a number of earlier Buddhist groups accepting the existence of such an intermediate state, while other schools rejected it. InTibetan Buddhism,bardo is the central theme of theBardo Thodol (literallyLiberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State), theTibetan Book of the Dead. Used loosely, "bardo" is the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth.
In Taoism a newly deceased person may return (回魂) to his home at some nights, sometimes one week (頭七) after his death[46] and the sevenpo souls would disappear one by one every 7 days after death. They may return home as a ghost, an insect, bat or bird and people avoid hurting such things.[47][48]
We know that the ancients spoke of prayer for the dead. We do not forbid this, but rather we reject the transfer of the Lord's Supper to the deadex opere operato. The ancients do not support the opponents' idea of the transferex opere operato.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)In "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church," Luther called upon pastors to pray for the dead without giving masses for the dead. Such prayers are approved in the Lutheran confessional writings. Philipp Melanchthon's "Apology" specifically held out the possibility of such prayer: "We know that the ancients spoke of prayer for the dead. We do not prohibit this, but we do reject the transfer,ex opere operato, of the Lord's Supper to the dead" (Kolb and Wengert, pp. 275-76). Such prayers can be found in past Lutheran practice. Evidence exists that such prayers were offered up in some Lutheran orders of the sixteenth century. Philip Pfatteicher's commentary onLBW explained that the dead have not left the body of Christ by dying but remain members of the body (pp.475-82).
ARTICLE XVIL OF THE INTERMEDIATE STATE: We believe that in the interval between death and reseurrection, the righteous will be with Christ in a state of conscious bliss and comfort, but that the wicked will be in a place of torment, in a state of conscious suffering and despair. Lu. 16:19-31; 23:43; Phil. 1:23; II Cor. 5:1-8; I Thes. 5:10; II Pet. 2:9 (R.V.). ARTICLE XVII. OF THE FINAL STATE: We believe that hell is the place of torment, prepared for the devil and his angels, where with them the wicked will suffer the vengeance of eternal fire forever and ever and that heaven is the final abode of the righteous, where they will dwell in the fullness of joy forever and ever. Matt. 25:41, 46; Jude 7; Rev. 14:8-11; 20:10, 15; II Cor. 5:21; Rev. 21:3-8; 22:1-5.
Considering the question of death and the intermediate state, John Wesley affirmed the immortality of the soul (as well as the future resurrection of the body), denied the reality of purgatory, and made a distinction between hell (the receptacle of the damned) and hades (the receptacle of all separate spirits), and also between paradise (the antechamber of heaven) and heaven itself.
We are further taught by it that there is an intermediate state between death and the resurrection, in which the soul does not sleep in unconsciousness, but exists in happiness or misery till the resurrection, when it shall be reunited to the body and receive its final reward.
Anglican orthodoxy, without protest, has allowed high authorities to teach that there is an intermediate state, Hades, including both Gehenna and Paradise, but with an impassable gulf between the two.
Orthodoxy teaches that, after the soul leaves the body, it journeys to the abode of the dead (Hades).
The country is called Hades. That portion of it which is occupied by the good is called Paradise, and that province which is occupied by the wicked is called Gehenna.
Besides, continues our critical authority, we have another clear proof from the New Testament, thathades denotes the intermediate state of souls between death and the general resurrection. In Revelations (xx, 14) we read thatdeath andhades-by our translators renderedhell, as usual-shall, immediately after the general judgment, "be cast into the lake of fire: this is the second death." In other words, the death which consists in the separation of soul and body, and the receptacle of disembodied spirits shall be no more.Hades shall be emptied, death abolished.
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