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Doesn`t matter what you say, but how...!! But you said it well http://spankzilla.spazioblog.it/

EXCELLENT thread

EXCELLENT thread

I don't want to get my info just from the media on the Purgatory issue.
Please comment Jimmy.

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RULE 1 VIOLATION

Bavli or the "Babylonian Talmud":
(compiled ca. 430-560 A.D.) Contains around half of the Mishnah and commentary called Gemara (the word "Gemara" is often used interchangeably with "Talmud"). It is the Babylonian Talmud that is most often referred to when one speaks of "the Talmud." This is the most important literature in modern Judaism, even more important than Torah.
Kabbalah:
(codified ca early 14th c.) Claimed to be a part of Torah given to Adam, the Kabbalah (the word means "tradition") is a mystical system that concerns itself with the process of creation. Because of its esoteric, gnostic elitist nature and its emphasis on magic, the conjuring of supernatural forces, numerology, astrology, reincarnation, etc., watered-down Kabbalah has become a trendy, New Age fashion.
True Kabbalah, however, is for initiates and is not supposed to be studied until one is firmly grounded in basic Judaic principles (usually around the age of 40 among the non-Hassidic). Parts of Kabbalah are in print (the Zohar --"Book of Splendor"-- by Moses de Leon, for example), but other parts are a matter of orally transmitted, deeply secret tradition. Kabbalah has played a great role in the development of many diverse movements, including Masonry, Rosicrucianism, Renaissance-era secular and Christian thought, Aleister Crowley's Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (and other Hermetic systems), and Mormonism.
Tosefta:
(12th c.) another compilation of Oral Law, like the Mishnah, but treated with less authority and as a supplement, a practical guide to the Mishnah
The rabbi is not the equivalent of the Israelite priest, for they offer no sacrifices and the Temple is no more. The equivalent of the Israelite priest is the Catholic priest who is ordained after the order of Melchizedek and who re-presents the once and for all Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary.
Jewish subcultures
Ashkenazi Jews:
the Central and Eastern European Jews. Most of the Eastern European Jews are descended from the Turkish Kingdom of Khazaria (an area of land known to the Greeks as "Scythia"; to the Church Fathers as "Magog"; and to moderns as various Eastern European and Southern Russian States) which converted to Judaism in the 8th and 9th centuries. The vast majority of modern Jews fall into this category. The Jewish historian, Josephus, writes that the people of this area descended genetically from Japheth, son of Noah and brother of Shem, the father of the Semites. Shem's descendant, Eber, gave his name to the Hebrews.)

Karl Rahner is heterodox at best. Warmed over Heidegger neo-Kantian nonsense.

Hades and hell are pretty much equivalent words in their respective cultures, Greek and Germanic. In both cases they are the shady relm of the dead.
Both words tend to be applied to Christian concepts incosistantly.
The Hell of the damned is where those who die in mortal sin go. Jesus never went there.
The Hell (or Hades or Sheol or Abraham's bosm) that Jesus went to is where those who died in original sin but not personal mortal sin went to, from which Jesus "ransomed the captives" bringing all there to heaven.

Hades and hell are not the same thing

I visited a Byzantine Catholic Church with a Roman Catholic friend of mine (I am Greek Orthodox recently more practicing) and there was an icon of Jesus descending into hell and in the icon (large painted on the South wall--the altar was facing east)and Jesus was bringing John the Baptist and Old Testament prophets apparently into heaven but definitely out of hell.

Fan of White: Please read "Da Rulz".

RULE 1 VIOLATION

Are there confusions between Hell and Purgatory? Could hell also have transient properties? Especially if Jesus went to Hell (or just Hades the place of death)
Hell, as the word in its original sense is not HELL as we know it. It just is the place of the Dead. Not Hell the place of eternal damnation

Jimmy Akin,
I have some questions which I would like a more authoritative answer to or at least an answer from you. I usually refer to the official Catholic Catechism, but it does seem the Church allows a lot of "room" for speculation, and freedom of diversity of opinions on certain topics.
Questions:
1. What does Karl Rahner say about reincarnation vis a vis purgatory?
2. Is there a "possibility" that no one is in Hell a la Hans Urs von Balthasar and others?
Not that it is prudent or you believe it but there is a theological possibility or that we (or I) am permitted to believe it as a Catholic?
3. Are there distinctions between the "Eastern" and "Western" Catholic (or even Orthodox or non-Chalcedon churches) rites in terms of purgatory?
(such as purgatory is a good thing etc--I did find some interesting comments on Anthony Dragani of EWTN's east2west.com website and am assuming imprimatur and proper approbation)
4. Are there confusions between Hell and Purgatory? Could hell also have transient properties? Especially if Jesus went to Hell (or just Hades the place of death)
5. What do ancient or modern Jews believe as it is or could be instructive to what Catholics do or could believe. I learned a lot about Judaism on this site and I knew none of it before. There are certainly implications if not ramifications of Jewish views on the afterlife (Do they really believe in reincarnation!?) (and thus did Jesus at least know about this as a concept?!)(Is this really Torah or some neoplatonist or pre-Christian gnostic type of influence as others have suggested?)
It does not seem fully discussed and dismissed by some.
6. Does or can the Church authoritatively teach on this or is this veil a mystery not known in detail or specifically until after death?

Certainty is by faith in revelation (I guess there is a question of which one or interpretation), but informed by reason

Did post Temple Babylonian Talmud Jews take over the message board earlier today or last night dependind on your time zone???? Khazars???
and than modernist Catholics???
and than the born again fundie crowd?????
good reading though but too much
I can get a Masters in Theology just from reading the Jimmy Akin board

He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name" (Revelation 14:10-11).
At first glance this may seem to confirm the traditional idea of a seething, sulfurous hellfire, mercilessly and eternally tormenting helpless immortal souls. But, if we don't already hold to a preconceived mental picture of hell, we can quickly grasp that this passage describes a quite different circumstance.
First, notice the setting for this passage. From the context we see that the events it describes aren't in hell or the afterlife at all, but rather on earth amid the earth-shaking events and disasters immediately before Jesus Christ's return. This warning describes the punishment that will befall all of earth's inhabitants "who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name."
The latter part of chapter 13 describes this "beast"—a dictator who rules over an end-time superpower—and his mark. Those who accept this mark show that their allegiance is to this dictator rather than God, and in chapter 14 God reveals the consequences of that choice—warning of the terrifying punishments that will precede Christ's return (see verses 14-20 and the following two chapters).
Notice also in this passage that the smoke from these terrifying events ascends forever—it does not say that people'sactual torment continues forever. The smoke is no doubt associated with the God's wrath poured out on earth as described in chapter 16—which includes widespread destruction, great heat, warfare and a massive earthquake. All these events will generate massive fires and a huge amount of smoke.
The properties of smoke are such that it "ascends forever"—meaning that nothing will prevent or stop it. Being primarily heated gas, it rises, expands and eventually dissipates. The Greek word translated "forever" does not always mean eternity or infinity. It can simply refer to something that will not be stopped, that will continue as long as conditions allow. This passage is simply describing fires associated with this devastation that burn as long as they have fuel to consume, after which they simply burn out.
The reference in Revelation 14:11 to the wicked receiving "no rest day or night" speaks of those who continue to worship the beast and his image during this time. They will be in constant terror and fear for their lives, and thus aren't able to find a moment's rest during this terrifying time of God's anger.

A drunken driver loses control of his car and careens headfirst into a van, killing a family. A mother dies of breast cancer, leaving confused children and a grieving husband. An infant boy succumbs to a birth defect. A gentle, elderly lady dies quietly in her sleep. A desperate, depressed teenager commits suicide.
Maybe death would be different if it were predictable or consistent. But death can be so capricious. It hardly seems fair.
To us life is precious. But death is everywhere! We don't want to die. We don't want to see our loved ones die.
Self-preservation is a powerful instinct. We design special diets and exercise programs to keep us young and fit. Through medical science we seek to isolate the gene that makes us age, hoping somehow to eliminate death. A few have even arranged for their bodies to be preserved cryogenically in the hope that they can be brought back to life when the cure for what killed them is finally discovered.
Yet, for all our efforts, hopes and wishes, death is the one thing in life that remains certain. Whether through old age, illness, accident or violence, whether we are rich, poor, male or female, no matter if we're good or bad, all of us regardless of race or creed-die.
Scientists cannot tell us what happens after death. Too many aspects of life itself are intangible-too elusive to measure and record. Philosophers disagree on death and the afterlife.
Religions also disagree. Traditional Christian denominations generally teach that the souls of the dead live on in a place or condition of heaven or hell. Many non-Christians believe in the transmigration or reincarnation of souls at death. Still others believe the dead will never live again, that this life is all there is.
What really happens at death? Why do we even have to die? Can we know if there is life beyond the grave? Where can we go for meaningful, believable answers?
Only the Creator of life can reveal its purpose and the state of the dead. By looking into the Word of God for answers to our questions about death, we can learn a great deal about both life and death.

Death is certain in human existence, though we do battle with its inevitability. Despite its ubiquity, it is a phenomenon conceived differently, depending on cultural, ideological, or idiosyncratic orientation. These differences are apparent because of my multicultural exposure of death in both the African context, the biblical Middle East, and the modern American view of death and dying.
Theologically, death is defined as the separation of soul and body. But as Professor Philip Keane pointed out in a lecture, no one has seen the soul depart the body. This definition, according to German theologian Karl Rahner, fails to indicate “the specifically human element of human death.” Philosophically, death is defined as the cessation of the integrated functioning of the human organism. This disintegration, of course, is like “the separation of body and soul” definition not an observable definition.
We are on more scientific ground with the physiological definition. Here, death is conceived as a cessation of breath and heartbeat. Medical advance, however, has made this definition somewhat obsolete. For we have observed in heart attack patients, the cessation of both breath and heartbeat. Yet these patients have been revived; thus we can say such patients have died at least once.
Seemingly, there is no perfect answer to the meaning of death. We have no eyewitness testimony: no one has died and come back to life and painted a clear picture of what death really is. From the Christian or religious perspective, death is not the end of life, but rather a transformation. For Paul in his letter to the Thesssalonians (4:13), death is a kind of sleep: “We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep. To make sure that you do not grieve for them, as others do who have no hope.”
Despite the religious hope, the unpredictability and inevitability of death fascinate and frighten the broad range of humanity. This fear and fascination is quite evident in natural disasters and in acts of war and terror. Thus there continues an ingrained denial of the gruesomeness and finality of death. An African adage likens the dead body in procession to that of dried wood. The natural yearning to live on has generated such beliefs as the Greek immortality of the soul or the various Eastern notions of reincarnation, which appear frequently in African cultures.
But even in less violent and disastrous circumstances, death, especially in our techno-culture, is a challenging project. For many, the hard reality is that they die in a hospital, usually isolated and in pain – tethered to a frightening array of high-tech equipment. From some perspectives, this techno-environment is another denial of the naturalness of death. Many would prefer to die at home in familiar and beloved surroundings. In traditional cultures, the family comes together and children are involved in the conversation. The dying person is comforted and encouraged to embrace death with dignity.
Though death in inevitable, the African both denies and accepts death in daily life. This double perspective can be seen in a set of beliefs sometimes referred to as “ancestor worship” or “reincarnation.” Many Africans believes the spirit of the deceased remains in the world and that the dead person can come back embodied in another person.
It is in light of this belief that John S. Mbiti asserted, “For the Africans, death is a separation and not an annihilation; the dead person is suddenly cut off from the human society and yet the corporate group clings to him. This is shown through the elaborate funeral rites, as well as other methods of keeping in contact with the departed” (African Religion and Philosophy, 1970, p. 46). The relatives of the dead believe that even though the soul of their dead relative has gone up to the sky or near to God, it remains also near to them and can be approached through prayers, libations, and offerings.
The Igbo views death as a natural rhythm of life. In a popular tale, they pass down a story of the genesis of death. At one time there was no death. People were fascinated by the idea of living forever. They appealed to the gods to guarantee eternal life. The final decision was left to the outcome of a marathon race between the frog and the dog. If the frog won, death would come into the world; if the dog won man would gain eternal life.
The people were excited about their opportunity, believing the dog would easily win the race. Once the race started, the frog continued at a slow pace, non-stop. The dog ran fast, but stopped often to eat garbage from cans. The frog’s approach of slow and steady won the day, the dog losing the race and thus the genesis of death.
Africans, like others, resist the daily contemplation of death. Often people do not write their living wills. I recall the time when my father began writing his will, four years prior to his death. In some consternation, I walked about ten miles to discuss this matter with my mother. My mother attempted to console me by saying that my father’s death was not imminent – that a person can write his or her will twenty years prior to his death. Of course, my father’s death was much closer.
Unlike many Americans, Africans do not tend to set aside money for their funerals while still alive. They do not make preparations towards their dying. They prefer to leave the burden to their living relatives. I was quite shocked and frightened when my American pastor showed me where he will be buried when he dies. As an African, I found this pastor’s openness about death strange and unbelievable.
This death-denying attitude is observed in how Africans conceptualize death. The term “transition” is used to refer to dying. It is very rare to hear people say a person has died. Saying that the person has transitioned in the African context means that he or she has gone to the next life. The term also implies that the person has not left us, that the person has simply changed form into a spiritual existence. The term “passed on” is also used frequently to express transition.
At the Carmelite Monastery in Waterford, Ireland, an anonymous reflection clearly captures this African transitional view of death. It says, “Death is nothing at all – I have slipped away into the next room. Whatever we were to each other that we are still. Call me by own familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way, which you always used. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let it be spoken without effort. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of your mind because I am out of your sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before – only better, infinitely happier and forever.”
This Irish view is an ancient and universal view; though still retained in African tribal life, it has been lost in our more modern, materialistic world. In our traditional cultural experience, man is born, he dies, and continues to exist in other realms. This circle of birth, death, and continued existence is commonly used symbolically in African art as cosmographic images. The dead is not in a distant heaven, but still remains among the living. In times of crisis and need, and sometimes, in times of joy, departed loved ones are viewed as smiling down on the living, looking out for them and assisting them. Thus even though it is a stressful time to have a loved one die, people find comfort in the belief that loved ones, though not physically present, are yet spiritually present.
Though there exists this consolation of an afterlife and its connection with present life, traditional Africans hold to the sanctity of life and fear death, for it is an enemy to life. Fear of death lead people to use charms and juju for self-defense; though death is invincible, it can be held at bay. Life is to be preserved at all costs. Thus, an average African would not be inclined to discontinue life-sustaining treatment once it was started. Likewise, Africans do not favor any artificial means of terminating life, such as assisted suicide, which is viewed as sacrilegious. In any event, such decisions would be arrived at through family consensus. It would be offensive to other family members and extended relatives if just one of them rushed into decision-making without at least considering what others thought and felt.
Even though statistics show many people prefer a quick and painless death, ideally while one is asleep, it is different in Africa. An African person prefers a slow and lingering death not through the aid of a machine but a natural prolongation of the dying process so that he or she could make their peace, say farewell to friends and relatives, and give final instructions to immediate relatives. Though it rarely occurs today in our modern cities with its sanitized hospitals, death is preferred in one’s home with the family providing comfort to the dying person.
The spiritual aspects of caring for the dying in medical settings have been neglected. So much emphasis is place on the physical care of the dying that spirituality is often overlooked. Often healthcare providers, untrained in the subject of spirituality, do not recognize special efforts are needed to respect the cultural traditions of the dying. A more satisfactory result in caring for African patients would be achieved if the African approach to decision-making is honored. The healthcare provider foremost must recognize the values of the African patient, who values highly the sanctity of life.
Man is a “being unto death,” Martin Heidegger pointed out. And this death is enigmatic, a mystery – a reality beyond full human comprehension. It is nevertheless, from the African perspective, the total negation of the sound health of human life – the height of all evils. Among the Igbo, the name of death is “Onwudinjo,” meaning “death is evil.” Because of this African frame of mind, decades are spent grieving over a lost one. People’s emotional makeup is often jarred for a long time after the death of a person dearly loved. I am still dealing with the loss of my father.
I have been going through a lot of pain since the death of my father six years ago. It is the greatest emotional trauma that I have ever had in my entire life. The pain is near indescribable. Life for me has not been the same. I struggle with this loss every day. Sometimes I try to let go of this sad memory but I have yet to succeed. It is a very hard blow one me, nay, on all of us – my mother, my siblings, and me.
My father’s death changed me forever. When he died, a part of me died with him. It is an indelible mark that can never be erased from my book of memory. The bottom line is that I love my father – he is my hero, my champion of courage. His words and examples yet remain a vade mecum (a go with me).
Still, a part of me knows, my father is not dead after all. He is in the other room. I can see him with the physical eye. That is the hard reality I have difficulty accepting. Yet he lives. He called me today and told me to trust and obey. He went farther and told me that this is the only way I can be happy in the Lord.
“Mpa” (Father) is dead; you are now fatherless,” my eldest brother spoke to me 17th of October, 1996, the day after my father died. These words have remained evergreen in my memory. I believe I shall see him yet again face to face in heaven, through the grace of God.

4. People's memories of their past lives prove that reincarnation is true...and that the Christian view of Heaven and Hell is not.
Reincarnation is a more comforting idea to some spiritual people than eternal heaven or eternal damnation because most of us have a strong sense that while our hearts are in the right place, we are not perfect. We sense that there is room for spiritual growth and it is frightening to consider we could die before the process is complete.
Unlike Protestants, Roman Catholics believe that Scripture and Sacred Tradition imply a state of purification called purgatory. Those who are responding to God’s grace and moving forward in the process of salvation by God’s grace are experiencing reality exactly as it is. If we die before the process seems complete, it does not entail eternal damnation.
Roman Catholics are often accused of close-mindedness for not giving reincarnation greater consideration. The notions of reincarnation and resurrection of the body in heaven or hell are mutually exclusive ideas, and Roman Catholics find those who adamantly defend reincarnation to be just as close-minded as we are accused of being.
Two points need to be made about memories of past lives.
First, the evidence that such memories exist without natural explanation is extremely weak to non-existent. More often than not, these cases have been demonstrated to be fraud, exaggeration, or distorted perceptions of reality.
Second, even if one could prove beyond doubt that a person has an accurate mental image of historical events and languages that occurred before the person was born, there is no way to prove that this occurred because of reincarnation.
Such a phenomenon would clearly have some sort of "supernatural" explanation, and reincarnation is not the only possible supernatural explanation. For example, it is at least theoretically conceivable that a demon is playing a trick on the person.
However, speculation of demonic tricks aside, the ultimate reason Roman Catholics reject the theory reincarnation is that we are a people who have encountered Jesus Christ risen from the dead.
We encounter the risen Christ in word and sacrament, in our interactions with others, and in prayer and small moments of grace throughout our lives. Christ is not reincarnated in specific human being. He is alive and revealing himself in our midst.
Once one encounters the risen Christ, it is impossible to believe in reincarnation because Jesus Christ is not reincarnated, but is alive and is the same person who walked the earth 2,000 years ago.
Furthermore, Christians believe that by the incarnation event, God has revealed that each and every individual human person - whole and entire - has a unique and incomparable dignity as the image of God.
Roman Catholics consider it an insult to the human person to see the body as a mere shell for some vague reality trapped inside the body. Roman Catholics believe in the resurrection of the body based on what happened to Christ and what is revealed about human dignity in Christ.
Though some people have taken a very small handful of Biblical verses out of their original context as indicative of the possibility of reincarnation, the Bible actually offers absolutely no evidence of reincarnation. Furthermore, such a notion was never widely believed by the Jewish people up to the time of Christ, if it was ever believed at all.
Reincarnation denies an essential doctrine of Christianity, is not supported by the Bible, and has no compelling rational evidence. The theory is ultimately an insult to the human person and the goodness of the body. The theory runs counter to our experience of the risen Christ. For all of these reasons, Roman Catholics soundly reject reincarnation as an erroneous conception of the afterlife.
All of this said, it is important to separate error from the person in error. A non-Christian who embraces the notion of reincarnation is beginning to grasp the basic truth that there is life after death, and that justice demands purification from sin. It may be a real response to divine grace that leads one to hope in the erroneous opinion that reincarnation is real.
Also, there is a very real sense that in the mind of God, a person existed before they were born, and sometimes, in mystical prayer, a Christian can gain a glimpse of this sort of "pre-existence" through a special gift of grace. Others may have a glimmer of such an experience as well.
Furthermore, even if a demon is playing a trick on a person to deceive one through false memories, such an experience will feel very real to the subject, and the subject is not in sin for having the experience. Sin is placing our trust in subjective experience when it is contrary to reason and objective truth.
Roman Catholics are morally bound by our Church's own teaching to be respectful of people who believe in reincarnation. At the same time, we feel no compulsion to give credence to a doctrine that seems to be clearly erroneous.

Karl Rahner (1904-1984) - foremost Catholic theologian of the 20th century, founder of the journal Concilium, and a leading proponent of inclusivism. Rahner sought to recover the doctrine of God's transcendence for liberalism, resulting in a theology similar to neo-orthodoxy. Rahner also believed the Holy Spirit worked salvation through "lawful religions" (Islam, Judaism, etc.) to produce "anonymous Christians." Titles: The Content of Faith; Encyclopedia of Theology: The Concise Sacramentum Mundi (Ed.); Foundations of Christian Faith; Encounters with Silence; Hearers of the Word; The Need and the Blessing of Prayer; Theological Investigations; Watch and Pray with Me; Words of Faith.
The reference to reincarnation as an analogy to purgatory is in Theological Investigations

1 "FAZ" September 28, 1974
2 "The Word" 11/1969, p. 336
3 Mussard, J. GOD AND THE ACCIDENT, Vol. III, Zuerich 1965, p. 139
4 Nigg, Walter: THE BOOK ON HERETICS, Zuerich 1949, p. 56 & 57
5 Quotation by H.U. Balthasar: ORIGINES-SPIRIT AND FIRE, Salzburg 1938, p. 107
6 H.U. Balthasar: ORIGEN. ibid note 5, p. 23
7 H.U. Balthasar: ORIGEN. ibid note 5, p. 12
8 Dacqué, Edgar: THE ORIGINAL FORM, Leipzig 1940, p. 74
9 "Badische Public Newspaper", November 11, 1964
10 See the booklet: THE THING WITH THE APPLE, A Knowledge about the Fall. Published by Joachim Illies, Freiburg, i.B. 1973
11 Mager, Alois: MYSTICISM AS TEACHING AND LIFE, Innsbruck 1934, p. 180 & 186
12 Material-Service of the Evangelic Center for: "Questions on Philosophy of Life" Stuttgart, December 1, 1971
13 Wachsmuth, Guenther: THE REINCARNATION OF MAN AS A PHENOMENON OF METAMORPHOSIS, Berlin 1935, p. 57
14 Ohlig, Karl Heinz & Schuster, Heinz: DOES THE CATHOLIC DOGMA BLOCK THE UNITY OF THE CHURCHES? Duesseldorf 1971, p. 9
15 "The Word" 1955, p. 336
16 Augustinus: "HANDBOOKLET" in: Text of the Church Patriarchs, Vol. 4, Munich 1964, p. 563
17 Staudinger, Josef. THE BEYOND AS A DESTINY-QUESTION, Einsiedeln 1950, p. 246
18 Staudinger, Josef- THE BEYOND AS A DESTINY-QUESTION, Einsiedeln 1950, p. 246
19 Staudinger, Josef.- THE BEYOND AS A DESTINY-QUESTION, Einsiedeln 1950, p. 243
20 Quotation by Sartory: FIRE DOESN'T BURN IN HELL, Munich 1968, p. 186
21 Staudinger, Josef. THE BEYOND. ibid note 17, p. 260 & 263
22 Staudinger, Josef. THE BEYOND. ibid note 17, p. 270
23 "Rhine-Mail" September 25, 1965. Quotation by Friedrich Heer: DEPARTURE FROM HELLS AND HEAVENS, Munich 1968, p. 305
24 Sartory, Th. & G.: Fire. ibid note 20, p. 96
25 Papini, Giovanni: THE DEVIL, Stuttgart 1955, p. 309
26 Papini, Giovanni: THE DEVIL, Stuttgart 1955, p. 310
27 Althaus, R: THE LAST THINGS, p. 194 following
28 Brunnen E.: THE ETERNAL AS FUTURE AND PRESENT, Vol. I, p. 193 & 198 following
29 Rahner/Vorgrimler: LITTLE THEOLOGICAL WORDBOOK, 6 Edition, Freiburg, i.B. 1967, p. 39
30 Schwarz, Gerhard: WHAT AUGUSTIN REALLY SAID, Munich 1969, p. 151
31 Quotation by Th. Sartory: FIRE. ibid note 20, p. 44
32 Ratzinger, Josef. INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY, Munich 1968, p. 219
33 Material-Service. ibid note 12, of March 1, 1972
34 Justin: TALKS WITH THE JEW TRYPHON
35 Schmidt, K.0.: REINCARNATION AND KARMA, Pfullingen 1962, p. 41
36 Osthagen, Karl: IS THERE A REBIRTH?, Feldkirchen 1958, p. 12
37 Andersen, Karl: THE TEACHING OF REBIRTH ON THE BASIS OF THEISM, Hamburg 1899, p. 187
38 Heer, Friedrich: DEPARTURE. ibid note 23, p. 245
39 Martin, Henri: LA VIE FUTURÉ, Histoire et apologie de la doctrine christienne sur l'aure vie, 2nd part, chapter III
40 Geyer: THE PATRISTIC HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (238), in F. Ueberweg: BASIC-PLAN OF PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 2,12th Edition, Tuebingen 1951; see also: THE TRANSMIGRATION CAESARIUS HEISTERBACENSIS, 0. List: DIALOGUS MIRACULORUM, published by J. Stange, Koeln 1851, Vol. I, p. 301
41 Wachsmuth, Guenther: THE REINCARNATION. ibid note 13, p. 7
42 Schubert, Kurt: THE IMPORTANCE OF FINDING THE MANUSCRIPTS IN THE DEAD SEA FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT, in "Theology Today", Munich 1959, p. 65
43 For example: Rudolf Augstein: JESUS SON OF MAN, Munich 1972
44 Bultmann, Rudolf. NEW TESTAMENT AND MYTHOLOGY, in "Kerygma" I (5), p. 20
45 Zahrnt, Heinz: IT STARTED WITH JESUS OF NAZARETH, Stuttgart 1960, p. 158, 160, 162
46 Zahrnt, Heinz: IT STARTED WITH JESUS OF NAZARETH, Stuttgart 1960, p. 162
47 Zahrnt, Heinz: IT STARTED WITH JESUS OF NAZARETH, Stuttgart 1960, p. 19
48 Hildebrand, Dietrich: THE TROJAN HORSE IN GOD'S CITY, Regensburg 1968, p. 163
49 Nigg, Walter: SECRET WISDOM, Zuerich 1959, p. 279
50 Hirsch, E.: PRE-HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL, 1941, p. 118
51 Nigg, Walter: SECRET. ibid note 49, p. 381
52 Wilder, A.N.: UNREALISTIC CHRISTIANITY?, Goettingen 1958, p. 37
53 Rahner/Vorgrimler: LITTLE THEOLOGICAL WORDBOOK, 1967, p. 310
54 Rahner/Vorgrimler: LITTLE THEOLOGICAL WORDBOOK, 1967, p. 310
55 Heer, Friedrich: DEPARTURE. ibid note 23, p. 66 following
56 Schweitzer, Albert: HISTORY OF JESUS LIFE-RESEARCH, Tuebingen 1913. Quotation by: WHO WAS JESUS OF NAZARETH? Research on an Historical Person. Published by S. Strube, Munich 1972, p. 154
57 FAITH-PUBLICATION FOR ADULTS, (German Issue of the Nederland-Catechism 1968, p. 509)
58 Kirsch, PA.: TO THE HISTORY OF THE CONFESSION, Wuerzburg 1902, p. 7
59 Kirsch, PA.: TO THE HISTORY OF THE CONFESSION, Wuerzburg 1902, p. 167
60 Kirsch, PA.: TO THE HISTORY OF THE CONFESSION, Wuerzburg 1902, p. 76
61 van der Meer: AUGUSTINUS, THE SPIRITUAL ADVISOR, 1946, p. 452
62 Weiss: CONFESSION COMMANDMENT AND CONFESSION MORAL, p. 30
63 Henne by Rhyn: GERMAN CULTURAL HISTORY, Vol. I, p. 118
64 "Catholicus": About the Churches, Nuernberg 1967, p. 49
65 "Church Official Paper", Trier, (Iss. 21/1970 #260), Explanation from Bishop Stein
66 Herder's THEOLOGICAL POCKET-DICTIONARY, published by Karl Rahner, Freiburg i.B. 1972, p. 353
67 Nigg, Walter: SECRET. ibid note 49, p. 238
68 Kueng, Hans: VERACITY. The Future of the Church, Freiburg i.B. 1968, p. 57

"But if we turn around in our prison so that we can see what a pitiable state we are in, then we encounter Christ who has entered into our loneliness and embraces us there with the outstretched arms of the crucified." (The Content of Faith, Karl Rahner, 306)
In the movie What Dreams May Come people are in control of everything: love, redemption, and salvation. They barely acknowledge God, and there is no mention of Christ in the movie.
How are they redeemed, from what are they redeemed, and by whom they are saved? Are the answers to these questions found in this movie representative of late twentieth century popular theology? Can people be saved if they don't acknowledge/recognize their redeemer? How does Christ move in people's lives in this self-deterministic, post-Christian society? I will reflect upon these questions and offer some conclusions.
Christianity proposes that people, in order to be redeemed, need salvation through Christ and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. Karl Rahner presents this view of Jesus:
Jesus is truly human. He worships, is obedient, experiences his own mortal finitude, falls mute before the incomprehensible mystery we call God…To understand what we confess of Christ is to recognize that it cannot be affirmed of everybody (Rahner, 274).
This passage asserts that only Jesus could have been or could be the Christ. Theologians throughout the history of Christianity have supported this traditional view of Christ. "The New Testament itself…affirms that Jesus Christ not only makes that life (the redeemed life) possible, he also determines its shape (Christian Theology, McGrath, 324)."
I define 'traditional view' as the theology that most practicing Christians demonstrate in their spiritual lives and in worship in America today. Most Christians oriented into this traditional perspective believe that only through salvation offered by Jesus Christ can one have eternal life. People holding this view either see something happening in Christ which makes possible and available a new way of life, see that Christ is an expression and demonstration of God's saving will, or see that Salvation is shaped or modeled by Christ (McGrath, 388-389). In any case, there is a constant: Salvation needs Christ.
Even Paul Tillich, who represents a less traditional understanding of Christianity, says that humankind needs to be saved through the New Being. "Whatever his name, the New Being was and is active in this man (Jesus of Nazareth)…Christ, the New Being, saves mankind from the old being, that is from existential estrangement and its destructive consequences (McGrath, 346)." Existential is a way to describe the non-temporal, historical nature of human existence (A Handbook of Theological Terms, Van A. Harvey, pp.92-93). Tillich also explores the idea that the influence of the New Being doesn't necessarily have to be through Jesus of Nazareth.
For Tillich "Jesus is one symbol among many of a universal human possibility relating to the transcendent or achieving salvation-others can be found elsewhere in the world's religions (McGrath, 346)." Does this mean that there could be more than one Christ, perhaps many at various times? Tillich poses the questions:
What if mankind destroyed itself tomorrow? Even if human beings were left who were cut off from the historical tradition in which Jesus as the Christ has appeared, then
what do the biblical assertions mean in view of such a development? The structure of the universe clearly indicates that the conditions of life on earth are limited in time, and the conditions of human life even more so. (Systematic Theology Vol. II, Paul Tillich, p. 100).
So, there are alternatives to the 'traditional view'.
In any case, it would be the end of that development of which Jesus as the Christ is the center. This existential limitation does not qualitatively limit his significance, but it leaves open other ways of divine self-manifestations before and after our historical continuum (p. 101). And salvation can be derived only from him who fully participated in man's existential predicament…whose being was the New Being (p. 146).
Consequently, under different circumstances, Jesus of Nazareth would not have to be the Christ, the New Being, but, nevertheless, there could be only one New Being. This doesn't indicate the notion of self-redemption or multi-saviors that we see in What Dreams May Come.
The movie models the idea of many human redeemers operative both in life and after life. The concept of one Redeemer is not present. In a Pelagianistic manner, if people even ponder God at all, humankind redeems itself from loneliness, isolation, mistakes, and separation from love. In What Dreams May Come the main character, Christy, saves his wife, both in life when she is suicidal and institutionalized, and in death from Hell. He doesn't need Christ who "entered into the heart of this finite world and of our cruelly sinful history and took on and suffered its finitude, tragedy, and guilt (Rahner, 275)." He does Christ's work.
Christy takes on his wife's pain, guilt, sin and human suffering before death and after death. He is in turn guided and led by other people to his salvation in the afterlife. He heals the relationships with his children while in heaven. The character of Christy illustrates the mindset of a large segment of late 20th century society that feels at home in the role of Christ.
Popular theology looks for redemption in psychology, psychiatry, human institutions, work, and human love. In Hebrews 2:10 Christ is named as the captain of salvation (NKJ), but in the world depicted by What Dreams May Come the individual is the captain of his or her own ship.
This cliché elicits an understanding of modern society's self-image: save yourself through self-help, self-analysis, self-love, self-medication, self-respect, self-awareness, self-direction, self-determination and self-meditation. Take care of yourself.
"Self" does have an importance in a Christ centered religion. According to Rahner self-will is not entirely incompatible with Christianity. It is our responsibility to do God's will.
It is not done for us. Redemption through Christ does not imply a denial by God of our duty but rather the gift that enables us to fulfill it. Redemption through the Son and our own responsible action do not thus contradict one another (275-76).
However, free will should not turn us away from God and into ourselves. " Jesus warns us not to receive our glory from ourselves (291)."
The self-determinism exemplified in the movie extends into the realm of being after death. In What Dreams May Come the characters determine the shape of their own personal heavens. They can decide if they will stay or if they will be reincarnated. They don't need Christ to guide them towards heaven in life or in death. Other movies from the same general time period reinforce the idea of self-willed choices after death.
In The Sixth Sense the dead can bother people until things concerning their death are resolved. In Ghost, Beetlejuice and the Poltergeist movies people after death have a lot of latitude to interact with the living, become solid, be seen, stay, or leave. The afterlife depicted in the Bible doesn't offer choices.
Death is one of the two strongest forces at work in our lives and has been throughout history. People do not easily give themselves over to God, a death of self-will, or relinquish their fear of death to the promise of eternal life. The characters in the movie are driven by a need to control what happens after their deaths. Most hadn't done a very good job of controlling their lives before they died.
They are faced with continuous decisions: change the vistas of their heaven, stay there or be reincarnated. They even defy the 'rules' when Christy goes to hell to redeem his wife. "Suffering and dying are the destruction of what is human (Rahner, 297)." People desperately cling to what is human.
Love is the second of the two strongest forces at work in our lives. In Luke 10:27 Jesus teaches us to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself (NRSV)." The Bible teaches us that God loves us so much he sends his son and Jesus loves us so much he dies for us. Through their love the characters in What Dreams May Come try to save each other in life, search for each other after death, move from heaven to hell and back, and find each other in their next reincarnation.
Rahner warns us that idols such as "the enjoyment of life or the experience of the person's own emptiness and absurdity…are worthless idols that must never become our masters (Rahner, 59)." In our self-absorbed society it is too easy to let our love for each other and our love of life become our idols.
The questions must be asked how we can love our neighbor unreservedly, committing our own lives in a radical sense on his behalf, how such a love is not rendered invalid even by death, and whether we can hope in death to discover not the end but the consummation in that absolute future which is called God. And anyone who does ask these questions is seeking thereby, whether he recognizes it or not, for Jesus. (282). By our love for others we experience Jesus (279).
Therefore, Jesus is inherent in the extreme love that the characters in the movie have for each other. Christ is in their lives in spite of themselves. However, if people don't recognize this fact, will it not reinforce the belief that humankind is sufficient for its own salvation?
Is a person like Christy, who acts as savior of himself and others, a tribute or an insult to the Christ? In the movie Christy ultimately gives up his self-determinism. He chooses the permanency and inevitability of Hell to be with his wife. In this way he finally gives himself over to a power greater than himself and is saved.
But such active renunciation of one's own happiness as is contained in surrender to pain and sorrow is still the clearest practical confession of the fact that the person, conscious of his own powerlessness in the face of the God of forgiveness and elevating grace, expects his salvation from above and not from himself, and hence can and will sacrifice his ego and its values, those values which are powerless to procure his salvation (297).
By giving up control we give ourselves over to Christ.
Christianity offers a response to the desperate struggle revolving around love and death. "He who is the Christ has to die for his acceptance of the title 'Christ' (Tillich, Vol. II, 97)." Through the resurrection of Jesus "death is reversed by life. The public defeat of death on the cross is refuted by the power of resurrection (God, Christ, Church, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, 112)."
Death is reversed by life. People in the movie have the choice in death to choose life again. Christ is asking us to choose eternal life before we die. We have to believe in the resurrection. "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; then if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, NRSV)."
How does the populace of the late 20th century, personified by the characters in What Dreams May Come, precede from self-obsession to hope through Christ? By the actuality that God's grace and salvation through Christ is part of their lives whether they want to recognize it or not.
Tillich says that the New Being has universal significance (Vol. II, 151).
And salvation can be derived only from him who fully participated in man's existential predicament…whose being was the New Being (146). We must ask in what sense and in what way Jesus as the Christ is the Savior, or more precisely, in what way the unique event of Jesus as the Christ has universal significance for every human being and, directly, for the universe as well (151).
Thus, the Christ emerges as a presence in our lives, even for those who self-determinedly turn away from the idea.
In some degree all (people) participate in the healing (salvific) power of the New Being. Otherwise, they would have no being (167). Jesus as the Christ is the Savior through the universal significance of his being as the New Being (169).
Rahner also sets forth a concept of the anonymous or implicit Christian. This salvation which the person has found must also be the salvation of Christ because there is no other (Rahner, 54)." Hence, humankind is saved.
Jesus in his human lot is the address of God to humanity. Jesus is from the outset seen within the context of the individual person's quest for salvation in the concrete human conditions of his life (340).
We see Christ in the movie, and in contemporary society, hidden in each person's quest for salvation.
Augustine and various writers throughout history, including most writers in the Middle Ages, maintained that only believers in Jesus would be saved. However, the universal saving will of God found an early proponent in Origen along with other theologians up through Karl Barth in the 20th century (McGrath, 417-18). Rahner, CS Lewis, and John Wesley also postulated that faith in God will lead to belonging to Christ "without knowing it", even if one has no knowledge of Christ or does not accept that knowledge (420).
Therefore, people will be saved even if they don't acknowledge or recognize their Redeemer, Jesus as the Christ, in this self-deterministic, post-Christian society. Also, perhaps their being will lead to their believing.

The Jesuit priest Karl Rahner is widely regarded to have been one of the leading Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. Rahner's early writings on death were published at a time when academic theology gave little serious consideration to the topic. Less sophisticated believers generally assumed that they knew what death was, and quickly moved on to mythological conjectures about the afterlife. Rahner sought to illuminate death's religious and theological significance. These initial publications and later writings are typical of his pioneering investigations, which creatively appropriate diverse theological and philosophical sources (e.g., Ignatian spirituality, Thomas Aquinas, Catholic neoscholasticism, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger). Notwithstanding their uncompromising rigor, most of his articles had a broadly pastoral concern to explore ways of recovering the meaning of Catholic doctrine in an intellectually plausible and contemporary idiom.
The density of Rahner's work is rooted in the subject matter itself. God, Rahner insisted, is not— and cannot—be an object for thought the way the things of our world are. But a person can know God by attending to the movement of knowing itself toward its objects, which reveals that human thinking always reaches beyond its immediate objects toward a further horizon. The movement of knowing, and the ultimate "goal" toward which it reaches, can be grasped only indirectly (or "transcendentally") as one's thinking turns back on itself reflexively. Rahner identified the elusive and final "term" of this dynamism of knowing with God, and argued that the same kind of movement toward God as "unobjectifiable" horizon is entailed in freedom and love.
By conceiving God, who always exceeds human reach, as the horizon of the movement of knowing, freedom, and love, Rahner emphasized that God is a mystery—a reality who is known and loved, but only reflexively and indirectly, as the ever-receding horizon of the human spirit. God remains a mystery in this sense even in self-communication to humanity through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. With this participation of God in an earthly history of human interconnectedness, something of God is anticipated—known reflexively and indirectly—at least implicitly whenever we know, choose, or love a specific being, particularly a neighbor in need. Conversely, God is implicitly rejected in every refusal of truth, freedom, and love.
Because it is often the good of a neighbor or the world, rather than God or Jesus which is directly affirmed or refused, it is quite possible that the one deciding will be unconscious or even deny that the act is a response to God. In either case, however, one turns toward or away from God and Jesus in turning one's mind and heart freely toward or away from the realities of the world.
Death is a universal and definitive manifestation of this free acceptance or rejection of God's self-communication ("grace"). In that sense, death is the culmination and fulfillment of a person's freedom, the final and definitive establishment of personal identity. It is not simply a transition to a new or continued temporal life. If there were no
Karl Rahner's wide-ranging concerns encompassed questions about the nature of God, Christ, and the relation of the Christian belief to modern understandings of the world. BETTMANN/CORBISsuch culmination, no ability to make a permanent and final commitment of self, then freedom would be an illusion. Genuine self-determination would be denied because every choice could be reversed. If everything is reversible, no act or succession of acts could definitively express an individual's identity. The Christian conviction that this life is the arena in which human fate is worked out, requires the freedom for such definitive acceptance or rejection of God's self-communication. But any anthropology that takes seriously the human capacity for free self-determination would also be required to see death as a kind of culmination and definitive expression of personal identity. Hence death is not something that happens only to the physical body. Death involves and affects the person as a whole. It involves consciousness, freedom, and love. It is not endured passively.
Hence, death as a personal and spiritual phenomenon is not identical with the cessation of biological processes. For example, illness or medication can limit personal freedom well before the onset of clinically defined death. Moreover, insofar as all the engagements of one's life anticipate death, Rahner maintained that every moment of life participates in death. Hence he disputed the notion of death as a final decision if this is understood to be an occurrence only at the last moment.
The Christian tradition has emphasized the definitive and perduring character of personal existence by affirming the soul's survival after death. Rahner warned that this way of conceiving of death can be misleading if one imagines that the separation of soul and body, entails a denial of their intrinsic unity. The contemporary appreciation of the bodily constitution of human reality was anticipated by the scholastic doctrine of the soul as the "form" of the body and thus intrinsically, not merely accidentally, related to it. Personal identity is shaped by one's embodied and historical engagement with the material world. So the culmination of freedom in death must entail some sort of connection with that embodiment. Rahner's notion of God as mystery, beyond objectification in space and time, provides a framework for affirming a definitive unity with God that does not imagine the unity as a place or as a continuation of temporal existence. In the early essays, Rahner addressed the problem of conceiving the connection to embodiment, particularly in the "intermediate state" before the resurrection of the dead on judgment day, with the hypothesis that death initiates a deeper and more comprehensive "pancosmic" relationship to the material universe. In later essays, he recognized that it was not necessary to postulate an intermediate state with notions such as purgatory if one adopts Gisbert Greshake's conception of "resurrection in death," through which bodily reality is interiorized and transformed into an abiding perfection of the person's unity with God and with a transformed creation.
The Christian doctrine of death as the consequence and punishment of sin underscores its ambiguous duality and obscurity. If the integrity of human life were not wounded by sinfulness, perhaps death would be experienced as a peaceful culmination of each person's acceptance of God's self-communication in historical existence. But death can be a manifestation of a definitive "no" to truth and love, and so to God, the fullness of truth and love. Ironically, this results in a loss of self as well because it is unity with God's self-communication that makes definitive human fulfillment possible. In the "no," death becomes a manifestation of futile self-absorption and emptiness, and as such punishment of sin. Moreover, everyone experiences death as the manifestation of that possibility. As a consequence of sin, people experience death as a threat, loss, and limit, which impacts every moment of life. Because of this duality and ambiguity, even a "yes" to God involves surrender. Just as God's self-communication to humanity entailed fleshing out the divine in the humanity of Jesus, including surrender in death on the cross, so death-to-self is paradoxically intrinsic to each person's confrontation with biological death.

http://www.experiencefestival.com/karl_rahner

Karl Rahner, the eminent 20th century Catholic Christian theologian, expressed his opinion that Buddhists and Christians could gain deeper insights into both reincarnation and purgatory by comparing their teachings in this field of speculation. (My reply to your question has been delayed by my efforts to find the essay on purgatory in which Karl Rahner made this statement. I’m sorry, but i have misfiled the reference.) Unfortunately, Karl Rahner died before he could explore this matter further. I suppose he knows more about it by now, but this still leaves us guessing.

One of the fundamental beliefs of Judaism is that life does not begin with birth nor end with death. This is articulated in the verse in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), "And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to G-d, who gave it."1
The Lubavitcher Rebbe would often point out that a basic law of physics (known as the First Law of Thermodynamics) is that no energy is ever "lost" or destroyed; it only assumes another form. If such is the case with physical energy, how much more so a spiritual entity such as the soul, whose existence is not limited by time and space nor any of the other delineators of the physical state. Certainly, the spiritual energy that in the human being is the source of sight and hearing, emotion and intellect, will and consciousness does not cease to exist merely because the physical body has ceased to function; rather, it passes from one form of existence (physical life as expressed and acted via the body) to a higher, exclusively spiritual form of existence.
While there are numerous stations in a soul's journey, these can generally be grouped into four general phases:
i) the wholly spiritual existence of the soul before it enters the body;
ii) physical life;
iii) post-physical life in Gan Eden (the "Garden of Eden," also called "Heaven" and "Paradise");
iv) the "World to Come" (Olam HaBa) that follows the resurrection of the dead.
What are these four phases and why are all four necessary?
To See or Not to See: The Free Choice Paradox
As discussed at length in Chassidic teaching,2 the ultimate purpose of the soul is fulfilled during the time it spends in this physical world making this world "a dwelling place for G-d" by finding and expressing G-dliness in everyday life through its fulfillment of the mitzvot.
But for our actions in this world to have true significance, they must be the product of our free choice. If we were to experience the power and beauty of the Divine presence we bring into the world with our mitzvot, we would always choose what is right and thereby lose our autonomy. The obvious becomes robotic. Our accomplishments would not be ours, any more than it is an "accomplishment" that we eat three meals a day and avoid jumping into fire.
Hence, this crucial stage of our lives is enacted under the conditions of almost total spiritual blackout: in a world in which the Divine reality is hidden, in which our purpose in life is not obvious; a world in which "all its affairs are severe and evil and wicked men prevail."3 In such a world, our positive and G-dly actions would be truly our own choice and achievement.
On the other hand, however, how would it be possible to discover, and act upon, goodness and truth under such conditions at all? If the soul is plunged into such a G-dless world and cut off from all knowledge of the Divine, by what means could it ever discover the path of truth?
This is why the soul exists in a purely spiritual state before it descends in to this world. In its pre-physical existence, the soul is fortified with the Divine wisdom, knowledge and vision that will empower it in its struggles to transcend and transform the physical reality.
In the words of the Talmud: "The fetus in its mother's womb is taught the entire Torah... When its time comes to emerge into the atmosphere of the world, an angel comes and slaps it on its mouth, making it forget everything."4
An obvious question: If we're made to forget it all, why teach it to us in the first place? But herein lies the entire paradox of knowledge and choice: we can't see the truth, we can't even manifestly know it, but at the same time we do know it, deep inside us. Deep enough that we can choose to ignore it, but also deep enough that wherever we are and whatever we become we can always choose to unearth it. This, in the final analysis, is choice: our choice to pursue the knowledge implanted in our soul or to suppress it.
The Mutual Exclusivity of Achievement and Reward
Thus the stage is set for Phase II: the tests, trials and tribulations of physical life. The characteristics of the physical--its finiteness, its opaqueness, its self-centeredness, its tendency to conceal what lies behind it--form a heavy veil that obscures virtually all knowledge and memory of our Divine source. And yet, deep down we know right from wrong. Somehow, we know that life is meaningful, that we are here to fulfill a Divine purpose; somehow, when confronted with a choice between a G-dly action and an unG-dly one, we know the difference. The knowledge is faint--a dim, subconscious memory from a prior, spiritual state. We can silence it or amplify it--the choice is ours.
Everything physical is, by definition, finite; indeed, that is what makes it a concealment of the infinitude of the Divine. Intrinsic to physical life is that it is finite in time: it ends. Once it ends--once our soul is freed from its physical embodiment--we can no longer achieve and accomplish. But now, finally, we can behold and derive satisfaction from what we have accomplished.
The two are mutually exclusive: achievement precludes satisfaction; satisfaction precludes achievement. Achievement can only take place in the spiritual blindness of the physical world; satisfaction can only take place in the choice-less environment of the spiritual reality.
The Talmud quotes the verse: "You shall keep the mitzvah, the decrees and the laws which I command you today to do them."5 "Today to do them," explains the Talmud, "but not to do them tomorrow. Today to do them, and tomorrow to receive their reward."6 The Ethics expresses it thus: "A single moment of repentance and good deeds in this world is greater than all of the world to come. And a single moment of bliss in the world to come is greater than all of this world."7
It's as if we spent a hundred years watching an orchestra performing a symphony on television--with the sound turned off. We watched the hand-movements of the conductor and the musicians. Sometimes we asked: why are the people on the screen making all these strange motions to no purpose? Sometimes we understood that a great piece of music was being played, but didn't hear a single note. After a hundred years of watching in silence, we watch it again--this time with the sound turned on.
The orchestra is ourselves, and the music--played well or poorly--are the deeds of our lives.
What is Heaven and Hell?
Heaven and hell is where the soul receives its punishment and reward after death. Yes, Judaism believes in, and Jewish traditional sources extensively discuss, punishment and reward in the afterlife (indeed, it is one of the "Thirteen Principles" of Judaism enumerated by Maimonides). But these are a very different "heaven" and "hell" than what one finds described in medieval Christian texts or New Yorker cartoons. Heaven is not a place of halos and harps, nor is hell populated by those red creatures with pitchforks depicted on the label of non-kosher canned meat.
After death, the soul returns to its Divine Source, together with all the G-dliness it has "extracted" from the physical world by using it for meaningful purposes. The soul now relives its experiences on another plane, and experiences the good it accomplished during its physical lifetime as incredible happiness and pleasure, and the negative as incredibly painful.
This pleasure and pain are not reward and punishment in the conventional sense--in the sense that we might punish a criminal by sending him to jail or reward a dedicated employee with a raise. It is rather that we experience our own life in its reality--a reality from which we were sheltered during our physical lifetimes. We experience the true import and effect of our actions. Turning up the volume on that TV set with that symphony orchestra can be intensely pleasurable or intensely painful,8--depending on how we played the music of our lives.
When the soul departs from the body, it stands before the Heavenly Court to give a "judgment and accounting" of its earthly life.9 But the Heavenly Court only does the "accounting" part; the "judgment" part--that only the soul itself can do.10 Only the soul can pass judgment on itself--only it can know and sense the true extent of what it accomplished, or neglected to accomplish, in the course of its physical life. Freed from the limitations and concealments of the physical state, it can now see G-dliness; it can now look back at its own life and experience what it truly was. The soul's experience of the G-dliness it brought into the world with its mitzvot and positive actions is the exquisite pleasure of Gan Eden (the "Garden of Eden"--i.e., Paradise); its experience of the destructiveness it wrought through its lapses and transgressions is the excruciating pain of Gehinom ("Gehenna" or "Purgatory").
The truth hurts. The truth also cleanses and heals. The spiritual pain of gehinom--the soul's pain in facing the truth of its life--cleanses and heals the soul of the spiritual stains and blemishes that its failings and misdeeds have attached to it. Freed of this husk of negativity, the soul is now able to fully enjoy the immeasurable good that its life engendered and "bask in the Divine radiance" emitted by the G-dliness it brought into the world.
For a G-dly soul spawns far more good in its lifetime than evil. The core of the soul is unadulterated goodness; the good we accomplish is infinite, the evil but shallow and superficial. So even the most wicked of souls, say our sages, experiences, at most, twelve months of gehinom, followed by an eternity of heaven. Furthermore, a soul's experience of gehinom can be mitigated by the action of his or her children and loved ones, here on earth. Reciting Kaddish and engaging in other good deeds "in merit of" and "for the elevation of" the departed soul means that the soul, in effect, is continuing to act positively upon the physical world, thereby adding to the goodness of its physical lifetime.11
The soul, on its part, remains involved in the lives of those it leaves behind when it departs physical life. The soul of a parent continues to watch over the lives of his/her children and grandchildren, to derive pride (or pain) from their deeds and accomplishments, and to intercede on their behalf before the Heavenly Throne; the same applies to those to whom a soul was connected with bonds of love, friendship and community. In fact, because the soul is no longer constricted by the limitations of the physical state, its relationship with its loved ones is, in many ways, even deeper and more meaningful than before.
However, while the departed soul is aware and cognizant of all that transpires in the lives of its loved ones, the souls remaining in the physical word are limited to what they can perceive via the five senses as facilitated by their physical bodies. We can impact the soul of a departed loved one through our positive actions, but we cannot communicate with it through conventional means (speech, sight, physical contact, etc.) that, prior to its passing, defined the way that we related to each other. (Indeed, the Torah expressly forbids the idolatrous practices of necromancy, mediumism and similar attempts to "make contact" with the world of the dead.) Hence the occurrence of death, while signifying an elevation for the soul of the departed, is experienced as a tragic loss for those it leaves behind.
Reincarnation: A Second Go
Each individual soul is dispatched to the physical world with its own individualized mission to accomplish. As Jews, we all have the same Torah with the same 613 mitzvot; but each of us has his or her own set of challenges, distinct talents and capabilities, and particular mitzvot which form the crux of his or her mission in life.
At times, a soul may not conclude its mission in a single lifetime. In such cases, it returns to earth for a "second go" to complete the job. This is the concept of gilgul neshamot--commonly referred to as "reincarnation"--extensively discussed in the teachings of Kabbalah.12 This is why we often find ourselves powerfully drawn to a particular mitzvah or cause and make it the focus of our lives, dedicating to it a seemingly disproportionate part of our time and energy: it is our soul gravitating to the "missing pieces" of its Divinely-ordained purpose.13
The World to Come
Just as the individual soul passes through three stages--preparation for its mission, the mission itself, and the subsequent phase of satisfaction and reward--so, too, does Creation as a whole. A chain of spiritual "worlds" precede the physical reality, to serve it as a source of Divine vitality and empowerment. Then comes the era of Olam HaZeh ("This World") in which the Divine purpose of creation is played out. Finally, once humanity as a whole has completed its mission of making the physical world a "dwelling place for G-d," comes the era of universal reward--the World to Come (Olam HaBa).
There is a major difference between a soul's individual "world of reward" in Gan Eden and the universal reward of the World to Come. Gan Eden is a spiritual world, inhabited by souls without physical bodies; the World to Come is a physical world, inhabited by souls with physical bodies14 (though the very nature of the physical will undergo a fundamental transformation, as per below).
In the World to Come, the physical reality will so perfectly "house" and reflect the Divine reality that it will transcend the finitude and temporality which define it today. Thus, while in today's imperfect world the soul can only experience "reward" after it departs from the body and physical life, in the World to Come, the soul and body will be reunited, and will together enjoy the fruits of their labor. Thus the prophets of Israel spoke of a time when all who died will be restored to life: their bodies will be regenerated15 and their souls restored to their bodies. "Death will be eradicated forever"16 and 'the world will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the water covers the sea."17
This, of course, will spell the end of the "Era of Achievement."18 The veil of physicality, rarified to complete transparency, will no longer conceal the truth of G-d, but will rather express it and reveal it in an even more profound way than the most lofty spiritual reality. Goodness and G-dliness will cease to be something we do and achieve, for it will be what we are. Yet our experience of goodness will be absolute. Body and soul both, reunited as they were before they were separated by death, will inhabit all the good that we accomplished with our freely chosen actions in the challenges and concealments of physical life.

A. Firstly, Man has free will--like no other creature has. No dog, dolphin or gorilla has the ability to weigh good and evil and choose one over the other. No dog, dolphin or gorilla understands the concepts of good and evil, for that matter. None except Man. So, the Jewish understanding of reward and punishment begins with the Jewish understandings of free choice, and good and evil.
B. Man has Free Choice. You can choose to do good. You can choose to do evil. You can choose. You can. You. G-d doesn't make you go one way or the other. He doesn't force you to the straight and narrow. He does not pre-program you to be a certain way. Man may do whatever he wants. Man can change whatever he is to become whoever he wants to be. Total freedom.
C. Now, G-d won't rain manna from Heaven on you if you do something He deems good, or zap you with lightning bolts if you do something He deems evil--would you have Free Choice if He did? Not at all--you wouldn't be able to walk down the street for greed of manna, or fear of lightning bolts. You'd become a vegetable. And G-d doesn't want vegetables--He wants Free Choice. So, what's going to happen to you if you eat non-Kosher? Nothing. No lightning bolts. Because if G-d zapped you every time you ate non-kosher, you'd have no choice but to eat kosher. You'd be forced to--unless you like lightning bolts. Now let's take a look at what Judaism does say about reward and punishment.
G-d won't... zap you with lightning bolts if you do something He deems evil--would you have Free Choice if He did?
1. Defining Good, Evil, Reward and Punishment
The Torah is mankind's morality manual. The Torah defines what is good and what is evil. When you do what the Torah says, you're doing good. When you don’t do what the Torah says--or when you do what the Torah says not to--you're doing evil. (But that's only if you're familiar with the Torah, and act spitefully against it--more on that later.) When you do good, you're rewarded, and when you do evil, you're punished. Sounds simple? It's anything but. There's no Reward and Punishment Catalog in Judaism, listing specific sins or good deeds and their specific consequences, and therefore, we don't know which actions elicit which reactions from G-d. Unless you are a prophet--and prophets don't exist today--you cannot conclude that Mr. A's son died because Goldberg ate non-Kosher or that Mrs. B got Lou Gehrig's Disease because she's a crook. Conversely, you cannot conclude that Bill Gates is rich because he's a good person (which is not to say he's evil!): untold variables known only to G-d come into play in every instance of reward and punishment. Only G-d can truly discern and decide matters of good and evil, and the rewards/punishments attached. We simply just don't know. For starters, we don't know what's truly good, what's truly bad, or who's truly good or bad, for that matter. Thus, suffering is not always punishment, punishment is not always suffering, good is not always a reward, and evil is not always punishment. Only G-d can tell.
2. Isn't the Torah All About Reward and Punishment?

The Jewish concept of hell is quite different from what’s commonly believed to be a dead end—an eternally painful consequence of a spiritually bankrupt life. The Hebrew word “Gehinom” doesn’t really have an English equivalent, but is loosely translated as “hell.” Gehinom is actually a process of restoration and recovery, not a permanent condition. The soul entering Gehinom can be compared to a person entering therapy, purging herself of negativity and preparing to face her true self.
As the 17th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Naphtali Bacharach explained, “Gehinom is like a sponge; it sucks up the negativity that attached itself during the soul’s journey on earth, allowing the soul to return to her original state.” So Gehinom is a learning station—a process through which a soul ultimately advances—that enables the soul to be one with her Source.
What is a soul? The dictionary defines it as the “spiritual part of a human being that is believed to continue to exist after the body dies.” In Judaism, the soul is regarded as a “piece of the Infinite,” which, through life, gathers experiences, emotions and thoughts that remain in her memory.
Life is lived to its fullest when the body and soul are in harmony. Judaism views basic needs as manifestations of the soul. Desires for meaning, intimacy and comfort are not ignored or repressed, but expressed in a soulful context and with balance. This is one reason the Torah, G-d’s blueprint for living, focuses on physical actions. It is not a penal code; rather it is a formula for the soul to harness the powers of the body to fulfill her mission on earth.
Gehinom is actually a process of restoration and recovery, not a permanent conditionHumans are born pure. “Very good” is the way the Torah describes the creation of humanity (Genesis 1:31). The soul was, is and always will be a Divine property. Though at times we may obscure this purity, we all eventually return to that state. At death, the physical elements of the body return to their source, while the soul returns to her Source. “The dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to G-d Who bestowed it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Jewish mysticism explains where, when and how this reunion takes place.
The harmony between body and soul during life determines the soul’s experiences after life. If a soul is balanced and fulfilled, it enters a state of Gan Eden (paradise), where the soul is reunited with her Source, devoid of ego, hurt and resentment. For people who are in touch with their soul, death is not at all painful. The Zohar teaches that when a soul leaves her body, the Shechinah (feminine Divine Presence) appears, and the soul goes out in joy and love to greet Her. Perhaps this explains why nearly everyone who claims to have near-death experiences sees a bright light and describes great happiness. If, during her stay on earth, the soul has become entrenched and immersed in materialism, the Shechinah departs, and the soul begins the process alone. Part of this process is the realization that the body has been fooling the soul all along.
“A person is measured,” the Talmud says, “by his own reckoning.” The body and soul are in a relationship and a person chooses which one will guide the decisions of life. Ultimately, all souls will experience a reunion, both with their loved ones, and with the Source from which every soul came. The only difference is how each soul will arrive.
A soul may return to earth for a second round, depending on whether her unique talents and attributes will be needed by a new generation, but that’s another subject for another time.

Certainly. However, Judaism's idea of the afterlife is very different then that of other Western traditions. For one, Judaism does not believe that Hell is a punishment, rather a process of refinement for the soul to rinse free of its collected "dirt" so that it can enter a state of paradise.
A Chassidic master once explained to his disciples the difference between Heaven and Hell. In the afterlife, he said, all souls' hands are bound by splints and heavy ropes. This is done so that they cannot bend their arms. Then each soul is given a ridiculously long utensil and told that it is theirs to attain what ever they desire. Above the souls hang great quantities of food and delights, but they cannot bring the food to their mouths for their hands cannot bend. In hell, the souls are emaciated and starving, breakfast is served, but since their hands cannot bend, and their utensils are too long to feed themselves, they starve. In heaven, however, it is paradise. Souls are smiling and enjoying the delights. In heaven each soul uses his or her own fork to feed the soul siting across the room.
When a person is able to love and extend themselves for another human being, then that person has tasted what heaven is on this earth
The existentialist Sartre once said, that hell is other people. The truth is that he is quite right. If a person feels that other people are others then sharing life with them is a living hell. However, when a person is able to love and extend themselves for another human being, then that person has tasted what heaven is on this earth.

Although these issues may not be spoken of in an overt manner, the Oral Tradition, the part of the Torah that goes hand in hand with the Written Torah, speaks clearly of these issues and sheds light on those passages in the Torah that allude to these concepts.
We have to understand that both these parts are interconnected. Each of them needs and feeds off the other. If there would be only the Written Torah, the Torah would be a closed book. We would not understand many of the allusive Mitzvot.
The rewards one will receive in the future, after the life one has led on this world, should not be a pertinent factor in one's behavior in the present life
One of the questions continuously asked in medieval Jewish thought is: "Why is there no explicit mention in the Torah regarding the afterlife?" Indeed, there is not one unequivocal verse or phrase in the entire Torah that indicates that a World to Come exists. The concept of heaven and hell is not clearly referred to in the Torah. This anomaly has vexed the greatest minds throughout the ages.
One of the great Jewish thinkers of 15th-century Spain, Don Yitzchak Abarbanel, offers that the answer is quite simple: the Torah does not mention the World to Come because that's not what the Torah is all about. The rewards one will receive in the future, after the life one has led on this world, should not be a pertinent factor in one's behavior in the present life. What is relevant to the discourse of life is life as it is now, life at the very moment.
Though the World to Come is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah, it remains a critical part of the Torah belief system

The ikkar (essence) of Kaddish is Yehay Shmay... When an adult Jewish male says Kaddish, which may only be said with a minyan, he causes that minyan (quorum of 10 adult Jews) to respond "Yehay Shmay..." (May His Great Name be blessed forever and ever)- a public sanctification of the Name of G-d. This is "Kiddush Ha Shem" in its most fundamental aspect, and is brought about specifically in the merit of the departed for whom it is being said. As the Mishnah in Ethics of the Fathers teaches: "One who causes another to do a mitzvah is greater than the doer of the mitzvah himself" . Thus the saying of Kaddish accrues to the benefit of the soul of the departed, and is of great spiritual benefit to that soul in the World to Come.

Although the Kaddish itself makes no mention of death or mourning, it has become the accepted practice for mourners to recite the Kaddish Yatom in order to elevate the soul of the departed.
The Midrash relates a story about a deceased wicked person who was suffering tremendously because of all his sins. Rabbi Akiba located this man’s young ignorant son and taught him to say the kaddish, and thus brought peace to the soul of his departed father.
Kaddish is recited for the first eleven months after a parent’s death (because “the souls of the wicked suffer Purgatory for [no more than] 12 months, and one should not treat one’s parents as if they were wicked”), and on every yahrtzeit of the deceased. On a person’s yahrtzeit, the soul makes a quantum leap to a completely new level of Paradise. The kaddish (and recitation of Mishna in honor of the deceased) greatly assists the soul in this transition process.

Judaism does have a concept of reward and punishment in the afterlife. However, since words we use bring to mind certain images, particularly “Heaven” and “Hell,” it is better to use the Jewish terminology which comes without the baggage.
When someone dies, the disembodied soul leaves this sensory world and enters “Gan Eden,” the spiritual Garden of Eden (a.k.a. “Heaven”). In the Garden of Eden, the soul enjoys the “rays of the Divine Presence,” a purely spiritual enjoyment dependent on the Torah learning and good deeds done while in a body. Every year on the yahrtzeit, the day of passing, the soul ascends to another level closer to G-d. This gives it tremendous pleasure.
In order to restore the level of purity the soul had possessed before entering the physical world, it must undergo a degree of refinement commensurate to the degree which the body may have indulged itself
Before entering the Garden of Eden, though, every soul must be refined, for it cannot enjoy the Divine Presence to the fullest degree with the pleasures and coarseness of our physical world still engraved on it. These would give the soul poor “reception” of divine radiance, and must be removed.
In order to restore the level of purity the soul had possessed before entering the physical world, it must undergo a degree of refinement commensurate to the degree which the body may have indulged itself. If a person sinned in this lifetime, as most of us do, then, to continue the radio analogy, we have serious interference. This means there is even more cleaning to be done. This cleaning process hurts, but is a spiritual and mental process designed not for retribution, but to allow one to truly enjoy his/her reward in Gan Eden. This cleaning process is called “Gehinom,” or, in the vernacular, “Hell.”

The ability to taste or discover truth develops in stages, represented by the permutations or mirror images of the Hebrew word chech, which is comprised of the Hebrew consonants het and kaf. When the order of these consonants is reversed, the word koach, meaning "power/strength," is produced.
First, the educator must sensitize his students to truth, cultivating in them a desire (or "sweet tooth") for authenticity. He proceeds by choosing the healthiest and most digestible lesson and serving it attractively, so the students will want to taste it and thus open themselves to that new dimension of reality. The educator's influence here is circumstantial, he brings his students into contact with an idea but does not yet attempt to modify their personalities. His next step, however, is to actually infiltrate into the students' psyche and begin to refine their characters--to strengthen their sensitivity to truth.
Sensitivity to truth requires devotion to truth. The educator needs to impress upon his students that they must be willing to pay any price for that most precious, vital and indispensable commodity, and not to tolerate the seeming convenience of lies and unreality. In order to convey this lesson, the educator encourages his students' sensitivity to essence and to the needs of others while dulling their sensitivity to superficialities and to their own needs for physical comfort. In this way the students detach from things that lure people into complacency and tolerance for deceit. When they express their commitment to truth through concrete actions and sacrifices, they can receive ever more subtle and potent revelations of truth and light--that is, "the goodness (and sweetness) of God" [see footnote below] that King David mentions in his Psalms.
As a compass seeks north, so a person with refined tastes will orient toward that inner source in God that lies beneath the surface of all experience. This ability is the foundation of wisdom.
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[Footnote]
The Talmud describes the World to Come as the time when God will "remove the sun from its container." This refers to an era when God's truth and spiritual light will irradiate the world with an unrestrained intensity, equivalent to the experience of physical light at the surface of the sun. The growth in our lives prepares us for this experience. The Talmud says that those who have achieved a level of holiness in life will be given the power to endure this searing blast of revelation. Their strengthened and refined sensitivities will allow them to bask in this experience of God that would otherwise be a consuming fire.
While the sages of the Talmud tell us that we will all reach that level of holiness someday, there remains the problem of how? After all, we are obviously far from it now.
Of course, those who have devoted their lives to good, seekers of truth and God are already at a level of holiness and need no final adjustments. They have spent their lives preparing for this unrestrained revelation of Godliness, and when it arrives, they will make the transition smoothly, rejoicing and embracing it with ultimate pleasure. They have, in their lives, only desired God, and now they are able to experience Him without the frustrating barrier of gross physicality.
Others who have pursued material and temporary pleasures, abandoning a relationship with good as defined by Torah, will not have done the work of refining themselves and cultivating a taste for Godliness. Since these souls have rejected or neglected truth in their lives, they will be unable to enjoy the pleasures of the World to Come (where there only exists the Light of Divine Truth) until their coarseness and impurity are purged from them through suffering the ordeal of "embarrassment." This is what is popularly called "hell"--the burning shame that a person feels when "his deeds and utterances march before him and make proclamation concerning him."
This is the consequence we face after death for not having devoted ourselves in life to the truth as it is now revealed. This purgation, though momentarily painful, is in fact a great blessing for it transforms all who pass through it, rendering them capable of appreciating the spiritual pleasures of the World to Come. It works something like the process of refining gold. In both instances the raw ore is placed in an oven, at extremely high temperatures until the impurity turns to ash, and all that remains is a pure golden nugget.
Lest we err in thinking that it makes no difference whether we indulge ourselves in this world and pays our dues in the next, or whether we suffer by restraining our passions here, in order to collect our pleasure in the World to Come, a word from the great 12th century Kabbalist Nachmanides should serve as caution. He writes that God has done human beings a great kindness by allowing us to work off our debt in the physical world where all pain and discomfort are only temporary (at most for a lifetime), are of bearable proportions, and there is always joy and pleasure interspersed. All of Job's seventy years of suffering (which include the loss of all his property and children as well as a permanent plague of boils and physical disease) do not compare to even one instant of the soul's suffering in the afterlife. This is because the body acts as an insulating barrier that protects the soul from too much discomfort. The body or mind goes into shock if the pain becomes too intense. In the afterlife, the soul is totally exposed and there is no protection and no place to hide. Therefore, the opportunity to face the consequences of our transgressions in this world, rather than the next, is a gift of love that God has built into the system for our benefit

Who would have a better understanding of the Bible online than THE JEWS?????!!!!!!
Kabbalahonline.org and Ascents of Safed (Safed or Safet Israel)
has the Parsha readings online THE BIBLE as you call it
Genesis, Exodus, Psalms
on inner.org you can learn about questions such as HELL, REINCARNATION and other concepts
The more psychological books (and there is some history that indicates Jewish influences including possibly Kabbalah on your St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, that may have been Sephardic Jews especially the language of fire, flame, darkness, and comparisons of ruach and nefresh--souls and metaphysical concepts that are more common to Judaism than Christianity at that time which is primitive generally but more primitive in Europe during these dark times) of the "Bible" are:
JOB, PSALMS, PROVERBS, also some of the Genesis stories such as Creation, and Lech Locha
to a lesser extent the SONG OF SOLOMON
and some of the erotic symbolism
also non or extra reading (nor from the Bible per se) of the TANYA and other writings of the Rebbes
Read Maccabees for ideas of an intermediary world between life and death. Also, read different commentaries on Greek and Hebrew words for death, Hell etc. Hades, Sheol, and other words for Purgatory as were as Gilgul, transmigration of souls and other concepts.

That better be a link to the Bible online.

Learn the truth
www.kabbalahonline.org

To check out some good websites to learn more about Judaism and thus real Monotheism check out:
www.chabad.org
www.meaningfullife.com
www.inner.org
www.kabbalahonline.org
for a non Chabad decent website try
www.aish.com

The reincarnation concept in Judaism is a corruption of the Babylonian exile and post Temple gnostic influences. It is not in the Torah. It is not in the Babylonian Talmud. It did explicitly come on the scene until at earliest the 10th century and really a lot later.
It is a concept in Kabbala and Hassidic thought and some Sefardim. The Kabbala is heavily influenced by platonist and pythagorian as well as more ominous occultic and babylonian sorcerory. Judaism after the fall of the Temple (70 AD) became very corrupted with some of the concepts and demonic mystical practices that last until this day including heterodox beliefs on the afterlife.

Perhaps we've had a peek at "anti-Purgatory" today: Fallen natures beating the bejabbers out of other fallen natures "while we wait in joyful hope.."!
For a decent and orthodox look at it, try Jesuit Michael Taylor's "Purgatory." Very edifying.
Also, is it me, or is there Jewish proselytizing going on here lately?