Are There Differences Between the Saints in Heaven?

I said last week that I was going to respond to the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright’s arguments against Purgatory. But as I was writing the response, I realized that it will need to be a two-parter. Why? Because underlying Wright’s opposition to Purgatory is his belief that there are “no different categories” in heaven. This idea is both (a) common enough, and (b) distinct enough from Purgatory that I thought it was important to address it head-on before turning more fully to Purgatory. Once again, the arguments in question are laid out in his book For All the Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed, and the relevant excerpt is available in full here.

The point that Wright is trying to prove is that in the “intermediate state” (between death and bodily resurrection), everybody is equal:

This brings me to the first really controversial point in the present book: there is no reason in the foundation documents of Christianity to suppose that there are any category distinctions between Christians in this intermediate state. All are in the same condition; and all are ‘saints’.

Wright is going to draw some pretty sweeping conclusions from this idea, so I want to briefly (a) explain what I think he’s claiming, (b) respond to his evidence for that claim, and then (c) present a contrary vision that I think better accounts for the biblical evidence.

Just What is Wright Arguing?

Sometimes, the hardest thing about responding to an argument is making sure you actually get the other person’s argument. So here’s what I don’t think Wright is saying. First, I don’t think he’s denying hell. From other things he has said, I know that Wright is not a universalist – he believes that “the New Testament is very clear that there are people who do reject God and reject what would have been His best will for them, and God honors that decision.” So in that sense, of course, there are at least two “categories”: those who accept God and are united with Him in Heaven (in ultimate anticipation of something yet more glorious), and those who don’t.

Second, I don’t think Wright is claiming that Catholics and Anglo-Catholics believe that “Saints” and “souls” are referring to two different types of creatures. As we’ll see a bit later on, there are all sorts of different kinds of being in the heavenly hierarchy: seraphim and cherubim, thrones, dominions, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels. But those are actually different kinds of beings, more like two different species of animals than like two different types of people. If Wright’s arguing that there’s only one human “species,” then he’s only arguing against a straw man.

Instead, I think he’s trying to argue that we shouldn’t think of the Christian life as involving two distinct groups of the saved: “the Saints,” and us poor souls who will have to go through purgatory. Jordan Gandhi, who liked the arguments I didn’t like, summarized Wright’s position this way:

Although I do not celebrate the same days of commemoration as are traditional in the Anglican or Catholic tradition, I appreciate the sentiments behind what Wright says as he discusses “All Saints Day” and “All Souls Day.” He points out that “this commemoration assumes a sharp distinction between the ‘saints,’ who are already in heaven, and the ‘souls,’ who aren’t and who are therefore still less than completely happy and need our help (as we say today) to ‘move on’” (Wright 168). Within my own thinking, it had been well established that there was an important distinction between the ordinary average member of the early church and the saints – St. Peter or St. Paul or St. James.

Gandhi argues that Wright’s position is important both that we aim higher (realizing that we are, and are called to be, saints), and so that we don’t fall into idolatry (because he thinks we risk treating the Saints as perfect, and thinks it’s idolatrous for any human besides Jesus to be perfect). Of these, I think that the first is a good point and the second is a bad point.

On the one hand, we shouldn’t treat the group “Saints” as a closed group that we were simply not born into… and actually, the Saints themselves regularly say things like this. My favorite quotation on this point comes from Léon Bloy (1846–1917). When a priest wrote to him that “I do not have the soul of a saint,” Bloy rebuked him by saying that “there is a deceptive form of humility that resembles ingratitude.” Bloy continued:

Well, then I answer you with certainty that I have the soul of a saint; that my fearful bourgeois of a landlord, my baker, my butcher, my grocer, all of whom may be horrible scoundrels, have the souls of saints, having all been called, as fully as you and I, as fully as Saint Francis or Saint Paul, to eternal Life, and having all been bought at the same price: You have been bought at a great price. There is no man who is not potentially a saint, and sin or sins, even the blackest, are but accident that in no way alters the substance.

This is the backdrop for Bloy’s famous aphorism (quoted by Pope Francis in Gaudete et Exsultate) that when all is said and done, “the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” And this is what the Church means when she speaks of a “universal call to holiness.” All of us were created to be saints, nothing less. So if that were all that Wright was arguing, he’d find the Catholic Church solidly on his side. All of us are called to be saints, and the souls in purgatory are those who are already saved and whose process of sanctification is simply incomplete.

All of that is consistent with the idea of Purgatory. The Catholic claim for Purgatory is not that there are two fixed groups – the saints and the souls – and that if you happen to be in the wrong one, you’ll end up in Purgatory instead of Heaven. The idea is that all of us are called to be sanctified, but that we’re not all in the same place in that journey. To take the obvious example, some of us are still running the race (1 Cor. 9:24; Heb. 12:1-2), and some of us have completed it and are not part of that great cloud of witnesses cheering on the runners (cf. Heb. 12:1). Protestants are typically fine with that point – that part of the Church is struggling on earth and part is in heavenly glory. The Catholic claim is simply that there’s part of the Church no longer struggling on earth, but not yet in heavenly glory, and that this part of the Church is undergoing a sort of spiritual purgation to prepare them for that glory.

But Wright does think that the fact that all of us are (in some sense) “saints,” debunks the idea of Purgatory. And part of the reason is that he seems to think that everyone in heaven is equally exalted, equally glorified, and equally close to God. What I’m curious about today is why he thinks that. So here are the five arguments that he offers, and why they don’t seem to lead to the conclusions that he’s drawing from them.

Argument #1: Saints are Saints?

First, he makes a linguistic argument, that since Scripture speaks of all Christians as “saints,” that they’re therefore all in the same category:

In the New Testament every single Christian is referred to as a ‘saint’, including the muddled and sinful ones to whom Paul writes his letters. The background to early Christian thought about the church includes the Dead Sea Scrolls; and there we find the members of the Qumran sect referred to as ‘the holy ones’. 

I’ve seen other Protestants make this argument, including many who, like Wright, I respect. So it may be that there is more to this argument than I’m seeing (or they’re saying), but taken on its face, it doesn’t really work. It would be like hearing Julius Caesar beginning an address, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen,” and concluding that therefore there were no social distinctions in ancient Rome, or like learning that “student” comes from the Latin studiare (“to study”), and that therefore, all students are equally good at studying.

Wright cites as proof to the Qumran community for this kind of egalitarian idea, since they referred to all of their followers as “the holy ones.” But the Qumran community itself neatly dismantles this argument, since they had some of the staunchest distinctions you can find. We see this most clearly in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls known as the Community Rule Scroll (1QS). It says things like:

The Priests shall enter first, ranked one after another according to the perfection of their spirit; then the Levites; and thirdly, all the people one after another in their Thousands, Hundreds, Fifties, and Tens, that every Israelite may know his place in the Community of God according to the everlasting design. No man shall move down from his place nor move up from his allotted position. For according to the holy design, they shall all of them be in a Community of truth and virtuous humility, of loving-kindness and good intent one towards the other, and (they shall all of them be) sons of the everlasting Company.

Community Rule Scroll, 1QS1:20-25, see page 100.

This is, if anything, a good deal more strictly hierarchical than anything in the Catholic vision of heaven, so it’s a strange place for Wright to look for support for the idea that there are (in his words) “no different categories.”

Argument #2: The Argument from St. Paul’s Silence

Wright’s next support for this argument is based on what St. Paul doesn’t say:

This means that the New Testament language about the bodily death of Christians, and what happens to them thereafter, makes no distinction whatever in this respect between those who have attained significant holiness or Christlikeness in the present and those who haven’t. ‘My desire’, says Paul in Philippians 1.22, ‘is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.’ He doesn’t for a moment imply that this ‘being with Christ’ is something which he will experience but which the Philippians, like Newman’s Gerontius, will find terrifying and want to postpone. His state (being with Christ) will indeed be exalted, but it will be no different, no more exalted, than that of every single Christian after death. He will not be, in that sense, a ‘saint’, differentiated from mere ‘souls’ who wait in another place or state.

It seems to me that Wright is again drawing an unreasonable conclusion from an argument from silence. It’s true that Paul doesn’t lecture the Philippians on how some of them might fear the Judgment Seat. But he does tell them to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13). Likely, one reason that fear of God isn’t a predominant theme in Paul’s letter is that it’s clear that he thinks the Philippians are already on the right course. He says to them that “it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict which you saw and now hear to be mine” (Phil. 1:29-30). He plainly isn’t writing to a group34 of people he thinks haven’t “attained significant holiness or Christlikeness.” For that reason, I don’t understand why Wright would expect to find Paul giving a theological excursus here about the levels of heavenly glory, or the distinctions between those who have run the race well and those who have not.

After all, there are plenty of other important heavenly (and hellish) distinctions which St. Paul (a) believed in, and (b) didn’t happen to mention to the Philippians. For instance, in his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul says that “we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). More positively, he says that God raised Christ “from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph. 1:20-21). To the Colossians, he mentions “thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities” (Col. 1:16). He says to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6:3), and mentions angels in several of his other letters, and has one mention of an archangel in his first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:16). So we know that St. Paul did believe in a spiritual hierarchy in heaven (and a corresponding “lowerarchy,” to use C.S. Lewis’ term, in hell). He just didn’t happen to be discussing it in his letter to the Philippians.

Argument #3: The First Shall Be Last

With the final three arguments Wright advances for his thesis, Wright groups them together in a single paragraph, but I want to unpack each of them, one at a time:

In fact, there are so many things said in the New Testament about the greatest becoming least and the least becoming greatest that we shouldn’t be surprised at this lack of distinction between the post-mortem state of different Christians.

The answer to this should be plain. The first becoming the last is still an order and a hierarchy, just in the way that God would arrange things rather than we do. God called the prophet Samuel to anoint Jesse’s youngest son David as king of Israel (instead of the eldest son, as Samuel expected), explaining that “the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). It didn’t follow that therefore all seven of the brothers were equally king of Israel.  The first becomes last and the last becomes first, but they don’t just end up in a big mushy middle together. Likewise, we should affirm both that there is a spiritual hierarchy in heaven, and that we can’t guess exactly who will end up exactly where.

Argument #4: Nobody (even Mary!) is Closer to God than Anybody Else

I appreciate that it may be hard for some to come to terms with this, but in the light of the most basic and central Christian gospel, the message and achievement of Jesus and the preaching of Paul and the others, there is no reason whatever to say, for instance, that Peter or Paul, James or John, or even, dare I say, the mother of Jesus herself, is more advanced, closer to God, or has achieved more spiritual ‘growth’, than the Christians who were killed for their faith last week or last year.

It’s good, in a way, that Wright draws his conclusion out so boldly, because it makes it that much more obvious (I think) that it’s wrong. Since Wright mentioned James and John, consider Mark 10:35-40:

And James and John, the sons of Zeb′edee, came forward to him, and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

Notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that James and John’s request is absurd because the Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t have any hierarchy. He doesn’t say that nobody is any closer to God than anybody else. He doesn’t say that there is no left and right hand spot. He simply says that those spots have already been set aside, and He’s not telling us for whom. That is, God has an order, but it might be pretty different than the order we’d imagine.

And can there be any doubt, from Scripture itself, that Mary is in a particularly honored position? Elizabeth says to her, “blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:42), and “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (v. 45). Mary says of herself that “henceforth all generations will call me blessed” (v. 48b). Indeed, she reminds us that God “has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree” (v. 52), yet again showing that God has an order, just not our order, and she places herself as one of those who has been exalted, “for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden” (v. 48a). St. Luke makes a point, twice, of describing her as pondering the mysteries of Christ’s life in her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). In Revelation 12, she is depicted as enthroned in heavenly glory. Only residual Protestant anti-Catholicism and fears about “over-emphasizing” the Virgin Mary can account for the sheer amount of Scripture one needs to ignore to suggest that Mary was and is no closer to Christ than the martyr who died last week.

Argument #5: The Workers in the Vineyard

The best argument that Wright offers (I’d even suggest the only strong argument) is one that he sort of tacks on at the end:

Remember the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20.1-16). Those who worked all day thought they would be paid more, but those who came at the last hour were paid just the same. Is the vineyard owner not allowed to do what he likes with his own? Are we going to grumble because he is so wonderfully generous?

Wright’s argument here is actually pretty good. The parable of the workers in the vineyard is the closest that Jesus ever seems to come to saying that everyone will receive equal rewards. You’ve got different workers, working for different lengths of times, and all receiving the exact same reward, one day’s wages. But that’s partly because we usually read the parable out of context. The parable begins with Jesus saying, “For the kingdom of heaven is like…” (Matt. 20:1). In other words, the parable is presented as Jesus’ answer to something specific. And what was that something specific? Look at the verses immediately preceding it (Matt. 19:27-30):

Then Peter said in reply, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. But many that are first will be last, and the last first.

Jesus is saying a lot in His response to Peter: first, that the Twelve have a special place set aside for them in Heaven precisely because of how they followed Jesus; second, that everyone else who sacrificed in the way that Peter has for the Kingdom will also be rewarded, a hundredfold; third, that they will receive eternal life; and fourth, that “many that are first will be last, and the last first.” Jesus then gives the parable of the workers in the vineyard to explain what He’s said. But that means, obviously, that He can’t be denying any of the four points that He’s just made.

The early Christians, dating back at least to Origen, read the parable as about salvation, not about heavenly glory.That is, those who convert at the last minute and those who are faithful for life are both saved. Those who did the bare minimum that God commanded and those who  “left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands” for Jesus’ sake are likewise both saved. On that level, everyone found working in the vineyard at the end of their day receives the wages of salvation.

But Wright seems to be reading the parable as if the wages were about a share of heavenly glory distributed perfectly equally. Read that way, the answer to Peter’s question would then be no, he and the Twelve won’t have any special thrones, and that they won’t be rewarded a hundredfold for their extraordinary sacrifices, and that the first and the last and everyone else will be in the middle.

[Edit: Deacon Steven Greydanus points out that in the parable of the minas (Luke 19:11-27), the Master clearly gives different rewards (five cities to one, ten to another) based on the fruitfulness of His servants. That parable seems at least as much on point as the one to which Wright cites.]

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My Response: The Case for Degrees of Holiness

Much of what I’ve written thus far is about why Wright isn’t really providing the evidence needed to carry his thesis that there are “no different categories” in Heaven. But what evidence do we have of such differences of degree? As crazy as this might sound, I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that the evidence is literally everything:

• The material world: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psa. 24:1), and yet He bestows greater glory on some parts (e.g,. humans, made in His image and likeness) than others (e.g., rocks).
• The week: every day belongs to God, but the Sabbath is especially holy.
• The angelic world: as seen above, there are clear references to an angelic hierarchy in Paul’s theology. We find such references all over the place: for instance, the idea that there are seven angels privileged to stand in the presence of God (Tob. 12:15; Rev. 8:2).
• The Temple: The whole Temple is holy, but one part, the Holy of Holies (Heb. 9:3), is even holier, and only the high priest may enter.
• Our spiritual lives: Some people are holier than others. It’s not just a question of good and bad, but of good and better. Abraham can intercede for Lot (Gen. 19:29), Job can intercede for his friends (Job 42:7-10), St. Paul can hold himself up as a model to be imitated by other Christians, etc. (1 Cor. 11:1).
• The Kingdom now: Jesus Christ speaks freely of those who will be the greatest or the least in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:19, 11:11).
• The Kingdom to come: At the Last Supper, Jesus says to the Twelve (Luke 22:28-30), “You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” This is confirmed in the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation, in which “the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14). The twelve enthroned Apostles certainly don’t sound like they’re on the same level as everyone else (as Wright suggests).
• Heavenly worship: Throughout the Book of Revelation, St. John describes, not a Heaven in which everyone is equal and interchangeable, but a dazzling array of differences. For instance, John sees the martyrs, enrobed in white and crying out to God from beneath the altar (Rev. 6:9-11). He sees twenty-four elders, crowned and enthroned (Rev. 4:4), and the Mother of Jesus enthroned with a dazzling crown of stars on her head (Rev. 12). He sees “thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed,” and sees the martyrs reigning with Christ (Rev. 20:4). He sees 144,000 sealed and set apart, followed by a multitude from every nation (Rev. 7:1-10). When mighty Babylon is overthrown, the hymn of praise includes the line, “Rejoice over her, O heaven, O saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!” (Rev. 18:20), just as an earlier hymn had praised God for “rewarding thy servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear thy name, both small and great” (Rev. 11:18). The Church, the Bride of Christ, is herself depicted in a bridal dress, “clothed with fine linen, bright and pure,” and John explains that “the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints” (Rev. 19:8). None of this would naturally suggest that everyone in heaven is equal.

Without a prior commitment to the idea that everyone must be equal and interchangeable in heaven with no differences of degree, it’s hard to see how anyone could arrive at that conclusion on the basis of the actual description of heaven included in Scripture, or on the basis of looking at any of the other works of God. To be sure, there’s more that we don’t know than that we know, and we should never forget that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived” what God has prepared for us in heaven (1 Cor. 2:7). But everything that we are told points in precisely the opposite direction of what N.T. Wright claims. But all of this really only sets the stage for the central question: can the doctrine of Purgatory survive the attacks N.T. Wright makes on it? And the answer to that question will have to wait a little longer.

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Tomorrow: We will switch subjects briefly. I’ve got an “intense discussion” (hopefully not too intense) with Gavin Ortlund on the papacy coming out tomorrow, and I will post some of my thoughts regarding what I thought were my own weak points.

After that (date TBD, but maybe early next week): We will finish up Wright on Purgatory. How does that sound?