NT Wright on the Purgatory

Thanks to Carson Clark for the link.

Here is the transcription of this talk:

(HD) Transcript: “Purgatory is different because, purgatory in traditional catholic theology was always a gloomy, dark strange place. Today, people sometimes talk about it, in terms of, well actually, purgatory is where the love of God finally heals us of all our problems, etc. In biblical theology, it is death itself that finishes off that which needs to be finished off. So that after death, there is nothing more that needs to be sorted out and finished off. What youre left with after death, if youre a christian, baptized, indwelt by the Spirit, what youre left with then is the real you. Or however you want to describe it as a soul or whatever. But waiting to be complete by being given a new body. I think actually that purgatory is a good metaphor for being a Christian in the present is. That is, a struggle to be holy. A struggle to finish off whats still bad about us. The suffering that goes with that, with the world as we know it. Thats why Dantes purgatory is the most popular of his trilogy because we know that place. Thats where we live.”