Here is Dr. Jerry Walls on his protestant defense of Purgatory.
He outlines four possible answers to how sinful people can die and go to heaven where nothing unholy can be. I would frame the possible answers differently from how he does:
1. We don't die imperfect. Our yoke is easy and our burden is light, it is not difficult to live the moral life. New bodies aren't necessary to purify moral evil, but to rid the world of natural evil (no more tripping down the stairs). No man was perfect, but some men would become perfect before their death. The path is narrow and few will find it.
2. We die imperfect, and God whippidy-snip perfects us spiritually. Walls offers it as a possible answer, but explains how it conflicts with the free-will solution to moral evil. If moral evil is necessary for free-will, then God is undermining that by making us perfect against our will – without our cooperation. I think he can leverage his argument beyond just free will. Any answer to the problem of why God would create moral evil requires some greater good to be achieved, even if it is not free will. If God can whippidy-snip perfect us, then the period of moral evil doesn’t make sense.
#2 and #3 are not mutually exclusive.
3. We die imperfect, and God whippidy-snip perfects us physically. One unexamined assumption Will makes is that everlasting life is had spiritually rather than physically. He seems to think we die and go to heaven rather than we die and are physically resurrected on the last day. If you hold the resurrection view, then it is possible that while our lack of holiness is solely a physical matter. It makes sense then that we are given new bodies, which when inhabited by reborn spirits, reach holiness.
4. We die imperfect, and we are not perfected. This view sees the continuation of sin and imperfection on into eternity.
5. Jerry Wall’s view: We die imperfect, we are sentenced to purgatory through which we are perfected. God perfects us but not in a whippidy-snip sort of way, but in a long grueling process sort of way. I award him extra thought points because if he were right, protestants would never see it. Protestants hate the idea of purgatory. This means that the fact that basically nobody agrees with him is not because he’s obviously wrong (in general, if nobody agrees with you you should be very skeptical of that belief, but adjust the other way for beliefs that people just don’t like).
That’s why it is imperative for Jerry to recite the major difference between his view of purgatory and the historic Catholic version. Purgatory is redemptive, not punitive. As such, you can not buy your way out of the process of being perfected.
