Hi Jon S,
I understand your analogy about the trip but I think it takes more mental gymnastics to interpret it that way than to interpret it at face value – that the thief would be in paradise that same day.
That is how my Catholic friends ask me to interpret the verse about Peter being the rock upon which the Church is built, whereas most protestants consider the faith in Christ shown by Peter to be the true rock upon which the Church is built.
I am not a biblical scholar, but it seems curious that different faith traditions interpret scripture literally at times and then figuratively at times to suit their doctrine.
Note: I am including my own in this, as well.
I don’t know…I feel like I am treating it literally.
I think we all agree we are transformed from sinners to holy when we die…you guys don’t have a word for that. We do. It’s purgatory. It may take an instant, it may take “time” we don’t pretend to know.
purgatory is the ultimate refining of the refiners fire…sounds like paradise to me.
The church teaches Purgstory is a state of being not a place. In the after life there is heaven and hell. If your not in hell you are in paradise, even if your in process of transformation.
I don’t think Jesus felt like giving a detailed sermon while dying on the cross…he kept it brief and encouraging giving the thief exactly what the thief needed.
He let his apostles give more details later (Corinthians ).
Check out this quote from Pope Benedict in Spe Salvi regarding what happens at death.
“Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.”
Or this one from Pope Benefict XVI in his book.
""The transforming ‘moment’ of this encounter cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of ‘short’ or ‘long’ duration on the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The ‘temporal measure’ of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we are transformed. To measure such Existenzzeit, such an ‘existential time,’ in terms of the time of this world would be to ignore the specificity of the human spirit in its simultaneous relationship with, and differentation from, the world.
. . .
"[Purgatory] is the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints.
. . .
“Encounter with the Lord is this transformation.”…
–Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, p. 230-231
