OK. I understand your take. Is that Catholic position, there is only one judgement which is before the before the resurrection, for the believer ? That would make Bishop Sheen’s assessment incorrect.
There is one ‘particular judgment’, which is ‘immediate’. (I’m tempted to get on my soapbox and talk about the difference between the common connotation of ‘immediate’ (that is, a temporal one, meaning “right now!”) and the connotation which means "not mediated by anything.) At our deaths, when (for us) time stops, we are judged – immediately – by Christ.
There is also the final judgment, spoken of by Christ in the Gospels, in which He will separate the sheep from the goats, and all that has ever been will be made manifest.
This is the Catholic position… and it does not invalidate Sheen’s position. The notion (that you asserted a couple of weeks ago, in post #172) that Sheen is referring to the final judgment as one “by fire” doesn’t work well with the Catholic theology that Sheen was discussing. Your assertion would seem to have it that, after the particular judgment, we are in some sort of ‘holding pattern’ – that the cleansing of purgation and the punishment of hell are held in check until the end of time. That’s not what the Church teaches. Rather, the final judgment is tied up in the notion of the eschaton: when we receive our glorified bodies, there will be the final judgment. The end result of that final judgment is that we will enter into eternity – bodily! – and the final judgment is the particular point at which that delineation between temporal and eternal exists.
Your Greek gives no bearing on just when the “day” is, and is an assumption it is at our death.
That’s a fair enough interpretation. After all, “the day of the Lord” is a phrase that had been used throughout the Old Testament, and has quite a history in theological debate over the millennia.
To be fair, the OT Jewish conception of “the day” is substantially different from the NT Jewish conception – and the Christian concept is even more distinct! For OT Jews, death was permanent: you went to Sheol, and became a ‘shade’ (i.e., a ‘shadow’) and that was where you were forever and evermore. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. However, they believed that there would be “the day of the Lord”, at which time the destiny of the Jewish nation would be restored, and all the peoples would be at peace, with the Israelites who were alive at that time at their head. No one would mess with them, no one would subjugate them, and God would make it be a ‘paradise on earth’ for His Chosen People. (Under this notion, “the day of the Lord” was necessarily a temporal reference – it would happen on earth at some point in time.)
By the 1st century AD, however, this notion was fraying at the edges. Some Jews asserted that there would be ‘heaven’ – that is, the eternal destiny of the just wasn’t eternal gloom, but eternal joy. For these Jews, then (e.g., the Pharisees), “the day of the Lord” had subtly changed: it wasn’t a
temporal reality, it was an
eternal reality. So, the notion of ‘timeline’ was significantly different: did one enter “the day of the Lord” – that is, ‘eternity’ – at the end of time, or at the end of one’s life? Jesus’ discussion of Lazarus and the rich man would seem to suggest that there was a contemporary understanding of ‘paradise’ (a.k.a., “Abraham’s Bosom”) that implied the latter rather than the former.
But, we can’t leave the discussion there: Christians, studying Jesus’ words and teaching, developed a theology that differed from all variants of Jewish theology, in a variety of ways. From this discernment of Jesus’ teaching, the Church taught a ‘particular judgment’ (heaven (with, perhaps, a cleansing prior to entry into heaven) or hell) that was immediate, as well as a final judgment at the eschaton, tied to the bodily ‘rising of the dead’.
Now… what of the assertion that “the day of the Lord” implies that ‘the fire’ only happens at the end of time? To be fair, that would force us to abandon Christian understandings of the eschaton and re-adopt a Jewish understanding that was already being rejected in Jesus’ time…
Even Sheen says we have an immediate, private judgement of sorts when we die and placed in one of the three places.
Not “of sorts” – that kind of hedging isn’t what Sheen is suggesting at all. There is, definitively, in Catholic teaching, a ‘particular judgment’. Not “of sorts”.
Again when we faithful die there is still a "timeline’’. That is, we do not go there and immediately enter into eternal state, with a, resurrected glorified body, and with rewards, and eternal assignments in the Kingdom set up on earth, etc., etc… Still an order of events, which signifies “time” of some sort.
Not so much a ‘time’, I would argue (since I would argue for the classical definition of time as being the measure of change of physical things), but certainly a ‘sequence’.
Even the saints before the throne in heaven (Revelations) are asking the Lord, “how long before your setting things straight on earth ?”
And, they could certainly be asking that with respect to the frame of reference of an earthly timeframe, not a heavenly one.
That is the suggestion, that we go to heaven in spirit and soul.Then the next step is resurrection of our body, at the end of time.Then we have that second public judgement of our works in Christ, and suffer loss of rewards or gain them, receiving our assignments in the newly established kingdom on Earth.
I’m with you up until “and suffer loss [at that time]”.
