Are the Fires of Purgatory the Same as Hell? What Aquinas Really Taught

A previous article discussed how saints have said that suffering in Purgatory is worse than any suffering on earth. It also mentioned that it is likely that most people do not go straight to heaven at the moment of death; if a person is honestly repentant before death it is likely that they will have to go to Purgatory. As a result, it seems that for most people pain, anxiety, and other suffering likely gets much worse after death. This article provides more supporting information for that claim. The points made in this article are summarized as follows:

1. Jesus’ Sacrifice saved us from the necessity that everyone experiences the fires of Hell in Hell, no matter what (but a person can still go to Hell if they do not honestly repent prior to death)
2. Jesus’ Sacrifice saved us from the necessity of slavery to sin (but a person can still become a slave to sin by choosing to do so)
3. Every sin involves ingratitude for Jesus’ Sacrifice
4. To be perfectly grateful for Jesus’ Sacrificial Gift, a person must understand what he or she was saved from; this understanding could be achieved through habituated or infused perfect Virtue (specifically the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, not almsgiving which is sometimes described as charity) or through experiencing the fires of Hell
5. Similarly, Heaven requires perfection, and perfect gratitude for Salvation requires knowledge of and habituated thankfulness for what one was saved from
6. Punishment for sin is proportionate to the sin committed
7. Punishment for ingratitude for Jesus’ Sacrifice (which includes every sin) could include the Fires of Hell in an experience that feels never-ending but eventually does end
8. Therefore, it is likely that the fires of Purgatory are the same as the fires of Hell but Purgatory is different in that it is temporary while condemnation to Hell is forever

What If Purgatory’s Fire Is the Same as Hell’s?

Some readers might be surprised by a few of the previous points. But it seems that every single one of them was made by or implied by St. Thomas Aquinas. While he did not provide the precise reasoning used above, St. Thomas Aquinas similarly suggested that the fires of Purgatory are the same as the fires of Hell. (The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that Purgatory is entirely different than Hell, suggesting that the big difference between Purgatory and Hell is temporary compared to eternal suffering.)

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the same fire that torments the damned may also purify the saved.

St. Thomas Aquinas presented the question as, “Whether it [Purgatory] is the same place where souls are cleansed, and the damned punished?”  He answered as follows:

Gregory [The quotation is from St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei i, 8)] says, “just as in the same fire gold is reddened while chaff turns to smoke, so in the same fire a sinner is reduced to ashes while one of the elect is purified.” Therefore, the fire of purgatory and of hell is the same, and thus they are in the same place.

Furthermore, before the coming of Christ the holy patriarchs were in a worthier place than the place where the souls are purified after death, for there was no sensible pain there. But that place was either the same as hell or attached to it, otherwise Christ would not be said to have descended into hell when he descended to limbo. Therefore, purgatory is in the same place as, or connected with, hell.

Thus, St. Thomas suggested that the fires of Purgatory are the same as the fires of Hell. Additionally, he wrote:

It should be said that concerning purgatory’s location, nothing specific is expressly found in Scripture, nor can one offer effective arguments about it. Yet probably, and according to what agrees most with the words of the saints and the revelation made to many, there are two places for purgatory. One, according to the general law, according to which purgatory’s location is a lower place connected with hell, so that it is the same fire that torments the damned in hell and purifies the just in purgatory; although the damned, as lower in merit, are also relegated to a lower place. There is another place for purgatory by special dispensation; and this is why it is read sometimes that certain people are punished in different places, whether for the instruction of the living, or for the assistance of the dead, so that by making their suffering known to the living, it might be reduced by the Church’s intercession.

The Same Fire, But a Different Purpose

Finally, St. Thomas Aquinas also importantly explained that:

The punishment of hell is for the purpose of affliction, wherefore it is called by the names of things that are wont to afflict us here. But the chief purpose of the punishment of Purgatory is to cleanse us from the remains of sin; and consequently the pain of fire only is ascribed to Purgatory, because fire cleanses and consumes.

To summarize, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that while the fire is the same for both Hell and Purgatory, the fire is mostly used to clean a person of the remains of sin in Purgatory while it is to punish forever in Hell.

Why Christ’s Sacrifice Changes How We Understand Purgatory

Some of St. Thomas Aquinas’ other writings can be applied to Purgatory to support his claim that the fires of Purgatory are the same as the fires of Hell. Specifically, as was summarized in the beginning of this article, St. Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on gratitude to Jesus for His sacrifice, sins against gratitude to Jesus, and punishment for sins proportionate to the sins committed suggest that the fires of Purgatory are likely the same as the fires of Hell.

St. Thomas Aquinas (and the Catholic Church overall) teaches that Jesus’ sacrifice saved us from necessarily going to Hell; the Sacrifice also saved us from slavery of sin. The Sacrifice opened heaven for us so that we would have the opportunity to get to Heaven, even though we still have to follow the Ten Commandments, receive the Sacraments, and do the other things He says to get to Heaven.

If adequate thanks are to be rendered in Heaven, then souls must fully understand what Christ saved them from.

(Of course, there is still the possibility for a person to go to Hell after death. While it is not the main point of this article, it is worth going off subject to describe how it seems that Jesus says that many people deceive themselves into thinking they are going to Heaven but find out on Judgment Day that they are going to Hell:

“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

It is something to keep in mind, especially the apparent surprise of those “many” who said “Lord, Lord” during their lives but find out that they are going to Hell. For this article that section on the Sermon on the Mount is mentioned to emphasize that it is still possible for “many” people to go to Hell.)

One of the main points to keep in mind for this article is that Jesus saved us from a very severe thing and we should be grateful to Him for that gift. But to be completely and accurately thankful to Jesus for His Sacrifice, a person has to understand what would have been the necessary severe suffering that Jesus saved us from.

St. Thomas Aquinas similarly wrote about how to give adequate thanks to God in Heaven, a person has to know “the way by which they are saved”:

All the knowledge imparted by faith revolves around these two points, the divinity of the Trinity and the humanity of Christ. This should cause us no surprise, for the humanity of Christ is the way by which we come to the divinity. Therefore, while we are still wayfarers, we ought to know the way leading to our goal. In the heavenly fatherland adequate thanks would not be rendered to God if men had no knowledge of the way by which they are saved.

A contemporary scholar comments on that in an article on gratitude to God by writing:

We cannot be grateful if we do not know the favor we have received. Aquinas believes God saved us through the gift of God himself, who was made man, born of Mary, suffered, died, and rose from the dead for us. Thus, adequate gratitude to God, and giving thanks is part of this adequate gratitude, requires knowledge of Jesus.

For Aquinas, Jesus was and is a perfect human being as well as perfect God. If Jesus is God, this complicates gratitude to God. Unlike God the Father who (according to Aquinas) does not suffer in giving us gifts, Aquinas believes that Jesus did suffer in giving us the gift of salvation by taking on human nature, suffering on the cross, and dying on behalf of sinners. According to some accounts of gratitude, when the giver suffers in giving us a gift, we owe the giver a greater debt of gratitude than when the giver gives the gift without personal cost. If this principle is correct, the Christian owes a greater debt of gratitude to God than the kind of theist who holds that God does not suffer in giving us gifts. (Pages 9-10)

Indeed, we owe a great amount to Jesus for His suffering for us to save us from necessarily going to Hell. As for the quote from St. Thomas Aquinas, the last sentence is what needs to be emphasized for this article: “In the heavenly fatherland adequate thanks would not be rendered to God if men had no knowledge of the way by which they are saved.”

Every sin carries within it a measure of ingratitude for Christ’s sacrifice.

Without Jesus’ sacrifice of becoming human (and then suffering and dying on the Cross), every person would be condemned to Hell. St. Thomas Aquinas explains this in multiple locations. First, he wrote:

What frees the human race from perdition is necessary for the salvation of man. But the mystery of Incarnation is such; according to John 3:16: “God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” Therefore it was necessary for man’s salvation that God should become incarnate.

Additionally, St. Thomas mentions the question of “Whether it was necessary for Christ to suffer for the deliverance of the human race?” He then answers the question this way:

It is written (John 3:14): “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.”

Finally, St. Thomas Aquinas describes the same teaching of what Jesus saved us from in his commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. St. Paul wrote:

And so, from the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.  May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:9-14)

St. Thomas Aquinas’ comments on those verses are partially provided as follows:

Then when he says, giving thanks to God the Father, he gives thanks for the favors granted to all of the faithful: first for the gift of grace, and then second for the fruit of grace, at who has delivered us. […]

And from it there follows the effect of grace, i.e., our transference from darkness to light. First, he mentions this transference; and second, the way in which men are the slaves of sin before they receive grace. […]

Then when he says, in whom we have redemption through his blood, he shows the way we have been transferred. For humanity in sin was held down in two ways: first, as a slave: every one who commits sin is a slave to sin (John 8:34), and second, as deserving punishment and as turned away from God: your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear (Isa 59:2).

But these two things are taken away by Christ, because, as man, he became a sacrifice for us and redeemed us in his blood; and so Paul says, in whom we have redemption: you were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20); and from Christ, as God, we have the remission of sins, because he took away our debt of punishment.

(The “debt of punishment” he mentioned there is not the temporal punishment for sin, often requiring Purgatory, that each individual incurs when they sin.)

To support St. Thomas Aquinas’ idea that Purgatory’s fires are the same as those in Hell, what one needs to know is that without Jesus’ sacrifice, every human being would remain a slave to sin and would go to Hell. Another way to say that is “you were bought with a price.”

Can We Be Fully Grateful Without Understanding Hell?

Now, refer to the previous quote from St. Thomas Aquinas in which he wrote that “In the heavenly fatherland adequate thanks would not be rendered to God if men had no knowledge of the way by which they are saved.” For a person to have adequate thanks to God in Heaven, it is necessary to have “knowledge of the way by which they are saved.” And that implies that to have adequate thanks to God in Heaven a person must know what they are saved from.

Purgatory may be far more severe than most modern Catholics dare imagine.

The previous sentence requires emphasis: for a person to have adequate thanks to God in Heaven for Jesus’ saving them from Hell, a person must have knowledge of Hell.

But how does a person have knowledge of Hell? A person can be like the many Saints throughout history who have meditated many hours on both the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus but also on Hell. It seems that many Saints often began their prayer life without fully knowing the extent of Jesus’ Sacrifice, but they believed that It was a very serious Sacrifice and they continually thanked God for it.  Those saints obtained an understanding of Hell – what Jesus saved is from necessarily experiencing – by working hard to become virtuous in Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Some saints, like St. Teresa of Avila, actually were put in a place that was like Hell and said that if everyone experienced what she did, less people would commit sin. Hence, another way to learn about Hell would be different types of infused knowledge or spiritual experiences.

In other words, Saints made a serious effort to understand what Jesus’ Sacrifice saved them from. They also continually thanked Jesus for His Sacrifice and believed that it was a serious Sacrifice.

Many people, though, are not like the Saints. They do not spend much time, if any, thanking God for His sacrifice of providing the opportunity for sins to be forgiven through the Sacrament of Confession and for providing the grace to not sin.

Does Every Sin Reflect Ingratitude to God?

In fact, it seems that even a single act of ingratitude to Jesus for His Sacrifice can result in contempt for that Sacrifice for the remainder of a person’s life. A person might be presented with the seriousness of Jesus’ sacrifice in a place like religion class, downplay the sacrifice at that moment, and for the remainder of their life almost completely ignore the Sacrifice.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the following on ingratitude to God:

By committing a venial sin one is not ungrateful to God to the extent of incurring the guilt of perfect ingratitude: but there is something of ingratitude in a venial sin, insofar as it removes a virtuous act of obedience to God.

St. Thomas Aquinas seems to be saying that every venial sin (and by way of implication, every mortal sin) involves being ungrateful to God; the ingratitude to God (Jesus is God) includes ingratitude for His Sacrifice of saving us from automatically being condemned to the fires of Hell at the moment of death (again, it is still possible to go to Hell; Jesus sacrifice provided the possibility to go to Heaven through obeying what He says, while before His sacrifice everyone would have gone to Hell no matter what). St. Thomas Aquinas says that it seems that every sin involves not being grateful to God.

Why Aquinas Says Punishment Must Fit the Sin

Now, how does the fact that every sin includes ingratitude to God effect punishment in Purgatory? St. Thomas Aquinas mentions how punishment for sin is proportionate to the sin itself:

Punishment is proportionate to sin. Now sin comprises two things. First, there is the turning away from the immutable good, which is infinite, wherefore, in this respect, sin is infinite. Second, there is the inordinate turning to mutable good. In this respect sin is finite, both because the mutable good itself is finite, and because the movement of turning towards it is finite, since the acts of a creature cannot be infinite. Accordingly, insofar as sin consists in turning away from something, its corresponding punishment is the pain of loss, which also is infinite, because it is the loss of the infinite good, i.e., God. But insofar as sin turns inordinately to something, its corresponding punishment is the pain of sense, which is also finite.

He continues:

Duration of punishment corresponds to duration of fault, not indeed as regards the act, but on the part of the stain, for as long as this remains, the debt of punishment remains. But punishment corresponds to fault in the point of severity. And a fault which is irreparable, is such that, of itself, it lasts for ever; wherefore it incurs an everlasting punishment. But it is not infinite as regards the thing it turns to; wherefore, in this respect, it does not incur punishment of infinite quantity.

The proportionate punishment for ingratitude toward Christ’s saving sacrifice may be an encounter with the very fire He died to spare us from.

As regards to punishment for venial sins, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:

Gregory says (Dial. iv, 39), that certain slighter sins are remitted after this life. Therefore all sins are not punished eternally.

I answer that, As stated above (A3), a sin incurs a debt of eternal punishment, insofar as it causes an irreparable disorder in the order of Divine justice, through being contrary to the very principle of that order, viz., the last end. Now it is evident that in some sins there is disorder indeed, but such as not to involve contrariety in respect of the last end, but only in respect of things referable to the end, insofar as one is too much or too little intent on them without prejudicing the order to the last end: as, for instance, when a man is too fond of some temporal thing, yet would not offend God for its sake, by breaking one of His commandments. Consequently such sins do not incur everlasting, but only temporal punishment.

The “slighter sins” that “are remitted after this life” are venial sins. But, as St. Thomas wrote in a previous quote, “punishment is proportionate to sin.” That is what is most important to keep in mind for this article.

Putting It All Together: Why Purgatory May Involve Hell’s Fire

Now it is necessary to put everything together:

In the heavenly fatherland adequate thanks would not be rendered to God if men had no knowledge of the way by which they are saved.

Jesus’ sacrifice provided the possibility to have sins forgiven first through baptism and then the Sacrament of Reconciliation for sins committed after baptism. Jesus’ sacrifice saved us from necessarily going to Hell (although a non-repentant person will still go to Hell).

Every venial sin involves being ungrateful to God for His Sacrifice.

Punishment for sin is proportionate to sin.

What, then, is the proportionate punishment for every person in Purgatory if they had been ungrateful for Jesus’ saving them from automatically experiencing the fires of Hell at the moment of death? Or, what about a related question: if adequate thanks to God could not be given to God in Heaven without knowing what God saved a person from, what would a punishment be for every soul in Purgatory that does not completely know, or had contempt for, what God saved them from?

The Good News is this: no soul is beyond mercy if it turns back to Christ in true repentance.

The answer seems to be pretty clear: the proportionate punishment for ingratitude to God would be the fires of Hell. This would only be temporary (but might somehow “feel” as if it is eternal), though, due to the Sacrifice which saved us from the necessary eternal punishment.

Thus, St. Thomas Aquinas’ (and St. Augustine’s) suggestions that the fires of Purgatory are the same as the fires of Hell are quite reasonable.

Of course, if Purgatory’s suffering includes the fires of Hell as a punishment, then a person can easily conclude that suffering in Purgatory is worse suffering than anything on earth. The above information, then, supports the claims in the previous article which suggested that at the moment of death, anxiety, pain, and other suffering gets much worse for most people.

The Good News: Mercy, Confession, and Hope

There is more that one could likely conclude based on what is written in this article, but it cannot be completely elaborated here. St. Thomas Aquinas suggested not only that the fires of Purgatory are the same as the fires of Hell, but also that “Purgatory is in the same place as, or connected with, Hell.” Reasoning from the premises that every sin involves sin against gratitude for Jesus’ Sacrifice, punishment in Purgatory is proportionate to sins committed, Heaven requires perfect gratitude to Jesus, and perfect gratitude requires knowledge and habituated (or divinely infused) understanding of what we were saved from suggests that “Purgatory is in the same place as, or connected with, Hell.” (The word “place” in this article is understood to mean “spiritual place” or a condition of existence that is the same as, or connected with, Hell.)

While it would be fine to end the article at the previous discussion, it is necessary to remind people of the Good News. The Good News is that if a person is just now realizing that they have had contempt for Jesus’ Sacrifice for most of their lives, they can honestly repent in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and then try to habituate thankfulness for His Sacrifice through the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, mainly out of love for God but also so that they do not have to spend much or any time in Purgatory. One of the best ways to do this is to go to The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the One True Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross made present in time and space, and continually thank Him there in the Most Holy Eucharist.