In chapter
21 ("Of the Torments and Punishments of Souls") of book 7 of his The
Divine Institutes, Lactantius (240-320) wrote the following about post-mortem
purification:
First of all, therefore, we say that the
power of God is so great, that He perceives even incorporeal things, and
manages them as He will.
For even angels fear God, because they can be
chastised by Him in some unspeakable manner; and devils dread Him, because they
are tormented and punished by Him. What wonder is it, therefore, if souls,
though they are immortal, are nevertheless capable of suffering at the hand of
God? For since they have nothing solid and tangible in themselves, they can
suffer no violence from solid and corporeal beings; but because they live in
their spirits only, they are capable of being handled by God alone, whose
energy and substance is spiritual. But, however, the sacred writings inform us
in what manner the wicked are to undergo punishment. For because they have
committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh, that
they may make atonement in their bodies; and yet it will not be that flesh with
which God clothed man, like this our earthly body, but indestructible, and
abiding for ever, that it may be able to hold out against tortures and
everlasting fire, the nature of which is different from this fire of ours,
which we use for the necessary purposes of life, and which is extinguished
unless it be sustained by the fuel of some material. But that divine fire
always lives by itself, and flourishes without any nourishment; nor has it any
smoke mixed with it, but it is pure and liquid, and fluid, after the manner of
water. For it is not urged upwards by any force, as our fire, which the taint of
the earthly body, by which it is held, and smoke intermingled, compels to leap
forth, and to fly upwards to the nature of heaven, with a tremulous movement.
The same divine fire, therefore, with one and
the same force and power, will both burn the wicked and will form them again,
and will replace as much as it shall consume of their bodies, and will supply
itself with eternal nourishment: which the poets transferred to the vulture of
Tityus. Thus, without any wasting of bodies, which regain their substance, it
will only burn and affect them with a sense of pain. But when He shall have
judged the righteous, He will also try them with fire. Then they whose sins
shall exceed either in weight or in number, shall be scorched by the fire and
burnt: but they whom full justice and maturity of virtue has imbued will not
perceive that fire; for they have something of God in themselves which repels
and rejects the violence of the flame. So great is the force of innocence, that
the flame shrinks from it without doing harm; which has received from God this
power, that it burns the wicked, and is under the command of the righteous.
Nor, however, let any one imagine that souls are immediately judged after
death. For all are detained in one and a common place of confinement, until the
arrival of the time in which the great Judge shall make an investigation of
their deserts. Then they whose piety shall have been approved of will receive
the reward of immortality; but they whose sins and crimes shall have been
brought to light will not rise again, but will be hidden in the same darkness
with the wicked, being destined to certain punishment. (ANF 7:216-17)
This is
rather consistent with what we find in any meaningful exegesis of 1 Cor 3:11-15
(see my article 1
Corinthians 3:15: A very un-Protestant Biblical Verse) and also D&C 76:104-107.
