Topic:  How did the belief of judgment beforehand become rooted in the Catholic doctrine?

Source of this posting: Moderator response

Date originally posted: November 23, 2003

Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip

Question: 

Sir,
 
Forgive me for not calling you Father but I don't even call my dad that...I was taught, and I remember seeing it in the Bible, that Father was reserved for God because He is the only Father. In any event, I just didn't want to offend your position. As far as my last question I think you did an awesome job of answering it and I can definitely see to a certain standpoint both sides. My only following question would be, why would the soul go to heaven, be judged, return to the body and be judged again? I understand the idea of final judgment but how did the belief of judgment before hand become rooted in the Catholic doctrine?
 
I appreciate your being so patient in answering my questions.
 
Yours,
Shirley

Answer: 

No problem about what you call me -- you can call me Phillip or Doctor Leach (I have a Ph.D.) or just "hey you" -- I don't get up-tight about stuff like that. 
 
Anyway, I really don't know why the soul would go to heaven, be judged, then return to the body and be judged again.  I guess I am tempted just to say that it's the way God wants it :-)
 
But the core of the problem that you and I are having is that we are trying to put "temporal labels" on a reality that is "beyond time." 
 
You see we live in a world that is bounded by time -- that is, by past, present and future.  We cannot go back to the past, no matter how much we may want to -- for instance, to take back a cruel word or something like that.  And we can't go forward into the future at all -- for example, to find out what would be the best major to equip us for what lies ahead in our lives.  Those are examples of our lives being "limited or bounded by time."  We're "stuck" in the present.  But the only way we can understand or conceptualize reality is by categorizing it as past, present, or future.  Make sense?
 
Well, anyway, God is not limited by time; God does not live in a temporally bounded world.  God is equally present right now, at this very instant, to the creation of the world, the birth of Jesus, the American Civil War, your birth, the Challenger disaster, the birth of your first grandchild, your death, the second coming of Jesus, and everything else.  That is to say, with God there is no time (Catholics believe, in fact, that time itself is one of God's creatures). 
 
Since ideas like "judgment before" is rooted in that temporally bounded world, it really can't be applied to God.  By that I mean that in God's time, so to speak, the soul going to heaven, the soul being judged, the soul returning to the body and the soul being judged "again" are all accomplished in one instant -- because there is no time with God.  But you and I are so limited in our ability to understand that we have to conceptualize those events as happening sequentially -- some happening "before" others.  But with God there is no "before" or "after."  With God everything is the ETERNAL NOW. 
 
So all of our wrangling and questions about what happens first and what happens later -- after death -- really don't amount to a whole lot.  The answer is that after we die we are in God's Presence.  Period.  Since with God there is no time, the past-present-future scenario just doesn't apply.  Since with God there is no time, what happens first and what happens next really doesn't have any meaning.  As Catholics we believe that we die, we go into the Presence of God, we are judged, and then we are in God's Presence or we are not; all of that happens, as Saint Paul says, "in the twinkling of an eye."
 
I hope that this 'explanation' helps some!
 
God bless!