Intermediate state (Christianity)

In some forms of Christianity, the intermediate state or interim state is a person's existence between death and the universal resurrection. In addition, there are beliefs in a particular judgment right after death and a general judgment or last judgment after the resurrection. It bears resemblance to the Barzakh in Islam.

Early Christians looked for an imminent end of the world and many of them had little interest in an interim state between death and resurrection. The Eastern Church admits of such an intermediate state, but refrained from defining it, so as not to blur the distinction between the alternative definitive fates of Heaven and Hell. The Western Church goes differently by defining the intermediate state, with evidence from as far back as the Passion of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their Companions (203) of the belief that sins can be purged by suffering in an afterlife, and that purgation can be expedited by the intercession of the living.

Those in the intermediate state have traditionally been the beneficiaries of prayers, such as requiem masses. In the East, the saved are said to rest in light while the wicked are confined in darkness; the dead can be assisted by prayer. Prayers are said to benefit those in Hades, even those who were pagans.

In the West, Augustine described prayer as useful for those in communion with the church, and implied that every soul's ultimate fate is determined at death. Such prayer came to be restricted to souls in Purgatory, which idea has "ancient roots" and is demonstrated in early Church writings.

The Roman Catholic Church offers indulgences for those in purgatory, which evolved out of the earlier practice of canonical remissions. Others, such as Lutherans and Anglicans, affirmed prayer for the dead. Nonconformist Protestants, such as Baptists, largely ceased praying for the dead. Protestants universally reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, while affirming the existence of an intermediate state, usually termed Hades. John Calvin depicted the righteous dead as resting in bliss.

The early Hebrews had no notion of resurrection of the dead and thus no intermediate state. As with neighboring groups, they understood death to be the end. Their afterlife, sheol (the pit), was a dark place from which none return. By Jesus' time, however, the Book of Daniel (Daniel 12:1–4) and a prophecy in Isaiah (26:19) had made popular the idea that the dead in sheol would be raised for a last judgment. The intertestamental literature describes in more detail what the dead experience in sheol. According to the Book of Enoch, the righteous and wicked await the resurrection in separate divisions of sheol, a teaching which may have influenced Jesus' parable of Lazarus and Dives.

In the Septuagint and New Testament the authors used the Greek term Hades for the Hebrew Sheol, but often with Jewish rather than Greek concepts in mind, so that, for example, there is no activity in Hades in Ecclesiastes. An exception to traditional Jewish views of Sheol, Hades is found in the Gospel of Luke parable of the Rich man and Lazarus which describes Hades along the lines of intertestamental Jewish understanding of a Sheol divided between the happy righteous and the miserable wicked. Later Hippolytus of Rome expanded on this parable and described activity in the Bosom of Abraham in Against Plato.

Since Augustine, Christians have believed that the souls of those who die either rest peacefully, in the case of Christians, or are afflicted, in the case of the damned, after death until the resurrection. Augustine distinguishes between the purifying fire that saves and eternal consuming fire for the unrepentant, and speaks of the pain that purgatorial fire causes as more severe than anything a man can suffer in this life. The Venerable Bede and Saint Boniface both report visions of an afterlife with a four-way division, including pleasant and punishing abodes near heaven and hell to hold souls until judgment day.