Limbo: Waiting Around for the Coming of Christ

Unexplained Mysteries

There are a lot of core concepts of Christianity that are not in the Bible. Many of these crystallized out of centuries of learned discourse from Catholic church leaders, aided by their erudite knowledge but also aided by the fact that their flock could not read Latin, and therefore fact checking was not available.

Some of these discussions revolved around the Bible, to be sure, and the enormous import of what could be gleaned from it. Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose takes place amidst a discussion between delegates from the Pope and Franciscan monks as to whether Jesus owned his clothing: the fabulously wealthy Papal representatives said he did, and therefore all their possessions had divine precedent, but the parsimonious Franciscans begged to differ.

But some creations were pretty much entirely extra-Biblical. This is the case for Limbo, the weird halfway house between heaven and hell where souls would lurk, not for eternity, but to await the arrival of Christ and with the prospect of eventually getting into heaven.

While currently not a formal doctrine of the Catholic Church, it has been a topic of theological speculation and pastoral concern throughout the history of Christianity. After all, it is an inevitable conclusion of what we are told about life after death in the Bible.

But where did it come from, and how did it grow into the concept we see today?