Whatever popular culture may think, the state of mind of serious believers on the status of Heaven and Hell and Purgatory is far from clear, as Greg Garrett rightly suggests (“An afterlife for our times”, 7 March). Time and space are ways in which the human mind has conventionally and effectively presented the physical world to itself. Our relationship to God cannot be seen in this way, because the “mind” of God would not see it in this way. As a more powerful incentive to lead a good life, the Church should perhaps stress the idea that we are already in timeless eternity and already in placeless Heaven, Hell or Purgatory, depending on the quality of our life measured in relation to the will of God. Our relationship with God is affective, not transactional. We make