Is purgatory biblical teaching?

Question

Actually, the Bible teaches very little about the afterlife. Once one has been condemned to eternal hell there is no second chance for salvation. Purgatory is entirely different than Hell. Those in purgatory are already assured of heaven and passed judgment but they must go through a purification process to rid them of unrepentant sin. This is mentioned in the following verse:

(Mal 3:2 DRB) And who shall be able to think of the day of his coming? and who shall stand to see him? for he is like a refining fire, and like thc fuller's herb:

Purgatory is only a temporary place where sanctification is completed. The Church teaches that there are only two eternal destinies and that is heaven and hell. Here are the Scripture verses relating to purgatory……….

(1Co 3:15 DRB) If any mans work burn, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.

(1Pe 1:7 DRB) That the trial of your faith (much more precious than gold which is tried by the fire) may be found unto praise and glory and honour at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

The Scriptures teach that we must be perfect and without sin to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is from this teaching that the Church with the guidance of Scripture developed the doctrine of purgatory.

I think that we can agree that at death, on our own merits that we are not perfect…

(1Jo 1:8 DRB) If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

The Scriptures further teach that in heaven all will be perfect……..

(Mat 5:48 DRB) Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.

(Rev 21:27 DRB) There shall not enter into it any thing defiled or that worketh abomination or maketh a lie: but they that are written in the book of life of the Lamb.

Are you starting to see the necessity of purgatory? Scripture also says for us to pray for those who are dead.

(2Ma 12:46 DRB) It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

The bible also teaches us of the sins which can be forgiven after death and which ones cannot…………..

(Mat 12:31 DRB) Therefore I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven.

(Mat 12:32 DRB) And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world, nor in the world to come.

Finally the ultimate proof in purgatory is that the Church which the bible says is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth” has always taught and defined the doctrine of purgatory as dogma.

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

Issa,

You are incorrect, purgatory is still taught by the Church. You are speaking of limbo which was theological specualation and never taught as dogma.

Cowboy_Christian,

Your opinion comes from the Protestant misunderstanding of purgatory. At least one protestant minister, John Wesley, spoke of perfectionism in this life, possible but rare. He is one of the few to proclaim that one can be sanctified in this life and he left the Moravian Church over this issue after a rebuke by Count Zinzendorf for this teaching.

People in purgatory are already justified by receiving the supernatural eternal life into our souls through Baptism making us a part of the Body of Christ. Those in purgatory have accepted Christ by faith and have not rejected Him by unrepentant mortal sin. It is a place where one is purified by fire (Mal 3:2). Imagine the joy of being in purgatory and knowing that you are there because you have passed judgment and are assured of being in the presence of God in heaven. Purgatory is not an eternal destination, there are only two, heaven or hell.

We should not think of purgatory as some kind of legal punishment for past sins as it would be under the old law. Those in purgatory are already new creatures changed by Christ’s grace, they are the adopted children and part of God’s family in purgatory one receives final discipline and cleansing preparing one for the perfection of heaven. Catholics believe that sanctification is a process and is not completed when one comes to belief. So purgatory is not a suggestion that Christ’s atonement is insufficient but that we have not yet completed our sanctification through the grace of Christ.

Steve Amato,

I am sorry that you cannot understand Scriptures as Christ's Church understands them. but then it is the Church that wrote them and have studied them for two thousand years with the authority of the Holy spirit. You would not be expected to have the same veracity in understanding as His Church. i see you even took upon yourself to decide personally which books belong in the Bible and which do not. I can see no way that you could have this authority as the Bible records that this authority is only given to His Church. That being said, we appreciate you giving us your doctrine of men as it reminds us that the Church has not completed its work to bring all into faith and into His Church which He prayed we would all be one.

Answer 1

"Absent from the body present to the Lord"indicates consciousness after death and that we are not in "soul sleep"(absolutely dead like an animal until the resurrection of the saved and justified based on the condition of God's Will to raise the elect),but it does not say that immediately after death we experience the full and unobstructed Beatific Vision of full union with God since we can only be capable of experiencing the total and unveiled presence of God if we are totally converted without any unrepented sin,no matter how small, or attachment to sin,its effects and residue. Nothing unclean can enter Heaven (Rev21:27), which is primarily a state of being totally purged in unalloyed sanctification and perfected union with God.

While there is a sort of "placeness" in Heaven with the resurrected body of Christ and with the resurrected Mystical Body of Christ of all the sanctified, there is no such in after-death Purgatory, which is an impermanent preparatory state for disembodied souls who do not have space/time experience that embodied mortals living on a planet going around a sun do. There are no planet-spinning and sun- and -moon-regulated days,years,etc or "here and there" in Purgatory as there are on earth.

The ideal is the full purgation,conversion and yielding to Grace in this life that the saints attain before death,but since God is just (and justifying those who cooperate with Grace, which is His free gift of favor and His self-communication and sharing of His Uncreated Energies),merciful and infinitely wise yet few apparently die in such a sainly state. Therefore, Purgatory as a post-death state is logically,spiritually and morally necessary for most of the saved.

The popular imagery of Purgatory(refining flames,"time spent',etc) is just that.

I find the reality of post-death transitional Purgatory to be biblical,traditional,logical,consistent,merciful and welcome.

Many have views of the teaching that are not consistent with the dogma of the Final Purification of Purgatory of the Blessed Saved Souls. Check out 1030-1033 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,everybody.

Anyone who wants to know what the Catholic Church actually teaches should own,read and use a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Answer 2

All Christians agree that we won’t be sinning in heaven. Sin and final glorification are utterly incompatible. Therefore, between the sinfulness of this life and the glories of heaven, we must be made pure. Between death and glory there is a purification.



The fact remains that between death and glory must come purification, and that is purgatory by definition -- the final purification or, to put it in more Protestant terms, "the final sanctification" or "the last rush of sanctification."


The fact is that the suffering we experience in sanctification in this life is something we receive because of Christ's sacrifice for us. His sufferings paid the price for us to be sanctified, and his sufferings paid the price for the whole of our sanctification -- both the initial and final parts. Thus it is because of Christ's sacrifice that we receive the final sanctification in the first place! If he had not suffered, we would not be given the final sanctification (or the glorification to which it leads), but would go straight to hell. Thus purgatory does not imply Christ's sufferings were insufficient; rather it is because of Christ's sufferings that we are given the final sanctification of purgatory in the first place.

Purgatory is in no way an unbiblical doctrine. Rather, it is completely biblical on both implicit and explicit grounds. Implicitly, it can be derived from the biblical principles that we still sin till death but that there will be no sin in glory. Thus between death and glorification must come purification.

Explicitly, we not only have the witness of passages such as 2 Maccabees 12, but also the witness of passages describing our accounting before Christ in the particular judgment, including the especially vivid depiction of one escaping through the flames in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15.


All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

Answer 3

"man is appointed once to die, then comes judgment" - that statement in no way contradicts the idea of purgatory. <<"Today, you will be with me in paradise" Jesus said this to a thief on the cross. >> The full phrase is "I say to you today you will be with me in paradise". But where does the comma go? Most bibles insert it before the today, making it look like the thief will be with Jesus that very same day. But there's two big problems with this. For one - ancient Greek did not have punctuation. The comma is an addition to scripture! Second - reading on, you discover that it was not until three days later that Jesus went up to heaven. How is it possible that the thief is in heaven and with Jesus(who is NOT in heaven) at the same time? Quite simply - it's not. A more accurate rendering of the phrase is "I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise". This assures the thief of salvation, but does not contradict other parts of the bible. <> Jesus didn't "save" us from sin. He made us able to be saved where we were unable before. Before Christ came, the gates of heaven were locked tight and no one went there unless directly assumed (2 people from the OT being the only ones to receive that honor). Jesus, through his death and resurrection, when to hell to retrieve the righteous and carried them up to heaven with him, where he unlocked the gates of heaven(probably not literal gates), thus allowing us salvation. This is basic stuff and it's really quite plainly stated in scripture. If Jesus' death washed away all sin in the sense that you are thinking, then, since he died for everyone, no one has sin on them - not even the unbelievers, as he died for them too. So everyone goes to heaven. Except that makes a contradictory statement. So the only conclusion is that the "washing away of sin" means something a tad different than you thought. As for purgatory being referenced in the bible - Mt 5:48, 5:26, 12:32, 12:36, Heb 12:14, Jam 3:2, Rev 21:27, 1 Jn 5:16-17, Jam 1:14-15, 2 Sam 12:13-14, 2 Macc 12:44-46, 1 Cor 3:15, 15:29-30 1 Pet 3:18-20, 4:6, 2 Tim 1:16-18 The 2 Maccabees verse is the strongest evidence, since it comes right out and says it, but I'm betting you are of a denomination that removed it from your bible, so it's not authoritative to you.

Answer 4

Purgatory is a Catholic fabrication misreading certain verse in the Bible. For example 1Pet 1:7 is referring to suffering in this life. 1Cor 3:15 is referring to burning the pages of our life which are sinful, not burning the people themselves. 2Maccabees is not actually in the Bible. The other verse you give mention nothing that even can be construed as purgatory.

Secondly if Purgatory is viewed as a place where sin is paid for, then Christ didn't have to die for sin. For then even people in hell would eventually pay for their own sins through temperol suffering.

Or if Purgatory is viewed as a place where Christians become sinless, then the process of achieving eternal sinlessness is by being tortured. That is neither God's economy nor does it work. For then what is to prevent allegedly perfected Christians from sinning in heaven?

Both of these concepts reveal the extremely shallow view that Catholics have towards God's judicial nature and the nature of God's salvation provided through Christ. They completely ignore the covental promises of God such as " For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." Heb 8:12

Such Catholics reject the grace of God which is through faith in Christ and opt for the Judas solution that reconciliation is achieved through one's personal suffering.

Answer 5

The Bible tells us that whatsoever the Church defines as binding upon earth is likewise bound in heaven; that the Holy Spirit guides the Church Christ founded into all truth; and that he who listens to the Church listens to Christ. Purgatory is defined as binding teaching by Christ's Church. It is therefore bound in heaven. You either believe what the Bible tells us or you don't.

Answer 6

Fr. Joseph, I agree completely.

the section on purgatory in the Catechism of the Catholic Church is only three paragraphs long (CCC 1030-1032). In essence, there are only three points on the matter which the Catholic Church insists: (1) that there is a purification after death, (2) that this purification involves some kind of pain or discomfort, and (3) that God assists those in this purification in response to the actions of the living. Among the things the Church does not insist on are the ideas that purgatory is a place or that it takes time.

Not only Catholics believe in this final purification, but the Eastern Orthodox do as well (though they often do not use the term "purgatory" for it), as do Orthodox Jews. In fact, to this day, when a Jewish person's loved one dies, he prays a prayer known as the Mourner's Qaddish for eleven months after the death for the loved one's purification.

Because the doctrine of purgatory was held by pre-Christian Jews, post-Christian Jews, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox, nobody thought of denying it until the Protestant Reformation, and thus only Protestants deny it today.

while 2 Maccabees 12 certainly teaches the doctrine of purgatory, the doctrine is in no way "based on" that passage. The doctrine can also be supported from numerous passages in the New Testament, but more fundamentally, it can be derived from the principles of Protestant theology alone.

Protestants are very firm (in fact, insistent) about the fact that we continue sinning until the end of this life because of our corrupt nature. However, they are equally firm (if you press them) about the fact that we will not be sinning in heaven because we will no longer have a corrupt nature. Thus between death and glory there must be a sanctification -- a purification -- of our natures.

This purification may take no time,but this no barrier to the doctrine of purgatory. The fact remains that between death and glory must come purification, and that is purgatory by definition -- the final purification or, to put it in more Protestant terms, "the final sanctification" or "the last rush of sanctification."

The final purification may take place in the immediate presence of God (to the extent that God's presence may be described in spatial terms). In fact, in his book on eschatology, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger describes purgatory as a fiery, transforming encounter with Christ and his love:



"Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where one is forced to undergo punishments in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather it is the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God [i.e., capable of full unity with Christ and God] and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints. Simply to look at people with any degree of realism at all is to grasp the necessity of such a process. It does not replace grace by works, but allows the former to achieve its full victory precisely as grace. What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in most of us, that basic option is buried under a great deal of wood, hay and straw. Only with difficulty can it peer out from behind the latticework of an egoism we are powerless to pull down with our own hands. Man is the recipient of the divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord is this transformation. It is the fire that burns away our dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy."

Thus according to Ratzinger's way of explaining the doctrine, as we are drawn out of this life and into direct union with Jesus, his fiery love and holiness burns away all the dross and impurities in our souls and makes us fit for life in the glorious, overwhelming light of God's presence and holiness.

Paul says, 'To be absent from the body is to be present with Christ.'"

This is virtually the mantra of some Protestant radio personalities. However, it is totally and completely false. Paul did not say, "To be absent from the body is to be present with Christ." What he actually said was this:

"6 So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body. 11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men; but what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience" (2 Corinthians 5:6-11).

Answer 7

Purgatory is not a Biblical concept it is one dreamed up by the Catholic Church. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is derived primarily from one book of the Apocrypha which the Roman Catholic Church did not officially canonize until the Council of Trent (1546 AD). This was in part because the Apocrypha contained material which supported certain Catholic doctrines, such as purgatory, praying for the dead, and the treasury of merit, so the Catholic Bible includes these books to support the heretical teachings.The Vulgate which became the official Latin version of the Scriptures in the Western Church until the Reformation, was made by (or under the direction of) Jerome in consultation with Jewish teachers, and drew heavily on Jewish tradition. Although Jerome at first excluded the apocryphal books, as he called them, on the grounds that they did not appear in the Hebrew canon, he was later persuaded to include them. It was only from the thirteenth century onwards that, perhaps rather ironically, Jerome's translation became known as the Vulgate, deriving its name from the Latin word vulgare meaning "to make common", something it signally failed to do, since by that time Latin was the language only of the educated classes.
At the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church decided to continue to include most of the Apocrypha in its Bibles. However, because of their rather uncertain pedigree, many of the Reformers thought the books were not truly Scripture in the same way as the Old and New Testaments. Others, including Luther and The Church of England, took a middle course. So for example, Article 6 of the Church of England's 39 Articles states that the books may be read for instruction of manners (that is, to determine Christian conduct) but not used to establish any doctrine.
Although the Apocrypha was included in the Authorised Version of 1611, largely because of its familiarity, it was relegated to a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, and in those versions which include it, this has been its almost invariable position in Protestant Bibles ever since. In Roman Catholic Bibles the books are normally retained in the main body of the Old Testament, where they are referred to as the Deuterocanonical (= second canon [or secondary]) books. But neither evangelical believers nor Jews consider these writings are being inspired of God. The Apocrypha was written after the close of the Old Testament canon.
As for it being a Biblical teaching, no, it is not. But the problem comes from Catholic theology itself. In their theology the cross is not sufficient to deal with our sins. For this reason all people must go through a period of purification (purging) in purgatory. Of course this is totally against what the gospel actually teaches. But since the Catholic Church centuries ago deviated from true Christianity this is not a problem for them
The Bible teaches that the blood of God's Son cleanses us from all sin. It also teaches that the sacrifice of Christ was for all our sins for all time. Finally, the apostle taught that when we leave our body, we are instantly brought into the presence of the Lord. The teaching of a purgatory is far removed from any semblance to true Biblical doctrine.Tertullian spoke of it only after he had joined the sect of the Montanists (a heretical cult of the 2nd century), and he confesses that it is not through the Holy Scriptures, to believe in Purgatory one must discard the teachings of the Bible about the sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ, and accept instead the Lie of Satan that man must add to the Work of Christ. If that is the case then Jesus Death was really not needed at all.

Answer 8

either that, or everyone who does a deathbed conversion has the right idea.

one could also point out that Moses wasn't allowed to enter the promised land because of his sins, even though he was forgiven of them.




lost.eu/21618

Answer 9

Yes it is very biblical, but protestants removed most of the books that explain purgatory

Answer 10

Those are all fine and good but the bible also says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

None of the scriptures you quoted in any way say that you go to a spiritual waiting room to be cleansed of your sins.

Sorry, Catholics are wrong on this one.

I guess we will see when death grips us.

Blessings in Jesus Name