Catholicism - Purgatory - A Rebuttal

This article is a response to the following article posted by Catholic Answers (@catholiccom) on Twitter.
What is Purgatory?
I appreciate the opportunity to respond and the kindness and patience Catholic Answers has shown me as I object to their beliefs. I intend this in kindness and love and not out of hatred, though I strongly disagree.
I will first state that I disagree with the doctrine of Purgatory. My original comment was:
Purgatory is found nowhere in the Bible. Luke 16 is pretty clear that physical death seals your eternal destination. In fact, its the reason that physical death because such a foe to living man. In Christ, though, death is just a doorway to eternity.
After reading through this article, I stand by my statement. I intend to show the following three things.
# The doctrine of Purgatory is not in the Bible and the article fails to demonstrate that it is.
# The article will appeal to extra	Biblical doctrines centuries after the Bible was revealed to man and	written down as its only source of authority for the doctrine.
# The article, when it does use	scripture to attempt to show Purgatory does not contradict	scripture, engages in question begging every time.
# The article will use some scripture completely and obviously out of context to justify its doctrine.
This will be an inline response where quotes from the article are contained in sections with my responses directly to those sections. This ensures that I am covering all things contained within the article to give it a fair and complete response.The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a “purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven,” which is experienced by those “who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” (CCC 1030). It notes that “this final purification of the elect . . . is entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (CCC 1031).
The purification is necessary because, as Scripture teaches, nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven (Rev. 21:27) and, while we may die with our mortal sins forgiven, there can still be many impurities in us, specifically venial sins and the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven.Purification from sin is absolutely necessary to enter Heaven. According to scripture, this purification happens by the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9). This is done by “obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.” (1 Peter 1:22). However, the blood of Jesus Christ is potent, able to cleanse us of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:7-9) not just some. Note what John wrote in verse 7:
“if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
The very foundation of the premise of Purgatory as defined above is that people may die cleansed of some kinds of sin but not others. Disregarding whether or not there is such a division of kinds of sins for the purposes of this discussion, the idea that the blood of Christ can continually cleanse of only some kinds of sins, but not all of them is to render the blood of Christ impotent. A person is either cleansed and in a right relationship with God or they are not. If they are in Christ, walking in the light, they are saved, washed, cleansed of all unrighteousness. If they step willfully out of the light and reject Christ, then they are no longer continually cleansed by the blood and their soul is in danger of eternal death (James 5:19-20). There is no in between state as the Catholics teach above. Thus, there is no need for Purgatory to even begin with.What Happens in Purgatory?
When we die, we undergo what is called the particular, or individual, judgment. Scripture says that “it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). We are judged instantly and receive our reward, for good or ill. We know at once what our final destiny will be. At the end of time, when Jesus returns, there will come the general judgment to which the Bible refers, for example, in Matthew 25:31-32: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” In this general judgment all our sins will be publicly revealed (Luke 12:2–5).There are some minor details with which I disagree here, but they are not within the scope of the this article. Instead, will say that I agree with the gist of the above, but want to include something left out here that is critical. When a person dies, there is a kind of judgment that is applied to them as we see Jesus teach in Luke 16. The rich man and Lazarus the begger both die and end up in two parts of Hades/Sheol. There is torments and there is paradise (called Abraham's bosom here).
Why this is important is because it is the only explicit look we have in scripture about what actually happens to our souls after we die before Judgement Day (Acts 24:15) and eternity (Heaven or Gehenna). What then is taught by Jesus here directly informs this entire question. Jesus says in verse 26 that there is an uncrossable gulf between the two parts that no one can cross. There is no passing from one side to the other. That is explicitly contradictory to the doctrine of Purgatory.Augustine said in The City of God that “temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment” (21:13). It is between the particular and general judgments, then, that the soul is purified of the remaining consequences of sin: “I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper” (Luke 12:59).Here begins their appeals to non-inspired men for the actual support for the doctrine. Then they quote Luke 12:59 out of context to somehow support what Augustine said. Luke 12 is about agreeing with someone you have something against before they take you before an earthly judge and you end up in prison. This has nothing to do with purgatory or “temporary punishments suffered after death”. It’s a totally bogus appeal to scripture here leaving them only with Augustine.
Again, to deal exhaustively with Augustine is beyond the scope of this article. However, it is sufficient to point to the work of Dr. Ali Bonner and her book The Myth of Pelagianism to demonstrate that Augustine returned to his Manichaean roots and corrupted the doctrines of the Catholic church for centuries to come. He is the worst person to cite as a source of authority for anything and has much to answer for.The Catholic Church, Purgatory, and Money
One argument anti-Catholics often use to attack purgatory is the idea that the Catholic Church owes the majority of its wealth to the doctrine of purgatory. But the numbers just don’t add up.
When a Catholic requests a memorial Mass for the dead—that is, a Mass said for the benefit of someone in purgatory—it is customary to give the parish priest a stipend, on the principles that the laborer is worth his hire (Luke 10:7) and that those who preside at the altar share the altar’s offerings (1 Cor. 9:13–14). In the United States, a stipend is commonly around five dollars; but the indigent do not have to pay anything. A few people, of course, freely offer more. This money goes to the parish priest, and priests are allowed to receive only one such stipend per day. No one gets rich on five dollars a day, and certainly not the Church, which does not receive the money anyway.
But look at what happens on a Sunday. There are often hundreds of people at Mass. In a crowded parish, there may be thousands. Many families and individuals deposit five dollars or more into the collection basket; a few give much more. A parish might have four or five or six Masses on a Sunday. The total from the Sunday collections far surpasses the paltry amount received from the memorial Masses.This section is included for thoroughness, but has no bearing on the overall point of this rebuttal and so I will not comment on it further.Is Purgatory a Catholic “Invention”?
Fundamentalists may be fond of saying the Catholic Church “invented” the doctrine of purgatory to make money, but they have difficulty saying just when. Most professional anti-Catholics—the ones who make their living attacking “Romanism”—seem to place the blame on Pope Gregory the Great, who reigned from A.D. 590 to 604.
But that hardly accounts for the request of Monica, mother of Augustine, who asked her son, in the fourth century, to remember her soul in his Masses. This would make no sense if she thought her soul would not benefit from prayers, as would be the case if she were in hell or in the full glory of heaven.So we again come to Augustine and not the scriptures. Having addressed him already, I will not belabor the point. Needless to say, Augustine is not scripture.Nor does ascribing the doctrine to Gregory explain the graffiti in the catacombs, where Christians during the persecutions of the first three centuries recorded prayers for the dead. Indeed, some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (both written during the second century), refer to the Christian practice of praying for the dead. Such prayers would have been offered only if Christians believed in purgatory, even if they did not use that name for it. (See Catholic Answers’ tract The Roots of Purgatory for quotations from these and other early Christian sources.)So in the final push to establish some form of authority for their doctrine, they appeal to more uninspired sources which they admit are "outside the New Testament". The problem with this appeal is that error abounded even in the first century. Most of what Paul wrote was written to combat error creeping into the church. In Galatians 1 Paul writes that he marvels that they had so soon left the gospel to teach a false one. John's eponymous letters were written to combat the rise of Gnosticism in the first century after the fall of the Jewish system. If the practice cannot be established from scripture, then these external sources are worse than useless to support the Catholic premise.Why No Protests?
A study of the history of doctrines indicates that Christians in the first centuries were up in arms if anyone suggested the least change in beliefs. They were extremely conservative people who tested a doctrine’s truth by asking, Was this believed by our ancestors? Was it handed on from the apostles? Surely belief in purgatory would be considered a great change, if it had not been believed from the first—so where are the records of protests?
They don’t exist. There is no hint at all, in the oldest writings available to us (or in later ones, for that matter), that “true believers” in the immediate post-apostolic years spoke of purgatory as a novel doctrine. They must have understood that the oral teaching of the apostles, what Catholics call tradition, and the Bible not only failed to contradict the doctrine, but, in fact, confirmed it.This so far amounts to nothing more than an argument from silence. A lack of argument against is not an argument for.It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the existence of purgatory tend to touch upon only briefly the history of the belief.It shouldn't be any wonder anyone objects only briefly. It's not worth addressing at length because the arguments from history by the Catholics in favor of Purgatory are essentially irrelevant if there is no scriptural basis for the doctrine. So far, the Catholic article has not presented any arguments from scripture to support the doctrine.They prefer to claim that the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell. Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now be opened to them (1 Pet. 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but neither were they experiencing the torments of hell.Two points to make here.
# Limbo is not in the Bible either, and "limbo of the fathers"	in Catholicism is pretty much just Sheol/Hades (see Luke 16 above)	which is distinct from Purgatory and so not relevant.
# 1 Peter 3:19 says that Christ preached to the spirits in prison by	the Holy Spirit. The Catholic interpretation here has a number of logical flaws that prevent it from being correct, but these are outside the scope of this rebuttal so I will not make them here. The main point is that 1 Peter 3 is not being used to teach Purgatory by their own admission and so we move on.
I cannot speak for others, but I certainly believe in 4 places of existence or conditions to use their word. The material universe in which we live, Heaven, Gehenna, and Sheol/Hades. This objection of theirs therefore is incorrect as it might pertain to me and does nothing to support their main premise of Purgatory.Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory. This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not contrary to Scripture.Neither does it show that Purgatory is real. "May or may not be the case" is speculation, not conclusion and therefore is discarded.“Purgatory Not in Scripture”
Some Fundamentalists also charge, “The word purgatory is nowhere found in Scripture.” This is true,An important point to make here is this admission that Purgatory is not explicitly stated in scripture. That then leaves them with inference alone to try and substantiate the doctrine. Proper hermeneutics and logic require that we only draw the conclusions necessary from the scriptures. We can only correctly infer what the scriptures imply. If we infer anything else, we are essentially adding to the scriptures what is not there. I will show that this and only this is what the author of the original article does with the scriptures presented below. For their inferences to be true, they must assume that Purgatory is true first, and that is called begging the question.and yet it does not disprove the existence of purgatory or the fact that belief in it has always been part of Church teaching. The words Trinity and Incarnation aren’t in Scripture either, yet those doctrines are clearly taught in it. Likewise, Scripture teaches that purgatory exists, even if it doesn’t use that word and even if 1 Peter 3:19 refers to a place other than purgatory.I have already reasoned through the points made here and will not repeat myself. Here they assert yet again that scripture teaches that Purgatory exists yet fail to provide any such scripture to substantiate the teaching. Stating something is true doesn't make it true.Christ refers to the sinner who “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matt. 12:32), suggesting that one can be freed after death of the consequences of one’s sins.At the time Christ is speaking, He has yet to die on the cross. He is therefore speaking inside the Jewish/Mosaical Age (what He refers to as "this age"). The "age to come" is the one about to begin, the Christian age. Reason being is that the sinner was rejecting the Holy Spirit by which the scriptures were inspired. If one rejects those in either age, they are lost and cannot be forgiven. This is an example of the article taking the scripture completely out of context and misusing it to attempt to justify their teaching.
There is nothing in this context that refers to "one can be freed after death of the consequences of one's sins". It isn't suggested, implied, or even remotely part of this context. Furthermore, the word "suggested" ought to be dispensed with altogether because it is a weak word used to befuddle and make the reasoning murky. We need clear cut explicit statements and implications to draw conclusions from. The Bible does not make "suggestions". This is not Pirates of the Caribbean.Similarly, Paul tells us that, when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried. And what happens if a righteous man’s work fails the test? “He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:15). Now this loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to hell, since no one is saved there; and heaven can’t be meant, since there is no suffering (“fire”) there. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory alone explains this passage.No, it doesn't. In fact, that last sentence was the one I copied and pasted as a short summary of the greater problem with this article. The Catholics struggle to understand the opposing viewpoints completely to the point that they can only see their own. This is another example of the article taking the scripture completely out of context and misusing it to attempt to justify their teaching.
Paul's text here in 1 Cor 3 is a reference to converts a person may make who suffer persecution (the fire). The building here is the church of Christ. Christ being the chief cornerstone of the foundation (vs 11; Eph. 2:20). Before this, Paul talks about planting the seed and Apollos watering so we are talking about the preaching of the gospel. The building on the foundation is adding bricks to the temple, which is the church. Gold, silver, and precious stones are those converts who will hold up and remain faithful during persecution while wood, hay, and stubble are weaker members who will fall away as the church comes under Jewish persecution in that time specifically, or any persecution in any time by principle. The reward is given to the preacher when those brothers and sisters in Christ he converts maintain their faith through the persecution. It's those brethren. They are the reward. But if the converts are burned up, the preacher still survives and does not necessarily fall because those he converted were ultimately weak.
Herein is a perfectly logical interpretation of the passage without begging the question of Purgatory as the writer of the article has done.Then, of course, there is the Bible’s approval of prayers for the dead: “In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin” (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell. This verse so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that, at the time of the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the Maccabees out of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.2 Maccabees is not the Bible. Protestants didn't "cut" the book of Maccabees from the Bible. The Jews never saw it as scripture and neither did the church. Maccabees wasn't included in any quotes of the NT that indicates it should be considered authoritative. The Catholics did not add Maccabees until Trent in 1546. We can get further into the canon debate if need be, but for this rebuttal, lets continue and see if they can sustain the premise from non-contested texts.Prayers for the dead and the consequent doctrine of purgatory have been part of the true religion since before the time of Christ. Not only can we show it was practiced by the Jews of the time of the Maccabees, but it has even been retained by Orthodox Jews today, who recite a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish for eleven months after the death of a loved one so that the loved one may be purified. It was not the Catholic Church that added the doctrine of purgatory. Rather, the Protestant churches rejected a doctrine that had always been believed by Jews and Christians.The answer is, no, they do not. Again they appeal to extra-Biblical sources for their doctrine. The rabbinical traditions taught many things out of line with the scriptures. Jesus accused the Pharisees of this constantly. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and so on. The appeals to things like the Mourner’s Kaddish have no weight because that source has no inspired authority. Appealing to Jewish traditions rather than scripture is grounds for added confusion and complication for the writer of the article and Catholic adherents, not clarity.Why Go to Purgatory?
Why would anyone go to purgatory? To be cleansed, for “nothing unclean shall enter [heaven]” (Rev. 21:27). Anyone who has not been completely freed of sin and its effects is, to some extent, “unclean.” Through repentance he may have gained the grace needed to be worthy of heaven, which is to say, he has been forgiven and his soul is spiritually alive. But that’s not sufficient for gaining entrance into heaven. He needs to be cleansed completely.Again, this assumes two things: Purgatory is real (begging the question), and that the blood of Christ is not potent enough to completely cleanse a person of their sins. They allege that one needs the help of the Catholic church to complete what the blood of Christ could not. Yet, 1 John 1:7-9 says that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin, all unrighteousness, not just some. So the reason “why” is nullified by scripture.Fundamentalists claim, as an article in Jimmy Swaggart’s magazine, The Evangelist, put it, that “Scripture clearly reveals that all the demands of divine justice on the sinner have been completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It also reveals that Christ has totally redeemed, or purchased back, that which was lost. The advocates of purgatory (and the necessity of prayer for the dead) say, in effect, that the redemption of Christ was incomplete. . . . It has all been done for us by Jesus Christ, there is nothing to be added or done by man.”
It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished all of our salvation for us on the cross. But that does not settle the question of how this redemption is applied to us. Scripture reveals that it is applied to us over the course of time through, among other things, the process of sanctification through which the Christian is made holy. Sanctification involves suffering (Rom. 5:3–5), and purgatory is the final stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo before we enter heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us the purifying redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross.Multiple unnecessary leaps and inferences here. The Bible does settle the question of how redemption is applied to us. It is applied via the blood of Christ (Eph 1:7; Col 1:14; 1 Peter 1:18-19) in water immersion (John 3:3,5; Acts 2:38; Mark 16:16; Eph. 5:26; 1 Peter 3:21; 1 John 5:6-8; Gal. 3:26-27). Furthermore, while the Catholics and I agree that OSAS is not true and we must remain faithful, this is done by walking in the light per 1 John 1:7 where again we are purged of all unrighteousness, not just some. If a person is walking in the light and stumbles, they are covered. If a person rebels against God and actively rejects Him to turn and walk in darkness again, then their soul is in danger of death unless they are converted back to Christ (James 5:19-20). This last is labeled a “mortal sin” by the Catholics and is therefore not part of their Purgatory doctrine and can be excluded from further consideration. There is no need or place for this after-death redemption that the Catholics have invented without scriptural support.Nothing Unclean or Purged
Catholic theology takes seriously the notion that “nothing unclean shall enter heaven.” From this it is inferred that a less than cleansed soul isn’t fit for heaven. It needs to be cleansed or “purged” of its remaining imperfections. Sanctification is thus not an option, something that may or may not happen before one gets into heaven. It is an absolute requirement, as Hebrews 12:14 states that we must strive “for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”Catholic theology also diminishes in word (though not in reality as they have not the power to do that) the blood of Christ. Their teaching concludes that the blood of Christ is not potent enough to remove all sin as a person is walking in the light. It is a direct contradiction to John’s teaching in 1 John 1:7-9 and thus should be discarded completely.NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
~Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827 permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
Bernadeane Carr was incorrect and thankfully I don’t need Rober Brom’s authority to publish this rebuttal.Once again, let me state that this article was not written with hate or animosity in mind at all. It was written out of love to correct an error using the Word of God as the only standard. No appeals to any external authority were made by me in terms of doctrinal premises. I have done what I set out to do:
* The doctrine of Purgatory is not in the Bible and the article fails to demonstrate that it is.
* The article appealed to extra Biblical doctrines centuries after the Bible was revealed to man and written down as its only source of authority for the doctrine.
* The article, when it did use scripture to attempt to show Purgatory does not contradict	scripture, engages in question begging every time.
* The article used some scripture completely and obviously out of context to justify its doctrine.
It is hoped that the read of this article will sit down with the Word and examine these things with regard to the standard of truth rather than the doctrines of men. I am confident that they will see the truth of the matter, that Purgatory is not a doctrine of truth.
In Truth and Love.
Category:Denominationalism
Category:Catholicism