A former evangelical Christian explains the reality of Purgatory
Suppose a friend or coworker comes up to you and says:
“The Catholic Church has this elaborate doctrine of purgatory, invented in the Middle Ages. The Church even used to sell indulgences to shorten the time one would spend in purgatory by a fixed number of days. This doctrine is based on books that do not belong to the Bible. There is no place or region in the afterlife for the saved except heaven. There is no pain in the afterlife, and the very minute we die we go to heaven, as Paul says, ‘To be absent from the body is to be present with Christ,’ so praying for people in purgatory makes no sense. Worse still, it contradicts the sufficiency of Christ’s work. It is completely unbiblical. No Protestant could believe in it.”
What would you say?
Well, the first thing you should say is “Whoa! Take it easy! One argument at a time, all right?” Then consider his arguments with him one by one…
1. “The Catholic Church has this elaborate doctrine of Purgatory.”
This is quite false. As an illustration, the section on purgatory in the Catechism of the Catholic Church consists of only three paragraphs (CCC 1030-1032). In essence, there are only three points on the subject on 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 who are undergoing this purification, in response to the actions of the living. Among the things on which the Church does not insist are the ideas that purgatory is a place or that it lasts for a time, as we will see below.
2. “Invented in the Middle Ages.”
The idea that purgatory is a late invention is similarly false. In fact, it has been part of the true religion since the time of Christ. It is attested not only in 2 Maccabees, which directly testifies to the belief (see below), but in other pre-Christian Jewish books, such as The Life of Adam and Eve, which says that Adam will be freed from purgatory on the Last Day.
It was also part of the true religion in the time of Jesus, as the writings of the New Testament show. And it has been part of the true religion ever since the time of Christ, as the writings of the Fathers of the Church also show (see the article “Purgatory in the Early Church and the Church Fathers”).
Not only Catholics believe in this final purification, but so do the Eastern Orthodox (although they frequently do not use the term “purgatory” to refer to it), as do Orthodox Jews. In fact, today, when a loved one of a Jewish person dies, that person prays a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish for the eleven months following the death, for the purification of the beloved one.
Since the doctrine of purgatory was held by pre-Christian Jews, post-Christian Jews, Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox, no one thought to deny it until the Protestant Reformation, and so it is that only Protestants deny it today.
3. “The Church even used to sell Indulgences to shorten the time one would spend in Purgatory by a fixed number of days.”
Regarding this argument, first point out that it actually deals with indulgences, which is a separate topic (see my article, “Introduction to Indulgences”). If someone truly wants to hear what Catholics have to say about themselves, one must deal with one topic at a time, not several at once in a kind of “point-blank” approach to apologetics.
Second, indulgences were never sold. At a certain time, over a period of perhaps two hundred years, it was possible to give a charitable donation to a particular cause, such as a fund to build an orphanage or a church, as one of the ways in which an indulgence could be obtained. This is no different from what Protestant ministries do when they offer something in exchange for a charitable contribution or “love offering” to a worthy cause. However, because of the scandal that the Protestants produced, more than four hundred years ago (shortly after the Council of Trent) the Church prohibited charitable donation as a means of obtaining indulgences.
Third, Protestants tend to be confused about the number of “days” that used to be associated with indulgences. They have nothing to do with time in purgatory. Indulgences originally arose as a way of shortening the period of penance on earth. The number of “days” associated with indulgences was not understood as shortening the time in purgatory, but as facilitating the purification after death in a manner analogous to the reduction of the earthly penitential period by the indicated number of days.
Fourth, since some people were confused, thinking that purgatory was reduced by a given number of days by means of an indulgence, the Church abolished the number of “days” associated with indulgences, specifically to eliminate this confusion.
Fifth, the reason the “days” were never understood literally as days deducted from purgatory is that the medieval theologians, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived precisely in the period in which these “days” were associated with indulgences, were very clear about the fact that time does not work in the afterlife the same way it does here. In fact, they had a special term for it, and they contrasted three different temporal modes: the ordinary course of events that we experience here on earth, called “time”; the perpetual present that God experiences, called “eternity”; and the intermediate state, not so well understood, experienced by those in the afterlife, known as “aeviternity.”
So the Church has never said that purgatory involves the same kind of time that we experience here on earth, or even any time at all. That is why Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is no liberal theologian, writes that purgatory may involve “existential” rather than “temporal” duration (see Ratzinger’s book “Eschatology”). It may be something one experiences, but experiences in a moment, rather than something one goes through over time.
4. “This doctrine is based on books that do not belong to the Bible.”
When a Protestant says this, he has in mind 2 Maccabees 12, where Judas Maccabeus and his men pray for their fallen comrades who “had fallen asleep with godliness,” so that they might be “loosed from sins” in the afterlife, and that it was a “holy and wholesome thought” for them to do this.
Therefore 2 Maccabees supports prayer for the dead so that they may be freed from the consequences of their sins (since what they had in mind was necessarily the consequences of sin, for one does not sin in the afterlife). Since it is not pleasant to be subject to the consequences of one’s sins, we can infer some kind of pain or discomfort, and therefore the complete doctrine of purgatory—a purification (deliverance) after death, which involves some kind of pain or discomfort, and which can be assisted by the prayers of the living.
However, although 2 Maccabees 12 certainly teaches the doctrine of purgatory, the doctrine is by no means “based on” that passage. This doctrine can be supported by numerous passages in the New Testament, but more fundamentally (and this is what you should point out to Protestants), it can be deduced from the principles of Protestant theology alone.
You see, Protestants are very firm (indeed, insistent) about the fact that we continue to sin until the end of this life because of our corrupted nature. However, they are equally insistent (if you press them) about the fact that we will not sin in heaven because we will no longer have a corrupted nature. Therefore, between death and glory there must be a sanctification—a purification—of our nature.
This purification perhaps does not take place in time, but as we have seen, this is no obstacle to the doctrine of purgatory. The fact remains that between death and glory there must be a purification, and that is by definition purgatory—the final purification or, to put it in more Protestant terms, “final sanctification” or “the last stretch of sanctification.”
5. “There is no place or region in the afterlife for the saved except heaven.”
Well, perhaps this is true. The Church teaches that purgatory is the final purification, but not that it takes place in some special region of the afterlife. Just as we do not know how time works in the afterlife—which means that purgatory may not take time—neither do we know how space works in the afterlife, especially for disembodied souls—which means that purgatory might not occur in a particular place.
The final purification may take place in the immediate presence of God (insofar as the presence of God can be described in spatial terms). In fact, in his book on eschatology, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger describes purgatory as a burning and transforming encounter with Christ and his love:
“Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, a kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where one is forced to undergo punishments in a more or less arbitrary way. Rather it is the inwardly necessary process of transformation by which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God [that is, capable of full union 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 beneath the latticework of an egoism we are incapable of demolishing with our own hands. Man is the recipient of the divine mercy, yet this does not free him from the need to be transformed. The encounter with the Lord is this transformation. It is the fire that consumes our dross and transforms us to be vessels of eternal joy.”
Therefore, according to the way Ratzinger explains the doctrine, we are taken from this life into direct union with Jesus; his burning love and holiness consume all the dross and impurities of our souls and make us fit for life in the glorious and unsurpassable light of God’s presence and holiness.
6. “There is no pain in the afterlife.”
This argument is quite false. It is not true that there is no pain in the afterlife, not even for the saved. We are told that one day, in the eternal order, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.” (Apocalypse 21:4)—but note when this happens: in the eternal order, after the descent of the New Jerusalem and the ending of the present heavens and earth.
Before that time, Scripture gives us no promise that we will be free from all pain. In fact, it indicates just the opposite. Paul tells us:
“And therefore we labour, whether absent or present, to please him. For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil. Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we use persuasion to men.” (2 Corinthians 5:9-11)
Paul states that out of fear of the Lord he tries to please God, because we will all appear before God to be judged as to whether what we have done is good or evil. Therefore the prospect of appearing before the judgment seat of Christ is something fearful, even for Christians.
This is something that even Protestants acknowledge. For example, in his series Thru the Bible (on Romans 14 in this case), the Protestant preacher J. Vernon McGee remarked that he was not eager to arrive at the judgment seat of Christ, because at his judgment seat Jesus Christ was going to take J. Vernon McGee aside, which is certainly something Christ supports, telling his disciples (the Christians):
“If any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: every man’s work shall be manifest; for the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work burn, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:12-15)
This clearly applies to the saved, since Paul says so (“he himself shall be saved”), but it does not indicate that this examination of one’s life is something enjoyable, since, as Paul also says, the person’s work “burns” and “he shall suffer loss,” and although he himself shall be saved, it will be “yet so as by fire.” Needless to say, seeing the work of one’s life consumed in flames, lost when one hoped to “receive a reward,” and escaping through the flames, is not something enjoyable.
Therefore the day on which we receive our particular judgment at the end of life will not be enjoyable insofar as our works are not good. This clearly shows the reality of pain and discomfort after death but before the inauguration of the eternal order.
Now, some Protestants attempt a maneuver to get around this passage, saying that it is our works that are tested. It is true that, on the surface, in this passage Paul says that our works will be tested by fire. But this changes nothing, since we will experientially feel how our works are tested and consumed. This is why Paul says that the one whose works endure “shall receive a reward”—something he will feel—and that the one whose works are consumed will suffer their loss—again, something he will feel.
That is why Paul crowns the passage by saying that the saved person who suffers that loss will be saved only “yet so as by fire”—the image of a man escaping from a burning building, which is precisely what Paul was referring to—the local church as a building built by men, whether with fireproof materials or with materials that will be consumed (see the preceding context). Therefore the image of a man who has built his own local church incorrectly, and then sees his work—the building he has built—consumed by fire, so that he has to flee from it amid the flames to escape.
Therefore, while Paul says that our works (the building we build) will be tested in the fire, he pictures the flames touching us ourselves if our building catches fire and we are forced to flee from it. Therefore, under this metaphor in Paul, our works are tested, and we ourselves feel the consequences of this examination in the most painful way possible, since it is not enjoyable to have to escape from a burning building while your life’s work collapses around you.
7. “Paul says, ‘to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ.’”
This is virtually the mantra of certain 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:
“[6] Therefore having always confidence, knowing that, while we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord; [7] (for we walk by faith, and not by sight;) [8] but we are confident, and have a good will to be absent rather from the body, and to be present with the Lord; and therefore we labour, whether absent or present, to please him. [10] For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil. [11] Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we use persuasion to men; but to God we are manifest. And I trust also that in your consciences we are manifest.” (2 Corinthians 5:6-11)
Note that Paul is speaking of himself by means of the plural “we” in this passage, as he shows in verse 11, mentioning his evangelizing ministry, and contrasting the “we” who try to persuade men with the hope that “you” too may have the same knowledge. His words clearly have application to other people in general, but he is speaking primarily of himself.
Therefore what Paul is saying here (v. 6) is that he knows that while he is in the body he is absent from the Lord, which is certainly true and which no Catholic would deny. We are not in the immediate, unveiled, visible presence of Christ in this life. So to this verse a Catholic can simply reply, “So what? Who doesn’t know that?”
Paul then states (v. 8) that he would rather be out of the body and with the Lord. This is what the Protestant radio personalities pass off as “to be out of the body is to be with Christ.” This is not what Paul said.
First of all, he is speaking about himself, let us remember, not about people in general. There are quite a few Christians, and to be frank, most of them, who would much rather be present in the body than die and go to be with Jesus. Paul’s preference to die in order to be with Jesus rather than to live and remain in the body is by no means a universal sentiment among Christians.
Second, he is expressing a desire. He wishes for something to happen. But there is a great difference between saying that one wishes something to happen, and saying that it will infallibly happen.
Third, there is an even greater difference between saying that one wishes two things to happen and saying that when one occurs the other will occur instantly. For example, if I as an unmarried person were to say “I want to go home and have dinner,” I would not mean that the instant I arrive home I will be having dinner. Since I am not married, before I can have dinner I will have to prepare it. There is obviously a certain temporal delay between my arrival home and my dinner. The same could be said in the case of a person who says “I want to go home and watch my favorite program.” When one gets home, it does not mean that one is instantly watching one’s favorite program. In fact, hours may pass before one’s favorite program airs.
And note that in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus shows the soul of the deceased being carried by the angels to its place of rest (Luke 16:22). Obviously, under this image, a certain time of transport is described.
Fourth, neither does it follow, even if one thing automatically follows the other, that the two are identical. If B follows from A, it does not guarantee the assertion that A is B; yet this is precisely the way the Protestant radio personalities twist Paul’s language when they declare, “Paul says, ‘To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.’” They say it in such a way that it seems like a direct quotation, not a summary, and since many people never look up the verse to see what Paul really says, they never realize that it is not a direct quotation, and they are misled into thinking that Scripture says something it does not say.
That is why this (inaccurate) summary of Paul’s language has passed into the realm of myths. It is one of those mythical verses that people have heard so many times that they think the Bible says it even though it really does not (for example, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” “The lion shall lie down with the lamb,” among Pentecostals: “Speaking in tongues is the evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit,” and the king of all mythical verses: “God helps those who help themselves”). The Protestant radio personalities therefore contribute not only to society’s biblical ignorance by saying this, but to erroneous biblical assertions.
Fifth, it is especially ironic that this passage is used to disprove purgatory since it speaks (vv. 9, 10, 11) of the need to please the Lord in this life because when we are absent from the body and present with the Lord we will have to “appear before the judgment seat of Christ” to give an account of everything we have done in our life in the body, which Paul says motivates him since he is someone “imbued with the fear of the Lord.” So one may say: “Do you want to be absent from the body and instantly present with Christ? Wonderful! Good for you! But what is going to happen when you are absent from the body and present with Christ—as this passage shows—is the particular judgment, in which you will give an account of each of your deeds and your works will be tested in the fire.”
In any case, the first thing you should point out to a Protestant who resorts to “absent from the body/present with Jesus” is “That is not what Paul said. What he really said is that he ‘would rather be out of the body and present with the Lord.’ But there is a great distance between the assertion ‘I desire A and B’ and the assertion ‘Everyone who does A will instantly do B,’ and even more so ‘A is B’!”
The second thing you should point out is: “Hey! Remember: purgatory can be instantaneous. So if we were instantly in the presence of Christ after death (contrary to Christ’s illustration of being carried by angels to our destination), what of it? This makes no difference at all to the Catholic position, since time does not work the same way in the afterlife, and purgatory could simply be an instantaneous transformation ‘in the twinkling of an eye.’”
8. “Praying for those in purgatory makes no sense”.
One of the things Protestants find hard to understand—especially if they are aware that purgatory may not unfold within time—is the practice of praying for those who are being sanctified. They will ask: “If someone has died and the time for finding forgiveness has passed, how can prayer make any difference? And if the purification does not take place in time, how can you pray for it after it has already happened?”
In answer to the first question, recall what purgatory is: the final stage of sanctification. Now, sanctification can be painful or painless (usually the former), including its final stage. Therefore, just as we can pray for others in this life that they may be made holy more quickly or in a painless way, so too we can pray for those in the final stage of sanctification that they may be made holy more quickly or in a painless way.
Consider an analogy: suppose you have a friend who joins the army and is at boot camp. Now, (in theory) everyone who joins the army must be brought to a certain level of physical excellence, which is the purpose of boot camp. No matter where he started from, the aim of the training is to bring him up to that level of physical excellence.
This is what purgatory does. Purgatory is heaven’s boot camp. The purpose of purgatory is to bring you up to the level of spiritual excellence needed to experience the full force of God’s presence. No matter where you started from, there will be no sin in heaven, and you must be brought up to that level during the final sanctification, before being glorified with God in heaven.
Now, when you have a friend at boot camp—whether it is physical training here on earth or spiritual training in the hereafter—you can pray for him that the training may go easily for him, that he may be brought to the level of excellence he needs in the least painful way possible. This may or may not shorten his time at the camp (in fact, in the United States army boot camp lasts a fixed length of time), but you can still pray that it may be made easier for him as he is brought to the level he needs to reach.
As for the second question, about how we can pray for someone if his purification was instantaneous, this is no different from praying about any past event. God is outside of time and therefore knows your petition from all eternity, which means that he can apply your petition to whatever period of time it is relevant to.
That is why many Protestant ministers, thinking of someone who has just died and whose profession of faith was doubtful, will say: “O Lord, if it be your will, may he have placed his faith in your Son before dying!”
Similarly, many Protestant lay people, when they rush home in anguish because a terrible accident has happened and they are afraid that, for example, their daughter is dead, will pray: “O Lord, when I get there, may she not be dead! May she not be dead, O Lord!” Of course, either she is or she isn’t. She has already died or she hasn’t. But since God is outside of time and hears all our petitions simultaneously, it remains rational to ask him not to have allowed something to happen to her while we were away.
C. S. Lewis, the well-known Protestant author, discusses prayer for past events at some length in his writings, and he points out that the only time it is irrational to pray for a past event is when one knows that it was not God’s will to answer the prayer, because one already knows how the event turned out. That is why it would be irrational to pray that Abraham Lincoln not be assassinated, since we already know that he was, or it would be irrational to pray that the Nazis lose a particular battle in the Second World War if one already knows that they won that battle. In such cases it is irrational to pray because one already knows God’s will in the matter and knows that it was not one’s own will. But insofar as one does not know what God’s will is regarding something—whether past, present, or future—it remains rational to pray.
Therefore, if it turns out that purgatory is instantaneous at the moment of death, it remains rational to pray that this final sanctification was easier for those who experienced it, in the same way that it is rational for a Protestant minister present at a funeral to pray in his heart, “O Lord, may this man have placed his trust in your Son!”
9. “It contradicts the sufficiency of the work of Christ”.
All right. The idea here is that, since purgatory involves suffering, it must somehow contradict the sufferings of Christ and imply that they were not sufficient.
That is not so!
Remember: purgatory is simply the final stage of sanctification. Sanctification in this life involves pain, “for whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth; and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” [and] “all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy, but sorrow” (Hebrews 12:6, 11); yet no one says that this suffering contradicts the sufferings of Christ. In the same way, the suffering during the final sanctification in no way contradicts the sufferings of Christ, nor does it imply that they are insufficient.
Quite the opposite! 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 all of our sanctification—both the initial part and the final part. That is why, in the first place, it is because of Christ’s sacrifice that we receive the final sanctification! If he had not suffered, the final sanctification (and the glorification to which it leads) would not be granted to us; instead, we would go straight to hell. Therefore, purgatory does not imply that the sufferings of Christ were insufficient; rather, the very fact that we are granted the final sanctification of purgatory is because of the sufferings of Christ!
10. “It is completely unbiblical”.
What we have said so far should reveal the falsity of this charge. Purgatory is by no means an unbiblical doctrine. Rather, it is thoroughly biblical, with both implicit and explicit foundations. Implicitly, it can be derived from the biblical principles that we go on sinning until death but that there will be no sin in glory. Therefore, between death and glory there must be a purification.
Explicitly, we have not only the testimony of passages such as 2 Maccabees 12, but also the testimony of passages that describe our accountability before Christ at the particular judgment, including the especially vivid description of someone escaping through the flames in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15.
Jesus himself adds to this when he speaks in Matthew 12:32 of a sin that will not be forgiven in this life or in the one to come, implying that some sins (the venial sins of which we have not repented before our death) will be forgiven when we repent in the first instant of our life beyond the grave.
Moreover, in Matthew 5:25-26, Jesus tells us: “Be at agreement with thy adversary betimes, whilst thou art in the way with him: lest perhaps the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Amen I say to thee, thou shalt not go out from thence till thou repay the last farthing.”
In this parable God is the judge, and if we have not been reconciled with our neighbor before seeing God, God will call us to account for the wrong we did to them. This is what the Bible means when it says that God will take vengeance on our behalf, so that we need not take it ourselves, because God will defend the cause of the poor and of widows. Whenever a poor person or a widow (or anyone else) is oppressed or treated unjustly, God will call the oppressor to account for what he did—unless the oppressed person freely chooses to forgive the offender. In that case, God will not call the offender to account for the wrong he did on the human level (that is, against the human being he wronged); but unless we have obtained God’s forgiveness for the wrong we did against God, he will continue to hold us accountable for that.
That is why in our sins against others there are two dimensions—the human one, by which we sin against our neighbor in that act, and the divine one, by which we sin against God in that act. That is why theft is a sin against our neighbor from whom we steal, and a sin against God, whose law we violate. We must obtain God’s forgiveness for the divine aspect of our sin, but, as Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:25-26, we must obtain forgiveness for the human aspect of our sin from the human being against whom we sinned. If we do not, God will call us to account.
Of course, since human beings are finite beings, our sins against them can only merit a finite punishment (compared with our sins against God, who is an infinite being, so that our sins against him can merit an infinite punishment). Since this punishment is finite, it has to be temporary (for an eternal punishment is infinite, since it involves the receiving of pain over an infinite period of time). But if this punishment that we will receive when we are judged by God (according to Jesus’ parable) is temporary, then it is purgatory. That is why Jesus says, “Thou shalt not go out from thence till thou repay the last farthing,” because there will come a moment when the finite punishment due to the human and finite dimension of one’s sins comes to an end.
In any case, more than enough has been said to show the inaccuracy of the charge that purgatory is an unbiblical doctrine. In reality, it is firmly rooted in Scripture.
11. “No Protestant could believe in it”.
I’m sorry, but this too is false. There are Protestants who believe in purgatory. One who was very explicit about it was C. S. Lewis. In his Letters to Malcolm, he wrote:
“Of course I pray for the dead. The act is so spontaneous, so unavoidable, that only the most compelling theological case against it could stop me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers could survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, most of those we love best have died. What kind of relationship could I have with God if I could not speak to him of what I love most?”
“I believe in purgatory… Our souls demand purgatory, do they not? Would it not break our hearts if God were to say to us, ‘It is true, my child, that your breath is foul and that your rags are dripping with mud and slime; but here we are charitable, and no one will reproach you for such things, nor turn away from you. Enter into joy’? Would we not answer him, ‘With all respect, sir, and if there is no objection, I would rather be cleansed first’? ‘You know it may be painful.’—‘Even so, sir.’”
“I suppose the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly because of tradition; partly because most of what has truly done me good has involved it. But I do not think that suffering is the purpose of the purification. I can well believe that people not much worse or not much better than I am will suffer less or more than I do… the treatment given will be whatever is necessary, whether it hurts little or much.”
“My favorite image on this subject comes from the dentist’s chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn from me and I am ‘coming round,’ a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ That will be purgatory. The rinsing may last longer than I now imagine. Its taste may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could bear. But… it will [not] be foul or unholy.”
But beyond Protestants like Lewis, who openly admit their belief in purgatory, it can be said that Protestants in general believe in purgatory—they simply do not call it that. For every historic Protestant will admit that our continual sinning in this life does not continue in heaven. In fact, they will insist quite firmly that although our sanctification is not complete in this life, it will be completed (instantaneously, they say) as soon as this life ends. But that is what purgatory is!—the final sanctification, the purification. Therefore it is permissible to say that many Protestants believe in purgatory without realizing it.
A Positive Move
All of these reflections help us understand how to respond to the challenges a Protestant may raise against the doctrine of purgatory. However, since they are refutations, they do not by themselves amount to a positive explanation of the doctrine for Protestants. If one wishes to do that—to set out an explanation of the doctrine rather than to explain why the objections to it fail—then one should tie the foregoing reflections together and say something like this:
“Purgatory is the name Catholics give to the final purification that takes place at the end of life. Since we still sin in this life but will no longer sin once we are in glory, there must be a purification between death and glorification. This is something even Protestants concede. Purgatory, then, is the final stage of our sanctification. It is our transition into glory. Throughout the whole Christian life God is purifying our hearts, granting us greater holiness, but this sanctifying process is not complete (nor anything close to it) until the end of our life. That is why what God chose not to give us in this life he wills to give us once we die.
“The only additional point on which the Catholic Church insists regarding the final purification is that, like sanctification in this life, it may involve pain or discomfort, and that, just as when someone is being sanctified in this life, we can pray for someone who is being sanctified in purgatory. The Church does not teach that purgatory takes place in a special region of the afterlife, nor even that it takes place across time, since we have very little idea of how time works in the hereafter, and purgatory may be instantaneous from our point of view.”
You can then back this up with the biblical passages and the other material we have discussed. In general, you should use the term “sanctification” rather than “purification” or “purging,” because “sanctification” is a term Protestants understand and are comfortable with. Framing the doctrine in terms of sanctification makes it more intelligible to them and knocks down many of their key objections (for example, the idea that purgatory implies that Christ’s sufferings were insufficient).
For this reason it is helpful to speak of souls being sanctified in purgatory and to describe purgatory as the final stage of sanctification. If you do this, you will make the conversation flow much more smoothly, speaking in the language of the person you are talking with, rather than insisting that he adopt your vocabulary when he is barely familiar with (and highly skeptical of, if not outright hostile to) the idea you are expressing.
In addition, there are a couple of further points you should make in your explanation, since many Protestants are confused about them.
Purgatory Is Not an Intermediate Destination!
First, you should explain that purgatory is not an intermediate state between heaven and hell. This encourages Protestants to think of it not only as a distinct place in the afterlife (something the Church does not teach!) but, worse still, as an intermediate destination between heaven and hell. This is completely false, and you should stress very strongly to Protestants that everyone who goes to purgatory goes to heaven. In fact, the reason one goes to purgatory is so that one may be made ready for life in heaven. Purgatory, then, is heaven’s beauty parlor, the place one goes to be groomed before being ushered into the Throne Room.
For this reason, you should avoid altogether any expression such as “Purgatory is where you go when you are not bad enough for hell but not good enough for heaven.” Besides sounding legalistic, this kind of language will also lead a Protestant to think that purgatory is some sort of intermediate destination rather than a temporary phenomenon. Instead, use the language the Church uses:
“Those who die in the grace and friendship of God, yet imperfectly purified, though assured of their eternal salvation, undergo after their death a purification in order to attain the holiness necessary to enter into the joy of heaven.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030)
In this way the emphasis is placed where it belongs—on the person’s incomplete purification—rather than on saying “not good enough,” which implies (at least to Protestant ears) a legalistic way of earning heaven.
The Joys of Purgatory
To better break down Protestant barriers to understanding the doctrine, point out that the Church in no way teaches that purgatory is exclusively pain. In fact, some of the greatest saints and theologians have emphasized that, because the soul is in greater union with God than here on earth, it consequently experiences greater joys. This is why St. Catherine of Genoa wrote:
“God inspires in the soul in purgatory so ardent a movement of devoted love that it would be enough to annihilate it were it not immortal. Enlightened and set aflame by this pure charity, the more it loves God, the more it detests the least stain that displeases him, the least defect that hinders its union with him.”
She also wrote:
“Apart from the happiness of the saints in heaven, I think there is no joy comparable to that of the souls in purgatory. An unceasing communication with God makes their happiness more intense each day, and this union with God grows ever more intimate as the impediments to that union that remain in the soul are consumed. These obstacles… are, so to speak, like the rust and the remnants of sin; and the fire keeps consuming them, and so the soul gradually expands under the divine influence. Thus, as the rust diminishes and the soul lies exposed beneath the divine rays, its happiness increases. The one grows and the other diminishes until the time of tribulation comes to an end… As for the will of these souls, they can never call these pains pains, so great is their conformity to the will of God, with which their wills are united in perfect charity.”
In fact, the souls in purgatory have a great many reasons for joy: (a) freedom from actually committing sins, (b) freedom from the desire to sin, (c) greater union with God and Christ, (d) certainty of final salvation in a way not possible in this life, (e) a final and complete appreciation of how merciful God has been to them, (f) a final and complete appreciation of how much God loves them, (g) the pure and free love, at last, that we will feel for God and for others, and (h) partial rewards that may be granted in anticipation of entering into the full glory of heaven at the end of purgatory.
What is more, there is no teaching that the pains of purgatory outweigh its joys. As St. Catherine says, “they can never call these pains pains, so great is their conformity to the will of God, with which their wills are united in perfect charity.” It may well be (and, in my opinion, it is highly likely) that the pain of seeing some of our works go up in smoke is more than balanced by the joy of seeing some of them remain and of hearing inwardly, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” from the ever-loving and infinitely good Source of our redemption, our life, and our very existence.
Keep the Doctrine in Perspective
Finally, urge your Protestant brother or sister to keep the doctrine of purgatory in perspective. Protestants often feel (as I know, since I was once one of them) that Catholics place a great deal of emphasis on certain doctrines, just as anti-Catholic Protestant literature does. So, for example, when a Protestant thinks of a Catholic, he more often thinks of him as someone who believes in purgatory than as someone who believes in the Trinity, and he may mistakenly come to suppose that purgatory is a more important doctrine for a Catholic than the Trinity.
Thus, because anti-Catholic Protestant polemics focus on areas of (real or apparent) disagreement with Catholics, these areas take on greater prominence in the Protestant mind and lead it to a distorted view of how important certain doctrines really are for Catholics. And so Protestants frequently imagine that Catholicism is a religion of nothing but saints and statues and Rosary beads and works and penances and purgatory and suffering and a host of minor things.
In doing so, they are straining out gnats but swallowing camels, missing “the weightier things” of the Catholic faith and what matters most to Catholics. Catholicism is in reality a religion of God and Christ and the Trinity and redemption and forgiveness and faith and grace and joy, as is shown by the fact that if you go to Mass and simply listen to the official prayers of the Church, you hear far more about God and Christ and grace and joy than you do about saints and statues and beads and purgatory.
This should be pointed out, strongly and repeatedly, to a Protestant brother, so that he may gain a better grasp of the essence of Catholic teaching and Catholic life, rather than assuming that the discussion he hears in the Protestant treatment of the subject is representative of the emphasis Catholics themselves place on these matters.
To that end, it would be helpful to actually show him the section on purgatory in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, since it is only three paragraphs out of 750 pages that explain what the faith is about. So let us simply close by looking at the section on purgatory in the Catechism and letting the Church speak for herself:
The Final Purification, or Purgatory
1030 Those who die in the grace and friendship of God, yet imperfectly purified, though assured of their eternal salvation, undergo after their death a purification in order to attain the holiness necessary to enter into the joy of heaven.
1031 The Church calls this final purification of the elect—which is something entirely different from the punishment of the damned—Purgatory. The Church formulated the doctrine of the faith concerning Purgatory chiefly at the Councils of Florence (cf. DS 1304) and Trent (cf. DS 1820; 1580). The tradition of the Church, referring to certain texts of Scripture (for example 1 Cor 3:15; 1 Pet 1:7), speaks of a cleansing fire:
“As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the judgment, there is a purifying fire, according to what he who is the Truth affirms when he says that if anyone has spoken blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come (Mt 12:31). From this saying we can understand that certain faults can be forgiven in this age, but others in the age to come” (St. Gregory the Great, Dial. 4, 39).
1032 This teaching is also supported by the practice of prayer for the dead, of which Scripture already speaks: “For this reason [Judas Maccabeus] ordered this atoning sacrifice to be offered for the dead, that they might be freed from sin” (2 Mac 12:46). From the earliest times the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers on their behalf, in particular the Eucharistic sacrifice (cf. DS 856), so that, once purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance on behalf of the dead:
“Let us bring them aid and let us commemorate them. If Job’s children were purified by their father’s sacrifice (cf. Job 1:5), why should we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate, then, to come to the aid of those who have departed and to offer our prayers for them” (St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in 1 Cor. 41, 5).
Author: Jimmy Akin
Source: http://www.apologetica.org
Translator: Daniel Cotarelo García
