How do you interpret it?

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Lorrie

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When the Bible says, “Paradise” do you interpret that as its speaking of Heaven?

I have a friend who says that paradise is purgatory (in a protestant way) and Heaven is Heaven. I don’t see how purgatory can have a paradise feel to it. His view on this makes no since to me. Its as if he’s missing the whole reason for purgatory in the first place.
 
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Lorrie:
When the Bible says, “Paradise” do you interpret that as its speaking of Heaven?

I have a friend who says that paradise is purgatory (in a protestant way) and Heaven is Heaven. I don’t see how purgatory can have a paradise feel to it. His view on this makes no sense to me. Its as if he’s missing the whole reason for purgatory in the first place.
I’d be interested in knowing your friend’s “protestant way” of understanding purgatory…“paradise” as I understand it’s use in Scripture has reference to “the bosom of Abraham” (compare Luke 23:43 with Luke 16:19-26) - a place of blessedness for those who died in God’s friendship before our Lord opened the gates of heaven for mankind…thus sort of an “Old Testament heaven”…although other passages would seem to equate “paradise” with “heaven” (2Cor 12:4 and Rev 2:7) …as far as your objection to purgatory “not having a paradise feel to it” I would counter that purgatory, while a place of suffering with varying degree of intensity depending on the purification required of an individual, does have the paradise quality of “hope” and the “real assurance of salvation”…the souls in purgatory KNOW that they are saved and thus they have a profound peace and a developing joy even in the midst of suffering which become less and less as they near perfection…

Keep the Faith
jmt
 
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Lorrie:
When the Bible says, “Paradise” do you interpret that as its speaking of Heaven?

I have a friend who says that paradise is purgatory (in a protestant way) and Heaven is Heaven. I don’t see how purgatory can have a paradise feel to it. His view on this makes no since to me. Its as if he’s missing the whole reason for purgatory in the first place.
paradeisos is used in Luke 23:43 (“Today with me you will be in paradise”), and also in the Septuagint in Genesis 2:8, for the Garden of Eden. It is, therefore, a place of bliss rather than a place of purification. Evidently, your friend has a very different idea of what purgatory is about.
 
In the early Church, baptism brought us into paradise, that is, into the Church. Christ is the Church, we are the members.

This is from memory. Also, this is based on what I have understood. I could be mistaken.
 
From the* New Advent Catholic Ecyclopedia* entry on Paradise:
The first mention of the word [in the New Testament] occurs in Luke, 23:43, where Jesus on the cross says to the penitent thief: “Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise”. According to the prevailing interpretation of Catholic theologians and commentators, paradise in this instance is used as a synonym for the heaven of the blessed to which the thief would accompany the Saviour, together with the souls of the righteous of the Old Law who were awaiting the coming of the Redeemer. In 2 Corinthians (12:4) St. Paul describing one of his ecstasies tells his readers that he was “caught up into paradise”. Here the term seems to indicate plainly the heavenly state or abode of the blessed implying possibly a glimpse of the beatific vision. The reference cannot be to any form of terrestrial paradise, especially when we consider the parallel expression in verse 2, where relating a similar experience he says he was “caught up to the third heaven”. The third and last mention of paradise in the New Testament occurs in the Apocalypse (2:7), where St. John, receiving in vision a Divine message for the “angel of the church of Ephesus”, hears these words: “To him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of my God.” In this passage the word is plainly used to designate the heavenly kingdom, though the imagery is borrowed from the description of the primeval Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis.
To see the entire article:
newadvent.org/cathen/14519a.htm
 
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