Lazarus and the Rich Man - Hell or Purgatory?

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Dan_Defender

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In this parable, Lazarus goes to Abraham’s Bosom and the Rich Man goes to… well the word 'Sheol" (Hebrew) or Hades (Greek) may be interpreted as ‘the other place’ which is not Abraham’s Bosom, as Jewish Theology did not have a developed concept of Purgatory.

It is possible that Jesus meant Hell and the details of the parable are not factual, but merely imagery to illustrate the main point: that how we live in this world has consequences in the afterlife. On the other hand, if the details are factual it is also possible that Purgatory was meant, because of two details: the Rich Man can ‘see’ Abraham, which even as a vision would not be possible from Hell; also, he expresses a concern for his brothers, which implies love, but Hell is the absence of God, therefore the absence of love.

The Rich Man’s punishment was ‘fire’ and fire has traditionally been interpreted as Hell. However, it is possible to have ‘fire’ in Purgatory. In all likelihood, Purgatory is not a single place with a single form of punishment. There must be many levels in Purgatory, some closer to Hell and some closer to Heaven.
 
Sheol and Hades were the Hebrew and the Greek name attached to the same idea, which was the place where the souls of all the dead dwelt in the afterlife. The Witch of Endor episode shows that Samuel, for all his great merit as a prophet, was condemned to spend eternity in the same gloomy underworld as everybody else. I don’t think there is any exception to that rule anywhere in the OT. With the parable of Lazarus in Luke, Jesus is departing from the earlier tradition by clearly stating that the souls of the meritorious enjoy a blissful afterlife while the souls of the damned suffer in the flames, though they are close enough to be in clear view of one another across the chasm and even to be able to carry on a conversation.

The idea of Purgatory, though, seems to be out, I think . Nobody gets a second chance. That, at least, is my understanding of the final words of the parable: “They [the living] have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them. … If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
 
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I don’t think it was Jesus’ intent to make any kind of clarity of the specifics of heaven, hell or purgatory. Doing that would have taken away from the point of the parable. This parable is being addressed directly to the Pharisees, and they had their ideas of what the other world was. It was not the intention to engage in that subject with them.
 
While that was the main point of the parable I agree, there could be more to the parable than that alone
 
It sounds like purgatory to me. Due to the proximity of the rich man to Lazarus and Abraham it seems like a transient state, not hell. Also, Jesus said that the rich man had everything in life, in other words, he didn’t suffer in this life. Lazarus, on the other hand, had nothing but suffering in this life. I take it as Lazarus did his purgatory on earth and the rich man is now doing his purgatory in the afterlife.
 
and what do you make of the Rich Man’s concern for his brothers? a soul in Hell can harbor no such feelings
 
We really don’t know what someone in Hell could “see” or not. Neither natural human eyes, nor natural light are involved.

The real problem is whether someone in Hell could still care to save his brothers. It seems to me not.

ICXC NIKA
 
If Lazarus was in heaven’s waiting room, what kind of ante room to heaven would be next door to suffering people in the flames of hell, where those in heaven’s waiting room could see and hear their suffering? That does not sound reasonable to me. I think both those places are purgatory, with Abraham’s Bosom being on the highest rung to heaven and the rich man was in one of the lower rungs on the ladder.
 
Now that’s just inaccurate. Yes, before the Resurrection of the Lord, all who died descended to Sheol, but that didn’t mean that the Jews did not believe in the Resurrection of the Dead. On the contrary, they believed in Sheol precisely because of the Resurrection of the Dead, that at the appointed time all who dwelt in Sheol would be raised from the dead and judged, and the righteous would inherit the World to Come. Isaiah spoke at length about the Resurrection of the Dead and Judgment Day. “Where the worm will not die, nor will their fire be extinguished” is a quote from Isaiah 66. Jesus’ teaching was entirely consistent with that of the Pharisees on this matter. You can read Josephus’ writings on the afterlife and find that they say essentially the same thing as the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.
 
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