Problems with the doctrine of Purgatory?

[Techno2000]

The biggest problem with Purgatory is the identification of the flesh as being the source of sinful behavior, viz. Romans 7:14-25, Romans 8:3-8, and others. In fact, in many translations, the greek word translated “sinful nature” is the greek word “σάρξ” or, sarx, which also means, and is variously translated “flesh.” If the flesh dies, then what sinful nature is yet to be purified from the soul?

The other idea of purgatory, that of needing to cleanse unforgiven veinial sin, I think we can all dismiss as unbiblical, and an insult to the sufficiency of the Cross.

Often people quote Rev. 20:27 to support the idea of Purgatory, which says:

“Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (speaking about the kingdom of Heaven)

But when read in light of 1 Cor 15:50, which reads:

“I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”

as well as the preceding description of our Resurrection Bodies, we see that the sinful flesh must die, and we must be given new spiritual bodies, which can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Taken all together, we can conclude thus:

1. Our Mortal Bodies are sinful by nature, and are the source of our sin (Romans 7:18)
2. When we are reborn in the Spirit, we are given a Spirit that wishes to please God (Romans 7:22)
3. Our Mortal Bodies must pass away(1 Cor. 15:50)
   i.e. We must die in the sin of Adam (1 Cor 15:22)
4. Jesus came to condemn sin in the Sinful Flesh (Romans 8:3b(sinful man also means “flesh” check footnotes!)
   Thus, we can conclude that when we die, our sinful nature goes with it, or as I’ve said in another purgatory forum

My Spirit wishes to please God
My Flesh makes me sin

My Spirit inherits the Kingdom of Heaven
My Flesh dies, and rots in the ground

This is also the basis behind the largely Protestant teaching that death is the final act of sanctification. I have also yet to hear a good Catholic interpretation for why we, if we are indeed redeemed and heirs to eternal life, still must die in the flesh.

This whole issue of Purgatory is all part of the RCC notion that the ideas of “Justification” and “Sanctification” are one in the same, but they are actually separate concepts, in that we are all Justified alike, but our various levels of Sanctification are different.

So everybody should go to Heaven, because when One Dies their sinful flesh turns to dust, and the only thing left is a pure Heaven bound Spirit ?

 

[jemfinch]

First, I want to remark at how curious it is that Catholics, when pressed on the issue of purgatory, always point out that nowhere is a time frame given, and it very well could be instantaneous on death, but will never just go ahead and give up the word “Purgatory” and just say we are sanctified in death. They give up Purgatory in concept, if not in words.

If you think that duration of time or existence as a place is necessary to the doctrine of purgatory, you still don’t understand it.

Eastern Christians (including Eastern Catholics in full union with the Pope and in full agreement as to the Catholic faith) have always understood purgatory as happening “in the twinkling of an eye.” When we say, “Purgatory does not necessarily have to have duration or location,” we’re not saying anything new: we’re explaining that either view is permissible and reasonable.

What is unreasonable, and indeed, heretical is to say that we are not purified before entering heaven. It doesn’t matter how they think it happens, the Catholic faith is simply that it must happen before entrance into heaven and the beatific vision.

Jeremy

 

[MariaG]

First, I want to remark at how curious it is that Catholics, when pressed on the issue of purgatory, always point out that nowhere is a time frame given, and it very well could be instantaneous on death, but will never just go ahead and give up the word “Purgatory” and just say we are sanctified in death. They give up Purgatory in concept, if not in words.

Someone else remarked on this also, but again you still do not understand purgatory if you think that we “give up” anything.

Did you actually read the original post? Did you actually read what purgatory is defined as in the Catholic Church?

Or are you so comfortable with what you think you know about purgatory you must insist on believing we are giving up things when speaking of purgatory?

Why don’t you try actually reading what the church teaches about purgatory and come back with specific objections to the teaching instead of bringing up objections to things we don’t actually teach?

Why should we give up the word purgatory. Purgatory as defined by the Catholic Church is the final sanctification.

Why is it that Protestants who are confronted with what purgatory actually is defined as, can’t just say, oh, I misunderstood, and as no “time” is spent in a place called purgatory, but as long as purgatory is defined as a process, I actually agree?

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Hi Afterburned, :tiphat:

So, no, I don’t think there is sin that can separate you from God, or cause you to lose your status as “justified”

Paul seems to think otherwise, and is in fact expresses

“fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Cor 9:27)And then a few lines later Paul says again to emphasize that point:

“Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.”(1 Cor 10:12)

Although the Catholic Church through its history has never made quite clear what constitutes “mortal sin,”.

Can you provide some support for that thesis? Do you have scholarship that corroborates your opinion?

Afterburned6387:

On Mortal Sins, even the Catechism isn’t real clear on what specific actions constitute Mortal sin

Can you show us where the Catechism is unclear?

Afterburned6387:

during the Inquisition, monks justified torture because they believed that it was “Purgatory on Earth,” and hence would merely shorten the time their soul would spend in Purgatory Proper.

Again, can your provide some historical scholarship for this assertion?

Afterburned6387:

it doesn’t occur even as church tradition until Gregory the Great in 300 AD

That would be quite a feat, as Gregory the great was born around 540 and died in 604.

Although the ridiculous Boettner List, itself full of innacuracies, does have an entry “593 AD The Doctrine of Purgatory popularized from the Apocrypha by Gregory the Great”. . . perhaps you confused this with another item on the list which says “300 AD Prayers for the dead”.

In any event, can you back up your statement regarding purgatory and church tradition? I hope Boettner isn’t you only source!? She doesn’t really qualify as a legitimate historian.

Afterburned6387:

My view of sins is thus

I understand that you are sharing *your *views and opinions. . . but please give us something more than opinion and unsupported assertions.

God bless you!
VC

 

[MariaG]

…Although the Catholic Church through its history has never made quite clear what constitutes "mortal sin…

Another case of not actually reading what the Catholic Church teaches.

Unless of course you are saying the 10 commandments are not real clear?

1857 For a *sin *to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."131

1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother."132 The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.
1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God’s law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart133 do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

 

[Philthy]

Well, I’ve seen little in the way of valid responses to my original post, but what I will say is this:

Ive seen little in the way of a valid response to my refutation of your original post: No valid response to the fact that flesh cannot sin and no valid response to the fact that the final purification is part of the sufficiency of Christs Cross. Perhaps people are waiting for you to address these posts before they entertain more of your personal interpretations.
afterburner:
If the Cross was insufficient to cover the penal punishment of sin (eternal death),

The Cross was not insufficient - how many times will we need to say this? The part of the application of the Cross is the final purification. Perhaps the reason you are not seeing valid responses is because you are not reading them?
afterburner:

then how would one even get to Purgatory with unforgiven venial sin?

Because although “all wrongdoing is sin, not all sin is deadly.”
afterburner:

In addition, Eph. 2:8-9 reads “For it is by Grace that you have been saved, and this is not of yourselves, but is a gift from God,not by works, so that no one can boast.” I understand that Phil 2:12 states that we should “work out our salvation in fear and trembling,” but the two must be shown to be compatible. Isn’t the only way to do this for God to first, Declare one righteous(totally free gift, no action required), and then conform one to the image of his son through a process, and deeds?

Your conclusion necessitates that once God declares you righteous that there is nothing you can do during this life to separate yourself from Him through sin and become unrighteous. I reject such a notion, the vast majority of Christians throughout the history of Christianity have rejected such a notion and most Christians currently reject said notion.
afterburner:

Salvation must be seen as a process with discrete steps.

Not only that, but it must be seen as something that we are initially outside of but which we are brought into and which we can remain in or be expelled from (through sin).
afterburner:

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
Romans 8:29-30

I’m not sure who those he foreknew are, or what that even means - do you? Please tell me where you get your understanding of the term “foreknew” and how you get your understanding of who “those whom he foreknew” refers to.
afterburner:

Besides, how could one ever atone for sin but by the blood of Christ?

Again, the final purification was accomplished by the blood of Christ - it is applied, for example, each time someone “comes to faith” in Christ, or is “baptized” or confesses a sin and asks forgiveness. That one past event is applied in a variety of ways
one of which is during the final purification (Puragatory)
afterburner:

Remember, Any good deed you do will only be doing what God requires, you don’t get “extra credit” to cover times you failed to do what he required.

Oh we get extra credit but it is not from simply doing something, it is from being united to the Cross of Christ through it.

"

 

[MarcoPolo]

The other idea of purgatory, that of needing to cleanse unforgiven veinial sin, I think we can all dismiss as unbiblical, and an insult to the sufficiency of the Cross.

I was wondering if you would answer 2 questions.

#1. Must we repent of our sins in order to attain salvation?

#2. How/when is a sin-prone mortal transformed into a non-sin-prone eternal being? How does that happen? (If you want to not repeat what others have tried, here’s that thread)

 

[Orionthehunter]

That is an awefully sunny description of Purgatory, but as I understand Catholic Teaching on it, it is a Hell with greater ferocity than even the Hell unbelievers go to, a place where we are cleansed by both fire and pain.

Afterburned, you don’t understand it very well. However, this is not a reflection on you. There is something in the “genes” of many Catholic writers (especially the Doctors of the Church) which causes them to write with words that have great imagery. It takes great time and effort to accurately discern the meaning of the imagery. For those who don’t read this type of writing often, mistaken impressions can be formed.

The presentation of the word fire is as much related to figurative and literal understanding that fire is used to separate the good from the bad as in smelting (removing the gold from the other metels). Purgatory is the separation of the evil from ourself. At the time of the writing of Scripture (when there was little knowledge of chemical cleansing (ie antibiotics), fire was the imagery used to describe a complete purification. Post #20 by fellowchristian reference some Scripture (new and old testament) which uses this imagery.

Zooey is quite correct in describing Purgatory as the cleansing in preparation for the Eternal Banquet. And, using this analogy, we Catholics don’t fear the cleansing but in a way look forward to it. We can’t imagine going to see the Beautific Vision without being cleansed of our inequity just as we wouldn’t imagine going to the White House without being clean.

With regard to the pain, to use a new visual, imagine being in a waiting room where you are forced to examine and make reparation for all the things you have done wrong because of your selfishness. In the next room, all are enjoying the perfect joy and happiness that is gained when we are in the presence of the I AM. Can you imagine anything more painful?

I can. Those in Hell know they are eternally denied the Beautific Vision. No wonder they will be gnashing their teeth as they lament their earthly conduct and its consequences for all eternity.

All those in Purgatory know they will in the future enjoy eternity with God. Thus, Purgatory is infinitely preferable to Hell and your caricature of Purgatory being of “greater ferocity” than Hell is wholly contrary to Catholic Teaching.

 

[avflf]

Just two questions:

1. Did the repenting thief on the cross go straight to heaven or did he have to go to Purgatory first?
2. Does Jesus sacrifice on the cross redeem us from **all **sins?

 

[mgrfin]

Did I understand Afterburned correctly:

“There is no Resurrection of the Body”???

How un-Christian is that?

mgrfin

 

[Afterburned6387]

I was wondering if you would answer 2 questions.

#1. Must we repent of our sins in order to attain salvation?

No, we repent because we are saved, and sin becomes abhorrent to us

#2. How/when is a sin-prone mortal transformed into a non-sin-prone eternal being? How does that happen? (If you want to not repeat what others have tried, here’s that thread)

Easy, the sin-prone flesh dies, because inherited sin, and the sinful nature are intrinsically linked to the flesh.

This is why you get a new resurrection body

 

[Afterburned6387]

Just two questions:

1. Did the repenting thief on the cross go straight to heaven or did he have to go to Purgatory first?

No, he went to the “souls in prison” per Luke 16. Remember the order, Jesus, then the “firstfruits,” then us. And no, it was not purgatory, otherwise he wouldn’t have told the theif on the cross next to him “today you will be with me in paradise”

He went to a paradise where God wasn’t…not quite purgatory…

"Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father” John 20:17

1. Does Jesus sacrifice on the cross redeem us from **all **sins?

Absolutely. Nowhere do we see any indication otherwise.

 

[MarcoPolo]

No, we repent because we are saved, and sin becomes abhorrent to us

You said “no” to the question of do we have to repent to be saved? But in Luke 13:3, Jesus said, “I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

There is so much about the necessity of repentance, I’m a little confused as to how you could have possibly come to your conclusion.
Matthew 21:31, Matthew 11:20, Acts 2:38, etc…etc…

Easy, the sin-prone flesh dies, because inherited sin, and the sinful nature are intrinsically linked to the flesh.

This is why you get a new resurrection body

But not all sins are of the flesh. Pride, jealousy, hate…etc. Satan was pure spirit and he still fell. So anyway, you then know that God must transform you somehow after death in order to make you non-sin-prone. Catholics call that Purgatory.

 

[mgrfin]

The way I always understood Luther and his theology of Justification by faith (fide sola), is that there is nothing we can do to be saved outside of faith. That is why degrees of sin doesn’t seem to matter to them.
I also understand some biographies of Luther say there he called himself a sinner and there was nothing wrong with that. Just sin and enjoy yourself.
All this penance, repenance, grief for our sins were ‘good works’ which had no value to him or to God. Sin and enjoy it. Purgatory did not exist to him; our faith wiped the slate clean.

That theology doesn’t seem rational to me. It flies in the face of
of God and his mercy.

Maybe the Lutherans today don’t profess such an effront to God, but ‘good works’ (to them) still are not on the level that “faith” is.

Maybe some experts in Lutheran theology could help me out on this.

mgrfin

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Maybe Luther was just a manic depressive and getting rid of repentance and not worrying about being perfect mde him feel more comfortable.

Peope have been following the comfortable route straight to hell ever since Jesus spoke of the narrow way that leads to life eternal.

 

[Techno2000]

No, we repent because we are saved, and sin becomes abhorrent to us

Easy, the sin-prone flesh dies, because inherited sin, and the sinful nature are intrinsically linked to the flesh.

This is why you get a new resurrection body

Demons didn’t have flesh, and have no flesh now ,how did they get Evil, without Flesh?

 

[Catholic_Dude]

all

sins?

The merits of Christ’s Passion and Death made the forgiveness of all sins possible, however it is important to recognize the distinction between Protestants and Catholics here:
Here is an example I came up with of how Catholics see the atonement and how Protestants see it:
Lets say a group of kids crash the family car, the Father is upset about this and needs to spank the kids…but the mother steps in…

-Protestants would say the mother would have to receive the equivalent beating that the children deserved and thus the Father would be satisfied.

-Catholics on the other hand reject that notion because the Father could never act in such a way towards His wife. Rather, the wife stepped in and spent all day in a hot-sweaty kitchen to prepare the Father a nice multi-course home cooked meal. The Father was so pleased at this act that He in turn decided not to discipline the children, only requiring a simple apology.
It is important to note how each side sees the atonement.

 

[mgrfin]

The merits of Christ’s Passion and Death made the forgiveness of all sins possible, however it is important to recognize the distinction between Protestants and Catholics here:
Here is an example I came up with of how Catholics see the atonement and how Protestants see it:
Lets say a group of kids crash the family car, the Father is upset about this and needs to spank the kids…but the mother steps in…

-Protestants would say the mother would have to receive the equivalent beating that the children deserved and thus the Father would be satisfied.

-Catholics on the other hand reject that notion because the Father could never act in such a way towards His wife. Rather, the wife stepped in and spent all day in a hot-sweaty kitchen to prepare the Father a nice multi-course home cooked meal. The Father was so pleased at this act that He in turn decided not to discipline the children, only requiring a simple apology.
It is important to note how each side sees the atonement.

Hey Dude,

The way I understand it (and believe), the human will is the cause of the loss of grace by mortal sin, yet the human will cannot, of its own power, repair the disaster and restore the relationship with God lost by sin.
The first movement of repentance comes not from the sinner, but from God. This is the orthodox and catholic teaching, “defidedefinita”, by the Council of Trent:
“If anyone says that without the predisposing inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and without his help, man can believe, hope, love or be repentant as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be bestowed upon him, let him be anathema.” Trent, Session VI, can 3.
This should quiet the Lutherans that they didn’t come up with “Repentance”, and God’s prevenient grace. There were 33 canons during this Session at Trent which dealth with many of the errors of the “Reformers” concerning justification and grace.
mgrfin

 

[Catholic_Dude]

Hey Dude,

The way I understand it (and believe), the human will is the cause of the loss of grace by mortal sin, yet the human will cannot, of its own power, repair the disaster and restore the relationship with God lost by sin.
The first movement of repentance comes not from the sinner, but from God. This is the orthodox and catholic teaching, “defidedefinita”, by the Council of Trent:
“If anyone says that without the predisposing inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and without his help, man can believe, hope, love or be repentant as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be bestowed upon him, let him be anathema.” Trent, Session VI, can 3.
This should quiet the Lutherans that they didn’t come up with “Repentance”, and God’s prevenient grace. There were 33 canons during this Session at Trent which dealth with many of the errors of the “Reformers” concerning justification and grace.
mgrfin

I agree with what you have said.

 

[Mt_28_19_20]

Well, I’ve seen little in the way of valid responses to my original post, but what I will say is this:

Guardian1> God made Satan…'nuff said

To All> When I said “The other idea of purgatory, that of needing to cleanse unforgiven veinial sin, I think we can all dismiss as unbiblical, and an insult to the sufficiency of the Cross.”

I could understand you saying you see little in the way of responses with which you agree, however to assume there have been little in the way of valid responses is to assume your view is the only valid view.

Just because you disagree with or do not understand the concept of purgatory, does not necessarily make it dismissed as unbiblical or an infult to the sufficiency of the Cross.

From the originial post:
“1030 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.
1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned…”

 Please tell me were you where you come up with "that of needing to cleanse **unforgiven** veinial sin".
Where does it say that the sins are not forgiven? Imperfectly purified does not imply unforgiven. When God forgives a sin, and the temptation occurs again, or we submit to temptation again, were we forgiven and purified, or forgiven and imperfectly purified?
Do you think God is going to purify those who He has not forgiven? It states "this final purification of the elect", it does not say "this final purification of the unforgiven".

Michael