Can you show it to me? I mean seriously, let’s cut to the chase with it. Pulling this verse out with that passage to try and glue together an argument doesn’t cut. I think at the end of the day, you would have to admit that Purgatory ultimately comes via the Magisterium not from Holy Scripture. Even Fr. Pacwa agreed that this is true.
No, no. Fr. Pacwa does NOT say that purgatory is from the Magisterium to the exclusion of scripture. I have listened to him many times and that’s not true.
What you perhaps have mistaken is that the word “purgatory” is a word that conveys a truthful theological concept, just like the word “Trinity” is a word that conveys the triuninty and same substance in nature (homoousius) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirity; that word was created in 325 AD at the council of Nicea, yet the coosubstance of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has always been true and yet was revealed in the New covenant, yet was still a theological truth without a specific name prior to the council of Nicea (a council of Catholic Bishops I might add).
Purgatory in the Bible is found a number of places like:
1 Cor 3:13-15
"If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw,
Here Paul is using an analogy in human terms, gold, silver and precious stones are those “good works” (Mt 25:34-40) which do not burn very easily and are NOT burned up on judgment day, because they are works done with God’s grace and for His glory. In other words they are truly God’s works in us. St. Augustine said when God crowns our [good] works He is simply crowning His works in us.
And Paul is using wood, straw and hay which in human terms burn up easily as do those personal works done for one’s own glory and NOT for God’s glory like those in Mt 25:41-46.
Paul goes on…
13 "the work of each will come to light, for the Day will disclose it. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire (itself) will test the quality of each one’s work.
This is analogous to Mt 25:34-46
14 If the work stands that someone built upon the foundation, that person will receive a wage. 15 But if someone’s work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire."
But what is most interesting is that Paul says that not only is this person will be "saved, so it IS a saved person, however this “saved person” also will “suffer lose”…“only as through fire”
So the question is: How can a “saved” person “suffer lose” IF they are in heaven and go to heaven immediately, yet no one suffers anything in heaven?
The answer is that not everyone is compeletly sanctified when they die, and yet God requires it because heaven and sin are incompatible (Rev 21:27).
And furthermore, the Protestant idea of imputed justification doesn’t fit the Biblical model of making us a “new creation” as Paul says in 2 Cor 5:17, for a mere covering of ones sins only give the affectations of being made intrinically a new creation without the actual effects of it happening.
A covering does NOT erradicate our sins, it merely cloaks them under the blanket of Christ, yet our sins still remain and yet we die with sin on our souls.
There is a place between death and glory that man has to go in order to complete his sanctification IF he doesn’t do so in this life, because very few people in this life die completely sanctified and yet heaven requires complete sanctification.
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