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pablope
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And at what instance will the Father call you clean?
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PRmerger
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Well, ronald, we all believe that Christ’s sacrifice forgives sins timelessly, since His sacrifice was eternal. And is being re-presented before the Throne of Heaven at every Catholic Mass, from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Not sure what your point is?
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LutheranScholar
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I can’t claim to peer beyond the veil of death. All I can do is trust the promises of God that through Christ my peace has been made and the High Priest of our confession intercedes Himself for my sake and for all of our sakes. It’s not about me. It never has been. It’s about Christ and what He did, what He does now and what He will do once we’ve passed through this mortal life. It’s not about me. If the Holy Spirit sees fit to use me for some positive purposes in the lives of those I come across, all glory is His, all credit is His. I have no righteousness of my own. It’s all about Jesus. The Holy Spirit moves through the lives of His people, sanctifying them. We’ve already been* justified*, that is, we’ve already been made right with God. Now, we are being sanctified, our hearts and lives transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. After we pass beyond, we shall be glorified, completely redeemed and utterly remade in the Image of God, so we can dwell with Him forever. Part of the sanctification process is the hearing of the Word and reception of the Sacraments. It is a glorious hope we all share!
I need to simply submit to the Will of God and if that Will involved a washroom to enter first, an antechamber to the Palace, if you wish, I would gladly sit a spell and have Jesus wash my soiled feet.
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LutheranScholar
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I have had to correct my daughter on occasion, actually. It wasn’t fun for either of us, but it was necessary to teach her something about boundaries.
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pablope
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LutheranScholar
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spedteacherita
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I think I stated in another post that I really don’t care if there’s a purgatory or not. I will be headed to be in the Eternal Light of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit! If I have to go thru a Purgatory, so be it. That doesn’t affect my belief in Christ’s atoning Sacrifice.I would suggest the following links:
usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/lutheran/hope-eternal-life.cfm
This is a Catholic Lutheran paper on purgatory (start at this paragraph):
A. Transformation Unto Glory: Purgation
As stated by para 211, Lutherans believe in some sort of purgation…just do not call it purgatory.
- If we die still deformed by sin, but will finally live before God fully transformed into what God intends for humanity, then some sort of change or transformation must occur between death and entry into eschatological glory. In this sense, the general topic of “purgation” is unavoidable. What is the nature of this transformation?
- Lutherans and Catholics have given conflicting descriptions of this transformation from the earliest years of the Reformation. The questions for this dialogue concern the nature of the divergent answers and whether they represent a church-dividing difference, i.e., a difference that is incompatible with life together in full communion. We seek here to answer these questions.
- Lutherans teach that all the justified remain sinners unto death (JDDJ, 29). Sin and the effects of sin in those who die in Christ will be removed prior to entrance into eternal glory. In effect, they teach the reality of purgation, even if not as a distinct intermediate state. The rejection by the Lutheran Reformers of the doctrine of purgatory as they knew it focused on practices and abuses perceived as bound up with this teaching. They judged that the doctrine of purgatory obscured the gospel of free grace. The Confessions explicitly express a willingness to discuss purgatory if the doctrine were separated from these practices and abuses, although at the same time expressing doubt about the biblical foundation of any such teaching (SA II, 2.14).
- Today, Lutheran and Catholic teaching integrates purgation with death, judgment, and the encounter with Christ. Recent Catholic and Lutheran understandings of purgation sound remarkably similar. While the word “purgatory” remains an ecumenically charged term, and for many Catholics and Lutherans signals a sharp division, our work in this round has shown that our churches’ understandings of how the justified enter eternal glory are closer than expected.
Thanks for sharing,
Rita
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LutheranScholar
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spedteacherita
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spedteacherita
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spedteacherita
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I appreciate the information but do you have references for this info? I’ve not heard that before so it would be cool to see where you found that. Thanks!
Do my learned fellow Lutherans know about this quote? Do we agree with this position Luther stated? I don’t know Luther’s works all that well so perhaps you can help me?
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spedteacherita
Guest
I can’t claim to peer beyond the veil of death. All I can do is trust the promises of God that through Christ my peace has been made and the High Priest of our confession intercedes Himself for my sake and for all of our sakes. It’s not about me. It never has been. It’s about Christ and what He did, what He does now and what He will do once we’ve passed through this mortal life. It’s not about me. If the Holy Spirit sees fit to use me for some positive purposes in the lives of those I come across, all glory is His, all credit is His. I have no righteousness of my own. It’s all about Jesus. The Holy Spirit moves through the lives of His people, sanctifying them. We’ve already been* justified*, that is, we’ve already been made right with God. Now, we are being sanctified, our hearts and lives transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. After we pass beyond, we shall be glorified, completely redeemed and utterly remade in the Image of God, so we can dwell with Him forever. Part of the sanctification process is the hearing of the Word and reception of the Sacraments. It is a glorious hope we all share!
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benhur
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Then how do your prayers, merits, effect my necessary and inevitable cleansing of a fixed state of being (at the time of death or of judgement) ?
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LutheranScholar
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Reuben_J
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Or maybe outside heaven gate? Jesus would have to come out from his abode as you cannot enter in, purify you until you are clean enough so as not to defile his house, and once you are ready, tell St Peter to ok you in the register book of life, and only then you are ushered in. Well, it is still a place somewhere . …
And that would be mass stipend. Unfortunately we cannot buy our way to heaven.
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benhur
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Reuben, are we not seated in heavenly places now, and have access to the Throne , per Paul writ ?
Hard to imagine the judgement seats being outside the kingdom of heaven. Again, He can face sin, and does all the time , just won’t marry it
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benhur
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Well the old Tetzel abuse was about “buying” your way out of something , not into something
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fhansen
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Nope, Gods purpose is to restore justice to His fallen universe, not ignore it. So that His will is ultimately done, His good and perfect will. God didn’t create us to sin, after all; He wants more for us than to merely leave us in sin; sin is what separates us from Him. With the New Covenant God becomes the God of man again; we commune. So that He may justify us, placing His law on our hearts and writing it in our minds. No sinners enter heaven. A state of final purification after death is no innovation; it’s the continous teaching of the ancient churches, both east and west.
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SAVINGRACE
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'Christ refers to the sinner who “will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matt. 12:32), suggesting that one can be freed after death of the consequences of one’s sins. Similarly, Paul tells us that, when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried. And what happens if a righteous man’s work fails the test? “He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:15). Now this loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to hell, since no one is saved there; and heaven can’t be meant, since there is no suffering (“fire”) there.
The verse below so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that, at the time of the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the Maccabees out of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.
“In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin” (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell. That means some people must be in a third condition, at least temporarily.
Why would anyone go to purgatory? To be cleansed, for “nothing unclean shall enter [heaven]” (Rev. 21:27). Anyone who has not been completely freed of sin and its effects is, to some extent, “unclean.” Through repentance he may have gained the grace needed to be worthy of heaven, which is to say, he has been forgiven and his soul is spiritually alive. But that’s not sufficient for gaining entrance into heaven. He needs to be cleansed completely.
It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished all of our salvation for us on the cross. But that does not settle the question of how this redemption is applied to us. Scripture reveals that it is applied to us over the course of time through, among other things, the process of sanctification through which the Christian is made holy. Sanctification involves suffering (Rom. 5:3–5), and purgatory is the final stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo before we enter heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us the purifying redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross. ’
Purgatory makes sense because there is a requirement that a soul not just be declared to be clean, but actually be clean, before a man may enter into eternal life. After all, if a guilty soul is merely “covered,” if its sinful state still exists but is officially ignored, then it is still a guilty soul. It is still unclean.
Catholic theology takes seriously the notion that “nothing unclean shall enter heaven.” From this it is inferred that a less than cleansed soul, even if “covered,” remains a dirty soul and isn’t fit for heaven. It needs to be cleansed or “purged” of its remaining imperfections. The cleansing occurs in purgatory. Indeed, the necessity of the purging is taught in other passages of Scripture, such as 2 Thessalonians 2:13, which declares that God chose us “to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit.” Sanctification is thus not an option, something that may or may not happen before one gets into heaven. It is an absolute requirement, as Hebrews 12:14 states that we must strive “for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
catholic.com
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Reuben_J
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Thanks God then, those days were long past and gone, we have got over them and living in the today. We still give for mass stipend if you want to but as for your relatives, maybe they should wake up to the reality of Catholicism today. A little visit to the local catechist would resolve that very quickly.
Reuben
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