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Alindawyl
Guest
If you think this, then you misunderstand what this verse means. Amandil has given a good explanation.
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
Which part of my argument? I keep thinking that you mean the part where I said that Jesus did not sin. But then the above Scripture quote backs me up: “who knew no sin”. Jesus did not sin.
Am I mis-understanding which part of my argument is not backed by Scripture?
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
I have been considering your statements.
First, I must say this: at the point in salvation history of which we speak, spiritual death was a given. From the time of the Fall of Man to the time of Christ’s Resurrection, ALL were spiritually dead. Born that way, died that way. This is the purpose of all that Christ endured: to bring us back to spiritual life.
Jesus could not have suffered spiritual death on the cross from assuming humanity because humanity was not spiritually alive at that point. Had Jesus sinned, which I still assert He did NOT, He would have simply remained spiritually dead in his humanity. It could not have been the reason He cried out from the Cross.
Second, you quoted Psalm 21. Amandil was right. If you read the entirety of Psalm 21 it is a beautiful prayer of total confidence in God, that though all looks bleak and the enemies are all around the Psalmist has faith In God’s deliverance.
[Thanks for getting me to read that, by the way! The intricacy of the interwoven themes of God’s revelation to us never cease to amaze me. "“May your hearts enjoy life forever” after His deliverance indeed! Totally profound! Then “all the ends of the earth will worship and turn to The Lord…all who sleep in the earth will bow low before God, all who have gone down into the dust (domain of the dead) will kneel in homage, the generation to come will be told of The Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.” What an amazing quote from Jesus just before descending to the dead to claim the just for his Father!]
One of the easiest sayings for understanding what Jesus accomplished on the cross is “I owed a debt I could not pay, so He paid a debt He did not owe.” (I have no idea the origin of that statement, though I myself heard it quoted on a CD by Dr. Scott Hahn) To make this point with more substance and after flipping through the Catechism a bit, I think these bits might be enlightening…
CCC 603 Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned. But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our hame from the cross: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,” so that we might be “reconciled to God by the death of his Son”
CCC 615 “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who “makes himself an offering for sin,” when “he bore the sin of many,” and who “shall make many to be accounted righteous,” for “he shall bear their iniquities.” Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.
624 “By the grace of God” Jesus tasted death “for every one.” In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only “die for our sins” but should also “taste death,” experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead. The state of the dead Christ is the mystery of the tomb and the descent into hell.
627 Christ’s death was a real death in that it put an end to his earthly human existence. But because of the union his body retained with the person of the Son, his was not a mortal corpse like others, for “divine power preserved Christ’s body from corruption.”
I believe that last point from the Catechism may be the most illuminating: He retained his divine power even in death. He could not have been cut off from Himself and still done so.
I believe those should also clear up the concern about Jesus and sin. He did not sin, He took the punishment without committing the crime.
S
SleeepWarrior
Guest
My previous post used events preceding Jesus death to make the argument that Jesus was not separated from the other persons of our Triune God. Now I will consider the events following His death to explain why He could not have been separated from His divinity.
When He died, He did not die just for all of the persons who came after Him.
Again I will use the Catechism:
632 Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.
(Not separated from God, but as a saving act of a loving God.)
633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell”–Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek–because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God, Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ The Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.
634 “The gospel was preached even to the dead.” The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfillment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.
650 The Fathers contemplate the Resurrection from the perspective of the divine person of Christ who remained united to his soul and body, even when these were separated from each other by death: “By the unity of the divine nature, which remains present in each of the two components of man, these are reunited. For as death is produced by the separation of the human components, so Resurrection is achieved by the union of the two.”
I believe this begins to get to the answer to your most important question: “What exactly did the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection entail?” It explains what it accomplished, and it demonstrates why it isn’t just true that Jesus was not cut off from God but essential that He was not: He died as God in order to act as God with power only accorded to God to redeem not just the living but the dead as well.
It has been amazing to me trying to answer your questions on this one, because I have often overlooked the importance of that rather understated part of the Creed: He descended into Hell. I suppose I have mostly focused on what is relevant to me: what He did for the lives of all of those who came after. Selfish humanity! Perhaps it is even more profound: the love He shows in the redemption of all those who had been lost before His time!
CCC 635 …He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him–He who is both their God and the son of Eve…“I am your God, who for your sake have become you son…I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.”
Which led me to further consider this…how ignorant it is to take for granted the beautiful gift of the Communion of Saints. I believe this is one article of our faith that we shrug off so lightly, when the beauty and implications it contains are so vast and glorious!
“The Church, the Mystical Body, exists on this earth, and is called the Church militant, because its members struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil. The Church suffering means the souls in Purgatory. The Church triumphant is the Church in heaven. The unity and cooperation of the members of the Church on earth, in Purgatory, in Heaven is also called the Communion of Saints.” (Taken from The Basic Catholic Catechism PART FIVE: The Apostles’ Creed IX-XII Ninth Article)
Anyway, that God chose to act in the fulness of time to redeem all of those lost from all times and for all time, that is the miracle that is our Salvation.
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
And finally, the answer to this burning question. By the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, true God and true Man, humanity was brought into the Trinity…into the glory of the presence of God. That was the miracle that grants eternal salvation to those who will to accept it.
Again I must use the Catechism. (As a priest friend of mine once told me when I got stumped by a faith challenge by a Protestant friend of mine: “You think that in the 2000 years since Christ walked this Earth your friend is the first to ask that question?? Read your Catechism. All of the questions have been asked. And answered!”)
CCC 648 Christ’s Resurrection is an object of faith in that it is a transcendent intervention of God himself in creation and history. In it the three divine persons act together as one, and manifest their own proper characteristics. the Father’s power “raised up” Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son’s humanity, including his body, into the Trinity. Jesus is conclusively revealed as “Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead.” St. Paul insists on the manifestation of God’s power through the working of the Spirit who gave life to Jesus’ dead humanity and called it to the glorious state of Lordship.
Ha! And as it turns out, that might have been a more succinct answer to all of the other questions as well! The Resurrection to which we owe our salvation was not just an act of God the Son, but it was an act of all three distinct persons in one God!
Counterpoint, please dissect anything you can and bring it back…I love exploring these mysteries…they make such ripples and patterns and weave throughout all of time, all of history, all of revelation–there is no end to the glory of God! But it sure is fun to take one thread of the weave and try to follow it throughout the tapestry and see where it leads, even if we could never grasp even the tiniest bit of it fully…
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
Jesus did descend to hell, but He did so in His full divinity, not as man being separated from God, but as God to reunite the just to Him. God visiting the God-less.Jesus’s death was only more than ours in the sense that He offered His life for all of us to liberate us from evil and give us new life. He couldn’t have done that if He had been spiritually dead. His love was - and is - indestructible, and divine as well as human. To be spiritually dead is to be in hell - a state of self-imposed isolation from God!
So I suppose Counterpoint has a point semantically speaking. To go to hell He could be said to be spiritually dead. However, the whole of it does not work if He were cut off from Divinity, for when He was in hell He did what none but God could do.
And I do feel that Jesus’ death is profoundly more than ours! By the vast gulf between what He deserves and what He received…vs our own inversely proportional lot of what we don’t deserve and what we still receive!
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tonyrey
Guest
Jesus did not go to hell:
637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.
It is absurd to believe all the prophets and saints in the Old Testament were damned!
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
CCC 633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell”–Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek–because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God, Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ The Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.
I think that we believe the exact same thing. The just, the holy souls, were not damned. For “he did not descend into he’ll to deliver the damned…, but to free the just who had gone before him.” Therefor it IS absurd to believe that all of the prophets and saints in the OT were damned!! However, before Jesus there was no reconciliation to the presence of God for man, because of the inheritance of original sin. They awaited it in the realm of the dead-in hell–though their lot was not identical.
And that is why the Resurrection is such a beautiful mystery to contemplate, for by it we see that the Resurrection was an act of our infinitely awesome Father, Creator of the Universe and Author of all life, and He loves every soul so much that He died, and even entered the land of the dead, to gather to Himself, into His love and protection and glory, every one of His lost sheep from all times and all places.
And by that act, we see the transcendent glory of each human person as God’s precious sons and daughters, a love we could never have understood had we not seen it in action, through all that was lost in Eden with the fall and through all of our sufferings and trials and struggles and crosses here on earth–to be saved and returned to what we lost and are returned to…that gives us knowledge and appreciation and an ability to not only be in love with God, but to also know how much we possess in that love.
I try to help children understand this by the argument that you can’t appreciate know what dry is if you have never known wet, or describe light if you have never seen dark. It just is, and is therefor taken for granted. Or, the one the kids really like…if you are laying on a towel on the beach in the Bahamas, the sun pounding down and sweat trickling down your forehead, and you have never left or felt a climate that reaches freezing,and someone hands you a steaming mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows, can you know its value? It is only through playing so long out in the snow that your toes are numb and your nose runs and your cheeks are red and finally you run for your warm house and open the door, and year off your frozen mittens and hat and your mother smiles, and hands you a warm mug of hot cocoa that you can know what the gift of that hot cocoa truly is.
Isn’t the same true for Adam and Eve, who had never truly known the inexpressible wonder of being able to walk in the cool of the day with God? It is only by the loss of it that mankind could KNOW what it was to have it. It is also true that, had Adam and Eve never possessed Eden that we would not know, for if you have always been wet you have no concept that there is a dry to long for. So, having first been shown the beauty and glory of a paradise of which the exquisite privilege of being fully with God, and then knowing the pain and contrast of the loss of it, we are given the most beautiful gift of all: an ability to have, know, and truly comprehend what it is that God is giving to is in His love.
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
That great love of God to desire to free each and every soul who has not rejected His offer of redemption, each precious soul by virtue of His great personal love of the details of each unique soul, is also why every human life is precious, for God searched every last corner of hell so that not one of those who willed to know love would be left.
And even more urgently important in our time and culture, is he implications of the profound dignity and self worth we all deserve not for what we have done or earned but by the price that was paid to save us from death. We are each intentionally made unique to be who we are, for the glory of God, not to conform to a social ideal of what we should be or to be well rounded, but to embrace the gifts we possess uniquely and to accept the weaknesses that we have, and to give God glory for the individual H
e created only our one self to be!
The Hadistic tale of the Rabbi Zusya (which I encountered in the book Living Your Strengths, Winseman et al.) makes this point. When he was an old man, Zusya said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’’” We are created to be who we ARE.
When you work with children, from parenting to teaching , you see that we are in a different sort of culture than what Jesus encountered in a particular way. He dealt with a society that put self above others, and those in the inner circle above the outside world. We face a culture that puts our own beliefs down and makes the beliefs of others more significant than ours. That sees much to be valued/envied in the other but little to no good in the self. Kids now believe that the virtue of humility means “I am a doormat”, and that feeling good about who you are is the sin of Pride. How twisted our culture is! For the true virtue of humility is truth, acceptance of self as strong in some things and not as strong in others. Self knowledge is humility.
I believe the New Testament Law of Love given by Jesus is a stunning example of the intricacy of Revelation, of a glimpse of the all-knowing God. For the miracle of Sacred Scripture is that every bit of it is true and profound in its meaning to the time, people and culture to which it was initially revealed, to us in our time as we read it now (true for all people in their own time and place), and in its meaning to the whole of salvation history. No human author has ever penned a work of liturature that could compare even slightly to this work of love!
And the example of which I speak is this: Love God above all things, and love your neighbor as yourself. The first command to love God is the key to overcoming our concupiscence, true for all people of all times and places. At the time of Christ, the profound message was revolutionary was that the neighbor be given equal honor and consideration to the self. For OUR time I believe the profound truth is that WE ARE COMMANDED TO LOVE OURSELVES!! It is not a two-fold command but three distinct commands! Not as the world love us or for any value we earn, but that we were created I the image and likeness of God, that we were fearfully and wonderfully made, every hair counted, and most especially the price that Love was willing to pay to free us. Only by honoring the dignity of our own self are we able to truly and fully love our neighbor.
What a trick the evil one has played on us! We are a culture that gives our pets greater treatment than our own selves, for we are so free in our self depreciation and self accusations! We acknowledge that everyone has a right to be free from unfair treatment by others, and then ask a child what they say to themselves when they make amid take or get a bad grade. I made some students write down there most common negative judgements. Then I made them try to say it to a classmate in the exact same tone they say it to themselves, but they could not! The most common answers given for why they refused was 1. It would be mean/cruel 2 It isn’t true! Even when the classmate was said to have commuted the same disappointment for which they abuse their own selves.
If we defeat ourselves, Satan does not even need to join us in battle, for we have already lost.
It reaches out from us as well. Children go home and treat parents with scorn and disrespect they would never show a teacher. And bully and torment siblings in ways they would never treat the meanest kid in their class, let alone a friend, but oh how they hurt the ones that love them! It is a perversion of the law of love, to put others above us by belittling our own worth and value, and leaving them as they are. We are to know our own value, and lift others higher still! But how high can I lift another when I believe myself insignificant and weak? It is for the instruction of mankind in our time that He did not say, “Love your neighbor more than your own self,” even though He also taught that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” It was so that we know that we must love others, and love our own selves, and therefor when we put another first, we have given them an increase. We don’t put ourselves last, so that we lag behind and they are left where they were. We hold our ground and lift them higher, so that together we might climb ever higher on that mountainous climb towards holiness.
We must obey the command of Jesus: love ourselves, know our worth! By doing so we become aware that our behavior reflects who we are and in the dignity of who we are created to be we cannot behave as a being of no or little consequence. We take ownership of our values, of our intent, of our actions, of our lives! And in so doing we become the tools of love that God commands us to be when He told us to love our neighbor!!
Whoops. Another tangent. I am prone to those!
And even more urgently important in our time and culture, is he implications of the profound dignity and self worth we all deserve not for what we have done or earned but by the price that was paid to save us from death. We are each intentionally made unique to be who we are, for the glory of God, not to conform to a social ideal of what we should be or to be well rounded, but to embrace the gifts we possess uniquely and to accept the weaknesses that we have, and to give God glory for the individual H
e created only our one self to be!
The Hadistic tale of the Rabbi Zusya (which I encountered in the book Living Your Strengths, Winseman et al.) makes this point. When he was an old man, Zusya said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’’” We are created to be who we ARE.
When you work with children, from parenting to teaching , you see that we are in a different sort of culture than what Jesus encountered in a particular way. He dealt with a society that put self above others, and those in the inner circle above the outside world. We face a culture that puts our own beliefs down and makes the beliefs of others more significant than ours. That sees much to be valued/envied in the other but little to no good in the self. Kids now believe that the virtue of humility means “I am a doormat”, and that feeling good about who you are is the sin of Pride. How twisted our culture is! For the true virtue of humility is truth, acceptance of self as strong in some things and not as strong in others. Self knowledge is humility.
I believe the New Testament Law of Love given by Jesus is a stunning example of the intricacy of Revelation, of a glimpse of the all-knowing God. For the miracle of Sacred Scripture is that every bit of it is true and profound in its meaning to the time, people and culture to which it was initially revealed, to us in our time as we read it now (true for all people in their own time and place), and in its meaning to the whole of salvation history. No human author has ever penned a work of liturature that could compare even slightly to this work of love!
And the example of which I speak is this: Love God above all things, and love your neighbor as yourself. The first command to love God is the key to overcoming our concupiscence, true for all people of all times and places. At the time of Christ, the profound message was revolutionary was that the neighbor be given equal honor and consideration to the self. For OUR time I believe the profound truth is that WE ARE COMMANDED TO LOVE OURSELVES!! It is not a two-fold command but three distinct commands! Not as the world love us or for any value we earn, but that we were created I the image and likeness of God, that we were fearfully and wonderfully made, every hair counted, and most especially the price that Love was willing to pay to free us. Only by honoring the dignity of our own self are we able to truly and fully love our neighbor.
What a trick the evil one has played on us! We are a culture that gives our pets greater treatment than our own selves, for we are so free in our self depreciation and self accusations! We acknowledge that everyone has a right to be free from unfair treatment by others, and then ask a child what they say to themselves when they make amid take or get a bad grade. I made some students write down there most common negative judgements. Then I made them try to say it to a classmate in the exact same tone they say it to themselves, but they could not! The most common answers given for why they refused was 1. It would be mean/cruel 2 It isn’t true! Even when the classmate was said to have commuted the same disappointment for which they abuse their own selves.
If we defeat ourselves, Satan does not even need to join us in battle, for we have already lost.
It reaches out from us as well. Children go home and treat parents with scorn and disrespect they would never show a teacher. And bully and torment siblings in ways they would never treat the meanest kid in their class, let alone a friend, but oh how they hurt the ones that love them! It is a perversion of the law of love, to put others above us by belittling our own worth and value, and leaving them as they are. We are to know our own value, and lift others higher still! But how high can I lift another when I believe myself insignificant and weak? It is for the instruction of mankind in our time that He did not say, “Love your neighbor more than your own self,” even though He also taught that “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” It was so that we know that we must love others, and love our own selves, and therefor when we put another first, we have given them an increase. We don’t put ourselves last, so that we lag behind and they are left where they were. We hold our ground and lift them higher, so that together we might climb ever higher on that mountainous climb towards holiness.
We must obey the command of Jesus: love ourselves, know our worth! By doing so we become aware that our behavior reflects who we are and in the dignity of who we are created to be we cannot behave as a being of no or little consequence. We take ownership of our values, of our intent, of our actions, of our lives! And in so doing we become the tools of love that God commands us to be when He told us to love our neighbor!!
Whoops. Another tangent. I am prone to those!
T
tonyrey
Guest
I
The doctrine of Purgatory is unduly neglected because it is “a realm of the dead” which solves the problem of the descent of Jesus to “Abraham’s bosom” which cannot be the abode of the damned. It is a false dilemma to limit the possibilities to Heaven or Hell.
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
It isn’t really a problem. It is Church doctrine that Jesus descended into hell.
From catholic.com/quickquestions/did-all-the-people-who-died-prior-to-jesus-go-to-hell
“By his death and Resurrection, Jesus opened heaven (CCC 1026). Prior to that timeframe all who died went to “hell”; however, the just went to a place in hell referred to as “the Bosom of Abraham,” where they would be comforted. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) seems to indicate that there were two parts of hell. Both Lazarus and the rich man died and went to hell, but Lazarus was comforted in the bosom of Abraham while the rich man was in a place of torment. A great chasm separated the two parts.”
D
davidv
Guest
According to Church teaching, which hell did he descend into?
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SleeepWarrior
Guest
From the Catechism:
CCC 633 “Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell”–Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek–because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ The Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.”
There is only one hell, and, as for the evil and the righteous there, as it says above, “their lot is not identical”.
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davidv
Guest
The hell described here:
CCC said:
Is not the same place as described in acticle 633. It would seem that Scripture uses the term hell in at least two different ways.
C
Counterpoint
Guest
“He (Christ) descended into hell” - The Apostles’ Creed
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tonyrey
Guest
NB:
ewtn.com/faith/teachings/resua1.htm
It is absurd to think Abraham and all the saints in the Old Testament were in hell through no fault of their own.
S
SleeepWarrior
Guest
I think it is possible that we are stuck on a matter of semantics. I feel in complete agreement with you.NB:
ewtn.com/faith/teachings/resua1.htm
It is absurd to think Abraham and all the saints in the Old Testament were in hell through no fault of their own.
In the Catechism 633, it says that there are two distinct regions in hell, the place for the damned, and the place for the just who are awaiting the coming of the Savior and receive some consolation. Both are in hell. The experience is profoundly different, and the two are completely separate.
The same section of the Catechism clarifies that Jesus did not descend to hell to free the damned but to free the just who had been waiting there.
I agree, it is not in keeping with our merciful God that holy persons before Christ would be given the same lot as the damned. They were not.
However, by these definitions, they were confined in hell, at the same time NOT damned, as you have rightly insisted.
It is not in keeping with many of our other beliefs to think that they went elsewhere, for instance Original Sin inherited by all as a result of the fall of mankind. Before the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross there was no other destination for mankind than hell, for the wages of sin are death, and the only way possible to be cleansed of that sin is to be born again from above by water and the spirit through Christ who saves us. No holy human life could ever earn Salvation. We are saved by Grace alone to do good works. We could not have Grace living within us until Christ, fully Divine and fully human died in perfect obedience and surrender to God’s plan for our salvation and was raised to glory in the Holy Trinity from whence He was sent forth.
That was our ticket to Heaven, and the only ticket for all people of all times. And the first thing He did was to descend to those cherished holy souls which came before to bring them home to heaven.
Tonyrey, I feel such a profound agreement with you that I feel frustrated by the apearance of disagreement. I feel that I am not expressing adequately the truth of this amazing act of love and this urgent act of relief and longing that caused Christ to gather those holy souls home before even consoling those of his friends and followers who were at that very moment hiding in terror from profound confusion at the meaning of his death on earth. Did this clarify anything? I am confused as to whether you disagree with the Catechism or with my understanding of it.
There is dialog about the terms “bosom of Abraham”, Limbo, and purgatory and whether they are the same. There is also dialog about the location of these, whether in hell, outside of Heaven but not in hell, etc. The fact is, I do not believe that the answers to these questions has been revealed to us. The word purgatory is not in Scripture, but as St. Paul discussed the need to pray for those who have gone before but still need our prayers to assist them in their affliction in order that they may attain heaven and other Scriptural references to purification that occurs after death, it was eventually given a name in order that discussion about its meaning and necessity could occur.
Whether they are one in the same has little practical significance, for before the first soul in need of further purification passed after Jesus Resurection, He had already emptied “Abraham’s bosom”. No one got to shake hands with Abraham on the way out. And whether it is indeed the same place in Hell but partitioned away from the damned, or a separate place altogether has little practical bearing, for what goes on in that place and the results thereof are identical no matter the conclusion to this particular question. And our actions in response to the knowledge of such a place effect the same in either case: our prayers as the Church Militant are the consolation of the Church Suffering, and bring them more quickly to the reward of the Church Triumphant.
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