Truth Unites - Purgatory: A Protestant Perspective

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Roman Catholic apologists often appeal to church history to support  Catholic teaching concerning purgatory. Many Protestants are less  familiar with church history on this question, and tend to focus on  making biblical arguments. In this video I offer an overview of a  Protestant perspective on purgatory, putting special focus on the  development of this doctrine throughout church history. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Sometimes Catholic apologists claim that everyone believed in purgatory for all 2,000 years of church history or almost everybody. You know, they'll claim this is pretty universal throughout the church fathers. It goes back to the beginning of church history and you see it everywhere. And a lot of times Protestants aren't engaging on a question like this. So many times Protestants just don't know how to respond to that. Sometimes Protestants can be swayed by that and think, gosh, if everybody believed in this, who am I to go in the other direction? Well, I've poured an enormous amount of energy into researching this. I'm really excited about this video to share it with you all.

Probably more excited about this video than any other video I've done thus far. And I'm going to be sharing what I've discovered. I'm not aware that this is already out there in the discussion. So I have lots of passages that I hope could kind of fill a gap in terms of people's understanding of this issue. And I just hope this will help people. It's going to be a longer video. But if you stick with me to the end, here's what you'll get out of it. By the end of it, you'll have an overview of how the church's view of what happens to a Christian, when that Christian dies,

how the church's view of that has developed and changed over 2,000 years and how incredibly complicated and diverse the church's thought about this is. So you'll be positioned to respond to those claims when people say, everyone believed in purgatory. You'll be able to interact with that. three quick caveats before I dive right in. Number one is I'm going to be speaking about a Protestant perspective. I do recognize I don't speak on behalf of all Protestants. There have been Protestants historically, as well as today, who have believed in some conception of purgatory. And then among Protestants who reject purgatory, which is by far the majority, not everyone would put it exactly the same. So I'm not speaking for everyone. I'm just going to be trying to explain and

give an overview of kind of the mainstream Protestant concerns and arguments. So I recognize this isn't representative of every Protestant, but it's kind of the mainstream Protestant position. Second of all, this is going to be a long video. I don't know how long, maybe an hour or so. So, you know, watch this. You can watch it in installments. I'll put timestamps in so that you can see where I'm going. But even as long as it is, it won't be comprehensive. I'm going to put a lot more attention on church history. At the end, I'll cover the biblical teaching about purgatory, just because I think we need to touch on that. But that's going to be very brief. It will not be comprehensive. So if you're expecting me to cover all of the relevant biblical passages,

you'll be disappointed in advance. So just understand that's not the purpose of this video. The reason is a lot of people are already dealing with the scriptural data with respect to purgatory. There's other great Protestants out there addressing that. I see a lot less on church history, though. And so that's why I'm going to be focusing there and putting more energy there. Third caveat is I just want to define what purgatory is. It's going to come through that I have very serious concerns about purgatory theologically and then also at a pastoral level for people. So that's going to come out in this video, especially at the end. But I want to rigorously try to be fair and accurate in how I describe purgatory so that a Catholic viewer of my

channel will, even if they disagree, hopefully feel like I didn't take any cheap shots. You know, I was dealing with the data fairly and honestly and so forth. I'll try to do that as best as I can. So in that spirit, let me ward off a couple of caricatures that Protestants often have of purgatory right here at the front end and we can just define what it is so that we know what we're talking about because a lot of Protestants, just like the caricatures go in both directions, a lot of Protestants don't really have a good conception of what purgatory is. So the catechism of the Catholic Church defines purgatory as a purification so as to achieve

the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. and this is experienced for those who die in God's grace and friendship, but are still imperfectly purified. And it uses the language of cleansing fire to describe this. So, you know, we'll get into that a lot more, but already we can just ward off some of the most common misunderstandings. Pergatory is not hell, first of all. It's not like you're in hell first and then you go to heaven or something like that. It's a completely different kind of punishment than hell. Second of all, Purgatory is not a second chance at salvation. Okay.

The people who go to purgatory are already saved. Third of all, purgatory is not necessarily a place. Some people have thought of it like that. Dante has sort of depicted it like that, but that's not necessary to think of it like that. Recent popes have clarified it's more of a condition of existence. So we just want to be aware of that and be careful not to think of it as just like that, just like a geographical location or something like that. And fourth, the fire of purgatory, that's consistent language, pergatorial fire,

this is not necessarily literal fire. So that it has been understood like that at times, but it's not necessary to see it like that. Most people probably wouldn't see it as literal fire today. So with that, let me encourage Protestants to kind of enter into this with an open mind, not to sort of dismiss this idea too quickly as though it's such a crazy idea, But I do want us to work through the evidence and see if there are good reasons to support it, and specifically with the view to this claim of the idea that it's sort of universal or nearly universal throughout church history. So let's dive in.

We're going to talk – there'll be three sort of sections to this video. First, I just want to explain what the Protestant concern about purgatory is in historical context. Second, I want to walk through purgatory in church history. That'll be the bulk of the video. Finally, we'll look at purgatory in scripture and examine this. that. So first, we have to see what the Protestant concern about purgatory is in historical context, just to kind of realize what we're talking about here. This is what surprised me in my research. If you start off studying purgatory and you're just looking at it as a systematic topic,

you're not looking at church history. You're not seeing, you know, in the 16th century and a little bit after what Protestants were actually responding to on the ground, then you tend to think of this as simply a matter of kind of the metaphysics of the afterlife, right? And there's actually so much more going on with the issue of purgatory than just that. So there you're just thinking, okay, you know, it's either it's either heaven and hell or it's heaven, hell, and purgatory. And you think of it as one or the other, and that's important, but it kind of stays isolated to that. Or you're thinking there's either the church triumphant and the church militant, or there's the church triumphant, the church militant, and the church suffering, threefold division.

but there's so much more to this. Pergatory, it's like if you start pulling on a little thread and then you keep pulling and pulling and all this other stuff comes with it. That's what I've realized about purgatory. It's connected to so many other issues. And historically, the primary concerns for Protestants about purgatory were not just the metaphysics of the afterlife. They were practical and satirological, which means having to do with salvation, and even financial concerns about how purgatory was functioning in the late medieval period. Because purgatory was one piece, an integral piece of this larger vision of what is salvation, what does worship look like? What are we supposed to do in this world as followers of Jesus?

So let me just explain that, okay? Because if we don't see this in context, we're like the referee who sees one player hitting another, but he didn't see the first player who hit him. You know how this can happen in like a football game or something? Somebody hits somebody. They retaliate, but the ref only sees the retaliation. So we got to see the medieval period before we see the reformers and what they're responding to. So what was going on in the medieval period? Well, in his examination of the Council of Trent, Martin Kempnitz opened his treatment on

purgatory by referencing ghost stories and how common these ghost stories were about people coming back from purgatory and talking about how, you know, this, you know, one minute in purgatory is worse than a lifetime of suffering here. There were these fierce fears of how horrifying, how terrible purgatory was. And he talks about other fables as having, quote, emptied the moneybags of the whole world. Now, why would he say that? Kemnitz goes on to argue that purgatory had become central to the whole Roman Catholic medieval system. He says, the foremost principles of papistical doctrine. If you ever want to sound really old-fashioned, there's a great word to use, papistical. The foremost principles of papistical doctrine, such as

concerning merits, satisfactions, perfections, and one's own righteousness before God. Likewise, almost the whole worship in their churches, such as vigils, masses for the dead, anniversaries, offerings of the dead, pilgrimages, baths of souls, indulgences, works of supererogation, fraternities, memorials, funeral processions, intercessions, holy water, dedications of cemeteries, and similar ways of snatching money rests so squarely on purgatory as their basis that if this is destroyed, all these things will at the same time be cast down from their foundation, end quote. So you get a little bit of a sense already, just from that quote, of the on-the-ground realities that were concerning Protestants.

And without going into all the weeds here, we can sum it up by saying there's a lot of financial manipulation of the laity. And I think any honest historian would admit this, I'll come back in a moment to distinguish this historical reality from official Catholic teaching. So if you're worried about that, just hang in one second. But let me just explain this. So both in terms of money and also in terms of service, the, there was this common practice of manipulation through, because you can understand, if you think

that the prayers and other sacrificial activity that the church does now can influence, can either reduce or speed along the suffering and torment of those in purgatory, that's profoundly motivating. One of the examples Keminence gives, and this is not an extreme example, I deliberately chose a kind of middle-of-the-road example. from one medieval text it talks about a certain girl who was sentenced to 700 years in purgatory but was instead freed after a mere 15 days

through the merits of participation in the brotherhood of the Rosary of Mary. And then this girl gets out and the claim is that she is a mission from the remaining souls in purgatory to encourage greater participation in the brotherhood for the sake of their release. Again, that's not the,

the worst kind of abuse. That's not the worst thing that we could talk about, but that's the kind of thing you had happening. And you can understand if that girl was your daughter, or if that girl was even your neighbor to reduce the torment, fiery torment from, you know, reduce it by 699 years and 12 months and two weeks. That's a pretty powerful motivation. And there's an enormous amount of that going on. Now, let me try to be as fair as I possibly can by saying, these historical practices are not the same as official Catholic teaching after Trent, particularly. We have to distinguish street-level practice from official teaching, because I feel deeply burdened at how over and over this happens with Protestants. People hear, they look at the street-level practice of a megachurch or whatever,

and they see that, and they think, that's Protestantism, and that's unfair, and I'm frequently pushing back against that, so I want to be clear to do that here. The Council of Trent did condemn vain curiosities, superstitions, filthy lucre, and scandals with respect to purgatory. So the Catholic Church recognized some of these abuses and condemned them. At the same time, it's not wrong to talk about the history, right? We need to know what's the context in which the disputes about purgatory arose. And the Protestant concern would be, while Trent condemned some of the worst abuses, the prohibitions were not sufficient.

They didn't go far enough. Some Protestants would say just because they're too vague, whereas the affirmations of Trent are often very specific. But the most important point is this. The Council of Trent still affirms a vision of purgatory that touches on the essence of what salvation is and what we're supposed to do here on earth as the church. What does it mean to get saved?

and how do you follow Jesus on this earth? Pergatory is interwoven with those things. This topic is as practical and as important as it can get. So, for example, Trent approves of, quote, the intercessions of the living faithful, namely the sacrifices of masses, prayers, alms, and other works of piety, which are customarily done for other departed faithful

according to the institutions of the church. And then in the catechism, there's an affirmation of alms giving, indulgences and works of penance to help those in purgatory. And you can see that in the Council of Florence earlier on and many other places as well. So the point we have to see is this. Purgatory functions in this larger system that includes indulgences and penances and so forth. And we have to appreciate that larger context. I'm not trying to criticize that yet. I'm just trying to help us get an accurate picture of what we're talking about and what the Protestant concerns were

in historical context. Because today, people will often try to make purgatory sound reasonable by just putting it like this. Hey, look, you're not going to be perfect probably when you die. You have to get made perfect before you go into heaven. And that process of getting made perfect is going to hurt. And people think, well, that sounds kind of reasonable, right? But that really isn't accurate because purgatory in Roman Catholic theology has so much more going on with it. First of all, the sufferings of purgatory are not just for cleansing from sin. They are for paying for sin. So now this is understood, and again, trying to be very accurate and fair and careful. This is understood not as eternal punishment, but as temporal punishment. So the claim is Christ's death was sufficient for our

sins to pay for sins, but it delivers us from eternal punishment, but we still have temporal punishments, potentially, that we have to endure in this life and in the next. Now, whether you accept that distinction or not between temporal punishment and eternal punishment, the point is the suffering of purgatory is not merely cleansing and medicinal. The suffering of purgatory is punitive and expiatory. Punitive means it delivers punishment, and expiatory means it affects atonement, or it extinguishes guilt. Here's how it's put at Vatican 2. Quote, the truth has been divinely revealed that sins are followed by punishments. God's holiness and justice inflict them. Sins must be expiated. This may be done

on this earth through the sorrows, miseries, and trials of this life, and above all through death. Otherwise, the expiation must be made in the next life through fire and torments or purifying punishments. So you can see there, even in the very language, it's called purifying punishments. And you can also see this in how Roman Catholic theologians during the counter-Reformation defended purgatory. The whole discussion is just how the sufferings of purgatory are expiatory and punitive, not whether they are. Okay. Then there's also a whole theology of merit and satisfaction that goes along with purgatory in the Roman Catholic system, and this undergirds the claim that the living can perform

sacrifices like alms giving indulgences can help and so forth and this can help and help those in purgatory. So this profoundly influences are how we live as Christians right now. I mean, think about if you believe that your spiritual ancestors are in torment and what you do can help them, that's really important, you know. So I'm not going to get into that as much in this video because I'm going to do a separate video on indulgences. In fact, so I have two remaining topics. I'm going to through my study of my issues. Two remaining topics that I might start branching off into other areas other than like Protestant and ecumenical stuff. The two remaining areas are indulgences and justification. So I won't get into this theology of merit right now too much. I'm just saying

we've got to see that as part of the context here. So the whole point is there's a whole understanding of salvation, a satirological context in which purgatory functions in the Catholic system. Again, I'm not trying to be unfair here. I'm just trying to be accurate, and I'm not trying to criticize this yet. I just want us to see this issue in context. This can help us understand why some Protestants accept a notion of purgatory, but don't accept the Roman Catholic notion as it had developed throughout the medieval era. And C.S. Lewis is the great example of this in my mind. There are others as well, whereas Lewis basically reject purgatory as it had developed because he called it a commercial scandal.

But he was warm to the central idea of purgatory. Similarly, Eastern Orthodox Christians generally acknowledge some kind of intermediate state after death before final judgment for purification and for growth into divinization, and they affirm praying for the dead. And leave wiggle room for how different people will word or understand that precisely. I'm not trying to overly define that. I'm just saying that there's that general idea, but they sharply distinguish this from the idea of purgatory in its Roman Catholic satirological context.

So they'll often link the rejection, and Calvin and the Institute says the same thing. The rejection of purgatory and the rejection of indulgencese go together. So for example, according to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, quote, the Orthodox Church does not believe in purgatory, a place of purging. that is, the intermediate state after death in which the souls of the saved, those who have not received temporal punishment for their sins, are purified of all taint, preparatory to entering into heaven, where every soul is perfect and fit to see God. Also, the Orthodox Church does not believe in indulgences as remissions from purgatorial punishment. Both purgatory and indulgences are

intercorrelated theories, unwitnessed in the Bible or in the ancient church, and when they were enforced and applied, they brought about evil practices at the expense of the prevailing truths of the church. If Almighty God and his merciful loving kindness changes the dreadful situation of the sinner, it is unknown to the Church of Christ. The church lived for 1,500 years without such a theory. The satirological context for purgatory in Roman Catholic theology is also why many of the early Protestants did not reject praying for the dead in general, but just the kind of praying for the dead that was going on. So you can see this in the Augsburg Confession, where Philip Melanchthon writes, now as regards the adversaries citing the fathers concerning the offerings for the dead,

we know that the ancients speak of prayer for the dead, which we do not prohibit. But we disapprove of the application ex operato, that means by the work having been done, of the Lord's supper on behalf of the dead. Here's how Luther himself put it. Quote, as for the dead, since scripture gives us no information on the subject, I regarded as no sin to pray with free devotion in this or some similar fashion. Dear God, if this soul is in a condition accessible to mercy, be thou gracious to it. And when this has been done once or twice, let it suffice. For vigils and requiem masses and year celebrations of requiems are useless and are merely the devil's annual fair. Do you see the Protestant concern there? It's not so much about praying for the dead per se. It's

about the vigils and the requiems and this whole system that had accrued and developed throughout the medieval West. And you can find lots of other Protestants who are totally fine with praying for the dead. In fact, people who will say, John Wesley, for example, a wonderful theologian, wonderful man, said he believed it was a duty to pray for the dead. So Protestants have not always uniformly been against praying for the dead. It's kind of this whole, the Protestant concern in its historical context has this larger context in which purgatory is functioning in view. Okay. Trying to keep it moving here because I got a lot to go. So hopefully that sets us up well to now enter into, okay, see, so what are we really talking about

when we talk about purgatory? Okay. We do not need to link up with purgatory all the abuses that have happened, but we can look at what Trent affirms in terms of the satirological context in which purgatory functions. And we can say that's what. what purgatory means. So with that in mind, let's dive in and let's look through church history. Okay, let's just walk through. And I'm going to put up a definition of the word accretion at the start here, because if you've been following my videos at all, you know, you're probably familiar with this word. According to Merriam-Webster, basically it means the process of growth or enlargement by a gradual buildup. Now, you'll be familiar with this because many of my criticisms of aspects

of non-Protestant theology and other traditions, such as Roman Catholicism, are proposing that these things are accretions. I've made that proposal with respect to some of the Marian dogmas, for example. That is the things that slowly kind of build up along the way throughout church history, but that don't authentically relate back to the apostolic deposit in the first century. And I'm, so it probably won't be a surprise that I'm going to argue that purgatory is that. It's an accretion. And that's actually one way of defecution. And that's actually one way of defining Protestantism. People often have a caricature as though we think, as though it's this idea of the church, a new church starting off in the 16th century. Not at all. Protestantism is

nothing other than the attempt to remove accretions. It is nothing other than the attempt to reform the ancient church, the one true church of Jesus Christ, in line with Holy Scripture. And so I've often argued that Protestantism is more lowercase C Catholic and it is better positioned to retain and cultivate Catholicity by its very nature. And I can say more about that some other time. I might do just a really short five-minute overview of kind of why I'm Protestant, trying to push against some of the caricatures of Protestantism that many people have. So I'm going to suggest purgatory is an accretion, but let me start by acknowledging the strength of the Catholic claim against me from church history. It is true, first of all, that the practice

of praying for the dead is extremely common and extremely early. Second of all, one can also find wide usage of the language of cleansing post-mortem fire throughout church history. So post-mortem, meaning after you die, cleansing fire. After you die. You can find that language a lot, and it comes in relatively early on. At the same time, Catholic apologists often overstate the case here by ignoring all of the countervailing evidence. and then second of all, by taking anything that sounds remotely like purgatory, any kind of language of cleansing fire,

and kind of glossing over all the differences and acting as though there's this one singular idea that goes back to the beginning. And so, for example, if you Google Church Father's Purgatory, you can find website after website just amassing these patristic quotes that are purported to be in favor of purgatory. But actually, if you read these quotes in context and you read them in light of, what the author meant, what the church father meant. You see, there's an enormous variety of different ideas out there. So I want to share my research with you. I want to walk through this, and I want to show you how, number one, praying for the dead and believing in purgatory are two distinct things that do not stand or fall together. We'll come back to that a couple times. I want to show you how common is the tradition early on and then continuing on in the east for some time of the belief

that immediately upon death, the soul of a believer, goes straight to heaven to be with Christ. And thirdly, I want to show you how complicated this development is of this idea of purgatory and how there's not just one idea going on. What you have is so many different competing ideas that gradually, slowly start to coalesce into a singular idea. So starting in here, among the earliest witnesses, I would propose in terms of the language, the earliest, to speak of a cleansing fire in the afterlife, would be Clement of Alexandria and then his pupil origin. All over, his biblical commentaries, origin will speak of a cleansing fire,

you know, purgatorial fire, the cleansing fire of Gehenna, and so forth. And sometimes we forget how massively influential origin was. Because he was so controversial, we forget how brilliant he was and how, especially in the immediate aftermath of his life, how significantly influential he was. And so then you'll find various statements about cleansing fire in lactantius and in Ambrose and in Jerome and then in Augustine. And then from Augustine through the influence of Gregory Great, that goes into the medieval era. As so much theology does of the medieval West, it's Augustine through Gregory. But when origin speaks of purgatorial fire, he's conceiving of this as the destiny.

of every human being, not just imperfectly purified Christians. He's a universalist who thinks that everyone might be saved, and some people even, he's read differently. Some people think he believes that even the demons will go through the purgatorial fire. Satan himself will eventually be saved, though I think it's probably unlikely he believed that, but that's contested. But when he's speaking of this, it's for every single person, and he has no awareness, to my knowledge anywhere of our prayers or anything we do influencing those undergoing

purgatorial cleansing in the afterlife. So, but yet you'll still find, if you type in Church Father's Purgatory, you'll go to these sites and find quotes from origin included as though this were in line with purgatory and the differences in Origins thought and what purgatory is are sort of glossed over in that. And you can see how misleading that is. That's just one example of how the complexity is sort of glossed over in a lot of the presentation of the evidence. And then you see, and the same thing with people reacting to origin, and I'll come back to that in a second. But let me start even earlier than origin, because I don't think you have any conception of purgatory in the earliest times of church history, and I think you have a long tradition of the opposite view that the soul of the believer goes immediately to heaven upon death for a long time in the east.

Now, there's another, so let me start with Cyprian, because he's another third century, so very early on figure who's often miscited as a proponent of purgatory. And people will quote a statement in his letter 51 that references purgatorial fire. But if you read in context, he's not talking about the afterlife. He's talking about the penitential discipline of the church in this life, not something post-mortem for, the individual. You can see what Cyprian thinks will actually, so that's another one of those quotes. You'll find that quote from Letter 51 on these websites and people, it's misleading people. What Cyprian actually believes about the afterlife, what happens to a Christian when they die, you can find in many passages. A good example is in his 11th treatise to Fortunatus at the very

end of it, section 13. He's talking about how since Paul went to heaven, Paul can give us a true comfort when he says that the sufferings of the present time are not worth being compared to the glory that is coming. And he continues, who then does not, with all his powers, labor to attain to such a glory that he may become the friend of God, that he may at once rejoice with Christ, that after earthly tortures and punishments, he may receive divine rewards. What a dignity it is, and what a security, to go gladly from hence, to depart gloriously in the midst of afflictions and tribulations, in a moment to close the eyes with which men in the world are looked upon, and at once to open them to look upon God and Christ, of such a blessed departure, how great is the

swiftness? You shall be suddenly taken away from earth to be placed in the heavenly kingdoms. Here's how Eliezer Gonzalez puts it in his study on this. Quote, Cyprian is clearly referring to the immediate presence of the deceased in heaven with God. It must be conceded that this passage is in the general context of martyrdom. However, Daly is probably correct that Cyprian is also referring to the experience of all the righteous dead. This view is supported by the fact that the specific requirements for the immediate entry into paradise upon death, as specified by Cyprian, are not martyrdom, but rather an unspoiled and unharmed, an unspoiled faith and unharmed virtue of mind. There's other passages like this in his on mortality in chapter 22, he's talking about how if we have faith in Christ,

we will reign forever in Christ, and he locates that as starting right upon death. Quote, as to the fact that meanwhile we die, we pass by death to immortality. Nor can eternal life succeed unless it has befallen us to depart from here. This is not an end, but a passage, and the journey of time being traversed a crossing over to eternity. We would not hasten to better things? Who would not pray to be more quickly changed and reformed to the image of Christ and to the dignity of heavenly grace? He who is to come to the abode of Christ, to the glory of the heavenly kingdom, ought not to grieve and mourn, but rather in accordance with the promise of the Lord, in accordance with faith and the truth,

to rejoice in this departure and translation. There's many other passages to this effect, for example, in his Epistle 55, and I could give a few others. There's even in his two Demetriana's chapter 25, he says, this life is the only shot you have at repentance because there is no satisfaction for sins in the next life. I'm going to say that Cyprian is representative of the early Christian view, and I'll document that in a second, that for the Christian to die is a happy thing that sends you straight to heaven to be with Jesus.

Okay? So that you find all over the... the language of rest and triumph and so forth associated with a believer's death. You can see this early on among the Apostolic Fathers. It's not crystal clear. There's not a lot of evidence we're getting, but you can see Clement, for example, First Epistle of Clement, late first century, talking about Paul and Peter is departing to the place of glory, to the holy place. You see the same language among the apostolic fathers for Polycarp as having attained the crown of immortality and someone could say well of course them because they're martyrs and they're so they're going to go to heaven but you also have just and martyr in his first apology chapter 14

speaking of all of those who live by the precepts of christ as having the joyful hope of a reward from god and philip shaft has documented uh how the tomb inscriptions what uh they had in that anti-Nicine period, that first period of church history, and he talks about them as having a prevailingly cheerful tone because regularly the language for deceased believers is in peace or living with Christ or in God in language like this on the tombs. Yes, they were being prayed for. I'll come back to that, but the consistent expectation early on seems to be when a believer dies, they go to be with Christ in heaven. I'm not aware of anything in that initial stage among the Apostolic Fathers, First Century, Early Second Century, there's any diversity on that.

Now, it does get interesting as you get into the late second century. So another supposed early proponent of purgatory that I'm going to show is not a proponent of purgatory is Tertullian. Tertullian is one of a number of figures who does believe in some kind of post-mortem waiting place. Now, by the way, I told you it's complicated, okay? This is going to get so fascinating and so interesting and so complicated. I know we're already like 40 minutes in and I still got a lot more to go, but I hope you're with me because it's so interesting seeing how this develops.

And it's so relevant, you know. So the post-mortem place that Turtolian talks about, and I'll try to just make the main points and keep it moving here, is not purgatory. It's called the bosom of Abraham, which this is how he calls it. This is the language from Luke 1622 where there's the poor righteous man in the parable with Lazarus who's taken to the side of Abraham. in this tradition of thought, Abraham's bosom is understood to be a division of Hades. So Hades is the realm of the dead where everybody goes to await the final resurrection. The bosom of Abraham is the happy part of Hades. And so you're waiting there, but it's a happy place of refreshment and rest and consolation and comfort and triumph and victory and joy and blessedness and so forth.

And you see that in Tertullian. You see this in Ironaeus. Iranis is less clear on it, but it's very clear. Hippolytus. So, for example, if you want to look this up a bit, Turtallion's on the soul, chapters 55 to 58, he says every soul goes to Hades, but those who are righteous in Hades, it's a place of consolation and blessedness. In other writings, in his against Marcion, he calls it an interim refreshment between death and the resurrection. You're refreshed there, if you're righteous.

Ironaeus against heresies 5.31.1 talks about how basically he says, because Christians, because Jesus was buried and then raised, Christians have to go to Hades and then, but he doesn't say it's a place of torment. It's not purgatory. It's just a waiting place. He just calls it an invisible place allotted to them by God, where they're just, you're just anticipating the final resurrection. You're waiting for that.

Let me read you the clearest description of this. It's a longer passage, but it's so. interesting. It's by Hippolytus of Rome, who's often dated to the late second century or early third century, although sometimes that's disputed. And this is from the very beginning of his against Plato and the cause of the universe. So I'm going to read this. Just try to imagine what this looks like. He says, the very beginning of it, he says, but now we must speak of Hades, in which the souls, both of the righteous and the unrighteous, are detained. He goes on to describe this as a place of darkness under the earth, a guardhouse station.

But it's happy for the righteous and unhappy for the unrighteous. Quote, for to this locality there is one descent at the gate whereof we believe an archangel is stationed with a host. And when those who are conducted by the angels appointed unto the souls have passed through this gate, they do not proceed on one and the same way. But the righteous, being conducted in the light towards the right, are being hymned by the angels stationed at the place, are brought to a locality full of light. and there the righteous from the beginning dwell, not ruled by necessity, but enjoying always the contemplation of the blessings which are in their view, and delighting themselves with the expectation

of others ever new, and deeming those things better than these. And that place brings no toils to them. There, there is neither fierce heat nor cold nor thorn, but the face of the fathers, and the righteous is seen to be always smiling, as they wait for the, their rest and eternal revival in heaven which succeed this location. And we call it by the name Abraham's bosom. And he goes on a great deal about that. This broad idea that the righteous go to Hades, so that everybody goes to Hades at death,

but it's basically anticipatory of what you will get after the final resurrection, it becomes a very common view. It rumbles on in the east, certain trajectories of the eastern tradition. so that even after the official acceptance of purgatory in the West, in the medieval era, this is one of the views that's proposed as one of the alternatives to that. And Maranus's book, Death in the Afterlife in Byzantium, narrates how Mark Eugenoccus, who was a 15th century bishop of Ephesus, argues that both the righteous and the unrighteous enter into this intermediate state after death,

they're just awaiting their rewards or their punishments. and he says basically, no one suffers. He's, you know, and so much in reaction, there's so much resistance in the East to the Western conception of purgatory that, for him, the unrighteous aren't really even undergoing any punishments. Here's how Maranus puts it, he says, and while sinners agonize over their fate and suffer from the memory of their sins, they are not subjected to external punishments. Interestingly, eugenocus amidst any mention of the provisional judgment, fearing perhaps that it may appear too similar to the purgatory of his Western colleagues. Already, hopefully, you're already seeing just how preposterous this idea is when people claim

everybody believed in purgatory. In fact, there were huge, massive divisions over this issue. And one of the emphases of Maranus's book is just how incredibly diverse the patristic testimonies are on this topic. You can see this at the Council of Florence. in the 15th century where there's this an attempt at reunion between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox. One of the main points of dispute in the deliberations is purgatory, along with the filiocque and the papacy. This is one of the dividing lines between East and West. And so during the deliberations, the Roman Catholic theologians go first and sort of recount their view of purgatory and the Eastern Orthodox respond. I'll put up on the screen in an article

you can read online that summarizes those proceedings if you're interested. But essentially, the Eastern Orthodox representatives were saying that our fathers, the Greek fathers, didn't believe in this with the exception of Gregory of Nisa. And his views were controversial because like origin, he appears, most people read him as a universalist as saying this purgatorial fire is for everybody. And Origins' views were very controversial at that time. So basically the Orthodox representatives are no, this is not the Eastern tradition, right? Now, whether they're right or wrong, they were making that claim. So again, saying everybody believed in purgatory is just massively wrong, massively wrong. This was a dividing issue within the church. We also have to appreciate how much development there is

in the West. Okay, so after picking up with origin, what you really see is the soterological context that we talked about with purgatory, that isn't representative of the patristic development of purgatory for the most part. Purgatory doesn't have these sort of meritorious penitential reverberations to the church's life and to the understanding of salvation. So when we talk about purgatory as an accretion, we're talking about how it's understood as it slowly takes on that form throughout the medieval West.

And you can see that in how origin's ideas are developed. So much of the patristic eschatology in the third and fourth centuries is reacting to origin. some are for him, some are against him. He's very controversial. And so this language of purgatorial fire is picked up a lot. It's sometimes used like origin, like Gregory of Nisa. But a lot of times people are using the same language,

but they're opposing what Origin is saying, especially his universalism. So you can find, and so you find all these different ideas that start developing and before they kind of coalesce into something singular. So you'll find lactantius, one of the, an early figure after Origin, who talks about a divine fire on the Judgment Day that will restore everything that it consumes. Really interesting. But he depicts everybody is passing through this, and it happens at the end of history,

at the Judgment Day, not at an individual person's death, and he insists that everybody goes through it, but it's only painful for those whose evil deeds outweigh their good deeds. And he says, everyone else will not be harmed by it because they will have, in them, something of God which repels and rejects the power of the flame. Ambrose uses this language of purgatorial fire in all kinds of ways. He's often, I'm just going to summarize what Daly says about Ambrose. This is a great book if you're wanting to get a snapshot of patristic views of eschatology.

Daly was a professor at the University of Notre Dame, wonderful patristics scholar. This is kind of the textbook that kind of gives you just a handbook, just goes through the father, just gives you an over. overview. I would have yielded Ambrose as a proponent of purgatory before getting into it. One of the things Daly showed me is just how it's complicated. He's got some passages that sound like that, but he's got others. Again, the tendency is to oversimplify what was actually incredibly diverse at this time. So here's, I'll just read what Daly says. He says, Ambrose has no consistent theory, however, about what the Christian may expect at death. In one passage,

he puts forward the theory that after death souls remain in storehouses until the resurrection. Yet even there, they anticipate psychologically the suffering or glory that awaits them in their recognition of what surely lies ahead. Other passages suggest that the soul remains in suspense after death, unaware of the outcome of the judgment until the resurrection, or that punishment experienced before the judgment is simply the lack of positive consolation. Another figure that picks up on Origins language is Jerome, but he uses the language of the fire exclusively for hell, and he is very clear that he thinks the punishments of the wicked and the rewards of the righteous happen immediately upon death.

So Jerome's view is that at Easter, when Christ arose from the dead, everything changed so that the souls of the faithful no longer go to Hades, but now go to Christ in heaven, and he'll speak of deceased believers as now reigning with Christ and so forth. So you get a lot of diversity. You also have a lot of speculation and openness. One of the things that's been so fascinating to discover is that even Augustine, who's often held to be a key representative witness for purgatory, his views are actually very complicated and sort of open-handed. In his Enkeridion, here's how he puts it, and note this sort of speculative feel of his language. He says, and it is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life. It is a matter that may be inquired. into and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion, the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it. It's complicated with Augustine. Certainly he's not sort of dogmatic about this. He kind of is leaving it open exactly how much is this going to happen, how certain are we, and so forth. Then there's other views floating around. Honestly, we could just go

on and on. I'll just mention one other sort of example. If you go to the fourth century Syriac fathers, Ephraim and Offerhat, they depict Christians who die as sleeping until the final resurrection. In fact, everybody who dies sleeps till the final resurrection. And they don't really have any capacity for activity or experience, but he describes Offerhat, at least, Ephraim a dozen. Offerhat describes that sleep as either a happy sleep or a disturbed sleep. It's so interesting. Here's how he puts it. For the servant for whom his Lord is preparing stripes and bonds while he is sleeping. Now keep in mind, the sleeping is between your death and the final resurrection. Desires not to awake, for he knows that

when the dawn shall have come and he shall awake, his Lord will scourge and bind him. But the good servant, to whom his Lord has promised gifts, looks expectantly for the time when dawn shall come and he shall receive presents from his Lord. And even though he is soundly sleeping in his dream, he sees something like what his Lord is about to give him whatsoever he has promised him. And he rejoices in his dream and exalts and is gladdened. And he goes on and on and he's saying, basically he's saying, you know, he compares later on the sleep of the wicked between their death and the final judgment as like when you sleep, but you have a fever.

And you're like tossing and turning. It's so interesting. You agitated sleep, whereas the righteous are soundly snoring. You know, they have a happy sleep. They're sleeping happily, again, because they're anticipating. So what this does for us is, first of all, in addition to showing how complicated and how diverse the thought of the early church was about what happens to the Christian when they die, it also cautions us for making a straight association between praying for the dead and

purgatory, because something like Offer Haft's view, you can totally understand, and everybody believes in praying for the dead, but not because they're in purgatory. So let me just establish that point with two examples. I want to give two examples that make it crystal clear that the reason people prayed for the dead was certainly not because they always thought they were in purgatory or in any kind of torment. So the first example is from Ambrose's sermon on the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395. Theodosius is one of the good guys. He opposed the Arians. Ambrose loves Theodosius and he's going on and on.

Listen to how he describes Theodosius throughout his eulogy. Theodosius, now at peace. rejoices that he has been snatched away from the cares of this world. Theodosius hastened to enter upon this rest and to go into the city of Jerusalem. Thus freed from an uncertain struggle, Theodosius of august memory now enjoys perpetual light and lasting tranquility and in return for what he did in his body. He rejoices in the fruits of a divine reward. He says, I keep quoting statements like this.

After all that, he prays for him. Listen to what he prays for. Give perfect rest to thy servant Theodosius, that rest which thou has prepared for thy saints. I have loved, and so I accompany him to the land of the living, and I will not abandon him until, by my tears and prayers, I shall lead the man, whither his merits summon, unto the holy mountain of God where there is eternal life.

He's saying, I'm going to lead him into eternal life by my prayers. Then right after that, he says this. In fact, that quote is often used down those. same websites proving the fathers all believe in purgatory. Okay, look what he says right next. Theodosius then abides in the light and glories in the assembly of the saints. There he now embraces Gratian, that was another deceased Christian, who no longer grieves for his wounds, for he has found an avenger. Although he was snatched away prematurely by an unworthy death, he possesses rest for his soul. So it's false that you only pray for the dead if you think they're in purgatory.

Theodosius does not sound like he's in torment. And this is very common in these patristic eulogies. Here's another one. This is really interesting. And I hope you're not getting bored as you're watching this because I got a little more to go still. I got to talk about Gregory of Nazianzus here. And then I want to talk about John Chrysostom. But then we're starting to land the plane and move on to scripture.

So hang with me a little longer because this is really important. And nobody's talking about these passages. I really don't know anybody who's bringing this up. So here's another example. Gregory of Naziances, Oration 7, his younger brother, Cesarius, has died. He's doing the eulogy. He makes it very plain throughout the eulogy that Cesarius is in heaven. He's been saved. He talks about in 7.4, when he's referencing their parents living pious lives, he talks about how Christians die, and he uses the language for this of being translated to the realms above. He talks about

how the Holy Spirit has transformed the body of, or the soul of Cesarius. And at the end of the sermon, he speaks of Cesarius. After speaking of it in various ways, this saved, he says, listen to this. And now for you, that's Cesarius, sacred and holy soul, we pray for an entrance into heaven. May you enjoy such repose as the bosom of Abraham affords. By the way, here and in other orations, Gregory will use the phrase, bosom of Abraham for heaven. So again, I told you this was complicated. Not all the terminology is used in the same way.

Such repose as the bosom of Abraham affords, may you behold the choir of angels and the glories and splendors of sainted men. Now, someone could say, okay, he's just praying for Cesarius to eventually experience that after he gets out of purgatory. But throughout the sermon, he regularly speaks of Cesarius has already gotten there. And more than that, he turns that into a consolation and hope for every current living. Christian. This is the regular contrast. Here on earth, we're in turmoil, but then after we are received by God into heaven. Quote, I believe the words of the wise that every fair and God-beloved

soul, when set free from the bonds of the body, it departs hence at once, enjoys a sense and perception of the blessings which awaited it inasmuch as that which darkened it has been purged away or laid aside, I know not how else to term it, and feels a wondrous pleasure and exaltation and goes rejoicing to meet its Lord, having escaped, as it were, from the grievous poison of life here, and shaken off the fetters which bound it. And he goes on and on about the resurrection of the body after that. Now, some people find it significant that the word purged is here, but you could just translate that, and I'll put up the two Greek words there. As he's saying, as having been cleansed or cast off, I don't know how to put it. So he's just using those two words

in the past tense to describe what we leave off, when we leave this life, when you leave life here, when you leave the body and your soul goes to the wondrous pleasure and exaltation and rejoicing meets the Lord. And that's the consistent contrast. And he ends the whole eulogy saying, basically setting up this contrast between the toil here and the joy of going to heaven and saying, after our toil here, receive us into your presence in a prayer. So this is the common idea in the East. I'm going to say, and not universal.

You'll find Basel talk in a very generic term about kind of a waiting place, but it's doesn't really say anything about it. But the common idea, if not universal, is at death, the soul is carried up. Sometimes you get all these strange variations. Sometimes you get this idea of toll houses, where this is the idea that the angels are escorting the soul of the deceased Christian up to God, but they have to pass through these toll houses where demons are hurling accusations and trying to drag them back down to hell and that kind of thing. It's fascinating. But this common idea throughout the East in the patristic era is that at death your soul goes to heaven. Okay.

Here's another example from a 5th century unknown Antiochian writer from Syria. But after the departure from the body, a separation of the just from the unjust immediately takes place, for they are conducted by angels into places worthy of them. The souls of the just are conducted to paradise in the company and sight of angels, the vision of the Savior Christ, according to what is said, being absent from the body and present with the Lord. But the souls of the wicked are conducted to the regions of hell and kept in places worthy of them

until the day of resurrection and retribution. Here's another example from Cyril of Alexandria in his commentary on John 19, where he's talking about the phrase Jesus gave up his spirit. And he's saying, what does that mean? Why doesn't it say that Jesus just died? It doesn't mean to give up your spirit. And he says, well, that's a hope that we all have when we die.

And he says, for I think we ought to believe that for this belief there is much ground, that the souls of saints, when they quit their earthly bodies, are, by the bountiful mercy of God, almost as it were, consigned into the hands of a most loving father, and do not, as some infidels have pretended, haunt their sepulchres, waiting for funeral libations, nor are they, nor yet are they, like the souls of sinful men, conveyed to the place of endless torment, that is, to hell. Rather, do they hasten into the hands of the father of all, by the new way, which, our Savior Christ has prepared for us, for he consigned his soul into the hands of his father,

that we also, making it our anchor, and being firmly rooted and grounded in this belief might entertain the bright hope that when we undergo the death of the body, we shall be in God's hands, yea, in a far better condition than when we were in the flesh. And he continues on just a bit. And he says that's why Paul says in Philippians 1, it's better to depart and go and be with Christ. Now, one last figure. I know I just went through a lot. One last figure, John Chrysostom. Oh man, I have spent so much time. This is another one where you'll find John Chrysostom listed on these same websites as though he believes in purgatory just because, in fact, the Roman Catholic Catechism quotes John Chrysostom as believing in its section on purgatory.

But just like so many other quotes, when you read them in context, you realize that's not what John is talking about. He's not talking about praying for people in purgatory. I'm going to prove to you, I think, that John is very clear in consistency with many of these other patristic witnesses that when you die, you go straight to heaven. John believes in praying for everybody. All people are to be prayed for, including the damned. Let me give a few examples, because he believes you can alleviate the suffering of the damned through your prayers, which is not something that any Roman Catholic Christian that I know of believes.

In fact, I've only ever heard Catholic Christians deny that we should do that. and yet people present John as if he's on the same side on the issue of purgatory. So, for example, in his sermon on Philippians 3, he says, Let us then not make wailings for the dead simply, but for those who have died in sins. They deserve wailing. They deserve beating of the breast and tears. For tell me, what hope is there when our sins accompany us thither,

where there is no putting off sins? As long as they were here, perchance there was great expectation that they would change, that they would become better. But when they are gone to Hades, where not can be gained from repentance, and he quotes Psalm 6.5, are they not worthy of our lamentation?

Let us wail for those who depart in such sort. It sounds like he's talking about people without hope, right? Sounds like he's talking about people in hell who can't change. There's no more chance for repentance, not just imperfectly purified Christians. He continues and calls them unbelievers. Weep for the unbelievers. Weep for those who differ in no way.

from them, those who depart, hence, without the illumination, without the seal. They indeed deserve our wailings. They deserve our groans. They are outside the palace with the culprits, with the condemned. Let us weep for these. Let us assist them according to our power. Let us think of some assistance for them, small that it will be, yet still let us assist them. How and in what way? By praying and in treating others to make prayers for them by continually giving to the poor on their behalf. There's other examples I found too. In his sermon on Acts 9, he quotes Mark 1421. That's the statement. It would have been better for him for that man if he had not been born. And then he writes, Here is a man who has lost all the labor of a whole life. Not one day has he lived for himself,

but to luxury, to debauchery, to covetousness, to sin, to the devil. Then say, shall we not bewail this man? Shall we not try to snatch him from his perils? For it is, yes, it is possible, if we will, to mitigate his punishment. If we make continual prayers for him, it's one of those many areas where people just gloss over all the nuances. They say, oh, John believed in purgatory, Augustine, they cite all these figures, origin, and Gregory of Nisa, another one, and they gloss over all the differences. John is not advocating for something here in these passages that is consistent with Roman Catholic theology. I don't think Catholics believe in praying for the damned. Now, someone's going to say, okay, fine. John had a quirky view. He believed in

praying for the damned, but he also believes in praying for deceased believers. So that means he believes in purgatory, right? I don't think so. I've spent a lot of time reading John, and I've spent a lot of time reading the scholarship on this point. That's not true. I've spent a lot of time reading John, and I've looked into the scholarship on this point. I'm firmly convinced, John thinks deceased Christians go straight to heaven. He interprets the fire of 1st Corinthians 315 as the fire of hell, and he consistently speaks about deceased Christians going straight to heaven. Let me give a few examples because again, this point is so important, and I don't find anybody talking about it, so I really want to document my claim here. My friend Damien Zizek

helped me find some of these. In his sermon on Acts 9, okay, John is talking about where Peter raises Tabitha back to life, and he's rebuking those who are improperly mourning death. And he starts describing why we shouldn't mourn Christians dying. Now listen to what he says. And if leaving her dwelling, the soul goes forth, speeding on her way to her own Lord, why do you mourn? Why then you should do this on the birth of a child? For this, in fact, is also a birth, and better than that. For here she comes forth to a birth. a very different light, is loosed as from a prison house, comes off as from a contest. Yes, you will say, it is all very well to say this in the case of those whose salvation we are

assured. Then what ails you, O man, that even in the case of such, thou dost not take it in this way? Say, what can you have to condemn in the little child? Why do you mourn for it? What in the newly baptized? For he too is brought into the same condition. Why do you mourn for him? For as the sun arrived, eyes is clear and bright, so the soul, leaving the body with a pure conscience, shines joyously. Not such the spectacle of emperor as he comes in state to take possession of the city, not such the hush of awe as when the soul having quitted the body is departing in company with angels. Think what the soul must then be. In what amazement, what wonder, what delight, why do you mourn?

I know that's a longer quote, but hopefully you could follow, and of course John's language can be a little bit foreign. but it doesn't sound like he's believing that the soul goes to purgatory. It sounds like he's believing that the soul of the deceased believer consistently with Cyril of Alexandria and the others that I've mentioned thus far go straight to heaven. There's many other passages like this. Philippians 1 when he's commenting on the phrase, to die is gain. He writes, and to die is gain, wherefore? Because I shall more clearly be present with him so that my death is rather a coming to life.

They who kill me will work on me no dreadful thing. They will only send me onward to my proper life and free me from that which is not mine. There's many other examples. I just mentioned one other in a homily in honor of the deceased Philagonius, who was an earlier bishop in Antioch. He says, he's been translated and has left our city. He's nevertheless gone up to the city of God. And while he's left the church here, he's ended up in the church in heaven, in which the firstborn are enrolled. He's left the feasts on earth and has moved on instead to celebrating with the angels.

And then he's going on and on about the benefits of heaven. And he's enjoining his hearers to follow Philagonius's example. And he basically says, you will go to heaven too if you follow his example. Now, there's lots of other examples like this. I've given a lot. So I'll probably just stop there with John. I did a deep dive in John. And it's been fascinating.

But I think it's very clear that John thinks you pray for everybody. you pray for the damned to alleviate their sufferings and you pray for the righteous and the righteous are in heaven with God. That's how he consistently talks and I'm not aware. I've not read everything in John, of course. John wrote a lot. But I've spent a lot of time in his sermons. I don't know of any passages.

By the way, any passages where he talks about a Christian dying and anything happening to them other than go to heaven. Now, some people, I've been doing this long enough. to anticipate how people are going to respond. Some people are just going to say, oh, you're just taking John out of context, or you're taking these other fathers out of context. And I think some people have, but they bought into this idea that if a Protestant, if a church father says something that sounds vaguely Protestant,

then you must be taking them out of context. But I'm not taking these quotes out of context, and I do hate to break it to people, because I almost sort of feel compassion because they bought into this paradigm, and it's just, it's their, the simplicity of their paradigm gets punctured, and I know that that can be disturbing, but unfortunately, it's just not true that all the church fathers are like proto-Roman Catholics or proto-Eastern Orthodox or proto-Protestant. The church fathers have enormous diversity, and I'm not taking these quotes out of context.

Just go read them. I'm firmly convinced if you just go spend a lot of time reading John Chrysostom's sermons, and you examine what does he believe about the souls of believers at death, it's pretty clear. So, by the way, the view, another thing that people do is they try to discredit what I'm saying by saying it's bad scholarship. The view that I am propounding right now is very common in the scholarship. Pretty much on all of this.

You could look at Brian Daly's book, which I think I held up earlier. He argues for the exact same thing on pages 108 and 109 about John. He says, and he draws it from John. Another resource in John is his sermons on the parable of, Lazarus and the poor man. And when it's second to four sermons there, he makes it very clear. Deceased Christians go to heaven. Another example is you could look at Maranis' book, where he makes the exact same point from the exact same sermon. He says, John thinks you go to heaven when you die. Here's my conclusion of the church history section. In light of, A,

the incredible diversity of the church's thought about the experience of the believer upon death, and B, the significant differences between patristic conceptions of purgatorial fire and the later medieval system that develops in relation to that in the West. When people say things like all the church fathers believed in purgatory or purgatory is universal throughout church history, it's the person who is saying that, who is taking the church fathers out of context or who is picking and choosing among the fathers.

Those are charges often leveraged against me and other Protestants. We pick and choose. It is exactly the opposite. It is the Catholic apologist, not the Catholic scholars. The Catholic apologists who make these overstatements, like everyone believed in purgatory, they're the ones picking and choosing and taking out of context. My position, namely that there's a complicated development, that is the position that's trying to look at the whole picture

and let every patristic voice be heard. So that leads us to the million dollar question, and that's the final ending point of this video. Where does the development start? Right? As a Protestant, this is what is ultimately going to be decisive for me. Does this development have an anchor in Scripture? Does it go back to the Apostles? Does it go back to Christ?

Does it go back to Holy Scripture? Now, let me start by mentioning some of the passages that are often referenced. There are so many. I mean, and people have argued for purgatory from weird passages. Johann Eck, who was one of Luther's opponents, argued for purgatory from Ecclesiastes 414 and the reference to a man who went down from prison to the throne. And, you know, so you got all these passages like this that are sometimes used, and a lot of times it tells you nothing more than simply how desperate the case may be.

So let me just hit some of the most common ones. Revelation 217 is a frequently referenced text. it references the heavenly city of God and then says that nothing unclean will ever enter it. Now, this one I'm very surprised would be used in sort of support of the idea of purgatory because it's simply not contested. You know, the alternative to purgatory is not believing that an impure soul goes into heaven. Rather, the alternative is that the process of purification happens relatively instantaneously. upon arrival in heaven, something like what is envisioned in 1 John 3-2,

which says we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. So a lot of times Protestants and others will associate this with the beatific vision, that upon the sight of God you will be made perfect. So the idea that nothing impure enters heaven is something we can all agree upon. The only question is, is the process by which a Christian is completely purified, instantaneous or relatively instantaneous or is it a long protracted time of torment. Now the most common passage that comes up for purgatory is 1st Corinthians 315, which talks about being saved through fire. Others have treated this better, so let me simply

be brief and put the passage up and just observe that it is explicit in this passage, that what is being revealed by fire is ministry work. That's the all. a whole context of this passage. It's very problematic when you take the fire imagery in one way and all the other imagery, the gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw imagery in another way. So the working image here is of a foundation, right? And in the ancient world, fire is used to reveal and get rid of the dross. So the imagery here, which is used throughout the New Testament,

is, and what happens is people take the fire imagery out of the foundation imagery. But if you read them both together and you look at verse 13 and what's actually being revealed by fire, it's ministry work, which is the context of the passage. Paul's talking about different kinds of apostolic ministry. So the idea is the person can be saved, but any foundation laid other than that of Christ will be revealed for what it is on Judgment Day. There's also no hint of a long process here. It's simply a revelatory moment.

Just like in one chapter later, Paul says in chapter 4 verse 5, therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts, and then each man's praise will come to him from God. So purgatory gist is out of context with Paul. concerns in this passage. The basic way I would sum up my perception about the biblical teaching is

you really don't find purgatory unless you're already looking for it. Honestly, think about the abundance we have about the teaching of heaven and hell in the scripture and how comparatively slender and ambiguous are these passages, which I really think this is the main one. Now, of course, people appeal to 2nd Maccabees 1246. I'm not going to deal with that here, partly because it would take us into the whole issue of the canon. And I think, I don't think this passage is canonical. I think when Jesus spoke of from Abel to Zechariah, he was designating the time of prophetic activity in Israel. And I see the second century BC as kind of a declining Judaism that's not authoritative over us. I also think there are other points about this story that show, even if you accepted Second Maccabees

as a part of scripture, it really doesn't establish purgatory. I think this is just testifying to a Jewish practice at that time. But there's really too much to get into it in this video because I'd have to justify that claim about the canon. So I'm not able to address that fully here. What I would simply say is this. There is not a single example in scripture of praying for a deceased Christian on the grounds that they are somehow in torment and we can speed along their torment or something like that on the contrary. We see something pretty consistently the opposite. Think of David with his deceased son who when his son is sick, he's praying and grieving, but when the child dies, in 2nd Samuel 12, he recognizes there's no longer a need to do that. I would put it like this. The consistent hope,

and I'll end the video with this, and this is kind of the pastoral note, the consistent hope in scripture is that when believers die, they are immediately received into the gracious presence of God. I think, actually, you can make a case for this from the Old Testament, going all the way back to Enoch and Elijah in their translation and then looking at other various Psalms. But let me just give a few examples from the New Testament. I remain convinced one of the clearest is the thief on the cross. And as you read through the answers on this, you just feel like it's such a stretch and the theology is driving the exegesis because people are trying to make the thief

into a martyr or a saint or something like that. But the reality is he's already dying. He's not dying for his faith. That's what a martyr does. He's already dying when he comes to faith. He's in his final moments. He acknowledges that he's deserving of crucifixion. That doesn't sound like a saint.

And he cries out to Jesus, and Jesus says, today. And people try to get around this by questioning the meaning of the word today, and even the meaning of the word paradise. And what makes me burdened about this is, it seems to me the whole point of Jesus' words to this man were to give him assurance. And it seems to me that the whole effect of this, these other alternative interpretations is to take that assurance away. And I would look at the thief on the cross, and just from that story alone, say,

I think that it's actually clear that when you die, you go to be with Jesus. If he went to be with Jesus upon his death, and certainly we will too, and I just see this as the consistent tone and expectation of the New Testament. Of course, we've got the key passages. Philippians 1. Paul says, my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. And if someone says, well, that's just Paul. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, he makes the contrast of being home in the body or home with the Lord. And he sure makes it sound like it's either one or the other. You're either home in the body or home with the Lord. If you're absent from the body, that's to be present with the Lord. There's also this consistent language about Christians dying as a matter of victory and rest. So you think of Simeon saying, now, Lord, you are letting your servant depart in peace. Isaiah, 57, one and two, talks about how when a righteous man dies, he enters into peace. Revelation 1413 says,

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on, and the reason is that they may rest from their labors for their deeds follow them. This is the hope that is held out to us in the New Testament. And in 1st, Thessonians 4, you see how important it is to Paul that we know about that hope. The whole occasion for this passage is these people didn't know. He had to leave before he finished his instruction to them. They didn't know what happens to a Christian when they die. And he says, I don't want you to be uninformed because then you'll be without hope, to be unaffirmed of what happens when somebody falls asleep. When your Christian brother or sister or husband or wife or child dies, I want you to know what happens to them. And he says in the next chapter, God has not destined us

for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. And this is the pastoral burden I finish with, is that this is what I believe the gospel does. We are united to Christ. The Bible teaches that right now, currently, we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. We will never be separated from him in this life, in the next life, in anything in between for all eternity, you are in the palm of his hand. And if somebody says, well, yeah, but doesn't, the process of getting rid of sin, couldn't that take, isn't it necessary that this is going to take some time? My answer would be no. Look at 1st Corinthians 15. Look at what's going to happen to the final generation that's alive at the

second coming. At the second coming, he says, we shall not all sleep. We shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will be raised and perishable and we shall be changed. If God can do that, the resurrection of the body in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. He can certainly change our moral character in an instant as well. And it's curious to wonder what would happen? I guess that final generation then would not go to purgatory if they happen to be alive at the second coming, which sounds kind of weird. My concern is this. The doctrine of purgatory robs us of the sweet assurance that we have held forth to us in scripture that because Jesus has paid all the punishment of sin without

qualification or division of any kind, therefore we have a consolation in the face of death. So the gospel says, don't be afraid death is conquered. If you believe in purgatory, there's this massive, yeah, but, that gets introduced to that. So it's no longer to die as gain. It's to die as gain eventually. And this is a serious matter. I mean, just think about it. We're all going to die unless we're alive when Jesus comes back. Think about what it feels like to be burned. Have you ever put your hand over a candle too long? You know, with that feeling? Now, imagine, I know the fire is not necessarily literal, but still,

purgatory is understood to be extremely painful. It's torment, and we don't know how long. That's part of the other thing is there's the speculative, inconclusive nature of this and its effect on your life. Just imagine when you're dying, and now you're saying, okay, I'm going to go be in torment, and I have no idea how long. Do we really have grounds to believe that? Is that really what the New Testament would leave us to expect?

I don't believe so. The whole point of the gospel is to say you have nothing to fear in death. You are with Jesus now. You will be with Jesus then, and nothing can snatch you out of his hand. My pastoral burden for Christians is, I want them to have the comfort that the gospel provides us. I want us to have the consolation the gospel provides us. I believe that every single Christian can say the exact same thing that Stephen did in Acts 759 when he died. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

And that is too precious, a comfort secured. by too great a sacrifice for us not to be clear about and to stand up for. So that's my appeal. I hope this video will be helpful. Gosh, even longer than I thought, hour and a half or so. If you watch this all the way to the end, say so in the comments, and I'll like your comment because way to go. Thanks for paying attention. I hope this will be helpful for people. Tell me what you think about the content in the comments. If you have any questions, I'll try to produce all the citations for the quotes so they're ready. So you can look all these passages up if you'd like to. And again, like I said,

not aware these passages are kind of out there in the awareness. So I hope this will be helpful and fruitful and productive in these discussions. Thanks so much for watching. It means a lot that you do that. And I really want to state my thanks for those who support the work of my channel, my patrons and others who share and like and watch the videos. That means so much to me. Thank you. God bless you all.