Talking to my evangelical friends about purgatory

Chapter 9 of the book Talking with My Evangelical Friends by José Miguel Arráiz

Michael: I would like to ask you to explain your beliefs to us about purgatory. Could you go further on this? Because I am completely certain the Bible says there is heaven, for those saved, and hell for the damned, but there is nothing mentioning the existence of any purgatory.

Pauline: I do not believe that purgatory exists, there’s no trace of it in the Bible.

Joseph: Ok, it seems very appropriate to address this issue because we have clarified some points without which I could not explain what Catholics mean by purgatory.

Michael: Go ahead.

Joseph: Do you remember we just mentioned that not all sins are equally serious and that there are mortal and venial sins?

Michael, Pauline: We remember.

Joseph: Do you remember that in another conversation we talked about the issue of salvation and we said that although man is justified by faith, he also must act according to the will of God and fulfill the commandments to be saved, not as a payment for salvation, which is by grace, but as a requirement to achieve it?

Michael: Yes, we do.

Joseph: What happens if a person dies, and he is already justified by faith, but he still retains some imperfections and he has committed some venial sins?

Pauline: He goes to heaven through Christ’s merits.

Michael: According to your own way of thinking, I know you will tell me that as their sins were not mortal, they will be saved anyway.

Joseph: In this case, we Catholics do not believe that those who die in such a condition will go directly to the presence of God because the Bible says “There shall not enter into it anything defiled” (Rev 21,27).We believe they will first need to be purified. Do you remember when in the Bible the apostle demands: “Follow peace with all men and holiness: without which no man shall see God.”(Heb 12,14)?

Michael: I do.

Joseph: Notice first that he is speaking to believers there. They are already in a state of God’s grace, they have been justified by faith, but they should still seek holiness1 and peace with all, before they can see God.

And I emphasize this again because it is important. If he speaks here of a holiness which you must “follow”, he does not only refer to that initial holiness product of justification by faith they already have. Remember how the text begins: “FOLLOW”. But it is common for a believer at the time of his death not have reached it yet, as recognized by saint Paul: “Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect: but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3,12). If with these imperfections you cannot enjoy the vision of God, as the apostle says, nor they are sins unto death; it is here where we can understand why they have to be purified, and that purification process prior to the beatific vision, is what we call purgatory.

Pauline: I understand, you assume that at the moment of their death, because they have not reached perfection and they are not completely holy, they have to be purified and that happens in this place you call purgatory. But this is only a guess? Because these texts do not say they are purified in a place like that.

Joseph: I did not say that purgatory is itself a place, and we’ll get to that. What I’m trying to say is that purgatory is another of the doctrines found in the Bible implicitly. You will not find the word purgatory, nor find the word Trinity, but that does not mean they do not have biblical support. But let’s go back now on the subject of sin. We have already seen that Catholic doctrine considers mortal and venial sins and that if someone dies in a state of grace having only venial sins is saved, right?

Michael: Right.

Joseph: Could those sins be forgiven in the afterlife?

Pauline: You can only receive forgiveness of your sins in this world.

Joseph: Remember what Jesus says when he speaks to the Pharisees and warns them about the sin against the Holy Spirit, “And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world, nor in the world to come.” (Matt 12,32)

Pauline: And so what?

Joseph: Well, although the sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven in this life or the next, this means implicitly that there are other sins that can be forgiven, either in this life or the next. Otherwise, it would have just sufficed to say that it shall not be forgiven. Now, in heaven, they could not forgive sins because sin will not exist anymore. You can see here again the implied figure of purgatory, as a prior state of purification for the next life where some venial sins can be forgiven, before starting to enjoy the fullness of heaven.

Pauline: I think that’s your own very personal interpretation.

Joseph: Let me give you another example. Previously, we mentioned a text where Jesus speaks of those who according to their knowledge of the truth will have more responsibility than others: “And that servant, who knew the will of his lord and prepared not himself and did not according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not and did things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes. And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more.” (Luke 12,47-48). Note that here He is not talking about an endless punishment (that would be the punishment of the damned). The same is seen in other similar texts: “And when thou goest with thy adversary to the prince, whilst thou art in the way, endeavour to be delivered from him: lest perhaps he draw thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the exacter, and the exacter cast thee into prison. I say to thee, thou shalt not go out thence until thou pay the very last mite.”(Matt 5,25-26, also in Luke 12,58-59). There He talks about how there will be people who will suffer punishment for their actions but they could leave later, having paid all their debt, “until thou pay the very last mite”, which would not be a very appropriate figure if Jesus had wanted to indicate that they would never come out of there (which is the case of those damned).

Michael: But do not forget that in this way of interpreting the Bible, you assume that each one pays for his sins, however, we know that Christ paid for them. Christ on the cross suffered the punishment for them and delivered us of it.

Joseph: We must distinguish between forgiveness of guilt and debt of punishment. Christ has won forgiveness of sins to those who, repented of them, have been justified by faith, but the debt of punishment for our sin remains.

Michael: Explain that.

Joseph: As St. Thomas explains, two things in sin can be considered, namely: the guilty act and the consequent stain. When we sin, even once we have been forgiven, we endure what we call debt of punishment. The sinful act merits a temporal punishment because it broke the order of divine justice, which does not return but for some compensating penalty, which restores the perfection of justice.

Pauline: I really do not understand what you mean.

Joseph: In every sin there is guilt and the sinner deserves two penalties: an ontological penalty, i.e., a consequence left by sin as a negative mark on the soul and body of the sinner, and a legal penalty, for which for justice he becomes entitled to punishment. Indeed, when we sin, we contract many guilts, and we bring upon ourselves many ontological penalties, while we also do deserve more than a few legal penalties.

Baptism removes from man any guilt and any legal penalty, but it does not eliminate the ontological penalty (for example, a lecherous drunk, when baptized, will still have his liver and venereal diseases). The Sacrament of Penance erases all guilt from a Christian, but not necessarily any penalty, whether ontological or legal; that’s the reason why in the Catholic Church, the priest imposes to the penitent a legal punishment, ensuring that it also has medicinal sense; i.e.it will heal the ontological penalty, those bad marks left on the person by the sins committed.

Well, according to this, the soul in purgatory has already been freed from their sins, but as he didn’t do sufficient penance on earth for them, he must now suffer the penalty of purgatory, which eliminates in his being «any rust or stain of sin», preparing him for perfect and blissful union with God.

Pauline: Nothing you’re telling me is supported by the Bible, which tells us that when God forgives our sin, he does not remember it again.

Joseph: We can see every day the existence of the debt of punishment, and we even suffer it. Note for example that although Christ died for us and has canceled the debt even for the original sin, we still suffer diseases, we must die, we suffer the lust of the flesh, we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, and even women still suffer the pains of childbirth. All these are consequences of the original sin remaining as ontological penalty (Gen 3,15-19).

Let’s see another example also taken from the Bible. Do you remember when King David sinned seriously before God, committing adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then causing his death sending him on a suicide mission?

Michael: Yes.

Joseph: Well, despite asking God for forgiveness, and He forgave him, he still had to suffer a penalty (debt of punishment): “Why therefore hast thou despised the word of the Lord, to do evil in my sight? Thou hast killed Urias the Hethite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Therefore, the sword shall never depart from thy house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Urias the Hethite to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thy own house, and I will take thy wives before thy eyes and give them to thy neighbour, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun. For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing in the sight of all Israel and in the sight of the sun. And David said to Nathan: I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David: The Lord also hath taken away thy sin: thou shalt not die. Nevertheless, because thou hast given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, for this thing, the child that is born to thee, shall surely die. And Nathan returned to his house. The Lord also struck the child which the wife of Urias had borne to David, and his life was despaired of.” (2 Samuel 12,9-15). Notice how the prophet says that God has indeed forgiven David and he has not died nor has been condemned, but he also suffers a temporal punishment.

Another example is when Moses sinned against God by disobeying and though God forgives him, He punished him by denying him entry to the promised land: “And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: Because you have not believed me, to sanctify me before the children of Israel, you shall not bring these people into the land, which I will give them.”(Num 20,12).

Michael: I understand what you say about the consequence of sin, or debt of punishment, but I would like to see a text in the Bible speaking about purgatory.

Joseph: Now we can go to it. Let’s read this text carefully:

“For other foundation, no man can lay, but that which is laid: which is Christ Jesus. Now, if any man builds upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: Every man’s work shall be manifest. For the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire. And the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is. If any man’s work abides, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work burn, HE SHALL SUFFER LOSS: BUT HE HIMSELF SHALL BE SAVED, YET SO AS BY FIRE.” (1 Cor 3,11-15)

There Saint Paul speaks of how we the believers build the kingdom of God with our works, and how ultimately the nature of these works will be exposed by God’s judgment. Each of our works will be examined, and there will be some that will stand the test and others not, but now let us look at what he says about the believer: “he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire”. It is precisely in this figure where we see the purification of that person who, while still being saved, is cleaned of the remaining stains of his sins and imperfections. You can name it your way; we name it purgatory2.

Michael: But then purgatory is for you a kind of second chance where the righteous obtain forgiveness for less serious sins and purify themselves of their remaining imperfections?

Joseph: No, not a second chance, because regardless of purgatory being a place or a state, the person who is purified is already saved. He does not need any other chance because he has already succeeded, and the glory of heaven is awaiting him. Also, he can’t rectify there anything that he couldn’t do in life, and that suffering purifies him.

There is a story of a beloved priest3 which has helped many people understand the doctrine of purgatory. He was traveling with a jeep to the desert to pray, and he had taken two blankets with him because he knew that in the desert, the temperature is very low at night. On the way there, he found shivering a resident of one of the villages where he made a stopover, so he felt the urge to give him one of the blankets. He knew that with just a single blanket he would feel cold too, but it was worth it for a brother. In the end, he was distracted from the idea and he went on his way to camp under a large rock. At bedtime, remorse did not allow him to use both blankets, and he left one rolled near him, and he went to sleep. Suddenly he woke up and saw that a great rock had come over him and it had crushed him from the chest down. He felt all his bones crushed but no physical pain. There he had the vision of the brother suffering from the inclemency of the cold almost to death, and he tried to grab the remaining blanket to give it to him, but the stone imprisoning him prevented him from doing that. All his efforts to reach it were in vain. He woke abruptly from that dream and he understood the type of purification that those in purgatory are suffering. They can see their life and see all the good things they could have done but didn’t do, and although now they wish to change it, it’s too late; time has passed and they have lost their opportunity. That suffering, the product of love, purifies and transforms them.

This is essentially the same as Saint Paul says, about the believer who sees how some of his works fail the test and are consumed. To him, though saved, it is as passing by fire.

Michael: I understand, but why then in the Catholic Church are those who are suffering torment in purgatory represented similarly to those who are damned? Is it or is not a place?

Joseph: We do not know if it is exactly a place as we know it, or if they even are purified immediately in the presence of God but without enjoying the beatific vision. What the Church teaches is that those who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death, they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven4.

All the different works of art simply try to represent that those who are being purified are experiencing some suffering, which is natural. They suffer, as one does who knows he is so close to meet the beloved but still have to wait. They suffer as they know they may have loved more, given more, served more, taken advantage of their opportunity more, but they didn’t. The time for gaining merit has finished, and then they only wish it would have been better used but it’s no longer possible.

Imagine yourselves at the end of your life and see all the times when you caused suffering to other people when you wounded and injured them, how often you didn’t even notice, and you were like the song says: blind, deaf and dumb. Will you not suffer when realizing all this and knowing that you cannot repair it? There will be our purgatory, and hence the importance of using all the time we have in life to love and do well, to allow God’s grace to flow through us to our brothers and be living testimony of the presence of God. As the Lord says, it is now that we can be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Footnotes

  1. We call SANCTIFICATION the process that follows justification and where a justified believer with the help of grace is purified and gets closer to perfection and to full holiness.
  2. Our evangelical brothers do not usually see in this text the doctrine of purgatory because they do not accept that the figure of the fire can be used in two different senses in verses 13-14 and 15. For them, fire only symbolizes Christ’s judgment on the believer’s works, which shall devour them if they don’t overcome it, losing any reward. They understand that the believer saved “as by fire” is one who escapes from a fire while his work is consumed. The Church from the beginning has interpreted this text differently. We agree that in verses 13 and 14, fire symbolizes Christ’s judgment, however, in verse 15, it symbolizes the purification of the believer, who suffers damage and is purified as “by fire” for those small faults that were imperfectly purified.

    This is confirmed in verse 15, where it is said that it will be the person (whose work will remain embraced) who will suffer “harm”. The ζημιόω Greek verb (zemióo), which is used here, means “harm” and in passive form “suffer harm” (Balz – Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume I, Ediciones Sígueme, Salamanca 2005, p 1733-1734).

  3. I mean father Carlos Carreto, and although I never met him, I keep a great affection and appreciation for how much I learned through his books of Catholic spirituality.
  4. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030
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