Audio only:
Joe examines NT Wright’s robust argument against Purgatory, and why it’s incorrect.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Poperyu. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I wanted to look at some of the strongest arguments against the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and I want to give a particular attention to the objections raised by the well-regarded Anglican theologian int Wright. Now, some of his objections are ones that are going to be familiar to anybody who’s debated purgatory, but others are ones that I hadn’t really heard before and I think Wright actually makes a really important point, but one which I think disproves nearly every other argument against purgatory. So what is that argument? He argues that one reason that people believe in purgatory is because they recognize it, because this life is meant to be purgatorial For us as Christians,
CLIP:
I think actually purgatory is a good metaphor for the sort of thing that being a Christian in the present is that is a struggle to be holy, a struggle to finish off what’s still bad about us, the suffering that goes with that and with the world as we know. That’s why Dante’s purgatory is the most popular of his trilogy because we know that place. That’s where we live.
Joe:
I don’t know if Wright is right about Dante’s purgatory being more popular than the Inferno, but that is neither here nor there. The underlying point that he’s making is true the idea of purgatory or being spiritually purified so that we can stand before God. That idea should sound familiar to us because we are hopefully engaged in that battle of purification right now. Now that gives Catholics and Protestants some helpful starting ground for a deeper biblical exploration of the doctrine and purgatory. We should be able to agree on at least two important starting points. But before I look at what those two are, I want to say a quick thank you to all of my wonderful patrons over@shamelessjoe.com. For as little as $5 a month, you can get access to show notes and the sources used in each episode, exclusive q and as, their additional perks at every additional level of support.
For instance, last night I had a round table video call with donors at the $25 a month level. They were able to share their thoughts on my recent appearance on pints with Aquinas. Now, even more perks are coming soon, so stay tuned over@shamelessjoe.com. Okay, so the first bit of common grind to look for and Catholic Protestant conversations on purgatory would be something like this. Christians need to be purified before we can stand before God in heaven. Now, hopefully that is something that we actually agree on already. St. John says of the new heavens and the new earth that nothing unclean shall enter it nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life in St. Paul reminds the Corinthians that since we have become the temple of the living God, God now says to us, touch nothing unclean that I’ll welcome you and I will be a father to you and you should be my sons and daughters.
And Paul says of this, since we have these promises, beloved let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit and make holiness perfect in the fear of God. Now, remember Paul is speaking to the church of God, which is at Corinth with all the saints who are in the toll of Acacia. So even these saints on earth need to be told, need to be reminded to cleanse themselves and to make their holiness perfect. So Paul is clearly using the term saints to refer to those who have been imperfectly sanctified so far. They’re not done becoming completely holy, completely detached from sin and from impurity and his instructions for those of us who meet that description that we should cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit and that we should make holiness perfect in the fear of God. Now that spiritual purification can hurt.
When the prophet Isaiah sees God enthroned in heaven, he realizes that even as a faithful prophet, he is not holy enough to stand before God and so he cries out, woe is me for I am lost, for I’m a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. And in response, one of the serif impresses a burning cold to his lips and says, behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin forgiven. Now you can call that whatever you want. You can call it sanctification, purification, deification, whatever you want to call it. But the basic point is when the Catholics and Protestants should be able to agree on many of us are like those Christians in Corinth, we are not as hol as we need to be.
We still need to make our holiness perfect. Now that leads to the second point where I think we should be able to find common ground. We ought to be striving for that purification in this life. Wright seems to think that this is an argument against purgatory to say that, well, because this life is meant to be purgatorial, therefore purgatory can’t be true. But the reality is the Catholic position is yes, this life is also meant to be purgatorial. After all, Paul isn’t telling the Corinthians to wait until they die to make their holiness perfect. He’s clear that they should be striving for that right now as the catechism explains every sin, even venial entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures which must be purified either here on earth or after death in the state called purgatory. Now, obviously we disagree about whether this process of purgation continues after death, but hopefully we can agree that we can and should be engaged in that process of purgation here on earth.
In the words of St. Augustine, temporary punishments are suffered by in this life only by others after death, by others, both now and then, but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. In other words as Christians, we’re either going to experience spiritual purgation now or in purgatory or in both places. So how then does purgatory fit into that vision of spiritual purification? Now, look, purgatory is not a second chance for people who reject God in this life as it’s sometimes misunderstood to be. Rather it’s a belief in a place of final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned some believers in their lives on earth in completely purified. This is probably not news to you, but these believers are not cast into hell. Christ is the foundation of their lives, but as St. Paul says, they will be saved but only as through fire.
Still, it’s better not to have to worry about purgatory at all. As St Augustine points out as Christians, we should be striving not only to avoid the fires of hell but also the fires of purgatory. It is better to be saved as through fire than to be unsaved, but it’s better still to be like those Christians who build upon the foundation of Christ with gold, silver, and precious stones rather than with wood, hay and stubble. Understood in this way, I think the gap between Catholicism and Protestantism on purgatory might be smaller than it initially seems because we both agree, or at least we should both agree that we do need to be cleansed of every defilement of body and spirit and that this holiness needs to be completed. We need to be perfect before we can stand before the throne of God. So the whole question becomes what happens to those who die without having gotten there all the way?
Now, I’m going to explore three possible answers to that basic question, but before I get there, I want to point out something else. As soon as you admit that even believers need to be purified, a teaching that I think both the old and the New Testament are very clear on, that’s going to answer almost all of the objections you hear raised against purgatory. And you can use this simple test anytime you hear or maybe you’re tempted to use an argument against purgatory. Ask, would this also be an argument against spiritual purification in this life? If so, that’s a bad argument. For instance, I want to consider some of the other arguments that int Wright raises in his book for all the saints. Now he starts with the thief on the cross to whom Jesus says, today you’ll be with me in paradise. And that text is often used to mean that Jesus and the good thief immediately go to heaven on good Friday, even though that doesn’t actually sit very well with the rest of the biblical evidence. For instance, when Jesus tells Mary Magdalene on Easter morning that he still hasn’t yet ascended to heaven, or when the apostles describe how Jesus and said descended to Hades after the crucifixion,
CLIP:
After Jesus has died, then where is he for the next 36 hours sort of thing. And in Luke it says that he says to the brig, and today you’ll be with me in paradise. So how does that work? Part of our problem here is that we don’t have again, good English words to name what they meant much more vaguely by she or Hades or whatever,
Joe:
But let’s leave those problems aside is right, correct in claiming that the good thief is exactly the kind of person we would expect would need to go to purgatory. His argument is as follows, if there is anyone in the New Testament to whom we might’ve expected the classic doctrine of purgatory to apply, it would be this. Brit, he had no time for amendment of life. No doubt he had all kinds of sinful thoughts and desires in what was left of his body. All the standard arguments in favor of purgatory apply to him. The biblical picture though is quite the opposite. When Jesus is crucified between two criminals, those who were crucified with him also reviled him. But at some point, one of the two appears to have converted and even rebukes the other saying, do you not fear God since you’re under the same sentence of condemnation?
And we indeed justly for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong that looks and sounds like amendment of life. The man acknowledges his sinfulness, recognizes Jesus’s sinlessness and Lordship, and even accepts his own crucifixion as a suffering owed to him for his past deeds. Wright imagines that no doubt he had all kinds of sinful thoughts and desires and what was left of his body, but that appears to just be in right’s. Imagination the Bible instead depicts him as saying, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power. What greater earthly pation could anyone experience than being slowly tortured to death for their past sense and then accepting that suffering as justice while simultaneously comforting Christ and his passion and appealing to him for mercy? Another of anti anti Wright’s arguments is that Romans eight disproves purgatory.
Since Paul says that neither life nor death can separate us from the love of Christ. Wright claims that if you think Paul might’ve added though of course you’ll probably have to go through purgatory first. I think with great respect, you ought to see not a theologian but a therapist. And that argument is bizarre since the Catholic position isn’t that you have to go through purgatory before you can be loved by Christ. And so you have to be purified before you can stand before God in heaven. And Romans eight says nothing about that. St. Paul’s whole point is that we’re within the love of Christ right now and that neither death nor life can separate us from that love. Now, that’s true whether we’re on earth or in heaven or in purgatory. After all the love of God and Christ Jesus our Lord is completely consistent with God.
Also pure purifying us from sin as right has already acknowledged because that’s happening here and now in this life. As Hebrews 12 reminds us, God disciplines us for our good that we may share His holiness. Believing in that is just basic Christian theology, not a sign that you need a therapist. Now, Wright also claims that purgatory is this distinctly Catholic idea, a later doctrine only ever believed in by Roman Catholics. In his words, there is one doctrine of purgatory that taught by Rome and Anglicans rejected. But the truth is Jews have been praying for the dead for longer than Christianity has been around based on a belief in some kind of postmortem purification. And this belief is shared by the Orthodox Church as well. Now, one reason for that is that you have texts like two Maccabees 12, which describes Judas Maccabee as praying for the dead and making atonement for the dead that they might be delivered from their sin.
Wright response to this by saying the books of the Maccabees are of course in the apocrypha that the early Christians would in any case have replied that the blood of Jesus God’s son cleanses us from all sin. Again, this is a weird argument. We don’t have to imagine how the early Christians might’ve replied to second Maccabees because we can read their actual replies. They had second Maccabees and the real life. Early Christians don’t respond to the text at all in the way that right claims they would. Instead, we find them doing things like quoting the book as scripture and making the point that both this scripture and the prayers of the mass explain why Christians pray the dead. Now, of course, the reason that the real life early Christians don’t respond like the ones of right’s imagination, is that it is perfectly consistent both to believe in the power of the blood of Christ to cleanse us from all sin and our ongoing need for spiritual purification.
That journey of purification isn’t apart from Christ. It isn’t Christ isn’t good enough, so I also have to be sanctified. It is only through Christ that sanctification is possible at all, and that, as you’ll see is squarely the biblical teaching. After all, imagine the absurdity of somebody saying they don’t need to fight against sin in their life because the blood of Jesus, God’s son cleanses us from all sin. That’s clearly not what the text is teaching. After all, if you read the verse that Wright is quoting here, you’ll see that it’s not talking about a one-time past event. St. John says that if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus’ son cleanses us from all sin, and then he immediately adds that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
So again, apply the simple test. If the argument that right raises against purgatory would just as easily disprove spiritual purification in this life, I don’t need to fight against sin because the blood of Jesus does everything, then it’s not a good argument. But all of this only works if we can actually agree on that basic foundation. Christians do need to be spiritually purified. Now, as we’ve seen that’s explicitly taught in scripture, but there are Christians today who no longer believe it. So very broadly speaking, if you are sharing the idea of purgatory with a Protestant Christian, there may be three places you could find that person first. You’ve got some Christians who don’t really understand the role of spiritual purification in the Christian life. They might be aware that there’s this thing called sanctification, but that can seem radically divorced from how they’ve been taught what it is to be saved and that can be divorced from the experience of being saved.
In that case, I think the first thing you need to do is establish something more fundamental than purgatory. You need to establish the role of sanctification in the Christian life. We’ve already seen from second Corinthians seven that St. Paul talks about Christians continuing to need to be purified. Well, St. Peters similarly says, having purified your souls but your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren love one another. Earnestly from the heart in St. John says that everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he’s pure. In other words, there’s this clear sense that our spiritual purification isn’t just a one-time event in the past, but that as Christians part of our journey is an ongoing journey of trust and confidence in the Lord and that along that process we are being purified and freed from the bonds of sin and being made evermore like Christ.
Okay, so the second place he might find people are those people, and this is where Inti Wright himself seems to fall who recognize that Christians need to wage this spiritual fight, but seem to think that it just automatically resolves upon death. Now, Wright claims that the problem of the arguments for purgatory is that we’ve been fooled into thinking that the important thing is the soul. When the soul features at all in the New Testament, according to Wright in the New Testament, bodily death itself actually puts sin to an end. And that while we might struggle with sin, now bodily death finishes that all off at a single go. Now he’s going to cite his support for that passages from Romans six and from Colossians two. But once again, if you read those passages in context, you’ll see they teach something quite different than how exciting them.
In Romans six, for instance, St. Paul says that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed and that if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. But plainly, Paul is not saying that we have literally been bodily crucified with Christ. And likewise in Colossians two when he says you were buried with him in baptism, he doesn’t mean you literally bodily died when you got baptized. The reality is sin harms the soul even more than it harms the body. It’s just not the case that bodily death is automatically going to remove the damage done by sin because if it did, why would anyone ever go to hell when they died? So I think that leaves us with the third group, people who recognize that spiritual purification is an essential part of the Christian life. Many of us die imperfectly sanctified, and the death doesn’t just automatically fix sanctification somehow. So what happens then to the Christian who’s placed their trust in Christ, who’s in a state of friendship with God, but they’re not entirely pure?
CLIP:
Is everyone by the end of their life completely experientially righteous? Of course not. Will they be experientially completely righteous in heaven? Of course,
We’re already seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So there is that
Aspect. So therefore it seems that between death and heaven, there must come a final rush of sanctification. Is that correct?
I wouldn’t call. There’s no reference to anything like that. There’s no reference to purgatory, there’s no reference to temporal punishments of sins or anything like that to even give a biblical response to,
I didn’t bring up any of those topics,
But those are the subject.
You’ve just agreed that people will not be fully experientially righteous at death, but they will be fully experientially righteous in heaven. So something must happen between death and heaven that gives them that experiential righteousness. Correct?
Joe:
That’s the question we’ve been trying to explore all episode. After all, we’re saved by faith. We know that such a person isn’t going to go to hell, but they’re also not ready to go before God. If they’re going to do that, they need to be purified. Many people are going to point out at this point, God can purify us in the twinkling of an eye, and that is true. He can, as he can cure you of bodily illness or spiritual struggle that you might be facing right now. But as St. Paul found out for himself, God sometimes chooses instead to allow his power to be made perfect in our weakness, he allows us to struggle because it’s good for him and it shows his glory. So whether we’re purified slowly or all at once, we still need that purification. That’s the point of both our purgatory here on earth and that final purgatory before our entrance into heaven. So look, this is very much just a 20,000 foot view of the theology of purgatory, but hopefully you can see how it makes sense and fits in with the biblical evidence. There’s actually a great deal more that can be said and in fact, a great deal more that I have said and an episode I did two years ago. If you want to do a much deeper dive on purgatory, I need you to check it out right here for Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.