The Doctrine of Purgatory in Catholic Biblical Perspective

This thread will focus on the biblical grounds for the later Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. Famed evangelical apologist C. S. Lewis embraced this doctrine and famously said, "The gates of Hell are locked from the inside." The doctrine of Purgatory is tied with the Catholic obligation to pray for those in Purgatory and is therefore an extension in their doctrine of the Communion of Saints, to which the Apostles' Creed gives assent. So this thread will also discuss the biblical basis for this doctrine, as well as other NT texts that imply the possibility of ultimate release from Hell. Remember, I'm not Catholic, but am rather a Pentecostal United Methodist who has a lot of respect for Catholic distinctives, even for ones I ultimately disagree with. I find that Fundamentalists are generally clueless about how Catholic distinctives might be anchored to Scripture. This thread is intended to begin to remedy that and thereby to shed some light on why some Evangelicals in my town have left their churches to find God real in our local Catholic church.

Jesus' preferred term for Hell is Gehenna term that originally referred to a Jewish valley and trash dump outside Jerusalem. It is therefore relevant to investigate what this term means when "Gehenna" is applied to Hell. In ancient rabbinic usage, it can function as a term for temporary postmortem purgation or purification and therefore nicely overlaps with the later Catholic concept of Purgatory. Here are just 2 rabbinic texts that trace the rabbinic concept of Gehenna to the period from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD:
(a) The ancient Jewish sages apply a saying of rabbi Jose ben Johanan of Jerusalem from the 2nd century BC to a postmortem Gehenna (Mishnah Aboth 1:5).
(b) Rabbi Akiba began his rabbinic studies around 75 AD and was born prior the Jewish revolt in 66-70 AD: He teaches that Gehenna is a postmortem Hell to which the unrighteous are confined for 12 months: “The judgment of the unrighteous in Gehenna shall endure 12 months (Misnah Eduyoth 2:10).”

Jesus' preference for this term rather than other available terms suggests that He embraces its basic concept. But this claim must be bolstered by Gospel texts in which Jesus implies that one's sojourn in Gehenna can be of temporary duration. Here are 3 relevant texts:

(1) "That servant who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted shall be beaten with many stripes. But the one who did not know, but did what deserved a beating shall be beaten with few stripes. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required (Luke 12:47-48)."
The application of the finite imagery "many stripes"/ "few stripes" implies limited duration and ultimate release.


(2) "In anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay all his debt (Matthew 18:34)."
In the Parable of the 2 Debtors, the image of a debtor's prison is applied to Hell. Note that the unforgiving servant is not confined to life imprisonment; rather, the implication is that the debt can ultimately be paid, or perhaps expiated.

(3) "Make friends quickly with your accuser while you are on your way to court Truly I with Him, or your accuser may hand you over to the Judge, and the Judge to the guard, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you will never get out until you have paid the last penny (Matthew 5:25-26)."
(a) This saying makes no sense if taken literally: Jesus would be teaching his criminal disciple how to beat the rap, waiting until they walk to court with the accuser they have wronged!
(b) Crucially, Jesus always reserves the solemn phrase "Truly I say tell you" for our relationship with God and never applies it to mundane daily issues.
(c) In the Judaism of late antiquity "prison" is a common term for Hell.
(d) The word "debt" (Aramaic: "hob") is a standard word for "sin" and is used that way in the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:4).
(e) In the first 2 centuries,this saying is consistently spiritualized as opposed to taken literally as a reference to court litigation.
(f) The same saying is inserted in an eschatological context in Luke 12:57-59, a fact that lends credibility to its application to a limited purgative stay in Gehenna.
(g) This interpretation brings 5:25-26 in line with the similar imagery in 18:34.

(4) "If the work is burned up, he [the worker whose service cannot survive close scrutiny] will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as by fire (1 Corinthians 3:15)."

The meaning of the phrase "saved, yet so as by fire" cannot be reduced to "saved by the skin of his teeth" because its meaning is determined by the use of that phrase in first century Palestinian culture. The phrase is often rabbinically applied to the fate of Jews of mediocre spirituality whose works don't survive close scrutiny and therefore they are temporarily consigned to the purgative or purifying fires of Gehenna before gaining access to Heaven. [For references see Strack-Billerbeck 4,2: 1043-1049.] As a student of Rabbi Gamaliel, Paul no doubt learned the phrase from his earlier Pharisaic studies, embraced it, and applied it to the fate of Christians who build inadequately on Christ as the foundation of their faith.

 

Both David and 3rd Angel adopt the ostrich approach to the quest for biblical truth. Can I assume that this is typical of Baptist closed-mindedness and biblical myopia? Catholics here and on other evangelical sites extend the courtesy of careful consideration of evangelical biblical interpretations. I'm sure that even some Baptists here find these mindless responses appalling.

 

This section of this Baptist board is ostensibly devoted to a discussion of the biblical basis for other denominational positions. It is the height of arrogant narrow-mindedness to simply offer unreasoned pontifications dismissing how Catholics ground their positions in Scripture. By contrast, Catholics generally have the courtesy to take Fundamentalist positions seriously and then discuss them in a friendly and rational way. I might add that in non-Fundamentalist academic circles Catholic Bible scholarship is generally respected far more than Fundamentalist scholarship. I know this from regular attendance at the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature, the most prestigious and academically grounded Bible society in the world. So I plan to refer my Baptist friends to this site and ask them, "Is it even possible to reason with people of this ilk and have a productive friendly conversation?

Shoostie: "I'm not much interested in apocryphal accounts of Jews who have rejected Jesus.
You need to leave the sheltered world of the Fundamentalist Baptist Ghetto and enter the big bad world of academic Bible scholarship. Modern Bible scholars, evangelical and mainline, recognize (1) that Christianity was shaped by its Jewish background and (2) that the understanding of Bible concepts must take into account the meaning of their terminology borrowed and adapted form that culture.


Shoostie: "Apparently you've never heard of settling out of court."
(1) Apparently, you think Jesus' disciples committed crimes and that Jesus was immoral enough to school them on how to beat the rap!
(2) Also, your bias makes you incapable of actually considering and critically engaging the several reason for taking the cited sayings of Jesus in the specified spiritualized sense.

 

You guys need to remember that I'm largely repeating the case of Catholic apologists.

David Taylor: "I am not going to deal with the extra-biblical texts for obvious reasons."

LOL. What you're in effect saying is this: "I'm not going to concede that ancient figures of speech derive their use from the contemporary cultural usage,--a cornerstone of modern biblical scholarship. Jesus taught us to "hate" our families, but we know from ancient Aramaic/ Hebrew idiom that He was talking about top spiritual priorities, not about emotional venom towards families. Similarly, Shootsie doesn't seem to realize that the citation of cultural parallels to establish contemporary meaning of idioms is not an admission of divinely inspired rabbis!

David Taylor: "This [Matthew 18:23-34] is a PARABLE. And it's meaning is not to show the punishment of the believer. It is to show we are to be ready for the coming of the Lord. This is clearly explained in verse 40."

Duh, there is no vs. 40!

David Taylor: "The point of this, again, is a parable about forgiveness."


Parables don't simply have "a point;" they operate with a series of assumptions. Jesus applies the metaphor of guard torture to the heavenly Father's postmortem judgment: "So my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if... (18:35). The presumed context is the Last Judgment, not the Second Coming of Christ.

David Taylor: "This [Matthew 5:25] is talking about our dealings with others on earth."

Your unreasoned pontification ducks the 7 exegetical reasons given for the contrary interpretation.
shootsie, also ducks the collective probative value of these 7 points. And no, Shootsie, it is implausible to assume that the character of Jesus' disciples is so shoddy that they can be taken to court for social crimes. That is not what Jesus is talking about. You need to revisit the other 6 reasons offered.

David Taylor: "And, of course, the classic "proof of Purgatory" verse (1 Cor 3:15). Nowhere in this verse does it say we are going to a fire of purification for an undetermined amount of time in purgatory.

On the contrary, the rabbinic background of the text establishes precisely that point! The phrase " saved, yet so as by fire" must be determined by its usage in ancient rabbinic culture because Paul learned religious language from Rabbi Gamaliel, not from modern Baptist fiat!

David Taylor: "This Fire, shows impurities. Impurities get burnt away yes. But this is an analogy. Notice the word "as". In other words, this isn't literal."

As a spiritual realm, Purgatorial fire is not literal; it is an analogy for postmortem purgation or purification. Again, you must defer to ancient contemporary usage, not to Baptist talking points.

 

Unlike the Baptist interpretation of 1 Cor 3:12-15 the Catholic interpretation recognizes 4 key points:
(1) that the meaning of jargon phrases like "save, yet so as by fire" derives its meaning from its use in the ancient Jewish cultural context;
(2) that the rabbinic concept of Gehenna, shared by Jesus, overlaps with the later Catholic concept of Purgatory;
(3) that the purgatorial understanding of 1 Corinthians 3:15 makes it compatible with a the purgatorial understanding of Matthew 5:25-26, which must be understood in an analogous way with Matthew 18:34;
(4) that Christians die in the same moral state and character with which they lived and that many have too many character flaws to live immediately in the sinless and pure realm of Heaven.

 

Like the rabbis, Paul locates Paradise in the 3rd Heaven 2 Corinthians 12:2-3), thus implying the existence of multiple heavens and raising the question of the 2 lower heavens. Since, once again, Paul continues to embrace his Jewish view, then the suffering of the 2nd Heaven (2 Enoch 8:1-3; cp. 7:1ff) serves as precedent for the later Catholic concept of Purgatory. Catholics pray for souls in Purgatory, and so, Christ is present there to answer their prayers. Paradise is the preferred initial arrival point for the newly deceased.