Purgatory with Dr. Michael Brown

Well, hello friends and welcome to the Reform Rookie podcast. My name is Anthony Eufenio and I'm your Reform Rookie host, bringing you all things Reformed. The goal of this podcast is to take the deep-rich truths of the Reformed tradition and break them down into smaller, understandable pieces.

I want to help you see the beauty of these doctrines and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better and how they're all interconnected. Understanding these truths will help us better know the God of the Scriptures and help us to better appreciate the hope and confidence we have in Jesus Christ.

And to that I say, Semper Reformanda. Now today, I'm excited to have a really special guest on the show. I have the distinct pleasure of speaking with Dr. Michael Brown today, who is a Christian apologist and a host and the host of the Line of Fire and Ask Dr. Brown radio show.

Welcome Dr. Brown.

Hey, great to be with you, Anthony.

Thanks so much. Could you just give us a brief introduction about you and your ministry?

Yes, sir. A Jewish believer in Jesus came to faith in 1971 as a heroin shooting LSD using hippie rock drummer, 16 years old. When the Lord wonderfully saved me, my dad was thrilled to see the change in my life, but said, look, we're Jews.

We don't believe in this. Brought me to meet the local rabbi who became a good friend, began to challenge me. You don't even know Hebrew and so on. So that's what led to my academic studies, ultimately with a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and biblical scholarship undergirds everything.

That we do.

But our ministry has three main emphases, the three R's. The first is revival, meaning revival in the church, seeing believers truly turn back to God in their first love and see a great visitation in our nation.

And then the second is a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution in society. So as Jesus changes us through the gospel, we bring change to the world around us. And then the third R, redemption in Israel, working to see the Jewish people saved.

And we do that through the various arms of our ministry. We have a daily live radio broadcast, as you mentioned, the line of fire that's on radio and then airs live on the internet with a video feed as well.

I normally write about five op-eds a week dealing with the key issues in the world surrounding.

Us.

And then we've had ministry schools who raised up and sent out folks around the world on the mission field and travel and speak. But everything boils down to those three R's, revival in the church, gospel-based moral cultural revolution in society, and redemption in Israel.

Amen.

Praise God for the work you do, Dr. Brown. Thank you so much for that. So now normally I ask my guests to give their testimony into reformed theology or the doctrines of grace, but that's not going to happen today.

Dr. Brown is not reformed and actually debates against my position. In fact, I was a moderator for a debate that he did against a Calvinist. So why on earth would I mention this and why would I have Dr. Brown on the show?

Well, because Dr. Brown is a Christian and there's much to be learned from him. He's a well-respected scholar and an apologist to the Jewish community and elsewhere. He's a staunch defender of the faith and stands against many of the unbiblical issues that we're facing today, like same-sex mirage and transgenderism and abortion.

He's the author of at least 22 books that I've counted and maybe more. You can correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Brown. So I'm grateful to him and the work. How many?

Over 42 now.

Oh, my goodness. We got to update.

You missed a few. You missed a few.

Yeah.

I just went on Wikipedia.

That's all.

But I'm grateful to him and the work that he's done to advance the kingdom of God. So in the spirit of love and unity, I wanted to have Dr. Brown on the show to discuss a recent debate that he did with a Roman Catholic apologist by the name of William Albrecht on the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.

Now as Christians, Dr. Brown and I can disagree on some issues and yet still love one another and learn from one another in the midst of our differences. So with that in mind, I want to turn our attention to the topic tonight, which is purgatory.

What Purgatory Is and Why Catholics Teach It

So Dr. Brown, what would you say, what would be the definition of purgatory?

Purgatory is, in short, a place that believers would go to after death to receive further purification of their sins, to make them fit for being with God forever, with eternal life in heaven. So it is something in the afterlife.

It's not something that takes place in this world. It does have a duration. It's not eternal hell punishment, but there is purging. There is discipline. There is purification. And it is to make us ready, fully holy, fully pure, to be with God forever.

Okay.

So do you think it's something in Roman Catholic theology that holds that this is necessary? Is it something, is there something necessary due to their doctrine of salvation?

Yeah, certainly. If you have a defective view of the fullness of justification by faith, of the fullness of what happens the moment someone is born again, of the full efficacy of the blood of Jesus, of the reality of the purification we receive through the cross, all of which qualify us to be with God forever, not because of works we've done, but because of God's righteousness in Christ.

If there's anything lacking in that view, anything where the justification seeps over into works on some level, then purgatory would make sense. That yes, you're saved, you're forgiven, but you're not quite ready.

It would make sense based on that logic and based on a deficient view of the fullness of the cross.

So would this have something to do with imputed righteousness versus infused righteousness?

Yes, you could say that. Certainly, we all believe, when I say we all, those of us who believe that holiness is important say that repentance and faith go hand in hand, that a person who's a true believer will demonstrate their faith through their works.

We believe that. We believe that we prove our repentance by our deeds. And yet when we stand before God or when we enter his eternal presence, it's not that we reached a certain level in our personal sanctification and that qualifies us to get in.

It's rather that we've been accepted because of the sacrifice of Jesus.

Right.

So as a Protestant, when we repent and place our faith and trust in Jesus, we get his perfect righteousness imputed to us such that we are declared legally innocent in his sight. Now that's not true of Roman Catholicism, correct?

Yes, you would. And again, my emphasis, even in agreeing to the purgatory debate, was not even to look at Catholic doctrine, simply to say, what does the Bible say?

Right.

That was the full extent of it. So, you know, I've heard Catholic scholars say that we misinterpret their views on the cross or we misinterpret their views of justification by faith. But to me, the simple thing is to bottom line it and to say, OK, why is it that one person you're saying is qualified at death to immediately go into God's presence and be with him forever?

But someone else has to go through a period of purification and it would be because their life has not reached that state yet. Therefore, in terms of why you should be accepted forever in God's presence or why you should have fellowship with him, eternal fellowship, you cannot simply say based on the imputed righteousness of Christ.

You can't say that. It has to be that plus some level of spiritual development. Otherwise, you wouldn't need purgatory.

I think even William admitted as much when he said that there may be millions or billions of people who are instantly purified versus other people who have to undergo some temporal punishment.

Right.

So, of course, that begs the question of where that division is. It begs the question, as I pressed in the debate as to the thief on the cross, on what basis is a thief on the cross enter instantly into paradise with Jesus?

Right.

Truly, truly.

I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. The man had no time to work out his repentance, no time to demonstrate the fruits of his new faith. And yet he instantly goes to paradise with Jesus.

Another question I pressed is at the end of the age, when Jesus returns, all who are alive will be caught up to meet him in the air as he descends to set up his kingdom. So the dead in Christ rise and we who are alive and remain will be caught up to meet him in the air.

So we're all instantly transformed. And so we will be with him forever.

Right.

So why is it that every single person alive on the earth that's a believer in the last generation, every single one could be billions, hundreds of millions. We don't know the numbers, but every single one of them goes instantly into the presence of God with no purgatory.

Why? What's different about that last generation? I mean, obviously the whole thing breaks down when you press it.

It's a major inconsistency. In fact, as I was looking up some information on purgatory, the council of Trent taught that there are three realms of hell, purgatory, limbo, and hell proper, which is Gehenna, the prison, which is eternal.

So wouldn't this mean based on their own theology that some Christians would go to hell before heaven?

Yeah, a kind of hell, right?

Right.

Purgatory is more of a kind of hell than a kind of heaven. I mean, you know, William basically sought to say, no, no, you're in the presence of God already or something like that, you know, tried to not push the location issue, but it's a place of punishment.

It's a place of pain. It's a place of purging, which is not what we think of in the glorious, unfettered presence of God. And by the way, just to mention this, I asked my assistant Dylan to retract the emails leading up to the debate and to try to see for those who watched it, why there was such a profound misunderstanding of the ground rules between William and me.

I don't debate Catholics. It's just not a focus I've had over the years. I don't mean I'd refuse to. I've had endless discussions with Catholics over the decades, but I don't debate Catholics. Like my colleague, Dr. James White has specialized, among other things, in debating Catholics over the years.

It's just never been a focus of mine and you can't focus on everything equally. So I was asked by a debate moderator, William wanted to debate me on some other subject, you know, very Catholic focused subject.

I said, I have no interest in that. And then it was proposed, how about is purgatory biblical? I said, that I'll do.

Sure.

We're just going to talk about what the Bible says. Then it was proposed is purgatory ancient and biblical. I said, no interest in debating that. I'm simply going to debate this purgatory biblical. So I thought we had spelled out the parameters pretty clearly.

In William's mind, you could say, well, we never said you can't use the apocrypha. Again, in my mind, if he's debating a Protestant, we're asking if it's biblical, that's self-evident. So that was a mix up there.

And then I thought it was clear enough that we weren't debating what the church fathers said. And in many ways they were misrepresented in a debate, but that's not what the debate was about. So I wasn't going that way.

I was simply staying with what the Bible says. But it is interesting that I've had colleagues say to me that not only was there gross misinterpretation of scripture by William in the debate, but there was also misrepresentation of church fathers positions and misrepresentation of the Catholic position on purgatory.

So those things are interesting. Maybe we could probe some of those as we go on.

Sure. Absolutely. And I heard of that Dr. White guy that you talked about. I heard of him. Did you know that the Council of Trent pronounces an anathema on Protestants who reject that doctrine? It says, if anyone says that after the grace of justification has been received, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out for any repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be paid either in this world or in the other in purgatory before access can be opened to the kingdom of heaven, let him be anathema or excommunicated.

Did you know that?

First thing is the Council of Trent wouldn't have even seen us as members of the church to excommunicate. We're already outside because we're not Catholic. But this is plainly saying that if a Roman Catholic holds to the view that we espouse as clearly biblical, then we should be excommunicated.

And notice that there's something remaining of the guilt or the debt of eternal punishment and that there must be some temporal punishment. So it is still saying that on some level that you must be punished for your sins before you're capable of entering God's eternal kingdom.

And thus, in short, that the blood of Jesus is not enough, that the cross and resurrection are not enough, that our own temporal punishment must be added to it. And then, of course, that's a very, very grave mixing of grace and works, a very grave mixing.

In fact, this is one of the questions that I wanted to hit later, but I might as well bring it up now. If Jesus pays the price for our sins and incurs God's wrath upon him for our sins, what punishment are we receiving?

Are we receiving on their doctrine, are we receiving punishment for sins that have already been paid for?

It would sound like that. Again, a Catholic apologist would try to approach it differently and speak it differently. But that certainly would be how it sounds to my ears in hearing that. And here's the other thing.

We know that in this world, we can be disciplined by God. We know that Hebrews 12 talks about growing in holiness through divine discipline. So we fully understand that trials and tests and difficulties can cause us to draw near to God in this world, and we can grow in holiness.

And we know that there are times of divine discipline. Hebrews 12 uses the word punishment in this world. But it is not for the purpose of salvation or forgiveness, but rather just in our walk with God as children that this happens.

But it is always as children. And as I pointed out in the debate based on Hebrews 10, already, because of what Jesus did, we can now enter the most holy place in fellowship with God in prayer. And according to Ephesians 2, we are already seated with Christ in heavenly places.

So how does that go backwards when we die? How does it get lost? If I can go into the most holy place of all right now in fellowship with God, through the blood of Jesus, why can't I now step out of this world and be with him forever?

Being Absent from the Body and the Meaning of 1 Corinthians 3

Amen. I agree with you.

There was one scripture that you had brought up, 2 Corinthians 5 .8, to be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord. And he said that wasn't the right rendering of that particular scripture.

So I looked it up and it says, Yes, we are of good coverage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So was he justified in saying what he said? How would you look at that scripture?

Yeah, that quotation received pushback from him and some of the comments from those that were in his camp. I didn't look at all of them, but some were just outraged quoting it. But what's Paul's whole point?

The end of 2 Corinthians 4, he explains that our outward body is perishing, but our inward being is renewed every day. And we're looking at that which is eternal, not temporal. Then he starts off the 5th chapter by saying that we groan because we're in this earthly tent and we're longing for the eternal.

In this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. If indeed by putting it on we won't be found naked, so that we'll be righteous in Him. While we're in this tent, we groan being burned, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed so that this mortal may be swallowed up by life.

And then we're always of good courage. We know that while we're at home in the body, we're away from the Lord for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we're of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and home with the Lord.

I mean, it's pretty simple. And really, it's not even a big issue because the bigger issue was, say, Philippians 1 where Paul says, I desire to depart and be with Jesus. Not I desire to depart, go through purgatory and be with Jesus.

And this just backs it up that he understood if he left this world, he's present with the Lord, just like the thief on the cross, just like those who've been beheaded for their faith in Revelation 6 or before the throne, that that's the New Testament mentality.

We are awaiting our resurrected body, but in spirit, we would go be in His presence. And there's nothing misleading about the way I quoted it whatsoever. That's why I read the whole context.

Right. Yeah, no, I think that makes perfect sense. I just had never heard that rebuttal to that particular verse. And I'm just glad that you clarified it. Obviously, the big one for them is 1 Corinthians 3, 9 through 17.

So I just want to read it real quickly and then we can go through exactly what it means. Yeah, it says we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it.

Let each one take care, take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?

If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him for God's temple is holy and you are that temple. So, does this paragraph imply purification or punishment for the believer?

It implies neither, actually, and it's quite explicit. Some limited to church planters or those that are building the foundation or building on the foundation, you know, in other church work. But let's apply it to every believer, that every believer on some level is building on the foundation of Jesus.

And it says that that person's works will be tested. Now, it doesn't say that the works will be purified or that the person will be purified, let alone punished. Rather, the works will be tested. There are some passages in which we are judged by our works and there are other passages in which our works are judged.

So, this is saying you work for the Lord in this life and perhaps everything you did was based on pride or had ulterior motive or greed and, you know, you were a famous pastor with a giant ministry and so on and all that goes up in the fire.

It's wood, hay, stubble. Notice nothing is purified. Nothing here gets purified. It goes up in the fire, gone. The other, maybe you did it all with a heart of love for the Lord humility, it goes through the fire and it comes out of the fire.

Gold, silver, precious stones doesn't say that they get purified, not a syllable about it. Rather, they go through the fire and they survive. In that case, you receive a reward. What happens if everything goes up in the fire?

You're still saved, but you lose that reward. Nothing about the person's salvation, nothing about the person's purification, not a syllable, not a hint at it whatsoever.

Right.

There was one point in the debate where William said that the reward was salvation. My question would be, what would the loss be?

Exactly. If the reward is salvation and the loss is the opposite of that, but you are still saved, then what did you lose? Yes. It's utterly illogical. It even felt, again, I don't focus on Roman Catholic theology, but it even felt that things were being represented in a certain way to try to rebut my argument rather than to be faithful to the doctrine that he was defending.

Right.

He tried to combine the person with the works themselves. Why doesn't that work?

Because the text quite explicitly says the opposite. In other words, we know other texts where it says you'll be judged by your works, right? Here, it says each one's work will become manifest. It will be revealed by fire.

The fire will test what sort of work each one has done. And then if the work survives, then he receives a reward. So he is not the work.

Right.

You and I are not the work. I don't know how Paul could say it any more plainly, right? The work you did will be tested. And based on that test, you'll either receive a reward or not. You say, well, what about the final line that if anyone's work is burned up, he'll suffer loss, so he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

That means that he has been saved through fire. That's the only syllable in the whole passage that could possibly be interpreted in a purgatorial way. Number one, since the whole passage tells us the opposite of that.

Number two, since the whole New Testament tells us the opposite of that. And number three, since we have an idiom that occurs a couple of times in the Old Testament of someone being like a brand plucked from the fire,.

We know what it means.

It's metaphorical for barely escaping. So everything you did, think of it, all your life work was mixed motive or something was wrong with it. It all gets burned up. What about me? Well, you're still safe as through fire.

I mean, you barely made it, but you're still saved. It's what Peter quotes from Proverbs in 1 Peter 4. If the righteous are scarcely saved, what about the ungodly? So that's all it's talking about. And again, to read it as anything else when the whole context is telling us the opposite is a gross misreading of the text.

And in all candor, you mentioned at the outset reform issues. I fully understand how someone could read the Bible and come out of Calvinist. And I fully understand how someone could read the Bible and not come out of Calvinist.

I cannot understand how anyone could read the Bible and come out believing in purgatory. And in fact, I read this passage, memorized the passage for years before I heard that Catholics used it to teach purgatory.

It's like, what?

Are you kidding me?

And this is like the big text. You know, in the New Testament, I was shocked. And then equally shocked to hear the others that are used too. It's like, are you kidding me?

Right, right.

You know, as I have meditated on this passage, I recognize that the term gold, silver, precious stones in the Old Testament always refers to the materials that they would use to build God's temple. Right.

And earlier in the passage, Paul says that we are God's temple. So I see the gold, silver, precious jewels as being potentially the teaching that the teacher puts forth. Are they giving them gold, silver, precious jewels to build up the body of Christ, which is the temple of God.

And in the other phrase that I see, wood, hay, or straw, those are the things that the Jews had to gather together to build Pharaoh's temple. So I see a dichotomy between building up God's people or doing things of the world or sewing in something that's worldly according to Pharaoh's temple.

Does that make sense, Rajiv?

Yeah.

I mean, whether it was building Pharaoh's temple or Pharaoh's city or things like that, it's either many, many different levels on which we could understand this. I gave the example of building based on pride and self-exaltation versus, you know, just for the honor of the Lord.

It could be... It's the quality and the reason behind what we put forward, which is not always going to be evident to others. So it could be many things. It could be, yeah, I was the best known teacher on the planet, but it was just really superficial stuff.

You know, and the people that followed me were not really helped. I was still saved, but it just was unhelpful and it all goes up in the smoke, right? So I think those are good observations in terms of looking for ways to apply it.

Okay.

One last question about this. What I kind of was looking at, the fact that if we're not separated from our works the way William had argued and our works determines our reward, and when he said salvation is our reward, wouldn't that mean that we are in some way.

Saved by our own works,.

Either by including them or as something that we've done?

Yeah, it would indicate that. Again, a good point to press because that would be a logical reading of the argument that he was making.

Right.

Okay. Now, I know you guys

And then even what you read from the Council of Trent still points in that direction, that there's something we have to do to avoid further temporal punishment. Right. And if it's something that we do, then we have to be punished for it.

So there's some lack of work, some lack of work or lack of consecration on our end for which we must be punished. So again, it breaks down into a works orientation.

It reminds me of Romans 10. They pursued it as if it were by works and not by faith. I mean, this is the whole justification by faith issue.

It's a very subtle thing.

Why we have it.

It's a very subtle thing. Paul said the Jewish people had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

Right. Right.

So, okay. I know you guys didn't Well, not you guys, but you particularly didn't go into the early church fathers. But do you know if this passage was unanimously interpreted this way by the early church fathers?

No, of course not. The first thing, at one point in the debate, I just told people, hey, just get online and search. Don't take you long. Just get online and search. But at one point he said it's unanimous.

He goes, no, of course, not all of them talked about it. So in other words, let's just say theoretically that there are 50 church fathers. Okay. You know, the most famous. And let's say five of them talked about this passage and interpret it the same way.

And he'd say all the church fathers interpreted it unanimously. That's the kind of misleading statement.

Right.

And when he said, look, I've even referred to the church fathers as the disciples of the apostles. I said, no, no, no. First generation. That's how I described the first generation, like a polycarp who was a disciple of John.

Right.

What did they say? What did the first generation of the church leaders, the ones that we,.

You know,.

Justin Martyr and these others that we'd look at,.

You know,.

Our first or second generation,. What did they say about purgatory? The only place you go maybe is to origin who then believed in the eternal, the universal reconciliation of everyone. He's ultimately,.

You know,.

Excommunicated for it many years later. But you just, you don't even find it talked about. And then even later on, you find different views being expressed. So it was, it was a gross overstatement to say the least.

Right.

So what would, how would prayer, like you probably know best.

With regards to this.

Most people say that the Jews had prayers.

For the dead. That was a tradition.

How would that factor in? Is there anything in the Old Testament that talks about we should pray for the dead? Was that just a tradition.

Based on that?

There's nothing. There's nothing in the Old Testament that even suggests that there's not a single example of anyone praying.

For the dead.

And you look, you'd think that this would be recorded because it's such a natural tendency to want to do something when somebody's dead. There's so much ancestor worship to this day.

Around the world.

There's this desire.

That, you know,.

Okay, the person's lost. Can I pray? Can I pray for them now? You want to do something. So it's, it's human nature and it's part of a lot of ancient superstitious.

Religions.

And,.

And beliefs.

And yet.

Not a syllable about it in the Bible. Everything is the person dies and then they rest with their fathers.

You know,.

That's it.

They're buried.

They rest with their fathers.

You know,.

David, when he's gonna lose a child,.

You know,.

I'll go to them. They will come to me again. There's a finality. What's mentioned in Hebrews 9, it's appointed to men once to die and after this the judgment would be self-evident through the Old Testament.

You've got the righteous and the wicked. You've got life and death. You've got blessing and cursing. You've got resurrection to eternal life or resurrection to eternal shame.

And,.

And reproach in the Daniel 12. It's just either or. It's just laid out like that. So not a syllable about it.

Uh, the,.

The passage brought from 2nd Accumen. I didn't want to get into at all because that's not.

What,.

What I agreed to debate from the outset. But even there people press it and say that's really doesn't, doesn't support purgatory because even praying for idolaters, which by definition would be lost in hell.

So that doesn't really support it. And then,.

Uh,.

2nd Maccabees was never part of a widely accepted Jewish canon in the ancient world. It's even disputed through, you know, church history for centuries as far as whether it's canonical or not.

So,.

I mean that, then he said, well, you want to debate. That's not now, but I could have easily,.

You know,.

Demolish that view as well. But when you just look at what we all agree on is biblical, not a syllable in the Old Testament, not a syllable in the New Testament. And as we said, everything going in the opposite direction.

So you would think it would be recorded somewhere or a teaching either to support it or nothing, nothing, everything to the contrary.

Even Josephus.

Didn't accept that verse in 2nd Maccabees,.

Correct?

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So,.

I mean that and if you were to use 2nd Maccabees, idolatry is a mortal sin. So that cuts you off of the grace of God in Roman Catholic theology and there's no prayer that's going to change that.

Right. Exactly.

Mute point.

Yeah. And for Josephus,.

You know,.

He referenced the exact same Old Testament just included like the 12 minor prophets included them as one book. So the number is different. But yeah, the exact same Old Testament that we hold to today and that,.