Purgatory: Biblical or Mythical? Pt I(White vs Stravinskas)

Debate Introduction and Speaker Credentials

I'm going to cut to the chase here tonight, and I'm going to start introducing the folks who are going to be actually involved in this event tonight. First, I'd like to introduce to you Dr. James White, the evangelical debater.

Dr. White is one of several pastors at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church in Arizona, where he also serves as director of a theologically reformed apologetics organization called Alpha and Omega Ministries.

He's the author of 17 books, including The Roman Catholic Controversy, Mary, Another Redeemer, Answers to Catholic Claims, and The Potter's Freedom. A New Testament Greek scholar, he also served on the translation team for the New American Standard Bible Update.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. James White. Now I'd like my friend Arnold Pilsner of Americans United for the Pope to step up. He is going to introduce to you our Roman Catholic debater, Father Peter Stravinskas.

Arnold? Ladies and gentlemen, Arnold Pilsner. Thank you, Chris. It is my pleasure this evening to welcome and introduce to you Father Peter Stravinskas. Father Stravinskas is the founding editor of The Catholic Answer, a widely read magazine that answers questions about the Catholic faith.

Father is also the author of 21 books and more than 500 articles, which explain the Catholic faith. As an apologist, he participates in debates around the country to let people know what the church teaches and to answer their questions.

Father Stravinskas is the founder and head of Newman House, which is an association of priests who specialize in teaching at the elementary, high school, and university levels. He likewise serves as adjunct professor of education at Seton Hall in South Orange, New Jersey, adjunct professor of education and classics at Holy Apostle Seminary, and adjunct professor of humanities at the Graduate School of Drew University.

Father has conducted retreats and lectured in 70 dioceses of the United States and overseas. Father was born in Newark, New Jersey, where he attended parochial elementary and secondary schools and then entered the seminary in 1968, and he was ordained a priest in May of 1977.

He has taught and administered Catholic education institutions at the elementary, secondary, university levels. Father holds a bachelor of arts degree in classical languages and French from Seton Hall University, a master of arts in school administration, a master of arts in biblical theology, a doctor of philosophy in school administration, and a license of sacred theology and systematic theology.

Father is the author of many books that answer a wide variety of questions commonly asked about the Catholic faith. Tonight, Father will speak about the church's teaching about purgatory and its biblical foundations.

I want to personally welcome and thank Dr. James White for being with us again this evening. I thank Dr. White for all that he has done to make this debate in the past a dignified, informative, and lively exchange each year.

My final thanks to Chris Arnson for all the hard work he does each year to make the great debate a huge success. Thank you, Chris. Now I'd like to introduce to you our moderator. We are very privileged to have Dr. Warren Frazina of Hofstra University as our moderator.

He is associate professor of philosophy and religious studies and acting dean of the Honors College at Hofstra University. He earned the Ph .D. in theology, philosophy, and the history of religion at the University of Chicago's Divinity School.

He writes on Chinese Confucianism and American philosophy and teaches courses in Eastern religion, religion and the news media, and American philosophy. Here he is, Dr. Warren Frazina. I would just like to let both of our debaters know that I care deeply about your safety tonight because you never know in a situation like this when you have a mixed group what kind of explosive situation you might have.

And today, serving as bodyguards for Dr. White, we have the Christian Motorcycles Association of America. And I want to be clear to all of you that I care deeply about the safety of Father Stravinskas as well, so we do also have a bodyguard for him.

I was just wondering, has Mother Angelica arrived yet? Don't laugh. I saw her once throw an ornery Jehovah's Witness through a plate glass window, so believe me, she can take care of herself. Well, I hope you're all prepared for an exciting and edifying debate.

Opening Remarks on Purgatory and the Gospel

This is a very important issue we're hearing about tonight, folks, the issue of purgatory because it addresses the very nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Last week, when I opened up the debate on homosexuality, a liberal minister in the audience who may even be here tonight, let me know if you see a glowing orange dot on my forehead, but he was very upset merely because I said at the opening statements that only one side can be right at this debate tonight.

And it was totally baffling to me that he would be so upset being a liberal, that I said only one side could be correct, and I actually responded to him in a letter and said to him, well, how much of the evangelical view that unrepentant homosexuals who do not come to Christ are damned, how much of that do you believe in?

How much of that are you willing to concede is correct? Obviously, as a liberal, he would not concede to any of that. So this was merely obviously a smokescreen. He knew only one side in that debate could be correct.

And the thing that I feel at ease about tonight is that I know that both Father Stravinskis and Dr. White know that this is not a gray area. Only one side of this issue can be correct, and I ask of you all to really pray seriously as you listen to these men, and when you leave here, pray with diligence and fervency with open Bibles about this matter, because it is indeed a serious one.

And now I'd like us all to bow for a silent word of prayer before we begin. Amen. Thank you very much. I will now turn the debate over to our moderator, Dr. Warren Frisina. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.

Debate Format and Opening Statement by Father Stravinskas

It's good to see some of the faces from last week. It's a pleasure to be back with you again today. As I said last week, I spend my life in universities, and the heart of universities is inquiry, and one of the best things about inquiry is when two people engage in serious and impassioned debate on important questions.

So it is a pleasure to be back. Let me remind the folks who were here last time and tell those for whom this is their first visit what our format is. We'll begin with opening remarks. Each of our speakers will have 30 minutes.

That'll be followed by 15 minutes of rebuttal. Each will in turn have 15 minutes to speak. We'll stand up and stretch, take a 10-minute break after that. Then we'll begin the cross-examination periods.

There'll be two cross-examinations. The person who is doing the cross-examining will be able to ask whatever questions seems appropriate to him. The person responding will be expected to answer the questions but not ask any new questions.

That opportunity will come when he gets the turn to ask questions. Both those sessions will go 25 minutes. We'll take a second round of cross-examinations, again, each with 25 minutes. And then we will have final remarks, 10 minutes from Father Stravinskas and 10 minutes from Reverend White.

Oh, I'm sorry, and then there's one last step here. We didn't have this last week. There'll be time for questions from the audience after that. So I want you to be thinking about the kinds of questions you'd like to ask.

And also keep in mind that when that time comes, we want you to ask questions rather than make long extended speeches so that our speakers can have an opportunity to respond to those issues that are so important to everybody.

My job is really easy today. I have this little mechanical timer. We set it. I don't have to do much. They pretty much know what's going on. We just push two, oops, two fives, and then two zeros. Oh, I'm sorry, 30 minutes.

That's right. The first is, thank you very much. See, I don't have this gig down yet. Three, zero, zero, zero. And we'll, our first speaker tonight will be Father Stravinskas.

Thank you. As a Johnny come lately to the great debate, I hesitate to say at the outset that I really wish the title of this would be a little different. I would frankly prefer something like the great conversation or the great dialogue.

Why? Well, because I think we should have learned a lesson from history that, for example, the medieval disputations with the Jews did little to bring them to Christ or to his church. And nor did their 16th century equivalent do all that much for Martin Luther.

In our own time, however, we have found a couple of very promising things occur. First of all, the Catholic dialogue with the Nestorian church, which broke from Catholic unity about 15 centuries ago, has, as a matter of fact, resulted in a theological consensus poising us for serious talks on organic reunion.

And secondly, the very impressive fruit of the Lutheran Catholic dialogue, which has been the joint declaration on justification. I think these results were achieved because we decided to set aside an approach which might be termed a theology of confrontation in favor of a theology of convergence, which should not be confused, however, with compromise.

In other words, what I hope is that we can try to find some language which stresses important areas of agreement, which can then help us move more confidently into areas of continued disagreement. Another point I'd like to raise from the beginning is the importance of recalling that Dr. White's theological agenda has far more in common with that of Catholicism than perhaps either he or I might be tempted to admit.

For example, an acceptance of a religion with a transcendental horizon, the maintenance of a stance which operates from the centrality of divine revelation rather than some sort of erector set approach to the formation of theology, a firm adherence to most of the doctrines which the 19th century evangelicals termed the fundamentals.

So for example, the inerrancy and inspiration of sacred scripture, the divinity of Christ in his virginal birth, the atoning value of Jesus' death along with his bodily resurrection, and the glorious return of Christ.

Which leads to my next point. We Catholics here need to applaud Dr. White's commitment to doctrine, because no ecumenism worthy of the name is possible without taking seriously doctrine and theology. Otherwise, we're all reduced to some kind of vague do-goodism.

And so we need to present the truth in love. Our goal should never be simply to get another notch in one's apologetical belt. After all, it is possible to win an argument or a debate and lose souls in the process, either one's own or someone else's.

Therefore, it's necessary to try to understand what's really being said, rather than listening for key words or slogans, which would just manifest a gotcha attitude. And that would demonstrate, of course, an interest in neither truth nor love.

With those principles in place, allow me to share with you three stories about purgatory and Protestants. First, some years ago, when Jimmy Swaggart and I were theological pen pals, before his fall from grace, which we need to explain, I guess, if salvation is assured once one is justified by faith alone, but that's a topic for another moment.

But at any rate, he and I got onto the topic of purgatory and prayers for the dead. He assured me that if he lived to be 100, he could never accept the doctrine of purgatory. A bit tongue-in-cheek, I responded, Brother Swaggart, on your deathbed, you're going to be praying there's a purgatory.

I'm not sure he quite got my point. Two, at about the same time, I was party to a conversation with the great Dr. James McCord, longtime president of Princeton Theological Seminary. Another priest asked him about Protestants and the doctrine of purgatory.

Somewhat glibly, he replied, Father, our Reformed theology tells us there is no purgatory, but I can assure you that every Protestant I know prays for his deceased relatives and friends. Third, John Henry Cardinal Newman, the Bicentennial of whose birth we commemorate this year, at the age of 15, embarked on a decades-long journey, in the words of his motto, ex imaginibus erumbris in veritatem, from images and shadows into the truth.

For many years on his theological sojourn, Newman stood by the teaching of the 39 articles of religion of the Anglican Communion, one of which describes purgatory as a pernicious doctrine. With much prayer, intense study of the whole thrust of sacred scripture, as well as the convincing witness of the Fathers of the Church, he ended up writing one of the finest works on purgatory written in Christian history, The Dream of Gerontius, which rivals the depth and beauty of Dante's appreciation of purgatory in his Divina Commedia.

These vignettes are fairly typical of where most Protestants are on the theological radar screen regarding our topic this evening. Those who hold and live their opposition, those who maintain one position in their head and a different one in their heart, and those who come to a completely opposite stance after a period of time, sometimes after years of study and prayerful reflection.

So, having backed into the issue, let us ask and answer directly just what purgatory is, relying on the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We read, All 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 heaven. The Church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.

The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on purgatory, especially at the councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire.

Here is cited 1 Corinthians 3 .15 and 1 Peter 1 .7. Then, quoting a passage from Pope St. Gregory the Great, which in turn is a comment of his on Matthew 12 .31, we read,. As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that before the final judgment there is a purifying fire.

He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence, we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.

The Catechism goes on. This teaching is also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in sacred Scripture. Quote,. Therefore Judas Maccabeus made atonement for the dead that they might be delivered from their sin.

From the beginning, the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers and suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that thus purified they may attain the beatific vision of God.

The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead. At that point, we're treated to an excerpt from a homily of St. John Chrysostom on 1 Corinthians, in which the Great Eastern Father quotes Job 1 .5.

Chrysostom urges his listeners in these words, Let us help and commemorate the dead. If Job's sons were purified by their father's sacrifice, why should we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation?

Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them. In just three short paragraphs, the whole doctrine is set forth, which we might summarize in this way. First, the Church sees her position as consonant with the Scriptures as they have been received and interpreted within the tradition from time immemorial.

Second, some of the elect, perhaps many, need post-death purification. Third, there is a hierarchy of sin, found explicated clearly in 1 John 5 .17, such that lesser sins can be atoned for after death.

Fourthly, prayer for the dead, especially the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice for them, is not a novelty of the Catholic Church, but goes back to the earliest days of Christianity, and that in turn has its roots in the Judaism lived by our Lord.

The current teaching is in the trajectory with the entire tradition, beginning with catacomb inscriptions, as well as with fathers like Tertullian, around the year 200, Cyril of Jerusalem, 350, Gregory of Nyssa, 380, Epiphanius of Salamis, 374, Chrysostom, 398, the Liturgy of Serapion, 350, and Augustine in 392.

One should notice that the authorities cited reflect the broad sweep of Christian theology from East and West alike, as found on the three continents where the Church existed at that time, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Furthermore, I've deliberately refrained from citing anyone beyond the 4th century, because the preponderance of evidence at that point, then, becomes unbelievably unwieldy. These early indicators of how the Church understood the afterlife, and the standard exegesis of various pericopes, was then crystallized in the teachings of the councils of Lyon in 1274, Florence in 1439, and Trent in 1563.

Very simply put, that is the broad picture of the Catholic position on purgatory. Now, because Catholic theology is of one piece, a seamless garment, if you will, this necessarily touches on a host of other issues as well.

Like the communion of saints, like intercessory prayer, like the nature of justification, and how one achieves justification, salvation, etc. I find it significant that we do not discover any opposition to the doctrine of purgatory until the 16th century, for all practical purposes.

A couple of heretical, marginal groups here and there, but as a matter of fact, they dissented on a host of issues with which Dr. White himself would not be comfortable dissenting either. It's significant, for example, that when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the cathedral door, absent from that list was an attack on the doctrine of purgatory.

And over 30 years later, at the Augsburg Confession, absent from a list of neuralgic issues was any discussion of purgatory. Indulgences, yes, but not purgatory. Very simply, I think we have to come to the conclusion that the novelty in regard to purgatory is not the Catholic position on it, but those who would dissent from it.

To discover 16, 17, or 20 centuries after the fact that there's a problem with a teaching is, as a matter of fact, a novelty. Thank you. Reverend White. Good evening. Thank you for being here. I would like to apologize ahead of time.

Should I join my brother Chris in a massive fit of coughing, we seem to share much in common, and sadly we seem to be sharing an allergic reaction to something in the Long Island air as well. So, of course, I come from Arizona, and that means there's all sorts of stuff in your air that I don't encounter but once a year, and so it wreaks havoc.

It is good to see you all here this evening. I commend you for being here. Each year I try to commend the audience for being concerned about issues of truth. There are so few in our society who care about these things today that it is indeed heartening, no matter what side you are on, to see someone who is concerned about truth.

I'll admit that my encounter last week in debating with a liberal on the subject of homosexuality made me look forward to this evening, because I don't know about the rest of you, but I find it significantly easier to deal with someone who actually believes in truth than someone who does not.

I've often said when someone says, how do you witness to someone from the Christian Science Church? And the Christian scientists don't believe that any of this is real. We're all an illusion. I've often said, well, I'm really not sure.

I suppose you could punch him in the nose and say, does that hurt? Okay, there's a place to start. Probably might not work very well, but I have a hard time with those who don't believe that truth exists.

I have a hard time dialoguing in that area. This evening we address a momentous topic. There have been those who have been going, ah, purgatory. Didn't they get rid of that at Vatican II? So they didn't show up tonight.

In reality, I think that this subject this year applies with clarity the vast differences between our two sides that we saw last year in the debate on justification. I believe that we see here the difference between the theocentric position that I presented then that is focused upon what God has done in Jesus Christ and his sovereign decree and the issue of sacramentalism and the concept of grace that is inherent therein.

Purgatory, Sacramentalism, and the Sufficiency of Christ

Now very few in our society today know the history of the development over time of this doctrine of purgatory. So let's review that, then look at the scant number of biblical passages that Roman Catholicism has cited in defense of this doctrine and close by noting the vast number of biblical passages that teach contrary to the fundamental elements of the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, most especially the teaching of Holy Scripture that Christ's death is complete, perfect, finished, and fully propitiatory.

Now the idea of suffering for sins after death before entering into a state of bliss is really nothing new. Historians have identified such a concept in many of man's religions. The sole Jewish source that is cited by Roman Catholicism in defense of this particular concept, even by the 1994 Catholic Catechism as we just heard read, is 2 Maccabees 12 39 -45.

Now I'm not sure how many of you have been reading 2 Maccabees of late, but in that story we read of a group of Jewish fighters, all of whom were idolaters. They carried pagan idols under their clothing, and according to the story, God struck them down as punishment for their idolatry.

Now this uninspired book, rejected as canonical by such notable early fathers as Melito of Sardis, Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, and Jerome, as well as Pope Gregory the Great and at least 50 other major ecclesiastical writers up to the time of the Reformation, including Cardinal Cayetan, the prelate who interviewed Luther, says that the Jewish leader offered prayers and sacrifices for these dead soldiers.

It seems that any connection at all with death is sufficient at this point, for obviously, since idolatry is a mortal sin, and would send one not to purgatory, but to hell itself, this passage is hardly supportive of the doctrine we examine tonight.

At the very best, it would have to be said that the passage indicates an error in thinking on the part of the Jews, but given its highly unusual and idiosyncratic nature, and the fact that no canonical scripture supports it, its very use begins to illustrate for us the highly questionable nature of purgatory as a dogma of the Christian faith.

When we come to the earliest centuries of the Christian church, we find no doctrine of purgatory. What we find fairly early on are prayers for the dead, often cited, even by my learned opponent this evening, as evidence of at least an implicit concept of purgatory.

Yet as historians such as Lagoff point out, these primitive prayers are actually contradictory to the modern concept of purgatory. They pray for their loved ones, that they might have refrigerium, refreshment, and yet this is couched in terms of the pleasures of paradise, a state defined as peace and light.

Mormon comments that refrigerium referred to heavenly happiness, and that, quote, among later Christian writers, refrigerium is used in a general way to denote the joys of the world beyond the grave promised by God to the elect, end quote.

Neal, upon collating and studying ancient liturgical sources, concluded, quote, that prayers for the dead have been from the beginning the practice of the universal church, but, number two, and this without any idea of a purgatory of pain or of any state from which the departed soul has to be delivered as from one of misery, end quote.

The ease with which modern apologists for Roman Catholicism point to these prayers, without taking serious note of their character and the lack of a meaningful context by which to make them truly supportive of their case, should give us reason to examine their claims more carefully.

Indeed, Tertullian, upon making reference to making oblations on the anniversary of someone's death, frankly admitted, quote, if you look in Scripture for a formal law governing these and similar practices, you will find none.

It is tradition that justifies them, custom that confirms them, and faith that observes them, end quote. What a strange, strange statement if, in fact, the passages Roman Catholic apologists cite are, in fact, relevant.

Evidently, Tertullian recognized that this was merely a practice, not a doctrine, let alone a dogma. How time transformed this simple practice into something wholly different. The chief architects of the earliest concepts that led to purgatory only decrease our confidence in the doctrine.

In the East, we have Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Both wrote extensively, and much of what they said would not be believed by almost anyone here this evening, Catholic or Protestant. Both engaged in allegorical interpretation that was devoid of meaningful exegetical content.

And while Origen did know both Greek and Hebrew, his view of Scripture as having all sorts of levels of meaning led him to ignore the literal, historical, grammatical meaning and focus upon an allegedly higher spiritual meaning.

Both, likewise, were influenced more by Plato than they were by Paul, leading to a strange, in fact, unorthodox theology. Both men were led into wild speculations, especially in regard to the idea of a corrective, punitive cleansing of the soul.

This idea came primarily from Greek philosophy and dualism, surely not from Scripture. At the same time, non-canonical, Gnostic-influenced works such as the Apocalypse of Peter or the Apocalypse of Paul likewise present a concept of the afterlife derived not from the Bible but from Greek philosophy.

These works, despite their non-canonical status, deeply influenced the rise of purgatorial thinking in the Middle Ages. In the West, we find Augustine strangely giving credence to a concept of purgation as well, though, as he likewise believed in predestination and election and the idea that saving faith is a gift of God, he melded these concepts into a strangely inconsistent hole that led him to believe that such sufferings would only avail for the elect and none others.

He was influenced in his thinking by his mother's dying request to be remembered in his prayers. But most importantly, we find a full half-millennia after the founding of the Church, Gregory, Bishop of Rome, known as Pope Gregory the Great today.

This man's theology was a mess, quite simply. He was at best a semi-Pelagian who gave tremendous weight to the idea of merit and works. He did not believe man was dead in sin but only wounded or sick.

He was ignorant of both Greek and Hebrew and knew absolutely nothing of biblical backgrounds as well. He would not have made it out of any decent undergraduate Bible program today, I can guarantee you that.

Yet, he wrote extensively, putting his manifest ignorance on paper. One of his works, completed after he became Pope, was a work on Job filled with the most inane and silly allegorical interpretation.

Schaff gives us an illustration of Gregory's thinking in this work. Here's some of the words. The names of persons and things, the numbers and even the syllables of the book of Job are filled with mystic meaning.

Job represents Christ. His wife, the carnal nature. His seven sons, seven being the number of perfection, represent the apostles and hence the clergy. His three daughters, the three classes of the faithful laity who are to worship the Trinity, of course.

His friends are the heretics, the 7 ,000 sheep, the perfect Christians, the 3 ,000 camels, the heathen and Samaritans, the 500 yoke of oxen and 500 she-asses again represent the heathen. That was Gregory's interpretation of the book of Job.

Ironically, this same work contains Gregory's rejection of Maccabees as a canonical work. But it was another work of Gregory, interestingly enough, cited by the Catholic Catechism called The Dialogues that is of importance to us tonight.

These dialogues between Gregory and the Roman Archdeacon Peter abound, as Schaff says, quote, in incredible marvels and visions of the state of departed souls, end quote. Gregory admits that he is transmitting hearsay only and did not himself see any of these alleged visions.

This is the work, however, that becomes foundational to the development in the Middle Ages of the doctrine that became dogma at the Council of Florence yet 900 years in the future. And so we have the beginnings of what would eventually become the modern dogma of purgatory, scattered references from Origen the allegorist who believed that even Satan himself would be saved and who likewise believed in the pre-existence of souls.

Tertullian who became a Montanist, Augustine who was deeply influenced by his mother's request and whose exegesis of Matthew 12 ignored the simple parallel passage in Mark 3 that, as we shall see, renders Matthew 12 irrelevant to its use by Rome today.

And most importantly, Gregory, who could not even read the original languages, offered allegorical interpretation, the place of true exegesis, and who passed on hearsay stories about visions of the afterlife that became central to the development of the concept of purgatory during the Middle Ages.

Indeed, did not Peter warn us about what happens when untaught and unstable persons distort the scriptures? He certainly did. Now time precludes delving much into the development of the actual dogma of purgatory primarily in the 12th century and its elevation to the status of dogma by the Council of Florence in the 15th century, a council history shows to have been political in nature, one that could hardly be said to have seriously considered anything of an exegetical or biblical nature.

Indeed, Florence, if you've read the history of it, spent more time worrying about where to put the chairs for the seating of the Greek delegates than it did on the study of the Bible. Yet the modern Catholic Church views Florence as the 17th ecumenical council and the modern catechism relies upon Florence and Trent, as we've heard, to define purgatory in section 1031 despite the fact that it was likewise Florence that gave us these words, words which are so easily understood in their original context but which ring so very hollow in today's ecumenical setting.

These are the words, quote, It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, cannot become participants in eternal life but will depart into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the church of benefit for salvation and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church, end quote.

I don't know about you but such a history does not recommend it to my thinking as something worthy of my faith and assent. I cannot help but think of the words of Scripture, to the law and to the testimony.

If they speak not in accordance to this word, there is no light in them, Isaiah 820. And so we now turn to the few passages that have been pressed into service by Rome to substantiate the dogma that is purgatory.

I hope you have your Bibles with you this evening. Second Maccabees chapter 12 has already been addressed in the few comments that I made earlier in regards to idolatry. Matthew chapter 12 verses 31 through 32 say therefore I say to you any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people.

But blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man shall be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come.

The assertion is that the phrase either in this age or in the age to come indicates the possibility of the forgiveness at least of temporal punishments of sin in the age to come after this life. The problem with that is that a basic work of exegesis is that when you are studying especially the synoptic Gospels you see if there is a parallel passage that will help to shed light upon what is being intended.

There is a parallel passage. It is Mark chapter 3 verses 28 through 29. Here we read truly I say to you all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.

There is the meaning of what Jesus is saying in Matthew 12. He is not in any way shape or form suggesting the possibility of forgiveness in a future age. He is saying that the sin is an eternal sin. It is an unforgivable sin and that of course is the context of Matthew chapter 12.

It is the unpardonable sin. The next passage to look at is 1 Corinthians chapter 3. I think we will probably end up spending most of our time here in the biblical discussion because it is foundational to the concept.

But as no text exists without a context please note that there is a context to this passage. It begins in verse 8. Now he who plants and he who waters are one but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor for we are God's fellow workers you are God's field God's building.

According to the grace of God which was given to me like a wise master builder I laid a foundation and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it for no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid which is Christ Jesus.

Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold silver precious stones wood hay straw each man's work will become evident for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work.

If any man's work which he has built on it remains he will receive a reward if any man's work is burned up he will suffer loss but he himself will be saved yet so as through fire. Now context is the determining factor here.

Paul is talking about ministers in the church in the previous section he's been talking about he and Apollos and Cephas and others and he said he has laid a foundation. Let a man be careful how he builds upon the foundation that Paul has laid.

The two individuals who are tested are leaders in the church who had good and godly motivations in what they did and leaders in the church with bad motivations. See the problem is we can't always tell which one's which.

We can't in this life necessarily see the motivations that fill the heart of man but there will come a day when those motivations will be revealed. Each leader's work is tested it is their work that is tested not their souls.

There's nothing here about temporal punishments of sins notice that even the godly leader every godly leader is tested. Are we to believe that every godly leader will go to purgatory? There are no saints who have done anything in the church?

Certainly not. Notice the text says it is the quality of their works that is tested not punished. There's a vast difference between testing the quality of a work or punishing someone for the temporal punishments of their sins.