Suppose a friend or co-worker comes to you and says:
"The Catholic Church has this massive doctrine of purgatory,
invented in the middle ages. The Church used to even sell
indulgences to shorten your time in purgatory by a fixed number of
days. This doctrine is based on books that don't belong in the
Bible. There is no place or region in the afterlife for the saved
except heaven. There is no pain in the afterlife, and the minute we
die we go to heaven, as Paul says, 'To be absent from the body is
to be present with Christ,' praying for people in purgatory makes
no sense. Worst of all, it infringes on the sufficiency of Christ's
work. It is completely unbiblical. No Protestant could believe
it."
What should you say?
Well, the first thing you should say is, "Whoa! Slow down! One
argument at a time, okay?" Then go over his arguments with him
individually . . .
1. "The Catholic Church has this massive doctrine of
purgatory."
This is quite false. As an illustration of this, the section on
purgatory in the Catechism of the Catholic Church is only three
paragraphs long (CCC 1030-1032). In essence, there are only three
points on the matter which the Catholic Church insists: (1) that
there is a purification after death, (2) that this purification
involves some kind of pain or discomfort, and (3) that God assists
those in this purification in response to the actions of the
living. Among the things the Church does not insist on are the
ideas that purgatory is a place or that it takes time, as we shall
see below.
2. "Invented in the middle ages."
The idea that purgatory is a late invention is similarly false. In
fact, it has been part of the true religion since before the time
of Christ. It is witnessed to not only in such as 2 Maccabees,
which itself witnesses to the belief (see below), but in other
pre-Christian Jewish books as well, such as The Life of Adam and
Eve, which speaks of Adam being freed from purgatory on the Last
Day.
It was also part of the true religion in Jesus' day, as the
writings of the New Testament show. And it has been part of the
true religion ever since Christ's day, as the writings of the
Church Fathers show (see the Catholic Answers pamphlet: "The
Fathers Know Best: Purgatory" ).
Not only Catholics believe in this final purification, but the
Eastern Orthodox do as well (though they often do not use the term
"purgatory" for it), as do Orthodox Jews. In fact, to this day,
when a Jewish person's loved one dies, he prays a prayer known as
the Mourner's Qaddish for eleven months after the death for the
loved one's purification.
Because the doctrine of purgatory was held by pre-Christian Jews,
post-Christian Jews, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox, nobody
thought of denying it until the Protestant Reformation, and thus
only Protestants deny it today.
3. "The Church used to even sell indulgences to shorten your time
in purgatory by a fixed number of days."
Concerning this argument, first point out that it really deals with
the issue of indulgences, which is a separate matter (see my piece,
"A Primer on Indulgences" ). If one wishes to really hear what
Catholics have to say for themselves, one subject must be dealt
with at a time, not several at once in some kind of "buckshot"
approach to apologetics.
Second, indulgences were never sold. At one time, for a period of
perhaps two hundred years, it was possible to give a charitable
donation to some cause, such as an orphanage or church building
fund, as one of the ways in which an indulgence could be obtained.
This was no different than Protestant ministries offering something
in exchange for a charitable contribution or "love offering" to a
worthy cause. However, because of the scandal that Protestants
produced, over four hundred years ago (shortly after the Council of
Trent) the Church forbade charitable giving as a way of obtaining
indulgences.
Third, Protestants are often confused by the number of "days" that
used to be attached to indulgences. They have nothing to do with
time in purgatory. Indulgences originally arose as a way of
shortening a penitential period on earth. The number of "days" that
were attached to indulgences were not understood as shortening time
in purgatory, but as easing the purification after death by an
amount analogous to the shortening of an earthly penitential period
by the number of days indicated.
Fourth, because some people were confused by thinking purgatory was
shortened by a set number of days with an indulgence, the Church
abolished the "day" figures attached to indulgences specifically to
eliminate this confusion.
Fifth, the reason that the "days" were never understood to be days
of literal time off in purgatory is that the medieval theologians,
such as St. Thomas Aquinas, those living at precisely the period
when they "days" were attached to indulgences, were very clear
about the fact that time does not work the same way in the
afterlife as it does here. In fact, they had a special term for it,
and would contrast three different temporal modalities -- the
ordinary flow of events we experience here on earth, called "time;"
the perpetual present that God experiences, called "eternity;" and
the middle, less well understood state experienced by those in the
afterlife, known as "aeviternity."
So the Church has never said that purgatory involves the same kind
of time as we experience here on earth, or even time at all. Thus
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, no theological liberal, writes that
purgatory may involve "existential" rather than "temporal" duration
(cf. Ratzinger's book Eschatology). It may be someone one
experiences, but experiences in a moment, rather than something one
endures over time.
4. "This doctrine is based on books that don't belong in the
Bible."
When a Protestant says this, he has in mind 2 Maccabees 12, in
which Judah Maccabee and his men pray for their fallen comrades who
had "fallen asleep in righteousness" so that they may be "freed
from their sins" in the afterlife, and it was a "holy and pious
thought" for them to do this.
Thus 2 Maccabees endorses praying for the dead that they may be
loosed from the consequences of their sins (for it must be the
consequences of sin that are in mind since the saved are not
sinning in the afterlife). Since it is not pleasant to be bound to
the consequences of one's sins, we can infer some kind of pain or
discomfort, and thus the full doctrine of purgatory -- a
purification (freeing) after death, which involves some kind of
pain or discomfort, and which can be assisted by the prayers of the
living.
However, while 2 Maccabees 12 certainly teaches the doctrine of
purgatory, the doctrine is in no way "based on" that passage. The
doctrine can also be supported from numerous passages in the New
Testament, but more fundamentally (and this is what you should
point out to the Protestant), it can be derived from the principles
of Protestant theology alone.
You see, Protestant are very firm (in fact, insistent) about the
fact that we continue sinning until the end of this life because of
our corrupt nature. However, they are equally firm (if you press
them) about the fact that we will not be sinning in heaven because
we will no longer have a corrupt nature. Thus between death and
glory there must be a sanctification -- a purification -- of our
natures.
This purification may take no time, but as we have seen, this is no
barrier to the doctrine of purgatory. The fact remains that between
death and glory must come purification, and that is purgatory by
definition -- the final purification or, to put it in more
Protestant terms, "the final sanctification" or "the last rush of
sanctification."
