Replies

You know, at some point we should take on the purgatory thing, since it is filled with divergent theology. On the other hand, and this is just a minimally informed speculation on my part, could it be that the purgatory idea stems from the idea that God's love is like a stream of fire which enraptures those who have gained a degree of theosis while it burns into torment those who have not. There's a magnificent icon of the Final Judgment which shows this quite graphically but I can't seem to find one that's any good to post. Here's a try. I think if you look close you can see the River of Fire.

Kolo, the Orthodox view of the "fire" is that of the Spirit, not the fire that burns you to death but one that fires you up to life in which those, who are in the image of Christ shine like gold does in furnace, while those who are clay and godless darken and harden. Remember, Orthodoxy is about compassion and mercy, about Life; hell is something we choose, and hellfire is a different fire from the fire of the Holy Spirit, the Life-giver.

Purgatory.

I won't "tackle" it so much as explain what I believe it is and why I believe that. I will leave it to the properly schooled theologians on the thread to slap me silly afterwards.

Purgatory is not a PLACE, but a state of being.

The problem is Scriptural.
On the one hand, you have James saying 'break one law, however small, and you've broken them all'.
You have people who have already sinned in the Bible consistently praying God to blot out their sins. Obviously they are still living.
You have Biblical statements that those with sin upon them shall not enter the Kingdom of God.
But then you have, especially in the Maccabbees, a specific rite of prayers and atonements and offerings for the dead.

Now, one argument - a Protestant one (they have cut the Maccabbees out of their Bible, partly to get rid of this particular problem) - is that when you die, that's it. Whatever sin you died with is upon you.
And if you take other parts of Scripture literally, if you die with sin, you're damned.
But the Bible says otherwise in Maccabbees. Prayers and atonement for the dead in light of the resurrection are held to be efficacious in the Bible itself.

What does one do with this welter, this spaghetti bowl of authority? Well, what I think what one does NOT do is assert some absolute certitude, like "Die with any sins, and you are damned", because the Bible says that, but doesn't say that.

"Purgatory" is a concept which Maccabbees brings to the fore. Apparently, grace is available for sins post mortem. We should not DEPEND on this and intentionally sin in life...but we should not DENY it either, because it is explicitly in the Bible, in Maccabbees.

So, when I say Purgatory is a state, not a place, I am being as objective as I can be with the confusing evidence. God apparently has provided a mechanism, a safety catch, for souls upon death. How it works certainly cannot be determined by the Scripture, although prayers for the dead clearly are indicated. (And indeed, if there were no such "catchment", then prayers for the dead would be pointless, in vain, and accomplish nothing other than make us feel good - they would be SUPERSTITION. But they aren't superstition, because of Maccabbees.)

Now, when we try to get any more specific than that...other than in imaginative art like Dante's "Purgatorio"...it starts getting ridiculous. An exception would be if a Saint has had revealed by God to him or her some aspects about the state of Purgatory. To my knowledge, that hasn't really happened.

So, given all of that, a STATE of Purgatory is a necessary thing, for the Bible to work, especially given Maccabbees. But a PLACE called Purgatory is not perforce necessary, and it goes to far to assert it absent a revelation of a Saint.

You are now free to fire at will on the big target I have painted on myself.