The first thing to say is that this is sloppy. What exactly does "according to Rome" mean? Is the statement de fide, an opinion, or what? and "the majority of us" is the majority of whom, please? Certainly we'd guess that the majority of those whose final stop is heaven will spend some time in purgatory, but that's not doctrine.
Scripture evidently speaks of a heaven and a hell, but for purgatory, where the majority will go, it’s odd that the writers can only muster “implications.” That's quite an oversight.
ALL of those who "endure", as churchmouse puts it, Purgatory, will end up in Heaven. Purgatory is an interval, a way station, a pause, and from the point of view of eternity, almost a triviality. SO I think it's tendentious to call it "quite an oversight."
Indeed, it is odd that one could only muster implications considering its importance in the afterlife. Asides from its absence in Scripture, we realize that for almost two centuries there was nothing which even remotely resembled afterlife purgatorial thought, Origen and Clement of Alexandria being the first to indulge a concept of it with its fruition coming in the 12th century.
As a matter of fact, we do not "Realize" that,l and that statement is indicative of the lack of care which characterizes this attempt at a refutation. What churchmouse can reasonably say is that we have no surviving record from before Origen and Clement of "afterlife purgatorial thought". He cannot conclude from that that "there was nothing which even remotely resembled ...." He does not know. (or if He does know, he doesn't show us how he knows.
Succumbing to the temptation to present conjecture as known and demonstrated fact is easy and hard to avoid. In this case it casts doubt on the reliability of the writer.
And that doubt is justified, since we find Tertullian writing in the early 200's about 'sacrifices' for the dead being a custom of Christians. I think that would count as "before Origen" and as remotely resembling.
I wonder what churchmouse thinks of the doctrine of the Trinity and and its mention or lack thereof in the early days.
But I guess it needs to be said yet again that the role of "proof from Scripture" is very different in Orthodoxy and Catholicism from what it is in much of Protestantism.
Excuse typos, etc. In haste here ...
There is no purgatory!!!!!! There is no scripture and there is no second chance nonsense so some need to quit fooling themselves!!!!!!!
>ALL of those who “endure”, as churchmouse puts it, Purgatory, will end up in Heaven. Purgatory is an interval, a way station, a pause, and from the point of view of eternity, almost a triviality. SO I think it’s tendentious to call it “quite an oversight.”
So when the RCC was selling indulgences of hundreds of years... um... they were wrong, or is a hundred years just a slight pit-stop of torturous purging on the way to eternity?
>And that doubt is justified, since we find Tertullian writing in the early 200’s about ‘sacrifices’ for the dead being a custom of Christians. I think that would count as “before Origen” and as remotely resembling.
Quote please, and source sited. Empty claims are just empty. And if it does not suggest a purging of the residue of sin before heaven, guess what? It is something which MAY suggest it, but that ain’t good enough.
Just like the empty claims the RCC puts on the Marion Doctrines (Luke 1:1-4). Anything added was not known by Luke, or that is what he claims, and he was interviewing the participants, prolly even Mary herself.