“Because St. Paul, being thoroughly Catholic, believes that sin is a work rather than a nature.”
Except the flame in 1 Cor 3 is being applied to the building, not the builder:
“He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
10 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.”
The individual is the “builder”, and he is building up the Church. It is not the builder that is flamed, but the building - to see if the builder worked in stone or straw.
“The Epistle though speaks of the whole human being a God’s building.”
Nope. The person doing the work is the BUILDER. Not the BUILDING. He is the PLANTER, not the FIELD.
“The residue, while not sin, represents an impurity of which the soul is purified.”
God says he forgets the sin.
“11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” - Psalms 103
And again: “God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
Set aside. It is gone. The Judge has declared us innocent: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.”
You write: “The Holy Scripture says it is akin to punishment; it is a “loss”.
No. The poor builder thought he had done great things but then finds out God placed no value on it - he was building the church with straw. Again - ZERO mention of sin or impurity. Nothing to punish. Nothing is removed from the builder’s soul. But “ each one’s work will become manifest” - not his moral life, not his sin, but the work he did on the building. He loses a REWARD, not impurities that the blood of Jesus was not able to handle.
You cannot take the verses out of context. The church is described as a field, or a building, being labored on by ministers:
“For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human?
5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.”
annalex: "The Epistle though speaks of the whole human being a God's building"
Nope. The person doing the work is the BUILDER. Not the BUILDING. He is the PLANTER, not the FIELD.
The last quote (from you Mr Rogers) should at least give one pause, especially considering 1 Cor 3:9 that you just quoted.
annalex is closer to the truth here it seems when one examines this passage again. Consider 1 Cor 3:10 which you quoted:
"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."
You left something out though, namely the sentence, "But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon."
In other words, every man builds upon the foundation provided by Christ. Every man "builds", his own "building" that is himself (again verse 9).
When we include that the passage 1 Cor 3:8-11 it becomes:
3:8 Now he that planteth and he that watereth, are one. And every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour.
3:9 For we are God's coadjutors. You are God's husbandry: you are God's building.
3:10 According to the grace of God that is given to me, as a wise architect, I have laid the foundation: and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
What St Paul is saying here is that he (St Paul) "laid the foundation" (in those who accepted the Gospel from him) and the newly converted becomes the "builder" who builds on this foundation, the foundation of the Gospel, the foundation Who is really Jesus (verses 5 and 7), builds a building that is also the believer. (Verse 9).
In other words, we are both the building and the builder (of our own lives. We build with God's help of course, but together with Him we build the building that is our own life). This is the only way to interpret this passage without contradicting it in some fashion (as you did when you insisted "Nope. The person doing the work is the BUILDER. Not the BUILDING. ". That clearly contradicts verse 9 that clearly states "you are God's building". Not "you are God's builder" but "building". This parallels the usage of the "potter and clay" imagery elsewhere in Scripture. We are the clay, not the potter).
Verse 11 sums up this relationship clearly putting God (Jesus) in the role of Who (and what) is the "foundation": Christ Jesus.
A "foundation" is not a "building" though a building is built on a foundation and this is where we see the cooperative relationship between God and Man; Man builds on what Christ (and only Him) founded. This takes us through verse 11.
Then from verse 12 onward we read St Paul's warnings of what can and does happen if Man does NOT cooperate with God, by building not with that which survives but with that which "is burned" (verse 15), then he will "suffer loss" but "still be saved".
So this entire passage 1 Cor 3:3-15, is talking about a man who is already saved, already assured salvation, but even after such assurance is "tested by fire" and that which he built that "remains" remains (and is rewarded for) but that which is consumed he is not rewarded for, but regardless he is saved no matter what.
So what state of life does this sound like? Do we see anyone being so tested in this life? I don't think we do, because even Scripture describes this kind of test as a future event (verse 13).
That future event can't be Hell, because no one who is "saved" goes to Hell. It can't be Heaven, since no one in Heaven is so tested. So that can only mean there is a future event where everyone is so tested (verse 13) and that event, that "state" if you will, the Church has called "Purgatory", since we are "purged" in that state of all that "burns" away.
No, that is not what the text says:
For we are God' s coadjutors: you are God' s husbandry; you are God' s building (1 Cor. 3:9)
And then:
he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. (1 Cor. 3:15)
These verses clearly refer to the man himself being allegorized as a building. I agree that the man also appears as a builder in Verse 10, as are Paul and Apollo, but that is consistent with the view that the people in focus are Christians building their lives on the foundation of Christ. It does not refer strictly to ministerial clergy, since the metaphor Paul provides applies to "every man".
ZERO mention of sin or impurity
Sin indeed is not in the picture because Purgatory, not Hell is described here. "Impurity" as a word means admixture of lower material and we obviously have plenty of references to that here.