Last I heard, there was no such thing.
Why would Protestants/non-catholics want to discuss purgatory? I’d have more to say about Hogwarts or Middle Earth.
The main function of purgatory is control of people here in the temporal world. It’s also very good for the penance industry. It’s harder to bilk indulgence money out of people fully assured of their salvation without a pony hell they have to spend 3 to 5 in first.
I’m catholic and OF COURSE there’s a Purgatory.
It’s in Maine.
Use the GPS for directions.
Real or not, it’s a creepy name for a town :)
In Roman Catholic theology, purgatory is an intermediate state after physical death in which some of those ultimately destined for heaven must first "undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven," holding that "certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come." And that entrance into Heaven requires the "remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven," for which indulgences may be given which remove "either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin," such as an "unhealthy attachment" to sin
Prayers for the dead express hope that God will free the person who has died from any burden of sin and prepare a place for him or her in heaven.
Death remains a mystery for us–a great unknown. Yet Christian language evokes a hopeful imagination in the presence of death, an assurance that our love, linked to Christ’s love, can help bridge whatever barriers might keep those whom we love from fully enjoying the presence of a loving and life-giving God.
Consequently purgatory and all the pomp, services, and business transactions associated with it are to be regarded as nothing else than illusions of the devil, for purgatory, too, is contrary to the fundamental article that Christ alone, and not the work of man, can help souls.
Sure looks like he was conciliatory to the subject. C'mon man!
If we are washed clean by the Blood, if salvation is a free gift and not by works, if we have been perfected forever, if our sins were as crimson but now are as white as snow, then what purpose would purgatory serve? It doesn’t make sense.
John 3:36
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”
No third option. Solemn: Wrath Abitheth
Regardless of what he said about purgatory, I think his late embrace of rabid anti-Semitism stands as a warning about his failure as a thinker.
Catholics sure like to make things up. Remember Limbo? That’s where unbaptized babies went. I’ve never seen Purgatory mentioned in the bible.
For Luther’s sake, he had better hoped for a Purgatory upon his death.
“Luther Thought Purgatory was an Open Question?”
Purgatory may exist but there is no hard proof of it spelled out in the Bible. Just speculation.
An excellent discussion and examination on the topic with extensive OT and NT references is the book — “The Fire That Consumes” by Edward William Fudge. It is considered the reference book on this topic of “Hell”.
bump
My take (a Protestant, overall Bible nerd, who’s read the “apocrypha” books in the Catholic OT once and studied a lot of church history).
It’s probably best not to quote everything by Luther as though it’s his official doctrinal belief. He had a habit of going off the cuff to make a point to win a debate (think Trump). So it’s not like a dual personality when he says that purgatory is “an appropriation of the devil”, then later says purgatory “…we have received neither command nor instruction. For these reasons, it may be best to abandon it [derhalben man es mocht wohl lassen], even if it were neither error nor idolatry”. It’s a logical argument to abandon purgatory if the Bible doesn’t address the dead, and especially if the devil has tempted church leaders to abuse it.
I think many people who know about the purgatory debate know about an incident of praying for the dead being mentioned in 2nd Maccabees, and that that’s one of the books in the Catholic Bible but not the Protestant Bible because St. Jerome couldn’t find a copy written in Hebrew or Aramaic when he translated the books in what we now call the “Old Testament” into the Latin Vulgate (the old Latin word “vulgar” at the time meaning having to do with the common man – like everybody in St. Jerome’s day knowing Latin more than the Greek language in the Septuagint). So Protestants tell Catholics to not read much into the apocrypha books (“apocrypha” meaning unknown), including 2nd Maccabees and the incidence of praying for the dead.
I ask to Catholics who I believe to be fellow Christians, even if you believe 2nd Maccabees is part of the Bible canon, why stop there? There are many other, much more detailed, descriptions in the Old Testament about the place of the dead. What the Hebrew people called “Sheol”. For example, Genesis 37:35, 42:38, 44:29, 44:31; Job 14:31 describe Sheol as a place that the righteous dead go to, while Numbers 16:30 & 33; 1 Kings 2:9; Psalm 9:17, 31:17, 49:14 describe people who reject the Lord going to Sheol. There are many other examples of both. And should the church teach it’s possible to communicate with the dead because of the story in 1st Samuel 28? There’s so much more detail in the OT to have those beliefs about the dead than the few lines in 2nd Maccabees about praying for the dead.
If you don’t want to adopt the other, much more detailed descriptions about the place of the dead in the Old Testament, then it’s hard to justify going off on a tangent from the minimal purgatory teaching in one otherwise obscure Old Testament book that nobody believes we have the original writings of, just a copy of what Jason of Cyrene says was in 2nd Maccabees. When I say “original writings” I’m not expecting us to be able to lay our hands on the original writing of Judah Maccabee any more than we can lay our hands on the original copy of Genesis. I’m saying we don’t even have a good copy of 2nd Maccabees, just a conglomeration of various writings that Jason of Cyrene said was in it. So surely a couple of lines supporting a belief in purgatory from a book we don’t even know is accurate to the original shouldn’t take precedence over all the other Old Testament descriptions of the place of the dead (Sheol) from copies of books written by people who were known to be prophets of God (not just a good military leader like Judah Maccabee), but also that we know line-by-line what we have in today’s copies of their books is exactly what was originally written.
I read through Luther’s collected works one summer about 23 years ago (I still remember the Library of Congress call number off the top of my head because I had to go back and forth to pick up 50 or so volumes a few at a time: BR 330.E5 1955).
Luther believed in Purgatory until the late 1520s. He essentially emptied it of meaning as time went by. He finally fully discarded it because it no longer could fit into his invented system.
Sin cannot enter Heaven and the presence of God. Purgatory supposedly burns it away, purges it. But the Bible says that accepting Christ’s sacrifice removes sin. So there is nothing to purge.
For God so loved the world, He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever BELIEVETH IN HIM should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
Short stories of Purgatory -A remarkable collection of visits from the souls in Purgatory to …"
you guys don't agree with Luther on so many things -- the Lutherans have priests, they have an episcopate (bishops, priests etc.), they believe in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and they also have confession to a priest.
Other western christians (with the exception of Anglicans) don't have this.
If Luther held to something, like Baptism, he said that those who don't follow it are vile. But Baptists (for one) disagree with him
Arguably the Unitarians or the Jehovah's Witnesses were the full implementation of the Reformatting. Luther, Calvin nor the Zwinglists went far enough.