Theopedia

Purgatory

“My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

— Philippians 1:23 (ESV)

Definition

Purgatory is the Roman Catholic teaching that most believers, after death, still owe a debt of temporal punishment for sins already forgiven and must undergo a period of suffering and purification before entering heaven.1 Reformed Baptist theology holds that Scripture recognizes only two destinies for the soul after death: those who die in Christ are made perfect in holiness at once and received into his presence, while the wicked are cast into torment, reserved for judgment.2 There is, on this reading, no third place where the souls of the redeemed are further cleansed.

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states:

“The souls of the righteous being then made perfect in holiness, are received into paradise, where they are with Christ, and behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies; and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell; where they remain in torment and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day; besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.”2

The Westminster Confession states the same teaching in nearly identical wording, closing its own chapter on the intermediate state with the same exclusion: “besides these two places for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.”3 Heinrich Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession, one of the most widely received confessions of the broader Reformed church, names the doctrine directly: “what some teach concerning the fire of purgatory is opposed to the Christian faith,” set against “the perfect purgation through Christ.”4 The 1689, alongside its confessional family, states plainly that Scripture allows no third place for the dead besides heaven and hell.

The confession locates the reason in what happens to believers at the moment of death itself: their souls are “made perfect in holiness” immediately, not merely admitted to a lesser blessedness that some further process must complete.2 The same confession elsewhere excludes the books purgatory is chiefly argued from: “the books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the Scripture.”5

Biblical Basis

Paul expected to be “with Christ” the moment he departed this life (Phil. 1:23), not after some further purification, and tells the Corinthians that “to be away from the body” is “to be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). Jesus promises the same immediacy to the thief on the cross: “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). None of these texts describe an intervening state between death and the presence of Christ.

Scripture also ties a person’s eternal destiny to what is settled at death, not to any further process afterward: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Bavinck traces this same point to the doctrine of justification: because Christ’s imputed righteousness, not the believer’s own progress toward holiness, is what fits a person for heaven, “those who believe have forgiveness and eternal life; they are ready and fit for heaven and need not go through a purgatory either here or hereafter.”6

Historical Development

The idea of a purifying interval between death and blessedness entered Christian thought as a speculative theory rather than an exegetical conclusion. Bavinck traces it to Origen (3rd century), who held that souls must undergo further punishment-purification before attaining full blessedness, an idea already present in intertestamental Jewish belief and paralleled outside Christianity in Parsism.6 In the early church, prayer for the dead began as a memorial practice, wishing the departed peace and refreshment; only gradually did it harden into a distinction between souls received directly into heaven and souls still needing purification, the latter aided by intercessions, good works, indulgences, and Masses offered on their behalf.6

The doctrine was formalized at the ecumenical Councils of Lyon (1274) and Florence (1439) and dogmatically defined at the Council of Trent (1545-63).6 The Tridentine profession of faith still required of converts states: “I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, and that the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.”7 The Reformers rejected the doctrine together with the indulgences it had come to fund, by which the church claimed authority to remit purgatorial punishment in exchange for payment; Calvin devoted a chapter of the Institutes to refuting both together, calling purgatory “a deadly device of Satan” that “makes void the cross of Christ” and “offers intolerable insult to the divine mercy.”8

Opposing Views

Roman Catholic. Roman Catholic theology holds that God’s forgiveness of sin removes its eternal penalty but not always the temporal punishment still owed for it. A believer who dies still owing that debt, or bearing the guilt of venial sin, is not yet fit for the vision of God and must satisfy the remainder in purgatory before entering heaven.1 The church claims authority to regulate, mitigate, or commute these satisfactions, drawing on a “treasury” formed by Christ’s infinite merit and the saints’ works of supererogation, an authority historically exercised through indulgences.1

In support, Catholic apologetic appeals to 2 Maccabees 12:41-45, where Judas Maccabeus sends an offering to Jerusalem so the fallen might “be delivered from their sin,”1 and to patristic testimony. Gregory of Nyssa taught that after death the soul “cannot be admitted to approach the Divinity till the purging fire shall have expiated the stains with which his soul was infected.”9 Augustine allowed that the prayers of the church benefit those Christians who died neither so faithful as to need no such help nor so unfaithful as to be beyond it.9

Objections and Responses

2 Maccabees 12:41-45 shows that prayer for the dead, and by extension purgatory, is an ancient and biblical practice. 2 Maccabees belongs to the Apocrypha, which Reformed Baptist confessional Christianity does not receive as canonical Scripture.5 Even apart from its canonicity, Bavinck observes that this intercession for the dead, current among Jews of that period, is never sanctioned, or even reported with approval, anywhere in the Old or New Testament.6

1 Corinthians 3:11-15 describes a fire that tests each person’s work, which sounds like a purifying fire after death. Bavinck answers that the passage, along with Matthew 5:22-25 and 12:32, “does not explicitly refer to a purgation of souls; only creative exegetical stretching yields anything close to it.”6 Paul is describing the testing of a believer’s works at Christ’s judgment, not the purification of the believer’s own soul.

Purgatory answers a real problem: even the most sanctified believer still carries some sin at death, so some further cleansing seems necessary. Bavinck grants the difficulty but denies the solution follows: death itself, not a purgatorial fire, is what God uses to complete the sanctification of the believer, in the same way he uses all suffering to that end in this life.6 He further presses that purgatory cannot even do the work claimed for it, since it is defined as a place where only temporal punishment is paid, not where sins are forgiven; if the souls there are still stained by sin, nothing guarantees they will not go on sinning, and if they are already righteous, there is no reason a righteous soul should be kept from heaven at all.6

Purgatory secures a genuine need for justice, since sin still standing against a believer requires satisfaction. Calvin answers that this transfers to the believer, or the church’s ministrations on the believer’s behalf, a satisfaction Scripture assigns to Christ alone: purgatory “makes void the cross of Christ” and “undermines and overthrows our faith,”8 because it treats Christ’s atonement as insufficient to secure full and immediate forgiveness for those united to him.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 750-752. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 31, “Of the State of Man after Death and of the Resurrection of the Dead,” para. 1. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chap. 32, “Of the State of Men after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead,” para. 1. ↩

  4. Heinrich Bullinger, The Second Helvetic Confession (Zurich, 1566), chap. 26, “Of the State of the Soul Departed from the Body.” ↩

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 1, “Of the Holy Scriptures,” para. 3. ↩ ↩2

  6. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 23, “The Intermediate State.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  7. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 120-121. ↩

  8. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 5, sec. 6, 576-577. ↩ ↩2

  9. C. Hodge, 3:752-753. ↩ ↩2