Forgive me if I'm re-stating something I've missed through coming late to this thread, but I'd like to make a couple of points which I don't think have fully come out.
Firstly - and this is something I myself have only recently really taken on board - there is a big difference between the attitude of the early Church to Scripture and that of modern day evangelicals (certainly of the more fundementalist variety). While the Old Testament, and the apostolic writtings which came to form the Canon of the New Testament, were highly valued and honoured by the Early Church, they were not necessarily taken as literally and definitively as we protestants might wish to think. Certainly the New Testament was written, not at the very outset of the church, but after several decades of oral tradition - at a time when folk realised that Christ was not going to return before all the first generation Apostles died out. By this time, a considerable body of teaching had been passed on by word of mouth, from the 12 Apostles to those they chose to oversee the new local congregations. The Church was, from the start, devoted to the Apostles' doctrine - not to a book or collection of books, but to a body of spoken teaching.
The concept of Purgatory may well have been one of the doctrines that formed a part of that oral tradition - passed on through the apostolic succession as central to the Church, who is the pillar and ground of truth. And I can see kernels of this concept within the New Testament - those who are saved 'only as through fire', for example.
However, having said that, I believe it is true to say that the full-blown doctine of purgatory as we know it today did not really take shape until the vision of St Perpetua (ca 203). Just prior to her martyrdom, she saw a vision of her brother, who had died as a young child from a cancer on his face. She saw him suffering from the cancer, and struggling to reach a fountain above his head. She was moved with pity, and prayed for him. Later she had another vision, where he was now able to drink from the fountain, and the cancer had shrunk. She continued praying, and later saw her brother, the cancer totally gone, laughing and playing with other children, blissfully happy.
From this came the belief that the prayers of saints on earth can speed their loved ones' progress through purgatory to heavenly bliss.
Anthony
Firstly - and this is something I myself have only recently really taken on board - there is a big difference between the attitude of the early Church to Scripture and that of modern day evangelicals (certainly of the more fundementalist variety). While the Old Testament, and the apostolic writtings which came to form the Canon of the New Testament, were highly valued and honoured by the Early Church, they were not necessarily taken as literally and definitively as we protestants might wish to think. Certainly the New Testament was written, not at the very outset of the church, but after several decades of oral tradition - at a time when folk realised that Christ was not going to return before all the first generation Apostles died out. By this time, a considerable body of teaching had been passed on by word of mouth, from the 12 Apostles to those they chose to oversee the new local congregations. The Church was, from the start, devoted to the Apostles' doctrine - not to a book or collection of books, but to a body of spoken teaching.
The concept of Purgatory may well have been one of the doctrines that formed a part of that oral tradition - passed on through the apostolic succession as central to the Church, who is the pillar and ground of truth. And I can see kernels of this concept within the New Testament - those who are saved 'only as through fire', for example.
However, having said that, I believe it is true to say that the full-blown doctine of purgatory as we know it today did not really take shape until the vision of St Perpetua (ca 203). Just prior to her martyrdom, she saw a vision of her brother, who had died as a young child from a cancer on his face. She saw him suffering from the cancer, and struggling to reach a fountain above his head. She was moved with pity, and prayed for him. Later she had another vision, where he was now able to drink from the fountain, and the cancer had shrunk. She continued praying, and later saw her brother, the cancer totally gone, laughing and playing with other children, blissfully happy.
From this came the belief that the prayers of saints on earth can speed their loved ones' progress through purgatory to heavenly bliss.
Anthony
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