Is There Anything Between Death and Heaven?

Michie

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How to respond to three Bible verses that Protestants use to claim that there is no intermediate state in the afterlife.

This excerpt on purgatory and the Bible is taken from Karlo Broussard’s great new book, Purgatory Is for Real, available now at the Catholic Answers Shop.

Some Protestants pose a general scriptural objection to Catholic teaching on purgatory: that the doctrine of purgatory contradicts the Bible’s teaching on the immediacy of heaven after death. There are three passages that Protestants commonly appeal to:

  • Luke 23:43—Jesus promises the good thief on the cross to be with him in Paradise on that day.
  • 2 Corinthians 5:6-8—“While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord . . . we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
  • Philippians 1:23—“I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”
Protestants who make this argument see each passage teaching that a believer enters heaven immediately after death. This doesn’t leave any room for an intermediate state like purgatory.

What can we say in response?

Continued below.
Is There Anything Between Death and Heaven?