Straight to Heaven, Straight to Hell...

Do these three Bible verses debunk the Catholic doctrine of purgatory?​

One of the most common objections Protestants raise against the Catholic doctrine of purgatory is that it seems to contradict what Jesus taught about the immediacy of heaven after death. In fact, well-known Protestant writers Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie make this exact case in their book Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences.

Their argument is simple: Jesus teaches that people either go straight to heaven or straight to hell after death, leaving no room for an in-between purification like purgatory. They point to three passages in Luke’s Gospel as proof: Luke 23:43, Luke 16:26, and Luke 16:22-24.

But do these passages really close the door on purgatory? Let’s take a closer look.

The Good Thief and “Paradise” (Luke 23:43)​

At first glance, Jesus’ words to the good thief on the cross—“Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise”—sound like a slam dunk. If the thief is in heaven that very day, then what need is there for purgatory?

As Jimmy Akin argues in A Daily Defense (Day 205), this could be a simple matter of punctuation. In the original Greek, there were no commas. So the verse could just as easily be read: “Truly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.” On this reading, “today” emphasizes the timing of Jesus’ promise, not the thief’s arrival in paradise.

If we look deeper, the argument assumes that “paradise” means “heaven.” In Jewish thought, however, “paradise” (Greek, paradeisos) often referred to the blessed state of the righteous dead—what Jesus elsewhere calls “Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22, which we’ll cover too in just a second). Importantly, this exchange happened before Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, which means heaven itself wasn’t even open yet (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 661, 1023). So it’s reasonable to conclude that “paradise” here refers not to heaven proper, but to that intermediate place of blessedness where the righteous awaited Christ’s victory.

Continued below.