Purgatory And Prayers For The Dead.

[Valletta]

I think the theology and doctrine of the church was fully established by the third century. As seen in your hundreds of words replies, with over 100 of those words being "liturgy", it's clear to me that man started overcomplicating Christianity after the time of the actual early fathers.

The Word of God is so rich and has been given to us with many things not explained in detailed words. There are layers of meaning meant for us to prayerfully ponder and reflect upon and build upon.

 

[prodromos]

The east has mountains of complaints from the past, the west has too; what good do they do?

It was probably in response to the misinformation you posted in #286

Purgatory is just a word; it signifies the state between a Christian's death and their reception into the presence of God in the beatific vision. What one thinks it is like is a matter for the Church to teach. Eastern churches believe such a state exists but do not teach anything definitive about it. That is fine. The Catholic Church does teach something definitive about it and that is ever better.

The Catholic Church teaches something that was never taught prior to the schism.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

I have already spoken of the devotion of the ancient Jewish church to the souls of the departed. But perhaps you are not aware that the Jews retain to this day, in their Liturgy, the pious practice of praying for the dead. Yet such in reality is the case.

Amid all the wanderings and vicissitudes of life, though dismembered and dispersed like sheep without a shepherd over the face of the globe, the children of Israel have never forgotten or neglected the sacred duty of praying for their deceased brethren.

Unwilling to make this assertion without the strongest evidence, I procured from a Jewish convert an authorized Prayer-Book of the Hebrew church, from which I extract the following formula of prayers which are prescribed for funerals: “Departed brother! mayest thou find open the gates of heaven, and see the city of peace and the dwellings of safety, and meet the ministering angels hastening joyfully toward thee. And may the High Priest stand to receive thee, and go thou to the end, rest in peace, and rise again into life. May the repose established in the celestial abode ... be the lot, dwelling and the resting-place of the soul of our deceased brother (whom the Spirit of the Lord may guide into Paradise), who departed from this world, according to the will of God, the Lord of heaven and earth. May the supreme King of kings, through His infinite mercy, hide him under the shadow of His wing. May He raise him at the end of his days and cause him to drink of the stream of His delights.”(Jewish Prayer Book. Edited by Isaac Leeser, published by Slote & Mooney, Philadelphia.)

Among the many-sided merits of Shakespeare may be mentioned his happy faculty of portraying to life the manners and customs and traditional faith of the times which he describes. How deep-rooted in the Christian heart in pre-Reformation times, was the belief in Purgatory, may be inferred from a passage in Hamlet who probably lived in the early part of the eighth century. Thus speaks to Hamlet the spirit of his murdered father:

“I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain time to walk the night;
And for the day confin'd too fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away.”(Hamlet, Act 1)

I am happy to say that the more advanced and enlightened members of the Episcopalian church are steadily returning to the faith of their fore-fathers regarding prayers for the dead. An acquaintance of mine, once a distinguished clergyman of the Episcopal communion, but now a convert, informed me that hundreds of Protestant clergymen in this country, and particularly in England, have a firm belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead, but for well-known reasons they are reserved in the expression of their faith. He easily convinced me of the truth of his assertion, particularly as far as the Church of England is concerned, by sending me six different works published in London, all bearing on the subject of Purgatory. These books are printed under the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal church; they all contain prayers for the dead and prove, from Catholic grounds, the existence of a middle state after death and the duty of praying for our deceased brethren.(See Path of Holiness, Rivington's, London. Treasury of Devotion, Ibid. Catechism of Theology, Masten, London.)

To sum up, we see the practice of praying for the dead enforced in the ancient Hebrew church and in the Jewish synagogue of today. We see it proclaimed age after age by all the Fathers of Christendom. We see it incorporated in every one of the ancient Liturgies of the East and of the West. We see it zealously taught by the Russian church of today, and by that immense family of schismatic Christians scattered over the East. We behold it, in fine, a cherished devotion of one thousand three hundred millions of Catholics, as well as of a respectable portion of the Episcopal church.

Would it not, my friend, be the height of rashness and presumption in you to prefer your private opinion to this immense weight of learning, sanctity and authority? Would it not be impiety in you to stand aside with sealed lips while the Christian world is sending up an unceasing De profundis for departed brethren? Would it not be cold and heartless in you not to pray for your deceased friends, on account of prejudices which have no grounds in Scripture, tradition or reason itself?

If a brother leaves you to cross the broad Atlantic, religion and affection prompt you to pray for him during his absence. And if the same brother crosses the narrow sea of death to pass to the shores of eternity, why not pray for him then also? When he crosses the Atlantic his soul, imprisoned in the flesh, is absent from you; when he passes the sea of death his soul, released from the flesh, has gone from you. What difference does this make with regard to the duty of your intercession? For what is death? A mere separation of body and soul. The body, indeed, dies, but the soul “lives and moves and has its being.” It continues after death, as before, to think, to remember, to love. And do not God's dominion and mercy extend over that soul beyond the grave as well as this side of it? Who shall place the limits to God's empire and say to Him: “Thus far Thou shalt go and no farther?” Two thousand years after Abraham's death our Lord said: “I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”(Mark 12:26-27.)

If, then, it is profitable for you to pray for your brother in the flesh, why should it be useless for you to pray for him out of the flesh? For while he was living you prayed not for his body, but for his soul.

If this brother of yours dies with some slight stains upon his soul, a sin of impatience, for instance, or an idle word, is he fit to enter heaven with these blemishes upon his soul? No; the sanctity of God forbids it, for “nothing defiled shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”(Rev 21:27.) Will you consign him, for these minor transgressions, to eternal torments with adulterers and murderers? No; the justice and mercy of God forbid it. Therefore, your common sense demands a middle place of expiation for the purgation of the soul before it is worthy of enjoying the companionship of God and His Saints.

God “will render to every man according to his works,”—to the pure and unsullied everlasting bliss; to the reprobate eternal damnation; to souls stained with minor faults a place of temporary purgation. I cannot recall any doctrine of the Christian religion more consoling to the human heart than the article of faith which teaches the efficacy of prayers for the faithful departed. It robs death of its sting. It encircles the chamber of mourning with a rainbow of hope. It assuages the bitterness of our sorrow, and reconciles us to our loss. It keeps us in touch with the departed dead as correspondence keeps us in touch with the absent living. It preserves their memory fresh and green in our hearts.

It gives us that keen satisfaction which springs from the consciousness that we can aid those loved ones who are gone before us by alleviating their pains, shortening their exile, and hastening their entrance into their true country.

It familiarizes us with the existence of a life beyond the grave, and with the hope of being reunited with those whom we cherished on earth, and of dwelling with them in that home where there is no separation, or sorrow, or death, but eternal joy and peace and rest.

I have seen a devoted daughter minister with tender solicitude at the sick-bed of a fond parent. Many an anxious day and sleepless night did she watch at his bedside. She moistened the parched lips, and cooled the fevered brow, and raised the drooping head on its pillow. Every change in her patient for better or worse brought a corresponding sunshine or gloom to her heart. It was filial love that prompted all this. Her father died and she followed his remains to the grave. Though not a Catholic, standing by the bier she burst those chains which a cruel religious prejudice had wrought around her heart, and, rising superior to her sect, she cried out: Lord, have mercy on his soul. It was the voice of nature and of religion.

Oh, far from us a religion which would decree an eternal divorce between the living and the dead. How consoling is it to the Catholic to think that, in praying thus for his departed friend, his prayers are not in violation of, but in accordance with, the voice of the Church; and that as, like Augustine, he watches at the pillow of a dying mother, so like Augustine, he can continue the same office of piety for her soul after she is dead by praying for her! How cheering the reflection that the golden link of prayer unites you still to those who “fell asleep in the Lord,” that you can still speak to them and pray for them!

Tennyson grasps the Catholic feeling when he makes his hero, whose course is run, thus address his surviving comrade, Sir Bedivere:

“I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within Himself make pure; but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If knowing God they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”(Morte D'Arthur.)

Oh! it is this thought that robs death of its sting and makes the separation of friends endurable. If your departed friend needs not your prayers, they are not lost, but, like the rain absorbed by the sun, and descending again in fruitful showers on our fields, they will be gathered by the Sun of justice, and will fall in refreshing showers of grace upon your head: “Cast thy bread upon the running waters; for, after a long time, thou shalt find it again.”(Eccles 11:1)

 

[Valletta]

It was probably in response to the misinformation you posted in #286

The Catholic Church teaches something that was never taught prior to the schism.

As to teachings that are officially declared, yes those have changed before and after the schism. And will continue to be changed as we reach a fuller and fuller understanding of God's Word. Some things, like prayers for the dead, have indeed been practiced since OT times.

 

[Lukaris]

I have always understood that certain Psalms involve prayer for the earthly living and the departed. Psalms like 23, 86, 88, 91, 130 etc. Prayer for the departed never seemed like a big deal; it was just understood.

 

[prodromos]

As to teachings that are officially declared, yes those have changed before and after the schism. And will continue to be changed as we reach a fuller and fuller understanding of God's Word. Some things, like prayers for the dead, have indeed been practiced since OT times.

The Apostles didn't have a full understanding of their faith?
We know better than them now?

 

[ozso]

Anything you don’t understand, I am happy to clarify. Rather than just criticizing my work as being somehow academically inaccessible and the product of an MDiv education (which it is not; I learned very little about the early church in Divinity School and even less about liturgics and Eastern Christianity, the emphasis rather being on the liberal postmodern theology that has basically destroyed the United Church of Christ, causing it to lose the majority of its members and causing it to earn the derisive nickname “Unitarians Considering Christ”, rather, my knowledge of the Eastern Church and of liturgics was formed long after I had left the halls of academia and the liberal mainline church, while simultaneously working as a freelance software developer specializing in embedded systems programming, which is fun but particularly challenging, since it consists of programming the very simple computers that run anything from a television, a microwave oven or a wireless router to the process control computers such as SCADA systems used in industrial automation, or other hard real-time applications in safety critical environments. So the time I had available to study this material was negligible. Suffice it to say, if I can do it, and if my friend @MarkRohfrietsch who works in an equally demanding technical profession can do it, in terms of the advanced knowledge he has acquired regarding Lutheran theology and his ordination as a deacon, I daresay you can do it also.



No, you wouldn’t. As I believe I stated in the post, I am available to help members of ChristianForums obtain easy access to any of the materials I cite in my works (with a few exceptions, certain books which are expensive and not in the public domain, like the Oxford History of Christian Worship or the Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer, or the nine volume Cambridge History of Christianity, but you will note that I did not cite those publications.



I don’t have a photographic memory, I don’t know of anyone on ChristianForums who does have a photographic memory, and the only members who have MDivs who I routinely engage in discussions with, when we have discussions, we primarily talk about issues relating to pastoral care and the proper governance of a parish church.

Now something like this is readily understandable:

It also varies from being a gross oversimplification to being wildly inaccurate. For example, it includes Eusebius of Caesarea as an early church father, despite the fact that he was a semi-Arian who protested the actions at the Council of Nicaea but then melodramatically signed the document, as if he were under duress (which he was not). His history of the church is regarded as being of dubious accuracy, his Life of Constantine is sycophantic, and smacks of being a part of the effort of Arians, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia, to cozy up to the Emperor and his family in order to bypass the Council of Nicaea, a plot in which they were successful, resulting in decades of persecutions of Christians by the Arian emperors from Constantius through Valens, and also, it was not so much St. Ambrose who was responsible for the conversion of St. Augustine as his own mother. The article also follows the Great Apostasy trope that we see from Adventists, Landmark Baptists, adherents of various other Restorationist denominations such as the Plymouth Brethren and the Churches of Christ, and which has also increasingly been adopted by fundamentalist Calvinists and non-denominational Evangelicals, many of whom take their Eschatology wholesale from John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren. Lastly, the article perpetuates the false dichotomy of Protestantism vs. Roman Catholicism, completely ignoring the existence of the Eastern churches, which is perhaps its most infuriating defect of all.

I suppose my greatest criticism of the article is that it buys into the hagiographic descriptions of certain Early Church Fathers when it suits it, and then makes an unsubstantiated claim that defending the Gospel against heresy resulted in a loss of doctrinal orthodoxy, the development of Roman Catholic theological errors, and a loss of focus on transmitting the Gospel in its pure form. In making this assertion, it does not explain why this is so; it does not mention any specific Church Fathers who defended the Gospel against heresy in a manner that was detrimental to evangelization (because there were none), and it also seeks to deflect attention away from this unsupported statement with a strategically placed declaration of the usual Nuda Scriptura argument along with a statement of the Infallibility of Scripture, ignoring the fact that for the Post-Nicene as well as the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the four canonical Gospels, and certain other writings whose canonicity was never disputed, were central to their faith, and once the New Testament canon was finalized by St. Athanasius, who the article does not even mention despite him doing that, and almost single-handedly defeating Arianism, not just at the Council of Nicaea, but through enduring decades of exile during which time he built a coalition of fellow Christian bishops who were ready, when the Arian emperor Valens was succeeded by a Christian emperor, to convene another ecumenical council and ensure that the Arian heresy was disposed of, by closing the loopholes inadvertently included in the initial version of the Nicene Creed that some Arian heretics as well as others, such as the Pneumatomacchians, who denied that the Holy Spirit was God, a person of the Holy Trinity, and the Apollinarians, who claimed that our Lord had a human body but a divine soul, and also subscribed to chiliasm.

Also I would note the article provides no citations to back up any of its claims, and thus fails the most basic standards of academic and intellectual rigor. Everything I have asserted in this thread can be verified by reading the aformentioned books on the history of the Orthodox Church, and also through the Cambridge History of Christianity, the Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity, and other sources. For that matter, I anticipate that Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican and Roman Catholic members will endorse my appraisal of that article, such as my friends @prodromos @Lukaris @dzheremi @MarkRohfrietsch @ViaCrucis @Ain't Zwinglian @Jipsah @chevyontheriver @Michie and @Valletta .

Basically, Patristics is too rich and complicated a subject to be crammed into three paragraphs, since at a minimum, it concerns itself with the activity of the Christian Church during the first 500-1000 years of its existence, and even the question of how long the Patristic era lasted before, for example, the start of the Scholastic Era in the Roman Church, where St. John of Damascus is regarded as the last Early Church Father, and subsequent leaders like St. Odo of Cluny, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas and so on were not Early Church Fathers but rather Schoolmen, who would later benefit from various works of antiquity such as the writings of Aristotle being translated into Latin from Arabic, into which they had been translated from Greek and Syriac manuscripts by monks of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.

Can you imagine if the Gospel was written like that? If that much painstaking detail was given to every person place and thing?

 

[ozso]

Not necessarily; it is complex.
I would ordinarily be happy to provide an overview of the different concepts but the problem is, it is a complex subject and you seem to have an aversion to long posts and there is no way I could attain the brevity you desire without misleading you as to the correct doctrine through oversimplification. And frankly I am not sure if anyone on the forum can explain the different Eastern Orthodox conceptualizations of what happens to the soul after death, since there are at least three different theories I am aware of, and the principal commonality between them is found in the liturgical services held after an Orthodox Christian reposes. Oriental Orthodoxy is similar but not identical and not as well understood in the West, and the same is true for the Assyrian Church of the East.

However since it is topical if other users want to know, and if my Eastern and Oriental Orthodox friends @prodromos @Lukaris @HTacianas @dzheremi and another new member whose name I keep forgetting don’t want to get into it, I might cover it.

For the time being I recommend Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, and for a detailed look at one of the three theories, The Soul After Dearh by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. I would of course suggest these works anyway, so I suppose no matter what I will be accused of demanding hundreds of hours of time to find and research the books, despite the fact that I have offered to assist members in accessing any of the books I recommend, and of requiring a photographic memory, despite the fact that I lack such a memory, and as far as an MDiv is concerned, my knowledge of the liturgy and of Eastern Christianity did not come from there, and indeed the seminary in question is so over the top in liberalism that I have disowned it, and one of these days I’m probably going to remove my diploma from its mounting and toss it in the garbage. The unfortunate fact is that In the US, the universities tend to have the worst divinity schools, with a few exceptions. Actually, the best Anglican, Lutheran and Orthodox divinity schools in the US are more or less free-standing institutions (such as Concordia Theological Seminary on the Lutheran side, Nashotah House and St. Joseph of Arimathea on the Anglican side, or St. Vladimir’s on the Orthodox side) or are in some Orthodox cases associated with a monastery (St. Tikhon’s and Holy Trinity).

You strike me as someone who drinks way too much coffee .

 

[The Liturgist]

the west has too; what good do they do?

The amount of Orthodox blood spilled by Western Christians is shocking, and if it were not for the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine Empire probably could have survived. There is also the issue of all of our icons and relics that were stolen, mostly by Venice and other Italian states - frustraringly, only portions of the relics of St. Mark have been returned to Alexandria.

 

[The Liturgist]

You strike me as someone who drinks way too much coffee .

I don’t drink coffee. You strike me as someone who makes incorrect inferences about other people, since I also lack a photographic memory and did not learn anything that pertains to this conversation at divinity school.

 

[The Liturgist]

Can you imagine if the Gospel was written like that? If that much painstaking detail was given to every person place and thing?

It is amusing in an absurdist sort of way, not unlike artwork of the Dadaist or Cubist schools, that you continue to derail this thread with pointless criticisms of my posting style.

However I feel obliged to @Xeno.of.athens and other participants to keep this thread on topic; I have offered to explain any points in my responses you did not understand and also to assist you in accessing any third party materials.

 

[ozso]

As to teachings that are officially declared, yes those have changed before and after the schism. And will continue to be changed as we reach a fuller and fuller understanding of God's Word. Some things, like prayers for the dead, have indeed been practiced since OT times.

It seems that perhaps odes to the dead are being called prayers for the dead.

 

[RileyG]

When did the church start teaching purgatory?

1274
The purgatory of Catholic doctrine. At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, the Catholic Church defined, for the first time, its teaching on purgatory, in summary two points: some saved souls need to be purified after death; such souls benefit from the prayers and pious duties that the living do for them.

It defined purgatory. It was already praying for the dead a millennia before.

 

[ozso]

Purgatory - OrthodoxWiki

orthodoxwiki.org

 

[RileyG]

Purgatory - OrthodoxWiki

orthodoxwiki.org

Interesting we never had a discussion about the Aerial Toll houses here, which sound terrifying

 

[ozso]

I have always understood that certain Psalms involve prayer for the earthly living and the departed. Psalms like 23, 86, 88, 91, 130 etc. Prayer for the departed never seemed like a big deal; it was just understood.

I'd love to see a passage from the Psalms (or anywhere else in the OT) clearly showing prayer for the dead taking place.

 

[ozso]

Interesting we never had a discussion about the Aerial Toll houses here, which sound terrifying

I figured that's what The Liturgist was talking about. I've come across the subject being discussed in The Ancient Way section. I know that the theologian Archbishop Lazar Puhalo was defrocked for speaking against the doctrine, but he later recanted.

 

[RileyG]

I figured that's what The Liturgist was talking about. I've come across the subject being discussed in The Ancient Way section. I know that the theologian Archbishop Lazar Puhalo was defrocked for speaking against the doctrine, but he later recanted.

I'm not knowledgeable about them at all. I read the Soul After Death by Father Seraphim Rose a number of years ago where he goes into greater detail about them. Unfortunately, I didn't retain much detail.

 

[ozso]

I'm not knowledgeable about them at all. I read the Soul After Death by Father Seraphim Rose a number of years ago where he goes into greater detail about them. Unfortunately, I didn't retain much detail.

Most people don't retain much detail.

 

[RileyG]

Most people don't retain much detail.

It was a fascinating read, that's for sure. Too much time has passed for me to remember much, though.