Purgatory And Prayers For The Dead.

[sandman]

The ECF all accepted an intermediate state after death that wasn't heaven or hell and it's certainly biblical. Even Jesus would have prayed for the dead given he was a practicing Jew. St. Paul prays for the dead in one of his epistles.

Jesus would have to ignore many scripture ...

So you've been told many times I'm sure. I suspect that has more to do with your opinion on the matter than anything in the Bible.

The praying for the dead really was not assimilated into Christianity a good hundred years after Jesus.

Everybody has opinions ...but if I render any in my posts I will stipulate it as such ... My statements are biblical.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Every last one of them was Catholic ....

Indeed.

Nevertheless, until 431 AD there was just one Church and it called itself Catholic.

It was united for hundreds of years after 431 AD of course.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Could you please elaborate as to how/why it's not correct?

The essay being referred to was written in the 1845 when Newman was still an Anglican. And it was an essay about what the Church had been doing for 2,000 years.

---

Cardinal Newman - Essay on the development of doctrine

It is the characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged in passing judgment on the things which come before us. No sooner do we apprehend than we judge: we allow nothing to stand by itself: we compare, contrast, abstract, generalize, connect, adjust, classify: and we view all our knowledge in the associations with which these processes have invested it.

Of the judgments thus made, which become aspects in our minds of the things which meet us, some are mere opinions which come and go, or which remain with us only till an accident displaces them, whatever be the influence which they exercise meanwhile. Others are firmly fixed in our minds, with or without good reason, and have a hold upon us, whether they relate to matters of fact, or to principles of conduct, or are views of life and the world, or are prejudices, imaginations, or convictions. Many of them attach to one and the same object, which is thus variously viewed, not only by various minds, but by the same. They sometimes lie in such near relation, that [Pg 34]each implies the others; some are only not inconsistent with each other, in that they have a common origin: some, as being actually incompatible with each other, are, one or other, falsely associated in our minds with their object, and in any case they may be nothing more than ideas, which we mistake for things.

Thus Judaism is an idea which once was objective, and Gnosticism is an idea which was never so. Both of them have various aspects: those of Judaism were such as monotheism, a certain ethical discipline, a ministration of divine vengeance, a preparation for Christianity: those of the Gnostic idea are such as the doctrine of two principles, that of emanation, the intrinsic malignity of matter, the inculpability of sensual indulgence, or the guilt of every pleasure of sense, of which last two one or other must be in the Gnostic a false aspect and subjective only.

 

[The Liturgist]

Every last one of them was Catholic, Orthodox is a later name adopted by the Eastern Patriarchs. Nevertheless, until 431 AD there was just one Church and it called itself Catholic.

True, in the sense that the Orthodox Church is Catholic, and the Eastern Orthodox churches of the Mediterranean and West Asia are also ethnically Roman (hence the demonym “Romioii” among the Greek Orthodox, Rum among the Arabic speaking Antiochian and Hagiopolitan Orthodox, and Roumelia as the name for the former Ottoman province consisting of their holdings in Eastern Europe.

False, in that the churches of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and also Constantinople and Cyprus, were always autocephalous (ecclesiastically sovereign with the same rights and privileges as Rome), with regards to Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, see canons VI and VII of Nicaea. Also take note of Canon XX, which the Roman Rite liturgy routinely violates by having full prostrations on Sundays and during Eastertide.

 

[The Liturgist]

Indeed.

It was united for hundreds of years after 431 AD of course.

That is correct, as far as the Chalcedonian side of things was concerned, with the first major fracture being caused by the filioque which forced St. Photius to sever communion with Rome until they agreed to remove it. However, it had been re-instated prior to the Great Schism kicking off in 1054. The Orthodox were really doing everything they could to avoid the schism, and ultimately much of the blame falls with the Papal Legate who left a writ of excommunication on the altar of the Hagia Sophia and fled the city.

Also in all fairness to the Roman Catholic Church, it was the Venetians and their shall we say redirection of the fourth crusade to attack Constantinople rather than the Islamic Caliphate in control of Judaea and Jerusalem (also the name of a lovely hymn in Gregorian chant; I have a recording of it by the Dominicans which is exquisite) which represented an arguable point of no return in the schism, and which crirically weakened the Byzantine Empire making Turkocratia inevitable.

I doubt even the military assistance offered vis the Council of Florence could have kept the Ottomans at bay, pun intended, sorry, that’s an obscure Ottoman joke…Ottomans, at Bey…ack someone is pelting me with over-ripe tomatillos!)…

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Also take note of Canon XX, which the Roman Rite liturgy routinely violates by having full prostrations on Sundays and during Eastertide.

Canon 20​

Forasmuch as there are certain persons who kneel on the Lord's Day and in the days of Pentecost, therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere (in every parish), it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing.

Do you think that this canon is an unchangeable rule of posture for corporate prayer in a Church building?

 

[The Liturgist]

Get me started on programming languages and you'll get the same effect from me.

Or from me, for that matter, although I like most programming languages aside from PHP, VisualBASIC, especially the pre .NET versions which offer no possibility of migration to a superior language, Pascal, due more to the limitations of it presently, and COBOL because compared to the other three programming languages of equivalent antiquity. namely, FORTRAN, ALGOL and Lisp, it is spectacularly outclassed, especially by Lisp, but Fortran was decent for the time and Algol helped inspire bcpl and PL/I which in turn led to Ken Thompson’s B, which led to Dennis Ritchie’s C, and the rest is history.

 

[The Liturgist]

Canon 20​

Forasmuch as there are certain persons who kneel on the Lord's Day and in the days of Pentecost, therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere (in every parish), it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing.

Do you think that this canon is an unchangeable rule of posture for corporate prayer in a Church building?

At a minimum modifying it should require an ecumenical council. However, don’t feel bad; Canon XX is one of the most frequently ignored canons and the Roman Church is not the only one which is violating jt. However, it is the reason why the Eastern Orthodox service of Kneeling Vespers that follows the Divine Liturgy on Pentecost Sunday is a Vespers… (since that advances the liturgical day to Holy Spirit Monday which is the first day not covered by this canon).

 

[The Liturgist]

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.

False. Archbishop Lazar Puhalo was reprimanded by Metropolitan Tikhon for his promotion of gay marriage and ordaining homosexual clergy, and forbidden from discussing it, but he is free to oppose Aerial Toll Houses, and he continued to be a vocal critic of it, and he remains a retired Archbishop. He had been an episcopi vagante but was received by the OCA as a retired Archbishop in an act of oikonomia.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Prayers for the dead, at least.

That is conclusive.

Purgatory is another matter altogether; I cannot find any definitive evidence of the doctrine as it was explained by Scholastic theologians and also in Dante’s Divine Comedy before the Great Schism

You have read Gregory the Great on this subject? Purgatory is pretty clear there. In fact some anti-Catholic polemicists like to claim it was invented by Gregory as a totally new thing. But then there is the matter of Augustine. Some say that of course he never spoke of purgatory, others said he did but then in his retractions repudiated it. I think Augustine is clear enough in speaking about purgatory. But then there is also Ambrose. For those who like to blame Augustine for it. Maybe not as flowery as the medieval guys made it, but the essence I think was totally there by 400 AD in the West.

We have to ask why the Jews prayed for their dead and why the early Christians did so. It was never totally obvious.

Tertullian had a role in all of this, but more on the concept of how the guilt of a sin could be forgiven but still need to have a penance done for it. This, conceptually, drives Protestants buggy, but it is the idea that you can be forgiven for breaking your neighbor's window but the window still needs fixing by somebody or other. I don't think Tertullian wrote of anything describing purgatory but this little conceptual framework made it make sense. Penance needs to be done to amend for the harm done by our sins. Somebody's gotta do it sometime. Of course we are always a little but suspicious of Tertullian, but his distinction between the guilt of a sin and the reparation for a sin was useful for later development on purgatory.

 

[The Liturgist]

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.

Actually no, that was only 1/3rd of what I was talking about, but I am thoroughly unwilling to explain the other Patristic concepts to someone who would rather just endlessly abuse my writing on various ranging from its exact attention to details to its careful citation of sources to the fact that it is more than a few paragraphs in length, and also the obvious fact that I am not an inspired evangelist writing Gospels for public consumption, or writing sermons, in this context, my actual sermons being more parsimonious, but rather am seeking to engage in stimulating intellectual colloquy with my friends, which apparently is something one can only do if one has an MDiv from a much nicer seminary than the liberal UCC nightmare I attended, photographic memory, and also standing as an autistic savant.

Particularly since the subject is both unnerving and also less interesting than the liturgical prayers for the dead it engenders.

 

[The Liturgist]

Tertullian had a role in all of this, but more on the concept of how the guilt of a sin could be forgiven but still need to have a penance done for it.

This has always been a peculiarity of Latin theology. Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox clergy do not even assign penances to everyone whose confession they hear. Indeed they’ve never penanced me, despite my being a horrible sinner, but there are things that will get them to issue a penance, since penances are intended as medicines for the soul.

Orthodoxy, and more broadly speaking, Greek and Syrian theology (including Coptic theology, which is in between the two, and also ahead of them in mystical theology via St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers), rejects entirely the forensic model of sin that has historically dominated Latin theology. To the ancient Greek and Syrian theologians, and the Orthodox churches of the present, sinfulness is a hereditary disease whose symptoms consist of our engaging in hamartia, which we engage in continually, particularly insofar as hamartia can be used, on the basis of its Greek definition “missing the mark” to evaluate the extent to which we deviate from the perfection of God, hence the need for Theosis, by metanoia enables through cooperation with the Holy Spirit so as to narrow that gap so that the experience of divine love is not as the consuming fire of wrath, but rather the ecstatic union of love between God and Man which was dismissed by some Scholastic theologians as recently as the 19th century as being impossible; for them the most we could hope for is the Beatific Vision.

Ironically I am not sure, @prodromos might know, if the Beatific Vision is even possible owing to the inscrutable nature of the Divine Essence and also the fact that God can be experienced perfectly well through His uncreated energies, and in the incarnate Logos, our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. However, deification, but not apotheosis, is possible, becoming sons of God by adoption and being perfected through cooperation with the uncreated grace of the Holy Spirit.

However since Vatican II, particularly in the Greek Catholic churches, these ideas have become mainstream.

At any rate I am disinterested in arguing with Roman Catholics and frustrated at threads such as this one which result in liturgical Christians clashing with each other, particularly given the widespread problems of iconoclasm, Nestorianism and Arianism among some aliturgical Protestants and Restorationists on this forum. Indeed the main reason I have participated in this thread has been to defend the practice of prayer for the dead from its detractors, as opposed to getting into a pointless food fight with Catholics like yourself who are some of my closest friends on CF.com united in our appreciation for Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mother of God and for the sacred liturgy of the Eucharist, which connects us also with traditional Protestants such as our friends @Jipsah @ViaCrucis and others (and I myself have strong connections with traditional Protestants).

 

[chevyontheriver]

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

I'd love it if someone could clearly explain Arial Toll Houses for me.

 

[chevyontheriver]

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

As I think you know, it is in the Books of the Maccabees. Which of course some people have Bibles where the books have conveniently been ripped out for ideological reasons. I'd go find a complete Bible if I were you.

 

[ozso]

Actually no, that was only 1/3rd of what I was talking about, but I am thoroughly unwilling to explain the other Patristic concepts to someone who would rather just endlessly abuse my writing on various ranging from its exact attention to details to its careful citation of sources to the fact that it is more than a few paragraphs in length, and also the obvious fact that I am not an inspired evangelist writing Gospels for public consumption, or writing sermons, in this context, my actual sermons being more parsimonious, but rather am seeking to engage in stimulating intellectual colloquy with my friends, which apparently is something one can only do if one has an MDiv from a much nicer seminary than the liberal UCC nightmare I attended, photographic memory, and also standing as an autistic savant.

Particularly since the subject is both unnerving and also less interesting than the liturgical prayers for the dead it engenders.

I was trying to offer constructive criticism in hopes that you would understand that your replies to me are way outside of my wheelhouse. And seeing as how I'm not a new Christian neophyte, I doubt that I'm the only one that pertains to. Basically I've implored with you and tried to motivate you to try coming down closer to a layperson's understanding, and obviously I did a bad job of that and it came out as a spiteful attack. So all I can do at this point is recant and apologize.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'd love it if someone could clearly explain Arial Toll Houses for me.

I will do it for you, but perhaps we might first engage in some anti-Nestorian, anti-Iconoclast, anti-crypto Arian polemics? After all it is an obscure doctrine specific to the Eastern Orthodox and not even the most frightening prospect among Patristic concepts of what happens to the soul after death.

 

[The Liturgist]

I was trying to offer constructive criticism in hopes that you would understand that your replies to me are way outside of my wheelhouse. And seeing as how I'm not a new Christian neophyte, I doubt that I'm the only one that pertains to. Basically I've implored with you and tried to motivate you to try coming down closer to a layperson's understanding, and obviously I did a bad job of that and it came out as a spiteful attack. So all I can do at this point is recant and apologize.

Indeed, and I have offered to go through my posts with you, line by line, to clarify any points of confusion and also to assist you in obtaining the texts I cited. I don’t think many people on CF.com are willing to be the personal Patristics tutor and librarian to members, but I have always offered to do this, and indeed if you review my posting history you will see that I routinely extend such an offer.

As I see it the subject of Patristics and ecclesiastical history cannot be made any simpler this side of the inaccurate and biased oversimplification you shared from gotquestions, so instead my approach is to open tne faucet all the way, and then supply barrells of one-on-one assistance to members who request it, for collection of what Orthodox Christians call “the Nectar of the Fathers” and in this manner I have individually mentored several members of this forum, both via PM and in the open forum.

 

[chevyontheriver]

This has always been a peculiarity of Latin theology. Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox clergy do not even assign penances to everyone whose confession they hear. Indeed they’ve never penanced me, despite my being a nasty sinner.

Yes, it seems to be a Latin way of thinking. But then the enduring Latin quest for understanding seems mirrored by a Greek lack of quest for understanding. Way back when the Cappadocians were high systematists but it seems that was then. The Orthodox seem fine with leaving everything undefined these days. Maybe some of that is a good thing. But it also seems uncurious.

Anyhow, how do we get the broken window fixed if we absolve the guilt of breaking it and that's just it?

 

[The Liturgist]

As I think you know, it is in the Books of the Maccabees. Which of course some people have Bibles where the books have conveniently been ripped out for ideological reasons. I'd go find a complete Bible if I were you.

Indeed, I have a PDF of the KJV with the intact section, although I myself prefer to use the Lancelot Brenton Septuagint with the Murdoch Peshitta as the New Testament.

 

[ozso]

As I think you know, it is in the Books of the Maccabees. Which of course some people have Bibles where the books have conveniently been ripped out for ideological reasons. I'd go find a complete Bible if I were you.

I know it's supposed to be in 2 Maccabees 15:11-12, but I've never seen it despite the numerous times I've read it. I refer to the Douay-Rheims and the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition fairly often.