Purgatory And Prayers For The Dead.

[ozso]

Catholics can be gullible too. The point being that there is a Church authority that can tell a Catholic they are wrong. That's a good thing, that is if Catholics listen. Some denominations exercise authority as well, and it's not everywhere that anything goes.

When it comes to universalism virtually all Protestant authority is going to say it's wrong. Something to keep in mind is that there are revered theologians which most Protestants all quote like Charles Spurgeon. And not all Catholics listen as you put it. There are devout Catholics who are proponents of universalism, including clergy like Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM. There's a Monsignor universalist too, but I don't remember his name. Again, there's not an anything goes policy in Protestantism. Anytime some lone wolf starts posting unorthodox material on CF, Protestants of various denominations all attack what he's spouting.

 

[ozso]

Agreed. But I think it is unresolvable within the confines of Sola Scriptura because everybody is their own infallible interpreter of what they think Scripture says. So everybody else has to be wrong. It's ultimately a very boring debate of people talking past each other.

You keep repeating the same misinformation you've been taught against Protestantism. It is not a system where every man is an island and his own pope with his own personal doctrine and anything goes. Most Protestants agree on what's primarily orthodox and what's heresy. And most belong to a major denomonation or a primarily identical branch. Virtually all of which agree on primary theology and doctrine. And Catholocism doesn't consist of a hive mind where all the members are in complete agreement. I've seen lots of disagreement and infighting from one Pope to another on down the line throughout many Catholic Church members.

 

[Ivan Hlavanda]

Sola Scriptura has been a disaster for you all

Just your opinion. The Bible is clear on this, but you ignore the Word of God.

(Faith Alone, Grace Alone, Christ Alone, Gloria of God Alone), you might be able to make a limited case.

Faith alone - Ephesians 2 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Romans 3 21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Habakuk 2 4 the righteous shall live by his faith

Grace alone - God's Word says that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus and not by our own efforts or works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace Alone. Faith Alone. Grace alone means that God loves, forgives, and saves us not because of who we are or what we do, but because of the work of Christ.

Christ alone - Christ alone attoints for sin. Christ alone paid for the sins on the cross. Christ alone is the mediator between God and man. Christ alone is the High Priest in Heaven. Christ alone is the Lamb of God. Christ alone carried our sins. There is absolutely no argument here.

To God alone belongs glory - Isaiah 42 8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other.

You cannot argue against any of the points.

 

[Ivan Hlavanda]

Actually no. IF there were any verses that said exactly what you want them to say they would say what you say they say. They would literally spell out Sola Scriptura. It's all a 500 year old invention totally incongruous with the 1500 years of Christianity before it's invention. Purgatory was already an old thing when Sola Scriptura was invented, and prayers for the dead have been normal from way way back.

The Word of God is sufficient is a teaching that has been taught by thousands of years, because the righteous lived by it.

Now please explain how salvation can be lost when the Lord said in 6 John 39 'And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.'

Lord Jesus said He will not lose one, how can then salvation be lost? Whoever teaches it can, calls Jesus a liar.

John 10 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

No one can snatch them out of Jesus.

As Paul said in Roman 8 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Now let's look at the cross itself. The work of Christ was perfect. Whoever believes that salvation can be lost is saying that work of Christ was not perfect. The sacrificy of His life was not enough.

Why don't you reply to any of these? Because you can't. If you say salvation can be lost you deny that the Son was a perfect sacrifice whicj means it wasn't enough and then there is no Saviour, no salvation. If we can lose salvation, we would all have lost it.

 

[Ivan Hlavanda]

That's a pointless debate in my opinion because the 'you can't lose your salvation' side will say that apostates were never actually saved (1 John 2:19 etc). It's one of those 'six of one and a half dozen of the other' views, because the outcome is the same either way.

6 John 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

Lord Jesus said He will not lose one, how can then salvation be lost? Whoever teaches it can, calls Jesus a liar.

John 10 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

No one can snatch them out of Jesus.

As Paul said in Roman 8 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Now let's look at the cross itself. The work of Christ was perfect. Whoever believes that salvation can be lost is saying that work of Christ was not perfect. The sacrificy of His life was not enough.

I can say for my self that the sacrifice of Jesus was the perfect substiture for my sins. He pain for them all, and by this I am guiltless before God. I can be assured of my salvation as the Scripture teaches, because of what Christ done on the cross.

Those who believe their salvation can be lost live in fear they whole life if they've done enough. The answer is they haven't, because Christ done it all.

 

[FenderTL5]

Faith alone - Ephesians 2 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Grace alone - God's Word says that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus and not by our own efforts or works (Ephesians 2:8-9).

You cannot argue against any of the points.

You have presented Grace and faith as a tandom, neither are alone in Ephesians 2. You even used the same verse to demonstrate that both are alone. both ≠ alone
At best you have presented Grace and faith as synergy.

Perhaps you have more that could make your point?

 

[ozso]

The Word of God is sufficient is a teaching that has been taught by thousands of years, because the righteous lived by it.

Now please explain how salvation can be lost when the Lord said in 6 John 39 'And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.'

Lord Jesus said He will not lose one, how can then salvation be lost? Whoever teaches it can, calls Jesus a liar.

John 10 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

No one can snatch them out of Jesus.

As Paul said in Roman 8 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Now let's look at the cross itself. The work of Christ was perfect. Whoever believes that salvation can be lost is saying that work of Christ was not perfect. The sacrificy of His life was not enough.

Why don't you reply to any of these? Because you can't. If you say salvation can be lost you deny that the Son was a perfect sacrifice whicj means it wasn't enough and then there is no Saviour, no salvation. If we can lose salvation, we would all have lost it.

His point is though is that many Protestants believe that salvation can be lost, which shows a marked discrepancy within Protestantism, in regard to that matter.

 

[Ivan Hlavanda]

You have presented Grace and faith as a tandom, neither are alone in Ephesians 2. You even used the same verse to demonstrate that both are alone. both ≠ alone
At best you have presented Grace and faith as synergy.

Perhaps you have more that could make your point?

Our response in salvation is faith, but even that is not of ourselves (but is), the gift of God. Faith is nothing that we do in our power or by our own resources. In the first place, we do not have adequate power or resources. More than that, God would not want us to rely on them even if we had them. Otherwise salvation would be in part by our own works, and we would have some ground to boast in ourselves. Paul intends to emphasize that even faith is not from us apart from God’s giving it.



Understanding that sin makes us thick-headed, unwilling to accept certain truths when they receive minimal emphasis, the biblical authors repeat foundational doctrines so that they might penetrate our hearts and minds. The man-made religions of this world prove that without the work of the Holy Spirit, people think that they are basically good and can contribute something to their salvation. This strips glory from God and gives it to us, for if we can do even one thing to merit salvation, then we deserve some credit. All belief systems except biblical Christianity encourage us to believe that we contribute to our salvation, even if they deceitfully assert otherwise.
It should have been clear from reading Ephesians 2:1–7 that the Lord owes us nothing but justice and wrath. (Moreover, this is taught throughout the Bible: Gen. 6:5–7; Deut. 7:6–11; Ps. 51:4; Rom. 1:18–3:20; James 2:10–11). But in case we missed it, Paul in Ephesians 2:8–10 tells us one more time that we bring nothing with us to our redemption, and that any good works we perform are not the ground of our status before God but result from us having been chosen and gifted with salvation: “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Grace, by definition, excludes the slightest hint that human merit contributes to our righteous standing before the most holy and perfect Creator, and faith, which admits our inability to help ourselves and rests wholly on another for salvation, confirms that our works have no power to atone for our wickedness. John Calvin writes, “If, on the part of God, it is grace alone, and if we bring nothing but faith, which strips us of all commendations, it follows that salvation does not come from us.”
Of course, faith is something that we exercise, and so some Christians think we bring this to the table when we are saved. They think we work faith up in ourselves and that all people are born with the ability to do so. Ephesians 2:8 makes this view impossible. The grammatical gender of the demonstrative this in “this is not your own doing” must refer back to the entire complex of things Paul mentions in the verse — salvation, grace, and faith. It is true that we are the ones who put our faith in Christ, but God gives us this faith and guarantees that we will exercise it unto salvation. If the Holy Spirit changes our hearts, we will not refuse the call to trust in Christ.

 

[ozso]

6 John 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

Lord Jesus said He will not lose one, how can then salvation be lost? Whoever teaches it can, calls Jesus a liar.

John 10 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

No one can snatch them out of Jesus.

As Paul said in Roman 8 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Now let's look at the cross itself. The work of Christ was perfect. Whoever believes that salvation can be lost is saying that work of Christ was not perfect. The sacrificy of His life was not enough.

I can say for my self that the sacrifice of Jesus was the perfect substiture for my sins. He pain for them all, and by this I am guiltless before God. I can be assured of my salvation as the Scripture teaches, because of what Christ done on the cross.

Those who believe their salvation can be lost live in fear they whole life if they've done enough. The answer is they haven't, because Christ done it all.

Not really because in most cases the teaching of loss of salvation doesn't apply to those who value it. The idea is more that people leave their salvation and they're not the least bit worried about it, because they no longer believe in it.

 

[Ivan Hlavanda]

His point is though is that many Protestants believe that salvation can be lost, which shows a marked discrepancy within Protestantism.

I don't care what many Protestants believe, I care about what God says, and God says that He will not lose one, and nothing will separete us from Him

 

[ozso]

I don't care what many Protestants believe, I care about what God says, and God says that He will not lose one, and nothing will separete us from Him

One thing I like about OSAS is that if a Christian believes they're saved no matter what, and is faithful to God, it means they're truly putting God first, and out of love not fear.

 

[FenderTL5]

Edited to remove my own off-topic ramble
To the topic:

The concept of purgation is certainly taught in scripture and in the Church since the beginning. Whether or not there is a specific place of purgation, I suppose there's room for discussion and speculation from both perspectives.

 

[The Liturgist]

The Catholic Church teaches that, besides a place of eternal torments for the wicked and of everlasting rest for the righteous, there exists in the next life a middle state of temporary punishment, allotted for those who have died in venial sin, or who have not satisfied the justice of God for sins already forgiven. She also teaches us that, although the souls consigned to this intermediate state, commonly called purgatory, cannot help themselves, they may be aided by the suffrages of the faithful on earth. The existence of purgatory naturally implies the correlative dogma—the utility of praying for the dead—for the souls consigned to this middle state have not reached the term of their journey. They are still exiles from heaven and fit subjects for Divine clemency.

The doctrine of an intermediate state is thus succinctly asserted by the Council of Trent: “There is a Purgatory, and souls there detained, are helped by the prayers of the faithful, and especially by the acceptable Sacrifice of the Altar.”

It is to be noted that the Council studiously abstains from specifying the nature of the expiating sufferings endured therein.

Is it not strange that this cherished doctrine should also be called in question by the levelling innovators of the sixteenth century, when we consider that it is clearly taught in the Old Testament; that it is, at least, insinuated in the New Testament; that it is unanimously proclaimed by the Fathers of the Church; that it is embodied in all the ancient liturgies of the Oriental and the Western church, and that it is a doctrine alike consonant with our reason and eminently consoling to the human heart?

This doctrine is alas an error, which is why the Orthodox, and for that matter, many Eastern Rite Catholics, reject it. What it basically represents is a scholastic attempt to simplify and perhaps make less frightening the earlier Patristic soteriology, in which prayers for the dead are vital, but furthermore, they are important because they can impact the soteriological status and eschatological outcome of the departed, for example, in the Byzantine model of what occurs to the soul after death.

The attempt by Scholastic theologians to simplify this doctrine through purgatory effectively introduced a non-scriptural teaching and it also distorted the meaning of the Sacrament of Confession and also led to the creation of the system of indulgences, which is another huge error, although the Roman Catholic Church did dramatically improve things by banning the sale of indulgences at the Council of Trent.

My own view is that as part of a future reunion between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox, because some Roman Catholics will likely persist in a belief in purgatory, the Roman church should release its entire “treasury of merit” and grant a plenary indulgence releasing everyone from purgatory now and in the future. Indeed I think the Catholic Church should do this anyway. But doing it would be a good preparatory step towards union with the Orthodox as it would allow for Purgatory to be set aside, and for the real reasons we should pray for the dead to be taught and emphasized, as part of a necessary Patristic ressourcement that would be required to undo some errors of the Medieval Scholastic theologians, many of which, such as Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas, were highly talented, but whose teaching is not altogether consistent with that of the Early Church Fathers, especially the Greek and Syrian fathers and St. John Cassian, and St. Cyprian of Carthage, who were two Latin saints very important to the Orthodox church whose views contradict those of St. Augustine. The problem with Scholastic theology is that it is overreliant on a misinterpretation of Augustinian theology, basically.

 

[The Liturgist]

So who was it that told you the Holy Spirit stopped speaking through people after Malachi died? And Maccabees was in fact included among the Jewish writings by someone else we wouldn't have it today. This is simply another example of a layman claiming to have more authority than the Church.

As far as telling God that sola scriptura is not true, I can prove that it is not by merely pointing out that it isn't in the bible. If we are to use scripture alone in deciding matters I'm sure it would say that somewhere in scripture. It doesn't. In fact it says something altogether different.

Indeed, Scripture itself asserts the importance of Holy Tradition, in the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, ch. 2, v. 12, and in his epistle to the Galatians, ch. 1, v. 8-9.

It is also worth noting that the concept of Sola Scriptura taught by Martin Luther and certain other early Protestants is much less problematic than the nuda scriptura doctrine people conflate with it. Basically Luther and Cranmer taught something along the lines of “Scripture, tradition, reason” wherein Scripture was the highest and most authoritative source of doctrine. This became conflated among Puritans, Anabaptists and other Radical Reformation movements, and later among the Restorationist churches, with the doctrines of Sufficiency of Scripture and Perspicuity of Scripture, which result in an anti-traditional, anti-Patristic theology which is extremely problematic and which opens the door for various errors such as the Prosperity Gospel, the errors of the Millerites, and so on.

 

[The Liturgist]

Edited to remove my own off-topic ramble
To the topic:

The concept of purgation is certainly taught in scripture and in the Church since the beginning. Whether or not there is a specific place of purgation, I suppose there's room for discussion and speculation from both perspectives.

The Orthodox Fathers clearly reject the idea of purgatory as a place. By the way, while it is a sobering read, Orthodox Christians probably should read Fr. Seraphim Rose “The State of the Soul After Death”, and also his translation of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky. The latter work is like a more condensed and comprehensive version of St. John of Damascus.

 

[The Liturgist]

Scripture has three attributes that no other source of religious authority can even touch:

Sufficiency. Certainty. Infallibility.

On the contrary, it does not have sufficiency; since it can be misinterpreted, it does not have certainty, in that you clearly mean perspicuity, which is to say, self-evident meaning, since we routinely see people who believe in the perspicuity of scripture come to radically different theological conclusions, and finally the infallibility of Scripture is the infallibility of the Gospel, correctly preached, as opposed to with the text itself, which can be incorrectly used, and furthermore, there are errors in some versions of the text, there is a lack of consensus on what books constitute the Old Testament, there are three different textual variants of the New Testament and discrepancies between, for example, the synoptic Gospels, which are minor discrepancies, but still, their mere existence contradicts the idea of an absolute infallibility of Scripture.

I think many people misread passages about the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ (John 1:1-18), the incarnate Logos, and assume that these references to the Word are referring to the written word, but the written word is itself an icon of Christ, but it lacks the infallibility of Christ Himself or of His Church, which we see guaranteed in Matthew chapter 16. Whereas nowhere do we see a declaration that Scripture is entirely free from any error. And for that matter there is nothing like a table of contents in any inspired book of scripture. The early Church had to work out what books constituted inspired New Testament writings, and this was accomplished in the fourth century by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who also defended the Trinity against the heresy of Arianism, the Arians who denied that Jesus Christ was God Incarnate. It was St. Athanasius who first put forward our 27 book New Testament canon, which all Christian churches do agree on, unlike the Old Testament canon, in his 39th Paschal encyclical he issued to the other bishops who were part of the Orthodox Church of Alexandria, which still exists today, and his canon was soon adopted by the Church in Rome and the Latin-speaking churches of the Western Roman Empire that viewed the Bishop of Rome as first among equals, and this adoption by Rome and Alexandria, led to the three other ancient Patriarchates in Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople adopting the 27 book canon as well.

 

[The Liturgist]

Absolutely false. Jews disagreed as to what books compromised Holy Scripture during the time that Jesus was on earth. The OT books were chosen because those are the books the Apostles taught from. A number of NT books that Protestants keep in their version of the Bible do not contain exact quotes from the OT, why have you kept those books? Remember the Jews whose books you accept as the OT ended up rejecting the Gospels and other books because they did not believe Jesus was the Messiah. The Catholic Church instead embraced those Jews who accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The story of those who were tortured and died for their belief in resurrection, referred to in NT Hebrews, is found only in one place in the Bible--in 2 Maccabees. Thus it should be no surprise that eventually most Jews rejected 2 Maccabees as the Word of God that it is.

Indeed, there was no consensus among the different factions of Jewry over which books constituted the Prophets and the Writings. Our Lord obviously would not refer to books as “Apocrypha” since the very word means they are apocryphal and thus irrelevant, and it is our position that the so-called “deuterocanonical books” are canonical scriptures which are of extreme importance, which are inspired, and in some cases are actually more important than some books later adopted by the Masoretic text as canonical.

Furthermore, the Masoretic versions of Daniel, and especially Esther, I would argue are defective compared to the longer versions found within the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation, by Jewish scholars, of the Old Testament from 200 BC, which was the version usually quoted in the New Testament, and which was also the Old Testament historically used by the early church.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Acts 17:10 Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.

Notice: Paul commended the early church in Berea for searching the Scriptures daily to judge what they heard was true. Sola Scriptura was their measuring line.

 

[The Liturgist]

Acts 17:10 Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.

Notice: Paul commended the early church in Berea for searching the Scriptures daily to judge what they heard was true. Sola Scriptura was their measuring line.

That’s a common misinterpretation of that passage, which in fact is praising the Bereans for looking in the Old Testament to see if it said what St. Paul asserted it said, as opposed to merely rejecting him outright, which had been their experience at least initially with the Jews of Thessalonica (who Paul did not usually preach to; generally he was more focused on the gentiles).

The doctrine of Nuda Scriptura, because what you are talking about is, as my friend @MarkRohfrietsch can confirm, quite different different from the doctrine of Sola Scriptura as taught by Martin Luther insofar as you are incorporating into it Sufficiency of Scripture and Perspicuity of Scripture, which Martin Luther never taught, was entirely unknown to the early church, and the “Noble Bereans” pericope in no sense endorses it.

Indeed the idea of Perspicuity of Scripture is actually contradicted by the ending of the Gospel According to St. Luke, wherein our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ has to “open the books” of the Old Testament Scriptures and show the Disciples how all of the Law and the Prophets in fact spoke about Him, that the Old Testament is Christological prophecy. That this had to be explained to his disciples refutes the notion of the perspicuity of Scripture.

On the other hand, we have St. Paul expressly endorse the value of the Apostolic tradition in Galatians 1:8-9 and 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

Lastly, it should be noted that St. Paul was not simply telling the Bereans to go and read the Scriptures, but rather was clearly presenting an exegesis of the Old Testament in the same way our Lord was, which the Berean Jews then verified. This exegesis, which is part of the Apostolic Tradition, shows how the Old Testament confirms the Gospel insofar as it is a prophecy of the Incarnation of Christ our True God, by whom we are able to see and be reconciled with God our Heavenly Father through the uncreated grace of God the Holy Spirit which proceeds from the Father and was sent to us by Christ as our Paraclete and Comforter, these three coeternal, coequal persons comprising one God.

 

[The Liturgist]

Moving back to the subject of prayers for the dead, whether one believes in purgatory or not, these are very important. In the West, All Saints Day is followed by All Souls Day, on which Anglican Protestants and Roman Catholics pray for their departed loved ones, and in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches, this is done on Saturdays in Lent, and also in the three Sundays leading up to Lent, which are known as Soul Saturdays.

The Roman Rite also has, in addition to the Requiem Mass, the Officium Defunctorum, which is a set of prayers which can be said in addition to or instead of the Divine Office, for the repose of souls, which is exceptionally beautiful. There is a musical setting of this by the Renaissance composer Cristobal de Morales which I highly recommend.