I can't reply to that many since my last post. Here is an overview:
1 Corinthians 3:12-15
In these passages, Paul is talking about how God judges our works after death by using a string of metaphors (we are God's building; works are good and bad materials, etc.). Paul says that if a person builds with good materials, he will receive a reward (verse 14). If he builds with a mixture of good and bad materials, his work is burned up, but he is still saved (verse 15). If he only builds with bad materials, he has destroyed the temple, and God will destroy him (verse 17).
This passage demonstrates several things.
First, it demonstrates that our works serve as a basis for determining our salvation. This is contrary to the erroneous Protestant belief that, once we accept Jesus by faith alone, we are saved.
Protestants have no good explanation for why Paul is teaching the Corinthians that our works bear upon our salvation.
Second, the verse demonstrates that, if a person does both good and bad works, his bad works are punished,
but he is still saved. The Greek phrase for "suffer loss" (zemiothesetai) means "to be punished." This means the man undergoes an expiation of temporal punishment for his bad works (sins) but is still saved. The phrase “but only” or “yet so” (in Greek, houtos) means "in the same manner."
This means that the man must pass through the fire in the same way that his bad works passed through the fire, in order to expiate himself of the things that led him to produce the bad works in the first place.
This demonstrates that there is punishment after death,
followed by salvation. The Church calls this purification “Purgatory.” If accepting Jesus as Savior by faith alone during one's life were true, there would be no punishment after death for those who are saved. Your sins would already be washed away. This passage proves that there is punishment and forgiveness after death, followed by salvation.
This biblical teaching of a post-death punishment by fire which is followed by salvation is inimical to Protestant theology.
Matthew 12:31-32 More verses that has objectors to purgatory stumped. This passage makes reference to forgiveness after death: something that is anathema to Protestantism. This
particular super-serious sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit) is not forgiven, yet it is clear that Jesus is presupposing that
there are other sins that are forgiven after death: which is one of the tenets of purgatory: forgiveness for and temporal punishment of sins after death for the person who is already saved and will inevitably make it to heaven in due course. To put it another way:
Just read the words: "
He will not be forgiven either in this age or in the age to come." Matt. 12:32. The phrase “in the age” (in Greek,
en to mellonti) refers to the afterlife (see, for example, Mk 10:30; Lk 18:30; 20:34-35; Eph. 2:1).
Jesus is saying that one can be forgiven either in this age (earthly life)
or in the age to come (after death). Those who are in heaven (which is in the age to come) have no need for forgiveness (true), and those who are in hell (which is in the age to come) cannot be forgiven (true). Therefore, there must be another state in the age to come where we can be forgiven (true). This is purgatory. To put it another way:
If sins can be pardoned in the “age to come” (the afterlife), again, in the nature of things, this must be in purgatory. We would laugh at a man who said that he would not marry in this world or the next (as if he could in the next — see
Mark 12:25). If this sin cannot be forgiven after death,
it follows that there are others which can be. Accordingly, this interpretation was held by St. Augustine, [17] St. Gregory the Great, [18] Bede, [19] and St. Bernard, [20] among others.
It doesn't fit Protestant theology. The general consensus of the Early Church Fathers doesn't fit Protestant theology either.
Luke 23:39-43 Another stumper. Redacted previously.
Geisler writes (p. 339):
[T]he immediacy of ultimate bliss upon death for a Christian is confirmed by many other texts, including the thief on the cross who went that very day to paradise (Luke 23:43).
The problem is that “paradise” is simply not heaven! It has to be something
other than heaven, for the simple and obvious reason that Jesus didn’t ascend to heaven until “forty days” after His Resurrection (Acts 1:3). Jesus wasn’t even risen from the dead yet (let alone ascended to heaven) on the “today” he referred to in this passage (which was Good Friday). Jesus Himself confirmed to Mary Magdalene shortly after His Resurrection, two days later, that He had “not yet ascended to the Father” (Jn 20:17). Therefore, neither He nor the good thief were in heaven on Good Friday. Why, then, does Geisler argue the contrary, and make out that this a supposed proof for immediate entrance to heaven upon death (which, in turn, would refute purgatory,
if true in
all cases)?
Moreover, we know what Jesus was doing between the time of His death on the cross and His Resurrection. He wasn’t in heaven (with the good thief). He was preaching to the “captives” (Eph 4:8), and the “spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:19) who were in the third state of
Hades, or
Sheol (which is not hell)
Geisler digs deeper into the mire of his own serious category error by stating on the same page:
Scripture teaches that death is final, and a destiny of woe or bliss is immediate.
To cap it off, Geisler refers to the story of Lazarus and the rich man, which I dealt with
last time. He writes (p. 339):
Likewise, unbelievers enter hell at the moment of death. [in context, referring to the wicked rich man of Luke 16:19 ff.]
This is hopelessly confused and self-contradictory, on many levels. First of all, Jesus expressly noted that the rich man was “in “Hades” (Lk 16:22-23), not hell. Hades (Old Testament,
Sheol) is the netherworld, or abode of the dead before the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. This was obviously before that time because Jesus told the story to His disciples as a past event, and He had not yet died on the cross. Hades is contrasted with hell (“lake of fire”) in Revelation 20:14.
This third state in the afterlife, Hades (or whatever one wishes to call it), cannot be equated with hell, because Jesus went there (or so it seems quite reasonable to assume; where
else would it be?) and
“preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 3:19) and “captives” (Eph 4:8) in “the lower parts of the earth” (Eph 4:9), whom He then “led” out of their captivity “when he ascended on high” (Eph 4:8).
None of that makes the slightest bit of sense if this is hell (the place of eternal punishment), because the inhabitants there are damned forever and cannot ever be led
out of hell. If they could be, that would be salvation attainable after death (or perhaps even a form of universalism), which Catholicism doesn’t teach at all. We believe that
all in purgatory are already saved and inevitably destined for heaven as their final state.
Thus, we must conclude that many saved people after death, before the time of Christ, were in Hades, and were led out of it to heaven (whereas no one can be liberated from hell).
And this means that an immediate “destiny of woe or bliss” for all people is a false and unbiblical statement.
“Armstrong vs. Geisler” #2: Purgatory (Lk 23:43)
