Transcription
What if I told you that Purgatory was not only biblical but taught explicitly straight from the mouth of Jesus Christ? Welcome to Eternal Christendom, consecrated to Our Lady for the glory of Our Lord. I'm Joshua Charles.
Well, first of all, today is exciting because we're recording the very first episode not only about Purgatory but in our new studio. You'll see that the background looks most of the same, but, uh, it's in a different place, and we've, uh, basically set everything up a lot better than we did before. And, uh, we hope you can tell the difference. We're trying to deliver a quality product, not only in terms of visual beauty but substance. So, and, uh, to do that, we have needed patrons. And I wanted to thank all the patrons that have been so generous with Eternal Christendom. If you go to our, our website, EternalChristendom.com, and go to the top right, there's a button that says "Become a Patron," and a list of the multiple ways you can get as a patron, whether through stock gifts or in your will, or just as a one-time or a monthly gift, a bank wire, there's all sorts of options. So if you are being blessed by Eternal Christendom and the content we're producing, I'd ask you to consider joining, um, the several hundred, uh, patrons we've already had to help make this possible. We've got a whole lot that we're planning to do in the future, but it's not going to be possible without your support, and we're trying to do it all for free so that everybody can get this for free. Digging into the great tradition, cultivating saintly sages and, and statesmen through the, the great tradition, but it takes time and effort to do it, but it's all possible because of patrons like you. So thank you very much for those of you who are patrons and who are also willing to consider becoming a patron.
So today, we're going to talk about Purgatory. It's the very first installment in, uh, this series. So, what is Purgatory? And is it taught in the Bible? Let's talk about it. And yes, that's the short answer. So let's go over the roadmap. So this will be the first installment in our miniseries on Purgatory. Our hope is that non-Catholic Christians, especially Protestants, will be willing to consider the many more scriptural details that support the Catholic teaching about Purgatory after they see how clearly Jesus teaches it. Growing up Protestant, I thought Purgatory was obviously unbiblical, but when I began reading the Church Fathers and saw how they unpack scripture in such a way that Purgatory not only became plausible but fairly obvious, I realized there was a much stronger biblical case for this Catholic doctrine than I realized.
So our roadmap for this installment, this very first one on Purgatory, is as follows. Our thesis is that Jesus teaches the doctrine of Purgatory quite clearly, despite the fact that many people miss it, including myself back in the day. I must thank, uh, Dr. Brant Pitre. He's one of my absolute favorites. If you haven't looked up Dr. Brant Pitre, amazing Catholic Bible scholar, amazing books on the Eucharist, Our Lady, explaining the Old Testament roots of all these things. I'd highly, highly recommend checking out Dr. Brant Pitre. But I've got to thank him for pointing this out that Jesus actually taught something quite explicitly like Purgatory, uh, in his video, "Purgatory in the Bible." So we'll link to that for you, for you, uh, so you can watch it. I suggest going into that. So we'll obviously show this that Christ taught Purgatory in, in a parable of his by diving into Christ's words. But first, uh, I want to provide some important context for Purgatory that I think will be helpful for this and future installments. And so we'll do this by first providing a, a brief definition of Purgatory. I'll leave various details for future installments, then describing the human soul and how it becomes impure through sin, then explaining how sin results in both eternal and temporal punishment, then showing how God exercises temporal punishment on his children to purify us of our sins and grow us in virtue, both in this life and, if necessary, in Purgatory, then providing a practical analogy to illustrate the common sense of Purgatory, what I call my "punching a hole in the wall" story. Uh, you'll, you'll hear about it later. And finally, we'll be reading Jesus's parable of the faithful and Unfaithful servant, recorded in Luke 12:41-48, and we'll explain how it clearly indicates something very much like the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory.
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So, what is Purgatory? We'll do a first, a brief definition. And this brief definition comes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1030. It describes it this way: "All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of Heaven." End quote. The doctrine of Purgatory is quite basic but has many details. For this introductory installment, we'll just stick with the basics here. The Catholic Church teaches that everyone, body and soul, will ultimately end up in either Heaven or Hell for all eternity. Only these two states are eternal. Only Heaven and Hell are eternal. However, the Church also teaches that some of those on the way to Heaven, who have impurities in their soul, will first be purged of those impurities prior to entering Heaven. Hence, the word Purgatory.
So, I actually think this isn't something I hear covered very much, but to explain Purgatory, I think it helps to go into the nature of the soul, sin, and what, what we actually mean when we say impurity. So, where do these impurities come from? I think it's pretty obvious, but it comes, they come from deliberate sins. And here's the next part that we'll explain in this, throughout this installment, but it not only comes from the sins themselves, but the just penalties due for those sins. Like I said, we'll explain this a bit further, but if you keep in mind throughout this whole episode how a parent disciplines a child, you'll understand the common sense basis of Purgatory much more easily. So, just keep that in mind: how a parent disciplines a child.
So, to better understand this notion of impurity in our souls, let's first clarify a few matters about the human soul. The soul, to use somewhat more technical language, is the form of the body. That's for diving into all that will be for another episode, but it's the form of the body, and it's what gives life, life to the body. This is why the definition of death, the technical definition of death, is the separation of body and soul. Human beings possess what the Church calls a rational soul, which is a soul capable of knowing and obeying the truth, unlike animals. This is what it means to bear God's image. God, who is truth, created those who bear His image to know and love the truth, truth which is ultimately Himself. We know the truth with our minds, and we love the truth with our will. And I'm going to be, when I say will, I'm generally going to be pointing to our, our heart, my heart, because the heart is generally seen as a symbol of the will. Our will is how we choose. So the soul is therefore the seat of our two most basic powers as human beings: our intellect, by which we perceive the truth, and our will, by which we decide to obey or disobey the truth. Whenever we sin, we are in some sense discerning the truth with our intellect, but refusing to follow it with our will. This is why continuing to sin makes us more and more miserable. I think any of us who have fallen into sin and stayed there, we, we can attest to this. We are in some sense splitting our soul when we fail to keep our will aligned with our intellect and fail to keep our intellect submitted to God, which is ultimately only possible by His grace. So, I, I frequently use this analysis where, or this illustration rather, where you have your intellect and your will together, and when you have, when you know something, you know what's good, and you do it with your will, you stay on the straight and narrow path. But whenever you know something and you fail to do it, it's like you split away, and your soul eventually kind of goes further and further away. So that's what I mean when I say that it, it splits the intellect and the will.
Whenever we sin, when our intellect and will are severed by sin, this results in what scripture and the Church often calls an impurity in our soul, which in layman's terms means our soul is not perfectly aligned with God. It may know the truth with the intellect, but is not loving the truth with the will. But to enter Heaven requires our intellect and will to be aligned with God, which is what it means to be pure or clean before God. Scripture is full of verses that speak of this purity required to be in God's presence. One quick example of this comes from the book of Apocalypse, or Revelation, which says, "Nothing unclean shall enter it" (referring to Heaven), "nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, falsehood. But only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." That's from Apocalypse 21:27.
So, next, let's move on to the topic. We understand where this, the, the impurity of sin comes from, how it relates to the soul. Now we need to go into the, the fact that sin has both eternal and temporal consequences. So this impurity in our souls caused by sin incurs two types of punishment: eternal, which is forever, as the word describes, and temporal, which is, as the word sounds, temporary. Eternal punishment is what is experienced in Hell. Temporal punishment is what is experienced in Purgatory, assuming we have not completed that temporal punishment in this life. Both punishments can be avoided by repentance, which, to speak in the terms we've been using, is realigning our intellect and will with God. Eternal punishment is incurred when we fall into what scripture calls mortal or deadly sin and fail to repent before death. The infinite punishment merited by such sin can only be paid for by Christ, whose grace not only cleanses us of our sin but makes us new creatures and empowers us to obey Him in love, which is how we avoid Hell and live for eternal, live eternally in Heaven. However, for those who have already been reborn in Christ, if we fall into sin and repent, our sin also incurs a temporal punishment, which God imposes on us so that we may grow in holiness in terms of our intellect and will. True and salvific punishment is meant to help us realign both toward God, which by sin we allowed to fall away from Him by disobedience. That is why, uh, why punishment is both painful and necessary. As good as sin may have felt when we committed it, fully repenting of it in order to attain the holiness God intends for us will feel just as painful, if not more so. So, for example, robbing a bank of a million bucks feels good. Who doesn't want a million more bucks, right? But paying it back with interest, paying institution, uh, restitution, excuse me, paying restitution is painful. But this is the only way our will, which was misaligned toward evil, can be realigned towards good once more. And as we will illustrate in the forthcoming example, think of a parent forgiving their child, but nonetheless imposing a disciplinary on them, disciplinary measure on them to help them grow in maturity. The parent's desire is that by this growth in maturity, they will not only repair the damage they have done by their sin but will grow in the virtue necessary to avoid repeating it. To speak again in terms of intellect and will, the parent's punishment is meant to train the child to know the truth and choose it with their will. God treats us very similarly through temporal punishments for our sin, which we can either pay in this life or in the next. Any punishment left unpaid by someone who is otherwise in a state of friendship with Christ must still be paid or purged from their souls, which happens after they die in Purgatory.
So now we need to cover how, how the God who forgives us uses punishment to make us holy. Because we actually see this all over scripture. We see this pattern of God using punishment to purify His children, those He loves, throughout all of scripture, particularly in His relationship with King David, who is sort of the, um, in the Church, he's sort of the archetypal example of how to do a good confession, uh, and that comes from Psalm 51, which we'll, we'll cover here very briefly. So I'll point to just two prominent examples when it comes to King David of God imposing a temporal punishment. First, in, uh, 1 Chronicles 21, King David violates God's command that he not take a census of Israel. He repents of his sin and asks God to remove his iniquity, that's in verse eight. But God responds by giving him three choices for a temporal punishment: a famine, a plague, or his defeat by his foes, his military defeat. Clearly, in this case, God's forgiveness of even the man after His own heart, which is how Samuel refers to him, 1 Samuel 13:14, clearly God forgiving even that man includes temporal punishment in 1 Chronicles 21. But it is a completely different kind of punishment from the eternal punishment reserved for the wicked in Hell. Similarly, the second example from David is after David famously committed adultery with Bathsheba. The prophet Nathan announced that God had forgiven his sin, but that he would nonetheless suffer a temporal punishment, and this comes from 2 Samuel 12:13-14: "And Nathan said to David, 'The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.'" Referring to the child of his adulterous union with Bathsheba. It was about this incident that King David wrote the famous Psalm 51 about repentance. Both the prophet Nathan and David himself are crystal clear that God has forgiven him, but that this forgiveness included a temporal punishment. This shouldn't surprise us, because scripture is very clear in more general terms that God uses temporal punishment to grow His children in holiness. A good example would be Proverbs 3:11-12, which is quoted in Hebrews 12:5-6: "'My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.'"
So, so few points here. First, it's important to recognize that scripture, and we're, we're, we're talking about the New Testament that's quoting the Old Testament here, so we've got both Testaments involved here. It's important to recognize that scripture speaks of God imposing punishment and discipline on those He considers sons, those whom He loves, in whom He delights, as the scripture says. These are those the Catechism refers to in a very similar way as in God's grace and friendship. Therefore, we are not speaking of someone on their way to Hell or outside the grace of Christ. We are speaking about those who are in a loving relationship with God by God's grace. Second, scripture speaks of God inflicting discipline and reproof on these sons whom He loves. And the same scripture verse, a few verses later, explains the purpose of this as follows: This is Hebrews 12:7-11: "It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."
So we see quite clearly here that God reserves a painful form of discipline exclusively for His legitimate children. Clearly, this reality is present in both the Old and New Testaments. However, this punishment, unlike the eternal punishment of Hell, is meant to make them holy, and its ultimate fruit is the righteousness necessary to obtain eternal life and in Heaven. The punishment that people in Hell receive does nothing of the sort. It's, it's going to be eternal and never-ending. This is why the Catholic Church teaches that God, in love, applies this form of discipline to every Christian who commits sin after receiving baptism, which cleanses their souls and makes them a new creature in a state of grace and friendship with God. The purpose is to purify their souls of the sins they have committed after baptism, as well as the punishment due to them, and lead them to eternal life in Heaven. However, if they die before their discipline has been completed, their soul is not yet completely purified. They have not yet fully realigned their will to God, which the punishment is intended to help them do. So the place where their soul receives this final purification and discipline, this final realignment of their will toward God before Heaven, should they die before it's complete, is Purgatory. As the book of Hebrews states quite clearly, this discipline is only applied to God's legitimate children, and it results in greater righteousness, which is precisely what the Catechism teaches about Purgatory. It is only for those who are on their way to Heaven, being legitimate children, and will result in them being purified and therefore more righteous.
So, as a Protestant, I thought the Catholic Church had made all this up, but when I actually read scripture more carefully and with the help of various Church Fathers and whatnot, I saw that this was not a concoction of the Catholic Church. It's not only all over scripture, but it's a reality every parent is well aware of. That's why I said at the very beginning, keep in mind the analogy of a parent and a child and how a parent treats a child. When their child does something wrong, they punish their children to help them become better. This punishment, as scripture quite clearly says, is not a negation of God's mercy, somehow done outside of or apart from it. Rather, it is an exercise of God's mercy, specially reserved for those He loves and those who love Him.
So here's an example to illustrate the concept: the "punching a wall a hole in the wall" story. I, by the way, this did not happen. I am not the one who punched a hole in the wall. I'm just thinking of a, of a, of a story of, of an angry teenager. And so here's this analogical story I promised at the beginning. So let's say a Christian purposely punches a hole in someone's wall. This is a serious sin. Unless they repent, they are on their way to Hell because they deliberately chose hatred of their neighbor, which breaks Jesus's commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. You don't just destroy people's property and think you'd get away Scott free. But let's say they repent. So now they are no longer threatened with Hell. Eternal punishment is off the table because they've turned back to God. However, their neighbor's wall still has a hole in it. Therefore, in justice, they are obligated to repair the wall that they broke by their sin. This is part of the temporal punishment they owe because of their sin. So imagine the Christian in this case was a teenager. The person whose wall they broke could forgive them, and their earthly father could forgive them, but despite being forgiven, any earthly father worth their salt will also punish them. They will require their child to repair the damage they have done. In justice, the hole in the wall must be fixed. They can do so in many ways. The parent can, they can ground them, they can deduct money from their allowance, they can require them to buy the supplies and fix themselves, etc., etc., etc. There's many different ways they could do it. But this punishment is temporary, not eternal. It must be done. Does their father do this because he hates them, or because their relationship is broken, or because his forgiveness is not sufficient? No, of course not. He does it because he loves them and wants them to grow in virtuous maturity, exactly as scripture describes God's desire for His children. A good father desires his child to have a pure soul, which means the split between their intellect and will that took place when they punched the hole in the wall must be healed by bringing it back together. They bring their intellect and will back together by repairing that damage. For just as they chose with their will to create the hole, they must now likewise choose with their will to repair it. This healing is the result of their submission to their Father's love through punishment. This is why Protestant accusations that Catholics believe in works-based salvation when it comes to the doctrine of Purgatory stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Purgatory is all about. It is as incoherent as accusing a child who is willingly and dutifully bearing a punishment imposed on them by a loving parent of thinking they deserve their parents' mercy by bearing the punishment, or that this punishment is once more somehow outside of or separate from the parents' love and grace that they're, they're, they're earning, uh, the forgiveness of their parents. It's just not true.
So at this point, there are two possible outcomes for this teenager who's been forgiven but is now having punishment imposed. First, the repentant teenager repairs the temporal damage from punching a hole in their neighbor's wall in this life. Or, two, if they die before doing so, they will pay for that temporal damage in the next life prior to entering Heaven. It's really that simple. And the place, Purgatory is not really a place, that's why I put it in quotes, but the place where this final disciplinary cleansing unto righteousness occurs is Purgatory.
So now that may have seemed like a whole lot of explanation that wasn't Jesus's teaching in a, in a, in a parable, and so it was, but I think it, I think it ultimately helps clarify a lot of the issues at stake with Purgatory. And again, I think if you keep in mind a parent lovingly disciplining their child, you will much more clearly understand Catholic teaching, not only about Purgatory but about eternal and temporal consequences for sin and everything that's related to them, including indulgences, but that's for a whole other episode. So, but now we will actually read Jesus's words from His parable. This comes from Luke 12:41-48, and so, um, it teaches actually quite explicitly that some Christians will undergo temporal punishment prior to entering Heaven.
So Jesus teaches this in His parable of the faithful and Unfaithful servants, where we read as follows, like I said, Luke 12:41-48: "Peter said, 'Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?' And the Lord said, 'Who then is the faithful and wise steward, whom his master will set over his household to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing. Truly, I tell you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that servant says to himself, "My master is delayed in coming," and begins to beat the male servants and the female servants and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will punish him and put him with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his master's will but did not make ready or act according to his will shall receive a severe beating, but he who did not know and did what deserved a beating shall receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much is given, of him will much be required, and of him to whom men commit much, they will demand the more.'"
In His parables, Jesus frequently uses the metaphor of a master imparting a gift to his servants and later judging them according to how they manage them, in such a way that we know He's often talking about the day of judgment. We see this, for example, in the parable of the unforgiving servant. This is in Matthew 18:23-35, where the master forgives his servant, expects him to forgive others, but when he doesn't, the master returns and punishes him accordingly. We also see it in the parable of the wicked tenants. This is Matthew 21:33-46, Mark 12:1-12, and Luke 20:9-19, where the master leaves his vineyard to his servants and later returns and punishes them for how they treat his messengers and ultimately his son. Likewise, in the parable of the talents, that's in Matthew 25:14-30, the master hires servants, and when he returns, they each receive a different reward or punishment based on what they did. There are other examples, but these suffice to illustrate this pattern of how, of how Christ does this in His parables.
So Christ utilizes this same metaphor in the parable of the faithful and Unfaithful servants we just read. However, He doesn't mention only two outcomes, if you read it carefully, namely Heaven and Hell. Rather, He describes four, really three. We, we'll explain which are as follows. First, He describes an eternal reward, which of course would correspond with Heaven. This is from verses 43 to 44: "Blessed is that servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing, doing his master's will. Truly, I tell you, he will set him over all his possessions." So this is, is basically representing Heaven. The second one is He describes an eternal punishment, which of course accords with Hell. This is verse 46: "The master will punish him and put him with the unfaithful." That can only describe one thing: Hell. The third one, we'll call this 3A because there's, there's two types of this, but the third one is temporary punishment. First is the severe punishment, the second is a light punishment. So the severe punishment is a form of Purgatory. "The servant shall receive a severe beating," that's verse 47. But in verse 48, we see that this is a light, uh, temporary punishment. "The servant shall receive a light beating." Thus, Jesus clearly describes three types of outcomes for the Master's servants. Each of these describes what the servants receive upon the Master's return, I.E., Christ's return, and are thus clearly eschatological. There is no more work to be done. All that remains is reward and punishment. Two of the outcomes are eternal, obviously corresponding with Heaven and Hell. That's number one and number two. However, one of the outcomes clearly refers to temporary punishment, number three, whether severe or light, number 3A and number 3B. So this would likewise obviously correspond with Purgatory. And since temporary punishment excludes the possibility of Hell, since Hell is eternal, it logically follows that after death, some who are in a state of friendship with Christ will in fact attain eternal life in Heaven, but only after receiving, as Jesus describes, some sort of temporal punishment or beating by which they are cleansed. In other words, they will go through exactly what the Church describes as Purgatory.
So there it is. Purgatory, straight from the mouth of Christ. And with that, we will end with our normal anthem verse, Psalm 73:25-26: "Whom have I in Heaven but you? And on earth I desire nothing besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." [Music]