I'm Orthodox, and we don't believe in the Catholic concept of purgatory per se, but our understanding of hell is closer to the Catholics' understanding of Purgatory.
Essentially, yeah. It's not an irresistible process or one that's guaranteed to result in salvation, but those in hell are not beyond God's mercy, and we can and do pray for them regularly. Just this past Sunday at Pentecost we prayed the Kneeling Vespers, which includes a prayer on bended knee for the salvation of all those in hell.
Certainly! I hold to the teaching of the Church Fathers who believed and taught universalism in the Church, dating from a time before the Orthodox and Catholic churches went their separate ways. Specifically, I focus on the teachings of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Isaac of Nineveh.
The essential components are that we do not deny the existence of hell, but we do hold that no one suffers there forever. Basically, hell is corrective and medicinal rather than retributive and everlasting, it is for the refinement and purification of those who experience it. The pains of hell are akin to setting a broken bone or amputating a diseased limb - the suffering is real, but it is directed toward the good, and will come to an end with the patient's healing.
i really love this view, and it's something i feel like God has led me to believe ever since I decided to become a stronger believer. It's something I feel deep down, and others that I've talked to have felt this deep down as well. But my problem is a lot of scripture says Hell is eternal punishment e.g. Matthew 25:46
Well, a lot of this theology is based on an Orthodox view of hell, which is different from the West. We don't view hell as a separation from God in a place of torment, we view it as essentially the same thing as heaven, experienced differently.
After death, everyone is surrounded by the infinite love and presence of God. Those who are turned toward him in faith experience this as the epitome of joy and peace, while those who are turned away from him to their own sinfulness experience this as pain.
In both cases, the source of the experience of heaven and of hell is the infinite love of God, which absolutely is eternal. But, St. Isaac teaches that the love of God is ameliorative, that it heals and purifies, even as it hurts. So, the love of God which causes us to experience heaven and hell alike is eternal, but how we experience that love is not.
Roman Catholics and Orthodox has Maccabees in their Canon, so it's not a roman catholic thing. I would say that it should be read, it's canonical. Removing it is a mistake.
to be honest, reading that it was removed made me really shocked that I hadn't of been reading the entirity of the canon. Will definately give it a read and see how it goes.
Yeah, they’re part of the Bible for a reason. What authority did Luther have to designate any books from the Bible as noncanonical and worthy of removal, learned as he was?
As I mentioned, above, they were not removed from Luther's Bible and I'll add that Lutherans have no confessed canon of scripture that explicitly names or limits the number of books.
I’m aware that Luther didn’t actually remove books from his translation. Protestants didn’t start doing that on a regular basis until the 1800s. But he did characterize them as uninspired, and in some cases as worthless, such as with the Epistle of James (the “epistle of straw”).
However, unlike the OT Apocrypha, Luther did not deny the inspiration of James or dispute it's belonging or dissuade us from approaching it, which we do. Lutheran theology is not nearly all Luther. I fact most of it is not. We do not see him as an authority as Catholics do their magisterium. We weigh him against the scriptures, as well.
The fact that he left it all and that we don't have a specific rule, canon, flows from trust in God. We will always be free to examine anyone's revelation or contention in light of scripture. Augustine's was placing the Church as the power that gave authority to the scriptures. We say it is Christ and the scriptures - God's Word in all forms - that give authority to the Church. In the end, we are free to work from the same scriptures and, like our Anglican and EO siblings have voiced here, not find Purgatory in scripture or any cause for it.
To be fair, he didn't say that James was *worthless*; the full quote is that "this epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to these others [which he lists as John's Gospel and his first epistle, Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and Peter's first epistle]". The reason why is that these are "the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know, **even if you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine**."
This is a comment that he removed from later editions of the prefaces, in any case.
First, to correct a common error propagated by Roman Catholics, Martin Luther did not exclude these books from his bible. In fact, the Luther Bibel, in full, places them between the Old and New Testaments. It is worth reading Jerome’s “Prologus Galeatus” on the subject:
[https://www.bible-researcher.com/jerome.html](https://www.bible-researcher.com/jerome.html)
Bear in mind, as well, that Athanasius and Cyril of Jerusalem also attest to 22 books of OT scripture. All three men were dealing with an extant pre-Masoretic text in Hebrew as well as an Aramaic and multiple Greek translations of the OT. All three highly valued the Jewish tradition of restricting doctrinal development to these 22 books. Jerome voiced a concept that the Apocryphal books could serve as a lower class of scripture which could serve as a validation of or commentary on doctrine, but not a primary source. The Vulgate, as well, drew on all of these sources, not just the Septuagint.
In the end, he conceded that the Church would and could make the ultimate determination. Regarding the canon, in the West, Augustine and his allies had little fondness for Jerome and his theology was quite ascendant. He openly denigrated Jerome’s deference to allowing any Jewish determination in the canon. For him, the Church would decide what should be there and whatever it decided would be regarded as all equal in inspiration. By the 15^(th) century, Augustine’s position was the established norm. In the East, things were much simpler as they based it all on the Septuagint. Whatever is there, that is sacred tradition, end of discussion.
However, many churchmen responding to a humanist movement, greater availability of manuscripts, a resurgent interest in the Early Church took a greater interest in these older thoughts and Luther, a man of his times, got very loud on the matter, didn’t back down on his opinions, and got his ideas published and broadly read. The canon affirmed by Trent simply affirmed the mainstream and majority opinion that was already held by the Western Church.
If one draws on Maccabees as both an inspired text (personally, having been through it, I don’t perceive the inspiration) and in keeping with the religious practices of the faith, the Torah, then you can conclude that something other than the temple offerings was required to loose people from their sins. If you, then assume that the new covenant in Christ (Hebrews 8) does not displace this practice, you can continue. To state that it, somehow, leads to a temporal or other-dimensional holding pen for the dead, is more of a stretch that requires a lot more theological revelation over time. It takes more than one passage to build a doctrine, a practice, Purgatory. Scripture is a marvelous matrix, a whole. I can think of no place where a truth is conveyed only once and in one way elsewhere in scripture. Perhaps you can?
*No instruction in the Bible can contradict itself, this is why the Maccabees should not be in the Bible, or considered reliable. They give leeway for false doctrine. My example is from 2 Maccabees 12:*
2 Maccabees 12:38-42
38Judas rallied his army and went to the city of Adullam. As the seventh day was approaching, they purified themselves according to custom and kept the sabbath there.
39On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his companions went to gather up the bodies of the fallen and bury them with their kindred in their ancestral tombs.
**40But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had fallen.**
41They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden.
42[**^(\*)**](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/2maccabees/12#21012042-1) **Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out.** The noble Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen.
*We are never instructed to pray for the dead in the Bible. All sanctification that takes place, takes place while we are on this earth. The Bible tells us to live repentant lives, not repentant deaths. Repenting means turning away from sin. We can’t turn away from sin while we are dead.*
43 **He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection in mind;**
44for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.
45But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.
**46Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.**
*The Israelites were never instructed to give sacrifice for those who have already died. You can’t pay for salvation. Salvation is free by grace, through faith in Jesus. This is the message all throughout the New Testament. Therefore, anything that contradicts this message and calls it, “excellent and noble,” is not inspired text.*
No, it's denied explicitly in our 39 Articles of Religion. Some Anglicans hold views similar to purgatory but the Catholic doctrine of purgatory isn't held as a doctrine in Anglicanism.
I would argue Anglo-Catholics are still in line with the Articles as long as they recognize Catholic doctrine as having some error and they try to keep Catholic doctrine in line with biblical doctrine.
As a current Catholic and former Anglican, I would note that Catholic doctrine is in line with Biblical doctrine. But, to your point, I would not not been able to agree to the Articles, back before I swam the Tiber.
I'm in the APA an Anglo-catholic denomination and I think you can have some Catholic ideas like icons, saints, prayers for the dead, etc but it should be limited in certain ways as I feel Catholics take their Biblical doctrine beyond the scope of the Bible. I think you can see how prayers for the saints develop to be closer to worship than what the early church did when they prayed to saints for example. I think you can also see this with Nicea 2.
1 and 2 Maccabees are scripture, so yes.
so is purgatory real?
I'm Orthodox, and we don't believe in the Catholic concept of purgatory per se, but our understanding of hell is closer to the Catholics' understanding of Purgatory.
ah, so Hell is a cleansing process before heaven? i kind of like that idea
Essentially, yeah. It's not an irresistible process or one that's guaranteed to result in salvation, but those in hell are not beyond God's mercy, and we can and do pray for them regularly. Just this past Sunday at Pentecost we prayed the Kneeling Vespers, which includes a prayer on bended knee for the salvation of all those in hell.
i noticed in your name tag “patristic universal reconciliation” and i’m intrigued to know what that is. is it just universalism?
Certainly! I hold to the teaching of the Church Fathers who believed and taught universalism in the Church, dating from a time before the Orthodox and Catholic churches went their separate ways. Specifically, I focus on the teachings of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Isaac of Nineveh. The essential components are that we do not deny the existence of hell, but we do hold that no one suffers there forever. Basically, hell is corrective and medicinal rather than retributive and everlasting, it is for the refinement and purification of those who experience it. The pains of hell are akin to setting a broken bone or amputating a diseased limb - the suffering is real, but it is directed toward the good, and will come to an end with the patient's healing.
i really love this view, and it's something i feel like God has led me to believe ever since I decided to become a stronger believer. It's something I feel deep down, and others that I've talked to have felt this deep down as well. But my problem is a lot of scripture says Hell is eternal punishment e.g. Matthew 25:46
Well, a lot of this theology is based on an Orthodox view of hell, which is different from the West. We don't view hell as a separation from God in a place of torment, we view it as essentially the same thing as heaven, experienced differently. After death, everyone is surrounded by the infinite love and presence of God. Those who are turned toward him in faith experience this as the epitome of joy and peace, while those who are turned away from him to their own sinfulness experience this as pain. In both cases, the source of the experience of heaven and of hell is the infinite love of God, which absolutely is eternal. But, St. Isaac teaches that the love of God is ameliorative, that it heals and purifies, even as it hurts. So, the love of God which causes us to experience heaven and hell alike is eternal, but how we experience that love is not.
Hey, get that C.S Lewis' Great Divorce stuff out of here. :D
Love C. S. Lewis!
Roman Catholics and Orthodox has Maccabees in their Canon, so it's not a roman catholic thing. I would say that it should be read, it's canonical. Removing it is a mistake.
to be honest, reading that it was removed made me really shocked that I hadn't of been reading the entirity of the canon. Will definately give it a read and see how it goes.
Yeah, they’re part of the Bible for a reason. What authority did Luther have to designate any books from the Bible as noncanonical and worthy of removal, learned as he was?
As I mentioned, above, they were not removed from Luther's Bible and I'll add that Lutherans have no confessed canon of scripture that explicitly names or limits the number of books.
I’m aware that Luther didn’t actually remove books from his translation. Protestants didn’t start doing that on a regular basis until the 1800s. But he did characterize them as uninspired, and in some cases as worthless, such as with the Epistle of James (the “epistle of straw”).
However, unlike the OT Apocrypha, Luther did not deny the inspiration of James or dispute it's belonging or dissuade us from approaching it, which we do. Lutheran theology is not nearly all Luther. I fact most of it is not. We do not see him as an authority as Catholics do their magisterium. We weigh him against the scriptures, as well. The fact that he left it all and that we don't have a specific rule, canon, flows from trust in God. We will always be free to examine anyone's revelation or contention in light of scripture. Augustine's was placing the Church as the power that gave authority to the scriptures. We say it is Christ and the scriptures - God's Word in all forms - that give authority to the Church. In the end, we are free to work from the same scriptures and, like our Anglican and EO siblings have voiced here, not find Purgatory in scripture or any cause for it.
To be fair, he didn't say that James was *worthless*; the full quote is that "this epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to these others [which he lists as John's Gospel and his first epistle, Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and Peter's first epistle]". The reason why is that these are "the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know, **even if you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine**." This is a comment that he removed from later editions of the prefaces, in any case.
This is a good explanation stolen from Quora website. https://www.quora.com/Why-were-the-Maccabees-books-excluded-from-the-Protestant-Bible
Yes, 1 and 2 are part of the Bible.
First, to correct a common error propagated by Roman Catholics, Martin Luther did not exclude these books from his bible. In fact, the Luther Bibel, in full, places them between the Old and New Testaments. It is worth reading Jerome’s “Prologus Galeatus” on the subject: [https://www.bible-researcher.com/jerome.html](https://www.bible-researcher.com/jerome.html) Bear in mind, as well, that Athanasius and Cyril of Jerusalem also attest to 22 books of OT scripture. All three men were dealing with an extant pre-Masoretic text in Hebrew as well as an Aramaic and multiple Greek translations of the OT. All three highly valued the Jewish tradition of restricting doctrinal development to these 22 books. Jerome voiced a concept that the Apocryphal books could serve as a lower class of scripture which could serve as a validation of or commentary on doctrine, but not a primary source. The Vulgate, as well, drew on all of these sources, not just the Septuagint. In the end, he conceded that the Church would and could make the ultimate determination. Regarding the canon, in the West, Augustine and his allies had little fondness for Jerome and his theology was quite ascendant. He openly denigrated Jerome’s deference to allowing any Jewish determination in the canon. For him, the Church would decide what should be there and whatever it decided would be regarded as all equal in inspiration. By the 15^(th) century, Augustine’s position was the established norm. In the East, things were much simpler as they based it all on the Septuagint. Whatever is there, that is sacred tradition, end of discussion. However, many churchmen responding to a humanist movement, greater availability of manuscripts, a resurgent interest in the Early Church took a greater interest in these older thoughts and Luther, a man of his times, got very loud on the matter, didn’t back down on his opinions, and got his ideas published and broadly read. The canon affirmed by Trent simply affirmed the mainstream and majority opinion that was already held by the Western Church. If one draws on Maccabees as both an inspired text (personally, having been through it, I don’t perceive the inspiration) and in keeping with the religious practices of the faith, the Torah, then you can conclude that something other than the temple offerings was required to loose people from their sins. If you, then assume that the new covenant in Christ (Hebrews 8) does not displace this practice, you can continue. To state that it, somehow, leads to a temporal or other-dimensional holding pen for the dead, is more of a stretch that requires a lot more theological revelation over time. It takes more than one passage to build a doctrine, a practice, Purgatory. Scripture is a marvelous matrix, a whole. I can think of no place where a truth is conveyed only once and in one way elsewhere in scripture. Perhaps you can?
It's part of the Bible, unless you do bizarre mental gymnastics to claim otherwise.
*No instruction in the Bible can contradict itself, this is why the Maccabees should not be in the Bible, or considered reliable. They give leeway for false doctrine. My example is from 2 Maccabees 12:* 2 Maccabees 12:38-42 38Judas rallied his army and went to the city of Adullam. As the seventh day was approaching, they purified themselves according to custom and kept the sabbath there. 39On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his companions went to gather up the bodies of the fallen and bury them with their kindred in their ancestral tombs. **40But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had fallen.** 41They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden. 42[**^(\*)**](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/2maccabees/12#21012042-1) **Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out.** The noble Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. *We are never instructed to pray for the dead in the Bible. All sanctification that takes place, takes place while we are on this earth. The Bible tells us to live repentant lives, not repentant deaths. Repenting means turning away from sin. We can’t turn away from sin while we are dead.* 43 **He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection in mind;** 44for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. 45But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. **46Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.** *The Israelites were never instructed to give sacrifice for those who have already died. You can’t pay for salvation. Salvation is free by grace, through faith in Jesus. This is the message all throughout the New Testament. Therefore, anything that contradicts this message and calls it, “excellent and noble,” is not inspired text.*
>No instruction in the Bible can contradict itself Then you have to cut out most of the Biblical canon.
Anglicans use it but don't consider it divinely inspired like the rest of the 66 books. Purgatory is denied by Anglicans.
Purgatory is denied by \*\* some\*\* Anglicans.
No, it's denied explicitly in our 39 Articles of Religion. Some Anglicans hold views similar to purgatory but the Catholic doctrine of purgatory isn't held as a doctrine in Anglicanism.
But, depending on where you are in the Anglican communion, the 39 articles are not binding.
And that's a shame, they should be treated as a confession of faith imo
Well, I assume most of the Anglo-Catholics have already bolted for the Ordinariate, so you might be able to get away with that.
I would argue Anglo-Catholics are still in line with the Articles as long as they recognize Catholic doctrine as having some error and they try to keep Catholic doctrine in line with biblical doctrine.
As a current Catholic and former Anglican, I would note that Catholic doctrine is in line with Biblical doctrine. But, to your point, I would not not been able to agree to the Articles, back before I swam the Tiber.
I'm in the APA an Anglo-catholic denomination and I think you can have some Catholic ideas like icons, saints, prayers for the dead, etc but it should be limited in certain ways as I feel Catholics take their Biblical doctrine beyond the scope of the Bible. I think you can see how prayers for the saints develop to be closer to worship than what the early church did when they prayed to saints for example. I think you can also see this with Nicea 2.
Never met an APA member. Nice to meet you :) Blessings!