Is purgatory in the Bible?

Oct 31, 2016

Q: Where in the Bible does it talk about purgatory?

A: A passage in the New Testament that I found very surprising is in St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians:

For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor. 3:11-15).

The passage is quite clear: Gold and silver, when placed into a furnace, would be purified; wood and hay would be burned away. As this is done, Scripture says we will suffer loss, but be saved as through fire.

Scripture teaches that God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). The point seems to be that, as God draws us to Himself after death, there is a process of purification in the fire of God’s holy presence. God Himself purifies us of those imperfect deeds: the wood, hay, and stubble. And those works that are performed in faithfulness and obedience to Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, those of gold and silver, are purified. This purification is necessary because, as Scripture teaches of heaven, the new Jerusalem and the temple within it, Nothing unclean shall enter it (Rev. 21:27). The biblical images of the purifying fire, through which the believer is saved while suffering loss, were now beginning to sound more and more like purgatory.

But where is the word purgatory? I began to see that this question revealed an ignorance on my part. The Scriptures were written in Hebrew and Greek. Purgatory comes from the Latin word purgatorium. In Scripture, we do find references to an afterlife that is neither the hell of the damned nor heaven. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word sheol is used to describe this condition; in the New Testament, the Greek term is hades. I had always thought that hades was hell, but Scripture teaches very clearly that hades is not hell — And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades... (Mt 11:23). It is distinct from gehenna — hell, ...the unquenchable fire (Mk 9:43) — or the lake of fire which is the hell of the damned. Scripture teaches that at the end of time, there is no more death and once the purification of all souls has taken place, there is no more need for hades. This same concept of sheol (in Hebrew), hades (in Greek), and purgatorium (in Latin) is purgatory as we have come to know it today (cf. Catechism, nos. 1030-32).

The concept of purification after death dates back to the Jews of pre-Christian times. Evidence of this can be seen in the Second Book of Maccabees. Catholics will quickly cite this as scriptural evidence for the reality of purgatory, but we must remember that Protestants do not accept 2 Maccabees as scriptural.

The sacred text notes that this was an honourable deed, and the passage closes with the statement, Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin (2 Mac. 12:45).

What is clear and undeniable is the solidarity the early Christians felt with the deceased.

Many ancient Christian monuments call out for prayer. For example, the epitaph of a bishop named Abercius, composed toward the end of the second century, provides: Standing by, I, Abercius, ordered this to be inscribed; truly, I was in my seventy-second year. May everyone who is in accord with this and who understands it, pray for Abercius. This practice of prayer for the deceased predates a fully developed defence of this practice, which was provided at the ecumenical councils of Lyons II (1274), Florence (1439-45), and Trent (1545-63).

As I began reading the Church Fathers, I was struck not only by the confidence of these holy men and the reality of the purifying fire (cf. 1 Cor. 3:15), but also by how deeply the teaching was rooted in the Apostolic Tradition. The historic evidence clearly pointed to a belief in a state of purification that would later be called purgatory. This term corresponded to the Hebrew concept of sheol, and to the Greek term hades in the New Testament. This third and temporary state of purification is biblical, apostolic, historical and, most of all, true and completely reconcilable with the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. -- By Curtis Martin, Catholic Education Resource Centre