Purgatory is not in the Bible! Answers to Common Objections VI, seriatim.

xcept that it is. Pur­ga­to­ry is in the Bible more times than the notion that some­thing must be in the Bible; sola scrip­tura is in the Bible pre­cise­ly zero times. Thus one way of answer­ing the objec­tion is to say: “If you can show me where the Bible says it must be in the Bible, I’ll show you Pur­ga­to­ry.”

But Pur­ga­to­ry is in the Bible, in 2 Mac­cabees 2:46: “It is there­fore a holy and whole­some thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” (N.B., this is the verse cita­tion for the Douay-Rheims; oth­er trans­la­tions have this text in verse 45.)

Some teach­ings we derive from the Bible by infer­ence. If a per­son is in heav­en, he does not require our prayers. If a per­son is in hell, no prayers can help. There must there­fore be a third place, or state, in which the prayers of the liv­ing have pow­er to loose a dead per­son from sin. This, we call Pur­ga­to­ry.

But Alt! 2 Mac­cabees is apoc­rypha! It’s not the Bible!

Thus part of the dis­cus­sion of Pur­ga­to­ry ends up being a dis­cus­sion of the Deute­ro­canon. (We don’t say “apoc­rypha” unless you mean some­thing like the Gospel of Judas.) And a thor­ough dis­cus­sion of those sev­en books from the Catholic Old Tes­ta­ment would mean I write anoth­er post or more. But here I can give a few rea­sons why the sev­en extra books—Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Wis­dom, Sir­ach, and 1 and 2 Mac­cabees, along with the addi­tions to Esther and Daniel—are canon­i­cal.

• They were includ­ed in the Sep­tu­agint, which was author­i­ta­tive from sev­er­al cen­turies pri­or to Christ until sev­er­al cen­turies after. The New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers quot­ed from this Greek trans­la­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment, as did the ear­ly Church Fathers. If the inclu­sion of these books was author­i­ta­tive for them, there is no rea­son it should not be for us.
• Protes­tant authors Glea­son Archer and Gre­go­ry Chirichig­no cite 340 quo­ta­tions in the New Tes­ta­ment using the Sep­tu­agint, against only thir­ty-three that come from the Masoret­ic text. The Masoret­ic was a Hebrew and Ara­ma­ic ver­sion that did not include the sev­en addi­tion­al books that were orig­i­nal­ly com­posed in Greek and did not exist in trans­lat­ed ver­sions.
• Even if some­one were to say, But Alt! Jesus spoke Ara­ma­ic, and so would have used the Masoret­ic text, Jason Evert has an answer:

[T]he Greek New Tes­ta­ment is inspired, and the Holy Spir­it chose to have the sacred authors repeat­ed­ly cite the LXX. It doesn’t real­ly mat­ter if Jesus was quot­ing Scrip­ture in Hebrew or Ara­ma­ic if the Holy Spir­it choos­es to use the Sep­tu­agint when trans­lat­ing his words into Greek.

• The New Tes­ta­ment quotes from books in the Deute­ro­canon. So for exam­ple, when Jesus says to lay up trea­sure in heav­en, he is quot­ing from Sir­ach 29:11. And when St. Paul says there are many gods but one Lord, he is quot­ing Wis­dom 13:3.
• Two ear­ly Church councils—at Hip­po (393 A.D.) and Carthage (397 A.D.)—listed the Deute­ro­canon as part of Scrip­ture.
• No Chris­t­ian reject­ed or col­lect­ed the Deute­ro­canon in a sep­a­rate unit until 1520.
• The rejec­tion of the books by Jew­ish author­i­ties is a dubi­ous prece­dent for Chris­tians to rely on, since their rejec­tion was influ­enced by a desire to stop Chris­tian­i­ty from spread­ing among the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion.

But Alt! Let us say, argu­men­t’s sake, that 2 Mac­cabees is canon. This verse is talk­ing about the Lim­bo of the Fathers, not Pur­ga­to­ry. After Christ freed the souls in prison, in the new covenant, there is only heav­en and hell.

The prob­lem is, this objec­tion con­flates two sep­a­rate things. The text of Mac­cabees says to pray for the dead, as per­sons, not for the com­ing of the Mes­si­ah. It says that these prayers will loose a per­son from sins. There is no indi­ca­tion in this text that the souls in prison are bid­ing their time until the Mes­si­ah frees them.

A sec­ond point here is that the text of 2 Mac­cabees speaks of more than just prayer for the dead, but sac­ri­fice for the dead. Here is the RSVCE trans­la­tion:

But if he was look­ing to the splen­did reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in god­li­ness, it was a holy and pious thought. There­fore he made atone­ment for the dead, that they might be deliv­ered from their sin.

It does­n’t say Judas—this is not that Judas—prayed for the Mes­si­ah to come and make atone­ment. It says he him­self made atone­ment. The idea that this a ref­er­ence to a Lim­bo of the Fathers where souls were bid­ing their time until Christ came to make atone­ment is for­eign to the text.

And it is worth point­ing out that even Mar­tin Luther thought that 2 Mac­cabees taught Pur­ga­to­ry. Luther reject­ed Mac­cabees because he thought that it con­tained error, not because he thought it con­tained truth but he was per­snick­ety about canon­ic­i­ty.

One can not deny that Mac­cabees is canon when it’s used to defend Pur­ga­to­ry, only to protest that the text is about some­thing else when put in a cor­ner on the canon issue.

But Alt! Can’t you cite vers­es that Protes­tants and Catholics both agree are Scrip­ture?

Sure. How about Malachi 3:3?

But who may abide the day of his com­ing? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refin­er’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refin­er and puri­fi­er of sil­ver: and he shall puri­fy the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and sil­ver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offer­ing in right­eous­ness.

Or how about Zechari­ah 13:8–9?

And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts there­in shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left there­in. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as sil­ver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my peo­ple: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.

But Alt! These pas­sages are using fire as metaphor!

Of course they are. I don’t need the fire of Pur­ga­to­ry to be lit­er­al. Nor do I need Pur­ga­to­ry to be a place, per se. And I’m not all that big on there being a clock in Pur­ga­to­ry, since it’s out­side time any­way. All I need is for pur­ga­tion to be a process that is nec­es­sary for one to enter Heav­en after death, and the Bible quite clear­ly talks about such a process.

And let us go to Rev. 21:27, which says that “noth­ing unclean shall enter Heav­en.” I hope no one believes that any­one dies clean. That’s utter fan­ta­sy. Either every­one goes to Hell—inference, dear reader—or there must be some sort of process of cleans­ing that takes place before one is allowed to enter Heav­en. The Bible uses fire as a metaphor to describe that process. And this, we call Pur­ga­to­ry.