Purgatory Explained - by Scott Hahn

Sandy from Florida hello what's your question for us tonight Sandy hi hi this is um Sandy from Illinois oh Illinois sorry that's okay no I wanted to make sure I was the right Sandy um I am a former Catholic and I am now an Evangelical so I know you understand where I'm coming from sure could you please explain uh the Catholic teaching in light of the New Testament regarding Purgatory all right Sandy thank you for the fine question yeah I would say this first of all Jews have always prayed for their dead before Christ and up to this present day you know in a C.S Lewis who was a believer in purgatory though he was not a Catholic you know he and others have pointed out that if you're praying for your dad you know if they're in heaven they don't need prayer if they're in Hell prayer is not going to do them any good so you know where are they well in Hebrew there's a term that is not the same as what we would call gehenna Jesus speaks of Hellfire as gehenna shaol is the place where the righteous and the unrighteous went and that's why the Jews have always prayed for them so even if you don't have second Maccabees in your Bible if you read second Maccabees 12 and you discover that the the prayers of the for the dead are being offered then and by Jews today you can see why because they really believe that there were people who could benefit well why well what was shaol in Hebrew becomes Hades in Greek again it's not to be confused with gehenna Hades is an intermediate State when it's translated into Latin it's called purgatorial because it's a place of purgation it's a place of purging cleansing you know Hebrews 12 29 describes God as a consuming fire now we often associate fire with hell but actually the imagery of fire is more commonly used in the descriptions of Heaven because that's where the seraphim the burning ones who are the closest angels to God seraphim literally means in Hebrew the burning ones they're burning with the pure love of God and so it is we have to be filled with the spirit to have that love purify by us and in this life we have our chance to really follow Christ but you'll notice that Paul States in First Corinthians 3 that there are some people who build on the foundation of Christ with gold silver and precious stones through works that really represent the Holy Spirit reproducing Christ in US other people Paul describes as building with wood hay and straw that work he says will be burned up but he goes on to say this and it's so important the work which any man has built on the foundation survives he will receive a reward if if any man's work is burned up he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved but only as Through Fire so he will suffer and he will suffer and lose as he passes through the fire of the spirit who will purify all of these false good works now if time flies when you're having fun time slows down when you're not when you pass through the fire of judgment which exposes the false you know the inadequate or The Superficial Good Deeds that you've done when you pass through the fire of God's love as judgment you know that might might take you know five minutes but it might feel like you know a lot longer but Paul is describing people who are going to be saved but only as they pass through fire and they will suffer loss but they will be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus what struck me as a Protestant was if I had a thousand Epistles to write I would never have penned those verses I would never describe someone who's passing through fire suffering and yet they're going to be saved and yet Paul as a good Jew and a good catholic christian can write this sort of thing in a matter-of-fact way just by way reminder to kind of jog the Corinthian memory that we ought to be careful how we allow the Holy Spirit to build in our lives Gold Silver and precious stones not the counterfeit works that those who are saved but are going to end up having to suffer a great deal as they pass through this fire and we're our Evangelical brothers and sisters often miss the point of that is their emphasis often merely on Saved or not that's right you're saved or not in fact a good portion of those look back to a time in the past when I was irretrievably saved or not because I was once saved always saved and so this whole concept doesn't fit their categories because they have that emphasis right and it's also a different view of sin what sin does yes indeed because sin is not just broken laws sin is a broken life a broken heart a broken home and so the Holy Spirit comes as the fire to restore that love but we often say yes and don't mean it or we often say yes and then end up kind of turning our backs and so you know the the Catholic Doctrine was not something that I could understand but I remember wrestling with this text going back to the Jewish tradition of prayers for the dead the Jewish notion of shale the New Testament notion of Hades which is not the same as hell Ghana and then suddenly I could see why the early fathers would speak of a place like purgatorio as a place where the spirit purges the the leftover draws to purify the gold so that we can enter not a second chance that's right you know these people are going to be saved but only passing through fire and only after suffering loss how could Paul write this apart from believing in what the Catholic Church explains later on in terms of purgatory well it makes I can't remember which verses I think it's in first John where it's and maybe it was Paul that talks about us our desires to stand before him without embarrassment right well that's what happens so does first John yeah I mean that's what happens that's why purgatory you know if we haven't lived perfectly in this life well then Purgatory is so that we can stand before him without embarrassment without hesitation purely cleansed in the right clothing nothing the wedding Unholy can enter the presence of God and yet when we die we sometimes have that lack of Holiness left that the Holy Spirit has not yet completely uprooted all right let's take this next email from Melissa New Jersey Hi Marcus and Dr Hall and I returned home to the church a year ago welcome home and am truly living my faith for the first time unfortunately I've found myself Faith faced with a great deal of misunderstanding and at times anti-catholic arguments and comments did you ever face this kind of reaction in your conversion I know you didn't Scott but I did but I'll let you come up with some idea because I know you never really faced any opposition but go on how did you best handle these disagreements both personally and in apologetics Melissa thank you for your email I would say back in 86 when I first decided to become a Catholic I faced a tsunami you know title waves and the plural of opposition you know and the first thing I would do is to remind my my Evangelical bible-believing friends that I too was anti-catholic and probably much more anti-catholic than they were and I would try to restate their arguments against the Catholic Church as well as I could which was often better than they could because I used to hold them with such vehemence and then I would try to kind of not refute them in the sense of of just beating them in an argument but I would try to show how as a Catholic I'm not an ex-evangelical I feel more Evangelical than ever I'm not an ex-bible Christian I feel like a whole new depth to scripture has been has been shown to me and so I would I would usually try to say look here's the Common Ground we share as Protestants and Catholics it's much greater than our differences let's begin and end with the common ground with the Bible and let's move into those areas of disagreement and I'll try to address your differences from my beliefs in terms of what we share in common because so often I found in conversations this not only Fosters friendship and keeps ties from being broken but it also shows them that it isn't something that requires the abandonment of all of the truths that you came to cherish as a Christian it means that you're just taking them and it's not subtraction but addition you're just discovering that they lead to even deeper truths about Jesus and the sacraments and the churches the family of God and so on all right thank you

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Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 01 2023