Is Purgatory in the Bible?

This may well be the most common single question I receive concerning our
Catholic Faith whether it be at conferences, via email, snail mail, or any other
venue. In fact, I've answered it twice today already, so I thought I might just
blog about it.

We'll begin by making clear just what we mean by "Purgatory." The Catechism

of the Catholic Church teaches:

All who die in God’s grace, 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 (1030).

This seems so simple. Its common sense. Scripture is very clear when it says,
"But nothing unclean shall enter [heaven]" (Rev. 21:27). Hab. 1:13 says, "You
[God]... are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wrong..." How
many of us will be perfectly sanctified at the time of our deaths? I dare
say most of us will be in need of further purification in order to enter the gates
of heaven after we die, if, please God, we die in a state of grace.

In light of this, the truth about Purgatory is almost self-evident to

Catholics.  However, to many Protestants this is one of the most repugnant of
all Catholic teachings. It represents “a medieval invention nowhere to be
found in the Bible.” It's often called "a denial of the sufficiency of Christ's
sacrifice." It is said to represent "a second-chance theology that is
abominable." We get these and many more such charges here at Catholic
Answers when it comes to Purgatory. And most often the inquiries come from
Catholics who are asking for help to explain Purgatory to a friend, family
member, or co-worker. 

Perhaps the best place to start is with the most overt reference to a
“Purgatory” of sorts in the Old Testament. I say a “Purgatory of sorts” because
Purgatory is a teaching fully revealed in the New Testament and defined by
the Catholic Church. The Old Testament people of God would not have called it
“Purgatory,” but they did clearly believe that the sins of the dead could be
atoned for by the living as I will now prove. This is a constitutive element of
what Catholics call “Purgatory.”

In II Maccabees 12:39-46, we discover Judas Maccabeus and members of his

Jewish military forces collecting the bodies of some fallen comrades who had
been killed in battle. When they discovered these men were carrying “sacred
tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear” (vs. 40),
Judas and his companions discerned they had died as a punishment for sin.
Therefore, Judas and his men “turned to prayer beseeching that the sin which
had been committed might be wholly blotted out… He also took up a
collection... and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this
he acted very well and honorably… Therefore he made atonement for the
dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”

There are usually two immediate objections to the use of this text when
talking with Protestants. First, they will dismiss any evidence presented
therein because they do not accept the inspiration of Maccabees. And second,
they will claim these men in Maccabees committed the sin of idolatry, which
would be a mortal sin in Catholic theology. According to the Catholic Church,
they would be in Hell where there is no possibility of atonement. Thus, and
ironically so, they will say, Purgatory must be eliminated as a possible
interpretation of this text if you’re Catholic.   

The Catholic Response:

Rejecting the inspiration and canonicity of II Maccabees does not negate its
historical value. Maccabees aids us in knowing, purely from an historical
perspective at the very least, the Jews believed in praying and making
atonement for the dead shortly before the advent  of Christ. This is the faith in
which Jesus and the apostles were raised. And it is in this context Jesus
declares in the New Testament:
And whoever says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but
whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this
age or in the age to come (Matthew 12:32, emphasis added).

This declaration of our Lord implies there are at least some sins that can be
forgiven in the next life to a people who already believed it. If Jesus wanted to
condemn this teaching commonly taught in Israel, he was not doing a very
good job of it according to St. Matthew’s Gospel.
The next objection presents a more complex problem. The punishment for
mortal sin is, in fact, definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and
the blessed in Hell according to Catholic teaching (see CCC 1030). But it is a
non-sequitur to conclude from this teaching that II Maccabees could not be
referring to a type of Purgatory.

First of all, a careful reading of the text reveals the sin of these men to be
carrying small amulets “or sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia” under their
tunics as they were going in to battle. This would be closer to a Christian
baseball player believing there is some kind of power in his performing
superstitious rituals before going to bat than it would be to the mortal sin of
idolatry. This was, most likely, a venial sin for them. But even if what they did
would have been objectively grave matter, good Jews in ancient times—just
like good Catholics today—believed they should always pray for the souls of
those who have died “for thou [O Lord], thou only knowest the hearts of the
children of men” (II Chr. 6:30). God alone knows the degree of culpability of
these “sinners.” Moreover, some or all of them may have repented before they
died. Both Jews and Catholic Christians always retain hope for the salvation of
the deceased this side of heaven; thus, we always pray for those who have
died.

A Plainer Text
In Matthew 5:24-25, Jesus is even more explicit about Purgatory.

Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court,
lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and
you be put in prison; truly I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid
the last penny (Matthew 5:25-26).

For Catholics, Tertullian for example, in De Anima  58, written in ca. AD 208,
this teaching is parabolic, using the well-known example of “prison” and the
necessary penitence it represents, as a metaphor for Purgatorial suffering that
will be required for lesser transgressions, represented by the “kodrantes” or
“penny” of verse 26. But for many Protestants, our Lord is here giving simple
instructions to his followers concerning this life exclusively. This has nothing
to do with Purgatory.
This traditional Protestant interpretation is very weak contextually. These
verses are found in the midst of the famous “Sermon on the Mount,” where
our Lord teaches about heaven (vs. 20), hell (vs. 29-30), and both mortal (vs.
22) and venial sins (vs. 19), in a context that presents “the Kingdom of
Heaven” as the ultimate goal (see verses 3-12). Our Lord goes on to say if you
do not love your enemies, “what reward have you” (verse 46)? And he makes
very clear these “rewards” are not of this world. They are “rewards from your
Father who is in heaven” (6:1) or “treasures in heaven” (6:19). 

Further, as St. John points out in John 20:31, all Scripture is written “that
believing, you may have [eternal] life in his name.” Scripture must always be
viewed in the context of our full realization of the divine life in the world to
come. Our present life is presented “as a vapor which appears for a little while,
and afterwards shall vanish away” (James 1:17). It would seem odd to see the
deeper and even “other worldly” emphasis throughout the Sermon of the
Mount, excepting these two verses.

When we add to this the fact that the Greek word for prison, phulake, is the
same word used by St. Peter, in I Peter 3:19, to describe the “holding place”
into which Jesus descended after his death to liberate the detained spirits of
Old Testament believers, the Catholic position makes even more
sense. Phulake is demonstrably used in the New Testament to refer to a
temporary holding place and not exclusively in this life.

The Plainest Text

I Corinthians 3:11-15 may well be the most straightforward text in all of
Sacred Scripture when it comes to Purgatory:
For no other foundation can anyone 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.
No Christian sect I know of even attempts to deny this text speaks of the
judgment of God where the works of the faithful will be tested after death. It
says our works will go through “fire,” figuratively speaking. In Scripture, “fire”
is used metaphorically in two ways: as a purifying agent (Mal. 3:2-3; Matt.
3:11; Mark 9:49); and as that which consumes (Matt. 3:12; 2 Thess. 1:7-8). So
it is a fitting symbol here for God’s judgment. Some of the “works” represented
are being burned up and some are being purified. These works survive or
burn according to their essential “quality” (Gr. hopoiov - of what sort).
What is being referred to cannot be heaven because there are imperfections
that need to be “burned up” (see again, Rev. 21:27, Hab. 1:13). It cannot be hell
because souls are being saved. So what is it? The Protestant calls it “the
Judgment” and we Catholics agree. We Catholics simply specify the part of the
judgment of the saved where imperfections are purged as “Purgatory.”

Objection!
The Protestant respondent will immediately spotlight the fact that there is no
mention, at least explicitly, of “the cleansing of sin” anywhere in the text.
There is only the testing of works. The focus is on the rewards believers will
receive for their service, not on how their character is cleansed from sin or
imperfection. And the believers here watch their works go through the fire,
but they escape it!
First, what are sins, but bad or wicked works (see Matthew 7:21-23, John 8:40,
Galatians 5:19-21)? If these “works” do not represent sins and imperfections,
why would they need to be eliminated? Second, it is impossible for a “work” to
be cleansed apart from the human being who performed it. We are, in a
certain sense, what we do when it comes to our moral choices. There is no
such thing as a “work” floating around somewhere detached from a human
being that could be cleansed apart from that human being. The idea of works
being separate from persons does not make sense.
Most importantly, however, this idea of “works” being “burned up” apart from
the soul that performed the work contradicts the text itself. The text does say
the works will be tested by fire, but “if the work survives... he will receive a
reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he shall suffer loss.” And, “he will be
saved, but only as through fire” (Gr. dia puros). The truth is: both the works of
the individual and the individual will go through the cleansing “fire” described
by St. Paul in order that “he” might finally be saved and enter into the joy of
the Lord. Sounds an awful lot like Purgatory.