Transcript

Welcome to First Lutheran Church.

I'm Evan McClanahan, and I'm the pastor here.

I'll be the host and moderator for the debate this evening.

First, a few quick announcements: If you need to go to the restroom, it's behind me in a hallway you can access through that door.

You'll just have to get up and walk in front of everyone.

We won't have an intermission, so if you're at peace with it, do what you have to do.

If you like these sorts of theological conversations and debates, you might want to check out, especially if you're in Houston, Theology by the Pint at theologybythepint.org.

We have monthly events and a podcast called Theology on Air, so check out the website, and we want you to be a part of that conversation after the event.

Dr. White, whom his followers and listeners will know, is in the midst of a five-debate teaching tour, so he is going to leave after the debate.

He's not able to shake hands or sign books, but if you're coming to the debates about a month from now, then he may be able to do that then.

So please excuse him for that.

After the debate, Mr. Horne will be next door; he'll be signing books for a meet and greet.

Yes?

You are probably familiar with both speakers, and the introductions are in your program, so I'm not going to spend much time doing that.

I'll only say that if you want to learn more about our speakers, you can go to Dr. White's website, aomin.org,

which stands for Alpha and Omega Ministries, and for Trent Horn, you can learn more at trenhorn.com.

Both gentlemen, as you know, are prolific authors, podcasters, YouTubers, and all-around influencers, as the kids say these days.

The format for those who aren't in the room and don't have a program in their hand: 15-minute opening remarks, 7-minute rebuttal, 4-minute rebuttal, two 10-minute cross-examination periods each, so that's 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes—40 minutes total—then a 20-minute Q&A. We're not doing Q&A from the floor.

You will have to write your question, and then I will be the one who chooses which questions to ask.

They will have one minute to answer and then a 30-second response, depending on who the question is addressed to.

If your handwriting is not readable—if it’s illegible, I think is the word—it will not be considered, so please do your best and write carefully what you want the question to be.

I will be picking those up before the cross-examination, okay?

So before the cross-examination is when I will be picking them up.

That will give me 40 minutes to filter through the questions.

Then after that, we'll have five-minute closing remarks, and that will be it.

Normally in these events, the person answering in the affirmative goes first; that will be true tonight.

The question is, is the doctrine of purgatory true?

Our Roman Catholic guest, Trent Horn, says yes, so he gets to go first.

So please welcome our first speaker tonight.

All right, well, I’d like to thank James for debating this important issue and for debating me last night, and I’d like to thank First Lutheran for hosting this debate.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in paragraphs 1030 and 1031: All who die in God's grace and friendship 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.

The Church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.

Purgatory is not an alternative to heaven or hell.

It is not a second chance to be saved, and it is not a place where sinners work to purify themselves.

Purgatory is the way Christ completes our sanctification or growth in holiness.

Protestants already believe in sanctification, so they should have no problem accepting this final part of the process.

In tonight's debate, I will not be defending various theological opinions about purgatory, such as its duration or what it entails.

I will also not be defending secondary doctrines related to it, like indulgences, since there are Christians who deny indulgences but believe in purgatory.

The Protestant author C.S. Lewis compared purgatory to visiting a dentist and said, Our souls demand purgatory, don't they?

The Protestant author Jerry Walls, a frequent critic of Catholicism, defends purgatory in his book Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation.

Finally, the Eastern Orthodox believe in post-mortem purification, but they don't call this process purgatory.

Now that we have a better view of what purgatory is, I will present two arguments in favor of this doctrine.

First, there is the argument from spiritual cleansing.

One, God can purify Christians of their desire for sin.

No one in heaven will desire sin.

Some Christians still desire sin at the moment of death; therefore, some Christians will be purified of the desire for sin after death but before they enter heaven.

Premise 1 follows from Scripture and God's omnipotence: If God can't free us from the desire to sin, He isn't all-powerful.

Premise 2 follows from Revelation 21:27, which says of heaven that nothing unclean shall enter it.

In heaven, there will be no actual sin or even the desire to sin.

Premise 3 is known from experience, especially in cases of Christians struggling with sin who die unexpectedly.

Since all the premises are true, the conclusion logically follows: We will be fully sanctified before entering heaven, even if we are not fully sanctified when we die.

Now, James might refer to Hebrews 10:14, For by a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

However, Paul says in Philippians 3:12 that he is not yet perfect, and in Romans 7:20, Paul says he does evil because of sin which dwells within him.

God will not allow sin in heaven, even if it is hidden under an alien righteousness of Christ that is imputed to us, as my opponent claims.

Instead, God will fully purify us; hence, the doctrine of purgatory.

Second, there is the argument for moral correction.

It goes like this: When Christians sin, God unpleasantly disciplines them to morally perfect them.

Some sins are not unpleasantly disciplined in this life; therefore, God unpleasantly disciplines some Christians after death to morally perfect them.

Let's start with Premise 1. Hebrews 12 says, My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by Him; for the Lord disciplines him whom He loves and chastises every son whom He receives.

The word translated chastises is mastigōi, which in every other use of the New Testament is rendered scourging.

The verse literally says God flogs every son with a whip whom He receives.

The text goes on to say God disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.

For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Even though Christ saved us from the eternal consequences of our sins, God still allows us to suffer the temporary consequences of our sins, such as a disordered will that is attached to sin, a lack of full fellowship with God, the fitting justice of feeling bad when we have done bad, and even suffering in this life.

For example, God forgave David's sins of adultery and murder, but still punished him in this life through the death of his infant son.

God does not punish us arbitrarily, but to reorder our wills so we can be morally perfected in Him.

Hebrews says earthly fathers do this imperfectly with their children, but God does this perfectly with us.

Now, what about Premise Two?

Paragraph 1472 of the Catechism says, A conversion which proceeds from fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.

We can choose to receive God's correction in this life.

We can choose to be sorrowful for the sins that we have committed and reorder ourselves to full fellowship with God, and we would no longer suffer the temporary consequences of our sins.

However, not everyone does that, as can be seen throughout salvation history.

Ancient Jews believed that the dead were purified after death in Gehenna.

According to Simcha Paul Raphael, a professor of Jewish studies at Temple University, Gehenna served as a realm of purgation and purification.

After this experience, the soul is sufficiently purified and able to enter the supernatural post-mortem realm of Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden). In the second century before Christ, Judas Maccabeus made an offering of silver on behalf of soldiers who died in battle.

The Jewish text that records this act says he made atonement for the dead so that they might be delivered from their sin.

Jesus and the apostles also never taught that all believers immediately enter heaven free from any unpleasant consequences.

Jesus told His audience to make friends with accusers, or else they will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be put in prison.

Truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny.

The Protestant reformer John Calvin said, If in this passage the judge signifies God, the accuser the devil, the guard the angel, the prison purgatory, I shall willingly yield to them.

To get around this, Calvin interprets Jesus' advice to be only about worldly law courts.

However, that doesn’t make sense, given the context in the previous verses of avoiding Gehenna due to anger with a brother.

Remember, ancient Jews believed Gehenna was a temporary punishment after death where you were released once you had paid the last penny.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul describes Christian workers at the final judgment.

Those who produce good works are symbolized by precious stones, while those who produce bad works are symbolized by hay and straw.

A fire tests the works and burns up the bad works.

Verse 15 says, If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

It's possible the works symbolized by stones are the Christian disciples of these workers.

This corresponds to Malachi chapter 3, a passage that also talks about the temple, the day the Levites being refined in fire like gold and silver, and others being stubble that are burnt up.

The good and bad materials in 1 Corinthians 3 may very well be good and bad Christians at the final judgment, and the fire will reveal which ones were saved and which were damned.

That coheres with verses 16 through 17, which say that you and I are God's temple, and if someone destroys God's temple—one of His redeemed creatures—God will destroy him.

Only God can destroy what He has created; no one else.

Now, if a worker's disciples were damned or burnt up at the judgment, the worker would not go to hell with them, but he would still be punished for his failure to shepherd them.

This corresponds with Hebrews 13:17. Could this be about merely judging the bad motivations of Christian workers, as James often says?

Maybe.

But it’s more natural to see the disciples as a Christian worker's work rather than his motivations, because the motivations are prior to any work that he does.

Besides, motivations are not mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3 at all, at least related to this small part of the passage.

Even if James were right, bad motivations like pride are sins, and God punishes sins.

The Protestant scholar E.P. Sanders says of 1 Corinthians 3 that Paul is discussing people who will be saved, but they will be commended or lightly punished at the judgment depending on their deeds.

Paul confirms this in 2 Corinthians 5:10, where he writes, We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive good or evil according to what he has done in the body.

In fact, the phrase saved through, as in saved through fire, when it's joined with a noun in the genitive case, is overwhelmingly used in the Old Testament, Jewish literature, and the Church Fathers in an instrumental sense or as a reference to purification.

That’s why Rabbi cited Zechariah 13:9 in reference to Gehenna: I will put this third into the fire and refine them as one refines silver.

The biblical scholar Daniel Frayer-Griggs, who claims the New Testament does not teach the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, admits, The fire of divine judgment on the day appears to be the circumstance through which the builder is purified of his sins and through which Christ saves.

The BDAG Greek Lexicon says the word loss in 1 Corinthians 3:15 reverts to punishment, and in ancient Greek temple inscriptions, the word referred to fines that were leveled against incompetent builders.

However, in his book The Roman Catholic Controversy, my opponent, like many Protestants, says the loss suffered in 1 Corinthians 3:15 is only a loss of reward and that it is not a punishment.

But even if that were true, my position would still be correct.

As a parent, I punish my children all the time by taking away a reward they were promised; I’d call that unpleasant discipline, wouldn’t you?

James even says in his book that it is terrifying to be in this position before God.

Why?

We are only terrified of God because of the unpleasant things He might do to us.

But God doesn’t arbitrarily cause us pain; He only does it for our good.

So James admits it’s possible God may provide unpleasant discipline, as described in Hebrews 12, after death.

That’s Premise Two of my argument.

In fact, the Protestant author Randy Alcorn summarizes 1 Corinthians 3 in a way that also supports my argument in an article he wrote on heavenly rewards.

He writes...

Maybe one way to say it is that the loss of rewards is, in some sense, permanent, but the suffering of that loss will be temporary.

God will do away with the suffering, but that is after the judgment, after our giving account to the Lord.

The suffering of regret will be there at the judgment; how could it not be?

Before entrance to the eternal state, there will be the learning, the purifying, and the eternal rejoicing.

So Alcorn says that the suffering of loss in this passage leads to moral reform and purification before we rejoice in heaven, free from any attachment to sin.

That sounds like purgatory to me.

In the second century, Irenaeus said, After death, but before heaven, each class of souls receives a habitation such as it has deserved, stating that Lazarus received refreshment while the evil rich man received torment.

James has claimed that prayers in the early Church for refreshment for the dead (Latin: refrigerium) are only an appeal for an increase in the heavenly happiness of the dead.

However, Cara Aspessi, in her 2021 article on refrigerium in the Academic Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, says that in classical literature, the term denoted coolness or physical relief.

She writes of these requests that the use of the subjective demonstrates that final heavenly bliss is not envisioned; instead, that meaning of refrigerium, which referred to Hades, the interim region of either punishment or consolation, is likely in view.

The third-century Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity uses this same meaning when Perpetua prays for her dead brother, Denocrates, to have refreshment after seeing him suffering in the afterlife.

The Protestant author Carl Olson admits that Clement of Alexandria, who lived between the second and third century, imagined an afterlife where the correctable sinner experienced a fire that sanctifies and does not consume.

In The City of God, Augustine wrote of some who suffer temporary punishments after death.

In his writings, Augustine specifically uses the Latin phrase pene purgatoriae, or purgatorial punishments.

Early Christian headstones, like those of the second-century Bishop Aversius, ask for prayers for the dead, which makes sense if some of the dead experience unpleasant correction after death.

Finally, none of these early Christian sources say that all believers immediately enter heaven after death without any purification.

According to Tertullian, For no one, on becoming absent from the body, is at once a dweller in the presence of the Lord, except by the prerogative of martyrdom.

However, this purification comes from Christ and does not detract from Him.

According to Pope Benedict XVI, some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ Himself, the judge and savior.

The account with Him is the decisive act of judgment; before His gaze, all falsehood melts away.

So to make his case, James has to do two things: He has to show that all believers immediately enter heaven after death and have no post-mortem discipline or purification, even though this is contradicted by Scripture and Christian history.

Then he has to refute the two arguments that I offered: the argument from spiritual cleansing—God can purify Christians of their desire for sin; no one in heaven will desire sin.

Some Christians still desire sin at the moment of death, so they’ll be purified before they enter into heaven.

Then there’s the argument from moral correction: When Christians sin, God unpleasantly disciplines them to morally perfect them.

Some sins are not unpleasantly disciplined in this life; therefore, God unpleasantly disciplines some Christians after death.

If James cannot show what’s wrong with these arguments, then you should reject his case and believe in the doctrine of purgatory instead.

Thank you.

Well, good evening!

It’s good to be back with you again this evening on a very, very different topic.

I’d like to begin with a little more formal definition of purgatory from a well-known resource: Dr. Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.

I wish it had been bound a little better, but anyway, speculatively, the existence of the cleansing fire can be derived from the concept of the sanctity and justice of God.

The former demands that only completely pure souls be assumed into heaven; that was just given to us from Revelation 21. The latter demands that the punishments of sins still present be meted out, but on the other hand forbids that souls united in love with God should be cast into hell.

Therefore, an intermediate state is to be assumed, whose purpose is final purification and which, for this reason, is of limited duration.

Now I want to point out, aside from the fact that purgatory is yet another dogmatically defined concept within Roman Catholicism, that in the modern period, the language that Rome and Roman Catholic apologists use to describe it has changed really radically over about the past 70 years.

You’ll notice, for example, that Ott says this: The remission of the venial sins which are not yet remitted occurs, according to the teaching of St. Thomas, in this life by an act of contrition deriving from charity and performed with the help of grace.

The act of contrition, which is presumably awakened immediately after entry into the purifying fire, does not, however, affect the abrogation or the diminution of the punishment for sins, since in the other world, there is no longer any possibility of merit.

Catch this: the temporal punishments for sins.

So I’m a little surprised, I’ll be perfectly honest, that in making this presentation, Trent hasn’t used the language that Rome has used in defining her own dogma, that this is a place of purification not just from attachment to sin, but the remission of temporal punishments for sins, and that this takes place by our suffering.

I can understand why he wouldn’t want to defend indulgences, but in Roman Catholic theology, they are intimately connected—and that’s in the Catechism as well.

And that is the idea of the treasury of merit—the excess merit of Jesus, Mary, and the saints put into the treasury of merit.

If they withdraw from that treasury of merit applied to a soul in purgatory, then somehow that would in some way hasten this process of being made more like Christ and purification so you can enter into the presence of God.

It’s a very, very different concept.

Of course, I’ll be showing you some books later on that I would recommend if you want to really understand what has been understood about the subject of purgatory.

It’s plainly said by people like Cardinal Bellarmine that purgatory could not possibly be as short as 10 or 20 years and could possibly be many hundreds of years in length.

So this is a self-undergoing of suffering, satis-passio, that removes the temporal punishments of sin that are necessary before you can enter into the presence of God.

It’s not just the idea that we need to be sanctified; we need to be made in the image of Christ.

Well, yes, that’s what God’s doing, and everything that Trent quoted from the New Testament about Christ disciplining His children and conforming us to the image of Christ—we believe all of that.

But that is not because of the temporal punishments of sins; that is making us like Jesus Christ.

That’s the whole purpose of God’s work of election.

You look at Ephesians chapter 1: What’s it all about?

Being in Christ and being conformed to His image.

So it’s a very different concept because what we’re talking about, really historically with Roman Catholicism—and I recognize modern Roman Catholicism; I doubt Francis actually believes this, I really, really do—but at least the orthodox view is represented by someone like Ludwig Ott: this is not just a state; it is a place that has temporality to it.

Having indulgences for tens and twenties and thirties of years would make no sense whatsoever if that were not the case.

And it is punishment that must be undergone before you can enter into the presence of the Father.

So what passages were brought forward to present that kind of a concept?

Well, the only one really was 1 Corinthians chapter 3. So let’s look at it.

We’ll look at a couple others as they were mentioned quickly, like paying the last penny, as if that’s what Jesus is talking about with eschatology and punishment for temporal punishments of sin and stuff like that.

No, let’s look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Let’s take a look at it.

It’s very, very important.

I’m sure we’ll be looking much more closely at it during cross-examination because Paul is talking about the ministry there in Corinth.

He says, “According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise architect, I laid a foundation, and others are building upon it.

Let each one be careful how he builds upon it.”

So what’s he talking about here?

Is he talking about stuff after this life?

He’s talking about there in Corinth.

How do Christian leaders build upon the foundation that Paul has laid?

He says, “For no other foundation can be laid other than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.

And if anyone builds upon the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, what will be made manifest?

His work will be made manifest, for the day will show it.”

What is that day?

Well, it’s the Day of the Lord; it’s the Day of Judgment.

So what is going to take place at that time is a manifestation of the character of the work that has been built upon that foundation.

The day will demonstrate that; the day will show what that is because it will be apocalyptic; it will be revealed by fire.

What does fire have to do with that?

Well, what’s the difference between gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw?

What’s the difference between these things?

Well, if you put gold in the fire, what’s the result?

It becomes more purified; you remove impurities from it.

But wood, hay, and straw—you introduce them to fire, and they are destroyed; they disappear.

They cannot stand the presence of the fire.

For it says the fire will prove or demonstrate the nature of these works, of what they are made.

That’s what he’s saying.

It’s very, very clear.

If a certain one’s work—not just if a certain one, but if a certain one’s work—remains, which he has built and produced, he will receive a reward.

But if a certain one’s work is destroyed and consumed, he will suffer loss.

When Paul uses it, he says, “I am willing to suffer loss of all things for the sake of Christ.”

It’s the same term.

Paul wasn’t saying, “I’m willing to be punished of all things for the sake of Christ.”

That’s not what he was talking about.

So you can find other places where this term is used.

But when Paul uses it, he’s using it in terms of suffering loss.

He says he will suffer loss, yet he himself will be saved, yet so as through the fire.

Now, if my works are examined by God on that final day, and He knows the intentions of my heart—He knows the intentions of all of our hearts—on that final day, He’s going to reveal why everyone did what they did.

Now, is that connected to me?

Is that something that will reveal something about me?

Well, of course, but it’s through the demonstration of those works which were built upon the foundation.

There is nothing here about different kinds of sins, mortal or venial sins.

There’s nothing here about temporal punishments.

There’s nothing here about satis-passio.

These are all concepts that come centuries and centuries and centuries later, and they go against, at their fundamental foundational level, how Paul believed that any of us will ever stand before God.

How do we stand before God?

Do we stand before God in a robe that is made up of the righteousness of Christ, Mary, and the saints from the thesaurus meritorum, the treasury of merit?

If you receive indulgences, then that’s going to be part of your standing before God.

Are we standing before God in a robe that includes our own suffering, our own satis-passio in this life or in the next?

Or do we stand before God robed in the seamless righteousness of Jesus Christ?

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Now look, I can quote, quote-unquote, Protestant scholars who don’t even think that’s about you and me.

N.T. Wright doesn’t think that it is.

But the reality is that is the great exchange; that is the foundation upon which any of us can have peace with God.

And that’s why this topic is so vitally important.

I believe purgatory is a doctrine that developed over the course of at least 1,400 years.

When you look at any of the people that Trent cited in that early period of time, they did not have a developed doctrine of purgatory—as Roman Catholic scholarship admits.

They did not have a fully formed understanding of it.

All you can do is point to, Well, here’s a little piece here, here’s a little piece there; you put this and that together, and then this develops.

Then Gregory the Great hears about these visions that people had about the afterlife.

My goodness, read the book by F.X. Schoup on purgatory—vision after vision after vision after vision—and it all eventually comes together and is dogmatically defined.

Even though I would say the clarity of its definition hundreds of years ago is far clearer than it is today, modern Rome is somewhat embarrassed by the clarity of the doctrine as it was taught at the time of the Reformation.

But what does that tell us about the fundamental differences between us?

It tells us that when Paul speaks and lays out what the gospel is—what gives us peace with God—Romans 5 says, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

How do you get to that point?

Well, that’s what Romans 3 and 4 are about.

As you follow the argument through, you get into chapter 4, and Paul talks about righteousness being imputed to those who do not work.

Those who work receive a wage that is due to them.

But the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly—his faith is reckoned to him as righteousness.

And then immediately he says, “David spoke of the blessedness upon the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.”

And that’s the works that come right before that—not E.P. Sanders, not N.T. Wright, not all the rest of that stuff.

It’s the works that are mentioned right before that, the contrast between believing and working.

And then to demonstrate what it means to have righteousness imputed to you, he quotes from Psalm 32, saying, “Blessed is the man whose sins the Lord has forgiven, whose sins are covered over.”

Then he says, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.”

So one of the conversations that we need to have this evening is: Who is that blessed man, and what does it mean that Paul could interpret the non-imputation of sin as the positive imputation of righteousness?

Because that’s what Romans 4:6, with the quotation in verses 7–8, is showing.

Now, why is this important to you or not?

It’s real simple.

How can you have peace with God?

When you wake up in the morning knowing your own heart, knowing the lust of your flesh, knowing the impurity of your words, and knowing the holiness of God, how can you have peace with Him?

How can you know that if your life ends on this day, you will enter into His presence and not spend 10, 20, 30, 40, or 100 years undergoing satis-passio?

How do you have that peace?

The only way—and we don't believe the same thing about this—the only way you can have that peace is if you recognize that a true believer in Jesus Christ is a person who has received His righteousness, not only in the sense of the forgiveness of all of my sins, but His positive righteousness.

He has loved the Father perfectly, and when I receive His righteousness, then I am seen in Him.

That’s how we have peace, and that’s really what we’re talking about this evening.

Thank you for your attention.

What you just heard from James was not an opening statement; it was a rebuttal and an assertion that his particular view about the gospel and imputation means that there is no such thing as purgatory.

That was it.

That’s all that he offered you tonight to believe that the doctrine of purgatory is false.

What are some things he didn’t say?

He didn’t cite any Bible verse that says that all believers enter heaven immediately at death and that they undergo no post-mortem purification or punishment.

He didn’t cite any Scripture about the afterlife to support his view, whereas I did cite Scriptures that describe the afterlife and support my view.

And how did James react to them?

When I cited Matthew chapter 5 about paying the last penny, he gave a scoffer's response: “Oh, it doesn’t mean that.

Sorry, you’re going to have to do a little bit better than that.”

And he said, “Oh, like that has anything to do with eschatology.”

Except Matthew 5:21-30 is all about what happens to us after death.

That lust can send you to hell, and anger can send you to Gehenna.

So the scoffer's response will simply not work there.

The same with 1 Corinthians chapter 3. He told a great story; he said it’s just about revealing the motivations that different workers have.

Read 1 Corinthians 3, verses 10 through 15 for yourself, and ask yourself: If you’re standing there at the final judgment and God burns up these works related to you, what shall you suffer loss?

What are you losing?

I cited a competent, well-respected Greek lexicon that says the loss being referred to in 1 Corinthians 3:15 is a punishment.

The Greek word is zemiao, and James says, “Oh well, Paul uses ‘loss.’

That’s not the way Paul uses the word.”

Paul uses words in different ways in different contexts; he hasn’t rebutted anything that I put there.

Also, James really manifested a severe lack of understanding of the doctrine of purgatory.

What’s interesting is that I cited from the official teaching of the Catholic Church, the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

James cited from one theologian who’s respected, but a theologian, and from other sources.

When you're going to critique another view, you ought to represent the official teachings of that view, not just private thoughts and articulations of it, and you should get the view right.

For example, what is satis-passio?

Satis-passio is not us working in purgatory to cleanse ourselves to get out of it.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says satis-passio is often spoken of in a loose sense as satisfaction.

Satis-passio is a completely passive process where God cleanses us.

I quoted from Pope Benedict XVI in an encyclical where he reflects upon theologians who say that this purifying process is just the encounter with Christ, where all falsehood melts away.

We don’t do anything.

The souls that are in purgatory rest from their labors, as Hebrews 4:10 says.

They know that they’re saved; they know that they will not sin anymore.

So if anything, they have joy that they’re going to enter into heaven.

And there’s no magisterial teaching that the joy of purgatory is outweighed by the suffering there.

That while in this process of being purified, they recognize they can now rest from their labors while they undergo what has been the technical term, satis-passio.

But he said we don’t undergo satis-passio in this life, which shows he doesn’t understand the concept.

Now, satisfaction—some people think, “Oh, satisfaction is just what Christ did on the cross.”

No, satisfaction, expiation, reparations, atonement; they all generally mean the same thing: to make up for something that was done to make reparations.

Now, only Christ, the God-man, can give expiation, satisfaction, atonement, and reparation for the eternal consequence of sin for fully turning away from God.

We can’t do that because we’re sinners; we have nothing to offer God except what God already gave us.

So if we fully turn away from God, only the merits of Christ can bring us back to God.

However, when we partly turn away from God—when we, as Christians, sin—God, as a loving Father, will gently turn us back to Him.

James talked about the temporal debt of punishment.

It’s not a legal debt that we have to pay to satisfy some kind of divine ledger.

Rather, God, as a heavenly Father and as the divine creator of the universe, has what’s called an order of justice.

God creates the universe, and it’s supposed to work a certain way because He’s perfect, all-knowing, and all-good, but we human beings have free will, and we mess that up.

For example, one of the ways the universe is supposed to work is that when you do good, you feel good, and when you do bad, you feel bad.

That’s how we’re supposed to feel.

But why do we sin?

Well, a lot of times we sin because we feel good when we sin.

That was what Pope Paul VI called a perturbation in the universal order.

Because God has planned that it is fitting that if we’re going to feel good when we do bad, then to reorder us into perfect harmony with Him, we will feel bad for doing bad; we will have sorrow.

Now I’ve already shown, in citing the Catechism, paragraph 1472, that by a fervent act of charity, one can remit all of the temporary consequences of sin in this life.

But not everyone will do that.

James has tried to say, “Oh, well, of course we believe in sanctification; of course we believe in conforming to God’s will.”

But he describes it as only a purely positive process, whereas I’ve clearly shown, based on my argument in Hebrews 12, that this is.

You don’t have to use the word punishment; I never use the word punishment in my arguments.

I said unpleasant discipline, and that’s clearly what is being described in Hebrews 12. God scourges; He whips every son He receives.

Just read it for yourself and see that God, because He is a loving Father—just as our fathers do—when they do bad and they feel good, I want them to be reordered toward the good, so they have to feel bad.

Now, God says that this is fitting; this is a fitting form of justice.

God is all-powerful; He doesn’t have to do this.

He can just snap His fingers and reorder our divine will, but it’s fitting that He does that.

So that leaves open the possibility that God, in His infinite mercy, can remit these temporary consequences from sin based on, for example, things like the rewards that He has given to others.

When you hear merits, when James talks about the merit of Christ and the saints, take out merit and put in rewards given by God, and that’s clearly taught in the New Testament.

The New Testament also teaches that God blesses people because of the goodness of others.

For example, in Romans 11, God blessed the Jews in Paul’s time because of what their forefathers had done, or He can remit punishment.

So when Solomon strayed from God’s will, God thought that Solomon would not lose his kingdom in 1 Kings 11 because of what David had done; He lessened the temporary consequence of Solomon’s sin.

There’s a lot more to talk about regarding the things that James just got wrong, and I’m excited to do that when I come back.

Why do Lutherans have such a small little stand here?

Is that where you preach from?

A little more?

Okay, a little more space.

Okay, all right—it’s hard to get anything up here, it really is.

Well, I guess we’re not going to be having a friendly discussion this evening.

That was a very unpleasant shot across the bow.

No, that was my opening statement, and everybody knows that it was a perfectly proper opening statement and that I did almost everything that Trent said that I didn’t do.

So obviously, it’s going to be a little bit more of a fangs-out discussion this evening.

We were just told that—okay, the scoffing thing—well, if you want me to read all of Matthew chapter 5, I would recommend that, as you’re taking notes, you begin at verse 21. This is from the Sermon on the Mount, and you will see that it’s talking about personal relationships between individuals: that you should not say “Raka,” and that you’ll be guilty before the Sanhedrin.

Is the Sanhedrin in purgatory?

I wonder?

I don’t know.

And whoever says, “You fool,” will be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

Okay, there’s punishment for personal relationships.

How does that connect when Jesus says, “Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge”? What’s that?

What’s the correspondence to that in regards to the concept of purgatory?

And the judge or the officer—you’d be thrown into prison.

Truly, I say to you, you will not come out until you’ve paid up the last quadrants.

So you’re paying to get out?

Is that what satis-passio is?

I don’t know, but we heard, “I don’t understand this, I don’t understand that.”

The fact of the matter is, Trent Horn represents a modern cleansed view of this.

Catholic Answers does this all the time.

Anyone who goes back—pick it up, buy it, F.X. Schoup, it’s available—pan books, pick it up, read it yourself.

This represents what Rome believed for centuries.

Now I realize Rome’s changing; we know what they believe about capital punishment procedures.

Now, they don’t believe that it changes, and while you should be quoting from the Universal Catholic Catechism, well, that gets changed too, and it may get changed yet again in the future.

The fact of the matter is, if you go to Denzinger, which is much more exhaustive than the Universal Catholic Catechism, and if you look up terms like punishment and merits and see what’s there, and you look up the thesaurus meritorum, to say that merits are just simply rewards that God gives—okay, then how is it that to be a saint when you die, your excess merit goes into the treasury of merit?

Think about what that means.

What’s an indulgence?

It’s a withdrawal from the treasury of merit.

Don’t you think there’s something more to that?

Doesn’t that correspond to the concept of indulgences and how long you get out of purgatory for indulgences?

Yes, there is an idea of punishment, satis-passio—the suffering of atonement.

I read from Ludwig Ott what it means, what it is about, and the necessity of undergoing it in purgatory.

My whole opening statement was that if you understand what the blessed man is, you will recognize that there is a fundamental confusion in Roman Catholicism between sanctification and justification.

That has been known; we’re just simply going back over what has been debated ever since the time of the Reformation.

What does it mean to be justified before God?

What does it mean to have the righteousness of Christ?

Rome says that’s a legal fiction!

Baptism actually makes you righteous before God, and that’s what makes you pleasing before God.

That’s why you’re going to go to heaven: because you’re in a state of grace and you’re objectively pleasing to God.

It’s an infusion of grace into you.

The whole point of the Reformation was the re-emphasis that had always been there in Scripture but the removal of centuries of tradition: the re-emphasis upon the freedom of God to save in Jesus Christ perfectly to His own glory, not through a sacramental system that controls that grace.

What that said to individual believers is that that individual believer now has not only direct access to God—not through a bunch of saints and angels and all the rest of these types of things—but has direct access to God because that individual has the righteousness of Christ, which is why the Holy Spirit can dwell within us, and that righteousness gives us peace with God.

And that makes us the blessed man.

Now, are we conformed to the image of Christ by God’s fatherly discipline?

Yes.

But that is not the working off of temporal punishments.

That is not because I’ve gone to a priest, which doesn’t exist in the New Testament, and been given penances to do.

If I don’t do them with the right attitude or with the right disposition, then there are still temporal punishments left over, and that’s why I need to go through purgatory before I enter into the presence of God.

That’s nowhere in the New Testament.

James gave us absolutely nothing that says we immediately leave this life and go into the presence of God.

He gave us something that suggests actually we go to a place called purgatory for an undisclosed period of time.

No, he didn’t. He quoted from various popes and sources like that, but he didn’t give us anything from Scripture that even comes close to that.

So let’s remember what this is really about because, in my experience, a discussion of purgatory reveals the fundamental and foundational differences between us as to how we believe that we will ever enter into God’s presence.

Is it because I have been objectively made pleasing to God, and therefore I am brought into His presence?

Or is it because Jesus Christ didn’t just make a way, didn’t just make it possible, didn’t just merit a treasury of merit, but He substitutionarily takes my sin in His body on the cross and I receive His righteousness?

That is a completely different understanding.

Both cannot possibly be true.

And so why is purgatory wrong?

Because it fundamentally compromises the gospel that Paul taught.

Thank you for your attention.

Fangs out, James!

You should have heard some of the things Luther used to say to his opponents—I’d say what I said was pretty tame tonight.

I also think it was just terribly ironic for James to ridicule the idea that baptism is how you get to heaven right here in a Lutheran church in a denomination that teaches baptismal regeneration, so I find that to be supremely ironic.

Notice what we’re going through with our cases here: I presented two arguments with specific premises.

That logically led to a conclusion about the essence of purgatory, which is that it involves purification from sin after death or it involves unpleasant discipline—or you would call it punishment for sin after death.

I gave reasons for both, yet James never showed that any of the premises were false.

He never demonstrated that there was a fallacy in any of the arguments; he just basically said that they’re wrong and offered a response that said, “Well, you know, Romans 5 says we have peace with God,” so therefore what?

So therefore there are no temporary consequences to our sins?

Well, the author of Hebrews 12—since Scripture does not contradict Scripture—would say that we have peace with God, but having peace with God does not entail that God is not our Father.

God is still our Father; we have peace with Him.

Because we have peace, God can then give us discipline so that we can be more conformed to His will and that we suffer the temporary consequences of our sins.

I think the problem for James, really, is that he rejects the idea of mortal sin and venial sin.

But to be consistent, almost all Protestants can’t do that because it’s just obvious to everyone here, no matter what you believe.

There are some sins.

If you’re a Christian tonight, do you sin?

You bet you do; you sin on a regular basis.

But they’re minor sins.

However, if somebody sinned on a regular basis—if they committed an abortion every day—that's different than committing some minor sin every day.

All of us, if you hold James’ view, do recognize that there’s a difference between the major sins that are incompatible with the Christian life—like adultery, abortion, sodomy—and the minor sins that we commit that are not incompatible with the Christian life.

Catholics just call those mortal and venial, and I don’t see how you can deny those.

So there are consequences.

The consequence of mortal sin is that you completely turn away from God, and you have to return to God through reconciliation by God’s grace.

But through the minor sins, we turn away from God, and God, in His fatherly discipline, chastises us just as our earthly fathers do.

Now, he said, “Well, I’m misrepresenting.”

You know, he says that I’m sanitizing purgatory.

That’s not true.

You can go to the Catechism in paragraph 1472; it says, “To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church related to indulgences…” It talks about grave sin depriving us of communion with God.

On the other hand, every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures that must be freed and purified either here on earth or after death in purgatory.

This purification frees one from what is called the temporal punishment of sin.

So the punishment must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin.

Sin separates us from God, and we suffer.

It can fully separate us or partially turn us away from God, leading to a recognition that we don’t have full communion with Him.

The order of justice has been disturbed, and so God reorders that in His loving fatherly will.

I also think it’s interesting to ask James, Well, when did his view come into existence in the history of the Church?

He didn’t reject any of the Fathers and historical witnesses that I cited, and this is something that has been continuously known in Church history.

Finally, this is compared to the doctrine of hell.

Many Christians agree on what hell is, but they disagree on the nature of hell.

Is it a red devil poking you in the butt with a pitchfork, or is it more of an abstract thing, the separation from God?

Just because Christians disagree about the precise nature of hell doesn’t mean hell doesn’t exist, just as Catholic theologians disagree about the nature of purgatory.

It does not follow that there is no purgatory.

Thank you.

Let me suggest that since you all have access to the Internet these days, in light of the assertion that was just made that this belief has been continuously known in Church history, I would recommend a very interesting exchange of videos between Trent Horn and Brother Ortland on this particular subject.

They are very lengthy, hours in length, and so I would invite you to take a look at those.

Do I get on the inside of the joke for having quoted him now?

Okay, alright, because he mentioned that in your debate, so there’s an inside joke going on there.

Anyways, I would suggest you take a look at that because the reality is, again, if you look at Le Goff and Roman Catholic historians, they will tell you that this is something that developed over time.

The idea that this was the universal idea based upon a headstone or a prayer here when there were so many different perspectives.

For example, Gavin Ortland spent a lot of time on John Chrysostom.

Chrysostom really, I was actually very surprised, believed that you should pray for the damned, those who are not going to heaven.

I found that a very strange aspect, but the point is there were all sorts of different perspectives, and it was not until the 1400s that you had a dogmatic distillation of all these things into the perspective that is now represented in the Universal Catholic Catechism, even if not to the fullness of what has been taught in the past.

But let me just address this idea of mortal and venial sins because even the definition just now given to you wasn’t the full definition.

A mortal sin, in at least historic classic Roman Catholic theology, is a sin that destroys the grace of justification.

So when you receive baptism, you are put into a state of grace and you are justified by baptism.

But if you commit a mortal sin, that state of grace is destroyed, and you have to be re-justified.

Therefore, there are eternal punishments for that, as well as temporal punishments.

Now, a venial sin does not destroy the grace of justification.

That’s the primary distinction between the two: whether it destroys the state of grace.

Because if you die outside the state of grace, then you’re going to go to hell.

Again, I don’t think that’s what the majority of the Magisterium actually teaches today, or believes today, anyways, personally, but that is the historic perspective that’s going on there.

That distinction is not biblical.

Even Roman Catholic theologians will tell you—exegetes will tell you—that if you go to 1 John, there’s a sin unto death and a sin not unto death.

That’s not talking about mortal and venial sins; that’s talking about committing apostasy by cursing Jesus Christ.

That simply is not a teaching that is found in the New Testament; it has to be read into the New Testament in light of later doctrinal developments from centuries down the road.

Why say this?

Evidently, Trent feels that providing biblical argumentation on the nature of what it is to be in relationship with Christ is insufficient; you have to have these specific terminologies.

Just like last night, you have to have specific terminology in regards to sola scriptura; you have a specific terminology here.

If we have righteousness in Christ, in God’s sight, by union with Christ and the imputation of His righteousness to us, all the rest of this stuff doesn’t make any sense.

If that’s what Paul was teaching, then you cannot turn Paul against Paul; you cannot make him contradictory to himself.

And that’s what you’d have to be doing in taking the view of purgatory.

Thank you.

I just want to mention that.

Okay, ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes.

Trent, you’ll go first.

You ready to go?

All right, so James, your main argument seemed to be that because of your view of the imputation of Christ's righteousness, people do not suffer temporal punishment from their sins in purgatory.

God judges us not based on our merits or the merits of others, but on the merit of Christ that is imputed to us, and that’s what He looks at at the judgment for each of us.

Is that basically your view?

That’s a rather surface way of putting it, but we’ll have to fill out the details.

The righteousness that we have when we die is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and that determines the fact that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

It's based upon that and not upon anything else.

Wait, were you just quoting 2 Corinthians 5, verses 8-9? You said, To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord?

Well, when Paul speaks of his own desire to be with Christ—well, no, I want to stick to this verse.

Are you aware that the verse actually says, We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord?

Not to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord—that is a common misstatement of it.

2 Corinthians 5:8—I’m not sure what the distinction you think is being made there is.

The distinction is that many Protestants will say there is no purgatory because to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and there’s no intermediate state.

But 2 Corinthians 5:8 doesn’t say that.

In fact, verse 10 says, We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive good or evil according to what he has done in the body.

Okay, and so, For we walk by faith, not by sight.

We are of good courage, and we prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

Therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.

In 1 Corinthians 3, is that talking about a saved person who will suffer loss?

So we’re leaving that one, going to another topic?

You bet we are.

Oh, okay.

All right, I thought you had said there was something else going on there.

1 Corinthians chapter 3 is definitely talking about a saved person who is building upon the foundation of Jesus Christ that has been laid by the Apostle Paul there in Corinth.

What do they lose?

Well, if you want to skip that far in, we’re going to be looking a whole lot more closely at it, but they lose a reward.

On what does God—well, I need to correct that because it actually says in verse 14 that it's the one whose work remains, which he has built, receives a misthos, a reward.

But if anyone's work is burned up, he shall suffer loss.

So it doesn't specifically say loss of the same reward, but I mean, that’s just sort of an assumption that you would come to.

Okay, in order to determine that the reward is lost, what does God see in that person?

Does He only look at the righteousness of Christ and then determine that a reward will be lost, or does He see something else?

That’s not what this text is about.

This text is about the testing of the works.

Specifically, verse 13 says, Each one’s work will be manifested, for the day will show it.

Why does the believer suffer something when only the work is tested?

Why doesn’t just the work suffer?

Well, where's the term suffer?

Suffer loss.

Well, but again, that’s the same term that—I was astonished that you said this—when Paul uses the term, the consistent use by Paul, and that has to be the first thing you ask in defining a term, is how someone uses it in their own writings.

He says he has been willing to suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Christ.

He wasn’t saying that he was undergoing punishment.

When Paul uses words, does he always use them in the same way?

No, but the first place you go to is to ask about the syntactical category, the lexical domain that he is utilizing.

If he doesn’t use it in multiple different ways— which he doesn’t in his writings—then if you’re going to say this is the one exception, you have to provide something in the context that demonstrates that that’s the case.

Does the BDAG Greek Lexicon say this is referring to punishment?

It is one of the meanings that is given, yes.

Is the meaning connected to 1 Corinthians 3:15? I don’t have it in front of me, but I’ll take your word for it.

Okay, it’s not my ultimate interpretive device; that’s fine.

Nor is yours.

Is the loss of rewards a bad thing for the believer?

Again, this is talking about determining what is gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble.

What is being shown is the nature of the works.

Now I agree, if my works are burned up, I’m very much a person who is going to be deeply troubled by that taking place.

So, James, if God looks at you and says, “You worked with bad motivations as a Christian worker,” these were the glorious rewards you would have had, and now you will never have them—will you feel bad?

Yes, I’ll feel bad.

Okay, so after death—so after death, God is—except this is at the Day of the Lord.

This is the great judgment.

It’s obviously not in reference to—so let’s say we make it to the Day of the Lord.

Who knows?

Maybe that’s what the Amber Alert was about.

Who knows?

We’ll see.

It may have been a Silver Alert; they’re looking for me.

So my point there is that if a father causes his child to feel bad because the child did something bad, is that punishment?

Different context.

I’m asking you something very general.

If you want to leave 1 Corinthians 3 and we can now maybe go to Hebrews or something like that, that’s fine.

But we can’t connect these things together because this is not talking about a father making a child feel bad.

This is talking about the justice of God revealing why workers in the Church did certain things.

If an authority takes away a good thing from me because I did something bad, is that punishment?

That’s not what this is talking about either.

So you don't think that God permanently revoking heavenly rewards because we worked with bad—I would say sinful—motivations in this life?

This is a demonstration to the world at the Day of Judgment of what was gold, silver, and precious stones and what wasn't. I’m very thankful that that’s going to take place because there’s so much false stuff going on in the name of Christ today that I can know that at the final day, there will be justice done.

I agree.

Now let’s go to my other argument then.

How much time do we have, by the way?

I have two minutes and 25 seconds.

All right, for this first half.

So just look at my argument.

Premise one: God can purify Christians of their desire for sin.

Is that true?

Yes.

No one in heaven will desire sin?

Right.

Correct.

Do some Christians still desire sin at the moment they die?

Yep.

Okay, so wouldn’t it follow then that after death, something will have to happen to those Christians so they will not desire sin when they enter into heaven?

Yeah, death is a definite transitional issue.

But unfortunately— But unfortunately, what’s missing from the argument is the concept of punishment.

I’m not talking about punishment; I’m making an argument from purification.

The doctrine of purgatory, in your own official documents, does use the term punishment.

So that’s where the issue is.

You’re confusing one of the issues where we disagree with one another; you’re confusing sanctification and justification.

Okay, well what I have quoted from—and I’m just going from the official magisterial teaching—I did make two arguments, and we just got done talking about punishment.

You just didn’t want to accept that 1 Corinthians 3 is about punishment, so I’m talking about purification.

No, no, no, you can’t interrupt me.

I get to interrupt you.

You’ll have plenty of time for that next round.

So you agree, though, you agree that God, if our sanctification is not complete at death, it will be complete before we enter heaven?

Yes.

Okay, so under some Protestant views of purgatory, such as what C.S. Lewis or Jerry Walls or others argue, would that be a Protestant view of purgatory that would be a biblical view that you would say is acceptable?

With Jerry Walls sitting right there, I’ll say no.

Is he here?

Yep.

Say hi, wave.

Hey!

Look at that, we’ve got to hang out and talk later.

That says all you need to know there.

But I tried to be very clear—this is your time.

Well, I’m all starstruck now!

That was an effective work on my part, wasn’t it?

Was that pretty good?

I’ll give you that; that was a good ringer!

James, I think Jerry can appreciate this.

I understand there are different models of purgatory.

There is a model that could be called the sanctification model and another that we might call the satisfaction model.

But satisfaction doesn’t mean you’re paying a legal debt of punishment; it means that you are making amends for what you can.

Is that meant to be a question?

No, it was just me coming off being starstruck, Jerry—we’ll talk later.

There you go.

Okay, let’s go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Let’s actually work through this one because it’s so vitally important, beginning in verse 10. Paul is the architect who has laid a foundation there in Corinth.

Would you accept that to be a good starting place?

Yeah, sure.

And now he says other people are building upon it.

In Corinthians, you have the super-apostles; there are obviously people questioning Paul’s authority and such, so this is probably the background of what he’s referring to, right?

Yeah, he’s talking about Christian workers, but he’s using them as an example.

It doesn’t follow that what he says only applies to Christian workers.

Okay, so when he talks about oikodomai—to build upon the foundation—do all Christians, is this a universal statement, or is this something specifically about people who are building upon the foundation in the Church?

Well, it is specifically about ministers like him or Apollos.

But Paul also refers generally to Christians in saying we are God’s co-workers.

We are a kingdom of priests, as Peter says in his epistle.

So all of us are called to build on the foundation of Christ to build up the body of Christ.

It’s a specific example, but it logically applies to all Christians.

Okay, but in this particular text, he is specifically talking about those who are building upon the foundation in Corinth.

If you want to expand upon that outside of that, I’m not going to argue about that.

But when he says, If a certain one builds upon the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, would you agree that the fundamental difference between the first three and the last three is their durability under testing by fire?

Yeah, there’s a symbol that there is something defective about the latter that is revealed, and something that is superior about the former.

So, however you interpret it, it will ultimately go back to the fact that there is something morally superior about some who are tested and withstand it, and something that is morally defective that will be revealed, whether it’s a person or even a motivation, as you claim.

Okay, so what does ergon mean when it says that each one’s ergon, each one’s work, will be made manifest?

What is that work?

Is it not the work that has been built upon the foundation?

Well, it could mean different things.

It could refer to their motivations, as you say, for why they have engaged in ministry.

But I gave an argument based on the work of Frayer-Griggs and others that the ergon, the work, are actually the disciples that they were forming.

What their work was—raising up other Christians to be holy—and if they had bad motivations, they were lackluster; they were poor pastors, and their disciples suffer or go to hell.

They’ll be held responsible for that.

So yes, I looked at that book, and it is a unique idea, which he admits is not mainstream at all and certainly does not align with the Drome Bible Commentary either.

So you're suggesting that the work that will be manifested is converts, disciples, or other Christians being ministered to?

I said that’s one possible interpretation, but even your interpretation would be fine.

But how can that be gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw?

A convert's a convert.

I mean, there are people who can be—because it's symbolized just like in Malachi chapter 3, where the sons of Levi are symbolized as gold or silver; they’re symbolized as stones in Malachi 3. Okay, so their work is their disciples?

Yes, I think that’s a good interpretation.

And the day will show it, for it will be revealed by fire.

Okay, so what does that have to do with their being purified by a satis-passio in purgatory?

Because we’re talking about their disciples—who’s being purified?

Well, it’s possible that the fire is purifying the morally superior ones that only have light blemishes.

Fire (pyro) is used frequently as purificatory imagery in the New Testament.

It reveals that people have different ideas about that.

So it would reveal that for the ones that are costly stones, there are slight imperfections that are removed, but for the ones that are objectively morally defective—wood, hay, or straw—they are destroyed at the judgment because they are actually not united to God; they are damned.

And it’s revealed who is saved and who is damned because we don’t know that in this life.

And then the builder is judged for what happened to his disciples.

That’s one explanation, one interpretation.

So you don’t have an infallible interpretation of the text?

No, the Catholic Church only offers a handful of infallible interpretations of Scripture, and this isn’t one of them.

That is even close?

No, it’s just one I’m putting out there, and I think it’s pretty neat and interesting.

So “for the day will show it.”

What is the Day?

The Day is the final judgment at the end of the world.

When Paul was writing 1 Corinthians, he was probably under the mindset that the Day of the Lord was very soon, within his lifetime.

Though by the end of his life, he seems to come to the conclusion that the Day of the Lord is further off.

So he seemed to be under the understanding that he and other workers would not have a natural death; they would probably be present when the Lord returned.

You said in your book that you got that from Jimmy Akin.

I thought I’d give him credit.

Oh yeah, Jimmy’s a great guy, so there you go.

So your argument that this is the Day of the Lord—if it is the Day of the Lord, and Paul understood what the Day of the Lord was—then it couldn’t be purgatory, because my understanding is that purgatory is something that is experienced by an individual person before the Day of the Lord, right?

Well, for most people, if we die, the Day of the Lord has not arrived; we have not come to the second coming or the judgment of sin, which is, for example, in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. So the purification that takes place after death is something that happens now.

And I need to be clear about this: the official teaching of the Catholic Church asserts there’s no teaching on the duration of purgatory.

There has been theological speculation about that.

But just as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye, maybe it’s the case that after death, the purification process is instantaneous or that time is different in purgatory.

St. Thomas Aquinas said that in the afterlife, we go through eternity, so the time that is connected to earth or in purgatory is too disanalogous to judge.

That’s why when you said that indulgences take time off in purgatory, medieval people did not believe that.

We’ll get back to that one in just a moment.

To make this relevant to purgatory, you have to accept the idea that Paul had an erroneous idea of when the Day was going to take place because the actual doctrine of purgatory would indicate that.

Are people undergoing this now?

If it’s temporal, are their souls in purgatory now?

Yeah.

Yes?

Okay.

And the Day hasn't come yet.

Nope.

So the fundamental assumption that has to be made, that you argued and borrowed from Jimmy Akin, is that Paul was wrong about the Day at the point he wrote 1 Corinthians and then later got a better idea that it was going to be way down the road.

Yeah, but there’s nothing problematic about him thinking something is going to happen and then it doesn’t happen.

I don't see the problem there: in Paul thinking God is going to do one thing and He doesn’t. He’s not making a declarative statement that the Day of the Lord is going to come on X date, for example; that would fall under biblical inerrancy or something like that.

But even if that’s not the case, the point is, he is saying that at the final judgment—so whenever the Day takes place—there are going to be negative consequences for people who did bad things in this life.

That purification will take place.

The Day of the Lord is not the embrace of the beatific vision; there’s still going to be a judgment—the separating of the sheep and the goats—the judgment that is in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 8-10. I already spoke about that.

So there’s no problem in Paul saying that at the final judgment, before you enter into heaven, out of the beatific vision, there will be judgment and there will be purification for the saved who are not fully sanctified.

Okay, but are you thinking that “apocalyptic” means purification?

No, it means revelation.

Okay, so the revelation by fire is showing what the works were, or you say what converts are, or giving motivations.

But then it goes on from there, and it says that the fire will make this known, and if a certain one’s work abides, which he has built, he will receive a reward.

So is this in purgatory?

Is this in purgatory?

The Church doesn’t teach that purgatory is a place.

I think that’s where we’re having a disagreement here.

Once again, there’s speculation about that, but is this purgatorially done?

Is this a process of purification?

Yeah, just like what I quoted from Randy Alcorn: that when bad things happen to you at the judgment, like losing rewards, you’re going to feel bad.

And God doesn’t make us feel bad for an arbitrary reason; He does it so that our wills are reordered, so we can be perfectly holy and enter into heaven.

Okay.

All right, so so far have we found agreement that someone could hold a model of purgatory that would be called the sanctification model—that God completes our sanctification after death?

I don’t have any idea why purgatory would be associated with that because I think you just said a moment ago that purgatory might be instantaneous, and hence there could not possibly be any objection that you would make to then say to a non-Catholic who says that when we die, we enter directly into the presence of Christ and we have been transformed.

Therefore, the new is fully manifest, and the old has passed away; we can enter directly into the presence of God.

But it won't be the process of death because all of us die, but not all of us go to heaven.

It’s not death that would change us.

No, of course not, but we have already been given a new nature in Jesus Christ, and so we have already been made new creatures.

We live in the now and the not yet; we are already in that position where we love God and we have those desires for God, and we have that new nature.

When we die, those final attachments to sin, that abiding sin that we struggle with, is gone.

So we are now—I'm going to finish this sentence—we are now clothed in the righteousness of Christ and therefore can enter directly into His presence.

So, wait, when does our attachment to sin vanish?

At death?

Does that happen to everybody?

No. So you’re saying at death, God purifies us of sin.

We’ve already been purified from the punishment of sin, but we still experience abiding sin in our life.

That’s what sanctification is about; that’s what conformance to the image of Christ is about.

And then when God calls us out of this world, He now has us going to a different place.

The reason for the continuation of that struggle is gone, and we enter into His presence, not on the basis of who we are or what we are, but on the basis of what Christ has done in our place.

So the reason I desire sin in this life is something related to my soul, correct?

Related to my soul?

Yeah, there is something about—we call it abiding sin.

We're no longer under the reigning power of that sin, but it is still in our fleshly bodies.

I’m not sure what you mean by soul at that point.

Is it possible that this sanctification model of purgatory, since it could be instantaneous, could also be a process?

Just as we undergo a process of sanctification in this life, that God will have us undergo a process of sanctification in the next life—is that possible?

The Bible does not teach that, and I’m assuming that you’re referring to something other than the Roman Catholic doctrine.

Because then we have to talk about punishments for temporal consequences of sin.

Let’s go to—I have a few other grab bags here.

Who would you say is the earliest Christian that held your view on the afterlife, that there are no post-mortem punishments or purification or anything like that?

Peter, Paul, James.

All right, let me rephrase that: What Christian after the apostolic age?

Honestly, in light of these—especially books like this by Brian Daly, this documents the wide range of views.

The fact that even looking at someone like Gregory the Great, you can find him in one place saying we go directly into the presence of God.

Were there any Fathers in there that denied purgatory, that said that all believers immediately enter heaven?

Okay, denied purgatory.

It wasn’t even a concept, so how could you deny it?

They didn’t deny that the Dallas Cowboys choke all the time in the playoffs either, but that’s still a reality.

Sorry, Tom.

Sorry, Tom.

Did Augustine believe in purgatory?

Not in the way you’d believe in it, no.

He made statements concerning afterlife purgation, but that has nothing to do with it.

Did he say that after death, people suffer pene purgatoriae?

Yes, but that had not been defined in the way that is defined by the Council of Florence, was it?

I am asking you if there—okay, since you like to quote people, Brian Daly says no.

Okay, where does he say that?

In his section on Augustine, he very clearly delineates the limitations of his understanding of any type of—there’s nothing that would give rise, for example, to the concept of indulgences and the thesaurus meritorum and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

That’s still way down the road.

You have to allow for the development.

In Church history, is there any person in Church history after the apostolic age who you would say that yeah, their views on the afterlife when it comes to post-mortem purification or punishment is pretty similar to mine?

Well, even John Chrysostom very clearly—in his—and you know this; you're the one doing the videos on these things—very clearly gave funeral orations and things like that, talking about the immediate entrance into the presence of Christ.

Did Chrysostom believe that the damned could be saved?

Not be saved, no.

He said they should pray for the damned to mitigate their suffering.

He did not say they could be saved; that’s different.

All right, let’s go to the issue related to punishment.

All right, so my other argument here—my timer stopped.

Evan, how are we doing on time?

Three minutes and 57 seconds.

Okay, three minutes and 55 seconds.

Okay, let’s go back to my other argument then about sin and punishment.

So premise one: When Christians sin, God unpleasantly disciplines them to morally perfect them.

Would you say that’s true?

God conforms the elect to the image of Christ, and that is described in the book of Hebrews as a father lovingly chastising his children because He wants us to be holy as Christ is holy.

The term “unpleasant” isn’t relevant.

Okay, well, in Hebrews 12:11, it says, For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Doesn’t that clearly say that God unpleasantly disciplines us?

If you want to use that term, I will allow you to do so.

I will never preach a sermon using that term.

I’m sorry, you won't preach what the Bible says?

All right, let’s go ahead; that’s a cheap shot, and you know it, and everybody in the room knows it too.

Nope, it was just a fun one to put out there!

All right, so I think that’s very clear: when Christians sin, God unpleasantly disciplines them in order to morally perfect them.

He’s not an arbitrary capricious monster.

Then that would go to premise two.

So is it impossible that if God does unpleasantly discipline us, you are saying that if that happens, it only happens in this life before death?

Yes.

How do you know that?

Because that’s what Hebrews chapter 12 is talking about: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him.

For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, and He flogs every son whom He receives.”

So this is being conformed to the image of Christ, and that’s God’s purpose in leaving us in this world.

Otherwise, He could just simply say, “Hey, you got saved—boom, you’re out of here, straight into heaven.

No worries about it.”

But instead, He wants us to live out the life of Christ here upon earth.

Okay, so that’s an assumption you’re making.

I’m asking you, is it possible that God—how do you know He only does it in this life?

How do you know that?

Is there a Scripture verse that says that?

Well, again, I am a sola scriptura believing biblicist, and I have not seen anything in Scripture that tells me that after this life, this concept of purgation or whatever else it might be is going to continue in the presence of God.

If I get to the presence of God in heaven and He permanently revokes a heavenly reward because of what I did on earth, would you call that unpleasant discipline?

It wasn’t a matter of—there are a number of false assumptions there.

Okay, you are assuming that in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, the reward has somehow quote-unquote been rescinded or something along those lines.

That’s not what the text is talking about.

What is lost?

What is lost in 1 Corinthians 3? He shall suffer loss of the things that he built.

The loss of what?

Well, the only context in 1 Corinthians 3 is the building upon the foundation that this individual is doing, so that was work within the Church.

It’s not about converts or anything like that at all; it’s the things that he did.

So when it is demonstrated—I could name names of certain people—that everything they did, the millions they spent, the buildings they built, and everything else—when that great Day demonstrates they did that completely for themselves, then that is all burned up.

It’s all gone, and he’s got nothing.

That’s the loss.

Didn’t you earlier say, though, that he would receive a wage, a misthos?

No, that’s the person whose work does not burn up—he’s the one that receives the misthos.

Okay, I’ve got to watch my timer a little more closely.

Stop!

Okay, sorry!

How many times do you have to tap it?

Okay, we’ve got ten more minutes, right?

All right, good.

There are some people in the audience not saying good, but that’s okay!

All right, we go straight back to 1 Corinthians chapter 3. So in verse 14—that’s pretty much where we were—if a certain one’s work remains, which he has built, he will receive a reward.

What is that reward?

Well, we don’t know exactly.

We would imagine it would probably be some kind of glorification or honor—something related to heaven since this is the Day of the Lord.

Okay, and the person who receives this reward— is this a saint or a person who goes to purgatory?

It says here it seems to be someone—it doesn’t talk about that person suffering any kind of loss or needing purification, so it only talks about them being rewarded in heaven.

But it’s possible that somebody could be purified of sin after death and still receive heavenly rewards.

Jesus says to store up for yourselves treasures not on earth, but treasures in heaven.

Okay, so the only ones in verse 14 are the ones who built with gold, silver, and precious stones.

Would you agree with that?

Can you ask again, please?

In verse 14, the ones who receive a reward are the ones who built upon the foundation with gold, silver, and precious stones.

Yeah, the ones who acted well in this life will receive a reward.

That’s the doctrine of rewards; it’s very common in the New Testament.

Okay, so are there saints—and we have completely different definitions of saints—but are there saints who built with gold, silver, and precious stones?

Oh, well, the Church doesn’t have a dogmatic teaching about whether all canonized saints immediately went to heaven or whether they underwent purification.

It’s possible that someone who is recognized as a canonized saint—someone who is definitely in heaven—went through a process of purification before that point.

The Church doesn’t have a teaching on that.

In fact, it seems probable that some of them did.

So, saints are not individuals who have more merit than temporal punishments upon their souls and hence go directly into the presence of God?

The word saint has different meanings when it is used in the New Testament; it refers to Christians in general.

The word saint has a technical meaning in Catholic theology to refer to someone the Church has officially taught is currently in heaven or a canonized saint.

But saints are not perfect.

When you read the lives of the saints, especially grumpy Jerome, you see that.

So, all right.

So this judgment can’t be of all.

Right, I’ll skip that part.

If a certain one’s work is destroyed by the fire, those are the ones who built with wood, hay, straw, right?

If a certain one’s work is—verse 15—I'm so sorry James, I’m just hopelessly distracted because I’m going to lose a bet of 50 bucks if you don’t ask me who the blessed man is!

But all right, we’ll just keep going.

We can keep going; this is fun.

So, verse 15: If a certain one’s work is destroyed, he will suffer loss.

Is it your idea, then, what you’re presenting to us, that if a certain Christian leader’s converts are proven to not be true Christians, that that person will be punished?

Is that what you’re saying?

I think that that is a view that makes sense in the passage.

I wouldn’t impose it on others, but it’s one that I think makes a lot of sense.

As I quoted before, Hebrews 13:17 says to submit to those who have authority over you—your leaders in the Church—who are men who will have to give account.

But even if we say that the works—are just the things they did in this life, the motivations that they had—the point is that the works are bad in a moral sense.

Bad moral things are sins, and so they are receiving a punishment.

But it is a temporary punishment, not an eternal punishment, and that is the foundation of the doctrine of purgatory in Romans 4:6. All right, I don’t think it’s fair whoever did the bet because you set it up; you can ask whatever you want.

Oh yeah, sure!

In Romans chapter 4, David speaks of the blessedness upon the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.

Do you believe that God imputes righteousness by faith?

I do believe that.

The point that Paul is making there in Romans 3 and 4 is that anyone can come to righteousness in Christ before God, whether they are a Jew or a Gentile.

Through baptism, all of their sins are washed away; they do no work.

There’s nothing like circumcision where they earn their place before God.

They simply come and receive Christ in baptism, and after baptism, none of their sins are held against them.

The blessed man is anyone who has received God’s forgiveness; when God forgives, his sins are not held against him.

Does the term baptism appear anywhere in Romans 3 or 4? No, but the point is the blessed man—we ask, how does God forgive us?

And that’s very clear when Paul talks about baptism in Romans 6. So we’ll only get to baptism in Romans 6, but in Romans 3 and 4, we just have to read ahead?

No, in Romans 3 and 4, just as if we’re talking about David.

Why is David a blessed man?

It’s because God forgave him of the sins of murder and adultery, and so those sins would no longer be held against him.

The blessed man is anyone who has received the forgiveness of God.

You’re jumping ahead, so hold on.

Verse 4 says, “To the one working, the 'misthos'”—which we also saw in 1 Corinthians 3—“the 'misthos' is not reckoned or imputed as a gift but what is owed.”

But then, verse 5—the contrast: “To the one not working but believing in the one justifying the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.”

Do you see that Paul is contrasting an attitude of earning something from God with an attitude of faith in the promises of God?

Right, and the Catholic teaching is not that we earn anything from God by our own merits or that we earn rewards or salvation as some kind of wage that God is obliged to give us because of equal value for our works.

What you’re referencing there in Romans 4, verses 3 through 5, is related to the fact that anyone can come into forgiveness from God, whether they’re Jew or Gentile.

N.T. Wright says in this passage, Paul is ruling out any suggestion that Abraham might have been just the sort of person God was looking for so that there might be some merit prior to the promise.

Yes, and yet when we get to verse 5, it does say that his faith is reckoned to him as righteousness, right?

Yeah.

The Catholic teaching on justification is that they’re not mutually exclusive; that God can declare we are righteous, but He also makes us righteous.

Just as God declared, “Let there be light,” He also objectively made light exist when He made the world.

On what basis can He say that someone is righteous?

Don’t they have to be righteous to be declared righteous?

Well, no.

God has to make us righteous.

He takes us as sons of Adam and makes us as sons of Christ by sacramentally infusing grace into us, right?

Yeah, that’s what Catholics believe.

Not by faith.

No, what the Catholic Church teaches and what Lutherans would teach and what Anglicans would teach is that baptism is something that we receive by faith; it’s not any kind of work.

Okay, so then he uses kathaparē just as David speaks of the blessedness upon the man to whom God imputes righteousness chorīs ergon—without works.

What are these works?

Probably the works related to— in an immediate context, as I said, Paul is most concerned about the relation between Jews and Gentiles.

That’s why in Romans 4:9, he makes the distinction between the circumcised and the uncircumcised.

So it’s those works that would give you entry into the Kingdom of God—he’s saying you don’t need that.

He’s saying you don’t have to be a good Jew in order to be a good Christian.

So it wouldn’t be the works that come from ergon, in verse 4, the one working; the wage is not reckoned according to grace.

So there’s a distinction?

To receive justification from God, you don’t have to do any work.

You receive baptism as a grace from God; that’s why an infant, when they are saved, cannot possibly work.

They don’t do anything but wriggle around.

And if you mortal sin and reject God, you can return to God through humble faith and receive Him in the sacrament of reconciliation— That’s not a work.

Okay, unfortunately, the answers have gone on so long that I’m not actually going to be able to fulfill your bet, but in verses 7 and 8, do you not see that Paul is defining the imputation of righteousness as the forgiveness of sins?

Yeah, and you can talk about it—as I said, they’re not mutually exclusive.

But the point of the matter is that if you’re arguing that, well, God imputes righteousness to us so He does not reckon our sins or He does not impute our sins to us, it doesn’t follow from that that there are no consequences for our sins.

Does that mean that once God reckons us as righteous, therefore, if we end up becoming an unrepentant apostate, we will end up going to heaven because God does not impute those sins to us?

Like, that doesn’t follow at all.

We come to the end of the cross-examination period.

I think I need a round of applause.

I know we were going to do that more; to have gone that long without clapping just felt wrong!

They worked really hard with that.

We have a lot of questions; I have no idea if this is a serious question or not, so I’m going to get it out of the way because it's for both of you: When will the both of you submit to the one true Church of Pastor Jim's Holy Apostolic Independent Fundamental KJV? And then someone else bribed me—or bribed Dr. White with a Chick-fil-A card.

I don’t know.

Are you keeping that?

I don’t know.

No? I’ll give it to you.

Here you go.

I think it’s just for a cookie, though.

We’re going to come to that question, but Trent is asking questions first.

What?

No, didn’t I already do?

We already did that.

No, I’m sorry; you’re answering questions that came in.

I’m sorry—I had you guys worried there!

Sorry, apologies.

Okay, so 20 minutes with this.

I’ll go through again: one minute to answer, 30 seconds to respond if the question is for you or not for you.

Okay, I had a lot of people ask about the thief on the cross.

I’m kind of surprised that it didn’t come up.

So, how do you respond to Luke 23:43? “Today you will be with me in paradise,” said Jesus to the thief on the cross.

The argument seems to be that purgatory does not exist because the thief would have had to undergo purification or temporary punishment for sins, and Jesus said, “Today you’ll be with me in paradise.”

I don’t find that to be a good argument against purgatory because, number one, as I quoted from the Catechism, paragraph 1472, by a fervent act of charity in turning to God in sorrow for sin, all of the temporal consequences of punishment for sin can be remitted.

I think the thief clearly did that.

He heartfeltly said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

He rebuked the other thieves on the cross, and he suffered a torturous death, so you could say that he was purified through voluntarily accepting that punishment.

Also, as I said, the duration of purgatory is not taught by the Church, so it still could have happened in a short period of time if he needed that after death.

Also, Jesus did not go to heaven immediately that day, right?

Because He had to descend into hell and preach to the spirits in prison.

He didn’t rise gloriously until Sunday.

Paradise refers to a region of the underworld, an interim where purification could take place.

I’d also caution that the thief on the cross...

All right, all right, one minute and 30 seconds!

That’s brutal!

Once you assume the authority of the Church to define these things, then you can utilize that to interpret all of the Bible the way you want to.

There is nothing in Scripture about purgatory; we have not seen anything that names it.

It has been assumed from the beginning, and the reality is, the thief on the cross simply trusted in Christ, and Christ says, “I can save you perfectly,” and that’s what all of us can trust in.

But I actually want to allow you—I’m not actually sure of the question, so you might say it has nothing to do with it—but the question is this: How does the meaning of the Greek word “aio,” A-I-O, affect the conversation tonight?

Or does it?

Or do you get that for nothing?

Are we talking about aeon?

Yes, A-I-O—well, it looks like an U, but it may be an A. It’s probably the final form—New.

Okay, I’m assuming that someone may be referring to Matthew 12, Mark 3, and the age to come versus an eternal sin, which we didn’t end up discussing.

Shockingly, I wish you had betted on that.

Other than that, I just don’t know what to assume is the background.

I’m sorry.

No, no.

I worried that—but they did bribe me, so I want to give you—you read it; I think you have earned your wage.

Let me give another question.

This is for Dr. Wright: Do High Church Anglicans who affirm sola scriptura and believe in purgatory affirm a different gospel?

Well, a High Church Anglican would have to use—the 39 Articles, and the 39 Articles were thoroughly reformed.

The problem is there has been development since then.

I have preached in many Anglican churches down in Sydney, Australia, where they are very, very conservative and believe in justification by faith and things like that.

I have a picture of me and an Anglican minister standing next to the little baptistry, and I’m going like that.

But they believe in justification by faith, so as to what other Anglicans have come up with after the 39 Articles, I can’t really comment.

But if there’s anything that is going to cause you to believe that there is something outside of faith and faith alone as the means of justification, that becomes extremely problematic.

But they don’t have quite the same level of dogmatic defining authority as Rome claims for itself.

Oh hush!

Yeah, I would say that when you look at—and this is important—when people see Catholics and Protestants debate, Protestantism is a very wide demographic, and there are going to be Protestants who are much closer to the Catholic position on certain issues and have no problem with it, such as baptism.

Regeneration is something Lutherans and Anglicans hardly agree with Catholics on.

King Henry VIII was called Defender of the Faith; he wrote a defense of the seven sacraments.

So if your theology has priests, has the sacrament of confession, and has penances, and you understand that there are temporary punishments for sin in this life that the Church has some authority over, then you’re just one skip, hop, and jump away from a doctrine of purgatory as Catholic.

You’re not that far off.

Okay, Trent, another question: Where Jesus is on the cross, based on Hebrews 10:12-18—although this is a reference to the Gospels—what did Christ mean on the cross by saying, It is finished?

There are different interpretations of what that means.

It could just mean that His passion was now complete.

I actually have a video on my website that mentions people who erroneously say that It is finished means paid in full; that is a misunderstanding of the Greek term and its abbreviation used in manuscripts.

What was not finished was our justification, for example, because Paul says in Romans 4:25 that Jesus was raised for our justification.

He also says in 1 Corinthians that if Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain.

So our salvation was not finished at that moment.

So it may refer to His prophetic mission; the passion is finished.

Or Scott Hahn, in his book The Lamb's Supper, proposes an intriguing hypothesis: that what is finished by drinking the fourth cup of wine, he finished the supper that he started the night before.

You can read that in Hahn's book The Lamb's Supper if you’re interested, and his academic book The Fourth Cup.

I don’t know if it strikes everybody else the same way it strikes me, but when I first started debating Roman Catholics, one of their main arguments was, “We’re not like you Protestants; we can go to the Pope, and we can find out exactly what a text means.”

Yet when we get into these texts, what we hear is, “Well, it might be this; it might be that.

I don’t know; we might read this book over here; we might read that book over there.”

It just seems to me that there’s less confidence in the interpretive authority than there once was.

But I'm out of time!

Dr. White, if you die and are saved but struggling with a deadly sin—pride, lust, etc.—do

you just go straight to heaven?

And can you show that with Scripture?

Again, the scriptural teaching is that we have been justified by faith; we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We possess His righteousness, and according to Hebrews 10, we have been perfected by that once-for-all sacrifice made in our place.

So when you talk about struggling with a deadly sin, it almost sounds like some type of mortal sin concept being presented there, and again, I reject the idea of the mortal-venial distinction.

The reason that I go into the presence of the Father is because there has been a transition; the old has passed away, the new has come.

That is a reality now, and then at death, it becomes the final reality, so that that attachment is no longer there, that abiding sin is no longer there, and the reason that I can stand in the presence of God is because I am clothed in that righteousness.

He was made sin in my place; that's why I can then go directly into His presence.

Yeah, I find the response a bit confusing.

It seems to make sin something we're freed from at death, simply because it sounds like our souls are separated from our bodies.

As if sin is just something we have; once the soul leaves the body, it doesn't struggle with sin anymore.

But that doesn't make sense, because damned people, when they die, will sin and continue to sin in hell, even though they don’t have their bodies.

So that would show that sin is something related to our souls.

So after we die, death is not the automatic process that sanctifies us.

If we still need sanctification, God will do something to complete that process if necessary after death.

Okay, for Trent: If sin can be paid for temporally and we can be sanctified via purgatory, why was Jesus' death necessary?

Jesus' death was necessary because we cannot make satisfaction for the eternal consequence of sin.

The eternal consequence of sin is that we have accrued an infinite debt against God; our actions separate us from Him.

We are born in original sin; we do not have sanctifying grace.

We are children of Adam.

We have no right to stand before God.

The only way we can come to God is that Christ made satisfaction, and He made it possible so that through His merits, it’s superabundant.

Every single person, if they choose to receive Christ, has access to that.

So Christ merits and satisfies the eternal consequences of sin.

However, as Christians know, when we still sin— even when we're saved—there are temporary consequences.

Jesus took away the permanent and eternal consequences, but when we sin, we create disorder in the will, unhealthy attachments to creatures, and discord amongst the brethren.

These are temporary, finite consequences of sins for finite, partially turning away from God.

What we didn't just hear, and what was just said, was anything about the union of the believer with Christ and the fact that what Christ's death actually accomplishes is perfect and complete on behalf of that particular individual, the elect.

That union with Christ and that substitutionary atonement really is part of what we're getting at this evening and what that actually ends up resulting in.

Okay, question for James: Could Peter forgive sins?

Why is the fact that the disciples could forgive sins not evidence that Christians confessed their sins to a quote-unquote priest?

I direct people to the debate that was done a number of years ago between myself and Mitch Pacwa on the subject of the priesthood.

I think it was very, very useful and helpful to people, and Mitch is a great guy.

There are no priests in the New Testament.

The apostles are told that they can proclaim the forgiveness of sins, but that’s through the proclamation of the Gospel itself.

That’s what the whole point of it is.

We can say to anyone, “Turn in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will find Him to be a perfect and powerful Savior.”

That’s what the forgiveness of sins is about.

It’s not the individual saying, “I have some sacramental mark upon my soul that gives me the power of transubstantiation and also the power to assign punishments to you and penances and everything else.”

That is again something so far removed from New Testament Christianity that it illustrates to us just how much development is required to get to the sacramental system itself.

I would say that's not a correct interpretation.

In John 20:23, there is no mention of proclaiming sins, and in fact, the proclamation of the Gospel is something that had been done at the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

Jesus gives something new; He breathes on the apostles.

So in a sense, the apostles are now God-breathed, and He tells them, Whose sins you forgive are forgiven; whose sins you retain are retained.

In fact, as I cover in my book Case for Catholicism, the New Testament never tells us to confess our sins to a priest.

God is never an explicit object to whom we are told to confess our sins.

When it talks about confessing sins, that’s in James chapter 5; it says to confess your sins to one another.

Question for Trent: Can you explain why the Catholic view on purgatory has changed since the mid-20th century?

This kind of speaks to the concept of development.

Yeah, I would say that doctrine develops, and this is the same for Protestants.

If you compare the early magisterial reformers to later reformers, you see that different understandings of theologies are sharpened and focused, and some views fall into dissolution over time.

The understanding of purgatory begins with the very basic concept of purification or punishment after death based on what someone has done in this life.

There are two different models of purgatory, and we see them in the magisterial sources.

In fact, it’s covered very well in Jerry Walls’ book.

You see a sanctification model, purifying after death, or a satisfaction model, which remits punishments for sins.

The development in Catholic theology seems to be an idea that the satisfaction or the suffering of the temporary consequences of sin—the purification is the punishment—instead of those two being separate ideas, that they may just be two different ways of describing the same thing.

Anything to be explained by using the term development?

If there's a problem, slap some Newman on it, is how it has been said, and I think it’s very properly said.

I’ve already recommended, and if you have a real interest, I really suggest to you this book by F.X. Schoup on purgatory.

It gives you a real deep insight into what was understood for hundreds of years, and I really do believe there has been a move away from that in the modern period.

Question for James: Can you sin after being saved?

If so, how can sin enter heaven?

Well, of course!

And that’s the whole point.

You know, 1 John tells us, by the way, that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just.

Who would you confess that to?

That would be to God.

So yeah, there’s a direct place where we are confessing our sins, and there is no concept of a priest there.

But yes, we experience abiding sin in our life.

How then can we continue to have the presence of the Spirit within us?

How then can we continue to have fellowship with God?

Well, it’s because He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

It is that fundamental imputation of the righteousness of God to us that makes us right before God, and that sin has been covered over.

That’s why the blessed man is not the blessed man one day, oops— not the blessed man the next, oops—back to not the blessed man.

No! A Christian is the blessed man because Christianity is focused upon what Christ does to the glory of the triune God.

That is the most important aspect that we need to understand, and it’s Christ’s righteousness that gives us our peace with God.

So it’s not sin entering into heaven; that sin was already dealt with in Christ.

I'll just say that I address 1 John 1:9 in my book and in several articles.

In verses 8 through 10, the context is related to publicly confessing things to other people, like our faith.

When you read early Church historians, it’s very clear.

Look at the Didache; look at Irenaeus, for example, who condemns women who go to church and gather and do not publicly confess sins.

The sacrament of confession was public.

That’s well established among Christian and Church historians.

So in seeing that the early Church was very concerned about the effects of sin on someone, even if you are saved, I think it’s your turn, Trent.

I’m getting lost—sorry!

I think probably one more question for each of you is all we have time for.

What are your thoughts?

This was mentioned in the remarks, but I think it’s important to sort of focus here on this: What are your thoughts on Paul saying to be apart or away from the body is to be at home with the Lord?

How does that allow for purgatory?

Yeah, I already addressed that in speaking with James.

This is a very common misquotation of Scripture.

So people say, “Oh, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”

Rather, Paul is expressing a hope: “We are of good courage; we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

But he understands there’s work we have to do in this life.

But it’s very clear that Paul is not teaching that once we die, we are just immediately in the presence of the Lord and embracing the beatific vision.

Because he says in verse 10, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive good or evil according to what he has done in the body.”

And so to receive evil because we did bad things in the body—that sounds like a post-mortem punishment for the purpose of our purification.

It is a promise that we will be in the presence of Christ, and of course that judgment before the Bema seat of Christ takes place in heaven in the presence of Christ.

These are redeemed people, and this is not some type of idea of punishment, satis-passio, anything like that.

The reality is Paul recognized the vital importance of knowing that in the body—and if I’m not in the body, I will be in the presence of my Lord.

Okay, and then again, I think the last question then for James: What purification is Paul referring to if not purgatory in 1 Corinthians chapter 3? He’s not referring to purification.

The text is really, really very clear, and we tried to walk through it.

What he’s talking about—the only term that is being translated as purification is zemiao, and I didn’t know that the Protestants who worked on BDAG had been given the charism of infallibility in interpretation.

But the reality is Paul’s use of that term is to suffer loss.

That’s how he always uses it when he uses the term, and it’s simply a recognition that the Day of Judgment will reveal clearly what is gold, silver, and precious stones, and what is wood, hay, and straw.

It has nothing to do with converts or anything like that, and so it’s not a matter of purification; it’s not a matter of punishment.

It’s a matter of the revelation and demonstrating why people did what they did and who did it for the glory of Christ.

I cited 1 Corinthians 3 not as an example of purification, but as an example of unpleasant discipline because James says, you know, you turn it into just purification.

You're getting away from the traditional view of punishment.

But then when I cite 1 Corinthians 3, he says, oh, it’s not really punishment.

Well, if you look, for example, here in Le Goff—the book that James recommends—he says that the first person who did the first real exegesis of 1 Corinthians 3:15 in the history of the Church was Ambrosiaster, and he considered it very clear.

Ambrosiaster says in the fourth century that to suffer loss is to endure reproof: For what person, when subjected to punishment, does not lose something thereby?

Okay, we are almost done.

We have five minutes for each speaker again.

Trent will go first, James will go second.

These are their closing remarks for the evening.

We’re good?

All right, okay.

Well, let’s draw everything together.

So I presented two arguments for the doctrine of purgatory.

The first one showed that we are sanctified in this life.

For some, the process of sanctification continues after death but is completed before we enter heaven.

So if we are still subject to sin, desire sin, if sin has any influence on us or dwells within us in any way, we cannot be in heaven because nothing unclean can enter heaven, as the book of Revelation says.

So I think we made a lot of progress tonight.

James seemed actually very open to what has been called the sanctification model of purgatory that is also embraced by other Protestants.

But second, I didn’t just rely on that model; I also spoke about unpleasant discipline after death—another word for punishment.

Many times, Protestants will hear Catholics use terms and import meanings into them that aren’t there.

So that punishment is seen as satisfying some kind of legal standard to earn our way out of purgatory when, rather, it’s about accepting the Father’s discipline to reorder our wills and for Him to set right the order of justice to respond to when we partially turn away from Him.

He gently guides us back, just as our earthly fathers have done with us.

James just tried to make distinctions; he tried to say—and I gave an example of that happening at the judgment at the Day in 1 Corinthians 3, and James said, “Well, you know, it’s not really punishment; that’s not what’s happening here; it’s discipline.”

Making all these distinctions.

I would ask you just to read the verses for yourself.

Read Hebrews 12:3 through 12. Read the whole Bible!

Read Hebrews 12. We’ll start there.

There’s a great podcast to go to, Bible in a Year, if you need to do that, by the way.

And I showed in both those arguments—both the argument for sanctification as well as the argument from unpleasant discipline—that if you don’t like the word punishment, it still follows with everything.

I also quoted from the official magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church that is in harmony with what has been taught before.

I think it’s important to understand that teachings on eschatology—the end of life—develop.

Many Protestant views of hell were much more graphic 300 years ago.

I remember when William Lane Craig did a debate on hell with an atheist; the atheist quoted earlier Protestants and even Catholics who talked about children burning in ovens and things like that, whereas now the discussion of hell is much more sanitized.

It’s still bad, but it’s eternal separation from God.

So we see developments in those things.

So why does the doctrine of purgatory matter?

It matters because we’ve seen there is a distinction between mortal and venial sin.

I think that’s obvious: sin impacts us.

We know deep down, even if we are saved, that when we sin, something has gone wrong in our relationship with God.

We feel sorrow for our sins, and that’s a good thing; God wants us to feel that way because He wants us to return to Him.

There is a natural order of justice through divine grace that He draws us to Himself, and we can’t pretend like that isn’t there or sugarcoat it with other language.

I'll leave you with the words of C.S. Lewis, who I think put that very well.

He said, “Our souls demand purgatory, don’t they?

Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells, your rags drop with mud and slime.

We’re charitable here, and no one will upbraid you with these things nor draw away from you.

Enter into the joy’? Should we not reply with, ‘Submission, sir?

And if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleansed first.’”

It may hurt, you know.

Even so, sir, I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering.

Partly from tradition, partly because most real good that has been done in this life has involved it.

So through all of this, we can be confident that I’ve shown this from Scripture; I’ve shown this as the witness of the Church.

James never cited anyone in the post-apostolic witness or church history that held any view related to this.

It is a novelty in Christian history, not something grounded in what the Church has passed on for centuries.

And this gives us hope and confidence that we can pursue holiness in this life, that God loves us; He is our heavenly Father, and He will bring us to perfection and full sanctification, whether in this life or the next.

We can be confident in the transforming love of Jesus Christ, who doesn’t just legally erase our sins with a fiction; He extinguishes every trace of them from our souls so we can be, as St. Paul says, new creations in Him.

The doctrine of purgatory is good news for that—to seek out this sanctification and to be able to fully conform ourselves to Jesus Christ.

Thank you very much.

Because we have short memories, I want you to remember what Trent just said because it summarizes the sad tragedy of the distinction between biblical gospel preaching and what is found in Roman Catholicism.

He just called the imputation of the righteousness of Christ a legal fiction.

That’s what the Reformation was about, and that’s what this debate should be about.

If you want to know more about the historical stuff, he said this is what it’s always been.

Roman Catholic scholarship knows better.

Read Brian Daly; read Le Goff.

They will give you a good indication and a good summary of the development over time of these concepts.

This was not something that Ignatius taught.

No, you have a little bit here, you have a little bit there.

It was really dependent upon Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and what was inputting into their theology was not a pure biblical stream by any stretch of the imagination.

Look it up for yourself.

Read Schoup; these are Roman Catholic sources, by the way.

Read these books for yourself to find out what purgatory used to mean—all the thousands of visions of what purgatory is about, and the temporality and the Sabbatine privilege.

I wonder if there’s someone in this room wearing the brown scapular right now because the promise is that when you die, Mary will come down into purgatory and release you on the Saturday after your death.

If there’s no time involved with that, how do you get to Saturday?

Unless everybody dies on a Saturday, I don’t even know how that works.

These are the historical realities, but I didn’t get into all the historical realities in a brief debate because this is about what was just said.

A legal fiction is the assertion of the New Testament; you won’t find the term purgatory in here.

You did not find anything about temporal punishments in here.

Every time Trent went there, he’s quoting from the Universal Catechism; he’s quoting from a pope that lived 2,000 years after the birth of Christ.

This truly is the issue.

And this is why we have the division.

I was attacked during the day today because you weren’t really clear in what you were saying about Roman Catholicism in the debate last night.

I made a distinction between the oneness Pentecostals, who have a Christological error and reject the doctrine of the Trinity, and my objections to Roman Catholicism because we don’t disagree on the doctrine of the Trinity.

What we disagree on is what is listed by Paul in Galatians as something that fundamentally divides, and that is the gospel.

If, in fact, you can identify as a legal fiction the assertion of the imputation of righteousness, which we just got done looking at in the original text of Romans 4, just as David speaks of the blessedness upon the man—to whom God legizomai—imputes righteousness dikaiosunē apart from works.

Oh, it’s a legal fiction that’s done by baptism, but you don’t get that.

So you get to Romans 6—that's reading the text upside down and backwards.

The reality is, let’s be honest—after last night, all the rest of this discussion of history and everything else is irrelevant.

Trent believes in purgatory because Rome tells him to; that’s his ultimate authority.

Therefore, Church history will be interpreted in light of that, and the Bible will be interpreted in light of that.

You can grab hold of anything and bring it into that ultimate authoritative claim.

We have not seen anything; we went through his arguments in cross-examination.

In my answers, I demonstrated why his arguments do not hold, but he’s not interacting with any of that.

Who is the blessed man?

Is the blessed man the one who is only right after being baptized?

The blessed man right after he walks out of the confessional?

Blessed man, not blessed man, blessed man, not blessed man, justified, not justified.

Is that really what Paul was arguing in Romans chapter 4? As he said, go read Hebrews 12. Yeah, but also go read Romans 3, 4, and 5 because that’s where you have the biblical teaching on how we can have peace with God, and it denies the concept of purgatory.

Thank you.

We really are the beneficiaries of a lifetime of learning, and it’s not a small thing that we’ve been able to listen to this tonight.

Debates are really a starting point for further exploration.

I hope you understand that I can’t answer all questions, so you have to go do your homework now based on what you’ve heard.

I want to give these gentlemen a few minutes; Dr. White needs to get to the vehicle and get some sleep tonight because he has to preach tomorrow.

Mr. Horn may also be teaching tomorrow; I don’t know, but he’ll be signing books next door.

If you guys want to go ahead and make your way there so you’re not mobbed in here—in March with Leighton Flowers on John 6, and then honestly a debate where I think Trent would be 100% on my side with Dale Tuggy.

You know Dale Tuggy?

If he brings a friend, I’ll join you.

And that debate could be quite interesting; he is really the king of the Unitarians, and so it’s going to be on the deity of Christ and the biblical testimony to who Christ is.

The main reason I want you to come back, aside from the importance of the debates, is that when we do it, I’m going to be going next door, and I don’t care what diseases I end up driving home with as a result!

But I do apologize because the church will tell you I always stand over there late into the evening greeting people, and some of you have been here before the debate, and I miss doing it.

I’m sorry, but I hope you understand the wisdom when I still have three and a half weeks of teaching and debating to do.

I’m not feeling well at all, so please pray for me in that way, and I look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.

Thank you for letting me be here.

The only reason I can be over there to shake hands is that I have three little kids, so I’ve already gotten everything.

Have a great night, and thank you for coming!