Monday, January 1, 2024

No Purgatory still isn't Biblical in Universal Salvation based Theology.

Every now and then I'll see an ally on Universal Salvation say something like "The Catholics were right about Purgatory" and even I have bordered on the sentiment in the past.  However that completely misunderstands the purpose Purgatory has in Augustinian, Mediaeval and Tridentine Theology.

The root word that Purgatory comes from is Biblical, there is talk about Purging Fire in Scripture, however it is used as a verb not a noun.  Purgatory as a name of a plane of existence is based on pointing to the verses that most undeniably refer to Corrective Judgment like in Malachi 3 and 1 Corinthians 3 and all the Refining Fire passages The Total Victory of Christ likes to talk about and saying they are referring to something different from The Lake of Fire in Revelation or from the Gehenna Fire Jesus warned of .  While those of us who have a proper Biblical understanding of Universal Salvation conclude those are all the same and can't be separated from each other.  

Augustine was clear that Purgatory was only for the Baptized.  It was in origin explicitly about rejecting Universal Salvation by creating an alternate explanation for the existence of Corrective Punishment passages.

It also when combined with the Platonist denial of Soul Sleep created a teaching that Purgatory is a place many of the dead currently are in, and this is where the idea of Praying for The Dead came from, which lead to the whole Indulgences thing, the Indulgences never claimed to get anyone out of "Hell" they were about shortening one's potential stay in Purgatory.  I however view all of the relevant passages as not happening till The White Throne Judgment after the Bodily Resurrection of even Unbelievers.

Purgatory was not an incidental doctrine that came to be labeled Catholic during the Reformation, it was actually vital to understanding the inciting Incident, Martín Luther wasn't even agaisnt the Office of the Papacy yet when he nailed the 95 Theses, everything he initially talked about were Symptoms of the false Doctrine of Purgatory.

Purgatory isn't a term for affirming Corrective Punishment, it's a term for limiting it only to Believers.

The Sheep and Goats Judgment is a Judgment of Nations not Individuals

While I don't always agree with The Total Victory of Christ YouTube channel (like their overreliance on the Creeds) their discussions of the Sheep and Goats Judgment of Matthew 25 are pretty good.  What I have to say here is in addition to all of that not in opposition to it.

Because another key point believers in Universal Salvation should stress is that this is a judgment of Nations not Individuals, that is explicitly the word used in verse 32.  I know Dispensationalists want to say "nations" here means "Gentiles" and that "the least of these my brethren" are The Jews.  But the Hebrew "Goyim" Biblically meant Nations, the modern "Gentiles" meaning came later, even if it is relevant to some NT uses of "Ethnos" it's not universal and in a context like this certainly doesn't work.  It's obvious from the context that "the least of these my brethren" means the poor and suffering and marginalized and least privileged of society not people literally genealogically "brethren" to Him in a way others are not.  Jesus is The Son of Man, all children of Adam are his brethren no matter if they recognize Him as their Savior yet or not.

As a Parable I don't think this is the most literal depiction of what the coming Judgment will look like. But the Moral of the Story is that Nations will be Judged based on whether or not they fed and cared for the poor and needy, an idea The Hebrew Bible already communicated in Ezekiel 16:49.

And so this understanding of Matthew 25 isn't just relevant to Universal Salvation but also to Christian Communism.  The argument of Conservative and Libertarian Christians that the Communalism of the Early Church in Acts or all the stress Jesus put on caring for The Poor all over this Gospels are only calling for Voluntary Charity and do not support Government Action are destroyed by this clear and simple reading of Matthew 25:31-46.  Yet everyone forgets to consider it relevant to that topic because we're so caught up in arguing over what it says the Punishment will be rather then who's being Punished and what The Sin is.