Purgatory

In Roman Catholicism, purgatory (from the Latin purgare, "to cleanse") is the place or state after death where those who have died in a state of grace but not free from imperfection expiate their remaining sins before entering the visible presence of God and the saints; the damned, on the other hand, go directly to hell.

The living are encouraged to offer Masses, prayers, alms, and other acts of piety and devotion on behalf of those in purgatory. The suffering of purgatory is less a concept of physical pain than one of postponement of the "beatific vision." Purgatory will end with the Last Judgment at the close of the world.

The official Roman Catholic teaching on purgatory was defined at the councils of Lyon (1274) and Ferrara-Florence (1438-45) and reaffirmed at Trent (1545-63). This doctrine was rejected by leaders of the Reformation who taught that persons are freed from sin through faith in Jesus Christ and go straight to heaven. The Orthodox church also rejects the theology of purgatory, although it encourages prayers for the dead in some undefined intermediate state.

Harold W. Rast

Bibliography:
Arendzen, John Peter, Purgatory and Heaven (1960); Le Goff, J., The Birth of Purgatory, trans. by A. Goldhammer (1984; repr. 1986).

Purgatory

The teachings of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches set forth a place of temporal punishment in the intermediate realm known as purgatory, in which it is held that all those who die at peace with the church but who are not perfect must undergo penal and purifying suffering. Only those believers who have attained a state of Christian perfection are said to go immediately to heaven. All unbaptized adults and those who after baptism have committed mortal sin go immediately to hell. The great mass of partially sanctified Christians dying in fellowship with the church but nevertheless encumbered with some degree of sin go to purgatory where, for a longer or shorter time, they suffer until all sin is purged away, after which they are translated to heaven.

The sufferings vary greatly in intensity and duration, being proportioned in general to the guilt and impurity or impenitence of the sufferer. They are described as being in some cases comparatively mild, lasting perhaps only a few hours, while in other cases little if anything short of the torments of hell itself and lasting for thousands of years. But in any event they are to terminate with the last judgment. Gifts or services rendered to the church, prayers by the priests, and Masses provided by relatives or friends in behalf of the deceased can shorten, alleviate, or eliminate the sojourn of the soul in purgatory.

Protestantism rejects the doctrine since the evidence on which it is based is found not in the Bible but in the Apocrypha (II Macc. 12:39-45).

L Boettner
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
A. J. Mason, Purgatory; E. H. Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison; H. W. Luckock, After Death; B. Bartmann, Purgatory; H. Berkhof, Well-Founded Hope.