Baptism, Eucharist and Purgatory

You replied to Drew's post on Nov 15, 2007 at 5:52 PM.
Drew,

I may be responding a little late...but the Catholic voice needs to be heard.

All things considered, I think we have substantial agreement, particularly if you are coming from the Reformed position.

Time to touch on some of what you said...

"There is a "promise of the eternal inheritance" (v.15). This is not a man-made promise, which is destined to fail. This is a God-given promise and He is faithful to fulfill every one of His promises. Not only that, but it's an "eternal inheritance". When we are born again, of "water" [He is not talking about a physical baptism here] and "spirit" (John 3) we inherit the kingdom of heaven, which is Jesus Christ. We are adopted into God's family; spiritually born into His family."

Concerning baptism, you did not explain WHAT "hudor" or water is then referring to in John 3:5.

An analysis of ancient Jewish mikvah baptisms, in tevillahs, shows similar language to that which Jesus uses in John 3. It thus appears to be quite likely that Jesus WAS referring to physical water baptism, therefore eliminating the amniotic fluid argument and the simple figurative argument.

"It was necessary for Christ to die, in order to fulfill the covenant. Shed blood alone is not enough. There must be death as well. It's like a will. The will does not become active until the person is dead. Christ's death on the cross activated the will. Christ still lives though; if He didn't rise from the dead then He wouldn't have been who He said He was. "If we could be saved by blood without death, the animals would have been bled, not killed, and it would have been the same with jesus." (John MacArthur Jr.)"

This I fully agree with. Jesus had to die.

"The penalty for sin is death, symbolized by the shedding of blood that can atone for sin. Can you see why any self effort, works, whatever, is an anathema for the atonement for sin? By GRACE through FAITH is the only Biblical way for salvation. There is no substitute!"

The Council of Trent (1545-1563) I hope you know, affirmed Sola Gratia.

"Nothing that precedes justification, whether faith or works, merits the grace of justification."

Therefore we are on the same page when it comes to the importance of grace as a result of Christ's atonement. Our differences come in the POST-justificational chronology, where you would assert that works are not meritorious and I would assert that they are.

James 2 says that works justify. Paul's letters indicate the Abraham was justified on SEVERAL DIFFERENT OCCASIONS. That means that justification cannot be solely the one-time legal declaration of God.

In Calvin's conception we are totally depraved and God "declares us" just even though we are not - a nominalistic lie.

That's where your problem starts. God declares us just based upon His MAKING us just, so that His legal ruling actually has some bearing in objective, factual reality. We are declared just because we are MADE just, we are made holy. God is intellectually honest.

"1 Peter 3 "For Christ also suffered ONCE for sins, the JUST FOR THE UNJUST, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the FLESH but made alive by the SPIRIT, by whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison.""

"preached" here is not talking about a "second chance" or "purgatory", as many catholics will claim. The Greek word is from the form Kerusso, which means "to herald" or "proclaim" or "publish". Christ was proclaiming His finished work. "It is finished".

Interesting how you quote from 1 Peter 3, which says that literal, physical WATER, hudor, saved Noah and his family, and says that corresponding to that, BAPTISM saves us now. But more on that later.

1 Peter 3, here, is not typically argued by Catholics as being pro-purgatory, although it can be. It's more so talking about Sheol, the righteous place where the OT saints went. Jesus preached to them, and when He rose, they rose TOO.

Matthew 27:50-53, "But Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many."

See what I mean?

Additionally, to call Purgatory a "second chance" is a strawman fallacy. Catholics do not think of Purgatory as such - that is more so the Mormon view.

Justification, understood as moving from the state without grace to the state of grace, CANNOT occur after death, as far as I am concerned. Purgatory in no way teaches that it does. It is NOT a second chance. If you die out of the state of grace, that's it, game over...hell.

Correctly outline something before you attack it, please. If you do not first correctly understand Purgatory, I will gladly offer what explanations I can.

"We cannot satisfy the Father. Only His Son, Jesus Christ can and has satisfied Him. Therefore Jesus is the only way we can go to the Father; "No one comes to the Father except through Me.""

Agreed. But the application of John 14:6 is an important matter to delve into, and it refers more so to the necessity of Christ being our mediator than to any "total depravity" on our part. We could not, indeed, make satisfaction for the eternal effects of our sins.

But we CAN make satisfaction, or expiate, the temporal effects of our sins. Scripture is CLEAR on that. I will explain in the coming paragraphs.

"If Jesus' sacrifice had not been sufficient for all mankind, once for all, He would have needed to suffer over and over- exactly like the Old Covenant and the Levitical priests offering. This is not the case though; Jesus' sacrifice was and is sufficient."

Agreed.

"What do Catholics believe?:
The doctrine of the "sacrifice of the mass" was made official by the council of Trent in the 16th century. Ludwig Ott, a theologian of the Catholic Church explains this doctrine: "The holy Mass is a true and proper sacrifice. It is physical and propitiatory, removing sins and conferring the grace of repentance. Propitiation by the offering of this sacrifice, God, by granting the grace of the gift, and the gift of Penitence, remits trespasses and sins however grievous they may be.""

First I must point out that the Mass was considered a sacrifice long before this point. Have you ever read the Didache, which refers to the Eucharist as a sacrifice and uses a prophecy from Malachi I as a prophecy OF it being a sacrifice? This isn't the post-nicene period...the Didache was written before John and Revelation were. The sacrificial understanding of the Eucharist, the CATHOLIC view, predates the symbol-only view that you are proposing. History is not on your side.

"In other words, God's satisfaction regarding sin depends upon the weekly mass. That is why attending mass is so important to Catholics. This, however, is a false doctrine within the Catholic Church. The belief that the bread and wine literally become Jesus' body and blood is also blasphemous; it is meant to be a symbol of communion with Christ; a means of rememberance as Christ commanded us to do; it is not meant to offer his blood again and again."

You have not proven that this is a false doctrine, Drew. You also mischaracterize it.

We do not offer His blood again and again.

"-"...but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God FOR US; NOR was it that He should offer Himself often [Christ offers Himself once, not often], as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood not his own." (9:24-25)"

And you are doing the classical Protestant tactic of taking Hebrews 9:24-25 as a charge against the Catholic sacrifice of the mass. The passage condemns the repetition of Christ's sacrifice, which you claim Catholics do, therefore Catholics are wrong.

Sorry, try again.

First off, what the passage is condemning is the repeated KILLING of the sacrificed animal. In the sacrifice of the Mass, Jesus is not killed again and again and again. There is no repeated physical sacrifice. So there goes an objection on those grounds.

The passage is therefore not addressing the Catholic mass at all.

Additionally, it also condemns REPETITION of the sacrifice of Christ, correct?

It does not, I repeat, does NOT, condemn CONTINUATION.

There is a difference between the two. Repetition is when you do something, stop, do it again, stop, do it again, stop. Continuation is when you do something and CONTINUOUSLY, PERPETUALLY do it, with no "breaks" in between.

THAT is the Catholic understanding of how the sacrifice of the Mass works, Drew, and THAT is why Hebrews 9 is an invalid prooftext for your argument against the sacrifice of the Mass.

Take a look, once more, at Hebrews 9:24:

"For Christ did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might NOW appear before God on our behalf."

You didn't put "now" in bold - I did.

Why?

Because Christ's role as our mediator was NOT a one-time sacrifice of Himself on Cavalry circa 30-33 AD. That was when the physical death, the physical aspect, of Jesus' sacrifice occured, but that is NOT the totality of the sacrifice.

When you sacrifice an animal, you must then offer up that sacrificed animal to God. And it is THAT action that Catholics believe the Mass to be. It is in THAT sense that we see the Mass as a sacrifice - it is Jesus, the True Priest, offering up Himself, the True Victim, the Lamb, up to God continuously, perpetually, eternally, forever. Is it any wonder that Revelation depicts Jesus as a slain Lamb in Heaven?

Hebrews doesn't attack that view at all - it supports it.

Hebrews 9:11-12, "But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, he entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption."

Do you have an interpretation of this? I'm curious as to what it is.

In Revelation, Heaven is depicted as having an altar - the same is true in the case of Hebrews 13.

Hebrews depicts the crucified, sacrificed Christ entering the HEAVENLY sanctuary, which the earthly sanctuary was but a copy of, and sprinkling His blood upon the altar, performing His act of Mediation.

Hebrews depicts Moses as mediator because of the sprinkling of the blood of the slain animal. It depicts Jesus as doing the same thing...IN HEAVEN. In the Heavenly sanctuary.

Clearly, the sacrifice was not 100% "done" at Cavalry. You can quote John 19:30 until you are quite blue in the face, my friend - but you need to indicate what the pronoun "it" is referring to when Jesus says "It is finished" or in Hebrew "Kalah."

For the Protestant position, Jesus is saying that His one-time act of Mediation is over and done with. Not so according to the perspective of Hebrews, which depicts Christ as fulfilling His role of Covenantal Mediator of the New Covenant AFTER His death!

"Kalah" or "It is finished" is what the High Priest would say upon the slaying of the lamb during Passover, btw. It's referring to Jesus dying, and does not mean that that was His sole act of mediation in any way, shape or form.

The Mass is the earthly presentation of a continuous, perpetual Heavenly event - Jesus offering Himself to the Father.

I may also point out several more Scriptural arguments in favor of the Catholic Mass:

1.) Paul indirectly refers to the Eucharist as a sacrifice in 1 Corinthians 10:16-21. He refers to the Eucharistic table as the "table of the Lord" - a biblical expression found in Malachi 1 that refers to an ALTAR.

What's on an altar? Sacrifices. And that is why, in his comparison between the Eucharist and pagan sacrifices, Paul says in v. 18:

"Look at Israel according to the flesh; are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?"

Did he not just get done saying that eating or drinking the Eucharist is a PARTICIPATION with Christ?!?

2.) Typologically speaking, Jesus is the "new" Passover Lamb. He replaces the Old one. What happened if you killed the old Lamb and didn't eat it?

Your firstborn would be dead in the morning. You had to EAT the Lamb.

Thus, Protestantism's insistence that the Eucharist is not the flesh and blood of Christ creates an incomplete typology in which Christ our Paschal Lamb is killed, but NOT eaten. That doesn't add up, especially in lieu of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 -

"Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough, inasmuch as you are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

Synopsis? The Lamb has been sacrificed, so let's eat the Lamb!

This works with John 6 as well, which you no doubt have opinions on. A few thoughts on that:

a.) Jesus' audience thought He was speaking literally.
b.) "Eat the flesh and drink the blood" was a common Jewish idiomatic figurative expression that meant to slander or persecute - it did not mean "believe" or anything of that nature. For examples, see Micah 3:3 or Galatians 5:15. Therefore Jesus was either saying, "Literally eat my flesh" or "Slander me." I'll let you guess which one.
c.) Jesus switches in John 6 from the Greek word for eat "phago" (which literally means eat or consume) and can be used figuratively to the Greek word "trogo" - which has NO figurative application in the Koine Greek of the New Testament and to the best of my knowledge is not used figuratively in Koine Greek in general. It is a LITERAL term used to refer typically to animal eating, and it literally means to chew, to munch, to crunch. If Jesus wished to be understood figuratively, as your "figurative" view requires, WHY would Jesus start using more literal, carnal language with His audience, Drew?

The true blasphemy is not affirming the Real Presence, but denying the Real Presence. Such can be seen in the early writings of Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the Apostle John:

"Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).

The Gnostic Docetists asserted that Jesus had no physical body; as a result, they refused to confess the Eucharist as the flesh and blood of Christ.

Ignatius, therefore, believed in the Catholic view of the Eucharist and called its detractors heretics. They were the blasphemers.

Is your view of the Eucharist found in early Christianity? No. It did not exist until later Reformers like Calvin and Zwingli. It loses the battle of hisoricity and is CLEARLY a revisionist position that is extensively disproven by the biblical evidence I have thus far brought forth.

More in a couple.

- Sean

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Post #70
You replied to Drew's post on Nov 15, 2007 at 5:54 PM.
Drew,

Next item on the list: Purgatory.

"Purgatory is a false doctrine, as no amount of prayers or works will atone for even one sin. On judgment day, the payment for our sins is Christ's death and blood, if you are indeed found to be in the truth."

Got something for you, then:

Proverbs 16:6 states, "By kindness and piety guilt is expiated, and by the fear of the LORD man avoids evil" (NAB; RSV has "atoned for" instead of "expiated").

How do you respond to that? It IS inspired Scripture, theopneustos.

Scripture even uses the stronger term "atonement" and indicates humans can make temporal atonement for themselves (see Exodus 30:15-16, Leviticus 17:11, Numbers 31:50).

According to Catholic Apologetist Jimmy Akin, "The claim that only Christ can atone for or expiate our sins arises from a confusion about whether the temporal or the eternal dimension of our sins is being discussed. Only Christ can provide eternal satisfaction for our sins, but we can make temporal amends or reparations for them."

Right on the money. Purgatory involves the expiation or making amends for the TEMPORAL, not the eternal, effects of our sins. It is not a second chance.

Colossians 1:24, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church,"

Woah woah woah! Something LACKING in the afflictions of Christ?

What is lacking is restitution for the TEMPORAL effects of our sins.

Consider our soul to be a temple. We are born in original sin, with our temples in total state of disrepair, and we cannot repair them on our own.

Because of Christ, we become new creations, and are initially repaired. However, every time we sin, we predispose ourselves to FURTHER sin, and "damage" the temple.

We atone for the temporal effects of our sins by FIXING the temple - through sanctification.

Scripture indicates that primarily our sanctification occurs through SUFFERING. Consider Romans 8, 1 Peter 4, etc.

We are sanctified through suffering, like Paul, and we "fill up" what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ by suffering ourselves, by taking up our OWN crosses.

THAT is the beauty of the Gospel, Drew. Not a baseless justification by which we all get off the hook without intrinscally BEING holy. It's not a matter of Christ being holy, therefore God the Father will put blinders on and "consider" us holy too. Rather, Christ is holy, and He MAKES us holy, and enables us to be "coworkers" with Him in making ourselves even more holy and putting to death the desires of the flesh.

Romans 8:13, "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."

This is Paul's answer to continuing sin after justification in Romans 7 - NOT imputation of Christ's righteousness!

And how do we do this?

Romans 8:16-17, "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him."

Thou shalt suffer. You spoke of us being heirs - well, according to Paul, us being heirs is CONDITIONAL. It is not unconditional.

1 Peter 4:1-2, "Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same attitude (for whoever suffers in the flesh has broken with sin), so as not to spend what remains of one's life in the flesh on human desires, but on the will of God."

Christ suffered, so we must suffer.

And what IS Purgatory? It is the final removal of "human desires" from us.

Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord."

We NEED to be holy to get into Heaven. Christ being holy, but us being unholy, will not get the job done.

Revelation 21:27, "but nothing unclean will enter it, nor any (one) who does abominable things or tells lies. Only those will enter whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life."

The man with the slightest sinful inclination is not 100% sanctified and holy. Instead of condemning all such people to Hell, our Lord and Savior invites all such people to suffer WITH HIM, and to be fully sanctified as a result.

Hebrews 12:4, "In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood."

And what is the point? We must become SO HOLY so as to be willing to suffer to the very point of death. That's why the author of Hebrews levels this criticism.

Did you notice that all of the Apostles except for John (and Judas who killed himself) suffered martyr's deaths, according to tradition? Why?

Because John was the only Apostle who didn't desert Christ at the time of the crucifixion. He WAS willing to suffer to the point of shedding blood, willing to resist the sin of leaving Jesus. So he was not martyred...and the other Apostles were. See the beauty of God's handiwork, the fairness, the justice?

Hebrews 12:10-11, "They disciplined us for a short time as seemed right to them, but he does so for our benefit, in order that we may share his holiness. At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it."

God's temporal punishment for the temporal effects of our sins is also the CURE for those temporal effects. His punishment involves our suffering "to the point of shedding blood" in order to avoid sin. THAT is what makes us increasingly holy, and that is something that is required for our ultimate entrance into the Kingdom.

Purgatory is post-death sanctification. It is us suffering, after we die, just a little bit more, in order to become perfectly holy. THEN we enter through Heaven's gate.

The Church's teaching on Purgatory thus flows DIRECTLY from the Biblical teaching on PRE-death sanctification through suffering. Our sanctification is both punishment and cure.

Make any sense?

Now, to bring things to a head...

1.) We need to be 100% holy to enter Heaven.
2.) We are made holy, sanctified, through suffering which is both punishment and cure.

3.) IF........IF we are not done with this process of sanctification by the time we die, in order for us to get into Heaven, the process must...

BE COMPLETED.

And that's the explanation for Purgatory.

The Protestant idea of "glorification" is very CLOSE to correct. It insists upon God making us 100% holy and pure after death if we are not already so.

But what it misses out on is the process. It ignores the process. We become holy by suffering, and we suffer as a result of the temporal effects of our sins. When we speak ill of a neighbor, we build up our sinful inclinations that must be painfully torn down if we are to be pure and full, to the point of bursting, of the love of God.

It is here where we bring up 1 Corinthians 3:12-15:

"If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, the work of each will come to light, for the Day will disclose it. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire (itself) will test the quality of each one's work. If the work stands that someone built upon the foundation, that person will receive a wage. But if someone's work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, but only as through fire."

So there will be a revelation, an apokalupsis, of all of our works...EVERY LAST ONE.

Protestants insist that this passage solely means that we will receive rewards for our good works, and receive nothing for our "bad" works.

First off, last time I checked, bad works are sins. So this means that not all sins are hellworthy - some are not deadly, which correlates with 1 John 5:16-17:

"If anyone sees his brother sinning, if the sin is not deadly, he should pray to God and he will give him life. This is only for those whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly."

Now, Paul describes a "fire" that will burn away the bad works. As a result of this burning, many people will be saved...by the fire, by what the fire does.

The burning away of those false works is thus NECESSARY.

Remember, also, verses like this:

2 Corinthians 5:10,"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad,"

Therefore, 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 is NOT just about recompense for GOOD works...it is about "recompense" for bad works!

What is the recompense for bad works? Punishment!

No wonder that zemiothesatai in this passage, translated here as "suffer loss", can also be translated as "suffer punishment" in the Septuagint, the LXX!

So we are punished by having our bad or false works "burnt up." What this means is that God will reveal to all of us what our false works are, and if we have not been completely "purged" of them, they will be burnt away...

How will they be burnt away? Through suffering.

Hebrews 13:11-13, "The bodies of the animals whose blood the high priest brings into the sanctuary as a sin offering are burned outside the camp. Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate, to consecrate the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore."

Jesus suffered outside of Heaven. What must we do? The same thing. Suffer, be "burned."

Burning is a metaphor not just for suffering, but for purification:

Wisdom 3:4-6, "For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself."

Such language is all over Scripture and it explains that not only is Paul talking about post-death punishment in 1 Cor. 3:12-15, he is talking about post-death SANCTIFICATION, or purification.

Daniel 12:10, "Many shall be refined, purified, and tested, but the wicked shall prove wicked; none of them shall have understanding, but the wise shall have it."

Sirach 2:5, "For in fire gold is tested, and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation."

Zechariah 13:8-9, "In all the land, says the LORD, two thirds of them shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left. I will bring the one third through fire, and I will refine them as silver is refined, and I will test them as gold is tested. They shall call upon my name, and I will hear them. I will say, "They are my people," and they shall say, "The LORD is my God."

It is THIS imagery that Paul is appealing to! 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 therefore MUST be understood in a Purgatorial sense.

1 Peter 1:6-7, "In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

Revelation 3:18, "I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire 14 so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see."

Do you see now?

- Sean