Is There a Fire After Death?
Every year on November 2, All Souls' Day, Catholic families remember their dead, and many ask a priest to offer Mass for a father, a mother, or a child who has died. Behind that tender practice stands a doctrine: that many who die in God's grace are not yet ready for heaven and must first be purified. Rome calls that purification purgatory. Beside it stands a second teaching, indulgences, by which the Catholic Church applies a treasury of merit to remit the punishment that the living and the dead are said to still owe.
These are not side questions. They answer the most personal question a grieving family can ask: where is the one we loved right now? And they rest on a particular view of the cross, that Christ's death removed the eternal penalty of sin but left a temporal penalty for us to pay, here or hereafter. Scripture answers that Christ by himself purged our sins (Hebrews 1:3), and that for the believer, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8).
In Roman Catholic teaching, the final purification after death of those who die in God's grace but are not yet perfectly holy. It is for the saved only, and it is distinct from hell (Catechism, §§1030–1031).
In Roman Catholic teaching, the punishment for sin that remains after its guilt and eternal punishment are forgiven, to be satisfied by penance in this life or purified in purgatory (Catechism, §§1472–1473).
In Roman Catholic teaching, a remission of temporal punishment for sins already forgiven, granted by the Catholic Church from the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints, for the living or the dead (Catechism, §§1471, 1479).
Many Catholics hold these doctrines out of love for their dead, and grief deserves gentleness. A faithful Catholic should recognize his church's teaching in what follows. We describe it from Rome's own documents, then weigh it by the Word of God, because the question is too important to answer from caricature.
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For Deeper Study
- Catechism of the Catholic ChurchAmazon The primary source (1992; second edition 1997). Read §§1020–1032 on judgment and purgatory and §§1471–1479 on indulgences, so you know what your Catholic friends are actually taught.
- The Gospel According to RomeAmazon James G. McCarthyA former Catholic compares the Catechism with Scripture topic by topic, including purgatory and indulgences. Evangelical.
- Reasoning from the Scriptures with CatholicsAmazon Ron RhodesA conversational guide that answers the Catholic case for purgatory and indulgences from Scripture. Evangelical and dispensational.
- Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical AssessmentAmazon Gregg R. AllisonWalks through the Catechism section by section and assesses it from Scripture. Southern Baptist; Reformed in its view of salvation.
- The Birth of PurgatoryAmazon Jacques Le GoffA French medieval historian traces how purgatory took shape as a place in Latin theology. A secular scholarly history, not written from our tradition, but it documents how late the doctrine developed.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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The Eternal State
God will make a new heaven and a new earth, where the redeemed will dwell with Him forever; all who reject Christ will be punished forever in the lake of fire.
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