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Purgatory

Also Known As The purgative state · purification after deathOriginal Term purgatorium (Latin)
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Origin 1274 to 1563

Purgatory is the Catholic teaching that some who die in God's friendship are not yet fit for the vision of God and undergo a purification before it, and that the prayers of the living assist them. It is defined doctrine for Catholics. It is rejected by the Eastern Orthodox and by the churches of the Reformation. Those two rejections are not the same rejection, and treating them as one is the usual mistake.

The Orthodox pray for the dead, offer the liturgy for them, and hold that the dead are helped by it. What they reject is the Latin construction placed around the practice: a distinct place or state defined as the satisfaction of temporal punishment still owed after guilt is forgiven, and the accounting of that punishment which made indulgences intelligible. Mark of Ephesus argued exactly this at the Council of Florence, not that the dead cannot be helped, but that the Latins had built a doctrine where the Greeks had a practice and a silence.

The Protestant rejection is more thorough. It denies that any satisfaction remains to be made, on the ground that Christ's satisfaction was complete, and therefore denies both the state and the practice; the English Articles reject "the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory" as grounded on no warrant of Scripture.

Note also what Catholic teaching does not say. Trent, having affirmed the doctrine, went on to forbid the preaching of the "difficult and subtle questions" and of things uncertain, the fires, the durations, the arithmetic. Much of what a reader will picture is popular devotional material rather than doctrine.

Facts
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Defined and binding within this tradition 1Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Sourced to the subject's own accountDefined at the Second Council of Lyons, at Florence and at Trent
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 3Tradition: Eastern Orthodoxy
The Orthodox churches pray for the dead but do not teach a purgatorial fire or a satisfactory punishment
Status Within the Tradition
Rejected, or not held, within this tradition 4Tradition: Protestantism
Rejected by the Reformers as without scriptural warrant and as inseparable from indulgences
Status Within the Tradition
Rejected, or not held, within this tradition 3Tradition: Eastern Orthodoxy
Rejected as defined at Florence
Origins
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account
1274 to 1563 1
Held By
Roman Catholicism, defined at the Councils of Florence and Trent; rejected by the Protestant Reformation as without scriptural warrant, and rejected in its developed Western form by Eastern Orthodoxy, which prays for the dead without teaching a purgatorial fire. 2
The Claim
The Claim
That souls who die in God's grace but still bearing the effects of sin undergo a further purification before entering heaven. 2
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
The doctrine was defined at the Councils of Florence in 1439 and Trent in the sixteenth century as Roman Catholic teaching; Eastern Orthodox theology affirms prayer for the dead and some process after death without adopting the Western doctrine of purgatory in its developed form. 2
Position Profile
Principal Critic
Martin Luther rejected purgatory, along with the practice of indulgences associated with it, among his central objections in the Ninety Five Theses of 1517. 2
Learn More
What the Orthodox Actually Reject

Purgatory is usually presented as Catholic doctrine denied by everyone else. That is accurate about the Reformation churches and misleading about the Orthodox, and the difference between the two rejections is worth having.

The Orthodox pray for the dead

They do it constantly. The dead are commemorated in the liturgy, on appointed Saturdays, at memorial services on the third, ninth and fortieth days. The Orthodox hold that the departed are genuinely helped by these prayers.

So whatever is being rejected, it is not the proposition that the dead can be assisted, and it is not the practice that the doctrine of purgatory grew up around.

What is rejected is the apparatus

The Latin construction placed around the practice: a defined state whose purpose is the satisfaction of temporal punishment still owed after guilt has been forgiven, with an accounting of that punishment which makes indulgences intelligible.

Mark of Ephesus argued exactly this at Florence in 1439. His case was not that the dead cannot be helped, he affirmed they can, but that the Latins had erected a doctrine, with a mechanism and a currency, where the Greek tradition had a practice and a deliberate silence about its workings.

The Protestant rejection is a different one

It denies that any satisfaction remains to be made at all, on the ground that Christ's satisfaction was complete. That removes the state and the practice together. The English Articles reject the doctrine as grounded on no warrant of scripture, and the clearest supporting text is in books the Reformers did not accept as canonical.

Two rejections, different in kind: one denies a theory built over a practice, the other denies the premise the practice rests on.

What Trent actually restrained

Having defined the doctrine in 1563, the council immediately limited it. Bishops were instructed to exclude from popular preaching the difficult and subtle questions, and to forbid the circulation of things uncertain.

That is a caution against precisely the material a reader will picture, the fires, the durations, the arithmetic of remitted years. Much of the popular image of purgatory is devotional literature that the council defining the doctrine tried to suppress.

From Prayers for the Dead to Indulgences

Purgatory's usual proof text is 2 Maccabees 12:38-46, where Judas Maccabeus takes up a collection to offer a sin offering for fallen soldiers found wearing forbidden amulets, "that they might be delivered from their sin." The book is deuterocanonical, accepted as scripture by Catholics and Orthodox and excluded by the Reformers' canon, which is part of why the same text does not settle the argument between them.

Prayer for the dead is attested very early and widely, in inscriptions, in the liturgies, and in patristic writers including Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine, well before any developed doctrine of a purgatorial state existed to explain why such prayer should help. Augustine speculated cautiously about a cleansing fire for minor faults without committing to a defined place or process; Gregory the Great, two centuries later, wrote more confidently of a purifying fire before judgment for slight sins.

The doctrine hardened in the medieval West alongside a developing theology of penance: sins forgiven in confession could still carry a temporal punishment, to be worked off in this life or the next, and an indulgence was the church's grant, from a treasury of merit built up by Christ and the saints, remitting some of that punishment. Dante's Purgatorio gave the state its most vivid popular picture, a mountain of ascending terraces, though the poem is imaginative literature and was never doctrine.

The system's abuse, indulgences sold to fund the rebuilding of St Peter's, prompted by the preaching of Johann Tetzel, is what Martin Luther's ninety-five theses of 1517 directly attacked, making purgatory's supporting economy, rather than the state of the dead as such, the spark of the Reformation split.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Affirmed By

Purgatory, Beliefs & Restrictions

Reconciliation: affirmed Belief -> contested Doctrine concept (Purgatory).

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Purgatory, a final purification after death, is dogma per the Council of Trent's decree, Session 25.

Source Canons and Decrees of the Council of TrentCouncil of Trentthe holders' own account

Rejected Here

Anglicanism, Denominations

Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles calls the Romish doctrine of Purgatory a fond thing vainly invented.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Baptist, Denominations

Baptists reject Purgatory; the two Baptist ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper, are held to be symbolic acts of obedience, not means of grace or purification after death.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Calvinism (Reformed), Denominations

This tradition does not accept Purgatory; the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XXXII, Of the State of Men after Death, names only heaven and hell as the soul's destinations after death.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account
Church of Ireland, Denominations

Article XXII calls the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory a fond thing vainly invented, grounded upon no warranty of scripture, and rather repugnant to the word of God.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Dutch Reformed Church, Denominations

Calvin's Institutes treat purgatory as a deadly fiction that makes void the cross of Christ, since a satisfaction that is complete leaves nothing to be worked off. No Reformed confession makes any place for it and the Dutch church inherited that rejection whole.

Source Institutes of the Christian ReligionJohn Calvin
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Denominations

No Lutheran confession makes a place for a purifying state after death, and the Augsburg Confession's treatment of the mass rejects the practice of applying its merit for the dead that the doctrine supported.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon
Jehovah's Witnesses, Denominations

A place of purification after death is rejected. This body teaches that the dead are unconscious and await resurrection, so there is no state in which a soul could be purified.

Lutheranism, Denominations

Luther's Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, the Ninety-Five Theses of 1517, opens the Reformation's critique of purgatory by challenging the indulgence trade built on it and questioning the pope's authority over souls there; confessional Lutheranism went on to reject purgatory outright as an unscriptural invention.

Source Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (the Ninety-Five Theses)Martin Luther
Presbyterianism, Denominations

This tradition does not accept Purgatory; the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XXXII, names only heaven and hell as the soul's destinations after death.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Held Differently

Church of Cyprus, Denominations

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Church of Greece, Denominations

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Eastern Orthodoxy, Denominations

This tradition does not accept the Western doctrine of Purgatory as pressed at the Council of Florence, though it holds its own view of an intermediate state.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Denominations

Prayer for the dead is practised. A distinct state of satisfactory punishment is not taught.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Georgian Orthodox Church, Denominations

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Greek Orthodox Church, Denominations

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Oriental Orthodoxy, Denominations

This tradition does not accept the Western doctrine of Purgatory, though, like Eastern Orthodoxy, it holds its own view of an intermediate state after death.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Romanian Orthodox Church, Denominations

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Serbian Orthodox Church, Denominations

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Eastern Orthodoxy, Denominations

No purgatory as the West defines it. The Orthodox churches pray for the dead and decline the juridical account of satisfaction that the Latin doctrine rests on, so this is a refusal of the framing rather than of prayer for the departed.

Opposed By

Protestantism, Denominations

Purgatory rejected outright at the Reformation, together with the indulgence system built on it.

Positions on This Question

Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Purgatory defined as a state of purification for those who die in God's friendship but imperfectly purified, dogmatised at Florence and Trent.

Related To

Mortal and Venial Sin, Doctrines

Where the Catholic scheme places the purification of what remains unremitted at death in a person who dies in grace.

Purgatory, Realms

The place imagined by Dante and the visual tradition; the doctrine carries the contested theological status.

Source Canons and Decrees of the Council of TrentCouncil of Trentthe holders' own account
The Particular Judgement, Doctrines

The particular judgement is what assigns a soul to purgatory.

Sources
1. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent
Council of Trent, 1563Session 25, Decree concerning Purgatorythe holders' own accountView the Source
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005Purgatory; Florence, Council ofView the Source
3. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
John Meyendorff, Fordham University Press, 1979View the Source
4. Institutes of the Christian Religion
John Calvin, 1559III.vView the Source
The Westminster Confession of Faith
Westminster Assembly, 1646Chapter XXXII, Of the State of Men after Deaththe holders' own accountView the Source
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Church of England, 1571Article XXII, Of Purgatorythe holders' own accountView the Source
Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (the Ninety-Five Theses)
Martin Luther, 1517Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (the Ninety-Five Theses), 1517
The Augsburg Confession
Philipp Melanchthon, 1530View the Source
The Orthodox Church
Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware), Penguin Books, 1993View the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
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