Purgatory: “The doctrine upon which the Roman Catholic church stands or falls”- Part II

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I mentioned in Part I that a place cannot exist where we are punished for our sins, though our guilt has been forgiven by Christ. I would like to expound this thought some more, drawing from Francis Turretin’s Elenctic Theology.

The idea that Purgatory is a place where you are punished for things that you are not guilty of is nonsensical and utterly absurd.

Turretin writes, “…because there is no punishment without guilt and remission of guilt is nothing else than deliverance from punishment.”

That is like a person being put in jail to serve a life term sentence for murder even though the judge and jury gave the verdict of “Not Guilty.” If the person is “Not Guilty”, then what punishment are they paying for where there is no guilt charged to them? “…But sin is not taken into account when there is no law” (Romans 5:12).

Turretin continues, “Again, how could God be said to cast behind his back, not to impute, to destroy, not to remember, if he still exacts the punishment of them (i.e., recollects and imputes them to punisment)?”

What Turretin is getting at is this: if God has forgiven one’s sins, there can be no punishment where there is no longer justice to be given out. So how could God forgive both the penalty and punishment (these two things are inseparable) if he still is punishing a person for their sins?

Turretin continues, “no one would say that a debt had been remitted to a person from whom the payment of it is still required.”

Purgatory is a contradiction to say that there is payment for sins where there is no guilt.

Again, if the guilt has been forgiven by Christ, then what are people doing in Purgatory? What punishments are they paying for where guilt no longer exists?

Turretin concludes, “this hypothesis [Purgatory] supposes either that Christ has not fully satisfied for us or that God demands the payment of the same debt twice (both of which are impious and blasphemous).”

Purgatory is an insult and a slap in the face to the Cross of Christ and the character of God. It is essentially saying, “Christ, what you did on the Cross was not enough!”

So, how can Christ be said to have propitiated (absorbed, satisfied) God’s wrath for all who believe (Romans 3:23-26) and yet, God’s anger has not been fully propitiated? God’s wrath cannot both be propitiated and not be propitiated at the same time. This violates the law of non-contradiction and is a further example of the absurdity of the Papists’ invention of Purgatory.

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Tags: purgatory, Roman Catholicism