Where is purgatory in the Bible?

01Your verses first

“No condemnation”

“There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh.”

“And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee: This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.”

Read fairly: Christ’s work is finished, and those in him are not condemned. The thief on the cross was promised paradise that day. What is there left to purge?

Catholics agree there is no condemnation. Purgatory is not condemnation.

021 Corinthians 3

What it does and does not prove

“Every man’s work shall be manifest. For the day of the Lord shall declare it, because it shall be revealed in fire. And the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide, which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work burn, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.”

Read on its own terms, this passage is about the work of those who build up the Church, tested on the day of the Lord. It does not use the word purgatory, and on its own it does not prove the Catholic doctrine.

What it does show is narrower: a person can be saved and still “suffer loss,” passing through something Paul compares to fire.¹⁰ The Church’s tradition, by reference to certain texts of Scripture like this one, speaks of a cleansing fire.²

Scripture also says nothing defiled shall enter the heavenly city.¹¹ And the Church reads Jesus’ words about a sin not forgiven “neither in this world, nor in the world to come” as implying that some sins can be forgiven after death.^2,12

Everyone in purgatory is “assured of their eternal salvation.”¹ It is a final purification of the saved, entirely different from the punishment of the damned.²

Then there is a passage you may not have in your Bible.

03Disputed ground

The book we do not share

Here we need to be upfront. 2 Maccabees is in the Catholic Old Testament but not in most Protestant Bibles, so it cannot settle the question between us. We set it out so you can see what Catholics point to, not as a trump card.

After a battle, Judas Maccabeus and his men find tokens of idols under the coats of their dead.¹³ They pray that the sin be forgiven, and Judas sends money to Jerusalem “for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead.”¹⁴

The book says he did this because he hoped the slain would rise again.¹⁵ The Catechism cites it for the practice of prayer for the dead.³

Even read only as history, it records Jews praying for their dead before the time of Christ.¹⁴

Whether the book is Scripture is its own question. Our page on the deuterocanonical books takes it on directly.

So where do we actually differ?

04The real disagreement

Where we think it lies

Two places. First, which books are Scripture. Second, whether the work of making us holy can be completed after death, or only at the instant of death.

The Church formulated its doctrine on purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent.² It is not a second chance for the unrepentant: it concerns only those who die in God’s grace and friendship.¹

Saved, yet so as by fire. Catholics believe God finishes what he starts.