Welcome back to Samus Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire, and I wanted to look at some of the strongest arguments against the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. And I want to give a particular attention to the objections raised by the well-regarded Anglican theologian N.T. Wright. Now, some of his objections are ones that are going to be familiar to anybody who's debated purgatory. But others are ones that I hadn't really heard before.

And I think Wright actually makes a really important point, but one which I think disproves

nearly every other argument against purgatory. So what is that argument? He argues that one reason

that people believe in purgatory is because they recognize it, because this life is meant to be

purgatorial for us as Christians. I think actually purgatory is a good metaphor for the sort of thing

that being a Christian in the present is. That is a struggle to be holy, a struggle to finish off

what's still bad about us, the suffering that goes with that and with the world

as we know. That's why Dante's Pergatory is the most popular of his trilogy, because we know

that place. That's where we live. I don't know if Wright is right about Dante's Pergatorio being

more popular than the Inferno, but that is neither here nor there. The underlying point that he's making

is true. The idea of purgatory or being spiritually purified so that we can stand before God,

that idea should sound familiar to us because we're hopefully engaged in that battle of purification

right now. Now, that gives Catholics and Protestants some helpful starting ground for a deeper biblical

exploration of the doctrine of purgatory. We should be able to agree on at least two important

starting points. But before I look at what those two are, I want to say a quick thank you to all

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Okay, so the first bit of common grind to look for in Catholic Protestant conversations

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