A Protestant Counter to the Biblical Case for Purgatory

When it comes to biblical evidence for Purgatory, Catholics know to turn to 1 Corinthians 3:11-15. There, Paul writes,

For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Paul describes a saved Christian on the day of judgment being purified by “fire” after death in a state of existence that’s neither heaven nor hell. That’s got to be Purgatory, right?

Well, some Protestants argue, “Not so fast!” There’s nothing here, so they say, about suffering that discharges the debt of temporal punishment, which is part and parcel of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory.

For example, the late Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie state, “There is absolutely nothing here about suffering for our sins or their consequences after death.” For Geisler and MacKenzie, Paul’s comment “he will suffer loss” merely refers to “a loss of reward [in heaven] for not serving Christ faithfully.”

How should we respond?

Notice how, for Geisler and MacKenzie, “there is absolutely nothing here about suffering for our sins.” Yet Paul makes it clear that the individual who “suffers loss” (v.15) suffers loss because his works, represented by wood, hay, and straw, are “burned up”—that’s to say, he suffers for his sins.

The suffering may be caused by the distress of losing a reward in heaven. But that’s beside the point. The individual still suffers on account of past sins. And to suffer on account of sin, even if the suffering is due to a deprivation of some good, is the meaning of punishment. That the punishment is temporary, or not everlasting, is evidenced by the fact that the soul in question is saved.

We can also look to the Greek for evidence of a punitive dimension to this passage. The phrase “he will suffer loss” translates the Greek word zēmiōthēsetai, which is a future indicative of the Greek verb zēmioō. The definition of zēmioō is “to be punished, with the implication of suffering damage.” Zēmioō can be understood without a punitive character, in the sense of simply losing something (Phil. 3:8). But even if we understand it that way in 1 Corinthians 3:15, the context reveals that the loss is on account of the bad works, thus punitive in character.

It’s interesting to note that in the Septuagint, zēmioō(corresponding to Hebrew anash) is used in several places as a monetary fine (Exod. 21:22; Deut. 22:19; Prov. 17:26) and punishment for an evil deed (Prov. 19:9, 21:11, 22:3).

Finally, the punitive character can be seen in that the individual is temporarily detained from receiving the reward of heaven on account of his bad works. He has to go through fire in order to be saved. As mentioned above, deprivation of a good on account of sin is an essential aspect of punishment. And since this is a temporary deprivation, it’s a temporary form of punishment.

So 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 supports not only the purification of the individual, which would involve the purging of any moral defilement remaining in the soul, but also suffering on account of venial sins, which by its nature discharges the debt of temporal punishment.