The Purgatory View Of Hell: The Roman Catholic Church

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same is also true for hell. The writers of the New Testament were not concerned so much with the exact nature of hell as they were with the seriousness of the coming judgment.
Third, the Purgatory view of hell is that of the Roman Catholic Church. It is not commonly known among protestant Christians as it is among Roman Catholic congregants. Simply put, Purgatory is a process of purifying suffering for those who have died in guilt or with a fault. This purification process goes through an interim period, beginning immediately after death, and up to the final judgment. However, this purgation process happens by fire, a symbol for purification and it is only for the dead that need it. Not everyone that goes to hell will experience purgation. …show more content…

It argues on both the nature and duration of eternal punishment against the Literal view of hell. Rather than an everlasting conscious torment for the damned, hell is destruction where the damned will eventually be consumed by fire, thus causing them to cease to exist. This view is also called Conditional Immortality or Annahilationism. Supporters of this view find a contradiction between God endlessly tormenting the damned and his endless love and grace towards them. They disagree on the idea that God is the one sending millions of sinners to hell especially when he could have predestined them to be saved. Pinnock, in defense of this view said …show more content…

No correct answer is possible unless we fully investigate the historical, cultural and literary background to the passages we want to consider. This means we must start with ancient Judaism and their understanding of the afterlife, how that developed during the second temple period into more complex ideas like judgment, reward and punishment of the wicked, hades, compartmentalization of the abode of the dead, and then the views of Jesus’ day, the NT and the early church. The development of eternal punishment in Judeo-Christian thinking is the subject of this research paper. The arguments proposed in this paper are laid out in three parts: Part I will examine the concept of the afterlife in Judaism, the origin and meaning of Sheol in the OT, and how it is described when it is used as the ultimate fate for the righteous and the wicked. Part II will address the rise of apocalyptic literature during the second temple period, explaining how Sheol became hell, judgment, rewards and retribution in the afterlife, hades, gehenna, and Tartarus. Part III will seek to investigate the views of hell in Jesus’ day, NT teachings, Jesus teachings on hell, and the early church. In the end, this paper will advance an exegetical rationale in favor of the literal view of hell. Historical evidences proved that the early Christians, as confirmed in Jesus’ teaching, and later NT documents, taught eternal

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