Indulgences — The Treasures of the Saints — Purgatory

The lecture addresses the points of disagreement between Orthodox and Catholics regarding indulgences, “the surpluses/treasures of the saints”, and the hypothesis of purgatory, and affirms that true forgiveness is accomplished by repentance and by the merit of the blood of Christ, not by mechanical practices or a system of postmortem chastisement.

Detailed main idea

1. The idea of indulgences that count days or years of forgiveness based on prayers or visits or spiritual practices is a mistaken practice because it turns forgiveness into a temporal accounting instead of a response of sincere repentance.

2. Forgiveness is obtained only by repentance: there is no real forgiveness except when a person accepts repentance, as Christ said “unless you repent…”.

3. Purgatory is a rejected idea: it is described as an image of life after death that divides people into righteous, wicked, and the majority who need temporary purification in purgatory. This conception is considered wrong because it imposes two penalties for sin — what Christ paid and what a person pays after death — thereby undermining the completeness of Christ’s atonement.

4. If the blood of Christ is sufficient to cleanse sins, there is no meaning for an additional penalty in purgatory; and if it is not sufficient, then the meaning of redemption collapses.

5. Purgatory lacks a clear scriptural basis: there is no explicit verse in the Holy Scripture teaching the existence of purgatory. The common portrayal of purgatory is derived from later literary works (such as Dante) and not from an explicit biblical declaration.

6. The problem of the justice of purgatory: the question is who suffers — the soul or the body? Since the body returns to dust, punishing the soul alone seems unjust, and the idea that the soul is purified apart from the body and then reunited raises theological contradictions.

7. True forgiveness is associated with faith and love, and is not a ledger of prayers attributed with years of indulgence. Confession and penance have their value, but they must not turn forgiveness into temporal transactions or paying a price after what Christ has paid.

8. Practical conclusion: defend the doctrine of atonement and rely on the blood of Christ as the source of cleansing, and warn against accepting notions of indulgences and purgatory because they put the person in anxiety and remove assurance of salvation, and they diminish the value of true repentance.

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