2 Maccabees 12 and Purgatory

In this post

When people ask where purgatory is in the Bible, the Catholic answer usually begins with the same passage: 2 Maccabees 12:38-46. The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites it in paragraph 1032 to ground prayer for the dead, and from there it moves to the doctrine of a purification after death. This post looks at what the text says, how it is used and why the Reformed faith does not accept it as a basis for doctrine.

What the passage says

The story takes place during the Maccabean wars, in the 2nd century BC. After a battle, Judas Maccabeus and his men go to gather the bodies of the fallen Jewish soldiers:

• Verses 39-40. Under the tunics of the dead they find amulets of the idols of Jamnia, something the Law forbade. They understand that this was the reason they died.
• Verse 42. They pray that this sin may be wholly blotted out.
• Verse 43. Judas takes up a collection of some two thousand drachmas, close to two thousand days' wages, that is, about five and a half years of a laborer's work. He sends it to Jerusalem so that a sin offering can be made.
• Verses 44-45. The author praises the act. If Judas had not expected the fallen to rise again, praying for the dead would have been pointless, and a splendid reward is laid up for those who die in godliness.
• Verse 46. He concludes that it is a holy and pious thing to pray for the dead so that they may be delivered from their sin.

How it is used for purgatory

The Catholic reasoning goes like this. If people pray for the dead so that their sins may be forgiven, there must be a state after death in which that purification is still possible. It would not be heaven, where it is no longer needed, nor hell, where it no longer helps. That intermediate state is purgatory (Catechism, nos. 1030-1032).

Two other deuterocanonical texts are sometimes added to this passage: Sirach 7:33, which asks us not to withhold kindness from the dead, and Tobit 4:17, about offerings at the tomb of the righteous, whose interpretation is disputed. So are two New Testament texts: 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, where someone is saved “but only as through fire,” and Matthew 12:32, which speaks of a forgiveness that will not be given “either in this age or in the age to come.”

What did Augustine say?

When people look for support for purgatory in the Church Fathers, the name that comes up most is Augustine of Hippo (354-430). It is worth seeing what he actually wrote, because later tradition quoted him with far more certainty than he himself had.

The texts

• Confessions IX, 13. After the death of his mother, Monica, Augustine prays for her and asks his readers to remember her at the altar. It is evidence that in his day people already prayed for the dead.
• Enchiridion 69. Commenting on 1 Corinthians 3, he grants that something like a purifying fire after this life is “not incredible,” but leaves it as a question that may be inquired into and may remain unresolved.
• Enchiridion 110. The prayers and offerings of the living benefit the dead, but only those who lived in such a way that these things could benefit them.
• The City of God XXI, 13, 24 and 26. He speaks of temporary punishments after death, which he calls poenae purgatoriae, and reads 1 Corinthians 3 again with a “perhaps.”
• On the Care to Be Had for the Dead (c. 421-422). Written to his colleague Paulinus, bishop of Nola, this is the text that connects Augustine with our passage: “in the books of the Maccabees we read of sacrifice offered for the dead” (De cura pro mortuis gerenda 1, 3). But he adds that even if it were read nowhere in the ancient Scriptures, the authority of the custom of the whole Church would be enough.

It must be said honestly: Augustine did receive the books of the Maccabees as canonical (The City of God XVIII, 36). In this he differed from Jerome and from the Hebrew Bible.

What scholars say

Scholarship agrees that Augustine contributed important pieces, but not the finished doctrine:

• Jacques Le Goff, in The Birth of Purgatory, gives him a central place among the “fathers” of purgatory, above all for the vocabulary he introduced: the adjectives purgatorius, temporarius and transitorius. But he argues that purgatory as a place, and the noun purgatorium, appear only in the 12th century (Le Goff, 1984).
• Joseph Ntedika studied how the theme developed in Augustine and showed that his thinking changed over the years, with a turn around 413 (Ntedika, 1966). Le Goff and later criticism rely on that study (Edwards, 1985).
• Isabel Moreira, a historian at the University of Utah, writes that later theologians cited Augustine as an authority on purgatory, although he was reserved on the subject. For Augustine, prayer for the dead was an act of piety and a comfort for the living, and only light sins could be purged after death. His extreme caution about the value of those prayers makes him, according to Moreira, an “honorary Protestant” (Moreira, 2010 and 2023).

Calvin had already noticed this. In the Institutes he writes that Augustine's book on the care of the dead contains so many hesitations that its coldness ought to cool the heat of a foolish zeal, while the moderns want their fancies about purgatory accepted as unquestionable articles of faith (Calvin, Institutes III, 5, 10).

In short, Augustine bears witness to a custom, prayer for the dead, and cautiously speculates about a purifying fire. But he himself supports that custom more by the practice of the Church than by Scripture, and he never taught purgatory as a dogma.

The Reformed response

1. 2 Maccabees is not canonical Scripture

The first point is fundamental. The books of the Maccabees were never part of the Hebrew Bible, the one Jesus and the apostles read. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, distinguished them from the canonical books. It was the Council of Trent, in 1546, that definitively declared them canonical, in the middle of the controversy with the Reformation.

The Westminster Confession puts it this way: “The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings” (WCF 1.3). The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, following Jerome, add that “the Church doth read [them] for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine” (Article 6).

The book itself gives reasons for that caution. Its author explains that he is condensing into a single book the five volumes of a certain Jason of Cyrene (2 Maccabees 2:23), and at the end he takes his leave modestly: if his account turned out well, that is what he wanted, and if it is poor and mediocre, that was the best he could do (2 Maccabees 15:38). That is not how a prophet speaks when passing on the word of God, but how a historian speaks who did his best.

A doctrine that cannot be proved except from a book that is not Scripture has no sufficient basis to bind the believer's conscience.

2. Even read on its own terms, it does not teach purgatory

Suppose for a moment that the passage did have authority. It still does not say what it is asked to say.

• The soldiers died in idolatry. Wearing amulets of idols was a direct violation of the first commandment. According to Catholic doctrine itself, someone who dies in mortal sin does not go to purgatory. Purgatory is for those who die in God's grace with venial sins or outstanding temporal punishment (Catechism, nos. 1030 and 1035). The case in the story does not fit the doctrine it is meant to prove.
• The text speaks of resurrection, not purification. The author's argument in verses 44 and 45 is the hope of the resurrection. At no point does he mention a place or a process of purifying souls.
• Judaism had no purgatory. Neither the author of Maccabees nor his readers knew the doctrine as the Latin church formulated it centuries later. Reading it into this passage is an anachronism.

An anachronism is attributing to a text an idea that did not yet exist when it was written. 2 Maccabees was composed in Greek in the late 2nd century BC, as a summary of a work by Jason of Cyrene (2 Maccabees 2:23). The noun purgatorium, which names a place of purification, appears in the Latin West in the 12th century (Le Goff, 1984). The doctrine was then defined at councils of the Latin church: Lyon II (1274), Florence (1439) and Trent (1563). More than a thousand years separate the story from that doctrine.

It is not just a matter of a word. Catholic doctrine combines several pieces: a state for those who die in God's grace but not yet fully purified, a purification of souls before they enter heaven and the value of the suffrages of the living on their behalf (Catechism, nos. 1030-1032). 2 Maccabees contains none of those pieces. Its horizon is the resurrection of the dead, the same hope as Daniel 12:2.

The Jewish ideas that most resemble it are later and different. The Tosefta, a rabbinic compilation from several centuries after Christ, attributes to the school of Shammai the teaching that some go down to Gehenna and come up from it refined (Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13:3). That is a judgment in Gehenna, not the Latin purgatory, and even so it is much later than 2 Maccabees. Moreover, the Orthodox churches pray for the dead and do not accept the Latin doctrine of purgatory. Praying for the dead and believing in purgatory are not the same thing. Whoever reads purgatory into 2 Maccabees 12 projects onto the text a doctrine born much later.

3. The New Testament texts say something else

In 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, Paul speaks of those who build the church on the foundation, which is Christ. What the fire tests is not the people but their work: “each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done” (1 Corinthians 3:13, ESV). “The Day” is the day of judgment, not a period after death, and the fire examines the quality of the work. It does not purify the soul. The builder whose work is burned up “will suffer loss,” that is, he loses the reward, “though he himself will be saved” (1 Corinthians 3:15, ESV).

In Matthew 12:32, the expression “either in this age or in the age to come” is an emphatic way of saying “never.” That is how the parallel passage in Mark understands it: whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit “never has forgiveness” (Mark 3:29, ESV). The text denies a forgiveness. It does not promise another one in the hereafter.

4. Christ's work is sufficient

The most serious problem with purgatory is not exegetical but evangelical. It assumes that, after Christ's work, something still remains to be paid for or purified. The letter to the Hebrews denies it:

“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14, ESV).

Christ's blood does not cleanse us from part of our sin, but from all of it: “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7, ESV). And the consequence is firm: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, ESV).

5. The believer who dies is with the Lord

The New Testament does not describe a state of purification for the believer who dies, but immediate presence with Christ. To the repentant thief Jesus promises: “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43, ESV). Paul's desire is “to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23, ESV), and he would “rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8, ESV). After death there is no second chance, but judgment: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27, ESV).

The Westminster Confession gathers up this teaching. At death “the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens,” and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell. “Besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none” (WCF 32.1).

Why it matters

This discussion is not a technical detail. Purgatory was at the center of the conflict that gave rise to the Reformation: the indulgences Luther denounced in his 95 Theses of 1517 were offered precisely to reduce the punishment of souls in purgatory. And the Reformed response was not only to deny a place but to affirm the sufficiency of Christ's work.

That is why Reformed believers do not pray for the dead. It is not a lack of love for them, but confidence that their destiny was sealed in this life, and that those who died in Christ already rest in him. The Christian's comfort in the face of death is not in what the living can do for the dead, but in what Christ has already done for them.

Bibliography

• Augustine of Hippo. Confessions IX, 13. Enchiridion 69 and 110. The City of God XVIII, 36 and XXI, 13, 24 and 26. On the Care to Be Had for the Dead (De cura pro mortuis gerenda) 1, 3. Read the Enchiridion online and On the Care to Be Had for the Dead.
• Calvin, J. (1559). Institutes of the Christian Religion, book III, chapter 5, section 10.
• Edwards, G. R. (1985). “Purgatory: ‘Birth’ or Evolution?” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36(4), 634-646. View online.
• Le Goff, J. (1984). The Birth of Purgatory. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Original: La naissance du Purgatoire (1981).
• Moreira, I. (2010). Heaven's Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press. View online.
• Moreira, I. (2023). “Purgatory in Historical Perspective.” In B. N. Wolfe et al. (eds.), St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. University of St Andrews. View online.
• Ntedika, J. (1966). L'évolution de la doctrine du purgatoire chez saint Augustin. Paris: Études Augustiniennes.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), nos. 1030-1032 and 1035. View online.
• Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chapters 1.3 and 32.1.
• The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571), Article 6.
• Council of Trent (1546), session IV, “Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures.”
• Council of Trent (1563), session XXV, “Decree concerning Purgatory.”
• Tosefta, tractate Sanhedrin 13:3.
• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (2001). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.