Praying for all the dead on November 2 is a communal act of supernatural charity by the Church Militant for the Church Suffering, praying in union with the Church Triumphant for all those being made ready for heaven. Continue Reading »
Protestantism will be purified only insofar as she is willing to contend conservatively for the faith once delivered to the saints. Continue Reading »
Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things that Matter Mostby jerry l. wallsbrazos, 240 pages, $19.99 The opening sentence of this book declares that it “deals with the most important questions you will ever think about.” Jerry Walls—a philosophy professor at Houston Baptist . . . . Continue Reading »
Several years of prison ministry have convinced me that there are substantial parallels between what we think about incarceration and how we understand salvation. After all, Christians believe that we are imprisoned by sin and that, rather than trying to escape our condition, we need to undergo a personal transformation before we can enter into the full presence of God. True, sin is universal in a way that jail is not. Nonetheless, crimes against the civil order and rebellion against God overlap in interesting and complicated ways, which makes prisoners among the most conspicuous, though certainly not the most hopeless, examples of humanity’s fallen state. Continue Reading »
Nearly a decade ago Jerry Walls wrote an article for this magazine (“Purgatory for Everyone”) in which he encouraged his fellow Protestants to reconsider their aversion to the doctrine of purgatory. His argument turned on a simple question: “If salvation essentially involves . . . . Continue Reading »
A few years ago, the journalist Philip Nobile wrote an article near the first anniversary of the death of Princess Diana in which he raised what he termed “an indiscreet theological question.” “Where is she now?” he asked. According to Christian theology, the options were heaven, purgatory, . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
