This Sunday (Nov. 2), on what is known as All Souls’ Day, Roman Catholics around the world will be praying for loved ones who have died and for all those who have passed from this life to the next. They will be joined by Jerry Walls.
“I got no problem praying for the dead,” Walls says without hesitation — which is unusual for a United Methodist who attends an Anglican church and teaches Christian philosophy at Houston Baptist University.
Most Protestant traditions forcefully rejected the “Romish doctrine” of purgatory after the Reformation nearly 500 years ago. The Protestant discomfort with purgatory hasn’t eased much since: You still can’t find the word in the Bible, critics say, and the idea that you can pray anyone who has died into paradise smacks of salvation by good works.
The dead are either in heaven or hell, they say. There’s no middle ground, and certainly nothing the living can do to change it. Read more
What is notable about this article is that does not identify the other theologians giving purgatory a second look--only Jerry Walls and Roger Olson. Both Walls and Olson are Arminians. Walls obtained his doctorate in philosophy at Notre Dame, a leading Roman Catholic university. He also attends an Anglican Church, which, considering the church is in the Houston area, is in all likelihood a church that is Anglo-Catholic or otherwise does not adhere to the doctrine of the Protestant Reformed Anglican confessional formularies. The article does not identify the church that Walls attends. There is enough evidence to question Walls' credentials as a Protestant. It is also noteworthy that among the heretical beliefs entertained by American evangelicals according to the Ligonier-Lifeway survey The State of Theology is the belief in a "second-chance."
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