GodsGrace: "I don't understand your last sentence at all.
How are people baptized on behalf of the dead? (1 cor 15:29)"
A family member substitutes for the unavailable deceased unsaved loved one and is rebaptized as a proxy for that family member. By implication, this practice builds on the Jewish practice (and thus later the Catholic practice) of praying for the dead.
GG: "Do you believe that purgatory is one of the 3 heavens?"
GG: "As purgatory has been taught until very recently, it is nothing like heaven at all.
It still had fire and all the terrible things of hell...this was necessary for the purging."
You don't understand the Jewish concept of "Heaven," shared by Paul (2 Cor. 12:2, 4), according to which "Heaven" is a term that embraces both blissful heaven realms and hellish realms. That is why nowhere in the Bible is it said that when the righteous die, they go to "Heaven." Instead, they enter "the kingdom of God," also called "the kingdom of Heaven," the realm of the King). As already mentioned, "Paradise" (meaning "park" or "garden") is the preferred destination for the redeemed dead (Luke 23:42-43) and is located in the 3rd Heaven. By implication, of course, the 2 lower Heavens are to be avoided at all costs. Why? Because they are purgative or even hellish realms (see the descriptions in 2 Enoch).
GG: "The fact that the idea did not even come about till about the 800's, or even later, tells me it was not present at the time of the Apostles or of the Apostolic Fathers or Early Church Fathers."
Don't confuse the jargon with the underlying concept. First-century Jews, followed by Jesus, have their own term for "Purgatory:" they called it "Gehenna, " a realm from which ultimate release was often expected for many. YOU DO REALIZE THE C. S. LEWIS, PERHAPS THE MOST EMINENT EVANGELICA AUTHOR OF THE 2OTH CENTURY BELIEVED IN PURGATORY!
GG: "Recently purgatory has been made to be much softer.
Also, there is no time frame given for the amount of time spent there...this must be because the CC
correctly knows that there is NO TIME after death since we go to eternity...there is no time frame in eternity."
I made it clear that first-century Jews provided the foundation for Catholic Purgatory. I never said they were the same. One differnce is that the rabbis speculated about the length of time one might need to stay in Gehenna.
GG: "The verses in 1 cor 3:15 are used by the CC as support...but the meaning is really misunderstood by most of us.
It's not referring to our works at all, but the work of ministers."
Not "ministers," but laymen who are followers of Peter (Cephas), Apollos, and Paul in the sense of having been mentored and baptized by them. (see 2:12-15 and 3:5-6)." We don't get to assign a meaning to the expression "saved, yet so as by fire" that avoids its postmortem application to Gehenna in the Jewish culture of Paul's day.