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The author of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/purgatory-is-for-real/">Purgatory Is for Real</a>, Karlo Broussard, explains the reality of indulgences and why they are effective in paying off debts.

Are Indulgences a Scam?

When it comes to the possibility of losing salvation, Catholics have their Bible passages—John 15:1-5, Galatians 5:4, Matthew 10:22. But Protestants aren’t short on comebacks.
One such comeback is employed by Protestant apologist James White. Whenever the above passages, and others like them, are brought up, White argues that such passages don’t necessarily have to be read prescriptively; they can be read descriptively.
A descriptive reading merely describes what is the case. Prescriptive readings describe what ought to be or, in the case of action, what should or must be done. The implication for a prescriptive reading is that what ought to be might not come to pass, or what ought to be done might not be done.
One occasion where White tried to use this argument was in his 2017 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72TRODe8BdA">debate</a> on eternal security with Trent Horn. Trent had a good response to defuse White’s rebuttal. But given the limitations of the debate, Trent could say only so much.
So I’d like to offer just a few complementary thoughts here—as I sit before my computer with time to think through this issue. (Kudos to Trent for his ability to think on his feet!)
First, regardless of whether we read the texts descriptively or prescriptively, we still arrive at the same conclusion: it’s possible for a Christian to lose his salvation.
Consider Jesus’ description in Matthew 10:22: “He who perseveres shall be saved.” Remaining faithful to the end is a condition that must be met to receive final salvation. But this means it’s possible that the condition might not to be met—that’s to say, a person may freely turn away from Christ and not persevere unto the end. That’s all we need to prove the view that it’s possible for a Christian to lose his salvation. There’s no need for the prescription “we must persevere” (a prescriptive reading).
What about John 15:2? Jesus says, “Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, [the Father] takes away.”
Consider that the description of some branches being part of the vine necessarily implies that those branches once were living with the life of the vine, but then, for whatever reason, they ended up dead, thereby failing to produce fruit.
As applied to Christians, some were living with the life of Christ (the vine), which means they were true believers who were truly saved (contra White—“These branches were not the ones in which true salvation had taken place”). Indeed, that’s a description. It’s also a description that they’re cut off from Christ, thereby no longer living with the life of Christ, and thus are spiritually dead. That Jesus describes some Christians in fact spiritually dying and thus being cut off from him logically entails that it’s possible for a Christian to spiritually die and thus be cut off.
The same line of reasoning applies to Galatians 5:4, where Paul tells the Galatians, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”
Describing how these Christians in Galatia in fact have been severed from Christ (“You are severed”—the Greek katērgēthēte is an aorist indicative, which signifies past time) implies that they were once in Christ and thus saved (contra White—“Who is being addressed there? Those who are seeking to be justified by their keeping of the law, not true believers”). Given that they are no longer in Christ, they are no longer in a state of salvation. And that these Galatians have lost their state of salvation logically entails that it’s possible to lose salvation.
So White’s contention—that a descriptive reading of these texts avoids the interpretation that it’s possible for a Christian to lose his salvation—doesn’t pan out.
A second thought is that, for White, the descriptive/prescriptive distinction is not the real issue. Rather, it’s what the possibility of a Christian losing his salvation necessarily entails. This becomes evident when White comments on the above passages individually. (All the emphases below are supplied.)
Consider, for example, his take on Matthew 10:22. When commenting on the prescriptive reading of the text, he states,
<blockquote>“He who endures to the end shall be saved”—and so by your enduring to the end you bring about your salvation.” That’s a prescriptive way of looking at things.</blockquote>
He then comments on what he takes to be a descriptive reading:
<blockquote>The descriptive way allows for the passages I presented to be true and then applies them to the application passages as to how Christians live the Christian life. And so what you then have is, “He who endures to the end shall be saved.” Amen, I agree a thousand percent, but it is not my enduring to the end that brings about my salvation, and God is not helpless unless I somehow work up an enduring faith.</blockquote>
For White, on the view that a Christian doesn’t end up being saved, God is “helpless,” and the final perseverance of a Christian is due solely to him “working up an enduring faith.”
In his comments on John 15, he argues, “It’s not my abiding in him that brings forth fruit; he’s the one that brings forth the fruit in me,” as if the view that a Christian can lose his salvation entails that the fruit comes solely from the Christian, without God.
Finally, when he directs his comments to Galatians 5:4, he argues that reading such a text as if a Christian can lose his salvation “adds to the finished work of Christ.”
Notice that in all these responses, White thinks that reading these texts in support of the view that a Christian can lose his salvation undermines God’s universal causality (and thus God’s sovereignty), excluding God and Christ’s work on the cross from the calculus of whether someone is finally saved or not.
There are two things that we can say in response. First, a Christian might challenge White’s assumption that God must be the cause of man’s free choice in attaining salvation, arguing that White’s prior view of divine causation, which he uses to interpret the above texts, is false, and thereby should not be a reason to reject the interpretation that these texts reveal the possibility for a Christian to lose his salvation.
Second, White’s concern that God’s causal influence (and thus his sovereignty) would somehow be excluded from the picture on the belief that a Christian can lose his salvation can be alleviated if we adopt a Thomistic/Augustinian view, where final salvation is attained by God causing the will, without doing violence to it, to freely choose him and thus be saved. And if a Christian falls from a saving relationship with God, such a fall can happen only if God permits it, a permission that’s infallibly known from all eternity, antecedent to any sin.
On this view, God is not “helpless” and excluded from the question of whether a Christian is finally saved or not. God is in the picture all the way through, causing man’s free choice when he chooses God and permitting man’s rejection when he freely rejects God, whether such choices are made before initial salvation, during one’s saving relationship with Christ, or in the end at death.
In sum, neither reason that White gives in his debate with Trent succeeds in justifying a rejection of the above texts as support for the belief that a Christian can lose his salvation. This belief can be arrived at even with a descriptive reading. And at least on some Christian views of divine causation and human freedom, such as those of Aquinas and Augustine, there’s no need to think the belief that a Christian can lose his salvation excludes God’s universal causality (and thus sovereignty) from a Christian achieving final salvation.
Now, White might contend that the above passages don’t prove the possibility to lose salvation on other grounds. That’s fine. But he can’t employ his prescriptive-versus-descriptive tactic, or his “God is helpless” charge, to undermine our appeal to these passages for proving it’s possible for a Christian to lose his salvation.

A Christian Can Lose His Salvation

In this insightful clip, Cy Kellett speaks with apologist Joe Heschmeyer about the challenges of navigating faith within a marriage when only one spouse feels called to the Catholic Church. Joe emphasizes the importance of prioritizing one&#8217;s relationship with Christ, even when it creates tension at home, and offers guidance on how to approach these sensitive conversations with love and understanding.
Transcript:
Caller: I really, really felt the calling to become Catholic, but at the Easter vigil. But my husband is absolutely against it. He is kind of in the school of thought of, you know, Catholics worship Mary, Catholics pray to dead people, you know, all the.
Joe: Sure. We get a fair number of those calls. Yeah, yeah.
Cy: Okay. Right. That.
Caller: And this is hard to say out loud, but he was even so upset and so distraught at the idea that he said to me, I would never have married a Catholic girl and I won&#8217;t be married to a Catholic girl, and basically kind of threatened divorce. So I went back to my parish priest and he, you know, after a long talk, he had said, you know, you&#8217;re a wife and mother first and foremost, and just keep it in prayer. And so I&#8217;m at the point where I feel like I&#8217;m disobeying God by not coming into the church.
Cy: Okay.
Caller: But it&#8217;s also causing a lot of conflict within my marriage.
Joe: Yeah, that is one of the hardest situations. You know, children whose parents won&#8217;t let them go to Mass is maybe number one. And then in the cases of spouses. And I think it&#8217;s fair to point out that there&#8217;s something that is radically inhibiting your freedom in your husband&#8217;s behavior. And I understand, you know, his perspective on this. He didn&#8217;t sign up for that. In his view, he didn&#8217;t expect you to have this change. But the healing has God to blame. Like, you&#8217;re obviously a faithful Christian seeking to understand the Lord better. God has called you in a certain way, and he is trying to tell you you can&#8217;t follow where Jesus is calling you as you have discerned.
And I think if you put it in those terms, he is directly interfering with your path of discipleship. And I think if you can lay that out now, I don&#8217;t know the details of your marriage, but I would encourage, rather than focusing on trying to convince him to become Catholic right away, just getting him to recognize that our duty is actually to Christ first. I mean, Jesus talks about how he comes to set Father against Son and Son against Father in Luke 12, and then in Luke 14, he even says, if anyone comes after me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children. Now, in your case, husband, not wife. But hate obviously doesn&#8217;t literally mean hate there. It&#8217;s hyperbolic.
But there is this sense in which our following of Christ has to be first and foremost. And we can&#8217;t let someone else determine our discipleship for us by telling us we&#8217;re not allowed to follow where Christ is calling us. That is just not. That&#8217;s not an appropriate boundary for one spouse to try to dictate that for another. Like, you have to follow where Christ is leading you. And I mean, the flip side is actually true as well. If a Catholic is having a crisis in faith, their spouse can&#8217;t just be like, well, you can&#8217;t have a crisis in faith. That&#8217;s not acceptable. That&#8217;s an inappropriate boundary for one spouse to try to assert over another. You have to follow where you believe Jesus is calling you. And no human being has the authority to stand in the way of that.
And everyone needs to take that seriously. Like, that is an actual, you know, this. You&#8217;re not a minor child. Where, you know, there&#8217;s a better case that like, parents have some role in restricting their kids&#8217; radical freedom. So if a kid just says, I don&#8217;t want to go to Mass on Sunday, that doesn&#8217;t have to be the last word. You&#8217;re a grown-up. You&#8217;re an adult woman. And so I think you have to say, I need to follow Jesus. And I think if you put it in those terms and pray about it fervently, I would even suggest fasting and doing mortifications for it, for a softness of his heart. Just to accept that you as a Christian need to follow where you believe Christ is calling and that to impede that and to delay. When Christ is saying go, and you say, I&#8217;m not going to go yet. I&#8217;m going to wait till a more convenient time, that constitutes disobedience.
Just as much as when you tell your kids, come to the car and they say, once I&#8217;m done with the video game. The fact that they intend to do it eventually isn&#8217;t obedience, it&#8217;s, you know, putting you on their schedule. And I realize as I&#8217;m saying this, this is heavy and hard teaching. This is one of the aspects of the high cost of discipleship. And I want you to be assured of my prayers. And I don&#8217;t know if you feel comfortable sharing your husband&#8217;s name on the air, but we&#8217;d love to pray for him as well.
Caller: Yeah, his name&#8217;s Scott.
Joe: All right, Stephanie and Scott, I&#8217;ve got a sister named Stephanie married to a guy whose brother&#8217;s name is Scott. So I&#8217;ll remember that, hopefully.
Cy: Stephanie, have you come. I just want to clarify something. Have you come to the decision that the Catholic Church is Christ&#8217;s Church and that that&#8217;s where you&#8217;re called?
Caller: To be 1,000%. And for the first time in my life also, I finally feel like the true peace that I&#8217;ve always been serving. And I can finally say that I now love Jesus more than my husband, my children, my parents. He&#8217;s like my absolute number one. And I want to do nothing more than what he tells me to do.
Cy: What a beautiful testament.
Joe: You know what? I think you should point to that testimony as well. Like, hopefully your husband can see that you have been transformed to become more Christ-like. Even if it goes against all of his prejudices against Catholicism, and hopefully if he will endure this period, even just for the sake of your following of Christ, you can be a living witness to the fact that someone can love Jesus and be Catholic. And in fact, that the more Catholic you become, the more you end up loving Jesus.
And the thing that Christ is calling you to is to receive Him. Like, you&#8217;re struggling with anxiety and depression, and he&#8217;s saying, I want to live with you. I want to be with you. And so I do want to. This is clearly going to be a process. Even if you were free to come into the church now, you would have to go through the OCIA, but you&#8217;ve come to faith in the Catholic Church, which makes you one of us. And you are baptized or not baptized?
Caller: Yeah. So I was raised Lutheran, so I was baptized as an infant.
Cy: Has anyone told you about making a spiritual communion with Jesus?
Joe: I don&#8217;t think so.
Cy: Well, you can just type in EWTN Spiritual Communion, and it will take you to a page with a little prayer where you can make a spiritual communion with Jesus because He wants communion with you. He&#8217;s clearly telling you he wants communion with you. You can do this while you&#8217;re watching a Mass on the television or on the YouTube or whatever, but you can do it anytime. You can make a spiritual communion with Jesus. It&#8217;s communion with Jesus that heals. And you already know that. So I&#8217;m just trying to let you know there are intermediate steps that you can take as you&#8217;re moving towards full communion. Okay, Stephanie?
Cy: Okay, I will do that. Thank you.
Cy: If there&#8217;s anything we can send you, just tell us. John will pick up in a second. John&#8217;s covering. If there&#8217;s a book or anything that you&#8217;d like from us, we&#8217;ll send it to you. If not, that&#8217;s perfectly fine. We understand. And you&#8217;re always welcome to call back here. I hear the music, which means we.
Joe: Have to take care of everyone listening. Pray for Stephanie and Scott.
Cy: Please do. Pray for Stephanie and Scott and pray. How beautiful is Jesus. I mean, every time I hear someone&#8217;s story like that, he wants to be with us in the Eucharist. He wants to be in communion with us. He wants to make his home with us. And how beautiful it is when he calls us to that.

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