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"PM you're proving my point: explicit references are not required for reality of a dogma... The word "Trinity" is nowhere found in scripture but the concept the reality of it is."

The word "Trinity" is our word. It is not God's word (so to speak) because it is not in the Bible. But the reality of the three persons of the Godhead (Biblical word) is clearly taught by Scripture. All three Presons are called "God" in Scripture. It is unambiguous - but "Trinity" is our convenient word for this unambiguous Scriptural concept.

"Purgatory" is ambiguous. No specific passage can be pointed to that refers to it's existence unambiguously. I think the 250+ references to Heaven and 250+ references to Hell are a striking contrast to this ambiguity.

Furthermore, "Purgatory" is a "necessary" doctrine that has grown up around a theology that teaches that what Jesus did on the cross was not enough to completely and utterly save you from sin and hell. "Limbo" is a similar "necessary" concept nowhere taught in Scripture.

"Purgatory" speaks to the need of the (I'm sure often) sincere soul who believes in Jesus but still has this nagging feeling that they are not ready - not pure enough to enter heaven. I find that same dilemma in the NT - in Paul who says...

"So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

Rom 7&8

Paul sees clearly that he is a wretched man who is at war with the evil tendencies within himself. He looks to what Gos has done in Christ as his source of liberation and freedom.