John Wesley Founder of the Methodist Believed in Prayers For the Dead and An Intermediate State After Death

File this under You learn something new everyday. David Armstrong has two very interesting posts from a few days ago. See

John Wesley's Belief in an Intermediate State After Death

and

John Wesley's Espousal of Prayer for the Dead (also, approval of Luther and Lutherans)

Armstrong in a back and forth in the comment section makes two observations

All you've done now is paraphrase what I stated

:"What this does is establish an antecedent premise . . . (that there is a third state besides heaven and hell after death). Wesley's view and ours share a common premise that is rejected by Reformed / Baptists, etc."

I don't know what is so difficult to understand about this. There are subtleties, but now that I have repeatedly clarified, there shouldn't be any mystery or confusion anymore. Yet you repeated my sentiment back to me, making out that there is some difference.

Wesley's statements prove nothing directly about purgatory; I agree; never stated otherwise. The two original posts never mentioned the word "purgatory." But it does show that Wesley and Catholics share a key premise (one denied by most Protestants) that is needed in order to believe in purgatory (what is in the parentheses above).Apart from questions of proof and demonstration, I disagree that Wesley's opinion has nothing whatever to do with purgatory because the one Methodist writer stated that he believed in some sort of increase of holiness after death, which is precisely the aim and goal of purgatory. In that sense, then, there is an affinity beyond mere adoption of the notion of a third state after death. You don't want to see it, but it is there, nonetheless.

and

Wesleyan theologian Jerry Walls makes some of the same connections here that I would make, in an excellent article in First Things (April 2002), entitled "Purgatory for Everyone":

"It is just this sort of consideration that led Wesley to insist that sanctificationmust normally be preceded by a significant period of growth and maturation. Without this process, one is not prepared to receive the fullness of grace sanctificationrepresents.

If this basic line of thought is correct, there is good reason to think that something like the traditional notion of purgatory is indeed necessaryfor those who have not experienced significant growth and moral progress."The classical notion of purgatory also seems necessary to a related issue in the process of sanctification: our free participation in it. Many Christiantheologians have held that our necessary cooperation in our transformation constitutesthe only satisfactory explanation for the bewildering array of good and evil in the world. God takes our freedom seriously and is patient with it; He recognizesthat even those who have made an initial decision to follow His will often make only sporadic or inconsistent progress in carrying out their resolution. Inthis view, while it is God who enables and elicits our transformation each stepof the way, our cooperation with His will is necessary to our sanctification."Now if God deals with us this way in this life, it is reasonable to think He will continue to do so in the next life until our perfection is achieved. Indeed, the point should be put more strongly than this".

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/purgatory-for-everyone-49

You don't see this, because Baptist presuppositions about justification, sanctification and the afterlife do not allow these categories, but Anglican and Methodist and Wesleyan and pentecostal-holiness systems of theology do, so it is thinkable and conceivable for a guy like this.