Christ’s Descent in to Hades

“He descended into hell”—so runs the venerable and majestic Creed. But the American Episcopal Prayer-book prefixes its timid rubric as follows: “Any churches may omit the words ‘He descended into hell,’ or may, instead of them, use the words ‘He went into the place of departed spirits,’ which are considered as words of the same meaning in the Creed.” The words which are here made optional have come down to us in an unbroken line of doctrinal succession from the fourth century. They have, indeed been stigmatized as an interpolation, but so early an interpolation might perhaps be called a mature addition. Their omission was favored by the change of meaning in the word “hell,” but there was also the feeling that Christ’s visit to Hades was of little importance, and is to us not a doctrine,’ but a matter of mere curiosity.

Now, whatever may be true of the “Apostles’ Creed,” the Descent into Hades has sufficient New-Testament authority. The first recorded address of Peter contains twofold evidence that the Descent was believed by both speaker and hearers. In the first place, he quotes from a Psalm (xvi.) that had a shaping influence on the belief of the people respecting Hades. Further, he bases an argument and appeal for the resurrection of Christ on the certainty that he would not stay in Hades. “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades” (Acts 2:27).

But what was Hades, and what the significance and importance of Christ’s going thither? In a somewhat recent discussion I find these words: “The Saviour was in the same state between death and resurrection as we now are after death.”¹ This is, it seems to me, precisely what ought not to be said. For this ignores the whole work of Christ in Hades, and leaves them that sleep in Jesus no better off than if he had not risen. Let us put ourselves in the place of the apostles and their fellow disciples, and after we have learned the truth about Hades as it appeared in their thought and forms of statement, then we may, if we can, translate it into our own thoughts and forms of statement. Hades was the region where dwelt the souls that were under the power of death. The souls of the righteous as well as of the wicked were under this awful power. Into this region came the soul of the Crucified, but it did not remain there. Going thither was the lowest point in his humiliation, and leaving was the beginning of his triumph. What, then, was the effect in Hades of this visit and this departure? But this is the same as to ask, What was the effect, in the spirit-world, of the resurrection? According to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, or Acts of Pilate,—of perhaps the fourth century,—two of the saints that arose at the resurrection of Christ, Charinus and Lenthius, sons of Simeon, wrote out all that they were allowed to reveal of the coming of Jesus into Hades. This Gospel was the basis of the mediaeval miracle-play “The Harrowing of Hell.” The work in Hades, here somewhat grotesquely described, was the deliverance from hell of the ancient saints, and may be summed up in a single one of its own sentences, “And taking hold of Adam by his right hand, he ascended from hell, and all the saints of God followed him.”²

I do not say that the Gospel of Nicodemus is to be trusted, but it may be as near the truth as the statement that “the Saviour was in the same state between death and the resurrection as we now are after death”—a statement that would be accepted, probably, by a majority of Christians. But surely the apostles and primitive disciples had no such notion. After they had come to understand the resurrection of Christ and feel its power, they were filled, with what may be called the resurrection-enthusiasm. In their view the resurrection-era was already begun. Death and hell [Hades] were vanquished. Wesley’s hymn has the true apostolic spirit: —

“Our Lord is risen from the dead,
Our Jesus is gone up on high;
The powers of hell are captive led,
Dragged to the portals of the sky.”

Just when the resurrection was to take visible effect in themselves, the disciples could not say, and it did not matter. To die was to go and be with him who had risen. And such a dying did not deserve the name of death. It was a sleep; it was the putting off of this tabernacle; it was a departure; it was not the death that all past ages had known, for Jesus had said: “He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

To the question why the Descensus is not oftener spoken of in the New Testament, the answer is, that going to Hades is taken for granted as a part of death. It was not necessary to speak of both whenever either was mentioned. In the Revelation, indeed, the two are linked together: “I have the keys of death and of Hades (1:18); “His name was death, and Hades followed with him” (6:8); “And death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them… . And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire” (20:13-14. The mention of either was logically sufficient. But the Hades is not a home, even temporarily, for believers. It is Hades triumphed over by him who “brought life and incorruption [exemption from death] to light.” When he ascended on high he led captivity captive” (Eph. 4:8). Death was “swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54). The resurrection-enthusiasm of the New Testament is the response of faith to those glorious words “I go to prepare a place for you” which place was not in Hades. The same divine enthusiasm refused to recognize any “intermediate state,” the old abolished Hades under a new name. Stephen did not say, “Behold, I see the Son of man in Hades.” Can we wonder that the early disciples looked for a speedy return of the Lord? Does one say, It was an error? It was not; for it was necessary to the highest truth. The resurrection-spirit refused to see the long interval of waiting. As has been said of the prophets that they looked from one mountain-top of history to another, and could not see the low-lying valleys between, so we may say of the apostles, that they saw the triumph over death and hell as a complete victory, and they would have been false to the power of the truth, if they had not looked upon it as gloriously near. “The reign of Death is over; Hades is abolished; Life and Immortality have come”—this is the key-note of the resurrection-spirit. Christ’s resurrection might as well be called a resurrection from Hades as from the grave.

I will not dwell on the preaching to “the spirits in prison” (1 Pet. 3:18–20). It cannot be needful that there should be a thousand and one expositions of that passage, instead of simply a thousand; but the point of view we are taking has to do with it in at least two particulars: —

1. The Descent was necessary without any regard to the preaching. The Descent itself, however, was a proclamation of unspeakable meaning. The inhabitants of the spirit-world were not in solitary confinement or unconscious sleep. They saw the Redeemer at the lowest point in his work of redemption, and at the beginning of his triumph.

2. This preaching looks backward to the past. This is in harmony with the idea that Hades was now abolished, and the spirit-world revolutionized. We might imagine that the object of the Descent was to plant the Christian church in Hades and ordain for it a succession of Hades-apostles, and so forth, but the view of Peter was that Hades came to an end the preaching was once for all. Why the antediluvians are referred to may perhaps be explained by the fact that so vast a number going to their death in an awful catastrophe, made them the representatives and types of the Hades-world. It might have given the name of Antediluvian under-world. If one asks, Why should not those who have since died hear the preaching also? the Scripture gives no answer. A perpetual Hades with perpetual preaching in it is nowhere revealed.

In regard to the whole question of the relation of the wicked to the resurrection, we need not wonder at the infrequent allusions to the risen wicked. The epistles of the New Testament are addressed to Christians. Paul’s great argument in 1 Cor. 15. runs into a grand anthem of Christian triumph. We cannot suppose that the enthusiasm of the apostles would rise over the fate of the wicked as over the redemption of the saints. But the resurrection-influence certainly reaches the wicked. One saying of the Master settles that: “They that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done ill unto the resurrection of judgment” (Jno. 5:29). This did not need for its certainty the echo of Paul “There shall be a resurrection both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15). The judgment scene in Matt. 25. implies the resurrection of the wicked. The resurrection period ends with the judgment. The divine foreshortening places the coming in glory close by the resurrection.

Rut we have the right to follow apostolic example, and avert our eyes from the fate of the wicked, and rejoice in the glory of the redeemed. Christ s Descent opened the resurrection-era in the spirit-world as well as on earth, and began the fulfilment of the promise “I go to prepare a place for you.” Shall we translate the apostolic thoughts and visions into modern thoughts and views? We cannot expect to comprehend fully the results of Christ’s death and resurrection in the unseen world. That it was a revolution is the unspoken testimony of our hearts whenever we think of those dear to us who sleep in Jesus, and whenever we look forward to our own death, which hope names a resurrection-sleep. We are still living in the resurrection-era. When we die we shall not pass beyond the resurrection-influence. How shall we express this hope and faith? Shall we say, in the words of the shorter Westminster, “The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into glory”? But to show the very heart and substance of the doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hades—its depth of humiliation, its triumph, and its glorious fruits—the Te Deum is better than the Catechism: —

“When thou had’st overcome the sharpness of death,
Thou did’st open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.”

1) Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 16:p. 323.

2) Gospel of Nicodemus, in the Apocryphal New Testament (London,. 1820), chap. 19:12.