Article: "Did Jesus 'Descend Into Hell'?"

Did Jesus “Descend Into Hell”?

Rev. Peter A. Butler, Jr.

Most parishioners who say The Apostle’s Creed find themselves confessing, in one part of the creed, “He [Jesus] descended into Hell.” Is that true? Did Jesus descend into Hell, and if so, why?

Just as some general background, it is good to understand that The Apostle’s Creed was not written by the Apostles – it is an attempt at a summary of the Apostle’s teachings. And, the phrase “descended into Hell,” is not included in the earliest copies of the Creed (cf. Sacred Dissertations on the Apostle’s Creed, Herman Witsius).

What are we to make of it? That is, what are our options?

The first option is to take its meaning literally – that Jesus did, in fact, descend into Hell – the place of the damned. Those who are of this opinion look to verses such as I Peter 3:18-20 for support: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought to safety through water” (ESV).

The argument goes thusly:

Jesus was dead in the flesh and alive in the spirit after the Crucifixion and before the Resurrection, so that is when this text refers to.

The spirits who are in prison must be a euphemism for Hell.

Therefore, Jesus preached the Gospel in Hell to the damned between the time of His Death and Resurrection.

The only question one might bring to this interpretation is, “Why?” If these were the damned in Hell that Jesus preached to, what good would it do them? If they had already been condemned to Hell, how would the Gospel help them? Unless one argues that Jesus preached the Gospel to them out of pure sadism – which would be another problem, to say the least.

What then might this text mean?

The commentators admit this is a difficult text to interpret, but one possibility, as Martin Luther, William Ames, and John Rogers argue in their commentaries, is that Peter is saying that Christ spiritually presents His Gospel through His Word and through His ministers – rather than Himself Bodily – since His Death – in the same way that the Gospel was preached in the days of Noah. It was the same Gospel – but before the Son was enfleshed, just as the Son has now been re-enfleshed, resurrected, and glorified – seated at the Right Hand of the Father.

A second possibility is that the phrase simply means that Jesus was dead – really dead.

While no Christian would debate that Jesus really and truly died in His Body, this interpretation would make the Creed redundant: “He was crucified, dead, and was buried; He descended into Hell” or – according to this view, “He was crucified, dead, and was buried; He died.” What would be the point of noting His Death twice in the Creed?

A third interpretation is this: when we say that Jesus descended into Hell, what we are confessing is that He suffered the hell of not merely physical death, but the Wrath of God upon Himself for our sins. (cf. The Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin).

In this third interpretation, we might, like John Calvin, argue that the compilers of the Creed put the phrase in the wrong place, and that is why it has caused such confusion. It would make more sense to have the Creed read: “He was crucified, descended into Hell, dead, and was buried.”

Then we could buffet the Creed with Scripture, such a Matthew 27:46, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried aloud with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ That is, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’” (ESV).

We see then that Jesus did not merely suffer the horrific physical torture of His flogging and crucifixion, but He suffered the absolute hell of God’s Wrath being poured out on Him. In that moment He cried out with the agony of being forsaken by God the Father, we get a glimpse into the mystery of the Father’s forsaking – damning – the Son. In some mysterious way, the Unity and Communion of the Trinity was disrupted for that moment that God the Father poured out the wrath we deserved on His Son, Jesus. And let us understand the hell of this punishment was not just in the amount of wrath – enough for every sin every believer ever commits – but in intensity – rather than suffer God’s Wrath for all of eternity, Jesus suffered it – intensified – in the space of time that He hung on the Cross.

This third interpretation of the phrase is one that keeps with all of the texts and does not disregard logic. However, in the end, The Apostle’s Creed is merely a human document, and it must submit to the Word of God. So, if in any degree it does not accurately summarize the teaching of God’s Word – which is what it is an attempt to do – then it must be disregarded as false, and the Word of God affirmed as True.

Some churches have chosen to delete the phrase from the Creed in the hopes of avoiding confusion, but I would argue that this is a mistake: the early writers had a reason for putting the phrase in, and if we understand what they have written in a way that is in concert with the Holy Scriptures, then it seems it would be a good thing to leave it in – rather than delete it – and, instead, let us disciple and teach the people of God that they might better understand why the phrase is in the Creed. And why it should matter that Christ would suffer the Wrath of God on our behalf.

[This article is being published in Dynadharma (Pune, India) Issue #5.]