Teetering on the Edge of Heaven and Hell

I freely admit that I am a fan of the singer Adele, or at least her music. When driving back from church during my undergrad days, my friends and I would put on any one of her albums and belt along with the songs. It might seem strange to suggest that the fifth song on Adele’s 30 album offers anything remotely close to a Christological reflection on Holy Saturday. But we shouldn’t be surprised to find that imagery of an entirely secular song written about the aftershocks of divorce finds overlap with the core Christian doctrine of the Descent.

That imagery finds similarity in the key English phrase of the Apostles’ Creed, “[Jesus] descended into hell.” That phrase, of course, is one that causes a good deal of confusion among catechumens and long-time Christians alike. The same phrase may be found in the last section of the inappositely named Athanasian Creed, although Evangelicals generally are unfamiliar with this second statement of belief. 

Within some Christian traditions, this phrase from the Creed is a reference to Christ’s so-called Harrowing of Hell, where Jesus rescues the Old-Testament righteous from the darkness. The Reformation offered other ways of understanding the phrase. Nonetheless, within the ever-growing umbrella of Protestantism, many Evangelical theologians and leaders reject outright any doctrine of Christ’s Descent (and the creedal clause itself) for lack of scriptural evidence (the “Neo-Deletionists”). Yet as easy as it is to engage in a reactionary, solo-scriptura theology in response to misunderstandings of the creedal clause, an orthodox understanding of the Creed communicates the full salvific benefits of Christ’s redemptive arc and affirms the veracity of the Chalcedonian Formulation. 

Within modern Evangelicalism, the Bible alone is the canon for assessing the theological acceptability of a premise or doctrine. In certain theologically conservative pulpits, the sermon becomes a verse-by-verse lecture on the selected Scripture, often lacking broader doctrinal preaching or pastoral conviction and development. The catholic continuity of preaching the Word is sacrificed, or perhaps ignored, for the sake of the immediate textual context to the passage. In order to hold to doctrine in many low-church settings, an explicit “proof text” is required, turning the whole of Biblical exegesis into something more akin to constitutional literalism than theological interpretation. Ironically, modern Evangelicalism becomes inherently suspect of the truth claims of historic orthodoxy. This is, then, a mirror to the postmodern context Evangelicalism often finds itself reacting against. As Kevin Vanhoozer notes, the postmodern climate “contributes … to an ethos of congregational consumerism and ultimately to a devaluation of doctrine.” Christ’s Descent into hell is one of those doctrines.

The clause finds historical spotlight first through the commentary of a certain Rufinus, a presbyter of the late fourth century, where he notes that neither Roman or Eastern churches included the clause in their baptismal creeds. Before Rufinus wrote his commentary, the doctrine of the Descent had been put forth by three separate Arian assemblies (Sirmium, Nicé, and Constantinople) between A.D. 359 and 360. It was discussed among the Alexandrian fathers, viz., Clement and Origen. Certainly, the doctrine itself was not a later theological reasoning of the church gone awry. 

Wayne Grudem misrepresents both Rufinus and the history of the clause when he claims that, “Rufinus, the only person who includes it before [A.D.] 650, did not think that it meant that Christ descended into hell but understood the phrase simply to mean that Christ was ‘buried,’” (Grudem 103). Grudem repeats the error of Philip Schaff in this reading of Rufinus, although Schaff himself defended the doctrine of the Descent. As is found in the Patristics of the second century, there was already formulating within the church a doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Sheol/Hades. Even if the clause, therefore, was a later addition by the church, it reflected the crystallization of long-developed doctrine traced back to the early church, if not the Apostles in certain epistles. However, H. B. Swete contends differently: 

We meet with the clause for the first time in the Aquileian Creed of the fourth century, but it can hardly have been then of recent introduction… Rufinus in any case has lost the clue [to the Descent clause], and this circumstance alone would lead us to suppose that the addition was made long before his time. Moreover the simplicity of the words points us to the early days of the Aquileian Church. 

Swete further notes the strong potential that the Aquileian Church added the clause as a means of protesting Docetism. It is possible that the clause would be further relevant against Apollinarianism during the late fourth century. Rufinus informs us that the Aquileian Church added “invisible and impassible” to the first creedal article against Sabellian Modalism, and against a sort of Gnosticism, added “the resurrection of this flesh." The Aquileian Church was, according to tradition, founded by St. Mark the Evangelist.

Additionally, Rufinus did not interpret this clause, as Grudem asserts, to merely intensify the burial. As Calvin correctly notes, no phrase in the Creed is redundant. Instead, Rufinus believed in Christ’s Descent to the realm of the dead as human, whereby his victory was realized through the hypostatic union – the ubiquitous belief of the early church. One of the only notable breaks in this ubiquity was a heretical sect from the sixth century, the Christolytes, who, St. John Damascene notes, believed “[Jesus] descended into Hell, Body and Soul; and that he left both there, ascending to Heaven with his Divinity alone.” Yet the clause was otherwise well-understood into the Protestant Reformation, albeit, with distinctive foci among different traditions. Up to the Reformation, the debates surrounding the creedal clause reflected less a confusion in terminology and more in effect. The Melkite (Eastern) understanding reflected a more universal soteriological action (this position was later arrived at by the dialectical reasoning of Abelard), while Sts. Augustine, Gregory, and Bernard of Clairvaux each fought for an exclusive soteriological action in Christ’s Descent for those who possessed faith. Under the Master of Sentences and St. Thomas, the Roman view of incorporating limbus patrum was solidified into the Descent schema. Yet all of these understandings reflected a belief in Christ’s actual Descent on Holy Saturday, not a reiteration of bodily burial. The Reformation, however, begot three essentially different understandings of the clause.

For Martin Luther, the doctrine of Christ’s Descent was a doctrine of victory and elevation, where the spatial and spiritual Descent was a triumphal conquest into enemy territory. Luther’s formulation was explicitly within catholic bounds, but he reduced the liberative aspects of Melkite theology and corrected the idea of limbo found in Roman theology. In this, his view was truly a Reformation view: “[Luther] saw the descent as an event subsequent to the reuniting of body and soul. In other words it was the first step in Christ's glorification, followed by his appearance to his followers.” However, even as Luther recognized the Victorious Proclamation of Christ’s Descent, he elaborated upon this theology in two particularly strange ways. The Lutheran “timing” of Christ’s Descent implies the event to have occurred on Easter Sunday itself, and furthermore, the Christological aspect focused upon is the resurrected body, rather than the human soul as the church previously had attested. The Lutheran view, however, is the most catholic of the Reformation views.

The Reformed tradition, through Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism (Q 44), has unfortunately mutilated the doctrine of the Descent, maintaining only the barest essence of the doctrine. (The Westminster Larger Catechism (Q 50) offers a more ambiguous meaning.) In the Reformed schema, Christ (1) “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified;” (2) “descended into hell;” and then (3) “dead and was buried.” The obvious problem with this understanding is that it makes no sense. The Creed is organized by chronology, and therefore Calvin imposed an alien reading upon the text; while the basis for Calvin’s theology is not wrong, the doctrine he developed out of it inverts the catechesis of the Creed equally to saying that Christ’s Ascension occurred before his Conception. Wayne Grudem actually is correct when he notes, “[w]hile it is true that Christ suffered the outpouring of God’s wrath on the cross, [Calvin’s] explanation does not really fit the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed.” 

The Descent becomes a functional reality of the penal substitutionary foundation of the atonement, rather than participating in the broader picture of redemption. Furthermore, Calvin viewed the Descent clause as the final piece of Christ’s humiliation, whereas Luther viewed it as the beginning of the exaltation. Yet if we adopt something of a Barthian position and say both are simultaneously true, this becomes less problematic. Christ’s Descent is primarily an act that elevates and glorifies Christ, as he descends qua human, yet triumphs via the hypostatic union. However, this does not preclude the Descent from having elements of humiliation. 

Rather, if we understand Sheol/Hades as a result of the Fall and therefore endured by all the Old-Testament saints, Christ’s Descent functions as a further humiliation, although perhaps not to the extreme suggested by Calvin. Instead, the Descent might be understood as the final piece to Christ’s humiliation in the same way that the Incarnation was itself the first act of humiliation for the Son. Since the Descent occurs right before the fully glorified Son is revealed in Resurrection, it is a final testament to his divinity veiled, and it is only because of Christ’s triumph over Death that the Son’s glory is revealed. The final humiliation anticipates and is concurrent with the beginning of the glorification, the instance of the Transfiguration excepting. To Calvin’s credit, he did properly understand the Christological aspect of the Descent is Christ’s soul, not the resurrected body. Yet his theology’s novelty is mirrored by its idiosyncratic absurdity. 

Within modern Evangelicalism, neither position is too prominent in those churches that actually recite the Creed. Although many, vaguely Reformed churches would no doubt attest to the doctrine as developed by Calvin, a fundamental understanding of Descent theology is quite often absent, even for those churches regularly familiar with the Creed. For those underneath the broadly Protestant umbrella, a conscious Descent theology is often lacking. 

Within the Prosperity Gospel, this doctrine has achieved a considerable amount of attention to justify a warped and heretical Christology – Kenneth Copeland, interestingly, approaches the position of Hans Urs von Balthasar when suggesting that Christ was attacked by demons in hell. Most Christians, however, do not really have an developed understanding of the clause. Either catechumens and converts are confused by the doctrine, or they ignore it. Therefore, it can become a dangerously empty declaration when the church responds with, “I believe.” Nonetheless, we believe so that we may then understand. 

Instead, the position of Martin Bucer has gained rather unconsciously the most traction among these Evangelicals. For those in the Evangelical camp who willfully recite the clause, many take it to refer to Christ’s bodily burial on Good Friday (or Holy Saturday) for the purpose of expressing solidarity with humanity in death. This clausal redundancy is one such issue that Calvin was correct about, however. Like Luther, Bucer’s position refocuses the Christological aspect to the body, but Bucer limits this refocusing to the corpse, not the resurrected and elevated body. In this theological framework, Bucer’s reinterpretation of the clause becomes an expression of a “pre-Bultmannian attempt to demythologize the New Testament,” (Emerson 94) because he and his followers could not accept the Biblical cosmology presented in the Creed. Equally novel and idiosyncratic as Calvin’s, this view goes further to strip any transcendent weight to the clause, however, and complicates how we are to understand not only the Adamic recapitulation of Christ, but also the Chalcedonian Formula of Christ’s two natures.

None of the Reformation answers are preferable to the Christian who wishes to maintain his catechetical heritage, although the Lutheran position is certainly palatable for some. Nonetheless, the desire to make understanding of the Creed without leaning into a Romanist or Melkite position has encouraged many Evangelicals to stop saying that creedal clause entirely . This novel abrogation against orthodox expressions of the Christian faith, while not directly heresy, is therefore something that dilutes the efficacy of the redemption accomplished in the Life and Death and Resurrection of Christ. 

Through the witness presented by the Old Testament, it is not too great a conclusion that, after he died, Adam descended to Sheol – such is the case for all the faithful who died awaiting the Messiah. The Hebraic cosmology reflected in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (cf. Luke 16: 19-31) would have had no literary or cultural grounding unless it was the normative expectation of Jews by the time of Second-Temple Judaism. Although Jesus does not explicitly endorse or reject this understanding of the pre-resurrection afterlife, he adopts the imagery it provides; the religious milieu of his day provides at least a framework for how the New-Testament writers would have comprehended the issue. What does it mean when Christ tells the penitent thief that “today you shall be with me in paradise,” (Luke 23:43) if not to confirm to the penitent thief that the understanding of Sheol with which he grew up – the very schema used by Jesus with the Rich Man and Lazarus – is cosmologically correct? Regardless if this postmortem thought is theologically correct, it is clearly not wrong enough to warrant correction from either Jesus or the Apostles in later epistles, and this schema informed the early church’s thoughts on the matter. 

Because this postmortem anticipation was true for those born before the glory of the Son was revealed, their souls awaited in this spiritual place yet to be reunited with the Godhead. In Christ’s Descent, he recapitulates the Old-Testament anticipation of the Messiah in his humanity, but through the hypostatic union and specifically the economic inseparability and appropriation of the Trinity, Jesus completely redeems those patient souls. Just as Christ needed to be born and live as man to redeem man, so, too, needed he to die and recapitulate against Death to redeem the dead. 

That which Christ did not assume, Christ did not redeem; in the Descent, “he experience[d] the nadir of human life in this age, and experience[d] it as all humans do,” (Emerson 169). In assuming that state of the soul after death, Christ fully encounters Death as man. Through the hypostatic union and economic inseparability, however, the Trinity consumes Death, and redeems man from the existential curse. The human soul becomes fully redeemed not exclusively through the Crucifixion, but also through Christ’s Descent and redemption of those souls in paradise/Abraham’s bosom/the righteous compartment of Sheol/Hades.

The failure of the Reformation to provide Protestants with a totally sound doctrine of the Descent compels us to evaluate what the Descent truly means. The medieval additions by Romanist and Melkite theologians raise the question if the early church’s understanding is both necessary and sufficient for the Protestant to lean back upon, however. Clearly, there is necessary grounding in the theological tradition for this doctrine. Whereas the ossification of doctrine is typically a guarantor of viability in the skeletal structure of the church – e.g., the doctrine of the Triunity of God has not really been modified since 381 – the somewhat mystical nature of this particular dogma does not allow one to arrive at obvious answers. 

However, the early church did provide a foundation for how to approach the doctrine, even if the full dogma of the Descent had not totally crystallized during that time. Beginning with the understanding that Christ descended in his human soul to Sheol on Saturday to pronounce victory over Death and announce a realized salvation to those who had perished under the Old Covenant all through the hypostatic union, the doctrine of the Descent further develops as part of the soteriological discussion when considering that Christ expresses not just victory, but lordship, as well, over Death and Hades. 

I would also posit that the Transfiguration functions secondarily as a prelude to the Descent and affirms it as a worthwhile doctrine to maintain. Foundationally, both Moses and Elijah  appear embodied with Jesus before the three Apostles on the mountain. In that moment, Christ’s divinity is no longer veiled, and both Moses and Elijah and the Apostles see the exalted Christ on Earth. Moses (notwithstanding any argument to be made from the debate over Moses’ body by Michael and Satan) was drawn up from Sheol, and Elijah drawn down from Heaven –  in the persons of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, the whole cosmological reality is represented. 

The the life of Christ is one that expresses his dominion in all three planes – in three critical moments (Incarnation, Descent, Ascension), Christ visits these three planes, and in each of them reveals his full glory (Transfiguration, Victorious Proclamation, and continual Heavenly Intercession). The Transfiguration presents a foretelling, then, of both the Descent and Ascension of Christ, attesting to his lordship and mastery over the full cosmos in his humanity and divinity. In this way, the whole of creation, not just man, is redeemed back to God through the Descent and Resurrection of Christ.

Through this consideration, the Christus Victor model of the atonement compliments and builds off of the Penal Substitutionary model; what this doctrine incorporates is that, while foundational and essential, PSA is not sufficient as a singular and orphaned understanding of the atonement. Christ’s death on the cross satisfies the wrath of God and draws the elect to God as an act of love and ransoms creation from the justice of God, but the Descent and subsequent Resurrection ultimately restores man to God by overcoming Death. 

Therefore, the Christian can confess with full confidence that Christ descended into hell and appreciate the full salvific weight that this clause connotes; the clause further provides surety against any heresy which assaults the true humanity of Jesus. Yet the spiritual event also reflects an eschatological dimension. Because the Messiah’s humanity is paradigmatic for us, we can approach the intermediate state (the time between our death and the resurrection to come) with hope because of the Descent; not only does this affirm that the entire person – body and soul – shall be raised at the Parousia, but it also provides that believers will remain fully human in this liminal space between the already and the not yet. Furthermore, Jesus’s Descent conquers the abyss, pointing believers to the understanding that Jesus has also already cast the Satan into the pit. The Descent becomes a very useful doctrine for many a systematic theology, therefore.

Did Christ truly descend into hell? The Christian can confidently confess “yes.” That Christ descended even once should drive the believer to praise God, not only for the act of grace that is the Descent, but also at how great a mystery it truly is. And even as Christ descended and conquered the place of the dead, so, too, do we know that Christ shall once more return to hell as Adonai – not by merit of mere divine omnipresence (for the finite cannot become infinite), but he shall return to hell as Judge and Executioner against the Satan and his angels and all unrighteousness in the final days (cf. Rev. 14:9-11).

In the very presence of the Lamb, the cosmological realm of Death shall become inverted to glorify God, and there will be everlasting peace. When the believer does not confess the Descent or misapprehends the doctrine, a crucial aspect not only of Christ-as-Mediator is lost, but the coherency of redemption is muddled. Only through the Messiah’s arrival in Sheol is the human soul finally reconciled and restored to God. The Descent becomes the central doctrine that points man forward until the Parousia, and through the ritual expression of “I believe,” the Christian can look to Christ, true man and true God, and be in awe of his mighty and powerful acts.

Bibliography

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Chambers, Ephraim. Cyclopædia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences: containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify'd thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine: the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial: the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial: with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c: among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c: the whole intended as a course of antient and modern learning. 1728. 

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Robert White. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2014. 

Emerson, Matthew Y. “He Descended to the Dead” An Evangelical Theology of Holy Saturday. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Grudem, Wayne. “He Did Not Descend into Hell: A Plea for Following Scripture instead of the Apostles’ Creed.” Journal of the Evangelical Theology Society 34, no. 1 (March 1991): 103-113. 

Pitstick, Alyssa Lyra. Light in the Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013.

Scaer, David P. “He Did Descend to Hell: A Defense of the Apostles’ Creed.” Journal of the Evangelical Theology Society 35, no. 1 (March 1992): 91-99. 

Swete, Henry Barclay. The Apostles’ Creed: Its Relation to Primitive Christianity, 2^nd ed. C. J. Clay and Sons, 1894. 

Turner, Ralph V. “Descendit Ad Inferos: Medieval Views on Christ's Descent into Hell and the Salvation of the Ancient Just.” Journal of the History of Ideas 27, no. 2 (April-June 1966): 173-194. 

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005.