If I were speaking to an audience and asked them what the word reed means, from the sound of the word, the majority response would likely be something like “processing written words.” When I explain that the word in my notes is R-E-E-D, they might rethink the answer and say that it is a kind of plant. But it could also be part of the mouthpiece in certain woodwind instruments. Even R-E-A-D can be used in contexts like “read the room,” which is not quite the same as processing written words.

Words are sometimes hard to grab hold of because they have multiple meanings, inflections, spellings, versions, and so on. That difficulty increases when we deal with how the use of words changes over time, and things get even more difficult with added layers of translation in the mix.

Such are the challenges when we come to the line of the Apostles’ Creed that says Christ descended into hell. Numerous historical factors go into a proper understanding and interpretation of this affirmation in our most fundamental creed. Before we can ask, “Does the Bible teach this?” we must know what “this” is.

As we come to this phrase that Christ descended into hell, we must clear away some misunderstanding, probably overcome some skepticism, and definitely parse out some complicated ideas. Nevertheless, with some historical context and proper understanding, this line is a wonderful truth worth affirming wholeheartedly. The main point is that Christ’s descent affirms his true humanity, which enables him to save us.

Definitions

This discussion requires some historical context. This line in the Creed has a more unique background than any of the others. We get the Apostles’ Creed first from the earliest Christian writers as they summarized “The Rule of Faith.” The Rule of Faith guided Christians in reading Scripture unto proper conclusions. The content of the Rule of Faith was roughly the same as the Apostles’ Creed.

In the Rule of Faith’s earliest versions, this line about Christ’s descent into hell did not appear as we have it. This was true particularly in the western version of the Creed, as examples from the third century theologian Tertullian show. In churches further east, this line appeared instead of the phrase that Christ was buried. Thus, in the Creed’s earliest versions, the phrases that Christ was buried and that he descended into hell held equivalent places in alternatively developing formulations of the Rule of Faith. Christians felt that whatever they needed from each phrase essentially came built into both. Over time, both phrases made their way into the Creed as subsequent lines.

That history tells us that Christ’s descent was directly related to his incarnate experience of burial. Yet, the inclusion of both lines tells us these statements are nevertheless distinct claims. That distinction should still be set within the context of seeing that Christ’s descent was connected to his being buried.

Further, we must reckon with the background of the word hell because there is some translation complexity here. In Greek, Gehenna refers to the place of everlasting torment. To stay on familiar territory, Mark 9:43 says, “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell [Gehenna in Greek], to the unquenchable fire.” Here, Gehenna is hell as the place of torment in contrast to everlasting life.

Another word involved in this issue though is Hades. On one hand, Matthew 16:18 says, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell [Hades in Greek] shall not prevail against it.” This instance of Hades implies clear opposition to the church, and we can infer it carries a similar sense of condemnation, which is why the ESV translated it too as “hell.”

On the other hand, Hades can have a wider meaning. In Luke 16:19–31, Jesus told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as a warning about the relation of this life and the next. In verse 23, referring to the rich man: “And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.” Here, Hades is the setting for everyone involved—the rich man being tormented in Hades can see Lazarus and Abraham enjoying Hades. So, Hades has a wider flexibility that, in contrast with Gehenna which refers only to the place of torment, can include the rest of people in the afterlife. It is in a sense the general spiritual locale of all who have died.

The word that governed our phrase in the Apostles’ Creed is Hades. It is probably debatable whether earlier English included the same flexibility in our word hell as Hades encompasses, but it is likely. Regardless, theology was not being articulated much in English until relatively recently in the scope of church history.

So, despite the initial impression we might get from a first read of the Apostles’ Creed, the point is not that Christ went to the place of everlasting torment. The suggestion that Christ went to the place of torment, especially with the purpose of continuing his own suffering there apart from his body, was not part of the early church’s understanding of this phrase, not really part of the medieval or Reformation church’s understanding, and is of very modern origin, really most associated with Pentecostalism and the prosperity gospel. Definitions show us the complexity of this topic. We need to define the Creed’s word for Christ’s descent to hell as the place where the believing dead are located.

Denials

This section outlines what we should not believe concerning Christ’s descent. While the Creed states where Christ went, it makes no claim as to what he did there. We should not unduly import any meaning (in this case, regarding what Christ did in his descent) into the Creed when it was formulated to affirm a specific claim and specifically neglected to elaborate, possibly to leave room for varying interpretations. Thus, we should argue for the best interpretation of the words that we have.

First, as already said, we should not believe that Christ’s descent was to the place of torment. We should not believe he went there to continue his experience of being consciously punished for our sin or to offer a second chance at salvation to those there.

Second, we should not believe that Christ descended to anywhere other than the place of spiritual paradise where dead believers are today. One interpretation of Christ’s descent suggests that Old Testament believers went to a sort of holding tank, a separate part of hell where believers were kept during the Old Testament period, free from punishment but still deprived of the blessing of knowing God’s direct presence as believers after Christ do according to the glorified state for our souls after death. This has often been called the limbus patrum.

This position is a growing problem as some want to impose a greater distance between the Old Testament and New Testament by differentiating how salvation works before and after Christ came. The idea is that Old Testament believers could not have had the privilege of truly going to heaven in their souls until Christ had paid for their sin in history. That neglects everything that our previous article argued concerning Romans 3:21–26 about how God passed over—forgave—former sins, namely those committed by Old Testament believers.

Paradise is the place where believers have gone both before and after Christ’s resurrection. In Luke 22:43, Christ said to the thief, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” In 2 Corinthians 12:3, Paul writes, “I know that this man was caught up into paradise,” positing that his own spiritual experience (after Christ’s resurrection) was in paradise, the same place Christ was with the believing thief. In Revelation 2:7, Christ encourages us to perseverance, saying, “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” The new creation itself is the place of God’s blessed presence.

Believers have always gone to be directly with the Lord when they die. Christ’s descent into the place of the dead was to be with those believing saints who had already died. As is a fair translation of the Latin words behind our Creed, we might have been better off translating this line as, “He descended to the dead,” or “to the place of the dead.” Since our translation is what it is, we should at least understand this line of the Creed this way. Our denials exclude positions that revise our understanding of Christ’s work on the cross or of how salvation has been the same across redemptive history.

Destination

Given that the eternal Son assumed a true human nature, including a true human soul, at his incarnation, the point of this line in the Creed is to affirm that Christ’s human soul went somewhere when he died. When Christ died on the cross, he remained under the power of death for three days. By remaining so, he proved that his death was real and not some temporary fainting, and he identified with his people in our experience of the curse between death and resurrection. Westminster Larger Catechism 50 helps us see this point, asking, “Wherein consisted Christ’s humiliation after his death?” It answers with an interpretation of the descent clause from the Creed: “Christ’s humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day; which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, He descended into hell” (emphasis added).

When Christ assumed human nature at his incarnation, it included a true human soul. The Son, therefore, remained incarnate even while his body was dead because the person of the Son still had that true human soul that experienced death like we do after our death as we wait for our resurrection. Even though the effects of sin’s curse are relieved from us in regard to our souls at our death, as we go to God’s direct blessed presence, that period between death and resurrection still means some effects of sin’s curse hang upon us because the separation of soul and body on account of bodily death is part of the curse. Christ endured even that aspect of humiliation, although his human soul went to paradise to be reunited with his Father and to be among his people as they wait for resurrection.

In Acts 2:22–36, Peter cited Psalm 16:8–11 to prove how Christ’s resurrection overturns the curse of death. David’s psalm “foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.” The world of the afterlife, Hades—with paradise and Gehenna included—could not keep the righteous Son of God because his work overrode the curse upon us all. He broke the chains of sin and death by dying for our sin and overcoming death in his resurrection. Although his soul joined believers in paradise during his three days in the grave, he paved the way out of the grave for all who trust in him for salvation. He ascended, leading and continuing to lead the host of captives free, for his risen and enthroned exaltation guarantees that we will follow him into the new creation.

All of us face death. The question is: Where do we find comfort and safety for that reality? Hebrews 9:27–28: “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Unless we are here when Christ returns, we will all follow the path he took—namely, our bodies will lie in our graves for a time as our souls go to paradise to be with the Lord. Wonderfully, the risen Christ is there, and as we perceive him in his resurrection glory, we will know and be assured that every facet of sin’s curse will also be reversed, and we will get to follow his path back out of our graves as well. In as much as God never abandoned Christ to Hades, we have the pledge that he will not leave us there either. Our destination is to join Christ in glory, knowing that he endured every aspect of death to make sure that we are freed from it at the last day.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

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Post authored by:

• Harrison Perkins

  

  Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast; MDiv, Westminster Seminary California) is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a member of the of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, associate online instructor in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, a visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and author of Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction.

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