Common among the ancient creeds but nearly nowhere in modern evangelical thought is the teaching of Christ’s “descent into hell.” Two of the three major creeds from before the 4th century teach this, albeit briefly.
In the Apostles’ Creed (from the 2nd Century) we confess:
“I believe in Jesus Christ…
…He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven…”
The Athanasian Creed (from the 3rd Century) states that Jesus,
“…suffered for our salvation;
he descended to hell;
he arose from the dead;
he ascended to heaven…”
If these creeds confess that Christ descended into hell, why do we not hear about it much around modern Christianity? Many of us are a bit uncomfortable with this teaching because of the cartoonish images it may conjure in our minds. Some evangelical Christians go so far as to suggest this part in the creed is a fabrication and nowhere to be found in Scripture, while others ignore it entirely, hoping it will just go away.
Typically, Holy Saturday (the day in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday) is a time to reflect on the descent into hell, but much like a lot of historical traditions, evangelicals are notoriously unschooled in it. My friend, the pastor and scholar A.J. Swoboda, has called today, “Awkward Saturday.” No one is really sure what to do.
However, many of our brothers and sisters in the Anglican, Lutheran, or Methodist Churches have no problem confessing Christ’s decent into hell each Sunday, and all the more on Holy Saturday. It’s probably time we talk about it.
The creeds mentioned above (and a number of others) are extremely important to the Christian faith. They are the first articulations and summaries of the key doctrines found in Scripture. Their confessions are what have guided us through many centuries of heresies and misinformation. We have received and passed along these teachings for thousands of years — one doesn’t get to make up his or her’s Christianity. Thinking about the creeds deeply alongside Scripture helps us continue to interpret the faith we’ve received.
So, what does it mean that Jesus, after his death, “descended to hell?” And where can we find this in Scripture? As best we know, the confession of the descent into hell comes from a couple of key passages of Scripture, that we can look at now, perhaps with fresh eyes.
First passage: Binding the strongman
24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
— Mark 3:24–27
As an evangelical who was trained at a conservative seminary but rolls deep with some pentecostals but also grew up around the Catholic Church, this text was rarely clear to me over the years. My conservative friends explained the “binding of the strong man” as vaguely connected to a sort of Christus Victor theology — that Jesus defeated Satan, sin, and death on the cross — and my pentecostal friends used it in healing prayer language — that we as Christians must continually “bind the strong man” in prayer when asking God for big things. I’ve realized since that both are not necessarily right.
Fleming Rutledge was incredibly instructive with this passage, in her I-cannot-recommend-this-enough masterpiece, The Crucifixion. Rutledge explains hell as “a prison from which escape is impossible unless there is active deliverance from without.” In comparing Mark 3:26–27 with Mark 1:23–27, where Jesus rebukes an unclean spirit out of a man, she concludes, “Mark’s message depends on our understanding that the demon is separate from the man he is tormenting, and that Jesus’ authority over such demons derives from another realm that has never before appeared in full strength in the sphere of the flesh until the incarnation of the Son” (Rutledge, The Crucifixion, pg. 406).
This separation of hell and demons can also be seen through the metaphor of “containment,” used by Joshua Ryan Butler in The Skeletons in God’s Closet. The “separateness” of hell, death, and demons, is important when we understand why Christ’s “decent” into such places is important: we can’t go there and come back. But alas, it appears that Christ, through the power of his resurrection, can. Jesus — not us — is the one who has “bound the strongman” through his death. He went into his house, tied up the enemy, putting him to shame (Colossians 2:15). In this Mark passage I quoted above, Jesus is teaching us that we won’t be able to do anything of significance against evil forces unless he does something — or goes in — first to tie up the big guy.
This brings new meaning to us when we realize some of the ways the New Testament speaks of Christ’s resurrection. Over and over again the writers say that he is raised “from the dead” (Matthew 17:9, 24:64, 28:7, Mark 9:9, Luke 24:46, John 20:9, 21:14, Acts 3:15, 4:10, 10:41, 13:30, and a lot more). To us, that might mean Jesus raised “from his dead body” or “from the physiological state of death,” which is absolutely true, but to these writers it also can be read that Christ was raised “from the realm of the dead” — literally “from the dead,” see? He came from the graves (plural), from Sheol (Old Testament Hebrew language for the holding place of the dead), from where dead people are — and he rose victoriously out of that, promising one day we will as well. As Peter says in his first sermon, “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24, emphasis mine).
The good news of the resurrection is that Jesus went to a place (death/hell/Hades) that no one has ever come back from and returned. His return from “deadness” and eternal darkness — or “hell” — is precisely the good news we need. No one has ever descended into hell and lived to tell about it. Christ has. Hallelujah.
The second passage: preaching across the chasm
18 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, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey,…
— 1 Peter 3:18–20
This next passage seems to be one of the clearer markers that after his death on the cross, Jesus went somewhere: “he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.” While we get no specific reference to hell or the “lower parts” of the earth, we understand “spirits in prison” of those who “did not obey” to be the separate, contained landscape of hell. And so what does this passage mean when it says Christ “proclaimed” to these imprisoned spirits?
This passage is helpful to interpret side by side with the story of the rich man and Lazarus found in Luke 16:19–31. Too long to quote here, you’ll notice when you read this story that while the rich man and Lazarus are certainly in separate, contained environments (as mentioned above)—the rich man in “in Hades” and Lazarus “to Abraham’s side” — there are communication lines between these two realms of the dead. Lazarus speaks to Abraham. This is a strange, but important note because it helps us see that while “Hades” and “Abraham’s side” are separate environments (and that the rich man does not communicate with Lazarus, but Abraham) there still is a chasm to speak across, it seems.
This helps us interpret Christ’s decent “into hell” carefully. Christ, upon his death, did not spend a literal 24 or 36 hours in a space called hell. To insert our current concept of time as the chronological passage in which we’re currently imprisoned would be ridiculous here (or anywhere for that matter…but that’s another essay).
The cosmic, eternal reality Peter is describing is beyond a literal “Saturday,” certainly, and probably beyond our comprehension entirely. And yet, Holy Saturday is the reality occurring beyond time and space that began in Jesus’ crucifixion: Christ has proclaimed and is proclaiming (and, surprisingly, we are too) his good word and gospel to the dead.
In Holy Saturday, we see Jesus dramatically and finally placing himself at “Abraham’s side” (some kind of “paradise” or heaven), shouting across the chasm of eternity to those imprisoned by death and hell the good news: “death is defeated!”
Jesus descended into hell, showing that no power of hell is too strong, no kind of death is too much, no chasm is too wide, and no darkness is too black for the Word of God, the gospel of Christ Jesus. The work and word of Christ is too much for hell to handle.
