“He Descended into Hell”
Written by J. Fowler White |
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
In God’s reckoning, when He laid our iniquities on His incarnate Son, He effectively relocated hell onto Christ Himself such that from Gethsemane to the grave His humiliation for sinners reached its nadir in both soul and body.
It’s an understatement to say that the last phrase of Article 4 of the Apostles’ Creed—He descended into hell—has generated a lot of controversy. Because its appearance in the Creed came later than its other articles and because its meaning is open to question, some advocate for removing it from the Creed’s publication or, at the very least, for excluding it from the Creed’s public recitation. Those opinions deserve our attention, but they are not conclusive. For our purposes here we’ll take our point of departure from J. A. MacCulloch’s work, The Harrowing of Hell (1930). He provides a fair and reasonable basis for the article’s acceptance for the church’s continued consideration and recitation as follows: “Although the confessional use of the Descent doctrine was only sporadic and occasional before the eighth century, on the other hand the doctrine itself was mentioned repeatedly by the Fathers and in the religious literature of the early centuries.” So it remains appropriate for us to look more closely at the interpretation of the Creed’s words He descended into hell.
Even with repeated mention of the Descent, there remains no consensus on its interpretation. Early on, the received text of the Creed’s Descent clause was typically taken as a simple declaration that Christ, having humbled Himself to be crucified, dead, and buried, had also been consigned to the common ignominious place of the dead, namely, the grave (as distinguished from the place of suffering-beyond-the-grave, namely, hell). As time moved on, however, various other views of the Descent arose. Some believed that after His death Christ’s disembodied soul went to hell in order to complete what was lacking in His suffering on the cross. Others affirmed that His soul went to the place of waiting for disembodied souls (aka limbus patrum) in order to facilitate the transport of the souls of pre-Christ saints to heaven. Still others believed that Christ’s soul went to hell in order to achieve and announce His victory over it.
Strikingly, despite their variety, common to these views is the belief that between His death and His resurrection Christ’s disembodied soul relocated to a place other than and in addition to the heavenly paradise of God to which He referred on the cross (Luke 23:43, 46; cf. Matt 27:50). Furthermore, as we look into the attempts to justify this belief, we realize that basically they involve imposing dubious interpretations of Eph 4:8-10 and 1 Pet 3:18-20 onto the supposed chronology and theology of events related to Christ’s soul between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Suffice it to say here that neither Eph 4:8-10 nor 1 Pet 3:18-20 refers to a relocation of Christ’s soul to hell. To the contrary, the Ephesians text affirms His descent from heaven to earth for His incarnation, while the First Peter passage contemplates His ascension (not His descent), in which was proclaimed His victories over sin, death, and all the fallen angelic host. In short, Scripture provides no witness to the relocation of Christ’s soul after His death to any place other than the paradise of God in heaven. In fact, the Creed itself seems to point the way to a better understanding of its Descent clause. That clue appears when we notice the likeness between the second article and the words dealing with Christ’s suffering. Even as the second article presents distinguishable perspectives on Christ’s person in the two phrases His only Son and our Lord, so the words about His suffering present distinguishable perspectives in the two phrases was crucified, dead, and buried and He descended into hell. We can elaborate briefly by looking first to Scripture and then to the Westminster and Heidelberg catechisms.
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The Decay of the World and the Love of God
God freely makes use of the evil actions of men to bring about the best of his plans and accomplish the best of his purposes—purposes like the preservation of his people through famine and the salvation of his people through Christ’s crucifixion. Even the greatest evil is God’s servant to accomplish great good.
Do you ever find yourself wondering just how much the Lord loves us? Do you ever find yourself wondering just how good his purposes can be and just how glorious his plans? Do you ever find yourself wondering if God really cares?
I found myself pondering these matters the other day after a friend sent me an article about the precipitous rise of euthanasia in Canada. What politicians insisted would be nothing more than a means to hasten death for those who are terminally ill has actually become a means to prey upon the vulnerable.
While many request euthanasia to avoid pain in their final days, some are now using it simply because they are downcast or impoverished. Veterans who seek help for emotional turmoil are being offered the option of suicide. Those who can’t afford to live are being allowed to die. As the article says, “Since Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016, there has been a strange balancing act at the heart of its medical system. There is a national suicide prevention hotline you can call 24/7, where sympathetic operators will try to talk you out of killing yourself. But today there are also euthanasia hotlines, where operators will give you the resources you need to carry out your wish. Doctors and nurse practitioners are now in the business of saving the lives of some patients while providing death to others.” And all this is taking place before the rules grow even more permissive in the months ahead.
This is just one of many moral abominations that has taken root in the modern Western imagination—a context in which aborting babies is understood to be as inalienable a right as voting, in which even questioning the goodness of assisting children in transitioning from one gender to another (as if such a thing were even possible) is considered contemptible, in which the basic family structure that holds society together is being disparaged and undermined. “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
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The Light of the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ
Paul does not back away from the truth, and we should not either, that the Gospel is indeed veiled to those who reject it. Those who want a gospel on their own terms reject out of hand the genuine gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, 2 but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 in whose case the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus. 6 For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:1-6 (LSB)
Carefully read the passage I placed at the top of this post (2 Corinthians 4:1-6). What is the Apostle Paul saying here? The Gospel that he preached, the other Apostles preached, which was passed on to them from Christ himself….
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Children Who Bloom in an Instant
Nature teaches us many lessons and the lesson of the blooming is one of them. God created some plants to open their flowers in an instant and others only over a much longer stretch of time. Both reflect his design. We cannot slow the plant that opens in an instant or rush the plant that opens in a month. But what we can do is enjoy the difference and celebrate the beauty. And so, too, with our children.
Those who explore the vast boreal forests of Canada are rarely far from a bunchberry dogwood, a plant so common that some have suggested it ought to be Canada’s national plant. The cornus canadensis is a little shrub that often carpets the floors of the great fir and spruce forests. A perennial, its shoots rise in the spring and soon each produce a whorl of six leaves. Come the early days of summer, a number of tiny flowers surrounded by four white bracts top each shoot. It is not the size of the plants or even their beauty that catches the eye as much as their sheer volume and their way of bringing cheer to an otherwise drab forest floor.
What few know about the bunchberry dogwood is that it holds a world record, for its blooms open faster than any other plant in the world. In fact, it moves at a speed few organisms can match. When its flowers begin to form, so too do the stamen, and they grow cocked under the petals like tiny medieval trebuchets. When the bud is fully formed and the time is right, the pressure of the stamen pushing against the petals opens the flower with a burst of energy and a spray of pollen. This takes place in less than one half of one millisecond, too fast for the eye to see, too fast even for a camera to record unless it can shoot thousands of frames per second. From the maturing of the bud to the full opening of the flower is far less than the blink of an eye. It’s a miracle of nature.
A great question deep in the hearts of many Christian parents is why some children bloom quickly when they profess faith while others take much longer. Why is it that some seem to burst into life while others seem to drag? One child comes to Christ and backs her conversion with immediate habits of devotion—she reads the Scripture and meditates upon it, she prays regularly and fervently, she reads good books and delights to discuss what she has learned. This comes quickly, easily, and joyfully. Then another child comes to Christ, truly and genuinely, yet has far less interest in reading the Bible, less interest in prayer, little interest at all in reading good books and engaging in spiritual conversation.
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