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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Written by Reuben M. Bredenhof |
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Christ our King has already defeated the kingdom of darkness. He did it when he hung on the cross, when he died, and he came back to life three days later. Now Christ is in heaven, reigning over all things. Jesus still has many enemies, like we do. But in your struggle, take heart. Your victory in Christ is secure!

Why did David have so many enemies? When we read his psalms, it seems like he’s always fending off another attack from his adversaries, trying to escape yet another conspiracy. Do you ever wonder what made him so hated?
He was Israel’s king, which meant he was involved in regular warfare against the nation’s political enemies. The Philistines and the Amorites had good reason to hate David, seeing as he was Israel’s highly successful wartime leader. Hard to like someone who has wiped out your battalions, time after time!
But there was more to it. For David was on the side of God. And those who hate God will also hate those who stand with him.
This is why we have enemies too. We’ve all learned from our Catechism that a Christian has three sworn adversaries: the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh (Q&A 127). Far more than we realize or admit, we are in constant warfare against the spiritual forces of evil.
And for this confrontation we need so much divine help and steadfast protection.
That’s what David understood too, for he prays in Psalm 143 that God would judge all his enemies. They had been hounding him again, and David feels almost crushed. 
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Perhaps today you are experiencing a difficult season and you feel like the Lord is asleep instead of coming to your aid. Let Psalm 44 encourage you. Look with eyes of faith to the Lord and affirm, “You are my King, O God” (v. 4). Take comfort in the truth that He ordains your suffering (v. 19). And cry out to Him, “Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love” (v. 26). 

It had been a hot summer in the south, but the heat didn’t match that of my own heart. I felt like I was trying to walk through a desert with no water, or slug through mud without getting anywhere. Years of battling chronic pain had worn me down. A ministry plan that didn’t materialize the way I had hoped had eroded my confidence to continue writing, teaching and speaking. I was raising four children, ranging from ten years to six months, and I was homeschooling the older two. I felt very much in need of help. Thankfully, by God’s grace, I cried out to the Lord and I studied Scripture. Through the study of the psalms, like Psalm 44, the Lord came to my aid.
You also know what it is to like to be in need of help, don’t you? Whether it’s a strained relationship, financial difficulty, unemployment, illness or injury, a hard season of ministry, parenting challenges, or marital strife, all of us have cried for aid at times. Perhaps even today you are crying for someone to assist you. Be encouraged, dear believer. Our great King will come to our help in the midst of difficulty.
Delight in the Past
Psalm 44 begins, “O God…our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days…for you delighted in them” (vv. 1, 3). The psalmist’s confidence in the Lord is rooted in the delight He showed Israel in the past. He chose them as the apple of His eye and entered into a relationship with them. The Lord chose Israel to be His treasured possession because He loved them and had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He delivered them from Egypt and gave them the land of Canaan. They won victories by His strength, not their own. Such magnificent stories of redemption were passed from generation to generation in order to encourage the people’s faith.
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