Forbes on Article III: Of the going down of Christ into Hell

THE minds of men both before and at the time of the Reformation turned much upon this mysterious sub ject a. ” There have been in my diocese/’ says Bishop Alley, of Exeter, ” great invectives between the preach ers, one against another, and also partakers with them ; some holding that the going down of Christ His soul to hell was nothing else but the virtue and strength of Christ His own death, to be made manifest and known to them that were dead before. Others say that dcsccn- dit in in/era is nothing else but that Christ did suffer upon the cross the infernal pains of hell… . Finally, others preach that the Article is not contained in other symbols, neither in the symbol of Cyprian or rather Rufinus. The contrary side bring for them the uni versal consent of all the Fathers of both Churches, both of the Greeks and of the Latins V

a It was one of the subjects of the trial of Bishop Reginald Pecock in the fifteenth century.

b Alley, cit. Hardwick, Articles, 137. Perkins expounded the descent into hell of our Lord’s mental sufferings in the place of the damned. (Hardwick, 171.)

Moreover from a very early period, in an uncritical

, the influence of the false gospel of Nicodemus had been profoundly felt in the Church. In that there was a most graphic description of the descent of our Lord into the lower parts of the earth, given with •circumstances particular enough to excite the imagina tion and to impress the soul : —

” Cap. xxi. And while Satan and Hades thus com muned together, there came a great voice, like thunder, saying, ’ Lift up your gates, ye princes ! and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in ! ’ And Hades, hearing it, said to Satan, ’ Go forth now, if thou art able, and make stand against Him/ And Satan went forth. Then Hades saith to his demons, ’ Make fast the gates of brass and the bolts of iron, and secure me the locks, and watch, all of you, standing on tiptoe, for if this man enter, woe be tides us/

” And hearing these things, the forefathers began to upbraid him, saying, ‘All-devouring and insatiate! open, that the King of Glory may come in ! ’ And David, the prophet, saith, ‘Kiiowest thou not, blind one ! that, while still in life, I prophesied these self same words, ” Lift up your gates, ye princes ? ” And Isaiah said, ’ I too foresaw this, and wrote by the Spirit, “The dead shall stand up, and those who are in the tombs shall be awakened.” And, ” Where is thy sting, O death ? Where, O grave ! thy victory ?” ’

” Then came again the voice, saying, ’.Lift up your gates, ye princes ! and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in !’

” And Hades, hearing the voice the second time, answered, as one forsooth unwilling, ’ Who is this King of Glory?’ And the angels of the Lord answered, ‘The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle/

” And straightway, with that word, the brazen gates were broken, and the bolts of iron torn asunder, and the bound in death were loosed from their chains, and we with them. And the King of Glory entered, in form even as a man, and all the dark places of Hades were lighted up.

” Cap. xxii. And Straightway Hades cried out, ’ We are conquered. Woe unto us ! But who art Thou, that hast such power and privilege ? And what art Thou that comest hither without sin, small in seeming but excellent in power, the humble and the great, slave at once and master, soldier and king, wielding power over the dead and the living ; nailed to the cross, and yet the destroyer of our, power ? Truly Thou art the Jesus, of whom the Archsatrap Satan spake to us, that by Thy cross and death Thou shouldest purchase the universe !’ Then the King of Glory, holding Satan by the head, delivered him to the angels, and said, ’ Bind his hands and feet, and neck and mouth, with irons/ And, giving him over to Hades, He said, ’ Receive, and keep him surely until My Second Advent.’… .

” Cap. xxiv. Then the King of Glory stretched out His right hand, and took the forefather, Adam, and raised him up, and turning to the rest also, He said, 1 Come with Me, all of you, as many as have died by the wood which this man eat of ; for lo ! I upraise ye

all by the wood of the cross ! ’ After these things He brought them all forth. And the forefather, Adam, filled with exceeding joy, said, ’ I render Thee thanks, O Lord, that Thou hast brought me tip from the depths of Hades.’ Thus, too, said all the prophets and saints : ’ We thank Thee, 0 Christ, Saviour of the world, that Thou hast redeemed our life from corruption/ And while they were saying these things, the Saviour blessed Adam in the forehead with the sign of the cross, and did the like to the patriarchs and the pro phets, and the martyrs and forefathers, and taking them with Him, He rose up out of Hades. And as He journeyed, the holy fathers, accompanying Him, sang, ’ Praised be He Who hath come in the name of the Lord. Hallelujah c.’ ”

When scenes like this passed for the very fact, as we find it all assumed as such even so late as the time of the great preacher, Luiz of Grenada, it is not to be wondered that it should occupy men’s thoughts. ” The harrowing of hell,” as it was technically called in Eng lish, became a favourite subject of the religious art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as may be seen in the works of Taddeo Gaddi and Simone Memmi, in the chapter-house of Santa Maria Novella at Florence. But this was not all. Calvin pushed his theory of the satisfaction of Christ to such a pass, that he maintained that our Lord not only descended into hell, but actually suffered the tortures of the damned.

Although this truth is not expressed either in the

c Lord Lindsay’s ” Christian Art,” vol. i. p. Ivii.

Nicene or Constantinopolitan Creeds, we find it in many of the most ancient, such as the Roman and Apostles’ Creeds, and before all in the Creed of Aquileia, as Rufinus testifies: — ” Rufinus mentions that it was not found in the contemporary creed of the Church of Rome. It occurs in the Athanasian (A.D. 430), but we do not meet it again till we find it in the Creed of Venantius Fortunatus (A.D. 570). Thenceforward it is of very frequent occurrence. It is found in an Arian Creed, which appeared in three forms in the years 359 and 360, and is known as the third Sirmian Creed. It was adopted at Nice in Thrace [not Nicsea], and next year in a council held at Constantinople. King sup poses that the Article relating to our Lord’s descent into hell was introduced into it by the Arians, the more effectually to blind the eyes of the orthodox, that by proposing a doctrine which by implication overthrew a doctrine which many of their sect held, viz. that Christ was without a human soul, the Aoyos supplying the place of soul, they might get the whole creed to pass without suspicion. These are the only creeds in which the clause is found previously to Rufinus’s time. But the fact of our Lord’s descent seems to have been ordi narily delivered, in connection with the other great facts of the Gospel history, in the elementary instruc tion communicated to the new converts. In the sum mary of faith which Eusebius says he translated from the Syriac, and which he states to have been rehearsed by Thadda3us to Agbarus of Edessa, we have the follow ing: ‘He was crucified and went down into hell, and

broke down the partition which had never been broken.’ Whatever opinion may be formed as to the authenticity of the narrative, at any rate the summary of faith in which these words occur is a witness to the elementary teaching of very early times d.” It is founded on two remarkable passages in Scripture, the 16th Psalm, as expounded by St. Peter in Acts ii., ” Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell, neither shalt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption ;” and secondly, 1 Pet. iii. 18, 19, where our Lord is said to have come in the Spirit, and to have preached to the souls in prison ; to which may be added the 81st Psalm, as a prophecy of this mystery, Christ alone being He who is free among the dead.

The chief questions which have been raised on this matter are, Did our Lord descend into hell ? For what end in the order of redemption did He so descend ? Whom did He rescue therefrom? Besides, there is the great question whether, on the dissolution of the vital union in Christ, the hypostatic union was still main tamed ?

Now that our Lord descended, was taught from the very beginning of Christianity b}’ the holy Fathers. Justin Martyr e applies to this truth that text of Jere miah which is not found in our version, but is quoted also by S. Irenseus : ” The Lord God remembered His dead from Israel that slept in the earth of the sepulchre, and He came down to them to preach His salvation.”

[…]

Justin accused the Jews of suppressing this passage. Irenaeus says, ” He went down to see with His eyes id quod erat inoperatum conditionis f ; ” also to announce His coming, and extending the remission of punishment to those that believed in Him g ; and that for three days He passed the time where the dead were, and de scended to them to bring them out and save them h.

Clemens Alexandrinus asserts “that our Lord de scended for no other reason than to preach the Gros- pel V and his disciple Origen says, ” the soul of Christ disembodied conversed with disembodied spirits k;” “that for the salvation of the world He went down and brought back Adam V Eusebius, commenting on the 16th Psalm : ” He was present for the sake of the souls who were retained in hell; who for many ages had expected His coming. He descended to break the brazen gates, and burst the iron bonds, that He might set those free who had been hitherto bound beneath m.” St. Athanasius uses the docrine as an argument against Apollinaris, who denied that our Lord had assumed a human soul. St. Cyril of Jerusalem elucidates the doc trine in the practical teaching of his Catechism n, and St. Epiphanius in his refutation of the heresies of the Herodians and Arians. To this truth also, in magnifi cent diction, St. Chrysostom, in the beginning of his homilies on St. Matthew, alludes, where he says : ” Thou

I Strom, vi. 6, p. 762, ed. Potter. k Cont. Cel. ii. § 43, p. 419. 1 Horn. xv. Gen. ’» Eus. Dem. Ev. x. 8, p. 501, ed. Col. 1688

II Cyr. M. C., iv. 11.

OF THE GOING DOWN OF CHRIST INTO HELL. 57

shalt likewise see the tyrant here bound, and the mul titude of the captives following, and the citadel from which that unholy demon overran all things in time past. Thou wilt see the hiding-places and the dens of the robber, for even there also was our King present0.” The Latin fathers are equally unanimous in their testi mony, and no one goes into the question more thoroughly than St. Augustine, who, in his 99th Epistle, treats of the interpretation of the obscure passage of St. Peter. St. Jerome p also developes the doctrine. He makes St. John Baptist, in sending his disciples to our Lord, reason, — ” I know that Thou art He who hath come to take away the sins of the world, but because I am going to descend into hell, I also ask, whether Thou also art to descend thither ; or is it impious to think this of the Son of God, and so wilt Thou send another ? I de sire to know whether, as I have announced Thee on earth, I am also to announce Thee beneath.” So, in his “Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesiansq,” he says, ” The Son of God therefore descended into the lower parts of the earth, and ascended up also ; not only that He might fulfil the law and the prophets, but also obtain other occult dispensations, known only to the Father and Himself. For we cannot know how the Blood of Christ profiteth the angels, and those that were in hell, and yet we cannot be ignorant that It did profit them. He descended therefore into hell, and ascended into heaven, that he might fill those who were in those regions, according as they could receive.”

S. Fu] gen tius r : “It remained therefore for the full effect of our redemption, that thither sinless man assumed by God might descend, whither sinful man separated from God deservedly had fallen; that is, into hell, where the soul of the wicked was used to be tormented ; and to the tomb, where the flesh of the wicked was used to be corrupted ; yet in such wise that neither the flesh of Christ was corrupted in the tomb, nor the soul of Christ tortured by the pains of hell ; because that Soul free from sin was not liable to punishment, and corruption dared not touch the sin less flesh.”

He meets the question of the dissolution of the vital union s : “In the sepulchre the same God made man lay; and the same God made man rose from hell on the third day ; but in the sepulchre the same God lay only according to the flesh, and descended into hell solely according to the soul.”

His disciple Ferrandus * developes this thought : “Whole (tot us) Christ is everywhere, in that He is the Word ; but the whole which He is (totum) is not everywhere : for the rational soul and flesh are not everywhere; with which He is one. He was in hell according to His rational soul, but not the whole of Him, for His flesh was not there, which went to constitute the whole. Whole Christ was in the grave according to the flesh ; but not the whole of Him,

r Ad Trasimundum, lib. iii. 30, init. Bill. Patr. ix. 65. s Lib. de Fid. ad Petr., cap. iii., B. Pair. ix. 74 B. l Ad Severum Seaolast.

B. Patr. ix. 512 E.

OF THE GOING DOWN OF CHRIST INTO HELL. 59

because the rational soul, which goes to constitute the whole, was not there. But the Word of God was both with the soul in hell, and with the body in the grave, because naturally it is everywhere dif fused, and was never wanting either to His soul or His flesh.”

Some of the Fathers, from the expression ” nether most hell,” in the Psalms, imagine that there are two mansions, one in which the souls of the saints were detained, and one in which the wicked are tormented. Whether our Lord went to both is a question on which the consent is not perfect. St. Gregory, in his Morals, would have that our Lord went to the first only ; St. Augustine u and, as we have seen already, his disciple Fulgentius, to the second.

As regards the question what souls our Lord freed, the author of the treatise DC Paschatc, attributed to St. Ambrose, asserts that all sinners were freed by Christ ; and to this St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his Paschal Ser mon (xlii.), alludes, where he says: “If He descended into hell, descend with Him. Learn the mysteries of Christ that are enacted even there ; what is the secret of that double descent, what was its reason ? Did He save all without exception by His advent, or those only who believed in Him ?” The large-hearted Alexandrian school, with its intense love of heathen learning, and with its theory of the providential development of the Greek philosophy, rather inclined to the opinion that our Lord freed all ; but the common belief of the

u De Gen. ad lit. xii.

Church has been that our Lord, descending into hell, imparted salvation to those only who, while they lived, by faith and righteousness had rendered themselves worthy of that favour. This would seem to be the interpretation of the extremely obscure passage in the Epistle of St. Peter, viz. that our Lord in the Spirit, descending into hell, mercifully bestowed His grace upon the dead, and called to the knowledge and vene ration of Himself, not all, but those who from the beginning of the world had died in the grace and friendship of God, not only under the law, but from the most ancient times, even before the Flood. There fore he specially dwells on their case, that he might exhibit the fact that the beneficent power of the Re deemer told backward, and that he might have a fitting opportunity of making mention of baptism, which the Flood prefigured x.

The descent into hell, viewed as the triumph over Satan, assumes an important place in that scheme of redemption which is found in many of the fathers be tween St. Irenseus and St. Anselm. The atonement, according to this view, consists in our Lord’s Life being paid as a ransom to Satan, who had, by man’s sin, acquired rights over man. The devil, by being unable to retain the Soul of Christ in hell, lost his empire also over those whom he had hitherto detained y.

x Vide Petavius, de Incarnatione ad locum. ? Irenseus, v. 1 j

Origcn, Horn, in MatUi., xiii. 581 ; see Oxenham on the Atonement, pp. 47—52.

Notes

• Iren. iv. 39. * Ibid. iv. 48. h Ibid. v. 31.
• Horn. ii. 18, Oxf. Tr. P Ep. cli. ad Algasiam. * iv. 10.