“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” Heb. 6:19 NIV
May 2008
From the Pastor’s
Study…
Questions
for the Pastor …
“What
is the meaning of the statement in the Apostles Creed, ‘He
descended into hell’? I’m not sure Christ did that and so I
don’t feel comfortable reciting this as a part of the
confession of my faith.”
I
understand this person’s reluctance, as this phrase has
troubled a number of thoughtful Christians and not a few
prominent theologians! But it is an inescapable dilemma,
isn’t it, because we are all invited so often in services
of worship to confess our faith together with this creed.
Furthermore, we hear people like John Calvin saying, “We
ought not to omit His descent into hell, a matter of no
small moment in bringing about redemption. (For) it
contains the useful and not-to-be-despised mystery of a
most important matter.”
But,
what then does this phrase truly mean?
Calvin believed that this phrase does not refer to Christ’s
bodily death so much, as to how Christ died in His death
for our sake: “Christ was put in place of evildoers as
surety and pledge—submitting Himself even as the accused—to
bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have
sustained. All, with this one exception: ‘He could not be
held by the pangs of death’ (Acts 2:24). No wonder, then,
if he is said to have descended into hell, for he suffered
the death that God in His wrath had inflicted upon the
wicked!” (The Institutes of the Christian Religion)
Over the years, I have come to appreciate deeply the wisdom
of the words of Dr. Clayton Bell, a Presbyterian minister
and brother-in-law to Dr. Billy Graham, who is now with the
Lord. Consider these words of counsel as you seek the
meaning of the phrase in relation to your faith in Christ
and what He accomplished for you and for us all:
The Roman Catholic Church takes the phrase ‘He descended
into hell’ to mean that, after his death, Christ went into
Limbus Patrum, where the Old Testament saints were awaiting
the revelation and application of his redemption. He
preached the gospel to them, and then he brought them out
and led them to heaven. The Lutherans regard the descent
into Hades as the first stage of the exaltation of Christ.
Christ went into the underworld to reveal, to consummate
his victory over Satan and the powers of darkness, and to
pronounce their sentence of condemnation. Some Lutherans
place this triumphal march between the death of Christ and
his resurrection; others after the resurrection. The Church
of England holds that while Christ’s body was in the grave
his soul went into paradise, the abode of the souls of the
righteous, and there he gave them a fuller exposition of
the truth. John Calvin interprets the phrase
metaphorically, as referring to the penal sufferings of
Christ on the cross, where he suffered the pangs of hell
while he was hanging on the cross.
Which interpretation is correct? I am not sure that it
behooves us to be dogmatic on any of them, but one thing I
am sure of: that God has left us with some degree of doubt
on this matter in order to impress upon us that God did
much more for us through the death of Jesus Christ than we
have begun to realize or any one interpretation can grasp.
On
the Journey with You,
Bill
Maxwell