The Upper Register

The meaning of "hell" in English

It is interesting that in contemporary English, “hell” seems to be used, in theological discourse, to refer to the place of eternal punishment for the lost after the resurrection, i.e., “Gehenna” (Matt 5:22, 29; 10:28; Mk 9:43; etc.) or “the lake of fire” (Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 14-15; 21:8).

But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first and oldest meaning was “the abode of the dead; the place of departed spirits; the infernal regions or ‘lower world’ regarded as the place of existence after death; the grave; Hades.” (“Hell,” OED [2nd ed., 1991], vol. 7, p. 117.) 

The OED says it is the name for the Norse god of the underworld. The word then entered Anglo-Saxon probably due to Viking influence. The earliest usages of “hell” cited by the OED are from Anglo-Saxon biblical texts:  the Vespasian Psalter (c. 825) and Aelfric’s translation of Genesis (c. 1000). John Wyclif (1382) used “hell” in his English translation of the Vulgate in the same places where the underlying Hebrew has “sheol,” e.g., Gen 42:38.

Accordingly, when theologians writing in English commented on the statement in the Apostles' Creed that Jesus descended into “hell,” they understood this (correctly) to mean that after his death and prior to his resurrection his soul descended into the abode of the dead, not the place of final punishment for the lost after the resurrection.

Here are three examples cited by the OED:

Sir Thomas More, The supplication of souls (1529):  “Descendit ad inferna:  that is to say he descended down beneath into the low places. Instead of which low places the English tongue hath ever used this word hell” (I have modernised the spelling).

Jeremy Taylor, The great exemplar of sanctity and holy life (1649):  “Our Lord descended into hell … that is into the state of separation and common receptacle of spirits.”

Isaac Watts, The improvement of the mind, II.v.2 (1748):  “I will explain the word hell to signify the state of the dead, or the separate state of souls … and … that the soul of Christ existed three days in the state of separation from his body, or was in the invisible world.”

For more on the descent clause in the Creed, see my paper He Descended Into Hell.

"He Descended Into Hell" paper posted

I have taken my four posts on the "he descended into hell" (descendit ad inferna) clause in the Apostles' Creed and combined them into a paper. I have also added new material, mostly in the footnotes. I'm especially eager to point to the Appendix where I document the translation trajectory from Hebrew ("Sheol") to Greek ("Hades") to Latin ("Infernus") to English ("Hell") in the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament. 

He Descended Into Hell, Part 4

What practical comfort can we draw from the truth that Christ “descended into Hades”?

It is comforting to know that Jesus has gone ahead of us as our forerunner and forged the path of eternal life from the dead. He experienced death as we will experience it, and has gone through it to the other side of resurrection life for us. Jesus shared the fate of all who have died. He was once among the dead, once among those departed souls in Hades. Jesus is really human like us. Although he is the eternal, divine Son of God, this in no way detracts from his full humanity. He is the Son of God who became man, one of us, who shared our fallen human lot in every way, including the troubling, mysterious, and angst-inducing experience of death. As the author of Hebrews says, he had to be made like his brothers in every way, and he is not ashamed to call us brothers. In that capacity as our brother, by the grace of God he “tasted death” for us all (Heb 2:9).

Tertullian made this point about the true humanity of Christ. He wrote in his treatise on the soul: “Although Christ is God, yet, being also man … he fully complied [with the law of human nature], by remaining in Hades in the form and condition of a dead man; nor did he ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the lower parts of the earth” (ANF 3.231).

Being God incarnate you might think he would be spared from tasting death in this way. You might think, once has accomplished atoning for all our sins on the cross, as soon as he expired, his human soul would go to some special place reserved at the right hand of God in heaven. But no, it was not yet time for his exaltation. Being the incarnate Son of God did not spare him one last act of humiliation. He had yet to go one step lower. The bottom of the cosmic parabola has not yet been reached. He must descend into Hades. He must go down, down to the very depths, to the farthest point symbolically from the heights of heaven. And he went there, not to suffer more for our sins, but in order to free all his own from the cords of death.

Not only did he share in our fallen humanity to the point of going down into the dead, but in that very humanity he conquered death for us. Over and over again the New Testament says, not that Jesus rose again from death in the abstract, but that he rose again “out from among the dead” (ἐκ νεκρῶν). Jesus is “the firstborn from among the dead” (Col 1:18; Rev 1:5). On the third day, he rose up victorious from among the midst of them as the firstborn from the dead, as the strong Savior, King, and Lord of Hades.  We can take heart in the face of our own death, knowing that Jesus has conquered death and released us from its power.

In the first chapter of Revelation, the Apostle John says he “was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” In a trance he saw a vision of “one like a son of man” wearing a long robe. His face was like the sun shining in full strength. When John saw him, he fell at his feet as though dead. But the Lord laid his right hand on him to comfort him and said, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades’” (vv 17-18).

Therefore, we need not be afraid of death. When the time comes for us to cross over into that mysterious realm where the souls of the dead are, we know that we will not go there alone, nor will we face it with doom and gloom.  Jesus has been there before us, and he will see us through.

He Descended Into Hell, Part 3

Now that we have figured out what “he descended into hell” really means, we have to ask another important question:  What did Jesus do in Hades? If we assume that the souls in Hades have some awareness of the other souls around them (as Isaiah 14:9 implies), then it is tempting to speculate. When the human soul of Jesus, still in union with the second person of the Trinity, entered the realm of the dead, it seems likely that some communication took place.

In the history of the church, there have been three main speculations. The first one is clearly wrong, the second one is wrong but can be rescued and reformulated in a more orthodox way, and the third one is orthodox but the Bible only provides hints about it.

The First Speculation:  A Second Chance for Repentance

The first speculation, the clearly wrong one, is that Jesus preached the gospel and gave those who had died before the coming of Christ a second chance to repent. But this speculation is clearly wrong. We know that there is no second chance for repentance after death. The Bible clearly teaches that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb 9:27). Jesus himself taught the same thing. Remember what father Abraham said to the rich man in Hades, “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed” (Luke 16:26). Once you’ve died, you can’t change your lot. So that rules out the first speculation that Jesus preached to the souls of those who had died before his coming to give them an opportunity to be saved.

The Second Speculation:  Release of Old Testament Saints from Limbo

The second speculation has been very influential in church history. This is the popular Roman Catholic view, although it has never been formally promulgated as doctrine. The popular Roman Catholic belief throughout the middle ages was that after his death Jesus descended into a place called Limbo, which is inside of Hades, to lead the Old Testament saints out of this shadowy prison and bring them into Paradise.

The problem with this view is that there is no such thing as Limbo. We know that when the Old Testament believers died, they experienced joy in God’s presence. For example, in Psalm 73, Asaph said to the Lord, “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:25). The Old Testament believers were not stuck in Limbo. Calvin called the Catholic belief that Jesus freed the Old Testament believers from Limbo, nothing but a childish fable (Institutes 2.16.9). 

But we shouldn’t give up on this speculation too quickly. I believe it can be rescued and reformulated in a more orthodox way. Although the Old Testament saints sometimes did express their confidence that God would ransom them from Sheol, at other times the thought of going down to Sheol was not such a happy feeling with warm fuzzies. There was a lingering sense of apprehension because the Messiah had not yet come. In the Psalms of lament, the psalmist will cry out to God not to let him die. He will ask rhetorical questions like, Do the dead praise you? Is your faithfulness known in the land of forgetfulness? (Check Psalm 88 for an example.) Objectively, the Old Testament saints experienced blessedness in the presence of God at death, but subjectively they were apprehensive about death. So when Jesus descended into Hades, his presence among the Old Testament saints must have been a glorious moment. I like to think of it as Jesus walking into a dark room and turning on the lights.

In support of this reformulation, J. I. Packer (Affirming the Apostles’ Creed [Crossway, 2008]), appeals to two verses in Hebrews which speak of the spirits of the Old Testament believers being “made perfect” by Christ. You remember Hebrews chapter 11, the great hall of faith which mentions a long list of Old Testament believers – Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, and so on. At the very end we read, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (Heb 11:39-40). The second verse is the reference in the following chapter to “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Heb 12:23). The implication seems to be that the Old Testament believers were “made perfect,” not at the time of their death, but only later after Christ had accomplished the atonement in history.

This is the core truth that the Roman Catholic concept of Limbo was getting at in its clumsy way. Even Calvin, who disdained anything that smacked of man-made myth, acknowledged this core truth. He said that Christ shined light upon the Old Testament believers. The light of his presence enabled them to see clearly the salvation which, before, they had only had a foretaste of (Institutes 2.16.9).

The Third Speculation:  Proclamation of Victory over Satan

This brings us to the third speculation. This one is the most biblical of the three, but we only have hints here and there in the Bible. It seems likely that when Jesus descended into Hades after his death, he proclaimed his victory over Satan and his host. Luther and his followers held a version of this view. One possible hint of this triumphant proclamation in Hades is a passage in Peter’s First Epistle, where Peter tells us that Jesus went and preached to the spirits in prison (1 Pet 3:19). This passage is full of exegetical puzzles that I don’t have the time to get into. But one possible interpretation would support this third speculation.

So the first speculation, that he gave the dead a second chance to repent, can be dismissed out of hand. The second and third speculations can’t be dismissed so quickly, and there are scattered verses here and there in the Bible that provide some hints that when the soul of Jesus entered Hades, something earth-shattering (or Hades-shattering!) happened there.

At the end of the day, I think it’s wise to exercise caution. We can’t be dogmatic. But this much we can say. When Jesus descended into Hades, it was the first sign that something historic had happened, the fabric of the universe was fundamentally altered, because he had accomplished the atonement and brought in the everlasting righteousness. This revelation of the accomplishment of redemption was like a thunder bolt that flashed across Hades. To the lost souls and the demons, it was a terrifying signal that Christ was now Lord of the underworld and that the day of judgment was coming. But to the Old Testament believers, it was a glorious revelation that Hades was now transformed into Paradise for them and that one day they would be raised again in resurrection bodies to dwell in the renewed creation.

He Descended Into Hell, Part 2

So if we’re not going to tamper with the Creed by editing out the descent clause, or by reinterpreting it metaphorically, how should we understand it?

Now right at the outset I need to clear up some confusion about the word “hell.”  When we hear the word “hell,” we usually think of the place of final judgment. We think of the Lake of Fire where the lost are sent to be punished eternally for their sins. So when the Creed says that Jesus descended into hell, we might think he entered the place where the wicked are punished in unquenchable fire. But this is not at all what the Creed is talking about.

What’s going on here? The problem is a linguistic one. It has to do with the way important theological words got translated from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, and from Latin to English. It’s a long story, but the short version is this:  the English word “hell” can be used to refer to two very different things.  Nowadays, it refers to the place of final judgment, after the resurrection. But originally, “hell” meant the realm of the dead, the interim place where souls go after death before the resurrection.

English has one word for two different concepts, resulting in much confusion. But the Bible itself uses different words. When the Bible talks about the place of final judgment after the resurrection, the word most commonly used is Gehenna. That’s the word Jesus used when he warned about the fires of Hell. In the Book of Revelation, the place of final judgment after the resurrection is called the Lake of Fire.

But when the Bible talks about the place of provisional judgment before the resurrection, Gehenna is not the word used. In the Old Testament, the interim realm of departed souls was called “Sheol.” For example, when Jacob’s sons brought Joseph’s coat of many colors to him, torn and with blood on it, Jacob thought that Joseph was dead. He refused to be comforted and said, “I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning” (Gen 37:35). The word Sheol is used 65 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. In 61 of those 65 occurrences, the Septuagint translators used the Greek word “Hades” to render the Hebrew word “Sheol.” The word Hades already had connotations from Greek mythology. Hades was both the name of the god who ruled in the underworld and the name of the underworld itself. When referring to the underworld itself, Hades could be a name for the gloomy dungeon of torment for bad people. Or, it could also be used in a neutral sense for the realm of the dead, whether good or bad. Because it was so similar to the biblical view of the afterlife, the Septuagint translators borrowed this word Hades to render the Hebrew word Sheol. Thus, Sheol and Hades are the same thing. It refers to the neutral place where all departed souls go, whether good and bad, whether saved or lost. The key point is that Sheol/Hades is a neutral concept, and is totally distinct from the negative concept of Hell or Gehenna.

And just as in the Greek pagan view, the biblical view is that Hades is subdivided into two sections, one for the saved and one for the lost. This is the view presupposed by Jesus in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16. Although they both went to Hades when they died, these two men had very different experiences there. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s Bosom. The rich man also died and he also went to Hades, but he was in torment in a place that was separated from Abraham’s Bosom by an uncrossable chasm.

(For more on the historical development of a “two-section” Hades in post-OT Judaism, see the excellent article by Joachim Jeremias on ᾅδης in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.)

It should also be pointed out that “Sheol” in Hebrew becomes “Hades” in Greek, and “Hades” in Greek becomes “Infernum” in Latin, which is the word used in the Apostles’ Creed (descendit ad inferna). In the Vulgate, most occurrences of “Sheol” in the OT or “Hades” in the NT are rendered “Infernum,” i.e., the underworld.

So when we recite the Creed and say that Christ “descended into hell,” we aren’t saying that he descended into Gehenna or the Lake of Fire. Instead, we’re affirming that he descended to the underworld, the realm of the dead, called “Sheol” in Hebrew and “Hades” in Greek. The Bible teaches that between the death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection on the third day, his body was laid in the tomb and his human soul went to Hades, the place where all souls go after death prior to the day of judgment.

This is clear from Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, where Peter quotes Psalm 16 and applies it to Jesus. In its original setting, Psalm 16 is a psalm of confidence in which David expresses his certainty that God will not abandon his soul in Hades. But here’s the interesting part. Peter says that David wasn’t really talking about himself. Peter reasons that David died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. So he couldn’t have been talking about himself. Rather, since David was a prophet, and since he knew that God had promised him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, David actually foresaw the future and spoke about the resurrection of Christ. When David said, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades,” he was speaking the words that Jesus himself would one day take up on his lips. So this is a crucial proof text for the statement in the Creed that Jesus descended into Hades.

Now just to be clear, Jesus did not go to that portion of Hades that is the lot of the wicked, the place of provisional punishment. Rather he went to that portion of Hades that is the lot of the righteous, the place of joy in the presence of God. This good part of Hades is also called “Paradise” or “Abraham’s Bosom.” That’s why Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

My third post will address the question, "What did Jesus do in Hades?"

He Descended Into Hell, Part 1

When we recite the Apostles’ Creed in church, we have no problem with the affirmation that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” But when we come to the next phrase, “He descended into hell,” we scratch our heads and wonder what is meant. The affirmation that Christ descended into hell is one of the most celebrated and controversial sentences in the Apostles’ Creed.

Some Protestants have objected to this clause. There was one Protestant pastor named Walter Deloenus in the 16th century who pastored a congregation in London. He didn’t think the descent clause was biblical and so he just deleted it. However, this created a bit of dust-up, and after he was rebuked by his fellow pastors he acknowledged his error.

Even today there are well known Evangelical scholars like Wayne Grudem who want to strike this clause. In 1991, Grudem published an article titled, “He Did Not Descend Into Hell: A Plea for Following Scripture Instead of the Apostles’ Creed” (JETS March 1991). He pointed out that the descent clause seems to have been added later, first showing up in the Creed of the Council of Sirmium in AD 359. The descent clause was not universally included in the Creed until around AD 650. But Grudem’s main argument is that it’s just not biblical. Nowhere does the Bible teach that Jesus descended into hell.

Calvin was equally concerned with this phrase and felt the weight of these objections against it. However, he didn’t want to tamper with an ancient Creed, so he interpreted it metaphorically (Institutes 2.16.8-12). He said that the descent of Jesus into hell means that Jesus endured the torments of hell in his soul prior to his death. Calvin’s interpretation is theologically acceptable. It’s true that Jesus “endured most grievous torments … in his soul” (WCF VIII.4), in addition to the painful sufferings of his body. Calvin’s metaphorical interpretation has had a tremendous influence in the continental Reformed tradition. It is the view enshrined in the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 16: 

Question 44: Why is there added, “he descended into hell”? Answer: That in my greatest temptations, I may be assured, and wholly comfort myself in this, that my Lord Jesus Christ, by his inexpressible anguish, pains, terrors, and hellish agonies, in which he was plunged during all his sufferings, but especially on the cross, has delivered me from the anguish and torments of hell.

This metaphorical interpretation is defended by many Reformed pastors to this day, e.g., Daniel Hyde, In Defense of the Descent (Reformation Heritage Books, 2010).

But I just can’t see that this is what was intended by “he descended into hell.” If the descent clause is a metaphorical way of describing Christ’s atoning sufferings on the cross, then it’s in the wrong place. It should be after “was crucified” and before “died and was buried.” On the cross Jesus said, “It is finished,” so we know that the atoning sufferings of Christ were completed before he died. He did not go into hell after his death to suffer further punishment in our place.