Jesus Christ Descent Into hell and Paradise Philip Schaff Samuel Macauley

A Religious Encyclopedia … edited by Rev. Philip Schaff and Rev. Samuel Macauley Jackson.  Third Edition Revised and Enlarged, Volume II, 1891.

Hell, Christ’s Descent Into (volume 2)
Paradise (volume 3)

Transcribed by Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com. 
Paragraphs, underlining, have been added to facilitate reading.  Greek words omitted.
Some Roman numerals and spelling updated to current usage.

HELL, Christ’s Descent into, one of the clauses in the Apostles’ Creed, was treated as a doctrine of the Church in the East as early as Marcion’[s time, and is found in the formula of the fourth synod of Sirmium (359).  Towards the latter part of the fourth century it formed, according to the testimony of Rufinus (Expos. Auilej., 18), a part of the baptismal confession of the Church under Aquileja.  But, in the great majority of the baptismal formulas until the sixth century, it was wanting.  By the eighth, however, it was universally accepted.  Its insertion, therefore, into the creed, was a matter of gradual development.  The Greek Church regards the descent into hell as a voluntary passage of Christ’s human soul into Hades in order to offer through the preaching of the gospel, redemption to such as were held under the dominion of Satan on account of original sin, and to transfer believers to paradise, especially the saints of the Old Testament (Conf. orth., I. 49).

The Roman Catholic Church holds that the whole divine-human personality of Christ descended to the Lumbus partum, or the place where the saints of Israel were detained, in order to deliver them into the fully enjoyment of blessedness (Cat. Roman. § 100-105).

According to the Lutheran theology, Christ descended with body and soul on the early morning of the resurrection, just before his appearance as the risen one on the earth.  The interval between the crucifixion and that time he had spent in paradise.  He went to the realm of the damned, not to preach the gospel, but to proclaim the legal sentence upon sin. (Form. Conc., I., II.9).

The Reformed theologians taught that Christ spent the three days following the crucifixion in paradise, and regarded the descent into hell as a figurative expression for the unutterable sufferings of his human soul, which he endured in the last moments of his vicarious dying (Calvin, Inst., II. 16, 8-12). 

It was there a part of his humiliation; while, according to the Lutheran view, it was the first stage of his exalted state (status exaltationis), proving his victory over death and the devil.  [The Westminster Catechism (q. 50), however, explains the expression, “He descended into hell,” as simply meaning his death, and continuance in that state for three days.] 

At the side of these views other views have been held concerning the meaning of the clause.  It was only another way of saying that Christ was buried (Beza, Drusius, etc.), or denoted the state of death regarded as an ignominious one for the Prince of life (Piscator, Arminius, Limborch, etc.).  In more recent times it has been explained of Christ’s life on earth amongst the demons who had taken up their temporary abode here (Marheineke, Ackermann), of the universal efficacy of redemption (DeWette, Hase), or the doctrine has been entirely given up as without biblical foundation (Schleiermacher, A. Schweizer).  Long before, Wesley had for the same reason omitted it from the articles of faith of the Methodist Church.

The following may be regarded as the teaching of the New Testament on the subject.  (1) Christ appeared among the departed in hades, while his body was lying in the grave.  This is presupposed by Paul in Romans 10:6-8 (Meyer), and implied in Christ’s own words to the thief on the cross (Luke 23:43).  (2) Christ went as spirit to the realm of the dead (1 Peter 3. 18 sq., cf. Acts 2:27), and (3) there preached the gospel (1 Peter 3:19) (4) to all the dead, and with the more particular purpose of awakening spiritual life (1 Peter 4:6). 

It is true that Christ’s preaching to the contemporaries of Noah has been explained to refer to an activity before he became flesh (Augustine, Beza, A. Schweizer); but the representation of these persons as being spirits in prison as well as other considerations, render this view improbable. If it be true that man spends the interval between death and the final resurrection in the intermediate state, hades, it follows as a necessary consequence from the real humanity of Christ, that he also participated in this lot.  This descent into hades was, therefore, a distinct stage in the final process through which the theanthropic personality of Christ passed to the glorified body.  Christ appeared in hades in his own special character of redeemer, and imparted the saving vital energy of God to those who were lifted into communion with himself by faith: of the results of this activity, we know nothing certainly.

But the analogy of this world leads us to expect that he was there the savor of life unto life to some, and of death unto death to others, as hades consists of two domains,--paradise, or Abraham’s bosom, and the place of torment.  (The second part of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, which belongs probably to the fourth century, is known also by the title Descent of Christ to the Underworld, and contains a most curious and fantastic account of Christ’s experiences in hades.  Hades is represented as resisting the entrance of Christ; but the news of Christ coming produces joyful commotion among the inhabitants of his realm.  These cry out, with David and Isaiah among them, in the language of Psalm 24, to Hades to life up the gates of his kingdom.  The bright light from the advancing Son of man then strangely floods the realm of death.  He calls his saints to him, and followed by them, Adam being in the number, he ascends from the underworld.  Arrived at the gates of paradise, he gives them over to the hand of Michael, who introduces them to its glorious fellowship.

PARADISE, (Neh. 2:8; Eccl. 2:5; Song 4:13; also the Targums and the Talmud; LXX and N. T.) means in Persian, whence the word has been adopted into all other languages in which the Bible has appeared, a wooded garden or park.  But in the Bible it is used in a twofold sense: (1) for the garden of Eden; (2) for the abode of the blessed in Heaven, of which Jesus spoke to the penitent robber (Luke 23;43), to which Paul was caught up (2 Cor. 12:4), in which are those who have overcome (Rev. 2:7). 

Attention is limited in this article to its Jewish and patristic interpretation.  I. It was taken allegorically.  The chief representatives of this view are Philo, Origen (Hom. Ad Gen., Contra Celsum, iv., Principia, iv. 2), and Ambrose (De Paradiso ad Sabinum). 

To Philo, Paradise stood for virtue; its planting toward the eat meant its direction toward the light; the division of the one river into four, the fourfold aspect of virtue as cleverness, thoughtfulness, courage, and righteousness.  This method of allegorical interpretation came over into the Christian Church, and appears in Papias and Irenaeus, Pantaenus, and Clement of Alexandria; and although it at first encountered great opposition from the sober-minded, especially from the Antiochian school, and from such scholars as Epiphanius and Jerome, it was finally so triumphant under the lead of Origen and Ambrose, that the latter counted the majority of the Christian writers of his time as its advocates. 

To Origen, who in the Old Testament, and particularly in the account of the creation and the Paradise, found much that was derogatory of God.  Paradise was a picture of the human soul, in which flourish the seeds of Christian virtues; or a picture of heaven, wherein the “trees” represent the angels, and the “rivers” the outgoings of wisdom and other virtues.  He did not, however, deny a literal Paradise: he only sought in allegorizing the harmonization of the Mosaic and New-Testament conceptions. 

To Ambrose, the Pauline Paradise was the Christian soul.  He also distinguished between the literal and the Pauline Paradise.  Many of the other Fathers trifled in similar fashion with the sacred text. 

II. Paradise was interpreted mystically.  The Mosaic and the New-Testament representations of Paradise were considered identical, and place was found for it in a mysterious region belong both to earth and heaven.  The chief representatives of this interpretation were Theophilus of Antioch, Tertullian (Apologeticus), Ephraem Syrus, Basil (Oratio de Paradiso), Gregory of Nazianzum, Gregory of Nyssa, Cosmas Indicopleustes, and Moses Bar-Cepha (Tractatus de Paradiso).  Those who doubted the identity of the two paradises were few, as Justin Martyr, the Gnostic Bardesanes, and Jerome. 

The Scriptures were not to blame for the identification,--for they clearly set forth the geographical character of the one, and the unearthly character of the other,--but the commentators themselves.  Excuse for the latter is to be found in the laxness of the prevailing exegesis, in its ascetic character, in the ignorance of the times respecting geography, and in the influence of the classical mythology.  In the poems of Ephraem (fourth century), which embody the speculations of Theophilus, Tertullian, and Basil, Paradise was generally conceived to have three divisions.  The first begins at the edge of hell, around which flowed the ocean, and in a mountain which overtops all earthly mountains. 

The one river of Paradise flows from under the throne into the garden, divides itself into four streams, which, when they have reached the border of hell upon the lowest division, sink under hell, and, through underground passages, flow to the ocean and a part of the earth, where they reappear in three different localities, forming in Armenia the Euphrates and the Tigris, in Ethiopia the Nile (Gihon), and in the west of Europe the Danube (Pishon).  Cosmas Indicopleustes (sixth century) represents the divisions as rising in trapezoid form, and understands by “Pishon” the Ganges.  Moses Bar-Cepha (tenth century) puts Paradise this side of the ocean, but behind mountains which remain inaccessible to mortals; giving as his reason for this change of position, that he could not conceive of another earth on the hither side of the ocean.

The synagogue teachers, influenced first by Josephus, and later by the great medieval Jewish exegetes, in their commentaries upon Genesis and in some dictionaries, put Paradise in the very center of the earth, somewhere in the shadowy East, far removed from the approach of mortals.  The four streams were Euphrates, Tigris, Nile, and Danube.  “Cush” was Ethiopia, “Havilah” was India.  Paradise was the intermediate home of the blessed.  Islam gave the name Paradise to four regions of the known earth, famed for their beauty: (1) On the eastern spurs of Hermon; (2) Around Bavan in Persia; (3) Samarkand in the Bucharest; (4) Basra on the Shatt el Arab.  The true Paradise was a future possession, on the other side of death.

Cf. the elaborate article by Wilhelm Pressel, in Herzog, 1^st ed., vol. 20. pp. 332-376.

It is remarkable that the word “paradise” occurs but once in Christ’s discourses, public or private.  The explanation probably is, that it had become associated with sensuous ideas of mere material happiness.  But in speaking to the penitent robber (Luke 23:43) he uses the word, because it was the most intelligible expression for the salvation our Lord promised him.  Paul only uses the word when speaking symbolically (2 Cor. 12:4); so also John in the Revelation (2:7).