When most of us hear the word “hell,” we think of the place of the damned, what the Catechism defines as the “state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (CCC 1033). So it might be a bit confusing, if not outright shocking, to find in the Apostles’ Creed the statement that Jesus “descended into hell.” If hell is the definitive state of exclusion from communion with God, how could this apply to Jesus, who is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God?”
To solve this puzzle, we must understand that “hell” doesn’t always mean what we think it means. Our usage of the word in English has shifted over the centuries.
Today we commonly understand it to mean eternal damnation, but when the Apostles’ Creed was first being translated into English, “hell” was being used synonymously with “hades,” the Greek word for the realm of the dead, which was referred to as “Sheol” by the Jews.
Most ancient Near Eastern societies, including Judaism, conceived of creation in three parts: the heavens, the earth and the underworld. The underworld is where the souls of the departed went after death, and it was not necessarily a place of punishment. Job 21:13, for example, speaks of souls going to Sheol in peace. This is quite different from the “Gehenna” Jesus describes as a place of everlasting torment. Nevertheless, Sheol was considered a realm where the departed were further removed from God than we are here on earth. The Psalmist asks, “For in death there is no remembrance of you. Who praises you in Sheol?” (Ps 6:6)
When we profess in our creed that Jesus descended into hell, what we are saying is that He went to the realm of the dead. In fact, some modern English translations of the Apostles’ Creed simply say, “He descended to the dead.” This creedal statement is an important affirmation that Jesus truly died on the cross.
He did not swoon. He did not faint. He was not “only mostly dead,” to borrow a phrase from “The Princess Bride.” His soul departed from His body and went to the place human souls go when they die. Without this affirmation of Jesus’ death, our profession of His resurrection would be meaningless. Easter only comes after Good Friday. That’s why we call it “good.”
But this raises another question: What did Jesus do among the dead? The Catechism instructs us that “the gospel was preached even to the dead” (CCC 634). It goes on to say that Jesus’ “descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfillment. This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance” (CCC 634). By His descent into hell, the redemptive work of Christ was extended not only forward in time to us, but backward in time to benefit all of the righteous souls who had gone before Him in the hope of a Savior.
This would have included even our first parents to whom the promise of a messiah was first made (see Gen 3:15). There is a beautiful passage from an anonymous second-century homily describing this that is read during the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday. “Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, He has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve … the Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won Him the victory. At the sight of Him Adam, the first man He had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ answered him:
‘And with your spirit.’ He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the death, and Christ will give you light.’” The God who made Adam became a son of Adam to undo Adam’s curse. What a glorious moment of reunion that must have been!
Jesus descended into hell – into the realm of the dead – not as a prisoner but as a liberator. This is referred to as “the Harrowing of Hell,” often depicted in art with
Jesus as a victorious conqueror bursting through the doors of death to lift up those who had been confined there. Sometimes He is shown pulling their souls out of Satan’s gaping maw. This is the limbo of the Fathers, a realm that has been closed to us who now have access to something much better, as well as the potential for something much worse.
Jesus descended from heaven to the earth, and even further from earth to the underworld, in order that He might be Lord “of those in heaven and on the earth and under the earth” (Phil 2:10), rescuing all of us from the threat of eternal death and giving hope – even to the dead – of eternal life.
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.