The Descent of Christ into Hell

Extract

In the Apostles’ Creed the Christian professes to believe ‘in Jesus Christ who was crucified, dead and buried, descended to hell, on the third day rose from the dead... ‘; the Catholics are told by the Fourth Lateran Council that Jesus Christ ‘descended into hell, rose from the dead and ascended to heaven’; the Anglicans are taught (Thirty-Nine Articles, art. 3) that ‘it is to be believed that Christ went down into hell’; and the Lutherans accept (art. 9 of the Formulae Concordiae) that ‘the entire Christ, God and man, after his burial descended to hell, overcame the devil, destroyed the power of hell, and deprived the devil of his prestige’.

For once there is a doctrinal unity among the Christian confessions. But what is the Descent to me, a Christian of the twentieth century?

Shall I drag you before the Inquisition, threatening eternal damnation if you refuse to submit to the collective teaching of the Christian Churches?

But why should anyone want to force us into believing that Christ did indeed descend into hell when neither hell nor descent seem to have a real place in our lives?

Besides, it will not prove difficult to get acquitted of such charges of unbelief. It is easy to relegate abstract and fanciful religious information to the colourful mythological flourishing which Christianity appears to have picked up on its journey through religious traditions from all over the world. Is there not also that grave warning from St Paul against man’s tendency to leave his proper abode, concerning himself proudly with the affairs of the divine, or bending too eagerly over the hideous and dark places at the unapproachable centre of existence?