Introduction

Holy Cross Lutheran Church offers individuals the chance to ask questions about the Church, faith, theology, and the Bible by putting their queries into a Question Box. A question and answer appears in each month’s newsletter. This is the October 2010 installment.

Question

When we confess our faith using the Apostles’ Creed, I’m not sure what we mean by saying that Jesus Christ “descended into hell.” What does this part of the Creed mean?

Answer

It helps to begin by remembering that the three Creeds—Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian—serve the Church and individual Christians by offering summaries of the Christian faith. The Creeds work together with the Canon—the Church’s collection of writings in the Old and News Testament. The Creeds summarize God’s history with his people, recorded in the Bible. The Creeds also help us to understand and interpret the biblical history of God with his people.

In AD 390, an early, formal statement of the faith appeared in a letter from the Council of Milan to Pope Siricius. By the beginning of the eighth century, such statements had evolved into the Apostles’ Creed. This Creed gained nearly universal acceptance across the Church. From its beginnings, the Church has tied this Creed closely to the celebration of Holy Baptism, just as we do today.

The passage, “He descended into hell,” comes from the second article, or part, of Apostles’ Creed—the one that proclaims our faith in Jesus Christ. We say this Creed in English, but it was first written in Latin. The phrase in Latin goes like this: descendit ad inferna. Translations of the Creed have rendered this in a variety of ways: He descended into hell; He descended to the dead.

Both translations help us to confess that Jesus Christ truly died and then faced and overcame the power of death. This points us to the words of St. Paul, who wrote,

When it says, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things (Ephesians 4:9–10, NRSV)

In the time of Jesus and Paul, terms for hell included Sheol (Hebrew) and Hades (Greek). They pointed to the dwelling place of people who had died and were not in the presence of God. Not all who resided there would be separated from God forever. The just ones who had died were waiting for a redeemer. We can see this belief at work in the parable of the rich man, Abraham, and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31, the Gospel for the last Sunday in September.

In the Apostles’ Creed, when we confess that Jesus Christ “descended into hell,” we confess that he truly died, and in the time between his death and resurrection, redeemed the just ones who had died before him. This points us to the words of St. Peter:

For this reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does (1 Peter 4:6, NRSV).

Because Jesus Christ is both true man and true God, he shared fully in the experience of knowing separation from God the Father, but at the same time, he alone had the power, through the Holy Spirit he shares with his Father,

…to destroy death, to break the bonds of the evil one, to crush hell underfoot… (Eucharistic Prayer IV, Lutheran Book of Worship, Ministers Desk Edition, p. 226).