The Western Father’s View of the Descent
This idea that everyone received the opportunity to be saved is widespread among the Eastern writers, but in the West, this began to drastically change under the influence of Augustine of Hippo. Augustine agrees that Jesus did descend into hell. He wrote in his Letter to Evodius, “It is established beyond question that the Lord, after He had been put to death in the flesh, ‘descended into hell’... who, except an infidel, will deny that Christ was in hell?”
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| Augustine |
What part of hell, however, is a point of contention. Many theologians, up to and including Augustine, felt that Hell was divided into two parts - Abraham’s bosom, which contained the prophets and saints awaiting deliverance, and another place, referred to as ‘the abyss’ or ‘the depths’ or just ‘hell’, which contained sinners who deserved punishment. This is based on the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, which speaks of an unbreachable gulf between the rich man (in torment) and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. Augustine felt that Jesus did visit the ‘lower part’ of hell and may have freed some of those there, but only those who were predestined to be released. He held to a literal view of Romans 8:29-30, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Augustine believed that Christ’s salvation of those in the depths did not extend to those not predestined, in fact, he refers to the idea as heresy in his “da Haeresibus” to say that the unbelievers believed, confessed and were saved. He does not refer to the salvation of the prophets and saints because he does not believe that “Abraham’s bosom” is a part of hell, and therefore they are in no need of salvation.
Shortly after Augustine, St Gregory the Great upheld some of Augustine’s beliefs, but also expanded them somewhat. He agrees with Augustine that only those predestined were freed. He claimed that Christ did not destroy hell, but only took a bite out of it:
He who left none of his elect in the lower world did indeed draw all things to himself. He took from them all the predestinate. The Lord by his rising did not restore to pardon any unbelievers, or those whose wickedness had caused them to be given over to eternal punishment; he snatched away from the confines of the lower world those whom he recognized as his own as a result of their faith and deeds... Because he slayed death in his elect, he became death for death; but because he took away a portion of the lower world, and left part of it, he did not completely slay it but took a bite from it.
Christ only harrowed hell, he did not destroy it. This firm stand was a first in
the question of who Christ came to rescue - everyone, or just the elect? The “elect” in this case being the Old Testament righteous and prophets, so no one who wasn’t already in Abraham’s Bosom were saved. This idea became widespread in the Roman Church afterwards and commonly accepted.
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| Thomas Aquinas |
These views were slightly modified and expanded upon by Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas also agreed that Christ did descend into hell, but for principally different reasons. First, in order to bear the penalty of sin for us and to release us from that penalty, and, to overthrow the devil and release the captives detained there. Aquinas agrees with Gregory against Augustine pertaining to the holy Fathers and prophets detained and awaiting salvation. He believes that they were only held there because of original sin and therefore the “approach to the life of glory was not opened. And so, when Christ descended into hell He delivered the holy Fathers from thence.”
It is worth noting at this point that Thomas Aquinas had a different view of Hell from Augustine. Again, he has taken what was and expanded upon it. Aquinas held that hell was divided into four parts: Purgatory, where sinners atone for their sins; the abode of the Old Testament righteous (or Abraham’s Bosom); the hell of unbaptized children; and finally, the hell of the damned. Aquinas taught that when Christ descended, he only saved the Old Testament righteous. As for the lost, none were saved:
“Now those detained in the hell of the lost either had no faith in Christ’s passion, as infidels, or if they had faith, they had no conformity with the charity of the suffering Christ: hence they could not be cleansed from their sins. And on this account Christ’s decent into hell brought them no deliverance from the debt of punishment in hell.
Those in the hell of the unbaptized children were likewise not saved:
But the children who had died in original sin were in no way united to Christ’s Passion by faith and love: for not having the use of free will, they could have no faith of their own; nor were they cleanesed from original sin either by their parent’s faith or by any sacrament of faith. Consequently, Christ’s descent into hell did not deliver the children from thence.
As for those in Purgatory, Aquinas states that Christ did not free anyone, claiming that those who were there still had a debt of punishment for their sins to pay off.
Aquinas’ view has become the predominant view in the Western Church. One hundred years after Aquinas, Dante wrote his famous “The Inferno”. In Canto IV, he describes the hell of the unbapitzed and the virtuous pagans (those who lacked Baptism’s grace, but were “sinless”) and Virgil recounts the harrowing of hell:
I was still new to this estate of tearswhen a Mighty One descended here among us,crowned with the sign of His victorious year.He took from us the shade of our first parentof Abel, his first son, of ancient Noah,of Moses, the bringer of law, the obedient.Father Abraham, David the King,Israel with his father and his children,Rachel, the holy vessel of His blessing,and many more He chose for elevationamong the elect. And before these, you must know,
no human soul had ever won salvation.
While a work of fiction and not a theological treatise, “The Inferno” influenced popular culture’s view of hell for hundreds of years, even into today in a way that many who have never read it are not aware.
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| Dante and the Virtuous Pagans |
Tomorrow: East vs West re: 1 Peter 3 (Click here to go there)
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