East vs West
The idea that Christ came to hell only to save the Old Testament righteous become firmly entrenched in the West, yet still in the East is the hope that all were at least offered, if not accepting of Christ’s salvation. These differences can be traced to two things: Augustine’s shaky view of predestination, supported by Gregory and Aquinas (and bolstered by Calvin later) and a very different reading of 1 Peter 3.
As already discussed, Augustine and others after him felt that only those predestined were saved by Christ. Because of this, Christ did not come to hell to offer them salvation. Yet, in 1 Peter 3:19, it is stated that Christ “went and proclaimed (or preached) unto the spirits in prison”. The words “proclaimed” or “preached” become words that makes a big difference as to whether salvation was for all or only the elect. Augustine rejects the traditional view that Christ preached to those in hell, and takes an allegorical view. He theorizes that Christ came down, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit before his birth either to rebuke unbelievers or justify believers. The “spirits” mentioned by Peter are those he came and preached to before the Flood, still in prison because they rejected him then. Augustine quotes Damascene in saying that Christ did not come to “convert unbelievers unto belief, but to put them to shame for their unbelief, since preaching cannot be understood otherwise than as the open manifesting of His Godhead, which was laid bare before them in the lower regions by His descending in power into hell”.
In other words, his very presence was preaching (or proclamation) made manifest, proclaiming victory over death, yet not offering any salvation from it. Through time, the gap between the literal reading of Christ preaching for salvation to proclaiming victory to those imprisoned there widens so much that the descent itself it called into question. During the reformation, the descent itself was made metaphorical by some theologians. John Calvin insists that “the “descent into hell” refers to his spiritual suffering beyond those of bodily death.
Karl Bath took a similar stance, interpreting hell as being total exclusion from God and God’s judgement on the sin that Christ took upon himself. This widening of the gap continues even today with just recently retired Pope Benedict XVI. His response about the descent from a radio program broadcast Good Friday 2011:
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| Pope Benedict XVI |
First of all, this descent of Jesus' soul should not be imagined as a geographical or a spatial trip, from one continent to another. It is the soul's journey... In this sense it goes into the depths, into the lost places, to where all who do not arrive at their life's goal go, thus transcending the continents of the past. This word about the Lord's descent into Hell mainly means that Jesus reaches even the past, that the effectiveness of the Redemption does not begin in the year 0 or 30, but also goes to the past, embraces the past, all men and women of all time. The Church Fathers say, with a very beautiful image, that Jesus takes Adam and Eve, that is, humanity, by the hand and guides them forward, guides them on high. He thus creates access to God because humanity, on its own cannot arrive at God's level. He himself, being man, can take humanity by the hand and open the access. To what? To the reality we call Heaven.
While a somewhat poetic and moving description of Christ’s work on the cross and the results, it is also a very imaginative account considering it’s very straightforward origin.
In speaking of 1 Peter 3:18-22, MacCulloch states in “The Harrowing of Hell” that “No other interpretation than that of the work of the discarnate Spirit of Christ in Hades seems natural and self-evident here. Indeed all other interpretations merely evade this evident meaning. It is also rendered more probable when we consider that the verses, with their explanatory or limiting phrases, seem to follow the outlines of some well-known doctrinal formula.”
Namely, the Apostles’ Creed:
The Apostles Creed | 1 Peter 3:18-21 |
Was crucified, dead, and buried: | 18 For Christ also died once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, |
He descended into hell; | 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. |
The third day he rose again from the dead; | 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, |
He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty (BCP, 53-54) | 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. |
It is interesting that the death, resurrection and ascension are given such literal weight while “he went and proclaimed” can be dismissed so casually in modern times. Francis Chan, in his book “Erasing Hell” says that v. 19 “almost certainly doesn’t mean that Jesus was preaching the gospel to unbelievers who had died” but to the ‘sprits’ who were probably evil angels who had sexual relations with women in the days before Noah and were imprisoned for it.
Even if this verse isn’t completely clear, Peter reinforces it less than 10 verses later, “For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.” (1 Peter 4:6)
What did Jesus preach? Bishop Kenneth Myers suggests that he preached “the same thing he preached everywhere: the announcement of the arrival of the Kingdom of God and the declaration of reconciliation through his sacrifice." If this is an assumption, it is justified by everything else that we know of our Lord. Christ sent out his apostles into all the world to make disciples; would this same opportunity not be extended to those who were unlucky enough to die before that happened? If it is so, then it follows that some would accept this message and be freed. If we limit Christ’s deliverance only to those Old Testament righteous, and those people were in hell only because of Original Sin or a general sinful human nature, then Christ’s deliverance of them was more of a duty than miracle. However, if Christ took the stain of sin and death upon himself, defeating it, then those who had fallen under it’s sickness could be made whole again, if they so chose. This has been the Eastern Church’s view of the descent from the beginning. According to Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, “the teaching that Christ granted to all the possibility of salvation and opened for all the doors of paradise should be considered general church doctrine.” This does not lead to Universalism, however, as there is the recognition that not all will respond to the offer of salvation in the next life just as all will not respond to it in this life. They are not saved against their will. Hell continues to exist for those people.
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