Did Jesus descend to Hell between His Death & Resurrection?

Why Christ Descended into Sheol on Holy Saturday & Led an Easter Procession to Paradise

Did you know that the first Easter sermon was actually preached in Hell?! And did you know that this proclamation was given by none other than Christ Himself? Because Jesus experienced a true death, his soul actually separated from his body and descended into the realm of the dead (also called Sheol, Hades, Infernus, Hell) like all other human souls in the Old Testament. St. Peter documents Christ’s descent to ‘prison’ in order to preach to these souls in Hades:

“He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18-20). St. Peter clarifies that these spirits were those people who had died during the time of Noah’s flood. He goes on: “For this is the 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).

Many contemporary Protestants are confused by this teaching. Didn’t Jesus tell the thief on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43)? He didn’t say, “Today, you will be with me in Hell!” And were not all of the Old Testament saints already in Heaven? To answer these questions, let us turn to more of Jesus’ words. Recall that Christ told Mary Magdalene near the empty tomb that he had not yet ascended to Heaven:

“Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).

Clearly Jesus did not ascend to the Father in Heaven right after his death. But why must we conclude he went to Hell? Perhaps he was roaming the earth. In response, I would simply say that we know from Scripture that Jesus did not make any appearances before the Resurrection to his followers, but only after. Had he made any appearances, it would have ruined the ‘Easter egg’ of the empty tomb. An early appearance would have also ruined the ‘sign of Jonah’ which Jesus describes as the Son of Man being in heart of the earth for 3 days (See Matthew 12:40). Lastly, if Jesus had appeared to people in his soul apart from his body before the resurrection, it would risk distorting the Easter message of the actual and literal bodily resurrection!

So where did Jesus go? He went to Sheol or Hades where all people went at death, because he was also a human. Like any good doctrine, Christ’s descent into Hell is well grounded in 1) Sacred Scripture, 2) the unanimous consent of the Church Fathers, and 3) the universal teaching of the ancient churches to the present day (Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, and the Assyrian Church of the East). Many of the Protestant reformers even had this view. This was not some hidden doctrine, but one handed on by the Apostles to the ancient, undivided church!

THE RIGHTEOUS & UNRIGHTEOUS IN SHEOL

When the fathers speak of Christ descending into Hell, they did not exclusively mean the ‘hell of the damned,’ which is the place of people who firmly and bitterly rejected God in this life. Instead, they meant the broader understanding of Hell as a realm for all of the dead which included the Old Testament saints. ‘Hell’ is an English and German word that Bible translators used to replace the word ‘Sheol’ in Hebrew and ‘Hades’ in Greek. Sheol referred to the realm of the dead in the netherworld where both the righteous and unrighteous went after they died. A great example of this comes from a story involving King Saul, the Prophet Samuel, and the Witch of Endor. In the story, the Prophet Samuel explicitly states that he went to Sheol after he died and that King Saul would be shortly joining him there for disobeying God (for numerous reasons that also included illicitly employing a necromancer to conjure up the dead). The story goes like this:

“The woman said to Saul, ‘I see a divine being coming up out of the ground.’ He said to her, “What is his appearance?” She said, “An old man is coming up; he is wrapped in a robe.” So Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance (paid him homage). Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up? Saul answered, ‘I am in great distress, for the Philistines are warring against me, and God has turned away from me and answers me no more, either by prophets or by dreams; so I have summoned you to tell me what I should do.’ Samuel said, ‘Why then do you ask me, since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy?… Tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me.” (1 Samuel 28:13-15, 19)

Samuel was clearly a righteous man while King Saul and his sons were clearly unrighteous. Samuel died in God’s peace while Saul died by suicide in sin and shame. However, both ended up in Sheol! There are several passages from the Old Testament that speak of both the goldy and unglodly ending up in Sheol, the place of silence. However, as we shall see, they had different experiences.

REFRESHMENT & TORMENT IN SHEOL

Through Old and New Testament studies, we learn that Sheol/Hades had at least two different experiences or abodes (1 Enoch, which is viewed as canonical by both Ethiopian Jews and Ethiopian Christians, describes three primary abodes but that will have to be a post for another day!) The unrighteous who rejected God were in a place of internal torment. No longer having bodies, they can no longer satisfy their sinful desires, which brings them great frustration. They are ‘thirsty’ even though they do not actually need water to survive since they are bodiless.

Although in Sheol with the righteous, the wicked are near Tartaros where fallen angels are imprisoned until judgement day. In Greek mythology, Tartaros was a lower region in Hades or below Hades where the Titans were imprisoned. The Apostle Peter borrows this imagery to describe this deepest, darkest places of Sheol where the fallen angels are chained. 2 Peter 2:4 is the only place in the New Testament that mentions the word ‘Tartaros’ to describe an aspect of Sheol/Hades/Hell:

“For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell (Tartaros) and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment” (2 Peter 2:4).

The righteous, however, were not chained up in a deep, dark pit. Instead, those who died in God’s friendship were in a place of rest and refreshment within Sheol called ‘Abraham’s Bosom.’ They were in the company of their Father Abraham along with all of the Old Testament saints. The Western Catholic tradition refers to this place as the ‘Limbo of the Fathers.’ Limbo (limbus) refers to the edge or outer regions. In this case, they are in the outer regions of Hell where no pain, suffering, or torment can touch them. They are at peace. Most importantly, they still experienced the Presence of God to some degree as the Psalmist remind us:

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there”

(Psalm 139:7–8).

To give further evidence to this ‘afterlife landscape,’ Jesus employs it to shape one of his most important parables:

“The poor man (Lazarus) died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us’” (Luke 16:22-26).

If Jesus was telling us what he actually thinks about the after life in this parable (and I think the evidence points in this direction), then we can deduce that there was a grand canyon separating the righteous from the unrighteous in Sheol. The wicked Rich Man could not simply walk over to where poor Lazarus was. Without some kind of miraculous intervention, he was stuck and could no longer satisfy his desires. (As a side note, we have evidence beginning in the first century that that at least some Jews and Christians believed people could be transferred from the place of darkness and thirst to a place of light and refreshment. This is this historical basis for praying for the dead that still occurs among Jews and Catholic/Orthodox Christians).

The Jews believed that everyone went to Sheol (perhaps on the 3rd day after their death), and once there, no one could ever leave. Eventually, the Prophets such as Daniel spoke of a future time when the righteous would be resurrected and reign with God like the stars in the heavens:

“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever” (Daniel 12:1-3).

The Pharisees during Jesus’ day embraced this belief, but the Sadducees did not. The Pharisees taught that one day the saints would be raised up out of Sheol, experience the resurrection of their bodies, and walk on a renewed earth again. Jesus and the early Christians sided with the Pharisees over the Sadducees in their belief about the afterlife. St. Paul goes into great depth discussing the resurrection of the dead in 1 Corinthians 15.

What is interesting about the early Christians is that they claimed that ‘Part 1’ of this belief had already occurred with Christ’s resurrection! The Old Testament saints had been liberated from Sheol by Christ and ascended to a spiritual Paradise within Heaven where they are now reigning with Him and interceding for us as a great cloud of witnesses (See Hebrews 12:1). However, they are still waiting for ‘Part 2’ when they will experience the resurrection of their bodies and walk again on a renewed earth when Christ makes all things new (see Revelation 21-22).

JESUS GOES TO SHEOL

The Apostles Creed emphatically states that Christ “descended into Hell.’ Again, this is an article of Christian belief in the ancient church that no one rejected. It also completes Jesus’ own self-emptying that we read about in Philippians 2. He descended to earth to be one of us. He then descended to a lower place to be the servant of us all. He then descended to the cross where he experienced a criminal’s death. Lastly, he hits rock bottom when he descends to the realm of the dead. However, Death could not hold Him nor could it hold those who belonged to Him!

While in Hades, Christ continued his salvific work by announcing his victory over demonic powers and by stripping death of its power. St. John Chrysostom’s Easter sermon from the 4th century beautifully states this teaching:

“Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it. He destroyed Hades when He descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh… Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive. Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see. O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory? Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated! Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down! Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is Risen, and life is liberated! Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!”

JESUS TAKES THEM TO PARADISE

After the King invaded the Kingdom of Darkness, Jesus led an Easter procession or victory parade out of the grave. Adam and Eve, who had been barred from Paradise, now return from exile back to Eden. Moses, who could not see God’s Face, now enjoys the Face of God in Jesus forever in the Promised Land that he could only see from afar. King David, who was betrayed by his royal sons, marvels at the incorruptible Kingdom made by the Son of David.

This is really the imagery of found in Ephesians 4:9-10 which states:

“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.”

This is also in the ancient Divine Liturgy of St. Basil:

“Descending through the Cross into hell that he might fill all things with himself, he loosed the pangs of death. He arose on the third day, having made for all flesh a path to the resurrection from the dead, since it was not possible for the Author of Life to be conquered by corruption.”

Dante also describes the episode in the underworld when the King of glory kicks down the bronze gates of Hades and enters with an earth quake. He continues:

“I saw hither come a Mighty One, with sign of victory incoronate. Hence he drew forth the shade of the First Parent, and that of his Abel, and of Noah, of Moses the lawgiver, and the obedient Abraham, patriarch, and David, king,… and others many, and he made them blessed” (Divine Comedy, Inferno 4, 52-63).

(As a side note the book of 1 Enoch, a Jewish Apocalyptic work written about 100 years before Christ, depicts Paradise as hidden above us on the highest Mountain among 7 mountains with the Tree of Life upon it. It is the place where heaven meets earth. (Just before this, he describes Sheol as a place with 3 caves. In one cave, the righteous enjoy a bright spring as Abraham’s bosom whereas the 2 other caves contain the wicked from bad to worst).

Following the imagery of 1 Enoch, the Book of Revelation describes Paradise or the New Jerusalem as now hidden above us and prepared as a bride ready to wed with earth again. There the saints now enjoy the first fruits of the coming New Creation which will be consummated with Christ’s second coming. However, the story is incomplete. They have not received their bodies back nor a restored world that has been promised to them by their Father in Heaven.

JESUS WILL BRING A COSMIC PARADISE

In the last few chapters of the Bible, we see proclamation of Easter, the promises of the covenants made to Israel, and the whole story of salvation fulfilled in the return of Christ to our world. Paradise descends upon the whole earth and experiences resurrection. The leaves from the Tree of Life heal the nations and many tribes, cultures, and languages enter into the Kingdom of God!

The Easter message is filled with great paschal joy, but let us never forget that it is also serious and sober. Sheol will give up the rest of the dead. Christ will be seen by all, and the transfigured light coming from His Face will either be embraced or rejected. For the righteous, this light will be as a River of Life but for the unrighteous, it will be as a River of Fire. Those who gave their allegiance to the Beast (Satan) will run away in terror as they are not ‘fit for the light,’ and they will be swept away into everlasting self-destruction. For those who are not prepared for the resurrection of all things and who reject the Author of Life, the end will be sorrowful. They will die hardened in their own sin. But for those who prepare for this Second Easter and readily embrace the Alpha & Omega, the Beginning and the End, will experience an eternal spring!

Come Lord Jesus, Come.