Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Quote by St. Seraphim of Sarov
"Acquire the Spirit of Peace, and a thousand will be saved around you."
--- St. Seraphim of Sarov
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Heresy then and now...
Adoptionism
From OrthodoxWiki
Adoptionism is a form of the heresy of Monarchianism that appeared in varying forms in the second and third centuries and then again in the eighth and twelfth centuries in the West. The Christological view held was that Jesus was born human and became divine later during his baptism and thus was adopted as the son of God. This form of the heresy differs from Modalism, the other form of Monarchianism, in which the “Father” and the “Son” are two aspects of the same subject. The adoptionism heresy revived again in the West during the eighth century by the bishops of Toledo and Urgell. It again appeared during the twelfth century in France as Neo-Adoptionism.
Apollinarianism
From OrthodoxWiki
Apollinarianism is a fourth-century Christological heresy. Named after Apollinarius of Laodoecia, its main author, Apollinarianism teaches that Jesus Christ had a human body and a human soul but no human rational mind (nous), because the Divine Logos had taken its place. Apollinarianism was condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council together with Macedonianism and other Christological and Trinitarian heresies. Adherents of Nestorianism sometimes accused Orthodox and monophysite theologians of Apollinarianism.
Arianism
From OrthodoxWiki
Arianism was a 4th century heresy named after Arius (c.250-336), a presbyter in Alexandria, Egypt, who taught that the Son of God was not co-eternal and consubstantial with His Father, but rather a created being with a definite origin in time. In Arius's words, "there was [a time] when he (the Son) was not." This led to the calling of the First Ecumenical Council, which condemned it and its author and established the Orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity as taught by Arius's chief opponent, St. Athanasius the Great. Though it managed to hang on among some of the Goths and other Germanic tribes in the West, Arianism had vanished by the seventh century.
Arianism should be clearly distinguished from "Aryanism", which formed the core of Nazi racial ideology during the twentieth century, and which had nothing whatsoever to do with Arius or his teachings.
Nestorian view: Christ existed as two persons
Nestorianism is a Christological heresy which originated in the Church in the 5th century out of an attempt to rationally explain and understand the incarnation of the divine Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity as the man Jesus Christ. Nestorianism teaches that the human and divine essences of Christ are separate and that there are two persons, the man Jesus Christ and the divine Logos, which dwelt in the man. Thus, Nestorians reject such terminology as "God suffered" or "God was crucified", because they believe that the man Jesus Christ suffered. Likewise, they reject the term Theotokos (Giver of birth to God) for the Virgin Mary, using instead the term Christotokos (giver of birth to Christ) or Anthropotokos (giver of birth to a man).
Arianism should be clearly distinguished from "Aryanism", which formed the core of Nazi racial ideology during the twentieth century, and which had nothing whatsoever to do with Arius or his teachings.
Bogomilism
From OrthodoxWiki
Bogomilism (Bulgarian: Богомилство) was a heretical Gnostic dualistic sect, the synthesis of Armenian Paulicianism and the Bulgarian Slavonic Church reform movement, which emerged in Bulgaria between 927 and 970 and spread into Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, Serbia, Bosnia, Italy, and France.
Bogomils, adherents of Bogomilism, were followers of an Orthodox Cleric, likely a priest, from Bulgaria by the name of Bogomil (Gr. Theophylus) active around 950 A.D. Their doctrine most resembles Armenian Paulicianism and earlier Gnostic sects in its insistence upon Dualism. In its Christian form Gnosticism tended to insist upon an "appearance" of flesh for Christ since "true flesh" would be a hindrance to his work of Salvation rather than an aid. The earliest record of Bogomilian theology comes from a work entitled, Against the Newly-Appeared Heresy of the Bogomils written in Staro-Slav by St. Kozma in the 10th century. A 12th century work by the author Euthymius Zigabenus claimed that the Bogomils believed man's soul to have been created by God, but that all matter was invented by Satan, the elder son of God. As a consequence of their belief that the grace of God could not adhere to flesh / matter the Bogomils believed that Christ had only the appearance of a human body. They also reject the Eucharist and other sacraments, as well as relics... on the basis of their ties to physical nature. They also practiced a very austere asceticism, vegetarianism, and celibacy like the Cathari and Albigensians due to their hatred of their own fleshly bodies.
Bogomils, adherents of Bogomilism, were followers of an Orthodox Cleric, likely a priest, from Bulgaria by the name of Bogomil (Gr. Theophylus) active around 950 A.D. Their doctrine most resembles Armenian Paulicianism and earlier Gnostic sects in its insistence upon Dualism. In its Christian form Gnosticism tended to insist upon an "appearance" of flesh for Christ since "true flesh" would be a hindrance to his work of Salvation rather than an aid. The earliest record of Bogomilian theology comes from a work entitled, Against the Newly-Appeared Heresy of the Bogomils written in Staro-Slav by St. Kozma in the 10th century. A 12th century work by the author Euthymius Zigabenus claimed that the Bogomils believed man's soul to have been created by God, but that all matter was invented by Satan, the elder son of God. As a consequence of their belief that the grace of God could not adhere to flesh / matter the Bogomils believed that Christ had only the appearance of a human body. They also reject the Eucharist and other sacraments, as well as relics... on the basis of their ties to physical nature. They also practiced a very austere asceticism, vegetarianism, and celibacy like the Cathari and Albigensians due to their hatred of their own fleshly bodies.
Caesaropapism
From OrthodoxWiki
Caesaropapism is the idea of combining the power of secular government with, or making it superior to, the spiritual authority of the Christian Church; especially concerning the connection of the Christian Church with government. In its extreme form, it is a political theory in which the head of state, notably the Emperor ("Caesar," by extension an "equal" King), is also the supreme head of the church ("papa," pope or analogous religious leader). In this form, it inverts theocracy in which institutions of the Church are in control of the State.
Docetism
From OrthodoxWiki
Docetism (or Illusionism) is a Christological heresy, the teaching that Jesus Christ only appeared to be man but was not in actuality. The word is derived from the Greek dokeo, meaning "to seem" or "to appear". According to Docetae (Illusionists), the eternal Son of God did not really become human, have a physical body, or suffer on the cross; he only appeared to do so, i.e., his body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion.
Docetism existed during the New Testament period and even afterwards, being addressed by both the New Testament epistles and by those of St. Ignatius of Antioch.
Docetism existed during the New Testament period and even afterwards, being addressed by both the New Testament epistles and by those of St. Ignatius of Antioch.
Donatism
From OrthodoxWiki
Donatism was a controversy that arose within the Orthodox Church during the early fourth century. The controversy resulted in a schism that later was condemned as a heresy. The controversy was largely an issue with actions of an ascetic, extremist sect in the western Church, confined mostly to the Roman province of Africa. The controversy centered on a single issue arising out of the persecutions of the early fourth century. That was how should those who lapsed during the persecutions be accepted back into the Church, especially lapsed clergy. Doctrine was not involved.
Macedonianism
From OrthodoxWiki
Macedonianism is an Anti-Trinitarian heresy taught by a group of people known as the Pneumatomachi (Combators of the Holy Spirit) and was so named after Macedonius, who was Patriarch of Constantinople.
Marcionism
From OrthodoxWiki
Marcionism is the dualist belief system that originated in Rome from the teachings of Marcion of Sinope around the year 144. Marcion affirmed Jesus Christ as the savior sent by God and Paul as his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and Yahweh. Marcionism anticipated the more consistent dualism of Manichaeism.
As Marcionism arose in the very beginning of the Christian era and from the very start had adopted a strong ecclesiastical organization that paralleled that of the Orthodox Christian Church, the movement was a dangerous foe of Christianity. While Marcionism has been associated with Gnosticism, Marcion looked to a form of Christianity that had no association with Judaism. Marcion’s vision seemed centered around the texts that were being used by Christians for a new testament, an approach that led the Orthodox on a path of defining the New Testament.
Early on, Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as heresy. These opponents also wrote against it, notably by Tertullian in a five-book treatise titled Adversus Marcionem that was written about 208. The criticisms against Marcionism, thus, predate the authority, claimed by the First Council of Nicea in 325, to declare what is heretical against the Church. Marcion's writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars (including Henry Wace) claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion.
Marcion declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism. He rejected entirely the Hebrew Bible and declared that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a lesser demiurge, who had created the earth, but was (de facto) the source of evil.
The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the god of the Jewish religion. Focusing on the Pauline traditions of the Gospel, Marcion felt that all other concepts of the Gospel, and especially any association with the Old Testament religion, were opposed to, and a backsliding from the truth. He further regarded the arguments of Paul regarding law and gospel, wrath and grace, works and faith, flesh and spirit, sin and righteousness, and death and life as the essence of religious truth. He ascribed these aspects and characteristics to two principles, the righteous and wrathful god of the Old Testament, who is at the same time identical with the creator of the world, and a second God of the Gospel, quite unknown before Christ, who is only love and mercy. Marcion gathered scriptures from the Jewish tradition, and juxtaposed these against the sayings and teachings from the Gospel of Luke, the Epistles of Paul (but not the Pastoral Epistles or the Epistle to the Hebrews), and the added Marcionite Epistle to the Laodiceans, in a work entitled the ‘‘Antithesis’‘. Marcion’s version of Luke did not resemble the version that is now regarded as canonical. It not only lacked all prophecies of Christ's coming and had differences with the now canonical version, as well as other serious theological implications. In bringing together these texts, Marcion redacted what is perhaps the first attempt at a New Testament canon on record, which he called the Apostolikon, which reflected his belief in writings associated with the apostle Paul and Jesus.
After Marcion’s excommunication, elements of his movement continued in the Mediterranean west for about 300 years, and in the east for some centuries more, principally in areas outside of the Eastern Roman empire that followed Manichaeism.
As Marcionism arose in the very beginning of the Christian era and from the very start had adopted a strong ecclesiastical organization that paralleled that of the Orthodox Christian Church, the movement was a dangerous foe of Christianity. While Marcionism has been associated with Gnosticism, Marcion looked to a form of Christianity that had no association with Judaism. Marcion’s vision seemed centered around the texts that were being used by Christians for a new testament, an approach that led the Orthodox on a path of defining the New Testament.
Early on, Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as heresy. These opponents also wrote against it, notably by Tertullian in a five-book treatise titled Adversus Marcionem that was written about 208. The criticisms against Marcionism, thus, predate the authority, claimed by the First Council of Nicea in 325, to declare what is heretical against the Church. Marcion's writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars (including Henry Wace) claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion.
Marcion declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism. He rejected entirely the Hebrew Bible and declared that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a lesser demiurge, who had created the earth, but was (de facto) the source of evil.
The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the god of the Jewish religion. Focusing on the Pauline traditions of the Gospel, Marcion felt that all other concepts of the Gospel, and especially any association with the Old Testament religion, were opposed to, and a backsliding from the truth. He further regarded the arguments of Paul regarding law and gospel, wrath and grace, works and faith, flesh and spirit, sin and righteousness, and death and life as the essence of religious truth. He ascribed these aspects and characteristics to two principles, the righteous and wrathful god of the Old Testament, who is at the same time identical with the creator of the world, and a second God of the Gospel, quite unknown before Christ, who is only love and mercy. Marcion gathered scriptures from the Jewish tradition, and juxtaposed these against the sayings and teachings from the Gospel of Luke, the Epistles of Paul (but not the Pastoral Epistles or the Epistle to the Hebrews), and the added Marcionite Epistle to the Laodiceans, in a work entitled the ‘‘Antithesis’‘. Marcion’s version of Luke did not resemble the version that is now regarded as canonical. It not only lacked all prophecies of Christ's coming and had differences with the now canonical version, as well as other serious theological implications. In bringing together these texts, Marcion redacted what is perhaps the first attempt at a New Testament canon on record, which he called the Apostolikon, which reflected his belief in writings associated with the apostle Paul and Jesus.
After Marcion’s excommunication, elements of his movement continued in the Mediterranean west for about 300 years, and in the east for some centuries more, principally in areas outside of the Eastern Roman empire that followed Manichaeism.
Monarchianism
From OrthodoxWiki
Monarchianism, sometimes called Monarchism, is a heretical theological movement that arose within the second and third century Church. It consists of a set of beliefs that emphasize God as being one, that God is the single and only ruler.
This emphasis conflicted with the doctrine of the Trinity, of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Models of resolving the tension between the two principles in favour of God's oneness were proposed in the 2nd century but rejected as heretical by the Church.
Monarchianism in and of itself is not a complete theory of the relation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but a simple tenet that requires further extension. There are basically two contradicting models of Monarchianism:
This emphasis conflicted with the doctrine of the Trinity, of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Models of resolving the tension between the two principles in favour of God's oneness were proposed in the 2nd century but rejected as heretical by the Church.
Monarchianism in and of itself is not a complete theory of the relation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but a simple tenet that requires further extension. There are basically two contradicting models of Monarchianism:
- Modalism considers God to be one person appearing and working in the different "modes" of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The chief proponent of Modalism was Sabellius, hence the view is also called Sabellianism. It has also been labeled Patripassianism by its opponents because it purports that God the Father suffered on the cross.
- Adoptionism holds that God is one being, above all else and wholly indivisible and of one nature, it reconciles the "problem" of the Trinity (or at least Jesus) by holding that the Son was not co-eternal with the Father, and that Jesus essentially was granted deity-hood (adopted) for the plans of God and his own perfect life and works. Different flavors of Adoptionism hold that Jesus was "adopted" either at the time of his baptism, or ascension. An early exponent of this belief was Theodotus of Byzantium.
Montanism
From OrthodoxWiki
Montanism was a heretical movement that originated about 156 and was named after its founder Montanus. It flourished mostly in and around the region of Phrygia in Asia Minor, where early on its followers were called Cataphrygians. It spread to other regions in the Roman Empire. This heresy arose at a time before Christianity was generally tolerated or legal in the Roman world. With the mainstream of the Orthodox Church prevailing against Montanism, the movement died out within a few generations although the sect persisted in some isolated places into the eighth century.
Differences between Montanism and Orthodox Christianity
The beliefs of Montanism contrasted with Orthodox Christianity in the following ways:
Differences between Montanism and Orthodox Christianity
The beliefs of Montanism contrasted with Orthodox Christianity in the following ways:
- The belief that the prophecies of the Montanists superseded and fulfilled the doctrines proclaimed by the Apostles.
- The encouragement of ecstatic prophesying, contrasting with the more sober and disciplined approach to theology dominant in Orthodox Christianity at the time and since.
- The view that Christians who fell from grace could not be redeemed, in contrast to the Orthodox Christian view that contrition could lead to a sinner's restoration to the church.
- The prophets of Montanism did not speak as messengers of God: "Thus saith the Lord," but rather described themselves as possessed by God, and spoke in his person. "I am the Father, the Word, and the Paraclete," said Montanus (Didymus, De Trinitate, III, xli); This possession by a spirit, which spoke while the prophet was incapable of resisting, is described by the spirit of Montanus: "Behold the man is like a lyre, and I art like the plectrum. The man sleeps, and I am awake" (Epiphanius, "Panarion", xlviii, 4).
- A stronger emphasis on the avoidance of sin and on church discipline than in Orthodox Christianity. They emphasized chastity, including forbidding remarriage.
- Some of the Montanists were also "Quartodeciman" ("fourteeners"), adhering to the celebration of Pascha on the Hebrew calendar date of 14 Nisan, regardless of what day of the week it landed on. The Orthodox held that Pascha should be commemorated on the Sunday following 14 Nisan. (Trevett 1996:202)
Nestorianism
From OrthodoxWiki
Patripassianism
From OrthodoxWiki
Patripassianism is a form of modalism, the teaching that there is only one God, who appears in three different modes. This is opposed to the Orthodox teaching that there is one God, who exists in three persons.
Patripassianism comes from the Latin, and means "the Father suffers." The name refers to the teaching that God the Father suffers on the cross as Son—since the two are different modes of the same person. Patripassianism is closely related to Sabellianism.
Patripassianism comes from the Latin, and means "the Father suffers." The name refers to the teaching that God the Father suffers on the cross as Son—since the two are different modes of the same person. Patripassianism is closely related to Sabellianism.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
The Messiah’s Triumph and Kingdom - Psalms 2:1-10 (NKJV)
The Messiah’s Triumph and Kingdom
2 Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”
And the people plot a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
6 “Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
6 “Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.”
7 “I will declare the decree:
The Lord has said to Me,
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
9 You shall break[a] them with a rod of iron;
You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”
The Lord has said to Me,
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
9 You shall break[a] them with a rod of iron;
You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”
10 Now therefore, be wise, O kings;
Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
Psalms 2:1-10 (NKJV)
online:
Monday, October 7, 2013
The Descent Of Jesus Into Hades - Presbyter Thomas Hopko
The Paschal icon, the icon of the victory of Christ, God’s Messiah, over death, the last enemy, in the Orthodox Church is an icon of the live, glorious Christ, in the realm of the dead, smashing the gates of Sheol, or of Hades, and releasing, and freeing, and pulling from the tombs, the whole of humanity, symbolized in the persons of Adam and Eve. In that icon, of course, there are the righteous of the Old Testament there in Sheol, those who were dead, who are delivered from the power of death by the dead Christ. When Christ tramples down death by death, He gives life to all of those in the tombs, all those who are among the dead.
There is some confusion among Christian believers, and even in some very technical, theological writings, even in recent years, about the significance, the meaning of what we would call the descent of Christ into Sheol, into Hades, into the realm of the dead. The confusion and the debate, the disputation, is about how is that to be understood? What does that really mean? What is being said there? What is happening? Of course, the Nicene Creed insists about the fact that Jesus was crucified and died and was buried. It said, “Who for us men and for our salvation came from heaven, and He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered.” That means He really suffered, it wasn’t fantasy, it wasn’t just a show, He didn’t just appear to be suffering, He really suffered. And He was buried. He was put into that sepulcher, which means He was really dead, and the Gospels are very clear about saying that He was really dead, that He was wrapped in the grave clothes, anointed by Joseph and Nicodemus.
In John’s Gospel, the women come to anoint the dead corpse. In John’s Gospel the point is really flaunted, the theological Gospel, whether or not He was dead. It speaks about breaking the legs of people to make sure they were dead, and then when they saw that He was really dead, they did not break His legs, to fulfill the prophecy that not a bone of His body shall be broken, but then they speared him, they take the spear and stick it in His side, from which comes forth the blood and the water that symbolizes the baptism and the Eucharist and the very life of the Church itself, the new Eve that is fashioned from the side of the new Adam when He is dead, hanging on the cross in the ecstasy of death.
So Christ really dies, and that is what the meaning of the icon is, and that is what the meaning of the expression, “descent into Sheol or Hades” means. Hades is the Greek term for the Hebrew word, Sheol, which simply means the realm of the dead. It means, not even realm, it means the condition of being dead. It is a way of speaking about the fact that the person is really dead. That is what it means. That is the meaning of it. It is sometimes put in terms of a place, and so even in the Paschal hymns we will sing, “In heaven and on earth and under the earth,” or the regions under the earth. The place of the dead was considered to be under the earth because they returned back to dust, they returned back to earth. They are taken from the earth, and their body corrupts, and they go back to earth.
So you have this kind of symbolical way of speaking about the condition of being dead. And so it can sound somehow like a place, like heaven would be a place, Sheol would be a place. But all the holy fathers, and many of the modern writers, for example Hierotheos Vlachos, the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, a very famous, well-known writer of Orthodoxy, today many of his books are translated into English, he makes it clear that heaven and hell are not places. They are situations, they are conditions, they are spiritual realities in which we find ourselves. But one thing is for sure, to be physically dead is to be physically dead. And it is a dogma of the Eastern Orthodox Church that Jesus of Nazareth physically died, and He was buried, put into a cave as a dead man. That is just affirmed over and over again, that He really became a corpse, He was dead.
It is also affirmed that He was raised on the third day, that He did not see corruption, that the Holy One could not see corruption, that He did not remain dead and could not remain dead, as being the very life and the power of God, Himself. It was impossible that He would die, being the divine Son of God, but even in the incarnation, as a man, it was impossible that this Holy One should see corruption, and that He, even as a man, had the capability of keeping Himself alive in His communion with God the Father, that He could raise the dead, He had all the power of God. So His death was voluntary, His suffering was voluntary, the passion was voluntary, but it was real. When He dies, this is depicted and spoken about as a descent into Sheol, in other words, entering into the condition or the realm of being dead, that He really was among the dead. He was numbered, not only among the transgressors, but among the dead. He really died.
Some confusion is caused, particularly in English-speaking worlds, when this Hades or Sheol is translated and interpreted as “hell”—many of our English liturgical texts use the term: “He descended into hell,” and so on. It can be very confusing if you use this translation.
I believe, personally, that the word “hell” should not be used, for a very simple reason. It wasn’t hell. It was not Gehenna. In Scripture, you have the expression, Gehenna, which was a smoldering garbage heap outside of Jerusalem, where even the dead people were burned up, and somehow it was like a garbage heap of corruption and smoldering fire. But Sheol, Hades, is not Gehenna. And in fact, in a certain sense, it is not even a place of torment, because the teaching is that the righteous dead, like Moses, and the prophets. and John the Baptist, were not suffering in Sheol or Hades. They were certainly dead, but they were somehow also alive, because according to Scripture, according to the Bible, and here we have to be very careful that we do not slip into the realm of Platonistic philosophy in speaking about souls, the Bible does not know anything about disincarnate souls, but the Bible does teach us that a dead person who is righteous, before the coming of the Messiah, was in the hands of God, that the righteous were held in the hands of God. They were somehow preserved in the bosom of Abraham, and there was even some type of consciousness there, an expectation of liberation, so that the graves could be opened and the whole cosmos could be restored and everything could become Paradise again.
Even on the Russian Orthodox crosses, by the way, there is a little inscription at the foot of Jesus’ feet on the cross, in four Slavonic letters, M, L, R, and B, in Slavonic, which translated means, “The place of the skull (or Golgatha) has become Paradise.” So the bosom of Abraham had to be transformed into Paradise, into a living reality again, with interrelationship with all of creation—the sun, the moon, the stars, the birds and everything. In other words, even the righteous person was in the realm of the dead and had to be liberated by the Messiah in order to have real life, eternal life, real communion with God.
Another example would be that in the Old Testament, in the Psalms, if you were in Sheol you could not praise God. That is why it was so bad to be dead. The reason why it was so bad to be dead was, you could not sing Alleluia, because according to the Scriptures, and the conviction was also, if you are dead, you are not alive, and if you are not alive, you cannot be singing the praises of God, you cannot sing Alleluia. You are mute, you are dumb, your eyes are closed, you cannot see anything, you are in darkness, you are in Abaddon, some kind of forgetfulness.
But it was also the teaching, I believe this is accurate, that the wicked people who did not follow the commandments of God, who did not follow Moses, who did not love life, who perpetrated evil when they lived on the earth, they are in the depth of the Sheol, they are in Hades also, but they are already anticipating their torment. First of all, they are being tormented by their own evil. They are being tormented by themselves and their own lack of faith and their own refusal to follow God’s commandments. Then they are being tormented by the fact that they want to live and have carnal sensual pleasures and they cannot do that anymore. Then they are tormented by the fact that they are not in the hands of God, they are in the hands of the evil one, they are in the hands of the demons in the pit of Sheol. They are also tormented by the expectation that when the Messianic King comes, they are going to be raised, not for glory, but for judgment, for condemnation, so to speak. They are going to get what’s coming to them, to put it in modern language.
So the evil dead are anticipating already their unending agony by the presence of the truth and the light and the glory of God, and their suffering is going to be “apo tou prosopou tou kyriou” as Isaiah said, quoted by the apostle Peter in the book of Acts. They will suffer torment from the face of God, and not from separation from the face of God, but from the presence of the face of God. If you are evil and rooted in evil and you do not repent, the presence of light and life and truth and glory causes you terrible agony.
Before the coming of the Messiah, the wicked dead were already somehow anticipating that, and the righteous dead were anticipating the time when they would have full and complete and total communion with God and all of the good creation of God, when the Messianic King would free them.
We Christians believe, Orthodox Christians believe, that Christ is that Messianic King who frees us, and He frees us by dying. He liberates us. He ransoms us by the power of hell. He gave Himself, a ransom, to death, by which we were held captive, in order to release us, and that is what trampling down death by death means. So the icon of the so-called Descent Into Sheol shows that Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, really died, and He entered into the condition and experienced the condition of being dead, but by experiencing the condition of being dead, being life Himself, He destroys death. He tramples down death, He annihilates death. He liberates and ransoms and frees and buys back the people who are held captive by death, captive by the power of death that has come from sin. And so, the descent of Christ into Sheol means that He really died, but being life Himself, when life dies, He destroys death, and that is what the teaching is, and that is what the Paschal message, the good news of the Gospel, is.
If anyone would say, and honestly, I do think some Christians do claim this, some pretty big-name theologians, I believe, actually teach this, but I am afraid, speaking the truth in love, we try to do that, we would have to say that they are wrong if they claim that when Jesus died He experienced the torments of hell. He did not experience any torments of any hell when He died, and in some sense there even was not any hell. First of all, hell is the torment from the presence of the glory and the beauty and the truth of God for people who do not want it.
How could He who is life and truth and glory, Himself, suffer torment? Was He being tormented by the presence of Himself? It is completely senseless. It does not make any sense whatsoever, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, could suffer the torments of hell. No. But He could die. He could enter into the realm of the dead in order to destroy it. But even the righteous dead, like the prophets and Moses and John the Baptist, were not being tormented in Sheol. They were caught by death, but they were not being tormented. There was no punishment to them, there was no torment, no agony, because the torment and the agony of Gehenna, of hell, is the torment of clinging to evils and loving death more than life, and loving evil more than good, and loving darkness more than light. That is what torments you.
And that is why, I believe, we Orthodox Christians would claim that Christ’s presence, His Parousia, in the realm of the dead when He is crucified, and then at His coming at the end of the age in glory, when all the tombs will be opened, and by the way in the Gospel the claim is that when Jesus enters into the realm of the dead and dies and tramples down death by death, the righteous already somehow experience the resurrection. In Matthew’s Gospel it says very clearly that on the Pascha morning, the first day of the week, the day of the Lord’s resurrection, many of the saints arose and they were seen walking around the holy city of Jerusalem. This was in St. Matthew’s Gospel.
And we do not ever want to imagine the dead as disincarnate souls. Some of the great teachers of Christianity do that, even Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, Hierotheos, he does that. I must say honestly say I do not agree with him when he does that. The dead are simply completely and totally dead. And then when you are alive, you are completely and totally alive. And I believe that when Christ rose from the dead in His glorified body, He gave the glorified body to all those in the tombs immediately, that they enter into eternal life with Him. That is why when we glorify the saints we glorify them as completely and totally alive. When they appear to people they do not appear as disincarnate souls, they appear as people in their glorified bodies, with their risen bodies. They are clothed with the raised body of Jesus Christ. The relic of their physical body might still be in the tombs, and they are in the tombs until the last day when all the tombs will be empty and there will be no more cemeteries and no more death anymore at all. But the dead in Christ are already entering into that splendid glory of the age to come. That is how we relate to them and venerate them within the Orthodox Church.
But in any case, that topic may be for another time, but what we want to know for now is that Jesus did not suffer any agonies of hell when He died. In fact, He did not suffer separation from God. He was forsaken and abandoned by God into death, into the hands of evil, but God was always with Him, and He was always with God. He commended His life into the hands of God when He died, He said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit,” and He gave up His spirit and He died. And as the Paschal Troparion, the hymn says during the canon, it says, “In the grave with the body, in Sheol with the soul, in as much as Thou art God in Paradise with the thief, on the throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit was Thou, boundless Christ, filling all things Thyself, uncircumscribed, uncontainable, infinite.”
So there is this mystery of the infinite, glorious God being circumscribed by flesh, and dying in the flesh, and God dies in the flesh, He really dies, and experiences death, but that experience of death is the destruction of death. It is the bringing of the power of God into Sheol to destroy death. God is with Him, raising the dead through His dead body. It is through Christ that the dead are raised, so I think that it is accurate to say, first of all, it is certainly accurate to say that Jesus did not go into hell. He went into Sheol, He went into Hades. That is not hell, that is not Gehenna. He never tasted of Gehenna. He never tasted of hell at all, and He brought heaven, He brought Paradise, to the righteous dead who were held in Sheol, in Hades, to captives. In other words, to those who were dead, to those who were, literally, dead.
He came to them, but we must remember that those who were literally dead were also still somehow alive in the hands of God, even before the Messiah came. When, for example, the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of Christ, tried to catch Him in his words by saying that according to the Levite low of Moses, if a man had a wife, and he died, his brother had to take her and raise up seed so she would have children. And then the Sadducees said to Jesus, “There was a woman, and her husband died, and then his brother died, and his other brother died, and his other brother died, so that this woman ultimately ended up having seven husbands.” And then they try to make a fool of Jesus, saying, “If there is a resurrection, whose wife will she be?” We could put it this way, “Who gets the girl?” If there is a resurrection, who gets the girl? They are trying to make a fool of Jesus. They are trying to make a fool of Him, asking such a question, in order to try to make the doctrine of the resurrection to be ridiculous. But Jesus answers them, “You know neither the Scripture, nor the power of God. The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.” But those who are counted worthy to attain to that age, the age to come, the age of the risen Christ, which begins when Jesus enters into the realm of death to destroy it, who are worthy to enter into that age and to the resurrection from the dead, they neither are marrying nor are given in marriage. They cannot die anymore, because, it says in Luke, they are eisangeli, equal to the angels (Luke 20:36). In Mark and Matthew it says hos angeli, like angels (see Mark 12:25). We do not become angels. We become angel-like, but we are still human beings. And they are sons of God. And even the women have the condition of being sons of God, because they are raised with the only begotten Son of God, who is Jesus Christ, and have the relationship to God as Abba, Father, that He has. It says, “Showing themselves to become sons of the resurrection.”
But that the dead are raised, Jesus says in Luke’s Gospel, to the Sadducees, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him. And then it says, some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well,” and they no longer dared ask Him any question.
So it seems to me, and you have to decide, but it seems to me that what Jesus is saying here is that the dead believers, the dead who follow the law, the dead who love God, yes, they are dead, and they have to be raised, and they are only raised by the Messiah, and they are only raised by the death of the Messiah. But they are already somehow in anticipation, children of the resurrection. They already belong to the resurrection that is planned for them from all eternity by God through Christ. That is why you even have the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. In fact, some commentators point out that Jesus does not say, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. They are not dead, but they are living. They are living in anticipation in the bosom of Abraham, awaiting the Messiah, and they are living forever when they are raised from the dead by Christ. So he says, “You do not even know what you are talking about, Sadducees.” In the Kingdom of God, yes, if a man has a wife, that is his wife forever, and if a woman had seven men as husbands, somehow that remains also forever. But there is no marrying or giving in marriage. We do not live as married couples, we live hos angeli, like angels.
We all become the bride of Christ, and we all relate to each other. We do not cease being who we are, because even the risen Christ, when He is raised, is still Jesus of Nazareth. In John’s Gospel, and in the Gospels generally, he even shows the continuity by showing the wounds in His hands. That causes some difficulty for some people, because they say, if He is raised into eternal life and is really healed, why is He still bearing the wounds? But I believe, personally, the reason for that is simply pedagogical and evangelical. In other words, the Gospel wants to insist that the risen Christ is not someone other than Jesus who was crucified.
And by the way, there are some Christians, even modern Christians, who say Jesus of Nazareth is one thing and the Christ is another. There is the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith and they are not the same person, they are not the same reality. But we Orthodox Christians say, oh no, Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, and when He is raised He is revealed as the Christ, but it is Jesus who is the Christ, and it is the same one who was put to death and was crucified. That is certainly the witness of the canonical Scriptures of Orthodox Christianity.
What we want to see now, though, is this. The descent into Hades simply means He really died and destroyed death by dying and liberated all those who were held captive by death, and He gave Himself as a ransom to death, abandoned on the cross by the Father into death, but He was not abandoned in the sense that He was tormented by demons and that He was tormented by evils and that He tasted the agonies of hell, and that is part of His kenosis , that is part of His humiliation, that when He died He experienced what it is to be in hell. I believe for us Orthodox Christians that would be blasphemy to claim such a thing. It would just be crazy to claim such a thing. He really died, but he was never “in hell.” All the holy fathers and modern writers like Hierotheos Vlachos and others would claim, there is no place, it is a condition.
If we would define hell as separation from God, this is not biblical. I do not believe that is biblical at all, and in fact, it is important even to note that in some translations of the Scripture, like the Revised Standard Version, because they think of hell and the punishment as separation from God, they even put in the Bible the term separation from God, that they are afflicted by being separated from God. But the text of the Scripture does not speak about separation. It does not speak about separation at all.
For example, in the second letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, it says, “When the Lord Jesus comes in His Parousia from heaven at the end with His mighty angels and flaming fire,” that flaming fire is the fire of the Godhead. We Orthodox Christians do not believe in material hellfire. We do not believe that God is a Nebuchadnezzar, stoking up flames to burn sinners in. No, that is not our teaching. At the Parousia of Christ, the flame of the living God who is a consuming fire is joy and peace and refreshment and glory for those who believe Him and love Him, but it is torment and agony and Gehenna for those who do not. So you have the flaming fire, and He does inflict vengeance upon those who do not know God…” To not know God means to not know God by experience, not really love God. It does not mean to not know about God…“and upon those who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the Revised Standard Version it actually says, in English translation, “They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.” That betrays a theology that thinks of hell as an exclusion from the presence of God. It is as if the evil people are being excluded from God and that is their punishment, and they say, “Oh, Lord, please forgive us,” and the Lord says, “No, it is too late, go away.”
Well, that is not the teaching. The teaching is that when Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, identifies with sinners and takes upon Himself the sin of the world, He has mercy and forgives everybody. Absolutely everybody is forgiven. And those who do not enter because they have no wedding garment, it means they do not accept the forgiveness of Christ. They are forgiven, He offers them the wedding garment, but they do not want it. They prefer the outer darkness. They wish they could be inside at the wedding feast, but they still want to be outside and have their own way and not have the wedding garment.
But in any case, getting back to this text of the second letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, the first chapter, the ninth verse, what it really says in Greek is, “They shall suffer the punishment, or the torment, of eternal destruction.” The destruction is from the presence of God. The Greek term does not mean exclusion. And in fact, that same expression, “from the presence of God” is used in the Book of Acts, I believe it is the fourth chapter, where it says that those who are refreshed in the resurrection and experience the renewal, they also experience the renewal “from the face of the Lord.” So the just are experiencing glory and peace and beauty and bliss from the face of the Lord, the presence of the Lord, and the evil are experiencing torment and agony and punishment from the face of the same Lord, in the same reality. That is the teaching of Holy Scripture.
Jesus, Himself, is the very Lord from whose face the light and the glory of God shines. So the only people and creatures who experience hell, Gehenna, are those who experience the face of the Lord and hate it, and do not want it, and try to reject it, and try to flee from it. Then that face with that fire and that light becomes agony, and there is no way that Jesus experienced that agony. In fact, He is the cause of the agony. You might even say, according to the Scripture, the fire and the cause of the torment of the wicked is the very presence of Christ, Himself. That is the teaching.
So there is a sense in which you can say, there is no everlasting Gehenna until the resurrection of Christ and the judgment of the world. Until that comes, people are caught by death, they are in the condition of being dead. The righteous in anticipation are in the hands of God, somehow anticipating the glory to come, and the evil are in the pit, also in the hands of God, but they are experiencing torment from those hands, and torment from their hatred of God. Then when the Christ enters into the realm of the dead and smashes the gates of hell and raises everybody up, He raises up the whole of humanity, not just the righteous, He raises up the evil, too.
St. John says this in the fourth chapter of his Gospel. Those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. The Lord even says, “Of Myself I can do nothing. As I see, I judge.” Sometimes it says, “As I hear I judge, and My judgment is just, because I am not seeking My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.”
So we determine whether we are in hell or not by our own belief or unbelief, by our love of love, and our love of light, and our love of truth, and our love of glory, or by our hatred of it. That has nothing to do with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, who died for us. When He descended into Sheol and Hades, it means simply that He died, and through death, trampled down death and raised the dead, all the dead, there is no one left in the tomb, as it says. In St. John Chrysostom’s sermon on Paschal night, he said, “No one is left in the tomb. Christ is risen and life reigns.” But if you hate that life, it is hell. If you love it, it is Paradise.
So we should not say that Jesus descended into hell. We should say, accurately, that He entered into the realm of death, which in the Bible symbolism is called Sheol, or Hades, the Greek term, the realm of the dead, the condition of being dead. What the paschal icon shows us is that Jesus entered into the condition of being dead, but being the Son of God, the perfect human being, totally in communion with the Father and the divine Son, Himself, in human form, when He enters into the realm of death, death is trampled on. Death is destroyed, the gates of hell are smashed, and everyone is raised from the power of death—those who have done good, to the resurrection of everlasting life, and those who have done evil and cling to their evil without repentance, unto everlasting hell, Gehenna, being cast out by God because they desire to be cast out. They think they deserve to be in Paradise, but they will not enter through repentance, and therefore the presence of the risen Christ torments them.
This is what we believe, this is what we understand, this is what we see when we contemplate the Paschal icon. This is what we believe, that it has not to do with hell. Hell comes at the end. Hell comes in the rejection of the risen Christ. That is what it is. The evil reject Him in anticipation, while the righteous love Him in anticipation. So the resurrection of Christ for those who keep the commandments, or try to, and repent when they do not, is the gift of everlasting life. Those who reject it get what they, themselves, desire.
thanks to source:
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_descent_of_jesus_into_hades
Friday, October 4, 2013
Death: A Source for Sound Philosophy
Death: A Source for Sound Philosophy
Through bodily death not only have we not sustained an injury, but also we have gained! Mortality has turned out to be a gain and a benefit for us, since we do not continue to sin in an immortal body. Furthermore, bodily death becomes a source for beneficial and salutary philosophy. Thanks to this horrible event, we have, says St. John Chrysostom, "a myriad opportunities for philosophical perserverance. For death convinces us, both when it is present and when we await for it, to be modest and to live with prudence and to be humble and to be spared from every evil." [1]
Truly, bodily death constitutes a strong and salutary medicine for restraining the base passions of the soul. For, as the physicians say, opposites are mutually therapeutic. As we warm what is frozen and moisten what has dried for the purpose of healing, so it is with the all-wise Physician of our souls, the Triune God, who found a way and arranged things with condescension and infinite love for man in order to heal the sinful passions of the soul, Because of sin the soul was overcome by despair and foolish rebellion against God. It was filled with traumas and wounds. For this reason our benevolent God uses a therapy, which restrains its egotism, its satanic pride and its rebellious excitement. What is this therapy? Death! For God fortifies the soul with death. This is why He made the body mortal and permitted it to decay, to be dissolved and to be eaten by worms and to exhude foul odors, placing from the beginning, by all these means, the foundations for humility. Through these God prevents all, and even the very proud, from holding high opinions of themselves. "For what is more foul than the human body? What is more worthless than one who is dead?" [2]
On another occasion, St. John Chrysostom taught: He who has died is not harmed at all by death, but the one who lives gains immensely from this event. One can benefit much from another's dead body. For, when one sees the person who only yesterday or even earlier was walking with him and is now being consumed by worms and decomposed into pus, ashes and dust, and if he still has the impudence and irrational rebellion which the devil has against God, he cowers from fear, he collects and humbles himself, and is instructed to forbear and to accept humility, the mother of virtues as a resident of his soul. So, he who dies is not harmed, because he will again receive his body immaculate and incorruptible. And he who remains and continues to live also gains a great deal. Consequently, God has placed in our life an important teacher of philosophy that instructs our mind, controls our passions, calms the waves of our stormy life and brings serenity! "This is no ordinary teacher of philosophy that has been introduced into our life." [3]
To look upon the dead is an opportunity for prudence and beneficial thoughts that avert evil and sin. The same Father goes on by saying: Look carefully at the rich and the selfish how they gather together, when they stand by the coffin of the dead and observe the dead human body to be laid out, deaf and motionless; when they see the children of the deceased orphaned, his wife widowed, his friends sad, his servants dressed in black and generally having the entire household covered with grief. See, also, how they are humbled and how they are all contrite. While they have heard a great multitude of teachings and have not gained anything, as soon as they see the dead they are moved, without any coercion to philosophize continuously. As they observe the mortal, insignificant and corrupt human nature, they become conscious of the weakness and instability of their wealth and power. They even foresee in the misfortunes of others "their very own changes." And he continues: There is death and, yet, there is so much stealing and greed. The stronger swallow up those who are poorer, as "the large fish eats the small". What would happen, one wonders, if there were no death? Even though they see that, because of death they will not be able to enjoy the things they covet, for whether they like it or not they must leave them to others, they, nevertheless, are wrathful and angry against the weak. What would happen, one wonders, if they lived with security and without the fear of death? What would restrain them from their irreverent and criminal deeds? What would extinguish their evil desire? [4]
Moreover, the death of the body, even though it is undesirable; even though it provokes horror within us, is, nevertheless, a blessing from God in that it is the escape from the world of earth to the world of heaven. It is a passage from finite time to eternity without end. It sounds strange, but it is true: Eternal life is approached through ... death! This is the most paradoxical thing about death, it stems from the unfathomable depth of God's wisdom and love.
If, after the transgression of Adam and Eve, the infinitely good and wise God had not permitted death to enter into the world, our life would have been insignificant and meaningless. But now our earthly life acquires meaning, depth and purpose, because it is terminated by death, which opens the doorway to heaven. If we consider the material world as self-sufficient, then everything in it is vain. Though we are informed that bodily death is indeed a terrible and bitter therapy, yet, it is, also, a transitional stage to eternity; when we think that this painful and agonizing procedure is one way to scale over the abyss that stands between the present and the future, then we truly understand how beneficial bodily death is.
In other words, death seems to say to us: Do not be fooled; the things of this present world are constantly changing, running, leaving. Eternity, for which your soul yearn, exists elsewhere. To that eternity it is I who will transfer you. For I have been injected into the life of you humans as a punishment and a disgrace, but God uses me so very wisely as a vehicle, which transfers you to the place where you so strongly and deeply desire to be. 1, by divine edict and inscrutable providence, transfer you from the corruptible to the incorruptible; from the earthly to the heavenly; from the temporal to the eternal!
Endnotes
1. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, On Romans, Homily 10,3 PG 60,478.2. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, Homily 8, On the Goths 3 PG 63, 505.
3. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, To the Scandalized 7PG 52,496.
4. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, On Psalm 110, 1-2 PG 55, 280-281.
From The Mystery of Death, by Nikolaos P. Vassiliadis, trans. Fr. Peter A. Chamberas (Athens: The Orthodox Brotherhood of Theologians, 1997), pp. 108-111.
online source:
The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological Traditions - Bishop Hilarion
Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: Christ the Conqueror of Hell
The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological Traditions
A lecture delivered at St Mary’s Cathedral, Minneapolis, USA, on 5 November 2002
The Byzantine and old Russian icons of the Resurrection of Christ never depict the resurrection itself, i.e., Christ coming out of the grave. They rather depict ‘the descent of Christ into Hades’, or to be more precise, the rising of Christ out of hell. Christ, sometimes with a cross in his hand, is represented as raising Adam, Eve and other personages of the biblical history from hell. Under the Saviour’s feet is the black abyss of the nether world; against its background are castles, locks and debris of the gates which once barred the way of the dead to resurrection. Though other motifs have also been used in creating the image of the Resurrection of Christ in the last several centuries[1], the above-described iconographic type is considered to be canonical, as it reflects the traditional teaching on the descent of Christ to hell, His victory over death, His raising of the dead and delivering them from hell where they were imprisoned before His Resurrection. It is to this teaching as an integral part of the dogmatic and liturgical tradition of the Christian Church that this paper is devoted.
The descent of Christ into Hades is one of the most mysterious, enigmatic and inexplicable events in New Testament history. In today’s Christian world, this event is understood differently. Liberal Western theology rejects altogether any possibility for speaking of the descent of Christ into Hades literally, arguing that the scriptural texts on this theme should be understood metaphorically. The traditional Catholic doctrine insists that after His death on the cross Christ descended to hell only to deliver the Old Testament righteous from it. A similar understanding is quite widespread among Orthodox Christians.
On the other hand, the New Testament speaks of the preaching of Christ in hell as addressed to the unrepentant sinners: ‘For Christ also died for sins once for all, 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; in which he went and preached to the spirit in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited’[2]. However, many Church Fathers and liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church repeatedly underline that having descended to hell, Christ opened the way to salvation for all people, not only the Old Testament righteous. The descent of Christ into Hades is perceived as an event of cosmic significance involving all people without exception. They also speak about the victory of Christ over death, the full devastation of hell and that after the descent of Christ into Hades there was nobody left there except for the devil and demons.
How can these two points of view be reconciled? What was the original faith of the Church? What do early Christian sources tell us about the descent into Hades? And what is the soteriological significance of the descent of Christ into Hades?
1. Eastern theological tradition
We come across references to the descent of Christ into Hades and His raising the dead in the works of Eastern Christian authors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, such as Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Hermas, Justin, Melito of Sardes, Hyppolitus of Rome, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. In the 4th century, the descent to hell was discussed by Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, as well as such Syrian authors as Jacob Aphrahat and Ephrem the Syrian. Noteworthy among later authors who wrote on this theme are Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene.
Let us look at the most vivid interpretations given to our theme in Eastern Christian theology.
The teaching on the descent of Christ into Hades was expounded quite fully by Clement of Alexandria in his ‘Stromateis’[3]. He argued that Christ preached in hell not only to the Old Testament righteous, but also to the Gentiles who lived outside the true faith. Commenting on 1 Pet. ¾21, Clement expresses the conviction that the preaching of Christ was addressed to all those in hell who were able to believe in Christ:
Do not [the Scriptures] show that the Lord preached the Gospel to those that perished in the flood, or rather had been chained, and to those kept ‘in ward and guard’?… And, as I think, the Saviour also exerts His might because it is His work to save; which accordingly He also did by drawing to salvation those who became willing, by the preaching [of the Gospel], to believe on Him, wherever they were. If, then, the Lord descended to Hades for no other end but to preach the Gospel, as He did descend, it was either to preach the Gospel to all or to the Hebrews only. If, accordingly, to all, then all who believe shall be saved[4], although they may be of the Gentiles, on making their profession there…[5]
Clement emphasises that there are righteous people among both those who have the true faith and the Gentiles and that it is possible to turn to God for those who did not believe in Him while living. It is their virtuous life that made them capable of accepting the preaching of Christ and the apostles in hell:
...A righteous man, then, differs not, as righteous, from another righteous man, whether he be of the Law [Jew] or a Greek. For God is not only Lord of the Jews, but of all men[6]... So I think it is demonstrated that God, being good, and the Lord powerful, save with a righteousness and equality which extend to all that turn to Him, whether here or elsewhere[7].
According to Clement, righteousness is of value not only for those who live in true faith, but also for those who are outside faith. It is evident from his words that Christ preached in hell to all, but saved only those who came to believe in Him. Anyway, Clement assumes that this preaching proved salutory not for all to whom Christ preached in hell: ‘Did not the same dispensation obtain in Hades, so that even there, all the souls, on hearing the proclamation, might either exhibit repentance, or confess that their punishment was just, because they believed not?’[8] According to Clement, there were those in hell who heard the preaching of Christ but did not believe in Him and did not follow Him. In Clement’s works we find the notion that punishments sent from God to sinners are aimed at their reformation, not at retribution, and that the souls released from their corporal shells are better able to understand the meaning of punishment[9]. In these words lies the nucleus of the teaching on the purifying and saving nature of the torment of hell developed by some later authors[10] . We will come back to the question of whether the pains of hell can be salutory when considering the teaching of Maximus the Confessor on the descent of Christ into Hades. An exhaustive discussion on this question, though, is beyond the scope of this paper. Gregory of Nyssa entwines the theme of the descent in hell with the theory of ‘divine deception’. On the latter he builds his teaching on the Redemption. According to this theory, Christ, being God incarnate, deliberately concealed His divine nature from the devil so that he, mistaking Him for an ordinary man, would not be terrified at the sight of an overwhelming power approaching him. When Christ descended in hell, the devil supposed Him to be a human being, but this was a divine ‘hook’ disguised under a human ‘bait’ that the devil swallowed[11] . By admitting God incarnate into his domain, the devil himself signed his own death warrant: incapable of enduring the divine presence, he was overcome and defeated, and hell was destroyed. This is precisely the idea that Gregory of Nyssa developed in one of his Easter sermons on ‘The Three-Day Period of the Resurrection of Christ’. Judging by its contents, this homily was intended for Holy Saturday[12], and in it Gregory poses the question of why Christ spent three days ‘in the heart of the earth’[13]. This period was necessary and sufficient, he argues, for Christ to ‘expose the foolishness’ (moranai) of the devil[14], i.e, to outwit, ridicule and deceive him[15]. How did Christ manage to ‘outwit’ the devil? Gregory gives the following reply to this question:
As the ruler of darkness could not approach the presence of the Light unimpeded, had he not seen in Him something of flesh, then, as soon as he saw the God-bearing flesh and saw the miracle performed through it by the Deity, he hoped that if he came to take hold of the flesh through death, then he would take hold of all the power contained in it. Therefore, having swallowed the bait of the flesh, he was pierced by the hook of the Deity and thus the dragon was transfixed by the hook.[16] A very original approach to the theme of the descent to Hades is found in a book entitled ‘Spiritual Homilies’ which has survived under the name of Macarius of Egypt. There, the liberation of Adam by Christ, Who descended into Hades, is seen as the prototype of the mystical resurrection which the soul experiences in its encounter with the Lord:
When you hear that the Lord in the old days delivered souls from hell and prison and that He descended into hell and performed a glorious deed, do not think that all these events are far from your soul… So the Lord comes into the souls that seek Him, into the depth of the heart’s hell, and there commands death, saying: ‘Release the imprisoned souls which have sought Me and which you hold by force’. And He shatters the heavy stones weighing on the soul, opens graves, raises the true dead from death, brings the imprisoned soul from the dark prison… Is it difficult for God to enter death and, even more, into the depth of the heart and to call out dead Adam from there?… If the sun, being created, passes everywhere through windows and doors, even to the caves of lions and the holes of creeping creatures, and comes out without any harm, the more so does God and the Lord of everything enter caves and abodes in which death has settled, and also souls, and, having released Adam from there, [remains] unfettered by death. Similarly, rain coming down from the sky reaches the nethermost parts of the earth, moistens and renews the roots there and gives birth to new shoots[17].
This text is significant first of all in that the author regards the descent of Christ into Hades as a commonly accepted and undisputed dogma, which he uses as a solid foundation on which to build his mystical and typological construction. The use of the images of the sun rising over both the evil and the good, and rain sent upon both the righteous and the unrighteous[18], indicates that the author of the ‘Homilies’ perceives the descent into Hades as a reality affecting not only the Old Testament righteous, but also entire humanity. Moreover, it affects every person and inner processes which take place in the human soul. For the author of the ‘Homilies’, the doctrine of the descent into Hades is not an abstract truth, nor is it an event which occurred in the days of old and which affected only those who lived at that time, but it is an event which has not lost its relevance. It is not just one of the fundamental Christian doctrines, not just a subject of faith and confession, but a mystery associated with the mystical life of the Christian, a mystery which one should experience in the depth of one’s heart.
The doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades occupies an essential place in the works of Cyril of Alexandria. In his ‘Paschal Homilies’, he repeatedly mentions that as a consequence of the descent of Christ into Hades, the devil was left all alone, while hell was devastated: ‘For having destroyed hell and opened the impassable gates for the departed spirits, He left the devil there abandoned and lonely’[19].
In his ‘Festive Letters’, Cyril of Alexandria elaborates on the theme of the preaching of Christ in Hades, popular in the Alexandrian tradition since Clement. He views the preaching of Christ in hell as the accomplishment of the ‘history of salvation’, which began with the Incarnation:
…He showed the way to salvation not only to us, but also to the spirits in hell; having descended, He preached to those once disobedient, as Peter says[20]. For it did not befit for love of man to be partial, but the manifestation of [this] gift should have been extended to all nature… Having preached to the spirits in hell and having said ‘go forth’ to the prisoners, and ‘show yourselves’[21] to those in prison on the third day, He resurrected His temple and again opens up to our nature the ascent to heaven, bringing Himself to the Father as the beginning of humanity, pledging to those on earth the grace of communion of the Spirit[22].
As we can see, Cyril emphasises the universality of the salvation given by Christ to humanity, perceiving the descent of Christ into Hades as salvific for the entire human race. He is not inclined to limit salvation to a particular part of humanity, such as the Old Testament righteous. Salvation is likened to rain sent by God on both the just and the unjust[23]. Putting emphasis on the universality of the saving feat of Christ, Cyril follows in the steps of other Alexandrian theologians, beginning with Clement, Origen, and Athanasius the Great[24]. The descent of Christ into Hades, according to Cyril’s teaching, signified victory over that which previously appeared unconquerable and ensured the salvation of all humanity:
Death unwilling to be defeated is defeated; corruption is transformed; unconquerable passion is destroyed. While hell, diseased with excessive insatiability and never satisfied with the dead, is taught, even if against its will, that which it could not learn previously. For it not only ceases to claim those who are still to fall [in the future], but also lets free those already captured, being subjected to splendid devastation by the power of our Saviour... Having preached to the spirits in hell, once disobedient, He came out as conqueror by resurrecting His temple like a beginning of our hope and by showing to [our] nature the manner of the raising from the dead, and giving us along with it other blessings as well[25].
Clearly, Cyril perceived the victory of Christ over hell and death as complete and definitive. According to Cyril, hell loses authority both over those who were in its power and those who are to become its prey in the future. Thus, the descent into Hades, a single and unique action, is perceived as a timeless event. The raised body of Christ becomes the guarantee of universal salvation, the beginning of way leading human nature to ultimate deification. An elaborate teaching of the descent of Christ into Hades is found in Maximus the Confessor. In his analysis, Maximus takes as a starting point the words of St. Peter: ‘For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit’[26]. In Maximus’s view, St. Peter does not speak about the Old Testament righteous, but about those sinners who, back in their lifetime, were punished for their evil deeds:
Some say that Scriptures call ‘dead’ those who died before the coming of Christ, for instance, those who were at the time of the flood, at Babel, in Sodom, in Egypt, as well as others who in various times and in various ways received various punishments and the terrible misfortune of divine damnation. These people were punished not so much for their ignorance of God as for the offences they imposed on one another. It was to them, according to [St Peter] that the great message of salvation was preached when they were already damned as men in the flesh, that is, when they received, through life in the flesh, punishment for crimes against one another, so that they could live according to God by the spirit, that is, being in hell, they accepted the preaching of the knowledge of God, believing in the Saviour who descended into hell to save the dead. So, in order to understand [this] passage in [Holy Scriptures] let us take it in this way: the dead, damned in the human flesh, were preached to precisely for the purpose that they may live according to God by the spirit[27].
Thus, according to Maximus’s teaching, punishments suffered by sinners ‘in the human flesh’ were necessary so that they may live ‘according to God by the spirit’. Therefore, these punishments, whether troubles and misfortunes in their lifetime or pains in hell, had pedagogical and reforming significance. Moreover, Maximus stresses that in damning them, God used not so much a religious as a moral criterion, for people were punished ‘not so much for their ignorance of God as for the offences they imposed on one another’. In other words, the religious or ideological convictions of a particular person were not decisive, but his actions with regard to his neighbours. In John Damascene we find lines which sum up the development of the theme of the descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern patristic writings of the 2nd¾8th centuries:
The soul [of Christ] when it is deified descended into Hades, in order that, just as the Sun of Righteousness rose for those upon the earth, so likewise He might bring light[28] to those who sit under the earth in darkness and the shadow of death: in order that just as he brought the message of peace to those upon the earth, and of release to the prisoners, and of sight to the blind[29], and became to those who believed the Author of everlasting salvation and to those who did not believe, a denunciation of their unbelief, so He might become the same to those in Hades: That every knee should bow to Him, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under the earth[30]. And thus after He had freed those who has been bound for ages, straightway He rose again from the dead, showing us the way of resurrection[31].
According to John Damascene, Christ preached to all those who were in hell, but His preaching did not prove salutary for all, as not all were capable of responding to it. For some it could become only ‘a denunciation of their disbelief’, not the cause of salvation. In this judgement, Damascene actually repeats the teaching on salvation articulated not long before him by Maximus the Confessor. According to Maximus, human history will be accomplished when all without exception will unite with God and God will become ‘all in all’[32]. For some, however, this unity will mean eternal bliss, while for others it will become the source of suffering and torment, as each will be united with God ‘according to the quality of his disposition’ towards God[33]. In other words, all will be united with God, but each will have his own, subjective, feeling of this unity, according to the measure of the closeness to God he has achieved. Along a similar line, John Damascene understands also the teaching on the descent to Hades: Christ opens the way to paradise to all and calls all to salvation, but the response to Christ’s call may lie in either consent to follow Him or voluntary rejection of salvation. Ultimately it depends on a person, on his free choice. God does not save anybody by force, but calls everybody to salvation: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him’[34]. God knocks at the door of the human heart rather than breaks into it.
In the history of Christianity an idea has repeatedly arisen that God predestines some people for salvation and others to perdition. This idea, based as it is on the literary understanding of the words of St. Paul about predestination, calling and justification[35], became the corner-stone of the theological system of the Reformation, preached with particular consistency by John Calvin[36]. Eleven centuries before Calvin, the Eastern Christian tradition in the person of John Chrysostom expressed its view of predestination and calling. ‘Why are not all saved?’ Chrysostom asks. ‘Because… not only the call [of God] but also the will of those called is the cause of their salvation. This call is not coercive or forcible. Every one was called, but not all followed the call’[37]. Later Fathers, including Maximus and John Damascene, spoke in the same spirit. According to their teaching, it is not God who saves some while ruining others, but some people follow the call of God to salvation while others do not. It is not God who leads some from hell while leaving others behind, but some people wish while others do not wish to believe in Him.
The teaching of the Eastern Church Fathers on the descent of Christ into Hades can be summed up in the following points:
1) the doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades was commonly accepted and indisputable;
2) the descent into Hades was perceived as an event of universal significance, though some authors limited the range of those saved by Christ to a particular category of the dead;
3) the descent of Christ into Hades and His resurrection were viewed as the accomplishment of the ‘economy’ of Christ the Saviour, as the crown and outcome of the feat He performed for the salvation of people;
4) the teaching on the victory of Christ over the devil, hell and death was finally articulated and asserted;
5) the theme of the descent into Hades began to be viewed in its mystical dimension, as the prototype of the resurrection of the human soul.
2. Western theological tradition To what degree did the approach to this theme of the Fathers and Doctors of the Western Church differ from that of the Eastern Fathers? In order to answer this question, let us look at the works of the two most significant theologians of the Christian West, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
The Augustinian teaching on the descent of Christ into Hades is expounded in the fullest way in one of his letters addressed to Evodius. This letter contains a comprehensive interpretation of 1 Pet. ¾21. It follows from Evodius’ questions that the teaching on the evacuation of all in hell and the complete devastation of hell by the risen Christ was widespread in his time. Augustine begins with the question of whether Christ preached only to those who perished in the days of Noah or to all the imprisoned. In answering it, Augustine begins by refuting the opinion that Christ descended to Hades in the flesh[38] and argues that this teaching contradicts scriptural testimony[39].
Augustine continues by setting forth the view that Christ led from hell all those who were there, as, indeed, among them were ‘some who are intimately known to us by their literary labours, whose eloquence and talent we admire, ¾ not only the poets and orators who in many parts of their writings have held up to contempt and ridicule these same false gods of the nations, and have even occasionally confessed the one true God…, but also those who have uttered the same, not in poetry or rhetoric, but as philosophers’[40]. The notion of the salvation of heathen poets, orators and philosophers was quite popular. In Eastern patristic tradition it was most vividly expressed by Clement of Alexandria. According to Augustine, however, any of the positive qualities of the ancient poets, orators and philosophers originated not from ‘sober and authentic devotion, but pride, vanity and [the desire] of people’s praise’. Therefore they ‘did not bring any fruit’. Thus, the idea that pagan poets, orators and philosophers could be saved, though not refuted by Augustine, still is not fully approved, since ‘human judgement’ differs from ‘the justice of the Creator’[41].
Augustine neither rejects nor accepts unconditionally the opinion concerning the salvation of all those in hell. Though very careful in his judgement, it is clear that the possibility of salvation for all in hell is blocked in his perception by his own teaching on predestination[42], as well as by his understanding of divine mercy and justice:
For the words of Scripture, that ‘the pains of hell were loosed’[43] by the death of Christ, do not establish this, seeing that this statement may be understood as referring to Himself, and meaning that he so far loosed (that is, made ineffectual) the pains of hell that He Himself was not held by them, especially since it is added that it was ‘impossible for Him to be holden of them’[44]. Or if any one [objecting to this interpretation] asks why He chose to descend into hell, where those pains were which could not possibly hold Him… the words that ‘the pains were loosed’ may be understood as referring not to the case of all, but only some whom He judged worthy of that deliverance; so that neither He supposed to have descended thither in vain, without the purpose of bringing benefit to any of those who were there held in prison, nor is it a necessary inference that divine mercy and justice granted to some must be supposed to have been granted to all[45].
While Augustine also considers the traditional teaching that Christ delivered from hell the forefather Adam, as well as Abel, Seth, Noah and his family, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob ‘and the other patriarchs and prophets’, he does not agree to it entirely, since he does not believe ‘Abraham’s bosom’ to be a part of hell. Those who were in the bosom of Abraham were not deprived of the gracious presence of the divinity of Christ, and therefore Christ, on the very day of His death immediately before descending to hell, promises to the wise thief that he will be in paradise with him[46]. ‘Most certainly, therefore, He was, before that time, both in paradise and the bosom of Abraham in His beatific wisdom (beatificante sapientia), and in hell in His condemning power (judicante potentia)’, concludes Augustine[47].
The opinion that through the death of Christ on the cross the righteous receive that promised incorruption which people are to achieve after the end of time is also refuted by Augustine. If it were so, then St. Peter would not have said about David that ‘his sepulchre is with us to this day’[48] unless David was still undisturbed in the sepulchre[49].
As for the teaching on Christ’s preaching in hell contained in 1 Pet. 3:18¾21, Augustine rejects its traditional and commonly accepted understanding. First, he is not certain that it implies those who really departed his life, but rather those that are spiritually dead and did not believe in Christ. Secondly, he offers the quite novel idea that after Christ ascended from hell His recollection did not survive there. Therefore, the descent in Hades was a ‘one-time’ event relevant only to those who were in hell at that time. Thirdly and finally, Augustine rejects altogether any possibility for those who did not believe in Christ while on earth to come to believe in him while in hell, calling this idea ‘absurd’[50].
Augustine is not inclined to see in 1 Pet. 3:18¾21 an indication of the descent into Hades. He believes that this text should be understood allegorically, i. e., ‘the spirits’ mentioned by Peter are essentially those who are clothed in body and imprisoned in ignorance. Christ did not come down to earth in the flesh in the days of Noah, but often came down to people in the spirit either to rebuke those who did not believe or to justify those who did. What happened in the days of Noah is a type of what happens today, and the flood was the precursor of baptism. Those who believe in our days are like whose who believed in the days of Noah: they are saved through baptism, just as Noah was saved through water. Those who do not believe are like those who did not believe in the days of Noah: the flood is the prototype of their destruciton[51].
Augustine is the first Latin author who gave so much close attention to the theme of the descent of Christ into Hades. However, he did not clarify the question of who was the object of Christ’s preaching in hell and whom Christ delivered from it. Augustine expressed many doubts about particular interpretations of 1 Pet. 3:18¾21, but did not offer any convincing interpretation of his own. Nevertheless, the ideas expressed by him were developed by Western Church authors of the later period. Thomas Aquinas, in particular, makes continuous references to Augustine in his chapter devoted to the descent of Christ into Hades[52]. During the Reformation, many Augustinian ideas were criticised by theologians of the Protestant tradition. The teaching that the recollection of Christ did not survive in hell after His ascent was rejected by Lutheran theologians who insisted on the reverse[53].
Thomas Aquinas was the 13th-century theologian who brought to completion the Latin teaching on the descent of Christ into Hades. In his ‘Summa Theologiae’, he divides hell into four parts: 1) purgatory (purgatorium), where sinners experience penal suffering; 2) the hell of the patriarchs (infernum patrum), the abode of the Old Testament righteous before the coming of Christ; 3) the hell of unbaptized children (infernum puerorum); and 4) the hell of the damned (infernum damnatorum). In response to the question, exactly which was the hell that Christ descended to, Thomas Aquinas admits two possibilities: Christ descended either into all parts of hell or only to that in which the righteous were imprisoned, whom He was to deliver. In the first case, ‘for going down into the hell of the lost He wrought this effect, that by descending thither He put them to shame for their unbelief and wickedness: but to them who were detained in Purgatory He gave hope of attaining to glory: while upon the holy Fathers detained in hell solely on account of original sin (pro solo peccato originali detinebantur in inferno), He shed the light of glory everlasting’. In the second case, the soul of Christ ‘descended only to the place where the righteous were detained’ (descendit solum ad locum inferni in quo justi detinebantur), but the action of His presence there was felt in some way in the other parts of hell as well[54].
According to Thomistic teaching, Christ delivered from hell not only the Old Testament righteous who were imprisoned in hell because of original sin[55]. As far as sinners are concerned, those who were detained in ‘the hell of the lost’, since they either had no faith or had faith but no conformity with the virtue of the suffering Christ, could not be cleansed from their sins, and Christ’s descent brought them no deliverance from the pains of hell[56]. Nor were children who had died in the state of original sin delivered from hell, since only ‘by baptism children are delivered from original sin and from hell, but not by Christ’s descent into hell’, since baptism can be received only in earthly life, not after death[57]. Finally, Christ did not deliver those who were in purgatory, for their suffering was caused by personal defects (defectus personali), whereas ‘exclusion from glory’ was a common defect (defectus generalis) of all human nature after the fall. The descent of Christ into Hades recovered the glory of God to those who were excluded from it by virtue of the common defect of nature, but did not deliver anybody from the pains of purgatory caused by people’s personal defects[58].
This scholastic understanding of the descent of Christ into Hades, formulated by Thomas Aquinas, was the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church for many centuries. During the Reformation, this understanding was severely criticised by Protestant theologians. Many of today’s Catholic theologians are also very sceptical about this teaching[59]. There is no need to discuss how far the teaching of Thomas Aquinas on the descent of Christ into Hades is from that of Eastern Christianity. No Father of the Eastern Church ever permitted himself to clarify who was left in hell after Christ descent; no Eastern Father ever spoke of unbaptized infants left in hell[60]. The division of hell into four parts and the teaching on purgatory are alien to Eastern patristics. Finally, this very scholastic approach whereby the most mysterious events of history are subjected to detailed analysis and rational interpretation is unacceptable for Eastern Christian theology. For the theologians, poets and mystics of the Eastern Church, the descent of Christ into Hades remained first of all a mystery which could be praised in hymns, and about which various assumptions could be made, but of which nothing definite and final could be said.
The general conclusion can now be drawn from a comparative analysis of Eastern and Western understandings of the descent into Hades. In the first three centuries of the Christian Church, there was considerable similarity between the interpretation of this doctrine by theologians in East and West. However, already by the 4th—5th centuries, substantial differences can be identified. In the West, a juridical understanding of the doctrine prevailed. It gave increasingly more weight to notions of predestination (Christ delivered from hell those who were predestined for salvation from the beginning) and original sin (salvation given by Christ was deliverance from the general original sin, not from the ‘personal’ sins of individuals). The range of those to whom the saving action of the descent into hell is extended becomes ever more narrow. First, it excludes sinners doomed to eternal torment, then those in purgatory and finally unbaptized infants. This kind of legalism was alien to the Orthodox East, where the descent into Hades continued to be perceived in the spirit in which it is expressed in the liturgical texts of Great Friday and Easter, i.e. as an event significant not only for all people, but also for the entire cosmos, for all created life.
At the same time, both Eastern and Western traditions suggest that Christ delivered from hell the Old Testament righteous led by Adam. Yet if in the West this is perceived restrictively (Christ delivered only the Old Testament righteous, while leaving all the rest in hell to eternal torment), in the East, Adam is viewed as a symbol of the entire human race leading humanity redeemed by Christ (those who followed Christ were first the Old Testament righteous led by Adam and then the rest who responded to the preaching of Christ in hell).
3. The doctrine of the descent into Hades and theodicy
Let us move now to the theological significance of the doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades. This doctrine, in our view, has great significance for theodicy, the justification of God in the face of the accusing human mind[61]. Why does God permit suffering and evil? Why does He condemn people to the pains of hell? To what extent is God responsible for what happens on earth? Why in the Bible does God appear as a cruel and unmerciful Judge ‘repenting’ of His actions and punishing people for mistakes which He knew beforehand and which He could have prevented? These and other similar questions have been posed throughout history.
First of all, we should say that the doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades raises the veil over the mystery that envelops the relationship between God and the devil. The history of this relationship goes back to the time of the creation. According to common church teaching, the devil was created as a good and perfect creature, but he fell away from God because of his pride. The drama of the personal relationship between God and the devil did not end here. Since his falling away, the devil began to oppose divine goodness and love by every means and to do all he can to prevent the salvation of people. The devil is not all-powerful, however; his powers are restricted by God and he can operate only within the limits permitted by God. This last affirmation is confirmed by the opening lines of the Book of Job where the devil appears as a creature having, first, personal relations with God and, secondly, being fully subjected to God.
By creating human beings and putting them in a situation where they choose between good and evil, God assumed the responsibility for their further destiny. God did not leave man face to face with the devil, but Himself entered into the struggle for humanity’s spiritual survival. To this end, He sent prophets and teachers and then He Himself became man, suffered on the cross and died, descended into Hades and was raised from the dead in order to share human fate. By descending into Hades, Christ did not destroy the devil as a personal, living creature, but ‘abolished the power of the devil’, that is, deprived the devil of authority and power stolen by him from God. When he rebelled against God, the devil set himself the task to create his own autonomous kingdom where he would be master and where he would win back from God a space where God’s presence could be in no way felt. In Old Testament understanding, this place was sheol. After Christ, sheol became a place of divine presence.
This presence is felt by all those in paradise as a source of joy and bliss, but for those in hell it is a source of suffering. Hell, after Christ, is no longer the place where the devil reigns and people suffer, but first and foremost it is the prison for the devil himself as well as for those who voluntarily decided to stay with him and share his fate. The sting of death was abolished by Christ and the walls of hell were destroyed. But ‘death even without its sting is still powerful for us... Hell with its walls destroyed and its gates abolished is still filled with those who, having left the narrow royal path of the cross leading to paradise, follow the broad way all their lives’[62] .
Christ descended into hell not as another victim of the devil, but as Conqueror. He descended in order to ‘bind up the powerful’ and to ‘plunder his vessels’. According to patristic teaching, the devil did not recognize in Christ the incarnate God. He took Him for an ordinary man and, rising to the ‘bait’ of the flesh, swallowed the ‘hook’ of the Deity (the image used by Gregory of Nyssa). However, the presence of Christ in hell constituted the poison which began gradually to ruin hell from within (this image was used by the 4th-century Syrian author Jacob Aphrahat[63]). The final destruction of hell and the ultimate victory over the devil will happen during the Second Coming of Christ when ‘the last enemy to be destroyed is death’, when everything will be subjected to Christ and God will become ‘all in all’[64] . The doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades is important for an understanding of God’s action in human history, as reflected in the Old Testament. The biblical account of the flood, which destroyed all humanity, is a stumbling block for many who wish to believe in a merciful God but cannot reconcile themselves with a God who ‘repents’ of his own deed. The teaching on the descent into hell, as set forth in 1 Pet. 3:18—21, however, brings an entirely new perspective into our understanding of the mystery of salvation. It turns out that the death sentence passed by God to interrupt human life does not mean that human beings are deprived of hope for salvation, because, failing to turn to God during their lifetime, people could turn to Him in the afterlife having heard Christ’s preaching in the prison of hell. While committing those He created to death, God did not destroy them, but merely transferred them to a different state in which they could hear the preaching of Christ, to believe and to follow Him. 4. The soteriological implications of the doctrine of the descent into Hades
The doctrine on the descent of Christ into Hades is an integral part of Orthodox soteriology. Its soteriological implications, however, depend in many ways on the way in which we understanding the preaching of Christ in hell and its salutory impact on people[65]. If the preaching was addressed only to the Old Testament righteous, then the soteriological implications of the doctrine is minimal, but if it was addressed to all those in hell, its significance is considerably increased. It seems that we have enough grounds to argue, following the Greek Orthodox theologian, I. Karmiris, that ‘according to the teaching of almost all the Eastern Fathers, the preaching of the Saviour was extended to all without exception and salvation was offered to all the souls who passed away from the beginning of time, whether Jews or Greek, righteous or unrighteous’[66]. At the same time, the preaching of Christ in hell was good and joyful news of deliverance and salvation, not only for the righteous but also the unrighteous. It was not the preaching ‘to condemn for unbelief and wickedness’, as it seemed to Thomas Aquinas. The entire text of the First Letter of St. Peter relating to the preaching of Christ in hell speaks against its understanding in terms of accusation and damnation’[67].
Whether all or only some responded to the call of Christ and were delivered from hell remains an open question. If we accept the point of view of those Western church writers who maintain that Christ delivered from hell only the Old Testament righteous, then Christ’s salutory action is reduced merely to the restoration of justice. The Old Testament righteous suffered in hell undeservedly, not for their personal sins but because of the general sinfulness of human nature and because their deliverance from hell was a ‘duty’ which God was obliged to undertake with respect to them. But such an act could scarcely constitute a miracle that made the angels tremble or one to be praised in church hymns.
Unlike the West, Christian consciousness in the East admits the opportunity to be saved not only for those who believe during their lifetime, but also those who were not given to believe yet pleased God with their good works. The idea that salvation was not only for those who in life confessed the right faith, not only for the Old Testament righteous, but also those heathens who distinguished themselves by a lofty morality, is developed in one of the hymns of John Damascene:
Some say that [Christ delivered from hell] only those who believed[68],
such as fathers and prophets,
judges and together with them kings, local rulers
and some others from the Hebrew people,
not numerous and known to all.
But we shall reply to those who think so
that there is nothing undeserved,
nothing miraculous and nothing strange
in that Christ should save those who believed[69],
for He remains only the fair Judge,
and every one who believes in Him will not perish.
So they all ought to have been saved
and delivered from the bonds of hell
by the descent of God and Master —
that same happened by His Disposition.
Whereas those who were saved only through [God’s] love of men
were, as I think, all those
who had the purest life
and did all kinds of good works,
living in modesty, temperance and virtue,
but the pure and divine faith
they did not conceive because they were not instructed in it
and remained altogether unlearnt.
They were those whom the Steward and Master of all
drew, captured in the divine nets
and persuaded to believe in Him,
illuminating them with the divine rays
and showing them the true light[70] .
This approach renders the descent into Hades exceptional in its soteriological implications. According to Damascene, those who were not taught the true faith during their lifetime can come to believe when in hell. By their good works, abstention and chastity they prepared themselves for the encounter with Christ. These are that same people about whom St. Paul says that having no law they ‘do by nature things contained in the law’, for ‘the work of the law is written in their hearts’[71]. Those who live by the law of natural morality but do not share the true faith can hope by virtue of their righteousness that in a face-to-face encounter with God they will recognize in Him the One they ‘ignorantly worshipped’[72] . Has this anything to do with those who died outside Christian faith after the descent of Christ into Hades? No, if we accept the Western teaching that the descent into Hades was a ‘one-time’ event and that the recollection of Christ did not survive in hell. Yes, if we proceed from the assumption that after Christ hell was no longer like the Old Testament sheol, but it became a place of the divine presence. In addition, as Archpriest Serge Bulgakov writes, ‘all events in the life of Christ, which happen in time, have timeless, abiding significance. Therefore,
the so-called ‘preaching in hell’, which is the faith of the Church, is a revelation of Christ to those who in their earthly life could not see or know Christ. There are no grounds for limiting this event… to the Old Testament saints alone, as Catholic theology does. Rather, the power of this preaching should be extended to all time for those who during their life on earth did not and could not know Christ but meet Him in the afterlife[73].
Is it possible at all that the fate of a person can be changed after his death? Is death that border beyond which some unchangeable static existence comes? Does the development of the human person not stop after death?
On the one hand, it is impossible for one to actively repent in hell; it is impossible to rectify the evil deeds one committed by appropriate good works. However, it may be possible for one to repent through a ‘change of heart’, a review of one’s values. One of the testimonies to this is the rich man of the Gospel we have already mentioned. He realized the gravity of his situation as soon as found himself in hell. Indeed, if in his lifetime he was focused on earthly pursuits and forgot God, once in hell he realized that his only hope for salvation was God[76] . Besides, according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, the fate of a person after death can be changed through the prayer of the Church. Thus, existence after death has its own dynamics. On the basis of what has been said above, we may say that after death the development of the human person does not cease, for existence after death is not a transfer from a dynamic into a static being, but rather continuation on a new level of that road which a person followed in his lifetime. * * * As the last stage in the divine descent (katabasis) and self-emptying (kenosis), the descent of Christ into Hades became at the same time the starting point of the ascent of humanity towards deification (theosis)[77]. Since this descent the path to paradise is opened for both the living and the dead, which was followed by those whom Christ delivered from hell. The destination point for all humanity and every individual is the fullness of deification in which God becomes ‘all in all’[78] . It is for this deification that God first created man and then, when ‘the time had fully come’ (Gal. 4:4), Himself became man, suffered, died, descended to Hades and was raised from the dead. We do not know if every one followed Christ when He rose from hell. Nor do we know if every one will follow Him to the eschatological Heavenly Kingdom when He will become ‘all in all’. But we do know that since the descent of Christ into Hades the way to resurrection has been opened for ‘all flesh’, salvation has been granted to every human being, and the gates of paradise have been opened for all those who wish to enter through them. This is the faith of the Early Church inherited from the first generation of Christians and cherished by Orthodox Tradition. This is the never-extinguished hope of all those who believe in Christ Who once and for all conquered death, destroyed hell and granted resurrection to the entire human race.
Translated from the Russian
A lecture delivered at St Mary’s Cathedral, Minneapolis, USA, on 5 November 2002
The Byzantine and old Russian icons of the Resurrection of Christ never depict the resurrection itself, i.e., Christ coming out of the grave. They rather depict ‘the descent of Christ into Hades’, or to be more precise, the rising of Christ out of hell. Christ, sometimes with a cross in his hand, is represented as raising Adam, Eve and other personages of the biblical history from hell. Under the Saviour’s feet is the black abyss of the nether world; against its background are castles, locks and debris of the gates which once barred the way of the dead to resurrection. Though other motifs have also been used in creating the image of the Resurrection of Christ in the last several centuries[1], the above-described iconographic type is considered to be canonical, as it reflects the traditional teaching on the descent of Christ to hell, His victory over death, His raising of the dead and delivering them from hell where they were imprisoned before His Resurrection. It is to this teaching as an integral part of the dogmatic and liturgical tradition of the Christian Church that this paper is devoted.
The descent of Christ into Hades is one of the most mysterious, enigmatic and inexplicable events in New Testament history. In today’s Christian world, this event is understood differently. Liberal Western theology rejects altogether any possibility for speaking of the descent of Christ into Hades literally, arguing that the scriptural texts on this theme should be understood metaphorically. The traditional Catholic doctrine insists that after His death on the cross Christ descended to hell only to deliver the Old Testament righteous from it. A similar understanding is quite widespread among Orthodox Christians.
On the other hand, the New Testament speaks of the preaching of Christ in hell as addressed to the unrepentant sinners: ‘For Christ also died for sins once for all, 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; in which he went and preached to the spirit in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited’[2]. However, many Church Fathers and liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church repeatedly underline that having descended to hell, Christ opened the way to salvation for all people, not only the Old Testament righteous. The descent of Christ into Hades is perceived as an event of cosmic significance involving all people without exception. They also speak about the victory of Christ over death, the full devastation of hell and that after the descent of Christ into Hades there was nobody left there except for the devil and demons.
How can these two points of view be reconciled? What was the original faith of the Church? What do early Christian sources tell us about the descent into Hades? And what is the soteriological significance of the descent of Christ into Hades?
1. Eastern theological tradition
We come across references to the descent of Christ into Hades and His raising the dead in the works of Eastern Christian authors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, such as Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Hermas, Justin, Melito of Sardes, Hyppolitus of Rome, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. In the 4th century, the descent to hell was discussed by Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, as well as such Syrian authors as Jacob Aphrahat and Ephrem the Syrian. Noteworthy among later authors who wrote on this theme are Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene.
Let us look at the most vivid interpretations given to our theme in Eastern Christian theology.
The teaching on the descent of Christ into Hades was expounded quite fully by Clement of Alexandria in his ‘Stromateis’[3]. He argued that Christ preached in hell not only to the Old Testament righteous, but also to the Gentiles who lived outside the true faith. Commenting on 1 Pet. ¾21, Clement expresses the conviction that the preaching of Christ was addressed to all those in hell who were able to believe in Christ:
Do not [the Scriptures] show that the Lord preached the Gospel to those that perished in the flood, or rather had been chained, and to those kept ‘in ward and guard’?… And, as I think, the Saviour also exerts His might because it is His work to save; which accordingly He also did by drawing to salvation those who became willing, by the preaching [of the Gospel], to believe on Him, wherever they were. If, then, the Lord descended to Hades for no other end but to preach the Gospel, as He did descend, it was either to preach the Gospel to all or to the Hebrews only. If, accordingly, to all, then all who believe shall be saved[4], although they may be of the Gentiles, on making their profession there…[5]
Clement emphasises that there are righteous people among both those who have the true faith and the Gentiles and that it is possible to turn to God for those who did not believe in Him while living. It is their virtuous life that made them capable of accepting the preaching of Christ and the apostles in hell:
...A righteous man, then, differs not, as righteous, from another righteous man, whether he be of the Law [Jew] or a Greek. For God is not only Lord of the Jews, but of all men[6]... So I think it is demonstrated that God, being good, and the Lord powerful, save with a righteousness and equality which extend to all that turn to Him, whether here or elsewhere[7].
According to Clement, righteousness is of value not only for those who live in true faith, but also for those who are outside faith. It is evident from his words that Christ preached in hell to all, but saved only those who came to believe in Him. Anyway, Clement assumes that this preaching proved salutory not for all to whom Christ preached in hell: ‘Did not the same dispensation obtain in Hades, so that even there, all the souls, on hearing the proclamation, might either exhibit repentance, or confess that their punishment was just, because they believed not?’[8] According to Clement, there were those in hell who heard the preaching of Christ but did not believe in Him and did not follow Him. In Clement’s works we find the notion that punishments sent from God to sinners are aimed at their reformation, not at retribution, and that the souls released from their corporal shells are better able to understand the meaning of punishment[9]. In these words lies the nucleus of the teaching on the purifying and saving nature of the torment of hell developed by some later authors[10] . We will come back to the question of whether the pains of hell can be salutory when considering the teaching of Maximus the Confessor on the descent of Christ into Hades. An exhaustive discussion on this question, though, is beyond the scope of this paper. Gregory of Nyssa entwines the theme of the descent in hell with the theory of ‘divine deception’. On the latter he builds his teaching on the Redemption. According to this theory, Christ, being God incarnate, deliberately concealed His divine nature from the devil so that he, mistaking Him for an ordinary man, would not be terrified at the sight of an overwhelming power approaching him. When Christ descended in hell, the devil supposed Him to be a human being, but this was a divine ‘hook’ disguised under a human ‘bait’ that the devil swallowed[11] . By admitting God incarnate into his domain, the devil himself signed his own death warrant: incapable of enduring the divine presence, he was overcome and defeated, and hell was destroyed. This is precisely the idea that Gregory of Nyssa developed in one of his Easter sermons on ‘The Three-Day Period of the Resurrection of Christ’. Judging by its contents, this homily was intended for Holy Saturday[12], and in it Gregory poses the question of why Christ spent three days ‘in the heart of the earth’[13]. This period was necessary and sufficient, he argues, for Christ to ‘expose the foolishness’ (moranai) of the devil[14], i.e, to outwit, ridicule and deceive him[15]. How did Christ manage to ‘outwit’ the devil? Gregory gives the following reply to this question:
As the ruler of darkness could not approach the presence of the Light unimpeded, had he not seen in Him something of flesh, then, as soon as he saw the God-bearing flesh and saw the miracle performed through it by the Deity, he hoped that if he came to take hold of the flesh through death, then he would take hold of all the power contained in it. Therefore, having swallowed the bait of the flesh, he was pierced by the hook of the Deity and thus the dragon was transfixed by the hook.[16] A very original approach to the theme of the descent to Hades is found in a book entitled ‘Spiritual Homilies’ which has survived under the name of Macarius of Egypt. There, the liberation of Adam by Christ, Who descended into Hades, is seen as the prototype of the mystical resurrection which the soul experiences in its encounter with the Lord:
When you hear that the Lord in the old days delivered souls from hell and prison and that He descended into hell and performed a glorious deed, do not think that all these events are far from your soul… So the Lord comes into the souls that seek Him, into the depth of the heart’s hell, and there commands death, saying: ‘Release the imprisoned souls which have sought Me and which you hold by force’. And He shatters the heavy stones weighing on the soul, opens graves, raises the true dead from death, brings the imprisoned soul from the dark prison… Is it difficult for God to enter death and, even more, into the depth of the heart and to call out dead Adam from there?… If the sun, being created, passes everywhere through windows and doors, even to the caves of lions and the holes of creeping creatures, and comes out without any harm, the more so does God and the Lord of everything enter caves and abodes in which death has settled, and also souls, and, having released Adam from there, [remains] unfettered by death. Similarly, rain coming down from the sky reaches the nethermost parts of the earth, moistens and renews the roots there and gives birth to new shoots[17].
This text is significant first of all in that the author regards the descent of Christ into Hades as a commonly accepted and undisputed dogma, which he uses as a solid foundation on which to build his mystical and typological construction. The use of the images of the sun rising over both the evil and the good, and rain sent upon both the righteous and the unrighteous[18], indicates that the author of the ‘Homilies’ perceives the descent into Hades as a reality affecting not only the Old Testament righteous, but also entire humanity. Moreover, it affects every person and inner processes which take place in the human soul. For the author of the ‘Homilies’, the doctrine of the descent into Hades is not an abstract truth, nor is it an event which occurred in the days of old and which affected only those who lived at that time, but it is an event which has not lost its relevance. It is not just one of the fundamental Christian doctrines, not just a subject of faith and confession, but a mystery associated with the mystical life of the Christian, a mystery which one should experience in the depth of one’s heart.
The doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades occupies an essential place in the works of Cyril of Alexandria. In his ‘Paschal Homilies’, he repeatedly mentions that as a consequence of the descent of Christ into Hades, the devil was left all alone, while hell was devastated: ‘For having destroyed hell and opened the impassable gates for the departed spirits, He left the devil there abandoned and lonely’[19].
In his ‘Festive Letters’, Cyril of Alexandria elaborates on the theme of the preaching of Christ in Hades, popular in the Alexandrian tradition since Clement. He views the preaching of Christ in hell as the accomplishment of the ‘history of salvation’, which began with the Incarnation:
…He showed the way to salvation not only to us, but also to the spirits in hell; having descended, He preached to those once disobedient, as Peter says[20]. For it did not befit for love of man to be partial, but the manifestation of [this] gift should have been extended to all nature… Having preached to the spirits in hell and having said ‘go forth’ to the prisoners, and ‘show yourselves’[21] to those in prison on the third day, He resurrected His temple and again opens up to our nature the ascent to heaven, bringing Himself to the Father as the beginning of humanity, pledging to those on earth the grace of communion of the Spirit[22].
As we can see, Cyril emphasises the universality of the salvation given by Christ to humanity, perceiving the descent of Christ into Hades as salvific for the entire human race. He is not inclined to limit salvation to a particular part of humanity, such as the Old Testament righteous. Salvation is likened to rain sent by God on both the just and the unjust[23]. Putting emphasis on the universality of the saving feat of Christ, Cyril follows in the steps of other Alexandrian theologians, beginning with Clement, Origen, and Athanasius the Great[24]. The descent of Christ into Hades, according to Cyril’s teaching, signified victory over that which previously appeared unconquerable and ensured the salvation of all humanity:
Death unwilling to be defeated is defeated; corruption is transformed; unconquerable passion is destroyed. While hell, diseased with excessive insatiability and never satisfied with the dead, is taught, even if against its will, that which it could not learn previously. For it not only ceases to claim those who are still to fall [in the future], but also lets free those already captured, being subjected to splendid devastation by the power of our Saviour... Having preached to the spirits in hell, once disobedient, He came out as conqueror by resurrecting His temple like a beginning of our hope and by showing to [our] nature the manner of the raising from the dead, and giving us along with it other blessings as well[25].
Clearly, Cyril perceived the victory of Christ over hell and death as complete and definitive. According to Cyril, hell loses authority both over those who were in its power and those who are to become its prey in the future. Thus, the descent into Hades, a single and unique action, is perceived as a timeless event. The raised body of Christ becomes the guarantee of universal salvation, the beginning of way leading human nature to ultimate deification. An elaborate teaching of the descent of Christ into Hades is found in Maximus the Confessor. In his analysis, Maximus takes as a starting point the words of St. Peter: ‘For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit’[26]. In Maximus’s view, St. Peter does not speak about the Old Testament righteous, but about those sinners who, back in their lifetime, were punished for their evil deeds:
Some say that Scriptures call ‘dead’ those who died before the coming of Christ, for instance, those who were at the time of the flood, at Babel, in Sodom, in Egypt, as well as others who in various times and in various ways received various punishments and the terrible misfortune of divine damnation. These people were punished not so much for their ignorance of God as for the offences they imposed on one another. It was to them, according to [St Peter] that the great message of salvation was preached when they were already damned as men in the flesh, that is, when they received, through life in the flesh, punishment for crimes against one another, so that they could live according to God by the spirit, that is, being in hell, they accepted the preaching of the knowledge of God, believing in the Saviour who descended into hell to save the dead. So, in order to understand [this] passage in [Holy Scriptures] let us take it in this way: the dead, damned in the human flesh, were preached to precisely for the purpose that they may live according to God by the spirit[27].
Thus, according to Maximus’s teaching, punishments suffered by sinners ‘in the human flesh’ were necessary so that they may live ‘according to God by the spirit’. Therefore, these punishments, whether troubles and misfortunes in their lifetime or pains in hell, had pedagogical and reforming significance. Moreover, Maximus stresses that in damning them, God used not so much a religious as a moral criterion, for people were punished ‘not so much for their ignorance of God as for the offences they imposed on one another’. In other words, the religious or ideological convictions of a particular person were not decisive, but his actions with regard to his neighbours. In John Damascene we find lines which sum up the development of the theme of the descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern patristic writings of the 2nd¾8th centuries:
The soul [of Christ] when it is deified descended into Hades, in order that, just as the Sun of Righteousness rose for those upon the earth, so likewise He might bring light[28] to those who sit under the earth in darkness and the shadow of death: in order that just as he brought the message of peace to those upon the earth, and of release to the prisoners, and of sight to the blind[29], and became to those who believed the Author of everlasting salvation and to those who did not believe, a denunciation of their unbelief, so He might become the same to those in Hades: That every knee should bow to Him, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under the earth[30]. And thus after He had freed those who has been bound for ages, straightway He rose again from the dead, showing us the way of resurrection[31].
According to John Damascene, Christ preached to all those who were in hell, but His preaching did not prove salutary for all, as not all were capable of responding to it. For some it could become only ‘a denunciation of their disbelief’, not the cause of salvation. In this judgement, Damascene actually repeats the teaching on salvation articulated not long before him by Maximus the Confessor. According to Maximus, human history will be accomplished when all without exception will unite with God and God will become ‘all in all’[32]. For some, however, this unity will mean eternal bliss, while for others it will become the source of suffering and torment, as each will be united with God ‘according to the quality of his disposition’ towards God[33]. In other words, all will be united with God, but each will have his own, subjective, feeling of this unity, according to the measure of the closeness to God he has achieved. Along a similar line, John Damascene understands also the teaching on the descent to Hades: Christ opens the way to paradise to all and calls all to salvation, but the response to Christ’s call may lie in either consent to follow Him or voluntary rejection of salvation. Ultimately it depends on a person, on his free choice. God does not save anybody by force, but calls everybody to salvation: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him’[34]. God knocks at the door of the human heart rather than breaks into it.
In the history of Christianity an idea has repeatedly arisen that God predestines some people for salvation and others to perdition. This idea, based as it is on the literary understanding of the words of St. Paul about predestination, calling and justification[35], became the corner-stone of the theological system of the Reformation, preached with particular consistency by John Calvin[36]. Eleven centuries before Calvin, the Eastern Christian tradition in the person of John Chrysostom expressed its view of predestination and calling. ‘Why are not all saved?’ Chrysostom asks. ‘Because… not only the call [of God] but also the will of those called is the cause of their salvation. This call is not coercive or forcible. Every one was called, but not all followed the call’[37]. Later Fathers, including Maximus and John Damascene, spoke in the same spirit. According to their teaching, it is not God who saves some while ruining others, but some people follow the call of God to salvation while others do not. It is not God who leads some from hell while leaving others behind, but some people wish while others do not wish to believe in Him.
The teaching of the Eastern Church Fathers on the descent of Christ into Hades can be summed up in the following points:
1) the doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades was commonly accepted and indisputable;
2) the descent into Hades was perceived as an event of universal significance, though some authors limited the range of those saved by Christ to a particular category of the dead;
3) the descent of Christ into Hades and His resurrection were viewed as the accomplishment of the ‘economy’ of Christ the Saviour, as the crown and outcome of the feat He performed for the salvation of people;
4) the teaching on the victory of Christ over the devil, hell and death was finally articulated and asserted;
5) the theme of the descent into Hades began to be viewed in its mystical dimension, as the prototype of the resurrection of the human soul.
2. Western theological tradition To what degree did the approach to this theme of the Fathers and Doctors of the Western Church differ from that of the Eastern Fathers? In order to answer this question, let us look at the works of the two most significant theologians of the Christian West, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
The Augustinian teaching on the descent of Christ into Hades is expounded in the fullest way in one of his letters addressed to Evodius. This letter contains a comprehensive interpretation of 1 Pet. ¾21. It follows from Evodius’ questions that the teaching on the evacuation of all in hell and the complete devastation of hell by the risen Christ was widespread in his time. Augustine begins with the question of whether Christ preached only to those who perished in the days of Noah or to all the imprisoned. In answering it, Augustine begins by refuting the opinion that Christ descended to Hades in the flesh[38] and argues that this teaching contradicts scriptural testimony[39].
Augustine continues by setting forth the view that Christ led from hell all those who were there, as, indeed, among them were ‘some who are intimately known to us by their literary labours, whose eloquence and talent we admire, ¾ not only the poets and orators who in many parts of their writings have held up to contempt and ridicule these same false gods of the nations, and have even occasionally confessed the one true God…, but also those who have uttered the same, not in poetry or rhetoric, but as philosophers’[40]. The notion of the salvation of heathen poets, orators and philosophers was quite popular. In Eastern patristic tradition it was most vividly expressed by Clement of Alexandria. According to Augustine, however, any of the positive qualities of the ancient poets, orators and philosophers originated not from ‘sober and authentic devotion, but pride, vanity and [the desire] of people’s praise’. Therefore they ‘did not bring any fruit’. Thus, the idea that pagan poets, orators and philosophers could be saved, though not refuted by Augustine, still is not fully approved, since ‘human judgement’ differs from ‘the justice of the Creator’[41].
Augustine neither rejects nor accepts unconditionally the opinion concerning the salvation of all those in hell. Though very careful in his judgement, it is clear that the possibility of salvation for all in hell is blocked in his perception by his own teaching on predestination[42], as well as by his understanding of divine mercy and justice:
For the words of Scripture, that ‘the pains of hell were loosed’[43] by the death of Christ, do not establish this, seeing that this statement may be understood as referring to Himself, and meaning that he so far loosed (that is, made ineffectual) the pains of hell that He Himself was not held by them, especially since it is added that it was ‘impossible for Him to be holden of them’[44]. Or if any one [objecting to this interpretation] asks why He chose to descend into hell, where those pains were which could not possibly hold Him… the words that ‘the pains were loosed’ may be understood as referring not to the case of all, but only some whom He judged worthy of that deliverance; so that neither He supposed to have descended thither in vain, without the purpose of bringing benefit to any of those who were there held in prison, nor is it a necessary inference that divine mercy and justice granted to some must be supposed to have been granted to all[45].
While Augustine also considers the traditional teaching that Christ delivered from hell the forefather Adam, as well as Abel, Seth, Noah and his family, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob ‘and the other patriarchs and prophets’, he does not agree to it entirely, since he does not believe ‘Abraham’s bosom’ to be a part of hell. Those who were in the bosom of Abraham were not deprived of the gracious presence of the divinity of Christ, and therefore Christ, on the very day of His death immediately before descending to hell, promises to the wise thief that he will be in paradise with him[46]. ‘Most certainly, therefore, He was, before that time, both in paradise and the bosom of Abraham in His beatific wisdom (beatificante sapientia), and in hell in His condemning power (judicante potentia)’, concludes Augustine[47].
The opinion that through the death of Christ on the cross the righteous receive that promised incorruption which people are to achieve after the end of time is also refuted by Augustine. If it were so, then St. Peter would not have said about David that ‘his sepulchre is with us to this day’[48] unless David was still undisturbed in the sepulchre[49].
As for the teaching on Christ’s preaching in hell contained in 1 Pet. 3:18¾21, Augustine rejects its traditional and commonly accepted understanding. First, he is not certain that it implies those who really departed his life, but rather those that are spiritually dead and did not believe in Christ. Secondly, he offers the quite novel idea that after Christ ascended from hell His recollection did not survive there. Therefore, the descent in Hades was a ‘one-time’ event relevant only to those who were in hell at that time. Thirdly and finally, Augustine rejects altogether any possibility for those who did not believe in Christ while on earth to come to believe in him while in hell, calling this idea ‘absurd’[50].
Augustine is not inclined to see in 1 Pet. 3:18¾21 an indication of the descent into Hades. He believes that this text should be understood allegorically, i. e., ‘the spirits’ mentioned by Peter are essentially those who are clothed in body and imprisoned in ignorance. Christ did not come down to earth in the flesh in the days of Noah, but often came down to people in the spirit either to rebuke those who did not believe or to justify those who did. What happened in the days of Noah is a type of what happens today, and the flood was the precursor of baptism. Those who believe in our days are like whose who believed in the days of Noah: they are saved through baptism, just as Noah was saved through water. Those who do not believe are like those who did not believe in the days of Noah: the flood is the prototype of their destruciton[51].
Augustine is the first Latin author who gave so much close attention to the theme of the descent of Christ into Hades. However, he did not clarify the question of who was the object of Christ’s preaching in hell and whom Christ delivered from it. Augustine expressed many doubts about particular interpretations of 1 Pet. 3:18¾21, but did not offer any convincing interpretation of his own. Nevertheless, the ideas expressed by him were developed by Western Church authors of the later period. Thomas Aquinas, in particular, makes continuous references to Augustine in his chapter devoted to the descent of Christ into Hades[52]. During the Reformation, many Augustinian ideas were criticised by theologians of the Protestant tradition. The teaching that the recollection of Christ did not survive in hell after His ascent was rejected by Lutheran theologians who insisted on the reverse[53].
Thomas Aquinas was the 13th-century theologian who brought to completion the Latin teaching on the descent of Christ into Hades. In his ‘Summa Theologiae’, he divides hell into four parts: 1) purgatory (purgatorium), where sinners experience penal suffering; 2) the hell of the patriarchs (infernum patrum), the abode of the Old Testament righteous before the coming of Christ; 3) the hell of unbaptized children (infernum puerorum); and 4) the hell of the damned (infernum damnatorum). In response to the question, exactly which was the hell that Christ descended to, Thomas Aquinas admits two possibilities: Christ descended either into all parts of hell or only to that in which the righteous were imprisoned, whom He was to deliver. In the first case, ‘for going down into the hell of the lost He wrought this effect, that by descending thither He put them to shame for their unbelief and wickedness: but to them who were detained in Purgatory He gave hope of attaining to glory: while upon the holy Fathers detained in hell solely on account of original sin (pro solo peccato originali detinebantur in inferno), He shed the light of glory everlasting’. In the second case, the soul of Christ ‘descended only to the place where the righteous were detained’ (descendit solum ad locum inferni in quo justi detinebantur), but the action of His presence there was felt in some way in the other parts of hell as well[54].
According to Thomistic teaching, Christ delivered from hell not only the Old Testament righteous who were imprisoned in hell because of original sin[55]. As far as sinners are concerned, those who were detained in ‘the hell of the lost’, since they either had no faith or had faith but no conformity with the virtue of the suffering Christ, could not be cleansed from their sins, and Christ’s descent brought them no deliverance from the pains of hell[56]. Nor were children who had died in the state of original sin delivered from hell, since only ‘by baptism children are delivered from original sin and from hell, but not by Christ’s descent into hell’, since baptism can be received only in earthly life, not after death[57]. Finally, Christ did not deliver those who were in purgatory, for their suffering was caused by personal defects (defectus personali), whereas ‘exclusion from glory’ was a common defect (defectus generalis) of all human nature after the fall. The descent of Christ into Hades recovered the glory of God to those who were excluded from it by virtue of the common defect of nature, but did not deliver anybody from the pains of purgatory caused by people’s personal defects[58].
This scholastic understanding of the descent of Christ into Hades, formulated by Thomas Aquinas, was the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church for many centuries. During the Reformation, this understanding was severely criticised by Protestant theologians. Many of today’s Catholic theologians are also very sceptical about this teaching[59]. There is no need to discuss how far the teaching of Thomas Aquinas on the descent of Christ into Hades is from that of Eastern Christianity. No Father of the Eastern Church ever permitted himself to clarify who was left in hell after Christ descent; no Eastern Father ever spoke of unbaptized infants left in hell[60]. The division of hell into four parts and the teaching on purgatory are alien to Eastern patristics. Finally, this very scholastic approach whereby the most mysterious events of history are subjected to detailed analysis and rational interpretation is unacceptable for Eastern Christian theology. For the theologians, poets and mystics of the Eastern Church, the descent of Christ into Hades remained first of all a mystery which could be praised in hymns, and about which various assumptions could be made, but of which nothing definite and final could be said.
The general conclusion can now be drawn from a comparative analysis of Eastern and Western understandings of the descent into Hades. In the first three centuries of the Christian Church, there was considerable similarity between the interpretation of this doctrine by theologians in East and West. However, already by the 4th—5th centuries, substantial differences can be identified. In the West, a juridical understanding of the doctrine prevailed. It gave increasingly more weight to notions of predestination (Christ delivered from hell those who were predestined for salvation from the beginning) and original sin (salvation given by Christ was deliverance from the general original sin, not from the ‘personal’ sins of individuals). The range of those to whom the saving action of the descent into hell is extended becomes ever more narrow. First, it excludes sinners doomed to eternal torment, then those in purgatory and finally unbaptized infants. This kind of legalism was alien to the Orthodox East, where the descent into Hades continued to be perceived in the spirit in which it is expressed in the liturgical texts of Great Friday and Easter, i.e. as an event significant not only for all people, but also for the entire cosmos, for all created life.
At the same time, both Eastern and Western traditions suggest that Christ delivered from hell the Old Testament righteous led by Adam. Yet if in the West this is perceived restrictively (Christ delivered only the Old Testament righteous, while leaving all the rest in hell to eternal torment), in the East, Adam is viewed as a symbol of the entire human race leading humanity redeemed by Christ (those who followed Christ were first the Old Testament righteous led by Adam and then the rest who responded to the preaching of Christ in hell).
3. The doctrine of the descent into Hades and theodicy
Let us move now to the theological significance of the doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades. This doctrine, in our view, has great significance for theodicy, the justification of God in the face of the accusing human mind[61]. Why does God permit suffering and evil? Why does He condemn people to the pains of hell? To what extent is God responsible for what happens on earth? Why in the Bible does God appear as a cruel and unmerciful Judge ‘repenting’ of His actions and punishing people for mistakes which He knew beforehand and which He could have prevented? These and other similar questions have been posed throughout history.
First of all, we should say that the doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades raises the veil over the mystery that envelops the relationship between God and the devil. The history of this relationship goes back to the time of the creation. According to common church teaching, the devil was created as a good and perfect creature, but he fell away from God because of his pride. The drama of the personal relationship between God and the devil did not end here. Since his falling away, the devil began to oppose divine goodness and love by every means and to do all he can to prevent the salvation of people. The devil is not all-powerful, however; his powers are restricted by God and he can operate only within the limits permitted by God. This last affirmation is confirmed by the opening lines of the Book of Job where the devil appears as a creature having, first, personal relations with God and, secondly, being fully subjected to God.
By creating human beings and putting them in a situation where they choose between good and evil, God assumed the responsibility for their further destiny. God did not leave man face to face with the devil, but Himself entered into the struggle for humanity’s spiritual survival. To this end, He sent prophets and teachers and then He Himself became man, suffered on the cross and died, descended into Hades and was raised from the dead in order to share human fate. By descending into Hades, Christ did not destroy the devil as a personal, living creature, but ‘abolished the power of the devil’, that is, deprived the devil of authority and power stolen by him from God. When he rebelled against God, the devil set himself the task to create his own autonomous kingdom where he would be master and where he would win back from God a space where God’s presence could be in no way felt. In Old Testament understanding, this place was sheol. After Christ, sheol became a place of divine presence.
This presence is felt by all those in paradise as a source of joy and bliss, but for those in hell it is a source of suffering. Hell, after Christ, is no longer the place where the devil reigns and people suffer, but first and foremost it is the prison for the devil himself as well as for those who voluntarily decided to stay with him and share his fate. The sting of death was abolished by Christ and the walls of hell were destroyed. But ‘death even without its sting is still powerful for us... Hell with its walls destroyed and its gates abolished is still filled with those who, having left the narrow royal path of the cross leading to paradise, follow the broad way all their lives’[62] .
Christ descended into hell not as another victim of the devil, but as Conqueror. He descended in order to ‘bind up the powerful’ and to ‘plunder his vessels’. According to patristic teaching, the devil did not recognize in Christ the incarnate God. He took Him for an ordinary man and, rising to the ‘bait’ of the flesh, swallowed the ‘hook’ of the Deity (the image used by Gregory of Nyssa). However, the presence of Christ in hell constituted the poison which began gradually to ruin hell from within (this image was used by the 4th-century Syrian author Jacob Aphrahat[63]). The final destruction of hell and the ultimate victory over the devil will happen during the Second Coming of Christ when ‘the last enemy to be destroyed is death’, when everything will be subjected to Christ and God will become ‘all in all’[64] . The doctrine of the descent of Christ into Hades is important for an understanding of God’s action in human history, as reflected in the Old Testament. The biblical account of the flood, which destroyed all humanity, is a stumbling block for many who wish to believe in a merciful God but cannot reconcile themselves with a God who ‘repents’ of his own deed. The teaching on the descent into hell, as set forth in 1 Pet. 3:18—21, however, brings an entirely new perspective into our understanding of the mystery of salvation. It turns out that the death sentence passed by God to interrupt human life does not mean that human beings are deprived of hope for salvation, because, failing to turn to God during their lifetime, people could turn to Him in the afterlife having heard Christ’s preaching in the prison of hell. While committing those He created to death, God did not destroy them, but merely transferred them to a different state in which they could hear the preaching of Christ, to believe and to follow Him. 4. The soteriological implications of the doctrine of the descent into Hades
The doctrine on the descent of Christ into Hades is an integral part of Orthodox soteriology. Its soteriological implications, however, depend in many ways on the way in which we understanding the preaching of Christ in hell and its salutory impact on people[65]. If the preaching was addressed only to the Old Testament righteous, then the soteriological implications of the doctrine is minimal, but if it was addressed to all those in hell, its significance is considerably increased. It seems that we have enough grounds to argue, following the Greek Orthodox theologian, I. Karmiris, that ‘according to the teaching of almost all the Eastern Fathers, the preaching of the Saviour was extended to all without exception and salvation was offered to all the souls who passed away from the beginning of time, whether Jews or Greek, righteous or unrighteous’[66]. At the same time, the preaching of Christ in hell was good and joyful news of deliverance and salvation, not only for the righteous but also the unrighteous. It was not the preaching ‘to condemn for unbelief and wickedness’, as it seemed to Thomas Aquinas. The entire text of the First Letter of St. Peter relating to the preaching of Christ in hell speaks against its understanding in terms of accusation and damnation’[67].
Whether all or only some responded to the call of Christ and were delivered from hell remains an open question. If we accept the point of view of those Western church writers who maintain that Christ delivered from hell only the Old Testament righteous, then Christ’s salutory action is reduced merely to the restoration of justice. The Old Testament righteous suffered in hell undeservedly, not for their personal sins but because of the general sinfulness of human nature and because their deliverance from hell was a ‘duty’ which God was obliged to undertake with respect to them. But such an act could scarcely constitute a miracle that made the angels tremble or one to be praised in church hymns.
Unlike the West, Christian consciousness in the East admits the opportunity to be saved not only for those who believe during their lifetime, but also those who were not given to believe yet pleased God with their good works. The idea that salvation was not only for those who in life confessed the right faith, not only for the Old Testament righteous, but also those heathens who distinguished themselves by a lofty morality, is developed in one of the hymns of John Damascene:
Some say that [Christ delivered from hell] only those who believed[68],
such as fathers and prophets,
judges and together with them kings, local rulers
and some others from the Hebrew people,
not numerous and known to all.
But we shall reply to those who think so
that there is nothing undeserved,
nothing miraculous and nothing strange
in that Christ should save those who believed[69],
for He remains only the fair Judge,
and every one who believes in Him will not perish.
So they all ought to have been saved
and delivered from the bonds of hell
by the descent of God and Master —
that same happened by His Disposition.
Whereas those who were saved only through [God’s] love of men
were, as I think, all those
who had the purest life
and did all kinds of good works,
living in modesty, temperance and virtue,
but the pure and divine faith
they did not conceive because they were not instructed in it
and remained altogether unlearnt.
They were those whom the Steward and Master of all
drew, captured in the divine nets
and persuaded to believe in Him,
illuminating them with the divine rays
and showing them the true light[70] .
This approach renders the descent into Hades exceptional in its soteriological implications. According to Damascene, those who were not taught the true faith during their lifetime can come to believe when in hell. By their good works, abstention and chastity they prepared themselves for the encounter with Christ. These are that same people about whom St. Paul says that having no law they ‘do by nature things contained in the law’, for ‘the work of the law is written in their hearts’[71]. Those who live by the law of natural morality but do not share the true faith can hope by virtue of their righteousness that in a face-to-face encounter with God they will recognize in Him the One they ‘ignorantly worshipped’[72] . Has this anything to do with those who died outside Christian faith after the descent of Christ into Hades? No, if we accept the Western teaching that the descent into Hades was a ‘one-time’ event and that the recollection of Christ did not survive in hell. Yes, if we proceed from the assumption that after Christ hell was no longer like the Old Testament sheol, but it became a place of the divine presence. In addition, as Archpriest Serge Bulgakov writes, ‘all events in the life of Christ, which happen in time, have timeless, abiding significance. Therefore,
the so-called ‘preaching in hell’, which is the faith of the Church, is a revelation of Christ to those who in their earthly life could not see or know Christ. There are no grounds for limiting this event… to the Old Testament saints alone, as Catholic theology does. Rather, the power of this preaching should be extended to all time for those who during their life on earth did not and could not know Christ but meet Him in the afterlife[73].
According to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, all the dead, whether believers or non-believers, appear before God. Therefore, even for those who did not believe during their lifetime, there is hope that they will recognize God as their Saviour and Redeemer if their previous life on earth led them to this recognition.
The above hymn of John Damascene clearly states that the virtuous heathens were not ‘taught’ the true faith. This is a clear allusion to the words of Christ: ‘Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’[74]; and ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but that believeth not shall be damned’[75]. The damnation is extended only to those who were taught Christian faith but did not believe. But if a person was not taught, if he in his real life did not encounter the preaching of the gospel and did not have an opportunity to respond to it, can he be damned for it? We come back to the question that had disturbed such ancient authors as Clement of Alexandria. Is it possible at all that the fate of a person can be changed after his death? Is death that border beyond which some unchangeable static existence comes? Does the development of the human person not stop after death?
On the one hand, it is impossible for one to actively repent in hell; it is impossible to rectify the evil deeds one committed by appropriate good works. However, it may be possible for one to repent through a ‘change of heart’, a review of one’s values. One of the testimonies to this is the rich man of the Gospel we have already mentioned. He realized the gravity of his situation as soon as found himself in hell. Indeed, if in his lifetime he was focused on earthly pursuits and forgot God, once in hell he realized that his only hope for salvation was God[76] . Besides, according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, the fate of a person after death can be changed through the prayer of the Church. Thus, existence after death has its own dynamics. On the basis of what has been said above, we may say that after death the development of the human person does not cease, for existence after death is not a transfer from a dynamic into a static being, but rather continuation on a new level of that road which a person followed in his lifetime. * * * As the last stage in the divine descent (katabasis) and self-emptying (kenosis), the descent of Christ into Hades became at the same time the starting point of the ascent of humanity towards deification (theosis)[77]. Since this descent the path to paradise is opened for both the living and the dead, which was followed by those whom Christ delivered from hell. The destination point for all humanity and every individual is the fullness of deification in which God becomes ‘all in all’[78] . It is for this deification that God first created man and then, when ‘the time had fully come’ (Gal. 4:4), Himself became man, suffered, died, descended to Hades and was raised from the dead. We do not know if every one followed Christ when He rose from hell. Nor do we know if every one will follow Him to the eschatological Heavenly Kingdom when He will become ‘all in all’. But we do know that since the descent of Christ into Hades the way to resurrection has been opened for ‘all flesh’, salvation has been granted to every human being, and the gates of paradise have been opened for all those who wish to enter through them. This is the faith of the Early Church inherited from the first generation of Christians and cherished by Orthodox Tradition. This is the never-extinguished hope of all those who believe in Christ Who once and for all conquered death, destroyed hell and granted resurrection to the entire human race.
Translated from the Russian
[1] In particular, the image of the risen Christ coming out of the grave and holding a victory banner, borrowed from the Western tradition.
[2] 1 Pet. 3:18—21.
[3] The critical edition of ‘Stromateis’: Clemens Alexandrinus. Band II: Stromateis I—VI. Hrsg. von O. Stählin, L. Früchtel, U. Treu. Berlin—Leipzig 1960; Band III: Stromateis VII—VIII. Hrsg. von O. Stählin. GCS 17. Berlin—Leipzig, 1970. S. 3-102.
[4] That is those who came to believe while in hell.
[5] Stromateis 6, 6.
[6] Rom. 3:29; 10:12.
[7] Stromateis 6, 6.
[8] Stromateis 6, 6.
[9] Stromateis 6, 6.
[10] In the East it was developed by Gregory of Nyssa and Isaac the Syrian. In the West it gradually led to the formation of the doctrine on purgatory.
[11] The Great Catechetical Oration 23¾24.
[12] The Homily on the Three-Day Period (pp. 444¾446). The text of the sermon in: Gregoriou Nyssis hapanta ta erga. T. 10. Hellenes pateres tes ekklesias 103. Thessalonike, 1990. Sel. 444—487. Since in this edition the text is not divided into chapters, we indicate page numbers.
[13] Cf. Mt. 12:40.
[14] Lit. ‘to make a fool of somebody’ (from moros—fool)
[15] The Homily on the Three-Day Period (pp. 452¾454).
[16] The Homily on the Three-Day Period (pp. 452¾454). Cf. 1 Cor. 15:26.
[17] Spiritual Homilies 11, 11¾13.
[18] Cf. Mt. 5:45.
[19] 7th Paschal Homily 2 (PG 77, 552 A).
[20] Cf. 1 Pet. 3:19¾20.
[21] Is. 49:9.
[22] 2nd Festive Letter 8, 52¾89 (SC 372, 228¾232)
[23] Cf. Mt. 5:45. See the same comparison in ‘Spiritual Homilies’ by Macarius of Egypt.
[24] See above quotations from these authors
[25] 5th Festive Letter 1, 29¾40 (SC 732, 284).
[26] 1 Pet. 4:6.
[27] Questions-answers to Thalassius 7.
[28] Is. 9:2.
[29] Lk. 4:18¾19; Cf. Is. 61:1¾2.
[30] Phil. 2:10.
[31] The Exact Exposition of Orthodox Faith 3, 29.
[32] 1 Cor. 15:28.
[33] Maximus the Confessor, Questions-answers to Thalassius 59. More on this teaching see in J. C. Larchet, La divinisation de l’homme selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris, 1996), pp. 647¾652.
[34] Rev. 3:20.
[35] Rom. 8:29¾30.
[36] See John Calvin, Instruction in Christian Faith, V. II, Book III (‘Concerning the pre-eternal election whereby God predestined some for salvation while others for condemnation’).
[37] 16th Discourse on the Epistle to the Romans.
[38] Concerning the teaching on the descent of Christ into Hades in the flesh, see: I. N. Karmires, ‘He Christologike heterodidaskalia tou 16 aionos kai eis hadou kathodos tou Christou’, Nea Sion 30 (1935). Sel. 11—26, 65—81, 154—165. See also: S. Der Nersessian. ‘An Armenian Version of the Homilies on the Harrowing of Hell’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954), pp. 201¾224.
[39] Letter 164, II, 3 (PL 33, 709).
[40] Letter 164, II, 3 (PL 33, 710).
[41] Letter 164, II, 3 (PL 33, 710).
[42] Cf. J. A. MacCulloch, The Harrowing of Hell (Edinburgh, 1930), p. 123.
[43] Cf. Acts 2:24.
[44] That is, the pains of hell.
[45] Letter 164, II, 5 (PL 33, 710¾711).
[46] Lk. 23:43.
[47] Letter 164, III, 7¾8 (PL 33, 710¾711).
[48] Acts 2:29.
[49] Letter 164, III, 7¾8 (PL 33, 711).
[50] Letter 164, III, 10¾13 (PL 33, 713¾714). Elsewhere Augustine describes as heresy the teaching that non-believers could come to believe in hell and that Christ led everybody out of hell: See, On Heresies 79 (PL 42, 4).
[51] Letter 164, IV, 15¾16 (PL 33, 715).
[52] See below.
[53] See details in: F. Loofs. ‘Descent to Hades’, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York, 1912), vol. IV, p. 658.
[54] Summa theologiae IIIa, 52, 2 (St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae. Latin text with English translation. London —New York , 1965. Vol. 54. P. 158).
[55] Summa theologiae IIIa, 52, 5 (Summa theologiae. Vol. 54, pp. 166¾170).
[56] Summa theologiae IIIa, 52, 6 (Summa theologiae. Vol. 54, pp. 170¾1720).
[57] Summa theologiae IIIa, 52, 7 (Summa theologiae. Vol. 54, pp. 174¾176).
[58] Summa theologiae IIIa, 52, 8 (Summa theologiae. Vol. 54, pp. 176¾178).
[59] See for instance: H. U. von Balthasar et A. Grillmeier, Le mystère pascal (Paris , 1972), p. 170 (where the Thomistic understanding of the descent to Hades is described as ‘bad theology’).
[60] The teaching on the fate of unbaptized infants, contained in the work ‘Concerning Infants Who Have Died Prematurely’ by Gregory Palamas, is opposite to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas.
[61] The term ‘theodocy’ (literally ‘the justification of God’) was invented by Leibnitz in the early 18th century.
[62] Innocent, Archbishop of Cherson and Tauria, Works, vol. V (St-Petersburg—Moscow, 1870), p. 289 (Homily at Holy Saturday).
[63] Demonstration 22, 4—5 in The Homilies of Aphraates, the Persian Sage, ed. by W. Wright (London—Edinburgh, 1869), pp. 420—421.
[64] 1 Cor. 15:26—28.
[65] Cf. I. N. Karmires, He eis hadou kathodos Iesou Christou (Athenai, 1939), sel. 107.
[66] Ibid., p. 119.
[67] Bishop Gregory (Yaroshevsky), An Interpretation of the Most Difficult Passages in the First Letter of St Peter (Simferopol , 1902), p. 10.
[68] That is those who believed in their lifetime.
[69] That is those who believed during their life on earth.
[70] Concerning Those Who Died in Faith (PG 95, 257 AC).
[71] Rom. ¾15.
[72] Acts .
[73] Serge Bulgakov, Agnets Bozhiy [The Lamb of God] (Moscow , 2000), p. 394.
[74] Mt. 28:19.
[75] Mk. 16:16.
[76] Lk. 16:20—31.
[77] Cf. J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (London , s.a.), p. 233—234.
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