Is It OK to Confess That Jesus Descended into Hell? (What if it really means “descended to the dead”?)

SI Filings
Apostles’ Creed
Creeds and Confessions
Church and Biblical History

“Thus one effect of Emerson’s book, I hope, will be for more churches to remove a needless stumbling block by changing the wording to something like “he descended to the dead” (as many churches already have). Anyone who can confess that Christ rose from the dead should be able to confess that he descended to the dead (cf. 42, 58).” - TGC

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Discussion

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Bert Perry
Wed, 11/27/19 4:45 pm

I’m no expert in Greek, but as far as I can tell, the Greek rendition of the Creed follows the wording of Ephesians 4:9, and there is a parallel there to the 1 Peter 3 passage. Worth noting as well is that the “Hell” mistranslation might be said to go all the way back to the Latin translation, which uses the word “inferos” (infernos?) to describe those lower regions. The ancients may have chosen the word from Ephesians 4:9 simply because of poetic devices as a mnemonic tool.

Should it be there? Probably hinges on 1 Peter 3:20, and who precisely the spirits in prison are, and whether the reference to Noah indicates just those who drowned in the Flood, or whether it’s all who died before Christ. One thing I can say is that just being a hard concept doesn’t automatically exclude it, because you’ve also got the concept of the Trinity—which we all affirm, but we simultaneously have trouble communicating it without using modalistic analogies.

And for that matter, how many of us….actually use the Apostles’ Creed in any form with any regularity. :^)

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.