In our Why Catholic? discussion group, one member asked a good question. The Apostles Creed states that Jesus decended into hell…some feel that Jesus experienced hell dying on the cross. My feeling is that he went to purgatory to release all the souls to heaven. Another said that Jesus couldn’t have gone to hell because he was free from sin. I promised an answer before next week…any takers?
Yes, He did indeed “descend into Hell.”
But let’s back up a minute here and start from the beginning so that it makes sense.
First of all, due to Adam’s sin, all of humanity lost the “opportunity” to go to heaven after death. All of humanity–that’s an important point. All human beings go to hell (the theology of the afterlife has a long development from the earliest pre-history of the people of Abraham to the time of Christ). Different words have been used; Gehenna, Sheol, Hades, the Netherworld, etc. etc. Whatever it’s been called over the centuries, in contemporary English, we generally use the word “hell.”
Death, including going to hell after death, was by virtue of Adam’s sin, an unavoidable end to every single human life. The gates of Heaven were closed.
In the Incarnation, the Eternal Son become man. That is He became in every way a complete human being in all things (except that He did not commit a sin Himself).
As a human being, Christ truly died on the cross. To put that another way, He experienced a true human death, just like every other human being (though the method was not typical, and the specifics unique, it was a human death like any other). Just like any other human being, when He died, He “descended into Hell”. Remember that at this time heaven is not possible for human beings. Had He not “descended into Hell” His death would have been unlike every other human; and that would mean that His life on earth would not have been “fully human” but something “similar to human.”
This is the point when things change. Unlike other human beings, after experiencing the fullness of death, by spending time, three days (the end of Friday, all of Saturday, and the beginning of Sunday) in the netherworld (hades, sheol, hell, etc.), Christ rose out of the netherworld and returned to earth in His now-glorified and risen Body.
When He “came out” of the netherworld, He gave the opportunity for other deceased humans to come along with Him. They went to heaven.
Here, Eastern and Western theology differs somewhat. Western theology says that only those who lived righteous lives were taken into heaven. Eastern theology says that all souls, from the beginning of time, likewise left and went to heaven (given the opportunity to leave hell, no one would refuse, even those who lived the most sinful lives and rejected God had learned the error of their ways by being in hell). The catechism emphasises the Western viewpoint, although the two are not entirely incompatible because that part will remain a mystery. An Eastern Christian might ask “would Christ have refused a request of someone in Hell to take him with Him?” and a Western Christian might ask “why would God admit into heaven those who freely chose to reject heaven while they were alive?”
In short, the main point is that because He was fully human, His death resulted in a descent into Hell just as every other human being (until that time) had done. Anything else, and He would not have been fully human; the Incarnation would have been an illusion.
Hope that helps…
