Did Jesus go to Hell when he died?

[javid]

Did Jesus go to Hell when he died and suffered there?(in the time between Crucifixion and Resurrection)

 

[Zeno11]

Did Jesus go to Hell when he died and suffered there?(in the time between Crucifixion and Resurrection)

Funny, but my son asked me this question yesterday after Mass. It was the part of the Creed which says ‘He descended into Hell’. I wasn’t able to give him a clear answer, so I hope you get more responses! i said something along the lines of hell being Sheol or the Jewish term for where we go after death, but I also had to admit I wasn’t sure.

 

[Jguerra]

Jesus didn’t go to the place of the damned but to the abode of the souls of the just, sometimes called Abraham’s Bosom, referred to as sheol (Hebrew). Somehow we kept the Olde English translation for ‘sheol’ in the Nicene Creed.

 

[Lancer]

Did Jesus go to Hell when he died and suffered there?(in the time between Crucifixion and Resurrection)

Jguerra is right on target…here is the doctrine:

**CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SECOND EDITION
**
PART ONE
THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
SECTION TWO
THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

CHAPTER TWO
I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY SON OF GOD

ARTICLE 5
“**HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. ON THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN”
**
631 Jesus "descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens."476 The Apostles’ Creed confesses in the same article Christ’s descent into hell and his Resurrection from the dead on the third day, because in his Passover it was precisely out of the depths of death that he made life spring forth:

Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead, and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your Son who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.477

Paragraph 1. Christ Descended into Hell

633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God.480 Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”:481 "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell."482 Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.483

Pax Christi

 

[SonCatcher]

The “Hell” referred to in the Creed is “Hades” or “Sheol” (the house of the dead). It is not “Gehenna” (the fire of torment).

It is simply the place where the dead waited until the time of Christ. When Jesus died, He entered that place and opened the gates of Heaven so that those who had died in the friendship of God could finally enter His presence.

 

[po18guy]

Jesus descended to the dead in order to preach His Gospel to them. This portion of the Apostle’s Creed is based substantially on the writing of Saint Peter:

1 Peter 3:18-20
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 spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.

1 Peter 4:5-6
'but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God.

 

[Robertanthony]

In French, the Creed uses the plural form of “hell”, which is an indication that we’re not talking about the hell where damned people are in the company of Satan and the rebellious angels. Retroactively I guess we could call it Purgatory, but it’s not exactly the same. Ain’t no soul was leaving the abode of the dead before Jesus expired.