Jesus descended into hell...?

[BartholomewB]

Thank you once again, @dmar198. Whoever wrote that DNB article is quite an admirer of Clement, noting that he displays “those freer ways and more speculative habits of thought which prevailed in the churches of Ireland, at that time the fountainhead of literary culture and missionary enterprise for the west of Europe … [He] seems to represent in some ways the free characteristics of Irish theology which found a lasting and vital expression in the writings of his great countryman, John Scotus, a century later.”

 

[Vico]

Jesus did not descend into Hell, where the damned are.

“In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison…” I Peter 3:19 DR

I was taught that Jesus descended into what was called Paradise, or Abraham’s Bosom, or is translated as prison in the verse above. I have also seen it translated as Hades or Limbo. It was a place where the spirits of just souls waited until they could be brought into Heaven. Despite dying with faith in God, they could not yet behold the Beatific Vision. It was called Hades because it was a place of the dead, but it was not the same as Hell, the place where the damned souls suffer forever. No damned soul can later repent and turn to God.

After Jesus had redeemed mankind by dying on the Cross, he went to this place (Abraham’s Bosom, Limbo, Hades, etc.) and brought these just souls into Heaven. His sacrifice allows us to enter Heaven after we are purified of all sin.

In the Catholic Catechism No. 633 it is called “Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek”.

 

[Cathoholic]

ROMAN CATECHISM Part I, Article V. Why He Descended into Hell

To Liberate The Just

Having explained these things, the pastor should next proceed to teach that Christ the Lord descended into hell, in order that having despoiled the demons, He might liberate from prison those holy Fathers and the other just souls, and might bring them into heaven with Himself. . . . This deliverance of the just was long before predicted by Osee in these words: O death, I will be thy death; O hell, I will be thy bite; ’ and also by the Prophet Zachary: Thou also by the blood of thy testament hast sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit, wherein is no water; and lastly, the same is expressed by the Apostle in these words:

Despoiling the principalities and powers, he hath exposed them confidently in open show, triumphing over them in himself. . . .

. . . Wherefore before His death and Resurrection heaven was closed against every child of Adam.

The souls of the just, on their departure from this life, were either borne to the bosom of Abraham; or, as is still the case with those who have something to be washed away or satisfied for, were purified in the fire of purgatory.

Bold and minor format changes mine.