Calvin wrote on this in his Institutes, Book 2 Chapter 16 paragraphs 10-12. This is the source for many Protestants believing He went to the place of the damned.
This isn’t really an issue I’ve given any thought to.
So the idea that Christ had to suffer in Hell is true, at least for Calvin, I looked up
that passage here:10. …
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Nothing had been done if Christ had only endured corporeal death. In order to interpose between us and God’s anger, and satisfy his righteous judgment, it was necessary that he should feel the weight of divine vengeance. …
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Im pretty sure this is heretical. His Passion and Death were sufficient…
Hence there is
nothing strange in its being said that he descended to hell, seeing he endured the death which is inflicted on the wicked by an angry God. … …But after explaining what Christ endured in the sight of man, the Creed appropriately adds the invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he endured before God, to teach us that not only was the body of Christ given up as the price of redemption,
but that there was a greater and more excellent price—that he bore in his soul the tortures of condemned and ruined man.
Im at a loss for words, he is basically saying the “corporeal” death was nothing compared to the tortures his soul had to face in hell.11. In this sense, Peter says that God raised up Christ, “having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible he should be holden of it,” (
Acts 2:24). He does not mention death simply,
but says that the Son of God endured the pains produced by the curse and wrath of God, the source of death. How small a matter had it been to come forth securely, and as it were in sport to undergo death. …
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This is clearly an abuse of that passage… Christ then praying in a loud voice, and with tears, is heard in that he feared,
not so as to be exempted from death, but so as not to be swallowed up of it like a sinner, though standing as our representative. And certainly no abyss can be imagined more dreadful than
to feel that you are abandoned and forsaken of God, and not heard when you invoke him, just as if he had conspired your destruction. To such a degree was Christ dejected, that in the depth of his agony he was forced to exclaim, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The view taken by some, that he here expressed the opinion of others rather than his own conviction, is most improbable; for it is evident that the expression was wrung from the anguish of his inmost soul.
We do not, however, insinuate that God was ever hostile to him or angry with him. How could he be angry with the beloved Son, with whom his soul was well pleased? or how could he have appeased the Father by his intercession for others if He were hostile to himself?
But this we say, that he bore the weight of the divine anger, that, smitten and afflicted, he experienced all the signs of an angry and avenging God. …
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What I see here is a contradiction, on one hand Calvin says God must carry out the worst torment on the soul of Jesus yet on the other hand he says God cannot be angry with Jesus. In some ways this reasoning denies the relationship between the Father and the Son and I consider it blasphemous. 12. Here some miserable creatures, who, though unlearned, are however impelled more by malice than ignorance, cry out that I am offering an atrocious insult to Christ, because it were most incongruous to hold that he feared for the safety of his soul. And then in harsher terms they urge the calumnious charge that I attribute despair to the Son of God, a feeling the very opposite of faith. First, they wickedly raise a controversy as to the fear and dread which Christ felt,
though these are openly affirmed by the Evangelists. For before the hour of his death arrived, he was troubled in spirit, and affected with grief; and at the very onset began to be exceedingly amazed. To speak of these feelings as merely assumed, is a shameful evasion. It becomes us, therefore (as Ambrose truly teaches), boldly to profess the agony of Christ, if we are not ashamed of the cross.
And certainly had not his soul shared in the punishment, he would have been a Redeemer of bodies only. …
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This is amazing, he tries to turn this around on Catholicism yet he is the one in error. Calvin seems to think every time suffering is talked about in the Bible the real suffering had to do with the torture the soul of Jesus would have to put up with. I see the last sentence as clearly teaching that the soul of Jesus went through a torture either that of hell or an equivalent (if there is such a thing).
(cont).
