Jesus’ Preaching to those in Hades
Aaron Milavec
A selection from my book, Salvation Is From the Jews:
At first, the efficacy of Jesus’ preaching and healing mission was limited to those living persons in Galilee who had encountered him or his immediate disciples and responded to the “Good News of God.” After the death of Jesus, however, his disciples were commissioned to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). The intent here is that “whoever welcomes you, welcomes me” (Matt 10:40) and “whoever receives a prophet [one of the Twelve] in the name of a prophet [Jesus] will receive a prophet’s reward” (Matt 10:41). Thus, the death of Jesus does not lead to quenching of his prophetic voice; rather, it multiplies it. In the course of time, consequently, the “Good News of God” progressively reaches out to the whole known world.[1]
By the opening of the second century, some sectors of the Jesus movement went even further and explored ways to extend the benefits of Jesus to those who had already died. In these scenarios, Jesus’ death afforded the occasion for him to be able to offer his message to those who had died and were abiding in Hades awaiting the general resurrection of the dead on the last day. Hades was the mythical abode of the dead‑-a borrowing from Hellenistic culture—and should be understood as quite distinct from what the medievalists later identified as “hell.” The original intent of “he was not abandoned to Hades” in a sermon in Acts (2:31) was to reinforce the reality of the death of Jesus prior to his resurrection. In 1 Peter, however, one finds the phrase “Christ also suffered for sins” (3:18) being used in connection with the explanation that “he was put to death in the flesh . . . and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison” (3:18f). Those to whom he preached, however, are expressly limited to those who “did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark” (3:20). The suffering and death of Jesus thus afforded him a few days in Hades wherein he “made a proclamation” to those who drowned at the time of Noah’s flood. The implied meaning here appears to be that those who died in the flood without the benefit of a prophet’s warning were now permitted to benefit from their ability to hear and respond to the Jewish prophet Jesus.
In the mid-first century, Justin Martyr again makes reference of Jesus’ mission to those who had died. In this case, however, it is not the sinners of Noah’s generation who are recipients of the Good News but the Jews who had died prior to the coming of Jesus: “The Lord God remembered his dead people of Israel who lay in their graves, and he descended to preach to them his salvation” (Dial. 72.4).
In the early second century, Clement of Alexandria further extended the mission to the dead. In his way of thinking, Jesus preached his Good News to the righteous Jews in Hades (as just noted), and, the Apostles, following their own deaths, descended into Hades where they preached to the pagan philosophers who had lived righteous lives (Strom. VI, 6:45, 5). Thus, 1 Peter, Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexander form something of the stepping stones whereby the efficacy of Jesus’ prophetic message was gradually understood to have reached backward in time to liberate progressively larger groups of those righteous persons who had died without the saving benefit of have heard the preaching of Jesus.
Gospel of Bartholomew
The third-century Gospel of Bartholomew offers the first instance wherein Jesus’ foray into Hades is dramatized. The Gospel portrays the “King of Glory” as menacingly descending the stairs of a thousand steps into the underworld. Hades, the god of the underworld, is depicted as trembling uncontrollably as he descends. Having arrived, Jesus “shattered the iron bars” of the gates of Hades and then grabs the god Hades himself and pummeled him “with a hundred blows and bound him with fetters that cannot be loosed” (19). Here now, the Gospel of Bartholomew dramatizes the commando rescue operation undertaken by Jesus in order to save “Adam and all the patriarchs” (9). When Jesus meets Adam, Jesus specifically says to him, “I was hung upon the cross for your sake and for the sake of your children” (22).
Jesus’ death is here understood, not as a penal substitution for the sin of Adam, but as the necessary means for gaining access to the underworld. Hades is the pagan god assigned to guard the underworld. Hades has no role in judging or punishing those who have died; rather, his role is limited to guarding the gates such that the dead cannot return to the land of the living. By destroying the gates and the gate-keeper, Jesus shows that he has the power to release not only the generation of Noah that died in the floor but also all generations going all the way back to Adam himself. The intent of this narrative appears to be that it would not be fair to have these former to be disadvantaged just because they were born too early or were born in the wrong place and did not have the opportunity to hear Jesus’ preaching. Furthermore, the narrative demonstrates that Hades has been defeated and that those who died need no longer groan in despair. This does not mean, of course, that everyone at the final judgment will be admitted into Paradise since, even on earth, only a small fraction of those who heard the message of Jesus reformed their lives and anticipated the coming Kingdom of God. The Gospel of Bartholomew does mark a high point, however, in so far as the efficacy of Jesus’ preaching and his death gets extended backward all the way to Adam. This would seemingly imply that those who do not hear the Good News during their lifetime have the opportunity, never the less, to hear it in the afterlife, either from Jesus himself or from his disciples. With this in mind, the phrase, “he descended into Hades,” was added to the Apostles’ Creed during the fourth century.[2]
What is plain to observe is that the Gospel of Bartholomew firmly centers the efficacy of Jesus upon his “presence” and upon his preaching mission—“that I might come down on earth to heal the sin of the ignorant and give to men the truth of God” (65). Jesus’ death is necessitated as the ordinary means whereby he could make his presence felt among those imprisoned in Hades. Secondly, the Gospel of Bartholomew knows nothing of inherited sin or of the Gates of Paradise being permanently closed due to the sin of Adam. In line with the other Church Fathers, it was the Gates of Hades that needed to be broken down in order for God’s plan of liberation to take place. Jesus, in the scenario, is not the atoning victim on the cross but the one who mounts a commando raid to smash the Gates of Death. Thirdly, the Gospel of Bartholomew has an interest in narrating the Fall of the Angels in such a way as to place the creation of Adam as directly leading to this fall. Once created “in the image and likeness of God,” the Creator commands that the angels worship Adam (the critical test, 51-58). Those angels who disobeyed this direct order were expelled from heaven to earth where they become the sword enemies of Adam and his race. The stage was thus being set to reread the temptation in the Garden as being the choice of obeying God or obeying the serpent. The serpent, in turn, could now be seen as one of the fallen race of angels who had been ruined by the creation of Adam and were now intent upon wrecking their revenge upon Adam and his race. At the same time, God was now being protrayed as “testing the angels” and “testing Adam” in such authoritarian and moralistic tones that “one infraction” led to instant expulsion with no option of repentance or forgiveness in the future.
The Medieval Synthesis of Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), along with other medieval theologians, attempted to consolidate and to harmonize the diverse traditions of the first five centuries. According to Aquinas, Jesus descends into the underworld, not to break the bars of those imprisoned there, but to gather the elect and to lead them into the gates of heaven that have been opened due to his atoning death on the cross. The underworld, at this point, is still being understood as the abode of all the dead, both the righteous and the sinners. Now, however, fire torments are introduced. Thus the Hades of the Gospel of Bartholomew has been transformed in the hell of the medievalist theologians. The souls of those who are damned are already in torment. The souls of those destined to be saved by Jesus experience only a temporal punishment calculated to purify them from their former sins. Fire for them is purgatorial and, in due course, later centuries will make a clear distinction in place between those in Purgatory and those in Hell. This need not concern us here. For our purposes, we need only to note that Jesus’ descent into Hades/hell has come full circle. Jesus comes not just to preach to the generation of the flood as in 1 Peter. Nor does Jesus mount a commando raid to break down the gates of Hades. Rather, Jesus’ death opens the Gates of Heaven, and his descent into hell is specifically to take those who have lived righteously and to carry them up, with him, into heaven.
In Acts, Jesus ascends alone into heaven and waits, at the right hand of God, for the time of his return. In Aquinas, all the souls of the righteous, from Adam on forward, are carried by the resurrected Jesus into heaven where they will immediately enjoy the Beatific Vision. When Jesus returns at the end times, all of these same saints will come to earth with him, their bodies will be resurrected from the grave, and both the living and the dead will be judged at the final judgment. Then the righteous will enter into eternal joy and the unrighteous into eternal torment. Purgatory will be no more.
According to the medieval tradition, the “gates of heaven” were permanently closed following the sin of Adam (Summa Theologica II-II 164, 2). This enforces the logic of Anselm pertaining to the universality of sin (both original and actual sins) and the utter inability of anyone to atone for even the least of these sins. But then salvation arrives: “The gate of heaven’s kingdom is thrown open to us through Christ’s passion” (III 49, 5). Here, again, Aquinas notes that not even the Jewish patriarchs who were sinless were able to enter into heaven: “The holy fathers were detained in hell (prior to his descent into hell) for the reason that, owing to our first parent’s sin, the approach to the life of glory was not open” (III 52, 5).
Aquinas not only presents Jesus as descending into hell to rescue the righteous; he also has Jesus achieving on the cross those infinite merits that are required for the universal atonement of all sins, from Adam’s first sin to the last sin on earth at the end of time.[3] Even relative to the Jews, Aquinas says: “The holy fathers [of Israel], by doing works of justice, merited to enter the heavenly kingdom [only] through faith in Christ’s passion . . .” (III 49, 5, ad 1). The deliverance of the Jewish patriarchs, consequently, was not due to their assimilation of the faith of Abraham or to their lifelong fidelity to God; rather, it is “through faith and charity, [that they] were united to Christ’s passion” (III 52, 7). Jesus’ death, consequently, provides a store of merits that was purported to reach backward in time and to atone for Jewish sins. This represented the absolute bankruptcy of Judaism—no one could be saved due to the faith of Abraham or the Torah of Moses. Jesus alone provided the atoning death that enabled the Father to forgive Jewish sins.
Endnotes
[1]In the Gospel of Matthew, it would appear that a world-wide preaching mission was out of the question for Jesus says to this disciples, “for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matt 10:23). Jesus often refers to himself as the “Son of Man,” but the “coming” of the Son of Man, in Matthew’s text, consistently refers to the final judgment (13:41, 16:27, 16:28, 19:28, 24:27, 24:30, 24:37-38, 24:44, 25:31, 26:64). Matt 25:31 firmly situates the Son of Man as drawing all humankind to himself for the final judgment. Matt 26:64 shows Jesus being judged by the high priests and saying to them that their judgment on him is of little significance for they will witness “the Son of Man . . . coming in his glory” to render true judgment. Thus, when Μatt 10:23 suggests that the final judgment will overtake this present generation, this means that even before the disciples of Jesus have gotten around to preaching in “all the towns of Israel,” the final judgment will have taken place. Now, for this to be inserted in Matthew’s Gospel in the year 80 C.E. means that the compiler knows that the time has elapsed and yet that the Son of Man has not come. Perhaps this is because, at this time, Jesus had limited the mission to the towns of Israel and explicitly set the towns of Gentiles and Samaritans as off limits (Matt 10:5). When Jesus appears to his disciples “on the mountain” in Galilee (Matt 28:16) where Jesus had earlier taught them (Matt 10:1), he then expands their mission to include “all nations” (Matt 28:19). In so doing, the time frame for the final judgment is presumably delayed in order to allow for the influx of the Gentiles.
[2] The Apostles’ Creed represents a second century summary statement of belief. Rufinus, in The Exposition of the Creed (c. 400 C.E.), makes note of the fact that “descended into Hades” did not exist in the second-century Roman version of the Creed. Hence, this phrase must have been added to the Apostle’s Creed sometime in the fourth century. This would place it in the same era as the Gospel of Bartholomew.
[3] The Roman Catechism endorsed the Thomistic perspective saying, “Christ the Lord descended into hell that, having seized the spoils of the devils, he might conduct into heaven those holy fathers and other pious souls liberated from prison” (1.6.q.6). The Catechism of the Catholic Church repeats the message of Trent placing an emphasis upon the fact that “the Gospel was preached even to the dead” (sec. 632 & 634 following 1 P 4:6). This event is interpreted in universal and eschatological terms: “This is the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ’s redemptive work to all [dead] men [women] of all times and places . . .” (sec. 634). The implication here appears to be that when Christ returns on the Last Day, he will come with all the prophets, the holy Jews, the enlightened philosophers that he has liberated from Hades immediately after he died on the cross.