“He Descended Into Hell” – Rejected by Evangelicals?

The Harrowing of Hell

Catholics who recite the Apostles Creed in Mass no longer say that Christ descended to the dead. The new translation of the Latin words descendit ad inferna are better translated as he descended into Hell.

The blogosphere is abuzz about two well-known and well-respected Minnesota Evangelical scholars who reject what is known as the “harrowing of Hell” – Jesus’ descent in Hell where he broke down the doors to righteous dead and freed them from Satan’s death grip. The scholars are Wayne Grudem and John Piper. Grudem, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society believes the words regarding Jesus’ descent should be removed from the Apostle’s Creed.

Both Piper and Grudem remain silent when these words are recited.

What’s wrong with the descent? Piper and Grudem believe it contradicts Christ’s words to the good thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Both scholars, however, overlook key passages of the Bible that speak to Jesus’ descent into Hell. For a wonderful analysis of this, check out this blog post. It is well worth the read.

Christ stormed the gates of Hell. He went head-to-head with the Devil, struck him a mortal blow, and set the captives free. Most images of the harrowing of Hell focus on Christ freeing the souls of the righteous, but perhaps the best imagery we see of the combat between Jesus and the Devil is found in the Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson captures this in the movie of The Two Towers with Gandalf defeating the Balrog after both fell into the depths of the earth. It is only after this that Gandalf experiences a kind of resurrection.

But if the evangelicals are losing the language and understanding of Christ’s descent while Catholics keep it alive in art and literature, it is the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern-Rite Catholics who have kept it alive in liturgy. A story from the Washington Post reads:

"...the harrowing of hell remains a central tenet of Eastern Orthodox Christians, who place an icon depicting the descent at the front of their churches as Saturday night becomes Easter Sunday. It remains there, venerated and often kissed, for 40 days. 'The icon that represents Easter for us is not the empty cross or tomb,' said Peter Bouteneff, a theology professor at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, N.Y. 'It’s Christ’s descent into Hades.'"

This post originally appeared on Orate Fratres on 4/9/12.

Creation and Non-Violence

My recent post on doubts concerning the historicity of Adam (and the Devil) as a potential means to deny the reality of evil should also help us understand why some theologians look to God’s creative act as justification for non-violence. In this view, monotheism stands above the pagan creation myths in which the gods fight a war and in the process create the cosmos. The non-violent God of Christianity, however, simply makes a harmonious universe from nothing and calls it good.

While it is certainly true that God created an ordered universe ex nihilo, what if the pagan myths contained a grain a truth, a kernel of knowledge lost to man during the true Dark Age following the Fall of Adam? What if a cosmic war really did precede the creation of the material universe? After all, why do we live in a seemingly indifferent universe filled with death, killer gamma rays, and asteroids capable of mass extinction?

The universe is not a safe place and the earth is certainly not our Mother.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion opens with a mythic creation account of his fantasy world Middle Earth. In it God created the angels first and then had them sing together in their harmonious hierarchy – but the greatest of the angels, Melkor, inserted his own themes into the music and eventually led a revolt against God. Nevertheless, God revealed that He created Middle Earth through the music sung by the angels and that the discord sown by Melkor’s disruptive music was the cause of certain evils and imperfections in the world.

This creation account in the Silmarillion is pure fiction, but Tolkien drew heavily from his Catholic faith, and the thought of God working through secondary actors is part and parcel of the Christian economy of salvation. Whether or not God included the angels in his creative act, we do know that St. Michael the Archangel led a victorious battle against the Devil and his demons and cast them out of heaven (see Revelation 12:7-9) and that Jesus has proclaimed the Devil “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31).

It is altogether in the realm of possibility that the Big Bang, which created our universe, was the result of the expulsion of Satan and his minions from Heaven. Lucifer claimed a heavenly dominion and the result was instead a dominion over this world. Man was made to unseat him from even this dominion, avenge God’s honor, and restore justice. In other words, God created man for war against evil, and while the Devil struck us first, the mission of Jesus Christ was to save us from sin in order to restore us for battle.

So much for non-violence.

Abortion and Pacifism

It would be good for us to remember that Eve came from Adam's side. Adam sees her and sees someone that is himself yet is not himself and as such woman is a reminder of man's soul, man's anima. Woman reminds man that his soul must be fortified, guarded, and protected and by protecting her, man remembers to protect his own soul.

Woman, too, is given a gift which reminds her to safeguard her own anima. This is the gift of children. When this gift, which is part of the woman yet not the woman herself, is aborted, the woman has truly embraced a kind of suicide. The scourge of abortion is not a genocide but rather the rejection of a woman to protect her own life.

Catholics have done a good job to promote a Culture of Life, but the Catholic reflex of visceral revulsion towards abortion should be equally felt when Catholics consider pacifism. Indeed, historically speaking, it was pacifism among young American men that lead to abortion. When the men refused to protect their nation, women refused to protect their children.