Category: Linguistics/Philology

He Descended into Hell

At the church I pastor, New Life Ithaca, we say the Apostles’ Creed every week. I also say it a couple of more times a week when I pray the daily office. All told, I’ve recited the Apostles’ Creed thousands of times. 

I still remember the first time I said it. I grew up Pentecostal. We didn’t say creeds. I heard more than one preacher say, “No creed but Christ.” But that is itself a creed isn’t it? And we had a declaration of faith, which is a creed as well. But I digress.

The first time I ever said the Apostles’ Creed was at an African Methodist Episcopal Church. The mother of my high school friend Carl had tragically died at a young age and a group of us went to the funeral to support him. The funeral was a traditional liturgical service, as I know now, but very foreign to me then. As a part of the service we recited the Apostles’ Creed. I remember scrutinizing it in my head, especially the parts about believing in the catholic church and that Jesus descended into hell.

I’ve written quite a bit about Catholicity. But what of the descent clause? Did Jesus go to hell?

This Holy Saturday, I thought it appropriate to share a bit of what I’ve learned about this over the years. Holy Saturday commemorates the time between Jesus’ death and resurrection. It has historically been a time that emphasized rest and stillness. But at the same time, it has been seen as the time period when Jesus was “harrowing hell.” According to this ancient view, while Jesus’ body rested in the tomb, his spirit entered hell to declare his victory over Satan and to lead out the host of righteous dead from sheol/hades into heaven. We see in this ancient view, that Jesus did not enter the hell of fiery torment in order to suffer for our sins. He entered victoriously and “led a host of captives in his train.”[1]

While this harrowing of hell, or something like it, may have happened, the Bible does not explicitly say so. The only text that even mentions Holy Saturday is a half a verse at the end of Luke 23:56, “On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.” Psalm 68:18 and Ephesians 4:8 seem to allude to this harrowing, and some take Ephesians 4:9 to refer to Jesus’ descent into hell, the Latin even using a version of the word “inferno”.[2] Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2:27 and 2:31 also refer to Christ in hell, using the Greek word “hades” and the Latin word “inferno.” Further, 1 Peter 3:19 states that Christ preached to the spirits in prison. In context this refers to some declaration to the unrighteous regarding his lordship and victory. Psalm 107:16 and Zechariah 9:11 are also mentioned in support of this view as they seem to allude to Christ releasing captives from a deep pit.[3] But none of these explicitly say that Christ entered hell and plundered Satan on Holy Saturday. Again, it may have happened, and I tend to think that it did, but the Bible is not explicit about it.

The phrase in the Apostle’s Creed seems to be modeled after the Latin of Ephesians 4:9, but this is not certain. The Latin for this verse is, “descendit primum in inferiores partes terrae,” while the original Latin for the Apostles’ Creed is, “descendit ad infernos.” Notice that while the word “descended” is the same, the Vulgate uses the preposition “in” while the Creed uses “ad” and the Vulgate uses the word “inferiores” while the Creed uses “inferno”. These words are very similar, but not identical. 

For this reason there have been varying opinions of the meaning of the phrase “descendit at infernos” through the centuries. One view is based on what I’ve been describing, the harrowing of hell. This view was taught by several ancient fathers as well as medieval scholastics like Thomas Aquinas. Calvin’s view was that the phrase refers to the spiritual torment that Christ underwent on the cross (Institutes II:XVI:10). While this view is attractive, we have to admit that it is novel and not obvious from the Latin text of the creed. Luther’s view was that Christ literally entered into Hell, and many modern Lutherans share that view.

Calvin and later Berkhof point out that the phrase was included later on (Berkhof says that it appeared c. 390, which would date its appearance after even the creation of the Nicene Creed). Berkhof states that Christ could not have descended triumphantly into hell because his victorious resurrection hadn’t occurred yet and because that would contradict the period of rest that Christ’s statement “into your hands I commit my spirit,” implies. Berkhoff takes a view similar to Calvin’s, adding that the descent clause teaches the deepest humiliation of Christ in his death (Systematic Theology, 340-343). The Westminster Larger Catechism, question 50, takes a similar view, stating that the descent clause means that Christ truly died and remained under the power of death until the third day in his state of humiliation.

There is a marked difference between the Reformed view (Westminster and Berkhof) and the traditional view in that the traditional view presents Christ as already victorious while the Reformed view presents him still in a state of humiliation. The Reformed view has merit, as it asks the question, “How could Christ’s soul be victorious in hell while his body lay dead in humiliation?” I think that’s a valid question to raise.

Now to my view. My goal here is not to articulate another version or perhaps a synthesis of the above views, but to present a linguistic point. When we see the word “inferno” in the 21st century, we think of fire. That’s what the word means in English after all. So when we see the phrase, “He descended into hell,” we naturally think of the hell of fire. However, in the Latin usage of the time when the Creed was written the word inferno did not mean that yet. According to the standard Latin lexicon by Lewis and Short, the word meant, “underground, belonging to the Lower Regions.” Thus, “inferno” literally means “underworld”. What would be the biblical analog to this in Greek or Hebrew? It would be the Hebrew word “sheol,” or “place of the dead,” for which the Greek “hades” is used as a translation. None of these refer to a fiery place of the damned, but a place where even righteous souls rest when they die. 

OK, so why not say that then? Why not say, “He descended to the place of the dead?” Well, we are saying that. You see the word “hell” did not have the connotation of a fiery place of the damned until it gained an additional Christian meaning. The Germanic word “helle” simply meant the same as inferno: the underworld or place of the dead. You can see this in the Germanic word for paradise: Valhalla– “-halla” referring to the place of the dead.[4] Thus the English word “hell” in pre-Christian times meant just that: the place of the dead, with no connotation of fire or damnation. With this in mind, we really are saying, “he descended to the place of the dead” when we say “he descended to hell.” And what we mean by that is that Christ really died, i.e. his soul was separated from his body, and while his body lay in the tomb his soul visited the saints in sheol. 

As for the rest, whether he harrowed hell, proclaimed his victory to the damned, and led a host of captives out to heaven, there are scriptures that allude to this. But did it happen on Holy Saturday? I do not know. But I do know this. We will be able to ask him about it someday.

[1] Psalm 68:18 and Ephesians 4:8.

[2] But this translation relies on a dubious textual variant that Metzger, et al. rate as “C”, meaning the originality of the word “regions” is highly suspect and is more likely an explanatory gloss.

[3] John Calvin notes this and argues that Psalm 107 is referring to Israel’s captivity in Babylon and that Zechariah 9 is referencing a release from spiritual prison, Institutes II:XVI:9.

[4] See the entry for “hell” in the Oxford English Dictionary. That entry has a trove of information about the etymology and prior usage of the word. Significant is that in the earliest translations of the Bible into English, the Hebrew word “Sheol” was translated “hell,” meaning the place of the righteous dead.

“Easter” is not a bad word

It is once again the time of year that folks begin to ramp up for Easter. Easter bunnies, Easter egg hunts, and other various trappings are beginning to be ubiquitous. Now, I will be the first to recognize that the secular (and especially corporate) focus on fluffy bunnies, eggs, and the like is an attempt to sterilize the explicit Christian content of Easter, specifically that of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Yet, I would also argue that Christians who wish to push back against that sterilized (if not secularized) view should not abandon these traditional symbols of Easter, but should fully embrace them and refill them with their Christian meaning.

The same can be said of Christmas. The traditional symbols of Christmas- St. Nick, trees, gifts, feasts- may have been sterilized, secularized, commercialized, and paganized, but that does not change the fact that St. Nick is a real Christian saint, that the Wise Men really offered gifts to the baby Jesus, and that trees and feasts also have their origin in biblical theology. No more should we as Christians abandon these symbols of Christmas than we should abandon the traditional symbols of Easter.

Yet, while I have asserted that the traditional symbols for Easter, including the word “Easter” itself, are Christian in origin, I have not yet substantiated that claim. What is my claim exactly? Well you may have heard that the word “Easter” is of German pagan origin. As a result we Christians sometimes get a little uneasy about using that word. In this post I set out to argue that the word “Easter” is not of pagan origins, and that the word “Easter” itself is actually a Christian metonym for the word “resurrection.”

What is a metonym exactly?  A metonym is a word-symbol that represents another more abstract word that can be used in place of that word. For example, a scepter is something that a king or queen might hold as a symbol of their authority. Yet the word “scepter” itself can be used as a metonym for the word “authority.” In other words “holding the scepter,” can mean “possessing authority.” This is like when Jacob prophesies that the scepter will not pass from the hand of Judah in Genesis 49. There, the word “scepter” is a metonym for kingship or rule. Another way to think of it is that a metonym is a metaphorical or symbolical kind of synonym.

So the word “Easter” is a metonym for “resurrection.” Now, where do I get that? Well, from none other than the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), widely considered to be the definitive record of the English language. Now, as far as lexicographical philosophies go, the OED is descriptive and not prescriptive. In other words, what  the OED sets out to do, in an academically rigorous fashion, is to describe the various usages of a word throughout the history of the English language. This is opposed to prescriptive lexicography, which is the notion that a dictionary should impose its view of language on others. As opposed to stating how a word should be used, rather, descriptive lexicography presents how words have been used already.

Now where I find the OED supremely helpful is in its record of word origins and etymologies. If we look to the entry for “Easter,” what we find in the etymological section is that the word is not of pagan German origin, but of Greek origin. What we find is that far back into our linguistic heritage (that would be the Indo-European family of languages) the word “east” has been a metonym for the rising of the Sun or the coming of the dawn. Thus the Old Dutch ōster, the Old Saxon ōstar, the Middle Low German ōsteren, or the Northumbrian Eostre, never found their origins in any pagan festival, but in the fact that the Sun rises in the East (der Osten is German for “the East”). Thus East(er) means dawn, or the rising of the Sun. This word “Easter” became associated metonymically with the vernal equinox in Germanic lands, and subsequently after their acceptance of Christ, the same word became metonymically associated with the Christian festival of the resurrection of our Lord.

Now the fact that Jesus rose from the dead at or near the vernal equinox is no coincidence. The vernal equinox has always been associated as the creation of the world (in the Hebrew conception), and Jesus is considered to have both been conceived and to have died at or near the vernal equinox, coinciding with the creation of the world and the Hebrew deliverance from Egypt (this is why the Introit for Easter Sunday is the Song of Moses from Exodus 15). Thus a new world comes into being through the resurrection of Christ at the same time of year that the world itself is growing in light (in the Northern Hemisphere) and at the exact point when that light begins to over take the darkness (which by the way is why Easter can never be before the vernal equinox, before the point of the year when light overtakes darkness).

Now, reader, you may also note that only German and English speakers call Easter “Easter,” while the rest of the world calls the festival “Pascha,” which is Greek for “the Passover.” Well let us ponder this for a moment. Germans and English live in much more Northern latitudes than do Greeks or Latins. Do you think that perhaps in the German mind, where the darkness of winter is so much more pronounced than in more southerly latitudes, the coming of the spring might so much more be associated with the resurrection of our Lord? In the most Northern parts of Europe, darkness nearly overtakes the day completely in the depths of winter. Easter then is the day when light finally has defeated the dark. For Greeks and Latins this astronomical reality is not so much of a big deal because they never experienced the disparity between light and dark during winter to the degree that the Germans did.

So, where did this misconception about Easter being pagan come from? The fact of the matter is that there is only one source in existence that claims that the word has such an origin. Now that this source is quite venerable (literally, in fact) explains the stubbornness of this myth. Sadly, it comes from one of my heroes of the faith, the Venerable Bede, the Northumbrian Saint, who while otherwise a very respectable scholar and theologian mentions in one place while talking about the origin of their word for the month April that the word Eostre comes from the celebration of a pagan godess. While Bede is quite the authority on most matters, there is no other source to collaborate this claim, and the OED states that this etymological claim is “less likely” (which is academic speak for not holding much water), and that some scholars think that Bede may have made the whole thing up (for what reason we cannot guess).

If we think about this logically we may suppose that there may have been a pagan feast for the coming of spring, and if so why wouldn’t there have been? Wouldn’t you celebrate the ending of the long dark winter if you lived in Northern Europe? Yet, the word Easter is not pagan in origin, but an ancient way of referring to the rising of the Sun and the coming of spring.

Besides, feasting is biblical in origin, so it is ever as much likely that the pagans started having a springtime feast in response to the Christian festival of the resurrection of our Lord.

So, don’t be afraid of the word Easter. Gladly and loudly go about wishing everyone a “Happy Easter!” this Sunday without reservation. Because Easter is not a bad word.