In a previous post I started to cover an article by Joe Rigney on Jesus descending to Hades, which I'm largely in support of. wondering what my thoughts were . I couldn't comment on the Facebook post because it was shared by someone with restricted comments so I thought I'd share them with everyone. You can also read my previous post on whether or not Jesus descended into hell. Again, here's the link to the article followed by quotes and my commentary.
"In the Old Testament, Sheol is the place of the souls of the dead, both the righteous...and the wicked. In the New Testament, the Hebrew word Sheol is translated as hades, and the description of Sheol in the Old and New Testament bears some resemblance to the Hades of Greek mythology."
This is true enough. All people went to this place and the words Sheol and Hades are basically equivocal. However, it is important to note that they can also mean 'the pit' or 'the grave'. It is also unclear if the biblical authors truly intended for us to think of these place as being realms of the conscious beings (One of the only examples of this is in Isa 14, but right before the 'spirits' speak the junipers and cedars are speaking).
"Hades proper is a place of torment, where fire causes anguish to the souls imprisoned there"
Quite speculative and based largely on extra-biblical texts and one parable of Jesus. This will be a whole other post at some point.
"All dead souls go down to Sheol/hades, but Sheol is divided into two distinct sides, one for the righteous and one for the wicked."
This also varies and in all but one place in the Bible there are clearly not divisions between the two sides.
"Following his death for sin, then, Jesus journeys to Hades, to the City of Death, and rips its gates off the hinges. He liberates Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, John the Baptist and the rest of the Old Testament faithful, ransoming them from the power of Sheol "
Nowhere does it describe this event per se. I'm ok with it figuratively speaking. I especially like the reference to the gates of Hades since there are no gates of hell. Jesus' death and possible descent into hades are to overcome the power of death so that it will not prevail against us.
"After his resurrection, Jesus ascends to heaven and brings the ransomed dead with him, so that now Paradise is no longer down near the place of torment, but is up in the third heaven..."
Paradise is never explicitly described as being down anywhere except in opposition to 'up there' in 'heaven'. Paradise is an earthly edenic place. Very physical. I think that the references by Jesus (Lk 23) and Paul (2 Cor 12) that are sometimes taken as describing an intermediate state can and should be interpreted differently to align with the regular use of the word If we have consciousness though our union with Jesus after death then I suppose it is accurate to say Jesus brought them with him on his ascension.
"And this is good news for us, because those in Christ now bypass the land of forgetfulness, where no one praises God. Instead, when we die, we join with the angelic choir and the saints of old to sing praises to the Lamb who was slain for us and our salvation."Again, I hold to a view similar to Luther that we merely 'sleep' after death until the resurrection. If I'm wrong, I still don't see how we could sing without a mouth. The dead cannot sing.
Clearly I have some disagreements with the position of the author, but overall I still commend him for wrestling with the topic and trying to make sense of what happened to Jesus between his death an resurrection. What I think happened was that he was dead and buried in a tomb (Hades). Wether he was conscious or not isn't really as important as the fact that after his death and burial he overcame the power of death and hades as proved by his resurrection. Through him we too are freed from these things and are given new life.
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