Did Jesus descend to Hades? Part 2

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.

http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/252233-descended-hell.html#.VS-bC3XvM9A.facebook

"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.

Did Jesus descend to Hades? Part 1

I have written previously on whether or not Jesus descended into hell here. But my friend, Andrew, tagged me in a comment for this article by Joe Rigney on Jesus descending to Hades 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. Here's the link to the article followed by quotes and my commentary.

http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/252233-descended-hell.html#.VS-bC3XvM9A.facebook

"We all know that Jesus died... But what happened after he died? We know that his body was laid in Joseph’s tomb, but what about his human soul?"

And what I find shocking is that Rigney conclude that..."Jesus’ soul went to Hades...." The reason why I find this shocking is because Joe Rigney blogs at desiringgod.org which is a staunchly reformed website named after the book, "Desiring God" by their chief figurehead, John Piper. Piper has spoken about and written his own blog post on this subject defending that the textual evidence for such a view is weak and he believes Jesus' soul went to Heaven when he died until his resurrection.

Asking what happened after Jesus died is a great question. I think that the article by Rigney does an excellent job of addressing it and gives a thoroughgoing explanation with an encouraging message at the end.  In my post on whether Jesus descended into hell, I make a similar claim: "...[Jesus] was among the dead between his death and resurrection whether you take it as a literal grave of the dead or a metaphorical/spiritual underworld/realm." So, I'm in support of this article's conclusions as one of two options. However, I have not come to the same understanding as this author does. 

"Death is separation, a dividing of things that ought to be united. Fundamentally, it is separation from God....But of course, death is more than just separation from God. Death also marks the separation of the soul from the body. God made human beings to be embodied souls and ensouled bodies, and death rips this union asunder."

 First, I don't agree with his definition of death. This isn't how we define the term or use it in most instances, and the Bible doesn't generally use it this way either. With rare exceptions where the word is used figuratively, 'death' means that the person dies physically. If one is a dualist, which I am not, and one thinks that the soul departs from the body at death this departure is still not death. This would be an effect of the death of the body. It is the body that is said to be dead and the spirit/soul is 'alive' and therefore not dead. Therefore death cannot mean separation in this instance, but the death of the body causes separation of body and soul.

Second, I don't think the soul/spirit is some immaterial substance that can survive death. With Martin Luther and many others I hold to 'soul sleep' and think that the human person is a whole that cannot be separated and survive. I am what in theological terms is called a 'monist'; I believe a human person is a single entity. Yes, it can be described as having various 'parts', but they make up one indivisible whole. In philosophy of mind this view is referred to as 'non-reductive physicalism'.

So I don't think of a human being as having a soul. I think you are a soul primarily because it is what I see in the Bible. In Genesis, for example, it says that God made man out of the dust and breathed the breath of life into him and he became a living soul. A 'soul' was not breathed into him, life was and the 'living dust' is called a living soul. Not only that, but after the fall, God says 'for dust you are and to dust you shall return.'. And the word for 'soul' is used for all of the other animals created beforehand. This is why the more modern translations say 'creature' instead of soul in this instance. They are being more consistent than the KJV and other translations where the creation of man is the first use of the english word 'soul' making it appear as a more unique creation than the text suggests in that manner (Though I do think the text is saying humans are unique by other means).

Now, I don't hold this monist view dogmatically and could very well be wrong. The point is that words we often think imply dualism are not doing so necessarily. I agree with Dr. Glenn Peoples who thinks that the primary reason for upholding a dualist view of human persons is cultural and theological (Read more about his defence of monism here and here).  And what is the primary/only theological belief that requires dualism? The belief that when people die they are in Hades and Paradise or Hell and Heaven....or in the case of Rigney, Hades and Heaven!

More to come in part 2...

Did Jesus descend into hell?

The Apostle's Creed:

1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:
5. The third day he rose again from the dead:
6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead:
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost:
9. I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
10. The forgiveness of sins:
1l. The resurrection of the body:
12. And the life everlasting. Amen.

When we recite this creed at my church, I do not say 'hell', but replaced the word with 'hades'. The reason why is because I do not believe that Jesus actually went to a place called 'hell' (whatever you may believe that to be). Where he did go was Hades; the grave; the realm of the dead. Why do I believe this? Because the creed says he was crucified, dead and was buried. The next logical step is 'realm of the dead' and as posted before I don't believe anyone goes immediately to hell when they die. Furthermore, the very next line is that he rose again from the dead. The striking thing is that he was not raised from death, but from 'the dead'. This says, quite strongly, that he was among the dead between his death and resurrection whether you take it as a literal grave of the dead or a metaphorical/spiritual underworld/realm. There are clear texts that cite Jesus as being in Hades and none that he was in hell. The most clear ones in my opinion are Acts 2:24-32 as well as Rev 1:16 which says,

"I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.

And I have the keys of Hades and of Death."

I am not the only one to have questions concerning the claim that Jesus descended into 'hell'. For more information and texts on this position see this post. You can also read JETS articles for and against Jesus descending into hell.

Who's gates? Hell's or Hades'? (Mt 16:18)

In my last post, I claimed that there are no "Gates of Hell". But don't just take my word on the matter. Check out this JETS article on Mt 16:18 by Jack Lewis:

"THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST IT” (MATT 16:18):

A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION

No one goes immediately to hell when they die

I make a claim that is often jarring to the people I share it with. I see no basis for believing that people immediately go to hell when they die. Think about it. Where does it say anywhere in the Bible that people go to hell when they die? For that matter, where does it say anyone goes to heaven? That's another subject, but it deserves being acknowledged at the same time. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever explicitly say that anyone immediately goes to either place when you die. In the case of heaven, it never says anyone goes there at any point. In the case of hell, it only ever says people are sent there after they face judgment.

I plan to post more on the various geography and terminology of 'hell' in the future, but let's operate under the generally assumption of lumping all of them together for now except for one; Hades. The place called Hades, otherwise known as Sheol, or the grave, or the place of the dead, is not hell. For most occurrences in the new testament the word is translated into it's actually meaning, but historically it was been translated to 'hell' in at least two significant places. This was due to historical developments including the latin translation which only used one word for both hades and hell; 'Inferi'. English translations such as the King James Version and others continued in this tradition and although most modern translations have corrected this error, the conflation of the two terms remains.

The two main texts that are stubbornly held as teaching about hell are the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 and the quote of Jesus in Mt 16:18: "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." The NIV even has a footnote pointing out that the word 'Hades' is indeed a reference to the realm of the dead. I will do a full post on the story of the rich man and Lazarus, but the reference to the gates of Hades is also important. The gates of Hades is a reference to the dead being held in death and unable to return to the land of the living. It is not a reference to the gates of hell, satan, demons, the powers of darkness, etc. Although this has traditionally been used as a text in 'spiritual warfare' to claim authority over the devil there is no textual relevance to that subject. What Jesus is actually saying is that the church will not be held in death. The powers of death and hades will not overcome them, but they will be raised on the last day. It is the promise of the resurrection.

So does anyone go to hell when they die? No. They go to Hades; the grave; the realm of the dead. Those who are dead are 'asleep' and will 'awake' at the resurrection on last day at Christ's return and all will be judged. It is then, and only then, that anyone will go to hell. Those who believe that people go to hell when they die have a few problems to deal with, but the biggest problem (aside from there being absolutely no textual support) is that they are forced to believe in something called 'Particular Judgment'. This is the belief that those who die before Jesus' return are judged immediately at death and are sent to heaven or hell. The problem with this is that there are no texts that teach particular judgement, only the final judgement, or what is sometimes called 'general judgment' by those who hold to this peculiar particularist view. The only text in the new testament that seems to give any justification for this position is, once again, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. However, to the original point of this post, even if we concede that particular judgment occurs and the dead are divided into places of bliss or torment, they would still not be in hell. Luke 16:23:explicitly says that they would be in Hades. It seems clear to me that no one goes to hell when they die. What do you think?