Every year, we celebrate a dying and rising God who fulfills the hopes of ages past.
If you’ve ever attended a liturgical church during Holy Week, you’ve likely recited the Apostles’ Creed—a confession that affirms the climactic events of Jesus’ life.
At the heart of this confession, between the phrases “was crucified, died, and was buried” and “on the third day he rose again from the dead,” you’ll find the mysterious (and some might say pesky) phrase “he descended into Hell.”
Although it’s largely overlooked in evangelical churches, dwarfed by the giants of Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, Holy Saturday in the liturgical calendar commemorates the day when Jesus’ body laid dead in the grave. But it also honors the “Harrowing of Hell”—an idea that traces back to a handful of verses in the New Testament referring to Jesus’ debated descent into the netherworld.
After all, one verse reads, “What does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?” (Eph. 4:9). For “After being made alive, [Christ] went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” (1 Pet. 3:18–20). Later, Peter adds, “For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does” (1 Pet. 4:6, ESV).
That these (and other) verses imply that Christ descended into hell is an interpretation discarded by a number of respected Christian thinkers including Wayne Grudem and John Piper, who argues there’s …
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