Abstract
In today’s epistle, the apostle Peter says that Christ was put to death and went and made proclamation to certain of the spirits in prison, the prison of death, that is. Or as we say in the Creed: ‘He descended into hell’. What do we mean by that?
Well, before descending, first He died. So first we need to consider what happens when a human being dies. And before we can answer that question, we need to take a step further back still and ask: What are human beings, of what do we consist?
We all know the answer to that. We are body, soul, and spirit. Unfortunately, when people speak about soul and spirit, they often do so in a confusing way. In particular, they sometimes regard ‘soul’ as interchangeable with ‘spirit’. But they are two different things.
So what is meant by ‘soul’ and what by ‘spirit’? The soul is the intelligent faculty, the repository where the ideas of outward objects, received through the bodily senses, are laid up as the materials of thought—the mind.
This is why, with respect, the philosopher Descartes was wrong to say, as he famously did: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Because thought is physical. It works through neurons and synapses. It is no more evidence of our existing than is kicking a football. What is true is: ‘I am aware that I think, therefore I am. It is this self-awareness that distinguishes us from all other animate creatures.
Our thinking is a function of our soul or mind, but that which is aware of our thinking is our spirit. The spirit is the residence of our personality. It is not material and so on the one hand, our senses cannot detect it except by the effect of its operation on outward things, and on the other it is capable of subsisting when separated from the body.
When the Bible tells us that God breathed into man the breath of life (Genesis 2:7), it was not the breath which goes into the lungs and which so many living creatures have. It was the spirit which we alone have, and have whatever our evolutionary history as animal creatures may have been. Human beings then became living spirit.
Having established what we are, body, soul or mind, and spirit, we can now take the next step and ask: what happens when a man or woman dies? Death is a condition in which sensation ceases, and the active functions of the living body, including thought, are no longer exercised. In the ordinary course of nature, the body, including the parts through which the soul or mind operates, decays. But the spirit, separated from the lifeless corpse, departs.
But although it continues to exist, the spirit is no longer in that perfect state in which it was when God pronounced man to be very good. Although, as we shall see, it can carry out certain functions when separated from the body, it no longer has the agency by which, while united to the living body, it derived the knowledge of outward things and operated on them. Human beings were not created to die, and the separation of body and spirit is a violation of the law of creation. However much, in some circumstances, to die may be seen as a relief from suffering, death is not a blessed thing; death is the penalty for sin. And death is the last enemy—enemy, note—that will be destroyed.
And it was into this state of death, of liability to corruption as regards the body and of imperfection as regards the spirit also, that Our Lord condescended. And so He remained until the first day of the week. This is the background to our consideration of what is meant by ‘He descended into hell.’s
Of one thing we may be sure, namely that His spirit was not then without hope. We know this from the words of the Psalm (14:9, 10), which the apostle Peter on the first preaching of the Gospel (Acts 2:31) showed applied prophetically to Jesus. ‘Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; my flesh also shall rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in hell.’
But this ‘hell’, in the Psalm and in the Creed, is no place of torment. ‘Hades’ is much to be preferred. That is no more than a transliteration of the Greek word, Hades, which in turn is the word used in the earliest translation of what we call the Old Testament into Greek for the Hebrew word ‘Sheol’. So our question is: What is meant by Sheol?
An examination of the Old Testament shows us that the word was used for the place or places (whatever ‘place’ may signify in the spiritual world) of all departed spirits, and figuratively of their condition; that it is associated with the idea of restraint (‘the cords of death’), which the wicked cannot escape; that men and women of God regarded it in advance as a place of silence and of gloom, but that the good there, while incapacity is implied, are in a state of peaceful hope and even joy.
Now you might have thought that Jesus’ spirit, being sinless, would—apart from any function he had first to perform in Hades (we are told that he preached to certain spirits)—would go straight to heaven. But not so. Any idea that the body being sinful must be got rid of so that the spirit can go on to perfection on its own is erroneous. The proof that the human can be perfected only when body, soul, and spirit are joined, lies in Jesus’ resurrection.
The Psalm I quoted which prophesied His resurrection says two things of it: both ‘You will not suffer my Holy One to see corruption’, that is, the body will be raised incorruptible, and ‘You will not leave my spirit in Hades.’ Both body and spirit are involved in the resurrection. And the disciples recognised Jesus in His, now spiritualised, body—saw the marks of the nails and so on—and experienced the acting of His personality, of His spirit through the medium of that body.
And in Christ, mankind in that triune nature of body, soul and spirit is for ever united with the Godhead Itself.