For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans6:23
Today we get to one of the most difficult and contested parts of the Apostles' Creed: "He descended into hell/the dead."
There are are couple of things we need to note about this phrase.
1. The very earliest forms of the Creed don't have this phrase.
2. The Nicene Creed, which is our next oldest creed doesn't contain anything similar to this phrase.
3. The word used for "hell" (Greek "Hades") could also be translated as the "realm of the dead" which is very similar to the Hebrew word "Sheol" rather than the Greek word "Gehenna" which is used for the place of eternal judgement and punishment.
There are two directions that interpreters take with this phrase:
Some argue that Jesus, after enduring separation from God on the cross, (remember His cry: "My God my God why have you forsaken me?"), and having obtained our forgiveness ("It is finished!") still had to go to hell where He:
1. Steals the keys of death and hell from Satan and/or
2. Preaches the good news to those who died prior to His coming.
Another group point out as Paul does that the wages of sin is death and that this includes physical as well as spiritual death. On the cross Jesus already endured spiritual death and now He submits to physical death, but as David predicted and Peter confirmed: "The Holy One did not see decay." (Ps.16:10 & Acts2:27)
Without getting into too many technicalities*, my preference is for the latter explanation rather than the former which raises too many difficulties.
What's the bottom line?
The bottom line is that Jesus' journey in humanity's shoes was a complete journey. He was born, He lived, He suffered, He died and the idea of descending into the dead is an indication that He didn't swoon into a coma, but that He really did physically die. This makes the resurrection very very very significant.
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(Technical stuff...)
Calvin and most conservative scholars take the same (latter) route while some conservatives like Grudem go even further and suggest that the phrase should be left from the creed. To argue the former that Satan held the keys of death and hell accords too much power to Satan. Furthermore the suggestion that Jesus preached to the spirits in hell is based on 1Pet3:19 "through whom (the Spirit) also he (Jesus) went and preached to the spirits in prison 20 who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built."
Here the obvious question would be "Why only those who lived in Noah's time?"
In the context of ch.3 Peter is talking about sharing the gospel at all times in word and in action (see v.15) It would be better to understand v.19 as talking about a pre-incarnate Jesus appealing through the Spirit and Noah's actions to the pre-flood masses. This also better explains Peter's paralleling the flood to baptism creating a very clear "then and now" scenario.
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Theo Groeneveld theo @ emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at emmdev[dot]blogspot[dot]com/
