Chapter 16
He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.
Every Sunday, in churches all over the world, Christians stand and say words most of them have never stopped to think about. "He descended into hell." Or, in more careful translations, "He descended to the dead." The line sits quietly inside the Apostles' Creed, wedged between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Most people rush past it. Some pastors skip it entirely.1
But what if that little line carries more weight than we realize? What if the early church put it there because they actually believed it? That the saving reach of Jesus did not stop at the grave?
I want to take you to one of the key texts behind that belief. It sits in a letter Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, and it has puzzled scholars for centuries. But at its heart, it is saying something simple and staggering: Christ went down. He went all the way down. And when He came back up, He did not come alone.
Paul is talking about spiritual gifts. Christ, he says, has given gifts to the church: apostles, prophets, teachers, and more (Eph 4:11–12). To ground this claim, Paul reaches back to Psalm 68:18, a victory hymn about God ascending the mountain, leading captives in His train, and giving gifts to His people.2
Then Paul pauses. He inserts a brief commentary on his own quotation. The result is one of the most debated parenthetical remarks in the New Testament:
"When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to his people." (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) — Ephesians 4:8–10 (NIV)
The logic is simple on the surface. If Christ ascended, He must first have descended. But descended to where? And what does "led captives in his train" mean? These two questions have produced centuries of debate. I believe the answers matter more than most readers have been told.
The Greek phrase is ta katōtera merē tēs gēs, which means "the lower parts of the earth." Three readings have been offered. The first says it means simply "the earth." On this view, the descent is the incarnation. Christ came down from heaven to earth. That is all Paul intends.3
The second says it refers to Christ's return as the Spirit at Pentecost. He ascended first, and then descended again in the person of the Holy Spirit to give gifts to the church. Harris, Lincoln, and Martin have all defended this reading.4
The third says it means the underworld, the realm of the dead, what the Old Testament calls Sheol and the New Testament calls Hades. On this view, Christ descended into the place of the dead between His death and resurrection.5
I believe the third reading is the strongest. Here is why.
This is not a modern idea read back into an ancient text. Tertullian, Irenaeus, Ambrosiaster, and Chrysostom all read Paul this way.7 They lived far closer to the culture Paul was writing into than we do. When they heard "the lower parts of the earth," they heard what Paul's first readers heard: the place of the dead.
The incarnation reading has appeal. If Paul simply means "Christ came down from heaven to earth," the logic works neatly. But it flattens the language. Why would Paul use so unusual and vivid a phrase, "the lower parts of the earth," if he only meant "the earth"? The phrase is doing something. It is reaching beneath the surface of the ground.
The Pentecost reading is creative. Harris makes a case that, once the adverb "first" in verse 9 is removed (as the best manuscripts require), the sequence might place the descent after the ascent. Christ ascended, then descended as the Spirit.8 But this reading struggles with the language of "captives." It also requires a very strained sense of "the lower parts of the earth" to mean simply "back to earth."
The descent reading fits. It fits the language. It fits the cosmology. And it fits the wider New Testament witness we traced in Chapter 15, where Peter speaks of Christ going to "the spirits in prison" and the gospel being "preached even to those who are dead" (1 Pet 3:19; 4:6). Read together, these passages form a pattern. Christ did not simply die and rise. Between death and resurrection, He went somewhere. He went to the dead.
Psalm 68 is a victory song. Picture a king returning from battle. He rides through the city gates. Behind him march the prisoners he has taken. The crowds cheer. The king throws gifts to his soldiers. Paul takes that image and hands it to Jesus.9
But who are the captives? The most common answer is that they are the hostile powers Christ defeated, the "principalities and powers" He disarmed at the cross (Col 2:15).10 On this reading, Christ parades His defeated enemies in triumph.
That may be right, and it is a powerful image. But the descent tradition offers another layer. If Christ went down into the realm of the dead, the "captives" might also be the dead themselves, those held captive by death, now led out into freedom. Christ enters the prison. He does not merely defeat the jailer. He opens the cells.11
I do not want to overreach here. Beilby is right that the primary purpose of Ephesians 4:8–10 is not to teach a doctrine of salvation for the dead. Paul's main point is about Christ's lordship over the entire cosmos (heaven, earth, and the underworld) and about the gifts He gives to His church.12 The text runs parallel to Colossians 1:18, where Christ is "the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy," and to Philippians 2:10, where "every knee" bows "in heaven and on earth and under the earth."13
Paul is making a point about Christ's total sovereignty. Even so, the logic cuts deeper than a bare claim of lordship. If Christ's authority extends beneath the earth, into the very realm of the dead, then the dead are not beyond His reach. Lordship and rescue are not at odds. A king who rules the prison can also free the prisoners. And the descent tradition says that is exactly what He did.
I want to be honest about what this text does and does not do. On its own, Ephesians 4:8–10 does not prove that Christ offered salvation to the dead. The passage is about Christ's cosmic victory and His gifts to the living church. Even if it teaches a genuine descent into Hades (which I believe it does), it does not spell out what happened there in the way 1 Peter 3 and 4 do.14
This book does not rest its case on a single text. It builds a cumulative argument. Ephesians 4 gives us the descent. First Peter 3 and 4 give us the proclamation (Chapter 15). The two-stage history gives us the framework. And the tradition of the church, which we are about to trace, gives us the living witness of Christians who believed the dead were not beyond the Savior's grace. Each piece strengthens the others.
The Apostles' Creed is the most widely used statement of faith in the Christian world. And nestled inside it is a line about the descent. In its Latin form: descendit ad inferos, meaning "He descended to the dead" or, in older English translations, "He descended into hell."15
Where did this line come from? Grudem has made a careful case that it entered the creed late. The earliest known version that includes it is from Rufinus of Aquileia, around AD 390. And Rufinus himself may have understood the phrase to mean simply that Christ was buried. After Rufinus, the line does not appear in any version of the creed until around AD 650.16
Grudem's scholarship is careful, and I take it seriously. But his conclusion, that the line should be removed from the creed because it has no solid foundation, is surprisingly weak. Here is why: the creed's wording arrived late, but the belief it expresses arrived early. By the time Rufinus wrote those words, the descent of Christ was already one of the most widely held convictions in the church.17 The creed did not invent the doctrine. It caught up with it.
The belief that Christ descended to the dead was not a fringe position in the early church. It was mainstream. Let me walk you through some of the voices.
Justin Martyr, writing around AD 155, quoted a passage he attributed to Jeremiah: "The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own salvation." The exact source of this quotation is unknown. It may come from a pre-Septuagint version of the text that is now lost. But what matters for us is what Justin believed: Christ went down to the dead and preached to them.19
Irenaeus, writing around AD 180, stated plainly that Christ "descended into the regions beneath the earth, preaching his advent there also, and declaring the remission of sins received by those who believe in Him."20 People sometimes read Irenaeus as limiting Christ's rescue to the Old Testament saints alone. But Irenaeus was writing against Marcion, who denied that Christ saved the Old Testament righteous. His emphasis was shaped by the debate, not by a desire to exclude others.21
Clement of Alexandria went further. In his Stromateis, he argued that Christ's proclamation in Hades was for the benefit of all the dead, not only the Hebrew patriarchs. "If the Lord descended to Hades for no other end but to preach the Gospel," Clement reasoned, "it was either to preach the Gospel to all or to the Hebrews only. If, accordingly, to all, then all who believe shall be saved."22
Origen, commenting on Psalm 68:18, the very psalm Paul quotes in Ephesians 4, wrote that Christ "raised up and set free from the recesses of Hades the souls that were held in captivity."23 Notice how naturally he connects Psalm 68 with the descent. For Origen, the "captives" of the psalm were not only defeated enemies. They were rescued prisoners.
Even a pagan critic noticed. Celsus, the second-century opponent of Christianity, mocked the idea: "You will not, I suppose, say of him, that, after failing to gain over those who were in this world, he went to Hades to gain over those who were there." Origen responded by affirming that Christ did preach to the dead and converted those who were willing to hear Him.25
The witness of the early church is not a proof text. But it is powerful. These were Christians who lived close to the apostolic period, who read the same Scriptures we do, and who believed that Christ's victory reached beneath the ground. The descent was not a curiosity for them. It was the good news carried to the last place anyone expected to hear it.
I need to be honest about something. The early church agreed that Christ descended. They did not all agree about what He did there, or whom He rescued.
Some, like Ignatius and Irenaeus, focused on the Old Testament righteous: the patriarchs and prophets who had waited for Christ in the paradise chamber of Sheol. On this reading, the descent completed their salvation. Christ brought them home.26
Others, like Clement and Origen, believed the reach was wider. They taught that righteous pagans and all who desired salvation could respond to Christ in Hades. This was not a fringe position. It was the mainstream view in the Alexandrian school and influenced the Eastern church for centuries.27
And there is a third position, held most clearly by Calvin. Calvin did not deny that the creed speaks of a real descent. But he reinterpreted it. For Calvin, "He descended into hell" meant that Christ bore the agonies of hell on the cross, the spiritual torment of separation from the Father. The descent was metaphorical, not spatial.28
Calvin's reading is creative and theologically rich. I respect it. But it does not account for the language of Ephesians 4 or 1 Peter 3, both of which describe a going somewhere. And it does not account for the wide, early, and vigorous tradition of a real descent that predates Calvin by more than a thousand years.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the descent is not a footnote. It is the climax of Holy Week. On Holy Saturday, the day between crucifixion and resurrection, the church celebrates Christ's entry into the realm of the dead. The liturgy announces that Christ "descended into Hades" and "destroyed death by death."29
And then there is the icon. If you have spent time in an Orthodox church, you have likely seen it: Christ standing on the shattered gates of Hades, reaching down with both hands to pull Adam and Eve up out of the darkness. The broken locks and chains lie beneath His feet. Behind Him, the righteous dead wait to follow. It is one of the most powerful images in all of Christian art.
The Western church tends to depict Christ casting the lost into flames. The Eastern church depicts Christ pulling the lost out of them. Both traditions read the same Bible. But the icon of the harrowing keeps alive an instinct the West has largely forgotten: the first thing Jesus did after dying was go to the dead.30
I hand the fuller treatment of the Orthodox tradition to Appendix G. But the icon matters here because it reads Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 3 the way the earliest Christians read them: as descriptions of a real rescue, carried out beneath the surface of the world.
Here is the point I want to land.
The descent of Christ is not a museum-piece doctrine. It is not a curiosity for church historians or a line in the creed we can safely skip. It is the historical anchor for the claim this book is making: that the realm of the dead is open to Christ, and that His saving work reaches there.
In Chapter 14, I laid out the two-stage history of the intermediate state. Before Christ, Hades was divided and sealed. At Christ's death and descent, the geography changed. He entered, He proclaimed, He led captivity captive. After His resurrection, the dead who die now enter a realm where Christ already holds the keys (Rev 1:18). In Chapter 8, I argued that this means the intermediate state is not a closed cell. It is a place of continued divine presence and pursuit.
Ephesians 4 and the descent tradition do not, on their own, prove postmortem opportunity. But they anchor the claim in Scripture and in the oldest layers of Christian belief. When this book argues that God's pursuit of the soul does not end at the grave, it is not inventing a new idea. It is recovering an old one, one the church believed before anyone thought to question it.
The Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov put it as well as anyone: "All events in the life of Christ, which happen in time, have timeless, abiding significance. Therefore, the so-called 'preaching in hell'… is a revelation of Christ to those who in their earthly life could not see or know Christ. There are no grounds for limiting this event… to the Old Testament saints alone."31
He went all the way down. And the tradition of the church, stretching from the second century to the present, says He did not go alone, and did not come back alone either.
In the next chapter, we turn from the descent texts to a different kind of biblical evidence: the universal-scope passages. Paul, writing to the Philippians, declares that at the name of Jesus "every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Phil 2:10). That phrase, "under the earth," should by now sound familiar. Christ's victory does not stop at the surface. It reaches all the way down.
↑ 1. The story of Wheaton College's chapel series on the Apostles' Creed is telling. When the faculty was asked to preach on each phrase, no one was willing to take the line "He descended into Hades." It was simply omitted. See Erickson, How Shall They Be Saved?, 172.
↑ 2. Psalm 68:18 in the Hebrew reads "you received gifts from men." Paul changes the verb to "gave gifts to men." The shift may reflect a targumic tradition in which Moses ascended Sinai, received the Torah, and gave it as gifts to Israel. See Harris, "The Ascent and Descent of Christ in Ephesians 4:9–10," 205, 209–10; cf. Stott, Ephesians, 157; Martin, Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon, 50.
↑ 3. This reading depends on taking tēs gēs ("of the earth") as an epexegetical or appositional genitive: "the lower parts, namely the earth." So the ESV and many modern commentators. See Lincoln, Ephesians, 242–48.
↑ 4. Harris, "Ascent," 198–214; Lincoln, Ephesians, 242–48; Martin, Ephesians, 50. Harris argues that once the KJV's "first" (prōton) is removed per the best manuscripts, the descent follows the ascent and represents Christ's return as the Spirit at Pentecost. Paul links the exalted Lord and the Holy Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17.
↑ 5. This view was held by many patristic interpreters. Harris himself notes that "nearly all recent interpreters" regard the descent as either to earth (incarnation) or to the grave/Sheol (the realm of the dead). See Harris, "Ascent," 198–214; cf. Grace, Grace beyond the Grave, 67–69.
↑ 6. Thielman, Ephesians, on 4:9. Thielman's full statement: "It is extremely unlikely that Paul would use the phrase [descended to the lower, earthly regions] in such a cultural environment and expect his readers to understand by it anything other than a descent to the realm of the dead." Also cited in Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 142; and Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6.
↑ 7. For the patristic witnesses reading Paul's descent as a descent into Hades, see Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 142; Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6. Tertullian (On the Resurrection of the Flesh) opposed the view that Christ emptied Hades, but in doing so confirmed that the teaching was widespread. See MacCulloch, The Harrowing of Hell, 93–94.
↑ 8. Harris, "Ascent," 201. Harris follows von Soden, Abbott, Caird, and Lincoln. Martin agrees that once "first" is dropped from verse 9, the sequence best fits an ascent followed by a descent. See Martin, Ephesians, 50.
↑ 9. The Roman triumph (triumphus) celebrated a major military victory. The conquering general paraded captives through the streets and distributed gifts to his soldiers. Paul uses this image to portray Christ's victory. See Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 141–42; Stott, Ephesians, 156–57.
↑ 10. Stott, Ephesians, 156–57, takes the captives as "principalities and powers he had defeated, dethroned and disarmed," paralleling Colossians 2:15.
↑ 11. MacCulloch, The Harrowing of Hell, 46–47. MacCulloch contends that no part of the universe—Hades, earth, heaven—was to be unvisited by Christ, and that the "captives" include those led out from death's captivity.
↑ 12. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 142–43: "Even if Paul is teaching that Christ descended into Hades, this is in service of Paul's assertion of the lordship of Christ over the 'whole creation.'" The passage is Christological before it is soteriological.
↑ 13. On Colossians 1:18 and Philippians 2:10 as parallel expressions of Christ's cosmic sovereignty extending "under the earth," see Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 143.
↑ 14. For the exegesis of 1 Peter 3:18–22 and 4:6 and their bearing on a genuine proclamation to the dead, see Chapter 15.
↑ 15. The Latin descendit ad inferos literally means "He descended to the lower regions" or "to those below." The older English "He descended into hell" reflects the archaic use of "hell" to mean the realm of the dead, not the final place of punishment (gehenna). Modern versions increasingly render it "He descended to the dead."
↑ 16. Grudem, "He Did Not Descend into Hell," 103–5. Grudem notes that Rufinus included the phrase in his version of the Aquileian baptismal creed around AD 390, but understood descendit ad inferos to mean merely that Christ was buried. Grudem argues the phrase is not found in any other formulation of the Apostles' Creed until AD 650.
↑ 17. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 172–73, responds to Grudem's argument by noting that affirmations of Christ's descent into Hades are attested throughout the early church long before the creedal phrase appeared. The creed formalized an existing conviction. See also Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6, who traces the same pattern.
↑ 18. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 72; Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.27.2; Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 6.6; Origen, Against Celsus, 2.43. Selwyn notes that "despite the popularity of the doctrine of Christ's harrowing of hell," 1 Peter 3:18ff was not quoted as authority for the descent before Clement and Origen—the teaching arose independently and was already well established. See Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter, 340.
↑ 19. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 72. Justin accuses the Jews of removing this passage from Jeremiah. Irenaeus quotes the same passage five times in Against Heresies. The exact source—called the "Jeremiah-logion" by scholars—is unknown, but its similarity to 1 Peter 4:6 is striking. See Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 181–82.
↑ 20. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.27.2 (ANF). Irenaeus continues: "Now all those believed in him who had hope towards him, that is, those who proclaimed his advent, and submitted to his dispensations, the righteous men, the prophets, and the patriarchs, to whom he remitted sins in the same way as he did to us." Cited also in Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6.
↑ 21. Irenaeus's emphasis on the OT saints was driven by his debate with Marcion, who taught that Christ abandoned the OT saints and rescued only the unrighteous. Irenaeus's statements should not be read as a denial that others might also benefit from the descent. See Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6.
↑ 22. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 6.6 (GCS 62bis, 454–55). Clement continues: "If, then, the Lord descended to Hades for no other end but to preach the Gospel, as he did descend, it was either to preach the Gospel to all or to the Hebrews only. If, accordingly, to all, then all who believe shall be saved, although they may be of the Gentiles, on making their profession there." Cited in Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6.
↑ 23. Origen, commenting on Psalm 68:18, as cited in Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6. Origen directly connects the psalm's "captives" with souls freed from Hades.
↑ 24. Gospel of Nicodemus (also called Acts of Pilate), in James, trans., Apocryphal New Testament, 22–23. The text is not canonical but was enormously influential in shaping popular Christian imagination about the descent. Cited also in Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6.
↑ 25. Origen, Against Celsus, 2.43 (Sources Chrétiennes 132, 382–83). Selwyn notes that Origen's reply to Celsus appears to reference 1 Peter 3:19 in affirming that Christ preached to the dead but converted only those willing to hear Him. See Selwyn, First Epistle, 340; cf. Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6.
↑ 26. Sanders, No Other Name, 183–84, identifies two early schools: those who limited the rescued to OT patriarchs and prophets (Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian), and those who held that Christ freed any who desired salvation (Clement, Origen, Athanasius). See also Grace, Grace beyond the Grave, endnote 24 to Appendix B.
↑ 27. The Alexandrian school's broader reading of the descent, including the salvation of righteous Gentiles, influenced the Eastern church's theology of Holy Saturday and the harrowing icon. See Dalton, Christ's Proclamation to the Spirits, 28–30; Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 182.
↑ 28. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.xvi.10–12. Calvin rejected a literal spatial descent and argued that the creedal line expresses the spiritual suffering Christ endured on the cross—the agony of divine abandonment. For an alternative Reformed treatment that acknowledges a real descent, see Horton, The Christian Faith, 491–93.
↑ 29. The Paschal troparion: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." For the broader significance of Holy Saturday in Eastern theology, see Appendix G.
↑ 30. The contrast between Western and Eastern iconography on this point is striking. Western depictions often show Christ as judge, consigning the lost to flames. The Eastern harrowing icon shows Christ as rescuer, standing on the shattered gates of Hades and pulling Adam and Eve upward. Both traditions are rooted in Scripture, but the Eastern icon preserves the hope of the descent tradition more vividly. See Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6; Alfeyev, Christ the Conqueror of Hell.
↑ 31. Bulgakov, as cited in Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 6. The full passage continues: "There are no grounds for limiting this event… to the Old Testament saints alone, as Catholic theology does." Bulgakov's point is that the descent, like all of Christ's acts, has enduring and universal reach.