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in Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption.” From this passage Pearson
concludes that the soul of Christ was in hell (hades) before the resurrection, for we are told that
it was not left there.[Expos. of the Creed, in loco.] But we should note the following: (a) The
word nephesh (soul) is often used in Hebrew for the personal pronoun, and sheol, for the state
of death. (b) If we so understand these words here, we have a clear synonymous parallelism.
The idea expressed would be that Jesus was not left to the power of death. (c) This is in perfect
harmony with the interpretation of Peter in Acts 2:30,31, and of Paul in Acts 13:34,35. In both
instances the psalm is quoted to prove the resurrection of Jesus.
c. Different interpretations of the creedal expression.
(1) The Catholic Church takes it to mean
that, after His death, Christ went into the Limbus Patrum, where the Old Testament saints were
awaiting the revelation and application of His redemption, preached the gospel to them, and
brought them out to heaven. (2) The Lutherans regard the descent into hades as the first stage
of the exaltation of Christ. Christ went into the underworld to reveal and consummate His
victory over Satan and the powers of darkness, and to pronounce their sentence of
condemnation. Some Lutherans place this triumphal march between the death of Christ and His
resurrection; others, after the resurrection. (3) The Church of England holds that, while Christ’s
body was in the grave, the soul went into hades, more particularly into paradise, the abode of
the souls of the righteous, and gave them a fuller exposition of the truth. (4) Calvin interprets
the phrase metaphorically,[Inst. Bk. II, XVI, 8 ff.] as referring to the penal sufferings of Christ on
the cross, where He really suffered the pangs of hell. Similarly, the Heidelberg Catechism.[Q.
44.] According to the usual Reformed position the words refer not only to the sufferings on the
cross, but also to the agonies of Gethsemane. (5) Scripture certainly does not teach a literal
descent of Christ into hell. Moreover, there are serious objections to this view. He cannot have
descended into hell according to the body, for this was in the grave. If He really did descend
into hell, it can only have been as to His soul, and this would mean that only half of His human
nature shared in this stage of His humiliation (or exaltation). Moreover, as long as Christ had
not yet risen from the dead, the time had not come for a triumphal march such as the
Lutherans assume. And, finally, at the time of His death Christ commended His spirit to His
Father. This seems to indicate that He would be passive rather than active from the time of His
death until He arose from the grave. On the whole it seems best to combine two thoughts: (a)
that Christ suffered the pangs of hell before His death, in Gethsemane and on the cross; and (b)
that He entered the deepest humiliation of the state of death.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY:
How were state and condition related to each other in the
case of Adam, when he fell? In the case of the Word becoming flesh? How are they related in
the redemption of sinners? Do one’s state and condition always correspond? How should the
state of humiliation be defined? What does Kuyper mean, when he distinguishes between the