01 May 2023

Aunty, did Jesus go to hell to preach on Easter Sabbath?

Features aunt sevvy, easter, state of the dead

1 May 2023 |

Dear Aunt Sevvy,

Can you resolve a discussion a friend and I had this past Easter? She believes Jesus left his body and preached to the dead the Sabbath after His death, before His resurrection on Sunday morning. I have never heard this before. Can you shed some light, please?

Signed, Strange Doctrine

Dear Strange Doctrine,

You push Aunty a bit out of her zone, but with the help of some scholar friends, here’s what she’s discovered.

Your friend is correct that this is a belief among some Christians. It used to be called the “harrowing of hell” (though most people don’t know it by that title), and it is based on one of the most problematic texts in the New Testament, one that even seasoned New Testament scholars struggle to explain.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water (1 Peter 3:18-21).

Some have said, on the basis of this text, that when Jesus “preached to the spirits in prison” he left his body behind at his death and traveled as a spirit to a dark “storehouse” where all those souls who had lived before Jesus’ death on the cross were waiting, where he gave them a chance to accept the gospel and repent. Some even say that Jesus led these souls out of hell into heaven (Ephesians 4:8). This belief goes back to very early Christianity, to people such as Origen and Tertullian. It is taught in some form in Lutheran, Catholic, Reformed, Mormon, and Orthodox traditions.

There is even a line in the traditional version of the apostles’ creed that says “he descended into hell” after he died, but before he was resurrected.

There are many problems with this teaching, including:

It depends on the immortality of the soul—that souls cannot die. Adventists don’t see immortality of the soul affirmed in the Bible. We believe souls “sleep” until the final resurrection.
Was the death of Jesus real? Or did he just appear to have died while his soul was gallivanting around the spiritual universe? If so, then his sacrifice and resurrection weren’t quite what they appeared to be.
This teaching is based upon just this one controversial and difficult passage. If Jesus had done this, don’t you think he’d have told us clearly himself?
Finally, the passage in 1 Peter is grammatically and lexically confusing. Is it about people in Noah’s day, or Jesus’ day, or some other time? Did he descend into prison, into hell, or merely into the grave? Did he make an altar call in hell?—or did he just proclaim to the universe and to Satan’s forces, by his resurrection, that he had achieved victory over sin and death? Did he do it before his resurrection on Sabbath, or by means of his resurrection?

This teaching of Jesus descending into hell is rejected by many Protestant scholars. Adventists reject it because we believe the Bible says that souls “sleep” until the final resurrection. Nor do we believe that a perpetual “hell” with conscious “souls” exists.

Aunty finds an explanation by Edcarlos Menezes and Kim Papaioannou in the June 2019 Ministry magazine quite helpful. They say,

Peter assures his readers that though Jesus suffered and died, He rose from the dead, proclaimed His triumph to Satan and his fallen angels, ascended to heaven, and was enthroned at the right hand of the Father, a Victor (emphasis added).

I hope you will do more study before you try to explain it to your friend—it is a difficult passage about a controversial teaching.

Aunt Sevvy

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