The phrase in the Apostles Creed he descended into Hell has long troubled Christians. Commonweal has a blog on it with some interesting comments.
The general (although not universal) view is that Christ descended into the limbo of the patriarchs to free all the just who had died before the Crucifixion. Dante is in the tradition.
But Augustine somewhere refers to the common belief in the North African church of his time that by His descent and resurrection Christ emptied Hell.
Hans Urs von Balthasar makes the Descent the cornerstone of his theology, because he sees Christ’s descent into the hell of the damned as the uttermost proof of God’s love. Therefore he also sees the possibility of the hope of universal salvation.
Many disagree with von Balthasar, and I get the impression that some people would be disappointed if all were saved – they take the Elder Brother in the story of the Prodigal Son as their model.
Others think that all good people will be saved. But what about the bad? God’s heart reaches out to the worst sinner.
I don’t know the secrets of the universe. But God has said that He loves all that He has made, and He has promised that He will make all things new and wipe away the tears from every eye.
What does this mean? Can we hope that all will be saved, that sin and death will be utterly defeated and God will reign in and through love over every creature? I do not know. All I can do is look at the Cross and hope and trust in Him.
“He descended into Hell…” Who was the originator of that thought? How would anyone know ( including Augustine and von Balthasar) where Jesus went after he was crucified? And does anyone really still believe that until Our Lord was crucified all other folks dead before him were in Limbo or Hell?
How do we teach young people to love this God the Father who was sending everyone to Hell until his Only Son could be crucified?
AW
Acts 3:21 is evidence that God plans to restore all things. The doctrine of Apocatastasis originated with the Stoics but it is a lovely thought that hell is or will be empty, even though we are required as Catholics to believe there is a hell.
I don’t think Jesus went to a place called: Hell
But rather hell came to him as demonstrated by the 3 hour darkness while jesus will hanging on the cross as his unity with his father is broken in a timeless fashion before giving up his spirit.
Confusion arises when we parse Scriptural teachings. The Creator gave us all the gift of Free Will to love and obey Him or to choose to reject His Truths. Heaven was closed after our first parents rejected God’s Law. “Hell” in this sense is to be deprived of the Beatific Presence.
His love for mankind was manifest in His ONLY begotton Son, whose suffering and death in perfect obedience to the Father’s Will expiated mankind’s rejection.
In the Eatern Church it is the Resurrection, which is the foremost Feastday for Eastern Christians , because it is the fulfillment of Christ’s Word and our hope.
Eternal Damnation is made clear in the Apocalypse or Book or Revelations.This is why the Shroud of Turin is considered a most significant relic.
We all were born and we all face death.
The reality I have witnessed while caring for the terminally ill is that there are not many people who die peacefully without a hope for eternal life.
It is much better for these people to refect on a life wherein one’s time was spent wisely seeking the knowledge and the love of their Creator, rather then a life focused on their own passing hedonistic pleasures.
You choose to believe or not since hell is filled with those who chose it.
Happy Florida! Happy Feast of Flowers!Happy Easter to all!
Did not Fr. Von Baltassar fall into the same error with the Blue Franciscans in that he allowed Adrienne von Speyer’s visions the same unwarranted influence on his Theology that you yourself say that they did respecting Mary of Agreda’s visions?
Sr Emmerich might be the most sensible of the 3 visionaries when she admits that sometimes the devils tricked her with false visions and that it was the duty of the Church to judge when & where that happened.She also admits to forgetting things & misunderstanding them due to human weakness.
For my part I would be horrified to discover people like Diocletian or Mao or Che Gueverra were anywhere outside the deepest pits of Hell. It seems vain & sentimental to imagine them as saved—“A large economy in God to save the like” I would say TOO large.
I think people should go back to what the OT teachings were, since Jesus was fulfilling Jewish prophesy. If I’m not mistaken (and I might be), the OT taught the existance of something called “the place of the dead” (“Sheol”). It was, apparently, some sort of way station before judgement, neither Heaven nor Hell. Also, take a look at the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus’s spirit went to “Abraham’s bosom,” where the rich man’s went to a place of profound torment.
I would have no problem believing that Jesus went to Shoel to free those righteous people who died. We must remember that Jesus bore the sin of the entire human race, for all time, and that his atoning sacrifice “cleansed” from sin, as opposed to the OT sacrificial system that “covered” sin (without removing it permanently).
The choice is whether people embrace Jesus’ atoning death for their own redemption. Those who do not risk eternal divine condemnation for their sin. That has been NT teaching throughout the centuries.
Happy Easter, everyone! And thank you, Dr. Podles, for encouraging reverent thought.
AW
“For my part I would be horrified to discover people like Diocletian or Mao or Che Gueverra were anywhere outside the deepest pits of Hell. It seems vain & sentimental to imagine them as saved—”A large economy in God to save the like” I would say TOO large.” -Joe Lowrey
A God incapable of saving people like Diocletian et al is itself a vain and sentimental vision. Let’s not think that we in our own hearts are too distant from Mao; we are human, and nothing human is alien to us. Did not Paul say he was the chief of all sinners? Christ took on sinful human nature and redeemed it. There is nothing new under the sun, and men in their sinful state are not capable of creating “new” human nature that was not redeemed in the incarnation, death and resurrection. To suggest that they are is to attribute creative power to evil, which is gnostic heresy.
T.T., the question isn’t whether God is capable of saving men like Diocletian and Mao. The question is whether men like Diocletian and Mao want to be saved, want to renounce their sin and embrace Christ’s atoning death for their redemption. Repentence is renouncing sin, not just saying, “I’m sorry” and doing nothing else. Jesus Himself said, “by their fruits you will know them.” The idea that those who don’t repent in this life will have another chance after they die is to make a mockery of human moral responsibility and the vicitimization of the innocent.
Lowrey said that he’d be “horrified” if he saw those men in heaven. But the Good Thief renounced sin as he was dying. My point was that a list of people whom one wishes to forbid God from saving is not a valid argument against universal salvation. I know these men did terrible things in life. I don’t claim to know what happened as they died.
I think it was Aquinas who stated that one of the joys of heaven was to watch the suffering of those in hell. I have always thought this the most horrifying thought.
Enjoying the suffering of others is sadism. And there is nothing heavenly about it.
Perhaps we should concern ourselves with preventing those who make hell on earth for children, and leave eternity to God.
AW
The Good Thief was able to behold the suffering of the innocent Jesus and to realize his sins and take responsibility for them. The Unrepentant Thief was not able to make this act of contrition. I do not know anything about the last days of the antichrists mentioned above that would indicate repentance and acceptance of the atoning death of Christ that would make me think that they would be in heaven.