“The words He descended into Hell are not in the Creed of the Church of Rome.” So Rufinus tells us at the end of the fourth century. He adds that they were unknown to the Churches of the East. This is true so far as regards the baptismal creeds; no Eastern form contains the clause or anything corresponding to it. Yet, before Rufinus wrote his commentary, the doctrine of the Descent had found a place in three synodical declarations, put forth by the Arian assemblies gathered at Sirmium, Nice, and Constantinople, in the years 359 and 360. The wording of these manifestos will repay examination and comparison.
It will be observed that the earliest of the three forms omits καὶ ταφέντα, as if it were implied in the new phrase which follows: the second and third replace καὶ ταφένταbut retain the new words. All the three are remarkable for the dramatic tone in which they describe the Descent. The Sirmian phrase rests ultimately on Job 38:17 (lxx. πυλωροὶ δὲ ᾅδου ἰδόντες σε ἔπτηξαν); but the reference is probably at second hand, for the passage in Job had been applied to our Lord by Athanasius and Cyril of Jerusalem. Cyril, whose influence is seen in other features of the Sirmian ecthesis, assigns great importance to the Descent, making it one of his ten primary credenda. With regard to the personification of Hades which appears in the two later forms, this new feature may have been borrowed directly from St Paul (1 Cor. 15:55, after Hosea 13:14) or from St John (Apoc. 6:8, 20:13, 14).
The rhetorical language in which these Councils describe the Descent seems to be characteristic of the fourth century: but the belief existed from the first, and at a very early period gathered round itself a number of remarkable accretions. Our Lord, it was said, descended in order to visit and instruct the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, or to raise them to a higher state of existence, or in some cases to restore them to life on earth. A similar descensus ad inferos was attributed by some early writers to the Forerunner, and to the Apostles and the first generation of believers. How wide a range these ideas attained will be seen when we add that in one form or another they occur in Ignatius, Hermas, Justin, Irenaeus, the Petrine Gospel, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Origen, the Edessan document cited by Eusebius (H. E. i. 13), and the Teaching of Addai.
Can we trace these aspects of the Descent to the Apostolic age? It is natural to think of 1 Pet. 4:6 (καὶ νεκροῖς εὐηγγελίσθη); but 1 Pet. 3:18, 19 seems to limit this preaching to the generation who perished in the flood. Nor is there any considerable evidence that either of these passages influenced the thought of the second century. There is a possible reference to them in the Petrine Gospel (ἐκήρυξας τοῖς κοιμωμένοις), and they may also be contemplated in the saying of the Elder (possibly Pothinus, Irenaeus’s predecessor in the see of Lyons) quoted by Irenaeus (iv. 27, 2). But no direct appeal is made to St Peter in any of the numerous references to the Descent; the earliest quotation of 1 Pet. 4:6 we have been able to find is in Cyprian’s Testimonia. On the whole it is scarcely possible to account for the early legends of the Descent by supposing them to be based upon reminiscences of St Peter’s words. Their general acceptance may with more probability be traced to the influence of some early teaching which strove to combine the scattered hints of Scripture, as that (e.g.) of the apocryphon which is boldly said by Justin (dial. 70) to have been removed by the Jews from their copies of Jeremiah, and which Irenaeus ascribes once (iv. 22. 1) to Jeremiah, once (iii. 20. 4) to Isaiah, and in three other places (iv. 33. I, 12; v. 31. I) quotes anonymously. The words are: “The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, remembered His dead, which slept in the dust of the earth, and descended to them, to preach unto them His salvation.” One of the sources of this saying is betrayed by the words εἰς γῆν χώματος, an inversion of the phrase in Dan. 12:2 (Th.); and the author had also in view, besides the passage in 1 Peter, the incident recorded in Matt. 27:52, for he has altered Theodotion’s καθευδόντων into St Matthew’s κεκοιμημένων. His words, possibly a fragment of a primitive homily, commended themselves so fully to the subapostolic age that before Justin’s time they had acquired a place in some Christian copies of the Prophets.
A remarkable contrast is presented when we turn from the rhetorical descriptions of the fourth century, and the simpler yet fanciful conceptions of the second, to the article in the Apostles’ Creed which announces the fact of the Descent. Here both words and teaching are directly Scriptural: Descendit in infernum (ad infernum, ad inferna) are Old Latin and Vulgate renderings of יָרַד שְׁאֹלָהlxx. εἰς ᾅδου κατέβη. The clause carries Rufinus back to his Psalter, and he quotes Ps. 15(16):10, 21 (22):16, 29 (30):4, 10, 68 (69):3; for the phrase he might have referred to Ps. 54 (55):16, 113:25 (115:17), 138 (139):8. Of these passages the first had been cited by St Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and applied to our Lord’s departure from the body in a manner which alone might have been sufficient to justify the use of the words in the Creed. If we ask ourselves what meaning was attached to such words by the primitive Church of Jerusalem, it is natural to seek an answer in the interpretation of the corresponding Hebrew phrase. “Sheol,” writes Professor Schultz, “is not the grave itself, for even when there is no grave, Sheol is thought of as the abode of the departed. It is the dwelling-place of the dead, who rest there after the joy and the suffering of life.” Since the body was committed to the depths of the earth, it was natural to associate the condition of the dead with the thought of an underworld, and to speak of a ‘descent’ into Sheol. The primitive Church took over these ideas, and the language in which they were clothed; that our Lord at His death descended into Hades not only accorded with the Psalmist’s prophecy, but was involved in her belief of the reality of His human nature. St Paul followed upon the same lines, boldly adapting Deut. 30:13 to the fact of the Descent (Rom. 10:7). The Descent into Hades was in the Pauline Christology the lowest point in the κατάβασις which preceded the ἀνάβασις of the Incarnate Son (Eph. 4:9). Obedience even unto death secured for Him the sovereignty of the underworld (τὰ καταχθόνια); His descent thither was the pledge of His lordship over it (Phil. 2:10).
At what precise time these primitive ideas took their place under a severely simple form in the baptismal Creed, we cannot say. We meet with the clause for the first time in the Aquileian Creed of the fourth century, but it can hardly have been then of recent introduction. The Church of Aquileia laid claim to an antiquity scarcely inferior to that of the Roman Church. St Mark was regarded as its founder, and the martyrologies speak of an Aquileian Bishop who suffered under Nero. No reliance, of course, can be placed upon these stories of a later age, yet they witness to a belief which on the whole was probably sound. The importance of Aquileia, which afterwards secured to its Bishop metropolitan rank and an independence shared in Italy only by the see of Milan, points to an early establishment of the Church in that city. The Aquileian Church received her Creed from Rome, but exercised the right of modifying the original form. To the first article she added the words “invisible and impassible,” as a protest, Rufinus tells us, against Sabellianism; whilst against a false spiritualising she maintained “the resurrection of this flesh.” It is at least probable that the words descendit ad inferna were introduced with a like purpose, to meet some heresy; and the Docetic tendency of the latter part of the second century suggests itself as likely to have supplied the occasion. Rufinus in any case has lost the clue, and this circumstance alone would lead us to suppose that the addition was made long before his time. Moreover the simplicity of the words points us to the early days of the Aquileian Church. We shall perhaps not be far wrong if we assign the clause to the end of the second century, or the beginning of the third.
From Aquileia the reference to the Descent made its way further west. It occurs in the Creed of Venantius Fortunatus, who was Bishop of Poitiers in the last years of the sixth century, but in early life had resided at Aquileia. Here it appears to take the place of et sepultus, as in the Sirmian manifesto of 359; but in the Gallican and Spanish creeds of the next half century the two clauses stand side by side, and from that time in Creeds of the Gallican recension they kept the position which they still occupy.
The history is an instructive one. An article of faith, which is neither Roman nor Eastern, has established itself in the Creed of Western Christendom through the influence of a remote Church represented by a Gallican prelate who had spent his early days in North-East Italy. It did not reach Gaul, as far as we can judge, till the end of the sixth century. But it came from one of the earliest forms of the baptismal Creed; it reflected an absolutely primitive belief: it is expressed in the phraseology of the early Latin Bible. Why should this clause be regarded with misgiving because of the accident of its Aquileian origin? Professor Harnack insists that “the clause is too weak to maintain its ground beside the others, as equally independent and authoritative.” In what its weakness lies, the Professor fails to point out; to us it appears to possess in a very high degree the strength which comes from primitive simplicity and a wise reserve. Each of the great Churches in ancient Christendom had its special contribution to bring to the fulness of Christian faith and life. It was the privilege of the Church of Aquileia to hand down to a remote age, free from legendary accretions, an Apostolic belief which affirms that the Incarnate Son consecrated by His presence the condition of departed souls.
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