Did Jesus Go to Hell?

by Admin · May 14, 2024

Question: In the Apostles’ Creed we say that Jesus descended into hell and rose on the third day. How could Jesus go to hell when he was divine and without sin?

Answer: This is a question that comes up frequently. When we say that “he descended into hell”, something gets lost in translation. In the context of the Apostles’ Creed, “hell” is translated from the Greek word Hades, which derives from the Hebrew concept of sheol (which even sounds a little like our word “hell”, but that term has its roots in old Germanic).

In the Hebrew Bible, sheol is the underworld place of stillness and darkness to which both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go — the realm of all the dead. It was the eternal habitat of the damned, but also a place where the righteous awaited redemption until the coming of the Saviour.

Before that, they could not know the joys of being in God’s presence. So Christ’s first act after his death on Calvary was to descend into sheol to rescue the righteous who had died and bring them into the glory of the Father.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him” (633).

By implication, after Christ’s rescue act, sheol became gehenna, the exclusive domain for the devil and the souls of the wicked —“the outer darkness” which Matthew described, where “men will weep and gnash their teeth” (see Mt 8:12; 13:42; 13:50; and 25:30,41).

Perhaps a new and more accurate translation of the Apostles’ Creed — our statement of faith — might prevent confusion among the faithful.

Published in the April 2024 issue of The Southern Cross magazine