Where Did This Phrase Come From?
In the Apostles’ Creed our congregation confesses that Jesus Christ “descended into hell.” Most Christians say these words without realizing that they were not part of the earliest baptismal creeds. The phrase descendit ad inferna first appeared in the baptismal creed of the church of Aquileia around AD 390, as documented by the theologian Rufinus. It was absent from the Old Roman Symbol (the ancestor of our Apostles’ Creed) and from the Nicene Creed. Over the following centuries, the clause spread through Gallican and Irish liturgical traditions until it was permanently fixed in the received text of the Apostles’ Creed by the 8th century, largely through the influence of the monk Pirminius and the Carolingian reforms.
A subtle but important shift happened along the way. The Greek versions of the Creed used the word hades (ᾅδης), which in the Bible translates the Hebrew Sheol, the general realm of the dead. It was a neutral term: the place where all the dead reside, righteous and unrighteous alike. When the phrase was translated into Latin as ad inferna (“to the lower regions”), Western theology gradually began to associate the word not with the state of death in general, but with Gehenna, the realm of punitive torment. This linguistic shift changed the theological question. It was no longer simply “Did Christ share in the human condition of death?” It became “What did Christ do when he entered the realm of the devil and the damned?”
What Does Scripture Actually Say?
The doctrine rests on a small number of passages, each of which contributes a distinct piece to the picture.
| Passage | What It Says | What It Means for the Descent |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Peter 3:18–19 | Christ was “made alive in the spirit” and “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison” | After his death and vivification, Christ traveled to the realm of the condemned and announced his victory. This was a herald’s proclamation, not an offer of salvation. |
| Ephesians 4:9 | Before he ascended, Christ “descended into the lower parts of the earth” | The same Christ who rose above the heavens first descended to the absolute lowest depth, conquering death, the curse, and the devil. |
| Psalm 16:10 / Acts 2:24–27 | “You will not abandon my soul in Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption” | Peter applies David’s prophecy directly to Christ at Pentecost: God did not leave his Son in the realm of the dead. Hell could not hold him. |
| Colossians 2:15 | Christ “stripped the principalities and powers and made a public triumph over them” | The descent was not a private event. It was a public, legal victory in which the devil’s authority over humanity was permanently revoked. |
The most important of these is 1 Peter 3:18–19. Peter says Christ was “made alive in the spirit” and then “went and proclaimed” (ekeruxen) to the spirits in prison. The Greek verb kerusso means to announce as a herald, not to preach the Gospel for conversion. Christ did not descend to offer the damned a second chance. He descended to declare, in person and in triumph, that the war was over and he had won. The modern suggestion that Hades is a place where unconverted individuals may still repent after death has no basis in this text and is rightly rejected as contrary to Scripture (Hebrews 9:27).
What Luther Saw
In a sermon preached at Torgau in 1533, Martin Luther painted the descent in the most vivid terms available to him. He described Christ descending
“clad in a priestly robe and with a banner in His hand, with which He beats the devil and puts him to flight, takes hell by storm, and rescues those that are His.”
Luther was not being fanciful. He was making a precise theological claim: the descent was not a continuation of Christ’s suffering on the cross. The suffering was finished. The descent was the first act of his exaltation, the moment when the crucified and risen God-man invaded the stronghold of his enemy and announced that the enemy’s power was permanently broken.
Luther described a “mighty duel” in which Christ “swallowed up the pains of hell and the power of death.” The point was not that Christ endured torment; it was that he conquered it. The descent fulfilled the prophecy of Hosea 13:14: “O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction.” For the Christian, this means that the devil’s kingdom has been utterly destroyed and the gates of hell have been torn to pieces.
What the Formula of Concord Confesses
Article IX of the Formula of Concord (1577) codified Luther’s Torgau sermon into binding confessional doctrine. The Formula teaches that the entire person of Christ, God and man, undivided in body and soul, descended into hell after his burial. It was not merely the soul that descended, nor merely the divine nature. The whole Christ went. The Formula deliberately avoids speculating about how this happened, directing Christians to wait until the life to come for a full understanding. What it insists upon is the what: Christ descended, Christ conquered, and by that conquest he
“destroyed hell for all believers, and delivered them from the power of death and of the devil, from eternal condemnation and the jaws of hell.”
Four Interpretations: Where the Churches Divide
The history of the Creed produced four competing readings of the descent. The table below lays them side by side.
| Interpretation | What It Teaches | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Confessional Lutheran: Triumphant Victory | Christ descended as the God-man into hell after his burial, not to suffer, but to proclaim his absolute victory over the devil, death, and all the powers of darkness. The descent is the first act of his exaltation. | Confessed in the Formula of Concord, Art. IX, and rooted in Luther’s 1533 Torgau sermon. This is our confession. |
| Roman Catholic: Limbus Patrum | Christ descended to the “Limbo of the Fathers” to liberate the Old Testament saints (Abraham, Moses, David) who had been waiting for the Messiah in a state of natural happiness. | Rejected. Old Testament believers were already justified by grace through faith and received into glory at death (Luke 16:22; 23:43). |
| Reformed / Calvinist: Suffering the Torments | Christ experienced the full torments of hell and the wrath of God, either on the cross or after death, to complete his atoning work. The descent belongs to his humiliation. | Rejected. Christ’s suffering was completed on the cross (“It is finished,” John 19:30). The descent belongs to his exaltation, not his humiliation. |
| Marcionite / Origenic: Second Chance | Christ descended to offer the Gospel to the damned or to those who never heard it in life, giving them a post-mortem opportunity for repentance. | Rejected. The 1 Peter 3:19 proclamation is a herald’s announcement of judgment, not a Gospel invitation. Scripture teaches no second chance after death (Heb. 9:27). |
What This Means for You
The Harrowing of Hell is not a relic of medieval imagination. It is the confession that when you stand at the grave of someone you love, or when you face your own death, the territory has already been conquered. Christ did not stop at the cross. He pursued the enemy into the enemy’s own stronghold, stripped him of his power, and walked out victorious. When we confess “He descended into hell,” we are confessing that there is no depth to which Christ has not gone, no darkness he has not invaded, and no power of death or devil that retains any claim over those who belong to him by faith.