Truth Unites - Did Jesus Descend Into Hell?

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Gavin Ortlund explores what it means that Jesus ‘descended to hell,’ looking at the creeds, church history, Scripture, and the hope this gives us in facing death.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth.Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Both the Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed affirm that Jesus descended into hell. Christians have all kinds of questions about this phrase, trying to understand what this means. Let's give a brief explanation of it in this video, just canvassing the big picture. First, the word hell here doesn't mean the opposite of heaven, as in a place of torment and final judgment. Rather, this is better taken as just a reference to the realm of the dead. I'll put up the Latin phrase from the Apostles' Creed here, the word I underline. line there comes from a word meaning low simply, and in the plural here, it can be just translated as the dead, the realm of the dead, the underworld, that's the kind of meaning there. So it's just

saying, it's not saying Jesus went to hell in the sense of we think of that word hell. Second, note the location of this phrase in the creed between Christ's burial and his resurrection. So we want to avoid two errors in how we understand this, redundancy and discronology. Redundancy is saying the same thing twice, and discronology is taking things out of order. So, for example, some people say he descended into hell means nothing other than he died. But in that case, why included it all? It would be redundant, and the Apostles' Creed is only about 75 words in Latin. It's not wasting words.

Why would it say the same thing twice? That also involves discronology, because it's placed after the burial of Jesus, but of course Jesus died before he was buried. So if that were the meaning, a more natural order would be something like, was crucified, died descending into hell and was buried. So that doesn't seem like the best way to take this. Another option is people think he descended into hell references Jesus' suffering on the cross while he bore our sins.

That was something in the ballpark of that is like John Calvin's view. And though I respect John Calvin a great deal, on this particular point, he appears to be following just a total innovation from what I can tell. This view also has the problem of discronology, even more so than the last view. Because if that were the correct view, it would be more natural to say, was crucified, descending into hell, he died and was buried. What the creed actually says is, he was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended into hell on the third day. So the more natural reading would be to conceive the descent into hell, or as we say, into the realm of the dead, as between Jesus's burial and resurrection, or at least between his death and resurrection, it could be simultaneous with his burial. So those don't seem like good views. What does this mean? What I would suggest, and what I think is the common view of the early church and also has some biblical support, even if it's uncomfortable or unfamiliar to some contemporary Protestants, is that Jesus' human human

soul descended to the realm of the dead to proclaim his victory. Now if you want more on this, Matt Emerson has a great book on it. Here's how he puts it. Christ in remaining dead for three days experienced death as all humans do. His body remained in the grave and his soul remained in the place of the righteous dead. He did not suffer there, but remaining hypostatically united to the divine nature of the sun, proclaimed the victory achieved by his penal substitutionary death to all those in the place of the dead, fallen angels, the unrighteous dead, and the Old Testament states. That's just from an article he wrote. Read the book for the fuller case. Now, to be clear, this proclamation of victory is best conceived, not as an offer of post-mortem

salvation, but rather as sheer declaration. You could almost, if it's not too crude, think of it as sort of Jesus trash talking or saying, in effect, I won. and one reason this makes sense, by the way, is because this corresponds to what happens to pretty much every human being when they die. There's this separation of body and soul. And if Jesus is fully human, then this idea is he's experiencing basically a normal human death, which we would expect as a normal human being. So you have a separation of body and soul. What most Christians have thought is human beings are constituted of two parts, body and soul. That's disputed sometimes, but that's majority view, and at death, body and soul are separated, and at the final resurrection,

they're reunited. And so we're just saying, Jesus was fully human. He had the fully human experience of death of a separation of body and soul. In other words, Jesus didn't have the abnormal experience of his soul being annihilated on Good Friday afternoon when his body is dead. And you see on screen, Joseph of Varamathia is the one who takes his body and buries in it the tomb. Nicodemus is also involved in that, according to John, which is interesting. I often think about the burial of Christ and what an experience it would be. Here, these wealthy, educated men are doing the burial. Think of them holding the dead body of Christ, the cold, stiffening body of Christ. Amazing to think that our Savior didn't merely die. He actually entered into the state

of death for a period of time, and there's significance to that. I've discussed that a little bit in the Apostles' Creed video as well. So separation of body and soul at death, his soul goes to the place of the dead, and he proclaims victory. Now there's other thoughts that come up about this, but that's the core idea. And that core idea is extremely well attested historically and does seem to have biblical support. For example, Peter writes that Christ being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. That's 1st Peter 319. Tough passage, disputed passage, but it seems like something is going on there. I mean, to deny any sort of

dissent and proclamation, you just have to say, well, what in the world is Peter talking about? There are some other views on that. But know what he says in the next chapter, that the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, 1st Peter 4.6. Similarly, Paul speaks of Christ, having descended into the lower regions of the earth. And while the interpretation of these passages is not totally obvious, it sure seems like that core idea is there, descent to the realm of the dead, and then proclamation of victory.

People often object to this because of other additional features that eventually come into the picture at times, like universalism, for example. But that's not necessary to the core idea. You can reject that, and still believe in the descent to the dead. One pastoral implication from this is very simple, and that is to appreciate that we have a Savior who has full solidarity with us in our humanity.

We don't need to be afraid of death because we have a Savior who doesn't just tell us he's going to save us from it. He literally has been there himself. I love this statement in Revelation 1 where Jesus introduces himself as the living one and says, I died and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. Think of this. Here's a metaphor. Okay.

So the idea here is we have a perfect Savior, everything he needed to do for our salvation he has done. He even entered into the state of death for us. He's done it all. You know, nothing that needed, no stone was left unturned in our salvation. He's had a full human experience. So even when we get to the moment of death, we're actually following in the moment of death. we're actually following in the footsteps of our Savior.

Think of it like this. Imagine years ago I was a youth pastor and we were on Catalina Island and we did a thought experiment of looking at these caves, which were kind of spooky, and saying, how much would someone have to pay you to walk in there without a light and just keep on walking as far as you possibly can? And we, you know, came up different amounts. But then we said, well, would it be different if somebody else went ahead of you with a light? And of course, everyone was totally comfortable with it at that point.

not totally comfortable, but much more comfortable than going by yourself without a light. This is something of what it means for us to face death. We have someone who's gone ahead, shining a light on the way. We know that we don't need to be afraid of that experience because we have a Savior who's already been there. He's literally been to the place of the dead and declared his victory and claimed that territory. As he says, I have the keys of death in Hades. So the pastoral consequence is, thank you.

you Jesus, that we don't need to be afraid of death.