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Christ’s Descent into Hell in Reformation Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

David Bagchi
David Bagchi*
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Extract

By far the shortest of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England is the third, ‘Of the going down of Christ into Hell’. In its entirety it reads: ‘As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell’. One might be forgiven for thinking that the brevity of the article, together with the notable absence of polemic, indicates the doctrine’s relative unimportance amid the other great debates of the day. In fact, the descent of Christ into hell was one of the most controverted of all the creedal articles in the Reformation era. Article III is so short, not because it was a routine recital of the Apostles’ Creed, but because no further elaboration or explanation of the doctrine could command consent in the febrile climate of early Elizabethan England: disagreement over what was meant by ‘hell’, what was meant by Christ’s ‘descent’, and over the doctrine’s fundamental significance, was rife. This particular manifestation of the afterlife – be it only Christ’s afterlife, and only a temporary destination at that – is not the most obvious candidate as a theological cause célèbre of the Reformation era. But the intensity and the longevity of trie debates it fuelled make it at least an intriguing footnote to the study of the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 45: The Church, the Afterlife and the Fate of the Soul , 2009 , pp. 228 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2009

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References

1 For a brief account of the evolution of the article, see Gibson, E. C. S., The Thirty-Nine Articles Explained with an Introduction (London, 1906), 159.Google Scholar

2 For treatments of the doctrine in this period, see especially Quilliet, E., ‘Descente de Jésus aux Enfers’, in Vacant, A. and Mangenot, E., eds, Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, 4 (Paris, 1920)Google Scholar, cols 565–619; Vogelsang, Erich, ‘Weltbild und Kreuzestheologie in den Höllenfahrtsstreitigkeiten der Reformationszeit’, ARC 38 (1941), 90–132 Google Scholar; Smith, Constance I., ‘Descendit ad inferos – Again’, Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967), 87–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wallace, Dewey D. Jr, ‘Puritan and Anglican: The Interpretation of Christ’s Descent into Hell in Elizabethan Theology’, ARG 69 (1978), 248–87 Google Scholar; Friedman, Jerome, ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell and Redemption through Evil: A Radical Reformation Perspective’, ARG 76 (1985), 217–30 Google Scholar; Herzog, Markwart, Descensus ad inferos’: Eine religionsphilosophische Untersuchung der Motive und Interpretationen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der monographistischen Literatur seit dem 16. Jahrhundert, Frankfurter theologische Studien 53 (Frankfurt am Main, 1997)Google Scholar; Peter Marshall, The Map of God’s Word: Geographies of the Afterlife in Tudor and early Stuart England’, in Gordon, Bruce and Marshall, Peter, eds, The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 110–30 Google Scholar; idem, The Reformation of Hell? Protestant and Catholic Infernalisms in England, c. 1560–1640’, JEH (forthcoming). I am grateful to Professor Marshall for letting me see his study in advance of publication.

3 Herzog, , ‘Descensus’, 21 Google Scholar. Dietelmair’s monograph was Historia dogmatis de descensu Christi ad inferos luterana (Nuremberg, 1741; 2nd edn Altdorf, 1762).

4 See, for instance, Kolb, Robert, ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell as Christological Locus in the Era of the Formula of Concord: Luther’s “Torgau Sermon” Revisited’, Lutherjahrbuch 69 (2002), 101–18 Google Scholar, at 105 n. 14, where it is noted that: ‘[t]he issue of the soteriological significance of Christ’s descent into hell cuts across the usual “party lines” of the period; Melanchthon, his Philippist disciples, as well as Gnesio-Lutheran students of his like Chemnitz, interpreted it as part of Christ’s triumph; Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) and Andreae shared a position similar to that of their Calvinist opponents in viewing it as a part of his suffering.’

5 The figure of our own time who is most closely associated with this doctrine – and who indeed based an entire theology upon it – is the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Balthasar’s orthodoxy was such that he was nominated to the cardinalate shortly before his death in 1988; but in the book Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (trans. Aidan Nichols; Edinburgh, 1990), in which he sets out his famous ‘theology of Holy Saturday’, his understanding of the descent shows many points of contact with that of Luther and Calvin, not to mention more recent Protestant theologians. Recent commentators have found these similarities striking, with some emphasizing the rich possibilities for ecumenical encounter, others his gross neglect of traditional Catholic teaching. An example of the first category is Lauber, David, Barth on the Descent into Hell: God, Atonement and the Christian Life (Aldershot, 2004)Google Scholar. The case for Balthasar’s heterodoxy is made by Pitstick, Alyssa Lyra, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI, 2007)Google Scholar. The fact that Pitstick’s splendid piece of conservative Catholic polemic was issued by a publishing house normally associated with the Reformed tradition adds to the sense of denominational disorientation typical of this doctrine.

6 Kelly, J. N. D., Early Christian Creeds, 3rd edn (London, 1972), 378–83.Google Scholar

7 For the various versions of the descensus section of the Gospel of Nicodemus, see The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. J. K. Elliott (Oxford, 2005), 185–204; see ibid. 165 for the question of dating.

8 Augustine, in his letter to Evodius (Ep. 63; PL 33: 709–18), expressly denied that the Petrine verses referred to the descent, and his interpretation was generally followed by medieval theologians, including Aquinas. See Quilliet, ‘Descente de Jésus’, col. 594.

9 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa theologiae III, qu. 52, ‘De descensu Christi ad inferos’ (Alba and Rome, 1962), 2124–30.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., art. 1, resp. 1 (2124).

11 Ibid., art. 8 ad 2 (2130): ‘Descensus autem Christi ad inferos non fuit satisfactorius. Operabatur tamen in virtute passionis, quae fuit satisfactoria.’ Aquinas’s concern was to demonstrate that faithful souls are still liable to the punishments of purgatory.

12 Nicholas of Cusa, Excitationum ex sermonibus, book 10, ‘Ex sermone, Qui per spiritum sanctum semetipsum obtulit’ (preached 3 April 1457), in Haec accurata recognitio trium voluminum operimi ciariss. P. Nicolae Cusae Card., ed. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (Paris, 1514), vol. 2, fols 176v-177r.

13 Cusanus’s words evidently created a stir. Shortly afterwards he was obliged to preach a sermon on the article ‘Descendit ad inferna’, where the emphasis was on Christ’s perfect obedience to the Father (Ibid, fols 181v-182r). In a sermon preached shortly after that, on 2 May 1457, concerning the duties of a shepherd of the flock, Cusanus again returned to the theme: a good shepherd would be damned in hell for the sake of his flock: ‘Pastor non debet ad se respicere: dummodo qualitercunque in pascendo ea faciat quae deus praecipit pastori bono etiam si propterea conciperet se in inferno datnnandum.’ But lest his fellow pastors were unduly alarmed, he immediately added that a man who demonstrated such love would not be damned in hell, because ‘a righteous man in hell would not suffer there the poena of the unrighteous’. (Nam siquis tantae charitatis esset: ille utique non esset damnatus in inferno. Iustus enim in inferno: non habet poenam iniustorum.): Excitationum ex sermonibus, book 10, ‘Ex sermone “Ministrat nobis fratres”’, fol. 182r. It is at best an indirect correction, for no explicit reference is made here to Christ. However, one of the leading authorities on Nicholas’s theology, Rudolf Haubst, believes that the ‘ingenious idea’ of Christ’s vicarious suffering in hell is marginal to Cusanus’s overall understanding of the descent. See the literature quoted in Herzog, , Descensus, 172–73.Google Scholar

14 d’Étaples, Jacques Lefèvre, Quincuplex Psalterium: Gallicum, Romanum, Hebraicum, Vetus, Conciliatum (Paris, 1509)Google Scholar, fols 50v-51r, at Ps. (29) 30: 11.

15 See d’Étaples, Jacques Lefèvre, Quincuplex Psalterium. Fac-similé de l’édition de 1513, Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance 170 (Geneva, 1979)Google Scholar, fol. 47r.

16 For the course of the Hamburg controversy, see Vogelsang, , ‘Hüllenfahrtsstreitigkeiten’, 107–19 Google Scholar, an account which emphasizes the differences between Aepinus and Luther; D. G. Truemper, The Descensus ad inferos from Luther to the Formula of Concord’ (S. T. D. dissertation, Concordia Seminary in Exile (Seminex) in cooperation with the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1974), 218–71, which challenges Vogelsang’s evaluation of Aepinus on the basis of a previously undiscovered manuscript; and Herzog, , Descensus, 176–81.Google Scholar

17 The text of Melanchthon’s (and Bugenhagen’s) opinion is given in Corpus Reformatorum: Philippi Melanthonis Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, eds K. G. Bretschneider and E. Bindseil, 28 vols (Halle and Brunswick, 1834–60), 7: 666–68. For an analysis of Melanchthon’s contribution to the Hamburg debate, see Truemper, , ‘Descensus’, 206–08 and 238–39.Google Scholar

18 In a sermon preached before Edward VI in 1549, Latimer (after summing up controversies over the descent in typically direct fashion as ‘much ado’), suggested tentatively that ‘[Christ] suffered in hell such pains as the damned spirits did suffer there’; Sermons of Hugh Latimer, ed. George E. Corrie, PS 27 (Cambridge, 1844), 234. Hooper expressed a similar view in his Brief and Clear Confession of c. 1550: Later Writings of Bishop Hooper, Together with his Letters and Other Pieces, ed. Charles Nevinson, PS 21 (Cambridge, 1852), 30.

19 See Carlile, Christopher, A Discourse concerning two divine Positions. The first effectually concluding, that the soutes of the faithfull fathers, deceased before Christ, went immediately to heaven. The second sufficientlye setting foorth unto us Christians what we are to conceive, touching the descension of our Saviour Christ into Hell: Publiauely disputed at a Commencement in Cambridge, anno domini 1532. Purposely written at the first by way of a confutation, against a Booke of Richard Smith of Oxford ([London], 1562)Google Scholar. Further details of the disputation are given in Strype, John, The Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke (Oxford, 1821), 89–90.Google Scholar

20 While Catholic writers were generally cheered by disagreement on this doctrine within Protestant ranks, the idea of a suffering descent struck them as particularly offensive. This ‘Calvinist’ doctrine was attacked by Richard Smith in his Refutatio luculenta crassae et exitiosae haeresis Joannis Calvini et Christophori Carlilus Angli; qua astruunt Christum non descendisse ad inferos alium, quam ad infernum infimum ([London], 1562).

21 Gibson, , Thirty-Nine Articles, 159.Google Scholar

22 The original form of the article added a clause which explained that that during his descent Christ freed no souls from imprisonment or torment. This would in effect have excluded the notion of a limbus patrum. It was, however, omitted from the article in its final form: Gibson, , Thirty-Nine Articles, 159.Google Scholar

23 The Geneva Bible’s marginal notes relate Ps. 16: 10, Matt 26: 37, 27: 46, Eph. 4: 8 and 1 Pet. 1: 19 to Christ’s suffering in hell.

24 See the summary of Alley’s paper given in Wallace, ‘Puritan and Anglican’, 260.

25 For accounts of the south German controversy, see Vogelsang, , ‘Höllenfahrtsstreitigkeiten’, 120–23 Google Scholar; Truemper, , ‘Descensus’, 277–91.Google Scholar

26 A point made forcefully in Truemper, , ‘Descensus’, 279–80.Google Scholar

27 Selneccer, , Paedagogia Christiana continens capita et locos doctrinae christianae, forma & serie catechetica vere, perspicue explicata (Frankurt am Main, 1565), 570.Google Scholar

28 For an account of the Mansfelders’ response, see Kolb, , ‘Christ’s Descent’, 106–15 Google Scholar. Kolb argues that it was this response (or at least the thinking behind it), and not the Hamburg controversy, which inspired the ninth article of the Formula of Concord.

29 de Vicq (Vicus), Henri, De descensv Iesv Christi ad inferos, ex symbolo apostolorvm et sacris scripturis liber (Antwerp, 1586)Google Scholar; Ebingshausen, Heinrich, De descensv Christi ad inferos dispvtatio theologien (Cologne, 1586)Google Scholar; Montanus, Hieronymus, Theses de descensv Christ ad inferos, et eivsdem ad caelos ascensu. In auibus refvtatvr impia et in Christvm blasphema doctrina Lutheranorum & Caluinianorum de hoc vtroquefidei articulo (Ingolstadt, 1587).Google Scholar

30 For a summary of Bellarmine’s approach, see Quilliet, , ‘Descente de Jésus’, cols 582–83.Google Scholar

31 See Wallace, , ‘Puritan and Anglican’, 269.Google Scholar

32 Hill, Adam, Defence of the Article: Christ descended into Hell. With Arguments obiected agains the truth of the same doctrine: of one Alexander Humes (London, 1592)Google Scholar and Hume, Alexander, A reioynder to Doctor Hill Concerning the Descense of Christ into Hell (Edinburgh, 1593).Google Scholar

33 For an account of the debate, see Wallace, , ‘Puritan and Anglican’, 273–77.Google Scholar

34 Higgins, John, An Answere to Master William Perkins, Concerning Christs Descension into Hell (Oxford, 1602).Google Scholar

35 See Wallace, , ‘Puritan and Anglican’, 277–79.Google Scholar

36 Sanford, Hugh, De descensu Domini Nostri Jesu Christi ad inferos, libri quatuor, ed. Parker, Robert (Amsterdam, 1611).Google Scholar

37 For example, WA 5: 606, lines 10–20. Interestingly, in his marginal notes on the 1509 edition of the Quincuplex Psalterium (at WA 4: 487), which he used in preparing for his Dictata super Psalterium (1513–15), Luther seemed less than impressed by the orthodoxy of Lefèvre’s suggestion. He commented that, although Cusanus and Lefèvre appear to be onto something (‘[q]uanquam ista argumenta aliquid esse appareant’), their views conflict with Christ’s promise to the good thief, ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23: 43). In confirmation, Luther cited John Cassian, Collationes patrum 1.14. See Cassiani Opera: Collationes XXIIII, ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 13 (Vienna, 2004), 23, lines 8–20.

38 On Zimmermann, see Truemper, , ‘Descensus’, 153–59 Google Scholar; Herzog, , Descensus, 186–204.Google Scholar

39 Truemper, , ‘Descensus’, 273–76.Google Scholar

40 Luke 23: 43.

41 1 Pet. 3–4.

42 For the texts of the article, see The Book of Concord, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia, PA, 1959), 492 (the Epitome), 610 (the Solid Declaration). The text of the ‘Torgau’ sermon for Easter 1533 may be found in WA 37: 62–72, while the text of the sermon for the afternoon of Easter Day (31 March) 1532, which is believed to be the more reliable text for a sermon that was later wrongly dated (see below), may be found at WA 36: 159–64.

43 WA 36: 160, lines 22–24.

44 Ibid., lines 6–9.

45 Ibid., line 102.

46 Ibid., 5: 604.

47 Lectures on Genesis, 1544 (WA 44: 524.6-7): ‘Ita Christus Dominus et liberator noster pro nobis omnibus fuit in ipsissimo inferno. Vere enim sensit mortem et infernum in corporesuo.’

48 Eine gute Predigt von der Kraft der Himmelfahrt Christi, 31 May 1527: WA 23: 702.11-703.1. For a description of the context of Luther’s breakdown in 1527, see Bornkamm, Heinrich, Luther in Mid-Career, 1521–1530 (London, 1983), 554–61.Google Scholar

49 Jonah 2: 2.

50 Der Prophet Jona ausgelegt, 1526 (WA 19: 225, lines 12–16, 28–29 = LW 19: 75).

51 Ein Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben, 1519 (WA 2: 690, lines 17–22 = LW 42: 105).

52 See esp. Vogelsang, Erich, ‘Luthers Torgauer Predigt von Jesu Christo vom Jahre 1532’, Luther Jahrbuch 13 (1931), 114–30;Google Scholar idem, Der angefochtene Christus bei Luther (Berlin and Leipzig, 1932); idem, ‘Höllenfahrtsstreitigkeiten’, 90–132; Paul Althaus, ‘Niedergefahren zur Hölle’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 19 (1942), 363–84.

53 See Althaus, , ‘Niedergefahren’, 379 n. 1.Google Scholar

54 See, for example, LW 22: 325 n. 38, where a descent-as-suffering interpretation is glossed in the following words: ‘Here Luther seems to equate the descent into hell with the death of Christ; ordinarily he distinguishes these two actions, as in the Torgau sermons of April 1533.’

55 Truemper, ‘Descensus’.

56 Ibid. 135.

57 I follow here, as does Truemper, Vogelsang’s reconstruction. This demonstrates that the document known to the compilers of the Formula of Concord as Luther’s ‘Torgau’ sermon of 1533 (in fact, the third and most extensive of three sermons) is a transcription of the sermon Luther gave on Easter Day (31 March) 1532 at Wittenberg. See Vogelsang, Torgauer Predigt’, 114–30.

58 See Brecht, Martin, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521–1532 (Minneapolis, MN, 1990), 430.Google Scholar

59 Ibid. 421–27.

60 WA 36: 159.8.

61 Brecht, , Shaping and Defining, 450.Google Scholar

62 Robert Kolb also proposes that the ‘Torgau’ sermon was influenced by Christological considerations arising out of the sacramentarian controversies, though he relates this to Zwingli’s death in 1531 rather than to the south German hostility to Luther’s anti-Schwenkfeldian letter in 1532: Kolb, ‘Christ’s Descent’, 116.

63 Chapter 11 of the Theologia deutsch opens with the words ‘Christ’s soul had to visit hell before it came to heaven. This is also the pattern for man’s soul.’ See The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther, ed. Bengt Hoffman (London, 1980), 72. The descent into hell was not an explicit concern of Tauler, whose focus was on the sufferings of Christ on the cross. However, his leading idea of following Christ through suffering; his conviction that, in the spiritual life, ‘the greater the descent, the greater the ascent’; and perhaps also his notion that the resignatio ad infernum – cheerfully accepting eternal separation from God for God’s sake – is the highest stage of the Christian life, all helped to point Luther towards what he called the descensio spiritualis. On the resignatio, see Johannes Tauler: Sermons, ed. Maria Schrady, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, Mahwah, NJ, and Toronto, 1985), 96.

64 See Luther’s notorious expression in the macaronic transcript of his sermon for Holy Saturday 1538: ‘This is the chief point: it was not for himself that Christ descended into hell a second time, but for us. That is to say, having been made lord over Devil, death, and sin, he now received the lordship’ (Das ist die heubtmeinung, quod Christus non propter se, sed propter nos ist zum andem mal inn die helle, i.e. dominus factus supra Teufel, mortem, peccatum, hat eingenomen die herrschaft: WA 46: 308.15-17). The date is important, and refutes any suggestion that the ‘Torgau’ sermon represents Luther’s ‘mature’ thoughts on the subject or that they superseded his earlier beliefs in a ‘first’ or spiritual descent.

65 Schatzgeyer, Kaspar, Verwerffung eines irrigenn artickels das die seel Christinach abschaidt vom leib in absteigung zu den hellen hab darinn geliden hellische pein. Mit erklerung der warhayt warumb Christus zu der hellen gestigenn sey (Landshut, 1526)Google Scholar, Giiv.

66 Wallace, , ‘Puritans and Anglicans’, 248–87.Google Scholar