Why Don't We Say, "He Descended into Hell"?
At Christ Church Bellingham, we say Jesus “descended into the grave” rather than “hell” in the Apostles’ Creed. This change wasn’t arbitrary—it reflects careful theological and historical reasoning. We’ll explore why this wording matters and how it aligns with Scripture.
I was asked recently about the version of the Apostles’ Creed we recite every week at CCB. Our version says that after Jesus' burial, “He descended into the grave.” Why don’t we say “hell” like many other churches do? I’m sure other people in our church have had similar questions. There are other variants which use the words hades or sheol. We believe these are to be preferred over “hell,” but can still be misleading. So, we have settled on the word “grave” as a summary term for the “place of the dead” or the place of “deepest darkness.”
While it may be true that Jesus went to the place of the dead (we will discuss that in point three), he definitely did not go to rescue damned people from torment.
This decision was made by our session many years ago. We had a long discussion about it at that time, but the issue is good to revisit now and again. I’ll give three reasons why we choose to use the word “grave.”
1. SAYING “HELL” IS CONFUSING
A main reason we have avoided the word hell is that it is misleading. One of the purposes of reciting the Apostles’ Creed week in and week out is to catechize church members and their children into the basic beliefs of the Christian faith and gospel. My experience is that most people, when they hear that Jesus was “crucified, dead, and buried, he descended into hell,” understand that to mean that after Jesus died and was buried, his soul went to the fiery place of torment where the damned are, to preach the gospel to them and set them free.
While it may be true that Jesus went to the place of the dead (we will discuss that in point three), he definitely did not go to rescue damned people from torment. If he went to the dead, it would have been to the faithful dead who died before his coming. We would not call that place “hell.” It is confusing to say that people like Abraham were in hell before Jesus came. Jesus said that God is the God of the living, referring to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Luke 20:38). They may not yet have entered heaven before Jesus’ ascension, but they were not in a place of torment.
The Reformed tradition has tried to deal with this problem by saying that “he descended into hell” acts as a summary statement for the previous four clauses: “he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried” (e.g. Calvin). Thus, Jesus suffered hell at the cross—where he bore God’s wrath and judgment in our place. This kind of summary reading is also expressed in the Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 50:
Q: Wherein consisted Christ’s humiliation after his death?
A: Christ’s humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day; which has been otherwise expressed in these words, he descended into hell.
This is certainly true, but I doubt that most people would know that is what the creed is saying; and, it is hard to believe that that is the intent of the original versions of the creed. It is confusing the way most creeds are read, and therefore not helpful in catechizing the church into the truth of the gospel.
2. THE DESCENSUS CLAUSE IS NOT IN THE EARLIEST VERSIONS OF THE APOSTLES’ CREED
Someone might argue though, “Should we be tampering with such an ecumenical and historic creed of the church? Isn’t that the point of the creed, that it doesn’t change with the fluid convictions of individual churches?”
It is not clear, biblically speaking, what happened to Jesus in between his death and resurrection.
Yes. That is true for most of the creed. And it is also true that part of the reason we prefer the Apostles’ Creed is because of its antiquity. It is a very catholic (not Roman Catholic, but lower case “c” catholic) statement of the gospel, affirmed by all branches of the visible church: Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. But, the descensus clause does not actually appear in the earliest versions of the creed, which has roots as far back as the second century. One article points out,
“The phrase [“he descended into hell”] is first mentioned by Rufinus in the late fourth century, and does not appear in any other versions of the creed until AD 650. Rufinus himself notes that the clause “is not added in the Creed of the Roman Church” (Symb. 18), though he includes it in the version of the creed that was accepted by his own church of Aquileia (see Symb. 3). Moreover, Rufinus makes clear that he did not believe Christ literally descended into hell, but rather that the phrase merely meant He was buried.”
This observation confirms our practice of simply saying “grave.”
Also, the Greek version of the creed that first includes the clause uses the word katôtata, drawing on Eph. 4:9— “In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions (katotera), the earth?’” Later Greek editions use the Greek hades. The word katôtata is a vaguer term, meaning something like “the place of deepest darkness,” or even more simply, “the grave,” while hades more clearly means the place of the dead, equivalent to the Hebrew sheol. Hence, we believe our translation honors the tradition of the church, while leaving more flexibility for interpretation.
3. IT IS NOT CLEAR WHERE JESUS WENT AFTER HIS DEATH
It is also not clear, biblically speaking, what happened to Jesus in between his death and resurrection. One verse often used in defense of “he descended into hell” is 1 Peter 3:19, which says Jesus was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison.” The claim is that the “spirits in prison” were people in hell, and Jesus went and preached to them.
The problem with this reading is that the ordering is wrong. When was Jesus “made alive in the spirit”? At the resurrection, he was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit (see Rom. 1:4; 1 Tim. 3:16). The ordering is:
Put to death in the flesh (cross)
Made alive in the Spirit (resurrection)
Proclaimed to the spirits in prison (forty days of preaching to the lost)
So, Jesus “proclaimed to the spirits in prison” after the resurrection—that is during the forty days he preached before his ascension (see Acts 1:3).
Well then, if he didn’t go to hell, what happened to Jesus after his death and burial? Two of Jesus’ sayings from the cross give us a clue. Possibly most important is Jesus' final words, “Father, to you I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). These words suggest that Jesus’ spirit went to his Father after he died. Another verse that confirms this reading is the martyrdom of Stephen, which bears a number of parallels to Jesus’ death. Stephen forgave his persecutors, just as Jesus had. After Stephen is stoned, just before he dies, he says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). Just as Jesus’s spirit went to his Father after his death, Stephen’s spirit went to his Lord.
But maybe a more important saying is Jesus' words to the dying thief on the cross next to him: “today, you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Most people probably read “paradise” as equivalent to “heaven.” But heaven is the place of God’s throne, the heavenly city and the heavenly temple. The heavenly sanctuary had not yet been opened to humans until Jesus' resurrection and ascension. Is there evidence of another paradise besides heaven that Jesus could have been referring to?
The answer is yes, and it comes from a parable Jesus tells in Luke 16. Jesus tells the story of a poor man named Lazarus who was ignored by an unnamed rich man. “The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side” (Luke 16:22-23).
According to Jesus’ worldview, there were two places in the afterlife before his death and resurrection—Abraham’s bosom and Hades. He later says that between them, a “great chasm has been fixed” (v26). Notice that in this story, “Hades” is a place of torment and judgment, different from paradise.
It is very possible that Abraham’s bosom is the paradise that Jesus speaks about to the thief on the cross, and Jesus went there after his death to retrieve the saints of the old covenant. That seems like a reasonable explanation, and we believe our translation of the creed makes room for this interpretation. But, because Hades is not the place for believers in this passage (but rather a place of torment), including it in the creed, saying Jesus went there, could also be misleading.
Whichever interpretation is right—Jesus went to the Father, or Jesus went to paradise— neither of them has Jesus in “hell.” Some might argue that hell could refer to the paradise portion of Hades, Abraham’s bosom—but that is an odd way to refer to paradise. Most people don’t hear the word hell as paradise, and it is exclusively used as a place of punishment and torment in the Bible.
For this reason, we believe that reciting “he descended into the grave” both honors the tradition of the creed while also being vague enough to allow for a variety of interpretations. It also avoids misleading our people into wrong theology, defeating the purpose of using the creed as a catechetical tool.
