Descended into Hell

Written for Triune God, taught by the incomparable Dr. Michael Dauphinais. September 23, 2020

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, uses the Apostles’ Creed as the basis for his Introduction to Christianity, in which he takes us on a journey to find Christ not just in our hearts, but in the world itself. Using the creed as a basis for catechesis is a popular starting point:

“Anyone conversant with the history of Christian theology knows that using the creed as a foundation for an exposition of the faith has been a time-honored practice in Christianity.”[1]

Ratzinger deconstructs the Creed, explaining not only the meaning of each phrase, but the background and history that lead to the formulation of the Creed. In doing so, he brings us deep into the mystery of creation and salvation. We will see this in his treatment of the phrase “He descended to the dead,” a phrase which may be found misleading or confusing, especially in our current cultural climate.

The first edition of Ratzinger’s book was published in 1968, a tumultuous time in the world. The social and political world of 1968 was much like that of 2020, with political unrest and distrust of the establishment, particularly in Ratzinger’s homeland of Germany, which was experiencing political upheaval. Ratzinger addresses that world, positioning the beliefs of Christianity against the theory of Marxism, which held sway with much of Germany in particular. Ratzinger addresses this

“post-modern age that has lost confidence in the human ability to discover truth and purpose,[by] consistently defends the intelligibility of the revelation disclosed in the Creed and attempts to show how this intelligibility offers a meaningful existential alternative.”[2]

Ratzinger does this by examining the background of the beliefs that form the creed and examines each phrase to show us not just what that phrase means, but how it ties into the rest of the creed and salvation history.  Ratzinger acknowledges the scope of the task:

“No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself.”[3]

He warns us against falling into complacency, into thinking we can understand God of our own power. Indeed, he states his key theme:

“Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.”[4]

Ratzinger shows that the creed is not a new teaching, but grows out of the baptismal promises made in the second and third centuries, as the person being baptized gave voice to believing in Father, Son and Spirit:

“the oldest form of the confession of faith takes the shape of a tripartite dialogue, of questions and answer, and is, moreover, embedded in the ceremony of baptism.”[5]

Ratzinger does not offer us a watered down, “accessible” version of God, but instead uses the Apostles Creed to show us what it is we believe when we begin our prayer with those words, “I believe.” One difficulty we face in the opening declarations of the Creed is to understand the two aspects of the Son: Jesus the God-man, and Christ the Redeemer. We err in choosing one or the other, rather than accepting the duality of the Son. Ratzinger reconciles this, not by choosing one or the other, but by accepting the balance between the two:

“Ratzinger will not make that choice [to choose between Jesus or Christ], he will hold the two in tension precisely because the Apostles’ Creed (the basis of his lectures) affirms in the same profession of faith both the consubstantial Word and the one who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, and was buried.”[6]

That precision of meaning which Ratzinger mentions is of particular interest when we address the phrase “He descended into Hell.” Ratzinger states

"Possibly no article of the Creed is so far from present-day attitudes of mind as this one."[7] 

Our society barely has time for God, and certainly does not spend time debating eschatology. Popular culture would have us believe everyone who dies simply crosses the rainbow bridge, where they are greeted joyfully by all the puppies they ever met. “He descended into Hell” has no place in that absence of not just theology, but of God himself.  

We no longer see creation as three levels, with heaven above us and hell below us, but we recognize the linguistic convention that lets us share in the understanding of that verbal geography. Thus, we accept the word “descended” to here denote a journey indeterminate as to location, direction, or mode of transportation. But that does not solve the issue of “Hell.” The word calls us to consider what we mean by pray “he descended into hell.” If we mean the place of the damned, why do we imagine Christ to have gone there? In his 2007 work Jesus of Nazareth, Ratzinger states

 “Jesus himself is ‘heaven’ in the deepest and truest sense of the word – he in whom and through whom God’s will is wholly done.”[8] 

The question for us, then, would be how can we comprehend heaven entering hell? What are we saying we believe when we say Christ descended into Hell? What does Hell mean? As Ratzinger states, if we accept hell as a mistranslation of sheol, or Hades, it means not hell as the lair of the devil, but the shadowy place of non-being, that where we exist once we are dead. John Paul II, in his own catechesis on the creed, accepts this, saying

“’He descended into hell’ is based on the New Testament statements on the descent of Christ, after his death on the cross, into the ‘region of death,’ into the ‘abode of the dead’ … It is a confirmation that this was a real and not merely an apparent death. His soul, separated from the body, was glorified in God, but his body lay in the tomb as a corpse.”[9]  

Ratzinger, perhaps more attuned to the mind of the theologian, suggests that if “descended into hell” means

“Jesus entered sheol, that is, that he died … the question remains whether that makes the matter any simpler or less mysterious."[10]

We find an answer in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus[11].

“The rich man is in Hades, conceived here as a temporary place, and not in ‘Gehenna’ (hell) which is the name of the final state.”[12] 

That distinction between a temporary hell and a permanent hell does not exist in English. However, Ratzinger specifically equates Hades with hell in discussing iconographic tradition:

“The icon of Jesus’ Baptism depicts the water as a liquid tomb having the form of a dark cavern, which is in turn the iconographic sign of Hades, the underworld, or hell. Jesus’ descent into this watery tomb, into this inferno that envelops him from very side, is thus an anticipation of his act of descending into the underworld....”[13]

He continues to position hell as a part of Jesus’ mission of salvation:

“His Baptism is a descent into the house of the evil one … who holds men captive….”[14]

 “The Apostles’ Creed speaks of Jesus’ descent ‘into hell.’ This descent not only took place in and after his death, but accompanies him along his entire journey. He must recapitulate the whole of history from its beginnings – from Adam on; he must go through, suffer through, the whole of it, in order to transform it.”[15]

“’God is dead and we have killed him’ This saying of Nietzsche’s belongs linguistically to the tradition of Christian Passiontide piety; it expresses the content of Holy Saturday, ‘descended into hell.’”[16]

“’Descended into hell’; how true this is of our time, the descent of God into muteness, into the dark silence of the absent.”[17]

Yet, through eyes of faith, we know Nietzche is wrong; that God is not dead nor even sleeping; that he always hears us; and if we find God is far from us, it is we who have moved, not him. For in the end, it is our faith that saves us from hell and leads us to heaven. Ratzinger has stated:

“the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself, they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.”[18]

We are called in faith not to blindly follow the Church, but to apply our intelligence to all God has revealed to us:

“Since faith is an assent of the intellect to the revealed truth about God, it requires an intelligibility, for the intellect cannot assent to what it believes to be false.[19] 

“Faith is said first to be an obedient response to God.”[20]

In Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger has shared with us insights into the Apostles Creed that reach us both in faith and in intellect, and provides us with what has been called the “Ratzinger Option”:

“Ratzinger emphasizes the intelligibility or profound rationality of faith, without undermining its character as divine mystery.  The “Ratzinger Option” for evangelization involves removing intellectual obstacles to believing the gospel, but doing so without watering down the challenging call to conversion that the gospel brings in every age.”[21]

Ratzinger sees Jesus’ mission as disclosing the Father to us:

“Like von Balthasar, whose influence will never be far from Ratzinger's work in the years to come, he sees the Virgin's Son as disclosing the Father not only on the Cross but also, and especially, in the descent into Hell. On the cross, the 'inexhaustible abyss of the divine love' both judges man who denies love in murdering the Just One, and also saves him.”[22]

Adam states:

 “For so completely does Jesus disclose Himself to His disciples, so profound is the action of His grace, that He gives Himself to them and enters into them as a personal source of grace. Jesus shares with His disciples His most intimate possession, the most precious thing that He has, His own self, His personality as the God-man.”[23]

In Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger has shown us this fullness of Jesus who lived, died, and faced hell for our salvation, and who continues to share with us, his disciples, His own self.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adam, Karl. The Spirit Of Catholicism. Garden City: Image Books, 1954.

Cunningham, Lawrence S. "Reflections On Introduction To Christianity". In Explorations In The Theology Of Benedict XVI, 142-154. John C. Cavadini. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013.

Dauphinais, Michael. "The Ratzinger Option: Introducing Christianity In A Postmodern Age". In Ressourcement After Vatican II: Essays In Honor Of Joseph Fessio, S.J., 112-138. Matthew Levering and Nicholas Healy Jr. Ignatius Press, 2019.

John Paul II. "Fides Et Ratio (14 September 1998) | John Paul II". Vatican.Va, 2020. http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html.

John Paul II. Jesus, Son, And Savior. Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1996.

Nichols, Aidan. The Theology Of Joseph Ratzinger. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988.

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. "Apostolic Journey To München, Altötting And Regensburg: Meeting With The Representatives Of Science In The Aula Magna Of The University Of Regensburg (September 12, 2006) | BENEDICT XVI". Vatican.Va. Accessed 23 September 2020. http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html.

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. Introduction To Christianity. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. Jesus Of Nazareth. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008.

The Holy Bible, Translated From The Original Tongues Being The First Version Set Forth A.D. 1611; Old And New Testaments Revised A.D. 1881-1885 And A.D. 1901. San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 2006.

[1] Lawrence S. Cunningham, "Reflections On Introduction To Christianity", in Explorations In The Theology Of Benedict XVI (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 144

[2] Michael Dauphinais, "The Ratzinger Option: Introducing Christianity In A Postmodern Age", in Ressourcement After Vatican II: Essays In Honor Of Joseph Fessio, S.J. (Ignatius Press, 2019), 112-138.

[3] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction To Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 46

[4] Ibid, 73

[5] Ibid, 83

[6] Cunningham, 151

[7] Ratzinger, Christianity, 292

[8] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Jesus Of Nazareth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 150

[9] John Paul II, Jesus, Son, And Savior (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1996), 485

[10] Ratzinger, Christianity, 298

[11] Luke 16:19-31

[12] Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 216

[13] Ibid, 19

[14] Ibid, 20

[15] Ibid, 26

[16] Ratzinger, Christianity, 294

[17] Ibid, 295

[18] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Apostolic Journey To München, Altötting And Regensburg: Meeting With The Representatives Of Science In The Aula Magna Of The University Of Regensburg (September 12, 2006) | BENEDICT XVI", Vatican.Va, accessed 23 September 2020, http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html. Regensburg Paragraph 14

              [19] Dauphinais, 112-138.

[20] John Paul II, "Fides Et Ratio (14 September 1998) | John Paul II", Vatican.Va, 2020, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html, Paragraph 13

[21] Dauphinais,

[22] Aidan Nichols, The Theology Of Joseph Ratzinger (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988),130

[23] Karl Adam, The Spirit Of Catholicism (Garden City: Image Books, 1954), 18