Why this story matters

(What was Jesus doing between his death and resurrection?)

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What happened to those who died before Jesus?

A fundamental tenet of Christianity is that no one gets to heaven except through Jesus. Romans 3:23 says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The belief is that God cannot be in the presence of sin and, since all human beings have sinned, none can enter into heaven unless their sins are absolved. That’s why Jesus said emphatically, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). No one means no one. After all, what’s the point of Jesus suffering on the cross if he’s not necessary for salvation? At least, this is what a great many Christians believe. But then the problem is, if no one gets to heaven without Jesus, what happened to the great Bible heroes of the past, like Abraham, Joshua, and Noah? Since they never knew of Jesus, or the idea of his blood washing away their sins, how could they have gotten into heaven? Well, this is where the abode of the dead comes in, the place called sheol in Hebrew, hades in Greek.

Was Jesus in hades between his death and resurrection?

For the majority of Christians, Jesus' spirit had to be somewhere. In fact, he explicitly told his disciples where he would be: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). So, going by this statement, coupled with Jesus’ story of Lazarus and the rich man and other verses, theologians concluded that Jesus went to the abode of the dead between his death and resurrection. And this is still believed today by the Catholic church as well as many Protestants. Let’s look at Catholic beliefs first because there’s nothing equivocal about the official position of the Church.

Where do Catholics believe Jesus was between his death and resurrection?

The Pontifical Yearbook has, in recent years, listed the number of Catholics worldwide to be well over a billion. Therefore, Catholic beliefs about where Jesus went comprise a substantial portion of the Christian community. We know Catholics believe he was in the abode of the dead because their catechism says so: “Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 632). Catholics call this realm of the dead “hell” but here they do not mean gehenna, the final hell. They mean hades, the temporary hell: “Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek” (paragraph 633).

 So it’s clear what Catholics believe, but how about Protestants? Well that’s a little trickier.

Where to Protestants believe Jesus was between his death and resurrection?

Many Protestants agree with Catholic doctrine here. Even a quick search of the Internet will reveal a substantial number of evangelical sights that claim Jesus went to hades. For example, the popular site, Apologetics Press, has an article by Dr. Dave Miller called One Second After Death. Miller writes, “So while Christ’s body was placed in a tomb for three days, Christ’s spirit went to hades.” The evangelical website, gotquestions.org, has an article called, Where Was Jesus Between His Death and Resurrection? In the article they state, "Our Lord yielded His spirit to the Father, died, and at some time between death and resurrection, visited the realm of the dead where He delivered a message to spirit beings." The website boasts an endorsement from legendary evangelical apologist Norman Geisler, who is quoted as complementing the site on its sound doctrine. And Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary, under the entry “Descent Into Hell”, says, “[The New Testament] assumes the reality of an intermediate abode of the dead to which Christ went after the parting of his soul from his body.” This has been the most popular belief from the earliest days of Christianity and was propounded emphatically by its most renowned thinkers.

Augustine of Hippo, regarded as perhaps Christianity's greatest early theologian, in a letter to his friend Evodius, stated definitively, “It is established beyond question that the Lord, after He had been put to death in the flesh, descended into hell.” And Augustine added, “Who, therefore, except an infidel, will deny that Christ was in hell?(Letter 164.2). Thomas Aquinas, in his masterpiece, Summa Theologica, argued, “Consequently since it was fitting for Christ to die in order to deliver us from death, so it was fitting for Him to descend into hell in order to deliver us also from going down into hell” (III,52,1). Scholar Ernest Best, in his exhaustive book Ephesians, confirmed, “The almost unanimous answer of the Fathers was that Christ descended into Hades after his death” (T. & T. Clark, 2003, p.195).

So if it’s such a popular belief among Christians that Jesus went to the abode of the dead between his death and resurrection, where exactly is this abode of the dead?

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