15th Dec 21 - Hades

Fr dear Fr: Why does the Apostles Creed we say at Sunday Mass spell out the idea that Christ went to Hell after his death, and is this rather Hades the land of the undead or is it Hell the place of punishment proper? And if he did go to Hell to free the dead, why did the Just go to Hell and Hades in the first place up to the Descent of Christ into Hell? 

Disentangling the weave of a tapestry without tearing the fabric - depiquer sans dechirer - as the French saying has it, a delicate task when one is responding to any generic Question on eschatology. Spiritually a sound understandable Question that some believers are naturally concerned about in real time. A good Question that emanates from the local parish community after hearing the repeated affirmation of the Apostles Creed on a Sunday morning that Christ went to Hell after his death. Something that evangelicals always panic about, when they hear the old formula, since they assume that this was a sending to Hell by God the Just Judge in the same way that moral imperfection and fundamental mortal sins and final impenitence with aversion ex toto toward God are punished in the ordinary course of things during life for many lost souls, again assuming that Christ in their unstated and unspoken opinions and christological errors was merely just a mortal man who made good with the real godhead in heaven - adoptionism in a word in the old list of pre-conciliar christological errors. We definitely do need a Lewisian or Chestertonian booklet of early christological errors in the parishes of this deanery just to help young people avoid the obvious old style pitfalls of the early Jewish christians. So, much to disentangle here. But I digress - Let us begin with some speculation:

Bp Vg states as something of an exorcist that yes Christ went to Hell, but he was not sent there as a punishment for mortal sins as evangelicals sometimes assume in their "Substitution Punishment" theories about the crucifixion. Merely that he went there under some disguise and stayed there for a while, leaving an imprint of his soul thereunder as a rebel commander and rebel leader, just to fox the dark Lord himself, who assumes that his soul is in Hell for being a rebel commander on earth during his time in Galilee and Jerusalem his mission having failed and he having been punished by secular rulers with the natural penalty for the delictum maiestatis called crucifixion. The idea or object of the exercise being to fox the dark Lord. In fact, Bp V explains, the covert Christ was down there to free the Just from the age old penalty of sin and to lead out the Just from the realms of the undead. But his imprint is still there for the remainder of life. Benedict XII who was the pope most often accredited with definitions on this subject from 1335-1342 does not go into detail about humans and hell or Hades, merely pointing out that it is a place primarily where the fallen angels were consigned, so primarily for the lost angels who also benefited from the crucifixion and incarnation rather than primarily for the humans (De Fide, Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals, 114 and 119, 473 to 476).

Does this means that as Fr Rahner once famously said that though Hell is defined as an existent, that there are no definitions that there is anybody actually in Hell? Certainly, on a note of hope and new optimism, the new 1992 Catechism reminds us that it is received doctrine that nobody is positively predestined to go to Hell, much depends on free will and the requisite of a final aversion toward God in the fundamental notion of total mortal sin - CCC 1033-1037, DS 397, and DS 1567, though the 1997 Final Edition of the Catechism, the final edition approved of by all the bishops, nuances this somewhat by speaking more of aversio. Bp Bob too, in his own subjective way, without trying to say anything objective, has courted controversy by advancing the notion that it is our earnest and sincere hope that God might save every human being from Hell -"we have a reasonable hope that all might be saved" as he puts it so well, though our own people do observe that this wanders slightly close to a mild form of the old heresy of universalism, that all might and can and have been saved for the most part, even the traitors of the early Christians, the people that consigned them to the pagan magistrates in the first place during those largely forgotten and unhappy times. So according to Bp Bob Hell might be in existence but the Church has never defined that there is anybody down there for sure for real. The Sermon on the subject for Holy Saturday Readings in the Morning Service points out that Jesus goes down to Hell, and down there that he reaches out for Adam and Eve the parents of the human race. There he meets the Just and leads them out of Hades through the back door of faith and humility, away from the vituperations of the dark Lord. This is sometimes called Bp V's back door - humility.

So the Creed mentions this place as Hell but is it rather just Hades, the land of the undead? Certainly, as our own theologians in the parish say, it looks like Hades rather than Hell, though here again we might be straying into evangelical misconceptions about the status of Hell itself and assuming with them that Jesus the Man was just that. So why not Hell? Evangelicals find the thought repugnant to pious ears naturally. They panic when they hear the phrase in the Creed, and think of Jesus being punished not only in this life with crucifixion in their penal substitution theories about his death, but also in the next life too as a mere mortal, in which case he seems to be something very very human only. Panic all round. But these are often misunderstandings of the real situation. Bp Bob too has strayed close to reprobated doctrine, and Bp V gives us his pet theory for the notion in the Creed, which is one theory after another, but is closer to the dignity of the Saviour himself. Bp V's position carries a little more weight than the mild universalism of Bp Bob chiefly because Bp V is an experienced exorcist so he knows what he is doing.

Hades then is the primary designate that much of these definitions and statements of primeval faith are concerned with, they are designed to remind us that until the coming of Christ among the dead in Hades, many even just souls were locked and loaded down below, since the Redemption had not occurred in real time for such souls. Many humans were just but not redeemed - to put it in the optimism of the redeemed style thoughts of Bp Bob. The Exultet on Easter Vigil night also refers to this reality of the opening of the doors for the Just down below. So it would appear that the Hell that is being referred to here is not the post baptismal post-incarnation of the place called Hell proper but merely the standard epithet of the place of the undead, the place where all human souls used to go when they were dead. Hades then is the word intended by such expressions. So although the two concepts are inextricably intertwined in many of the old early sources, still nonetheless there is a needed distinction between the concepts. Not the post-christian reality of punishment as men see it in the ordinary course of things after the Incarnation of the Christ-Saviour, saviour of the world, saviour to the world, saviour of angels and also of men and women. So Hades. The Just were consigned down below to the realms of the undead too in ancient times simply because the Redemption had not yet occurred - a feature of the old baptismal formulas of the early Christians and of the old Psalms and Book of Wisdom sayings of the Hebrews too. So that is how the Tradition describes the place, but on a note of hope, especially in Wisdom 3. "In the eyes of the unjust they did appear to die, their going looked like a disaster, but their hope was rich with immortality" - thus spaketh the Book of Wisdom. Very nice indeed. Something of a solution then appears in the Book of Wisdom, though maybe all of this entangled and congealed area might need a christological definition again some time in the future, possibly by the next pope, in order to resolve all of these modern questions all over again - certainly, time has moved on since Trent.

Certainly again, a group of theologians from the ITC in Rome once recently offered some solid thoughts on the subject of Limbo, objecting to the older concept in Augustine as a remedy for the unbaptised, but it would take more than a group of theologians huddled in the back office of the CDF in Rome to resolve that issue too, since it normally requires the deliberations and definitions of a synod or council of bishops to address these issues as a theological act of a theological magisterium in the vein of Acts 15 - "We and the Holy Spirit." Limbo too, though doubted as a very or most certain opinion by those ITC theologians in their hope to reduce it, still remains a probable opinion for many people on the ground in the local parishes, since this is designed for the sleep of the undead of those who desire not to live with the Father - some people can do this. So Limbo, still out there somewhere. Whatever a band of what remain as unofficial theologians say about the matter. A magisterium call and the flocks to be consulted by the episcopate - nothing unilateral on this issue should be considered by the bishops in authority. The faithful have their beliefs. Not to be disparaged or poo-poohed. The episcopate decides such matters, with their believers, and not just a band of middle class German theologians. Amen.