01.18. Import And Uses Of Hades, Ἃιδης In Scripture.

Section Sixth.

Import And Uses Of Hades, Ἃιδης In Scripture. THIS is one of the few words employed by the sacred writers which played a prominent part in the mythologies of Greece and Rome; and it is of importance, for the correct interpretation of certain portions of New Testament Scripture, to as certain, whether the sense which it bears in the sacred, is the same with that which it bore in the profane territory; or what, if any, may have been the modifications it underwent in being brought into contact with the spiritual revelations of the Bible.

1. To look first to the heathen use of the term,—the derivation and primary meaning cannot be pronounced absolutely certain; yet what has been the most general, continues still to be the most approved opinion—that it is a compound of privative a and ἰδεῖν, so that, if applied to a person or power, it would designate what makes invisible, if to a place, the invisible region. We may the rather hold this to be the correct etymology, as in the more ancient writers the iota is very commonly written and pronounced as a constituent part of the word; and ᾅδης may consequently be regarded as an abbreviation of ἀΐδης. One does not see how this could have happened, if the derivation had been from ἅδω or χάδω, to receive. In the elder Greek writers, the word is generally used to designate a person or power; it is but another name for Pluto, Dis, or Orcus. In Homer it is always so used; but in later writers it is applied sometimes to the power, and sometimes to the abode or region, over which he was supposed to preside. And as people felt unwilling (according to Plato) to designate the Deity by the dreaded name of Hades, preferring that rather of Pluto, so the term Hades came in process of time to be generally appropriated to the region. Nor can there be any doubt that this region, in respect to locality, was understood to occupy a relatively lower position than the earth—hence the Latin designations, inferi and inferna, the people or places beneath ground; and that, in respect to its nature and design, it was the common receptacle of the departed, Πάντας ὁμῶς θνητούς ̓Αΐδης δέχεται. This common receptacle, however, they held to be divided into two distinct spheres one for the good and another for the bad—Elysium and Tartarus. Delineating the two paths, which at a certain point led off to the different habitations, Yirgil says, Æn. vi. 540:—

“Hac iter Elysium nobis: et laeva malorum Exercet pœnas, et ad impia Tartara naittit.” But notwithstanding this division, and the possibility, according to it, of a state of happiness being enjoyed in the nether world, the notion of Hades was still a predominantly gloomy and forbidding one to the heathen mind. Pluto and his subordinates were always imaged under a grim and stern aspect; and the whole region over which their sway extended looked dull and mournful. The passage of souls thither was commonly represented as a transition from the region of light and life to the mansions of darkness, and the possession, at the most, of a kind of shadowy, semi-real existence, a sort of mid-way condition between proper life and death. The poets, who partly expressed and partly also formed the popular belief upon the subject, inclined so much in their representations to the shady side, that Plato would only admit them into his Republic, if the passages bearing on this point were erased from them; because, filling the minds of men with such uninviting representations of the state after death, they inevitably tended, he conceived, to unnerve the spirits of men, and dispose them to prefer slavery to defeat and death (Rep. iii. 1-4.) This dark and gloomy portraiture of the state of the departed in heathen mythology arose, doubtless, in part from the want of any definite revelation to guide and elevate men’s views regarding the future; but still more, from a want of another kind the want of any proper satisfaction for the guilt of sin, such as should, on solid grounds, have restored peace to the conscience. Their imperfect ablutions and sacrifices were felt to be insufficient for so great an end, especially when the thought of future retribution hove distinctly in view. Yet, uninviting as the prospect of an entrance into Hades was, even for the better portion of mankind, it was greatly preferred to exclusion; and the classes that were denied admission for a time, were deemed peculiarly unhappy. These were the unburied, the unripe (such as had been carried off at an immature age, hence supposed to be not ready,) and those who had met a violent death. The first class till their funeral rites were performed, the other two till the natural period of death had arrived, were doomed to flit about the outskirts of Hades. (See Tertullian de Anima, c. 56; also the long note of Pearson on the subject under Art. V. of the Creed, note l.) Itself a proof of the superficialism of heathen mythology, and of the undue regard that was had in it to merely natural considerations! since all the circumstances which were supposed to exclude from the proper receptacles of the dead, belonged to the outward and fortuitous, rather than to the moral. But whatever may be thought of such imaginations, there can be no doubt of the two leading points already noted—namely, that the Hades of ancient heathenism was believed to be the common receptacle of departed souls, and that it was understood to possess a compartment of bliss for the good, and a compartment of retributive punishment and misery for the bad.

2. Turning now to the territory of Scripture, we look in the first instance to the light that is furnished on the subject in the writings of the Old Testament. There the place of departed spirits is designated by the Hebrew name of Sheol; which is most commonly, and I believe rightly, derived from שָׁאַל, to demand or ask: So called, to use the words of Michaelis, a poscendo, quod non desinat postulare, et homines alios post alios ad se trahere. With reference to this primary import of the term, as well as to the reality indicated by it, it is said in Proverbs 27:20, “Sheol and the abyss are never satisfied,” and in Habakkuk 2:5, the Chaldean monarch is likened to Sheol, “because he gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people.” Gesenius’s later derivation, as if it were for שְׁעוֹל, a hollow, then a hollow and subterranean place, seems to rest on no solid foundation. But nothing of importance depends on the etymology; other and more certain sources of information exist as to the notions involved in it. The Sheol of the Hebrews bore so much of a common resemblance to the Hades of the Greeks, that in the Septuagint ᾅδης is the word commonly employed as an equivalent; and in the latter periods of the Jewish commonwealth the two words were viewed as of substantially like import. According also to the Hebrew mode of contemplation, there was a common receptacle for the spirits of the departed; and a receptacle which was conceived of as occupying, in relation to this world, a lower sphere—under ground. Hence they spoke of going down to Sheol, or of being brought up again from it. Josephus, when describing in this respect the belief of the Pharisees, which was, undoubtedly, the common belief of his countrymen, says, “They believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth (ὑπὸ χθονὸς,) there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; that the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again,” (Ant. xviii, 1, 8.) The language of earlier times perfectly accords with these views, so far as it refers to the points embraced in them. Jacob, for example, speaks of being brought down to Sheol with sorrow, (Genesis 42:38;) and David, in one place, (Psalms 139:8,) contemplates the possibility of making his bed in Sheol, and in another, (Psalms 3:1-8) after deliverance from the sore calamity which had enveloped him for a time as in an atmosphere of death, gives thanks to God, like one actually restored to life, for having brought his soul up again from Sheol. At the same time, that the wicked were regarded as going to Sheol, is so often expressed in Old Testament Scripture, that it is almost needless to produce any particular examples of it. The passage alone of Isaiah 14:1-32, which, though highly figurative, is certainly based on the existing beliefs of the Israelitish people, is conclusive proof. The king of Babylon is there represented as thrown from his lofty elevation by the judgment of Heaven, and sent as an humbled captive into the chambers of Sheol, the inmates of which appear moved with wonder at the thought of his downfall, and raise over him the shout of exultation. Beyond doubt, therefore, Sheol, like Hades, was regarded as the abode after death alike of the good and the bad. And the conception of its low, deep, subterranean position is not only implied in the general style of thought and expression upon the subject, but is sometimes also very forcibly exhibited;—As when in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 32:22, the Lord declares that a fire was “kindled in his anger, which should burn to the lowest Sheol;” and in Job 11:7-9, “Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol, what canst thou know?” And still again in Amos 9:2, “Though they dig into Sheol, thence shall My hand take them; though they climb up into heaven, thence will I bring them down.” In these passages Sheol, like Hades, is manifestly put in opposition to what is elevated in height; it is the antithesis of heaven, and stands as a concrete designation of the lowest depths. From what has been stated, it is clear, that the Sheol of the Hebrews much more nearly coincides with the Hades of the Greeks, than with either our hell (in its now universally received acceptation (Originally, it had much the same meaning as Hades, being derived from the Saxon helan, to cover, and denoting simply the covered or hidden space—the invisible regions.)) or the grave. In some of the passages referred to, indeed, the meaning would not materially suffer by one or other of these terms being employed as an equivalent. Substantially, we should give the sense of Jacob’s declaration, if we rendered, “Ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave;” nor should any violence be done to the general import of the passage in Deuteronomy, if as in the authorized version, the wrath of God was said to burn to the lowest hell; because here it is the wicked only that are contemplated, and these as pursued by Divine vengeance to the farthest bounds of their possible existence. Yet, the terms in either case are not precisely equivalent, and hence are not convertible; we could not substitute hell for grave in Jacob’s declaration, or grave for hell in the passage from Deuteronomy. With this general agreement, however, between Hades and Sheol, there may still be shades of difference between them, and such as involve important principles. The term Hades certainly came nearer to Sheol than either hell or the grave, especially in these two respects, that both alike were viewed as the common receptacle of departed souls, and as lying far under ground: In two other points also there might be said to be a substantial agreement. First, in regard to the diverse conditions of the departed; for, though in what is said of Sheol we do not find by any means such a distinct separation into the two regions for their respective classes of occupants, as in the case of Hades with its Elysium and Tartarus, yet the existence of such a separation is not doubtfully indicated. It is implied in the representations given of the doctrine of Divine retribution, as reaching beyond the boundaries of sense and time into the realms of the dead. It is again implied in the hope, which was possessed by the righteous in his death—the rooted conviction, that he was safe in the keeping of the all-present and omnipotent Jehovah, even when appointed to find his bed in the viewless chambers of Sheol;—a very different condition from that of those, who, like the godless monarch of Babylon, were represented as cast down thither with the marks upon them of shame and dishonour. Such things leave no room to doubt, that while Sheol might be regarded but as one region, it was known to possess quite different receptacles for those received within its gates, and that there still, there, indeed, pre-eminently, it should be well with the righteous and ill with the wicked. With all this—and here lies the other point of substantial agreement with the Hades of heathendom—a certain degree of gloom and repulsiveness hung around the region even to the eye of the believing Israelite. He felt alarmed and saddened at the thought of his entrance into it—as if his nature must there suffer a kind of collapse; and not only the commoner sympathies of flesh and blood, but the holiest affections also of grace, must be denied the exercise they delighted in on earth. In the Book of Psalms Sheol is spoken of as the land of forgetfulness, and of silence, where no celebration is made of God’s praise, or active service is done for Him, like what is ever proceeding on earth. David asks respecting those who have entered that nether world, “Who shall give Thee thanks?” (Psalms 6:5.) And Hezekiah, in like manner, declares “Sheol cannot praise Thee, nor death extol Thee. The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this day.” (Isaiah 38:18.) Were expressions of this nature to be taken absolutely, they would bespeak even a darker and gloomier view of Sheol, on the part of Old Testament believers, than was held by the better sort of heathens respecting the Elysium of Hades. But it is evident, from what has been stated, that they cannot be so taken. If the retributive justice of God followed men into Sheol, distinguishing there also between the righteous and the wicked, there could not possibly, with either class, be total silence and forgetfulness; the soul must have been conceived capable of happiness or misery, and consequently to have had continued recollection and consciousness, as discerning in the elements of its new state the issues of that which it had left. The ideal scene, too, in Isaiah, of the Chaldean monarch’s reception among the departed, and the historical representation of Samuel’s reappearance at Endor to rebuke Saul and proclaim his approaching doom, should have wanted their proper basis, if the tenants of Sheol had been supposed to be bereft of consciousness and power. The language, which seems to betoken such a complete cessation of thought and energy, could be nothing more than relative. It meant, that, as compared with the present life, so replete with busy, and in many respects pleasurable activities, existence in Sheol presented itself to the apprehension of the Hebrews, as an obscure, inactive, torpid repose. In truth, they had no revelation on the subject; and, wiser than the heathen, they stopped where their light forsook them; they did not attempt to supply the lack of supernal illumination by silly fables, which were fitted only to deceive. It was the further development of God’s scheme which alone could relieve the gloom; and waiting for that, they rested meanwhile in the conviction—though not without many recoils of feeling and faintings of heart—that He who had kept and blessed them through the troubles of life, would not leave them a prey to evil in the undiscovered regions that lay beyond.

Along, however, with those points of obvious or substantial agreement, between the Sheol of the Hebrews and the Hades of the Greeks, there were points—two in particular—of actual diversity. One was, that Sheol was not, in the estimation of the Hebrews, a final, but only an intermediate state. It was the soul’s place of rest, and, it might be, for aught they knew, of absolute quiescence, during its state of separation from the body, but from which it was again to emerge, when the time should come for the resurrection of the dead. The prospect of such a resurrection was cherished from the very first by the believing people of God, to whom the promise was given of a reversion of the evil brought in by sin, and, by consequence, of the destruction of death, in which that evil found its proper consummation. So that every true believer was a man of hope of a hope that penetrated beyond the mansions of Sheol; his final resting-place, he knew, was not to be there. And when the Psalmist spake concerning himself, “God will redeem my soul from the hand (or power) of Sheol, for He shall receive me,” (Psalms 49:15;) or the prophet Isaiah, of the righteous generally, “Thy dead men shall live, my dead body shall arise; awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust,” (Isaiah 26:19;) or Hosea, “I will ransom them from the power of Sheol, I will redeem them from death: death, I will be thy plagues; Sheol, I will be thy destruction,” (Hosea 13:14;) or Daniel, “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,” (Daniel 12:2 :)—they but gave varied expression to that hope, which lay in the breast of every pious Israelite—namely, that there should be a resurrection of the just and of the unjust—that for the just, at least, there should be a release from Sheol, with its unnatural abridgments of life and being, that they might enter on their proper heritage of blessing. In this consisted one important element of difference between Sheol and Hades; for the heathen idolater could see nothing beyond Hades; its bars to him were eternal; the thought of a resurrection was alien to all his conceptions of the possible future. And closely connected with that was this other, that Sheol was not viewed as a separate realm, like Hades, withdrawn from the primal fountain of life, and subject to another dominion than the world of sense and time. With the heathen, the lord of the lower regions was the rival of the King of earth and heaven; the two domains were essentially antagonistic. But with the more enlightened He brew there was no real separation between the two; the chambers of Sheol were as much God’s as the habitations of men on earth, or the mansions of the blest in glory; there, as well as here, the one living Jehovah was believed to be in all, through all, and over all.

Now, it is impossible but that these two leading principles, associated with the Hebrew Sheol, but not with the Grecian Hades, must have materially affected the views currently entertained upon the subject; and though the Hellenistic Jews employed Hades as the nearest equivalent in the Greek language to Sheol, it must yet have called up ideas in the mind of an enlightened Israelite, which found no place in the bosom of a heathen. The word was a different thing in the mouth of the one from what it was in the mouth of the other.

8. So much, then, for the Old Testament usage and ideas; we come now to those of the New Testament. Here the word Hades is of comparatively rare occurrence; it is not found in more than eight passages altogether. The first time it meets us is in our Lord’s denunciation upon Capernaum, the place where He had usually resided during the time of His active ministry in Galilee; and it is employed, as in some of the passages cited from the Old Testament, merely as one of the terms of a contrast:—“And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to Hades” (Matthew 11:23)—i.e., from the most towering elevation to the deepest debasement. From a proverbial use of this description nothing very definite can be inferred as to the nature of the place; the reference proceeds simply on the popular apprehension respecting its position in the lowest depths. The next use of the term by our Lord is also of a somewhat rhetorical character; it is in the memorable words addressed to Simon Peter, which contained the declaration, “And on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18.) This no further determines the nature of Hades, than that somehow it is conceived of as standing in opposition to the continued existence or prosperity of the church; so that the ascendency of the one would be the defeat or overthrow of the other. Hades is referred to as a realm or kingdom, having, like earthly kingdoms in the East, seats of council and authority at its gates, where deliberations were held, and measures taken, in regard to all that concerned its interests; and these, the Lord affirms, should never prevail against His cause on earth; this cause should ever maintain its ground. But on another occasion still—the only occasion besides on which the term occurs in the recorded sayings of our Lord—in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, it is there said of the former, that “in Hades he lifted up his eyes, in torments.” And it cannot but be regarded as a noticeable circumstance, that in the solitary example, wherein Hades is mentioned by our Lord explicitly as a receptacle for the departed, it is in connexion with the wicked, and as a place of torment. True, no doubt, Lazarus also, the child of faith and the heir of glory, was so far associated with the lost worldling, that he appears, as it were, within sight and hail of the other; but still, it is only to the compartment, where the lost had their portion, that the name Hades is applied; and betwixt that locality and the abodes of the blest an impassable gulf is represented as being fixed. Coupling with this the circumstance, that in the other two cases also, in which the term Hades was employed by our Lord, it appears in a kind of antithesis to His cause and kingdom, one can scarcely avoid feeling as if there had been taken from Hades somewhat of that common aspect and relation to the whole of mankind, which in more ancient times was ascribed to Sheol. The rather may we thus conclude, when we call to remembrance the words of Christ on another occasion; words which exhibit a marked contrast to those spoken of the rich man in the parable, and which, from the emphatic moment when they were uttered, might be said to designate for future time the receptacle of departed saints. It was on the cross, when Jesus said to the penitent malefactor, “To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise,” (Luke 23:43.) Paradise! the region, not of gloom and forgetfulness, but of beautiful and blessed life the primeval home and heritage of man; and so, proclaiming Jesus to be that Second Man, the Lord from heaven, who had prevailed to recover what was lost by the first. (The full significance of our Lord’s language on this occasion has been sadly marred by our rabbinical commentators (Lightfoot, Wetstein, etc.,) who have thought they sufficiently explained it by adducing passages from Jewish writings, in which the Garden of Eden is used as a name for the place of departed believers. As if such writings were entitled to rank even in antiquity with the gospels! Or, as if the kind of hap-hazard employment of terms by blind Rabbis, as often wrong as right, when referring to the mysteries of the kingdom, gave the key to Christ’s pregnant and select diction! But see at Part I., sec. 3, p. 51, sq.)

Notwithstanding, however, this studied avoidance, on the part of our Lord, of the term Hades to denote the place of His temporary sojourn, and that of His people, between death and the resurrection, the next passage in which we meet with the word, seems to make Hades, such a place of sojourn for the Redeemer Himself. It is in Acts 2:27-31, where, after quoting a portion of Psalms 16:1-11, and applying it to Christ, the Apostle Peter says, that David spake there as a prophet—“spake of the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, neither did His flesh see corruption.” By the great body of Christian writers this passage is held conclusive as to the fact of Christ’s soul having actually been in Hades; since it could not have been represented as not left there, had it not actually been there; and by many of them it is deemed the only very clear and decisive text on the point. (See Pearson on the Creed, Burnet or Browne on the 39 Articles.) Yet it is rather pressing the language too far, when it is alleged in proof of Hades being the proper designation of the place, whither our Lord’s soul went at the moment of death. For it is an Old Testament passage, and like other passages of a prophetic nature, which pointed to New Testament times, it naturally spoke of the future under the form and image of the things then present or past. It should, therefore, be understood of the actual event in Gospel times with such a measure of qualification, as the altered circumstances of the new dispensation might require. And if, as we have seen reason to believe, the language of our Lord Himself gave indication of a change in respect to Hades, as regards the souls of believers if in His discourses he carefully distinguished between Hades and the receptacle of His own and His people’s disembodied spirits, we can scarcely be warranted in pressing the Old Testament passage quoted by St. Peter, so as to impose on it still an Old Testament sense. But, in reality, neither the original Hebrew, nor the Septuagint Greek, which is adopted by the apostle, gives any precise indication of the place where our Lord’s spirit sojourned; they do not define so closely, as is supposed, his relation to Hades. The words in the Greek, which represent quite exactly the sense of the Hebrew, are, οὐκ ἐγκαταλείψεις τὴν ψυχήν μου εἰς ᾅδην, Thou wilt not relinquish, or abandon, my soul to Hades—wilt not surrender it as a helpless prey to that hostile power, or unwelcome abode. It might, indeed, mean, that the soul was to be allowed to enter there, though not to be shut up for a continuance; but it might also, and even more naturally, intimate that the soul should not properly fall under the dominion of Hades. The expression is general as regards the matter of relationship; Hades is simply eyed as the antagonistic power, the hostile quarter, against which security was to be provided, or from which deliverance was to be granted.

Another passage commonly referred to in the same connexion, were it justly so employed, might also be treated as deriving its impress from Old Testament times. Having quoted Isaiah 25:8, “He will swallow up death in victory,” St. Paul breaks out into the fervid exclamation, “O death, where is thy sting? Hades, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55.) Such is the reading of the received text; but there can be no doubt that Θάνατε, death, should be in this clause, as well as the preceding one. So that the passage does not come into consideration here; and the English version, which merely substitutes grave in the second clause for death in the first, is really more correct than the original it professed to follow. Grave answers more nearly to θάνατε than it should have done to ᾅδη.

Passing this, then, as not applicable, the only remaining passages, in which Hades occurs, are in the Book of Revelation. There it is found four times. In Revelation 1:18, the Lord re-assures John, who had fallen at His feet as dead, by saying, “Fear not: I am the first and the last; He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore; Amen, and have the keys of death and of Hades.” The second is in the description of the rider on the pale horse, in Revelation 6:8, whose name was Death, and who was followed by Hades, slaying on every hand with sword and pestilence. The two others occur in successive verses, at Revelation 20:13-14, where, amid the changes that usher in the final condition of things, it is said, “And the sea gave up the dead that are in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that are in them, and each were judged according to their works. And Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death.” In these representations it were too much, perhaps, to affirm with some, that Hades is necessarily restricted to the place of torment, the temporary prison-house of the lost. For, when Christ speaks of having the keys of death and of Hades, He might refer to the invisible world generally; He might intend to comfort the Apocalyptist with the assurance, that He, who then appeared to him in glory, had supreme control over the mansions of life and death, and that excepting under His direction no one could be sent into the nether world from the scenes and habitations of the living. At the same time, when the connexion of the words is taken into account—when it is remembered that John, together with the church he represented, was then threatened with destruction by a powerful adversary, and that he felt at the moment on the point of dissolution, the conviction forces itself on our minds, that there also death and Hades are chiefly contemplated as evils objects shrunk from and dreaded, on account of their connexion with sin, and from which exemption was to be sought and obtained in Christ. That such is the aspect in which death and Hades are presented in ch. 6:8, where the one follows the other in the work of carnage and desolation, admits of no doubt; for the work given them to do was one emphatically of judgment, to take effect on the adversaries of God. The same reference to the wicked, and to the consequences resulting from their misdeeds, if less obvious in the remaining passage of Revelation, is scarcely less certain. For, while the sea is spoken of, along with death and Hades, as giving up the dead that were in it, and of all the dead, so given up, being judged out of the books that were written in them according to their works, it is not to be forgotten, that in the Apocalypse sea is the usual symbol of the world, in its sin-heaving, agitated, and troubled state—the world as opposed to the peaceful and blessed kingdom of Christ; and in such a case the books are most naturally regarded as the ideal records of human guilt and depravity. I am inclined, therefore, to the opinion, that the souls here represented as coming out of the sea, death, and Hades, and being judged according to the things written in the books, are the non-elect portion of mankind—all, whose names were not found in the book of life. And this is confirmed by what is said immediately after, that death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire; for what reason could there have been for such an utter perdition, if Hades included in its domain the paradise to which Christ went with the penitent malefactor? Could the realms of bliss and wo, life and destruction, be so indiscriminately confounded together? Manifestly a Hades, which was to find its outgoing in the devouring fire of Heaven’s wrath, was a very different region from that, in which our Lord tasted the sweets of paradise, or even the lap of Abraham’s bosom, wherein a pious Lazarus is said to have reaped his reversion of comfort from the sorrows of an afllicted life. On the whole, there seems ample ground for maintaining that a marked difference lies between the use of Hades in the New Testament and of Sheol in the Old. Sheol is plainly and uniformly represented as the common receptacle of the good and the bad; for the one class, indeed, containing the elements of a very different portion from what awaited the other; yet even for the good wearing an aspect somewhat cheerless and uninviting. Hades, in New Testament Scripture, is not once explicitly employed as a designation for the common region of departed spirits; when speaking of the intermediate state for the good, our Lord carefully abstained from associating it with the mention of Hades; and both as referred to by Him, and as personified in the Book of Revelation, Hades is placed in a kind of antagonistic relation to the interests of His kingdom—is even viewed as standing in close affinity with death, and destined to share in its final extinction. Not, however, that we are therefore warranted to deny the existence of an intermediate state for the souls of believers, differing in place or character from their ultimate destination; or that it must on no account be identified with Hades. No; but simply that this is no longer the fitting epithet to apply to the temporary receptacle of departed saints; and we cannot but regard it as unhappy, and tending to convey a partially wrong impression respecting Christ, that the article in the Apostles Creed should have taken the form of representing His disembodied soul as descending into Hades. He Himself introduced a change in the phraseology respecting the state of the departed, such as appears to have betokened a corresponding change in the reality. Assuredly, by the incarnation and work of Christ, the position of the Church on earth was mightily elevated; and it is but natural to infer, that a corresponding elevation extended to those members of the Church who had already passed, or might henceforth pass, within the veil; that a fresh lustre was shed over their state and enjoyments by the entrance of Christ, as the triumphant Redeemer, into the world of spirits; and that for them now the old Hades, with its grim and cheerless aspect, was to be accounted gone, supplanted by the happy mansions in the Father’s house, which Christ opened to their view. Hence also, instead of shrinking from the immediate future, as from the grasp of an enemy, the children of faith and hope should rather look to it as a provisional paradise, and confidently anticipate in its realms of light and glory a higher satisfaction than they can ever experience in the flesh. In this statement, however, nothing is to be understood as affirmed in respect to the locality assigned for the spirits of the departed as if it had been removed to another sphere by the agency of Christ, and a new and higher region had taken the place of the one originally appointed. This was a very common view among the later Fathers those who lived subsequently to the fifth century—and became at length the received opinion of the Church. It was supposed that, up to the death of Christ, and His descent into Hades, the souls of the righteous were kept in what was called Limbus Patrum—not absolutely hell, but a sort of porch or antechamber in its outskirts; and that Christ, after having finished the work of reconciliation, went thither to deliver them from it, and set them in the heavenly places. Bede expresses this to be the general faith of the Church in his day; (Catliolica fides habet, quia dcsccndens ad Inferna Dominus non incredulos inde, sed fideles tantummodo suos educens, ad celestia secum regna perduxerit. So also Isidore Hispalensis, Sentent. L. I. c. 16, Ideo Dominus in Inferno descendit, ut his, qui ab eo non pœnaliter detinebantur, viam aperiret revertendi ad cœlos. See other authorities in Pearson on the Creed, Art. V.) although many of the greatest authorities before him had opposed it, both because it seemed to bespeak the existence of too much evil in the condition of ancient believers after death, and also to ascribe too great a change to the personal descent of Christ. The notion undoubtedly rested on fanciful grounds, and had various errors, of a collateral kind, associated with it. Its propounders and advocates too much forgot that the language used of this province of the invisible world, as well as others, is to a large extent relative, and, as regards circumstantial matters, was never meant to impart precise and definite information. When represented as a lower region, as stretching away even into the profoundest depths, it was, doubtless, the world of sense that supplied the form of the representation. The body, at death, goes down into the earth; and it became natural to think and speak of the soul as following it in this downward direction, and finding its proper abode in the shades below. But this no more determined the locality, than our conception of heaven as a higher region necessitates its position over our heads; which, indeed, would require it to shift perpetually with the seasons of the year, and with the revolutions of day and night. Hence it is ridiculous to say with Horsley, as if such language aimed at philosophical precision, “The sacred writers of the Old Testament speak of a common mansion in the inner parts of the earth; and we find the same opinion so general among the heathen writers of antiquity, that it is more probable that it had its rise in the earliest patriarchal revelations, than in the imaginations of man, or in poetical fiction.” (Sermon on 1 Peter 3:18-20. ) Did not the sacred writers as well, though less frequently, also speak of the spirit of a man going upwards, while that of a beast went downwards—of God taking the most eminent saints to Himself, of their being made to see the path of life, and dwelling in the house of the Lord for ever? (Genesis 5:2; Ecclesiastes 3:21; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Psalms 16:11; Psalms 23:6.) In speaking of what pertains to the soul after death, we necessarily speak under a veil; the discourse we make must fashion itself after the appearances, rather than the realities of things; and we wander into a wrong path whenever we attempt to turn the language so employed into a delineation of exact bounds and definite landmarks. “What is written of departed believers is intended only to give us some idea of their state, but not of their local habitation; and the comparison of the later, with the earlier revelations, as already stated, warrants the belief, that with the progress of the scheme of God, and especially with its grand development in the person of Christ, that state did also partake of some kind of progression, or experience some rise, though we want the means for describing wherein precisely it consisted.

It is scarcely necessary to add, that the same qualifications attach to what is sometimes indicated as to the relative nearness of the two regions appropriated respectively to the saved and the lost in the separate state. An actual nearness is inconceivable, if the better portion are really to exist in a state of blissful consciousness; for what room could there be for an Elysium of joy, with the existence of such a mass of wretchedness perpetually pressing on their view? The scene of the rich man’s cognizance of and interview with Lazarus can be nothing more than a cover to bring out the elements of remorse and agony, that torment the bosom of the lost. So far, disembodied spirits might be viewed as occupying a common territory, that they are alike tenants of a region physically suited to such spirits, and a region not yet parted into the final destinations of heaven and hell. But nearer determinations are impracticable, and the attempt to make them is to enter into profitless and haply misleading speculations.

4. The preceding remarks have touched upon every thing that calls for consideration as regards the import and application of the term Hades in Scripture. The doctrine of our Lord’s temporary withdrawal into the world of spirits, its historical reality, the relation it bears to the experience of His people, and the results to which it may be applied in respect to the constitution of His person and the completeness of His work,—all this properly belongs to another department of theological inquiry. Or, if treated exegetically, it would be more fitly discussed in connexion with a few texts, in which the term Hades does not occur. One of these is the application made in Ephesians 4:9, of an Old Testament passage, in which the Lord is represented as ascending up on high, leading captivity captive; and on which the apostle remarks, “Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts (τὰ κατώτερα) of the earth?” The Fathers, undoubtedly, made frequent use of this passage in establishing the descent of Christ into Hades, and they have also been followed by many in modern times. But this, as Bishop Pearson long ago remarked, and for stronger reasons than he alleged, is a very questionable interpretation; for the contrast marked in the apostle’s statement is not, betwixt one part of the earth and another, but rather betwixt earth as the lower region, and heaven as the higher. The one is brought into view simply as expressive of His humiliation, preceding and preparing for the exaltation, announced in the other; and to understand the words of a farther descent into the bowels of the earth, would not only be to press them to a sense which cannot fairly be regarded as before the mind of the writer at the time, but also to make them include a portion of our Lord’s history, yea, specially to single out that, as the distinctive mark of his humiliation, which does not strictly belong to it. This will appear from what follows in connexion with another text—the one that chiefly bears on the point under consideration—1 Peter 3:18-20, in which the apostle points to the sequence and result of Christ’s sufferings in the flesh. He suffered once, says Peter, for sins, “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us unto God, being put to death, indeed, in flesh, but quickened in spirit, in which also he went and preached, (or made proclamation,) to the spirits in prison, that sometime were disobedient in the days of Noah,” etc. (θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ ζῳοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι, ἐν ᾧ καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασιν πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν, ἀπειθήσασίν ποτε ὅτε ἀπεξεδέχετο ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ μακροθυμία, κ.τ.λ.) This is, certainly, one of the most remarkable, and, if isolated from the context, one of the most obscure passages of New Testament Scripture—bringing in so abruptly, and with such rapidity passing over, some of the more remote and peculiar points in the Divine economy. The greatest theologians have not only differed from each other in their views respecting it, but also differed from themselves at one period as compared with another; of which instances may be found in Augustin, Luther, and Calvin. It would be out of place here, however, to give a history of opinions on the subject; they may be seen, for example, in Steiger’s Commentary, (Biblical Cabinet,) and in part, also, in Pearson’s Notes under Art.V. It will here be enough to indicate a few guiding principles and textual explanations, which it is hoped may serve to show, that when contemplated in the proper light, the passage is neither inexplicable in meaning, nor in the least at variance with the general teaching of Scripture.

First, then, it must be held as fixed and certain, that our Lord’s visit to the world of departed spirits, between His death and His resurrection, was an historical reality, whatever He might have felt or done when there. His departed soul did not ascend to the proper heaven of glory, as He expressly declared, till after the resurrection; while yet it went, according to another declaration, to a region so blissful, that it could be called by the name of paradise. One alternative alone remains, that His spirit went to the company of those who are waiting in hope of a better resurrection.

Secondly, Christ’s presence and operations in that world of spirits must be held to have taken place in free and blessed agency; they are to be associated, not with the passive, but with the active part of His career. His sufferings were at an end when He expired upon the cross; for then the curse was exhausted, and, with that, the ground of His appointment to evil finally removed—whence the change explains itself of the difference that forthwith appeared in the Divine procedure toward Him. Shame and contumely now gave place to honour: not a bone of Him was allowed to be broken; He was numbered no longer with the vile and worthless, but with the rich and honourable, and by these, after being wrapped in spices, He was committed to a tomb, where no man had lain: all, so many streaks of that dawn which was to issue in the glory of the resurrection-morn. Whatever, therefore, was done by the soul of Christ subsequent to His death, must have been in free and blessed agency; and it were abhorrent to all right notions of the truth respecting Him, to suppose, as some have done, that His sufferings were prolonged in the world of spirits, and that He there for a time had experience of the agonies of the lost. This were in effect to say, that His work of reconciliation on the cross was not complete,—that the sacrifice then paid to Divine justice was not accepted of the Father. Even the modified view of Bishop Pearson must be rejected, that “as Christ died in the similitude of a sinner, His soul went to the place where the souls of men are kept who die for their sins, and so did wholly undergo the law of death;” for, in that case, a certain measure of penalty and satisfaction should still have been implied in the transaction. The language of St. Peter in the passage more immediately before us gives no countenance to such an idea, nor admits it under any modification; for he represents Christ’s spirit as being vivified, or quickened—starting into fresh life and energy of action, from the moment that in flesh He underwent the stroke of death, and, as so invigorated, going” forth to preach. (In this explanation, it will be observed, the ζῳοποιηθεὶς πνεύματι is taken to refer to the spiritual part of Christ’s human nature, precisely as the θανατωθεὶς σαρκὶ, to His corporeal part; for it is impossible to deny that this is the natural, and, indeed, the only grammatical mode of interpreting them. As Flacius long ago remarked, “The antithesis clearly shows, that He is said to have been put to death in one part of Him, or in one manner of life, but vivified in another.” In like manner Horsley, If the word flesh denote, as it most evidently does, the part in which death took effect upon Him, spirit must denote the part in which life was preserved in Him, i.e., His own soul.” Perfectly right thus far, though scarcely right when he adds, that “the word quickened is often applied to signify, not the resuscitation of life extinguished, but the preservation and continuance of life subsisting;” no, not preservation and continuance simply, but rather freshened energy and revived action. The interpretations, which understand by spirit the Holy Ghost, and regard the preaching spoken of as either the preaching of Noah through the Spirit, to the antediluvians, or that of the apostles to the wicked around them, hence fall of themselves; they are but ingenious shifts resorted to for the sake of getting over a difficulty, but twisting the passage into an unnatural sense. Giving to the words πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν their legitimate import, they must mean, that Christ went away and preached—as a spirit to spirits. And the spirits being described as having been sometime, or formerly disobedient, also plainly implies, that the period of disobedience was a prior one to that to which the preaching belonged.) In short, the culminating point of His humiliation and suffering was His death upon the cross, (as already prefigured in the Old Testament sacrifices,) (See Typology of Scripture, vol. ii. p. 347.) and from that point, both in respect to soul and body, the process of exaltation, strictly speaking, began.

Thirdly, In regard to the more specific points—why the Apostle Peter should have made such particular mention of this agency of Christ’s disembodied spirit, why he should have coupled it only with the spirits of those who had perished in the flood, and what may have been the nature and intent of his preaching to them:—for all this we must look to the connexion. Now, it must be carefully remembered (for chiefly by overlooking this have commentators gone so much into the wrong track,) that the apostle is not discoursing of these topics doctrinally; they are referred to merely as matters of fact, which had a practical bearing on the great moral truths that were the more immediate subject of discourse. What were these? They were, that Christians should seek to avoid suffering by maintaining a good conscience; but that if they should still, and perhaps on this very account, be called to suffer, it was greatly better to do so for well-doing, than for ill-doing. Then, in confirmation of this complex truth, he points to a twofold illustration. In the first instance, he fixes attention on Christ as having suffered, indeed, the just for the unjust suffered as the Righteous One, but only once suffered; and on that (the ἅπαξ ἔπαθεν) the special stress is here to be laid; it was, so to speak, but a momentary infliction of evil, however awful in its nature while it lasted; still, but once borne, and never to be repeated, because borne in the cause of righteousness. Not only so, but it carried along with it infinite recompenses of good—for sinful men, bringing them to God; and for “Christ Himself, limiting the reign of death to a short-lived dominion over the body, while the soul, lightened and relieved, inspired with the energy of immortal life, went into the invisible regions, and, with buoyant freedom, moved among the spirits of the departed. How widely different from that mighty class of sufferers!—the most striking examples in the world’s history of the reverse of what appeared in Christ—the last race of antediluvians, who suffered, not for well-doing, but for ill-doing, and suffered, not once merely in the flood, that swept them away from their earthly habitations, but even now, after so long a time, when the work on the cross was finished still pent up as in a prison-house of doom, where they could be only haunted by memories of past crime, and with forebodings of eternal retribution! What a contrast! How should the thought of it persuade us to suffering for well doing, rather than for evil-doing! And for those lost ones themselves, Christ’s spirit, now released from suffering, fresh with the dew of its dawning immortality, preached; preached by its very entrance into the paradise of glory. For even this, seen from afar, must have been to them like the appearance of a second Noah, “the preacher of righteousness;” since it proclaimed—proclaimed more emphatically than Noah ever did—the final establishment of God’s righteousness, and a sure heritage of life and blessing for those, but for those only, who were ready to hazard all for its sake. Such, doubtless, was the kind of preaching meant; it is that alone which the case admits of—whether, as to its formal character, it may have consisted in the simple presentation of the Spirit of. Christ among the spirits of the blessed, or may have included some more special and direct intercourse with the imprisoned hosts of antediluvian time. In either case it was to them like the renewal, in a higher form, of the old preaching of righteousness; for what the one had provisionally announced, the other finally confirmed and sealed; yea, was itself the radiant proof of an eternal distinction between those, in whom suffering triumphs because of sin, and those who through righteousness triumph over suffering. (It is no objection to the view now given, that κηρύσσω is commonly used in the sense of a gospel proclamation; for it is neither necessarily nor always so used. In Romans 2:21, it is coupled with abstinence from stealing as its object—a preaching of moral duty. Here the reference manifestly is to the ancient preaching of Noah; and to connect this action of Christ with his the term might justly seem the fittest.)

Viewed thus, the whole passage hangs consistently together; one part throws light upon another; and the agency ascribed to Christ is in perfect keeping with all that is elsewhere written, both of His own mediatorial work, and of the condition of departed spirits. On the one hand, it rescues the words from the arbitrary meanings which doctrinal considerations have so often led pious minds to put on them; and, on the other, it removes the ground, which has too often been sought in the passage, not only by Romish, but even by some Protestant writers, who find a door of hope for certain classes of those who have lived and died in sin. The reference to the antediluvians in the age of Noah is not to some individuals among them, for whom possibly some better fate might have been reserved, but to the collective race as a well-known class in sacred history; and to them as still detained in the prison of judgment, not as having any prospect of deliverance from it. Nay, on this very circumstance the great moral of the reference properly turns; for it is their protracted, everlasting destination to a doom of suffering, as contrasted with Christ’s suffering but once, and, that over, entering on a fresh career of life and glory, which lent all its weight to the exhortation given, to prefer suffering for righteousness-sake to suffering for sin. In what follows also the same account substantially is made of their case; they are thought of simply as reprobate and lost. It is in Noah alone, and the little remnant in the ark, whom the waters, that destroyed the corrupt and pestilential mass around them, saved, to be the seed of a new world, that the prototypes are found of the genuine subjects and fruits of Christian baptism. And what does this imply of the mass whom the waters engulfed? Plainly, that their counterpart in Christian times is to be sought in the corruptions of the flesh and the world, from which it is the design of baptism through the power of Christ’s resurrection, to save His people—corruptions which, like their antediluvian exemplars, are irreconcilably opposed to the life of God, and can have no end but destruction.