One line in the Apostles’ Creed causes no little head scratching for us today. “He descended into hell.” The way we usually understand hell — the place of eternal punishment — doesn’t fit this credal statement. Ancient peoples would not have divided up the afterlife into the neat categories that we have of heaven, hell and purgatory. Instead early Christians inherited from their Jewish roots the idea of “sheol,” the realm of the dead. So the Creed is saying that Jesus at his death was able to encounter those who had died before him — Abraham, Moses, King David, etc. The creed insists that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead to show that the saving victory of the cross was extended to those who had gone before him. Since Christ is the one who saves, he saves throughout past, present and future. As the letter to the Hebrews puts it talking about the ancestors: All these, though approved because of their faith, did not receive what had been promised. It was the risen Jesus who would lead them, and all of us, into paradise.
