632 



HELL 



in prison. The earliest account of this as a his- 

 torical fact is given by Eusebius, but it soon appears 

 with fantastic elaboration in the apocryphal gospel 

 of Nicodemus, and a statement of belief in it was 

 inserted in the Apostles' Creed, in the earlier forms 

 of which, however, it does not appear, any more 

 than it does in the creeds of Irenneus, Origen, Ter- 

 tullian, Cyprian, nor in that of the Council of Nice. 

 Yet we find it distinctly taught by Ignatius, 

 Hernias, Justin Martyr, Irenseus, Tertullian, 

 Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, Cyril, 

 Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Chrysostom. It 

 was maintained in answer to Arian and Apollin- 

 arian heresies, as proving the true humanity and 

 the real death of Christ. Besides 1 Peter, iii. 19, 

 the other passages in Scripture considered to 

 support this belief are Eph. iv. 9, and Acts, ii. 

 27-31. Tertullian asserts that heaven is not open 

 till the end of the world, and that all men are in 

 Hades, either comforted or tormented, and that 

 the purpose of our Lord's descent was that the 

 patriarchs should be made partakers of him. The 

 belief soon came to be widely held that the patri- 

 archs and prophets were in Hades, but passed with 

 Christ into Paradise the germ of the medieval 

 doctrine of the Limbus patrum. Augustine seems 

 to have believed that Christ's preaching was effec- 

 tive in saving some souls which were in torment. 

 Cyril of Alexandria describes Christ as having by 

 his descent ' spoiled Hades utterly, and thrown 

 open to the spirits of those that slept the gates 

 that none may escape from, and leaving the devil 

 there in his solitude and desolation, having risen 

 again.' To him it was the supremest proof of 

 Christ's love to man that the Cross, the symbol of 

 deliverance, had been raised in Hades itself. The 

 theme early became a subject of Christian art, as 

 the ' Harrowing of Hell ' was a favourite subject 

 of our own medieval writers of mysteries, and 

 takes its place in the great Divina Commedia of 

 Dante. The Reformers felt that the doctrine lent 

 support to the dogma of Purgatory, and some, 

 as Calvin, taught that the descent into Hades 

 meant only the terrible anguish witli which the 

 soul of Christ was tried, equalling in its intensity 

 for the time the suH'erings of the damned, while 

 others merely admitted the fact without allowing 

 themselves to define anything as to its purpose 

 or result. Hammond, Pearson, and Barrow main- 

 tain the only meaning of St Peter's words to be 

 that our Lord by his Holy Spirit, inspiring Noah, 

 preached to the disobedient antediluvians, who are 

 now for their disobedience imprisoned in hell an 

 explanation that had already occurred to Jerome 

 and Augustine. Bishop Harold Browne observes 

 that on this subject Pearson has written less logi- 

 cally than is his wont, and says well that the real 

 difficulty consists in the fact that the proclamation 

 of the finishing of the great work of salvation is 

 represented by St Peter as having been addressed 

 to these antediluvian penitents, while no mention is 

 made of the penitents of later ages, who are equally 

 interested in the tidings. It can hardly be denied 

 that the patristic interpretation is most in har- 

 mony with an honest exegesis of the passage in 

 St Peter's epistle, but here it may be enough to 

 summarise the opinions of two great Protestant 

 theologians, Martensen and Dorner. 



The former says that departed souls live a deep 

 spiritual life, for the kingdom of the dead is a 

 kingdom of subjectivity, of remembrance in the full 

 sense of the word. At death the soul finds itself 

 in a world of pure realities ; the manifold voices of 

 the world, which during this earthly life sounded 

 together with the voices of eternity, grow dumb, 

 and the holy voice now sounds alone, no longer 

 deadened by the tumult of the world ; and hence 

 the realm of the dead becomes a realm of judg- 



ment. Departed spirits thus not only live and 

 move in the elements of bliss or woe which they 

 have formed and prepared for themselves in time, 

 but they continue to receive and work out a new 

 state of consciousness, because they continue 

 spiritually to mould and govern themselves in rela- 

 tion to the new manifestation of the divine will 

 now first presented to their view. 



Of the famous passage of St Peter, Dorner says 

 that Peter really contemplates Christ after his 

 s death, probably before his resurrection, as active in 

 the region of the dead, and therefore not in the 

 place of torment, but in the intermediate region. 

 There is an Intermediate state before the decision 

 of the Judgment. The Reformation, occupied chiefly 

 with opposition to the Romish Purgatory, leaped 

 over, as it were, the middle state i.e. left at rest 

 the questions presenting themselves here, gazing' 

 with unblenched eye only at the antithesis between 

 the saved and the damned, on the supposition 

 (retained without inquiry), in opposition to more 

 ancient tradition, that every ones eternal lot is- 

 definitely decided with his departure from this 

 present life. This is in keeping with the high 

 estimation put on the moral worth of the earthly 

 life. Nevertheless, the view is untenable, and 

 that even on moral grounds. Not merely would 

 nothing of essential importance remain for the 

 Judgment if every one entered the place of his 

 eternal destiny directly after death, but in that 

 case also no space \vould be left for progressive 

 growth of believers, who yet are not sinless at the 

 moment of death. If they are conceived as holy 

 directly after death, sanctification would be effected 

 by separation from the body ; the seat, therefore, 

 of evil must be found in the body, and sanctilica- 

 tion would be realised through a mere suffering of 

 death as a physical process instead of through the 

 will. Add to this that the absoluteness of Christi- 

 anity demands that no one be judged before Christi- 

 anity has been made accessible and brought home 

 to him. But this is not the case in this life with 

 millions of human beings, as the heathen in 

 central Africa. Nay, even within the church 

 there are periods and circles where the gospel 

 does not really approach men as that which it 

 is. Moreover, those dying in childhood have not 

 been able to decide personally for ChristiaTiity. 

 The passages which make the pious enter at once 

 a better place exclude a Purgatory as a place of 

 punishment or penance, but by no means exclude a 

 growth in perfection and blessedness. Even the 

 departed righteous are not quite perfect before the 

 resurrection. Their souls must still long for the 

 dominion of Christ and the consummation of God's 

 kingdom. There is, therefore, a status intermedius 

 even for believers, not an instantaneous passage 

 into perfect blessedness. 



How closely this touches the question of the 

 admissibility of Prayers for the Dead will be at 

 once apparent, although that subject hardly falls 

 to be discussed here. It was an ancient pre- 

 Christian custom to offer up prayers for the dead, 

 and we early find traces of it in the Christian 

 Church. These St Augustine thought might at 

 least secure for the lost a tolerabilior damnatio. 



III. Another view, not without its adherents, is 

 that of Conditional Immortality or Annihilation- 

 alism, according to which final destruction and not 

 endless suffering is the doom of the finally impeni- 

 tent. It of course traverses the belief in the in- 

 herent immortality of the soul, the instinctive hope 

 and belief of all mankind everywhere ; and, if it 

 saves the mind from the horror of endless torment, 

 necessitates the belief that God will raise up the 

 impenitent from the dead only to be tormented 

 and at last destroyed. Its adherents depend for 

 proof on the literal and assumed interpretation of 



