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What we believe · 3 of 10

Jesus Christ

Who is Jesus, and what did he do?

Christianity isn't primarily a set of ideas about God. It's a report about a man who lived in a real place, under a real governor, and a claim about who that man was.

The claim is extreme. Christians have tried to soften it for two thousand years, and it keeps refusing to soften, read the Gospels and see for yourself. This carpenter forgave sins that were not committed against him. He accepted worship from monotheistic Jews who would have died rather than give it to a creature. He said that before Abraham existed, I am, and they picked up stones, because they understood him perfectly.

It took the church four centuries of hard argument to find language careful enough to say what it had believed from the start. The result is not philosophy imposed on the Bible; it is a fence built around the Bible, marking where explanations start eating the text.

This page walks that fence, and then asks the questions Christians still work on: who Jesus died for, how his death saves, what he set aside to become a man, and where he went between the cross and the empty tomb.

Theologians have a name for this subject: christology. You don’t need the word — but now you’ll know it when you see it.

Christ transfigured in blinding light with Moses and Elijah, the disciples thrown to the ground below, engraving by Gustave Doré.

Notable art

The Transfiguration

Matthew 17 · the veil lifted for a moment, and the disciples on their faces.

Gustave Doré, 1866. Public domain.

The shape of it

The descent and the ascent

Paul's hymn in Philippians 2 runs downward as far as it can go: to a cross, and then upward further still. Read down the left arm, then up the right.

8 statements, each with its passages

What we hold

  1. 01What we hold

    Fully God and fully man, one person, two natures.

    John opens with it: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and then, fourteen verses later, the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us. With God, and was God, and became flesh. All three.

    Paul says the whole fullness of deity dwells in him bodily, and that he is the image of the invisible God, and that all things were created through him and hold together in him. Hebrews says he is the radiance of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature.

    And the same texts insist on his humanity without embarrassment. He got tired, hungry, and thirsty. He slept through a storm from exhaustion. He wept. He was tempted in every way as we are, and did not sin. Hebrews says he had to be made like his brothers in every respect.

    In 451 the council at Chalcedon wrote the sentence the church has used ever since: one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, made known in two natures, 'without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.' The council names four things the two natures may never do, and never explains how the joining works. It does not tell you how; it tells you what you may not say. The deity is not diluted, the humanity is not swallowed, and the person is not split in two.

  2. 02What we hold

    Born of a virgin.

    Matthew and Luke both report it, independently, from different angles, Matthew from Joseph's side, Luke from Mary's, and both treat it as an event, not a symbol. Matthew ties it to Isaiah's sign; Luke records the angel's answer to Mary's entirely sensible question about how this would work: the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

    It matters for more than the Christmas story. The virgin birth is where the two natures meet. He is truly human because he was truly born of a woman, of David's line, made of her flesh. He is not merely another son of Adam because his origin was not from a man.

    It is also the first note of what the whole New Testament says about salvation: the initiative was God's, and the human contribution was consent. 'Let it be to me according to your word.'

  3. 03What we hold

    He never sinned.

    Every New Testament writer who addresses it says the same thing, and they say it as people who lived with him for three years. He knew no sin. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. In him there is no sin.

    He asked his enemies directly which of them could convict him of sin, and the question hung there.

    This is not a compliment; it is a requirement. Only someone who owes nothing can pay for someone else. A lamb without blemish is the whole logic of the sacrificial system, and it is why the sinlessness is reported so insistently.

    It also means the temptations were real. Hebrews says he suffered when tempted, and only the person who never gives in knows the full force of it.

  4. 04What we hold

    He died in our place.

    The New Testament's shortest summary of the gospel begins: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He did not die merely because of our sins, or as a result of them. He died for them, in our place.

    Isaiah wrote the substitution seven centuries early: he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the chastisement that brought us peace was on him; the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all.

    Jesus said it about himself before it happened: the Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many. The cup, he said, is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

    Peter puts the exchange in one line: the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.

  5. 05What we hold

    He rose bodily from the dead.

    This wasn't a vision, a memory, or just his influence living on. It was a body, one that could be touched, that ate broiled fish in front of witnesses, that still carried the wounds.

    Paul stakes the entire religion on it and does so in public: if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is worthless and so is your faith, and we are found to be liars about God. No other faith has ever offered its critics such a clean way to end it.

    He then lists witnesses, most of them alive when he wrote, including one group of more than five hundred at once. That is not devotional language; that is an invitation to go and ask them.

    The resurrection is God's verdict on the cross. Jesus was handed over for our sins and raised to show the debt was paid in full.

  6. 06What we hold

    He ascended, and he is praying for you right now.

    Forty days after the resurrection he was taken up, visibly, and a cloud received him out of their sight, and two men in white told the disciples he would come back the same way.

    The ascension is not the story ending. It is Jesus taking up an office. He is seated at the right hand of God, and Hebrews says he always lives to make intercession for those who come to God through him. Paul lists it as the reason no charge can stand: Christ Jesus is at the right hand of God, and he is interceding for us.

    Right now, in a real human body, there is a man in heaven who knows exactly what your week has been like, and he is speaking to the Father about you. That's not a metaphor, and it's not a feeling. It's what the Son of God is doing right now.

  7. 07What we hold

    He is coming back.

    The same Jesus, the same way, visibly. Every eye will see him. He comes on a white horse, and the name written on him is Faithful and True, and the armies of heaven follow.

    This site's tradition holds a pre-tribulation, premillennial view of how that unfolds, and the page on the end times works it out in detail. Here the point is simpler, and nearly every Christian tradition agrees on it: history is headed somewhere, and that somewhere is a person.

  8. 08What we hold

    He holds all three of Israel's offices at once.

    In the Old Testament three kinds of people were anointed, prophets, priests, and kings, and in Israel the three offices were normally kept apart. Melchizedek, the priest-king from outside Israel, is the standing exception, and Hebrews reaches for him for exactly that reason. Jesus holds all three at once, and 'Christ' means Anointed.

    Prophet, he speaks God's word, and unlike every prophet before him he speaks it in the first person. Not 'thus says the LORD' but 'but I say to you.' Moses said God would raise up a prophet like him, and Peter says that is Jesus.

    Priest, he offers the sacrifice and he is the sacrifice, and then he goes inside the sanctuary and stays there for us. Hebrews spends chapters on it: a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek, not by ancestry but by the power of an indestructible life.

    King, of David's line, given a throne, ruling now and openly then. The kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever.

Quoted, with the work named

How the church has said it

The ancient shorthand for 2 Peter 1:4: the exchange the incarnation made. Not that we become God, but that we come to share his life.

He was made man that we might be made God.

Athanasius of Alexandria· On the Incarnation §54 (Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers translation)Patristic

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Why both natures are load-bearing and neither can be trimmed.

It deeply concerned us, that he who was to be our Mediator should be very God and very man.

John Calvin· Institutes of the Christian Religion II.xii.1 (Beveridge translation)Reformed

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The doctrine sung, which is how most Christians have actually learned it.

Amazing love! how can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Charles Wesley· hymn, And Can It Be (Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739)Evangelical

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The house answer in gold, every alternative at full strength

Where Christians divide

  • The claimthis site's tradition
  • The objectionanother reading, at full strength
  • The answerwhat that reading costs
  • Scripturequoted plain, never slanted toward any side

Who did Jesus die for?

4 more passages on this7 in all

The claim · this site's tradition

Everyone. This site's tradition holds that Christ's death was a real provision for every human being without exception, he gave himself a ransom for all, and he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world. It becomes yours when you receive it, which is why the offer of the gospel to any person alive is completely sincere.

The texts say 'all' and 'the world' in exactly the places where a limit would need to be stated. Paul: one mediator, who gave himself a ransom for all. John: not for ours only but for the whole world. Hebrews: he tasted death for everyone. Isaiah: the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Peter says of false teachers heading for destruction that they deny 'the Master who bought them.' Whatever else that verse means, it applies purchase language to people who are not finally saved.

Paul's evangelistic urgency assumes it. He begs people to be reconciled to God, on the basis that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. He is not offering something he suspects may not exist for his hearer.

The old formula is the right shape, and it is worth quoting as it was actually written. Peter Lombard, in the twelfth century, said Christ was offered on the cross 'for all, as far as the sufficiency of the price is concerned, but for the elect alone as far as its efficacy is concerned' (Sentences III, dist. 20), sufficient for all, efficient for the elect. The medieval church repeated it, and the Reformers inherited it. MannaFest keeps the first half exactly as Lombard wrote it and reads the second half its own way: the death is efficient for those who receive it, whom God foreknew.

Where others land: 3 positions, each with what it costs

  1. THE OBJECTION01Particular redemption, he died to actually save his peopleChrist did not make salvation merely possible for everyone; he actually secured it for those the Father gave him. The atonement is not a payment left on the table hoping someone will claim it, it accomplished redemption, and everyone for whom it was made will certainly be saved.Its case, in fullOwen's argument is the hard one and deserves stating properly. Christ died for either all the sins of all men, all the sins of some men, or some sins of all men. If all the sins of all men, why is anyone lost? If the answer is unbelief, is unbelief a sin? If it is, and Christ paid for it, then it cannot condemn. If it is not paid for, then some sins are not covered and no one is saved by the cross alone.Jesus speaks of his death in particular terms constantly: the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and he tells his opponents plainly that they are not among his sheep. Paul says Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. Isaiah says he will see his offspring and be satisfied, a satisfaction that a merely potential outcome would not deliver.It holds the Trinity's work together: the Father chooses a people, the Son purchases that people, the Spirit applies it to that people. On the alternative, the Son's intention is wider than the Father's and the Spirit's, which fractures the unity of the divine purpose.The 'all' and 'world' texts are read in context rather than ignored. John's 'whole world' answers a Jewish-Christian assumption that salvation is for Israel only, and 'all' in the pastoral epistles regularly means all kinds and classes, which is exactly the argument of the passage about kings and those in authority.John Owen (The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, 1647); the Synod of Dort, second head of doctrine; the Westminster Confession; today J. I. Packer's introduction to Owen and the writers of From Heaven He Came and Sought Her.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. It has to carry an unnatural reading of 2 Peter 2:1 and to explain how a preacher can look at a congregation and say Christ died for you. Even within the Reformed tradition this was the point of greatest strain: the Amyraldians below are Calvinists who could not accept it, and Dort's own delegates disagreed among themselves about how to word it.

  2. THE OBJECTION02Amyraldianism: universal provision, particular applicationChrist died sufficiently for all, so the universal offer is genuine; but knowing none would come, God also elects and effectually calls a people. Unlimited in extent, limited in application.Its case, in fullIt takes the universal texts at face value without giving up the Reformed doctrine of grace, which is why it has attracted people who found both alternatives painful.It preserves the sincerity of the gospel offer, which is a real problem for strict particularism and which its defenders have always acknowledged.Moïse Amyraut of Saumur (1634); John Davenant, an English delegate to the Synod of Dort and later Bishop of Salisbury; Richard Baxter; among later figures, this is close to what many broadly Reformed evangelicals actually hold.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. Both sides accuse it of wanting things both ways: strict Calvinists say a universal provision God never intended to apply is not a real provision; Arminians say that if the call is effectual and irresistible, the universal offer is still not one anyone could accept without it.

  3. THE OBJECTION03Universal reconciliationIf Christ died for all and God desires all to be saved and is sovereign, then in the end all will be saved: the atonement will lose no one.Its case, in fullIt presses two things Christians affirm (the scope of the atonement and the will of God) to what looks like their conclusion, and cites the sweeping texts: God will be all in all; every knee will bow; in Christ shall all be made alive; God has consigned all to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.It refuses to be comfortable about the lost, which is a moral seriousness the church often lacks.Origen in a tentative form (later condemned); George MacDonald; in modern theology Karl Barth's doctrine of election is read this direction by some, though he refused the label; Thomas Talbott.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. MannaFest declines it, and the reason is Jesus, who spoke about final loss more often and more severely than anyone else in Scripture. 'Depart from me' and 'the door was shut' are his words, not later additions. The same freedom that makes love real makes final refusal possible.

How does the cross actually save us?

7 more passages on this10 in all

The claim · this site's tradition

MannaFest leads with substitution: Jesus took the judgment our sin deserved, in our place, and God's justice and mercy met at the same nail. But the New Testament describes the cross from several angles at once: victory over the powers, a ransom paid, a life lived and offered where Adam failed, a love that changes those who see it. MannaFest treats those as different windows into one event, not competing theories where only one can win.

The substitution language is not one strand among many; it is the load-bearing one. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.

Paul explicitly says the cross addresses a problem in God, not only in us: God put Christ forward as a propitiation, to demonstrate his righteousness, so that he might be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. God had been passing over sins; the cross is where that account is settled.

It rests on the sacrificial system, which is the Old Testament's longest sustained lesson. The worshipper laid hands on the animal's head. The transfer was the point.

MannaFest's own tradition is emphatic here. Wesley preached substitution without reserve, and his Notes on Romans 3 read the propitiation as a real satisfaction of divine justice. A strand of later Methodist theology (John Miley following Hugo Grotius) preferred a governmental account in which the cross upholds God's moral government rather than paying a penalty. MannaFest does not follow that strand.

Where others land: 5 positions, each with what it costs

  1. THE OBJECTION01Christ the Victor: the cross defeated the powersThe cross is a battle. Christ disarmed the rulers and authorities, made a public spectacle of them, destroyed the one who had the power of death, and set the captives free. Salvation is rescue from occupying powers: sin, death, and the devil.Its case, in fullThe texts are explicit and MannaFest quotes them constantly: he disarmed the powers and triumphed over them in the cross; the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil; through death he destroyed the one who holds the power of death.It was the dominant way the first several centuries of Christians spoke about the cross, which is worth weight.For a site that takes the unseen realm seriously, this is not an optional accent. Genesis 3:15 announces a head-crushing, and the cross is where it lands.The early fathers; recovered for modern readers by Gustaf Aulén (Christus Victor, 1931); today N. T. Wright and much of the church in places where spiritual conflict is a daily category.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. By itself it explains the outcome but not the mechanism: why does a righteous man dying at the hands of the powers defeat them? Without substitution underneath, the victory has no legal ground. Aulén also overstated his history, presenting his view as the one 'classic' idea in a way specialists have since qualified.

  2. THE OBJECTION02Ransom: a price paid to set captives freeHumanity was held captive, and Christ's life was the ransom that bought us out.Its case, in fullJesus said it in exactly these words: to give his life a ransom for many. Paul: you were bought with a price. Peter: ransomed not with perishable things but with the precious blood of Christ.The imagery is not abstract: it comes from the slave market and the kinsman-redeemer, both of which the Old Testament had already trained Israel to understand.Irenaeus; Origen; Gregory of Nyssa; the language is Jesus's own.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. The old question of whom the ransom was paid to has no comfortable answer. Some fathers said the devil, which grants Satan rights he does not have; Gregory of Nyssa's image of the hook baited with Christ's humanity troubled even his admirers. Read as payment to God's justice, it becomes substitution, which is where MannaFest lands.

  3. THE OBJECTION03Satisfaction: the debt of honor repaidSin robs God of the honor due him. Someone must repay, but only man owes it and only God can pay it, therefore the God-man. Christ's death, which he did not owe, renders satisfaction on our behalf.Its case, in fullAnselm's argument for why the Savior had to be both God and man is one of the most rigorous pieces of reasoning in Christian history, and it is what makes the incarnation necessary rather than merely impressive.It takes God's honor and the gravity of sin with a seriousness modern accounts often lack. Anselm's line to his interlocutor, you have not yet considered how weighty sin is, still lands.Anselm of Canterbury (Cur Deus Homo, 1098), public domain.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. It is framed in the categories of feudal honor rather than biblical law, and it centers on satisfaction of honor instead of the bearing of penalty, which is what Isaiah 53 and Galatians 3 describe.

  4. THE OBJECTION04Recapitulation: Christ redoing the human storyChrist went over the whole course of human life, from birth to death, undoing at each point what Adam did (obedient where Adam disobeyed, faithful at the tree where Adam failed at the tree) and so gathered up humanity in himself and set it right.Its case, in fullPaul argues exactly this way in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15: as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous; the last Adam.It gives Christ's whole life saving significance, not just his last six hours, which fits the Gospels, which spend most of their length on the life.It explains why the temptation in the wilderness matters: Adam failed in a garden with everything, Israel failed in a desert, Christ succeeded in a desert with nothing.Irenaeus (Against Heresies), public domain.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. On its own it does not say what happens to the guilt already incurred. A new humanity is begun, but the old debt still needs addressing.

  5. THE OBJECTION05Moral influence: the cross changes us by moving usThe cross is the supreme demonstration of God's love, and its saving power lies in the response it awakens: it melts hostility and draws us back to God.Its case, in fullThe New Testament does say this: God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.' Any account of the cross that does not move you has missed something the texts insist on.It rightly refuses to let the atonement become a transaction that leaves the sinner unchanged.It presses a fair question to substitution: if God can simply forgive, why the blood? And if he cannot, is he freer than we are?Peter Abelard (twelfth century); Horace Bushnell (The Vicarious Sacrifice, 1866); much of liberal Protestant theology since.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. As the whole story it fails, because a demonstration of love that accomplishes nothing is not a demonstration of love. If a man drowns to show he loves you while you stand safely on the shore, that is not love, it is theater. The cross moves us because it did something.

What did Jesus give up to become a man?

3 more passages on this6 in all

The claim · this site's tradition

Not his deity, and not any divine attribute. Paul's word is that he emptied himself by taking; the emptying happened by way of an addition. He took the form of a servant, and in that servant life he consistently declined to use his divine prerogatives on his own behalf, living instead in dependence on the Father and the Spirit. He veiled his glory; he did not surrender his nature.

The grammar of the passage points that way. Paul does not say what Christ emptied himself of; he says how he emptied himself: 'taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.' The self-emptying is described by the taking, not by a subtraction.

The passage's purpose is ethical, not metaphysical. Paul is telling the Philippians to consider others more significant than themselves, and holds up Christ as the pattern. The point is a status renounced, not a nature reduced.

Deity is not a coat. If the Son laid aside what makes him God, the result would not be a humbled God; it would be no God present at all. Colossians says the fullness of deity dwells in him bodily, present tense, during the incarnation.

The hard text is Jesus saying that of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels, nor the Son, but the Father only. MannaFest reads that as genuine: in his human nature he did not know, and he did not reach across to his divine knowledge to find out. That is what living as a servant meant. It is also why the Gospels show him praying all night, being led by the Spirit, and doing what he sees the Father doing: he lived the life he calls us to live, in the power we are offered.

Where others land: 2 positions, each with what it costs

  1. THE OBJECTION01Kenotic Christology: he really did set attributes asideIn becoming man the Son genuinely surrendered the attributes that belong to God's relation to the world (knowing everything, being everywhere, unlimited power) while retaining the attributes that constitute God's character: holiness, love, truth. He was not pretending to be limited. He was limited.Its case, in fullIt takes the Gospels' portrait at face value. Luke says the child grew in wisdom. Jesus asks questions and appears to want the answers. He says he does not know the day. A Christ who secretly knew everything while asking who touched him is hard to distinguish from a performance.It gives Hebrews its full weight: he learned obedience through what he suffered, and was made perfect. Learning implies not having known.It makes the incarnation cost something. If nothing was actually given up, the humility Paul is praising is difficult to locate.Gottfried Thomasius (Germany, 1850s); Charles Gore and the English kenoticists; later P. T. Forsyth (The Person and Place of Jesus Christ) and H. R. Mackintosh.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. It struggles with Colossians 1:17 (in him all things hold together), which the Son does not stop doing for thirty-three years. And it divides God's attributes into essential and expendable, a distinction Scripture never draws and which implies that omniscience and omnipresence are not part of what it is to be God. The older Lutheran debate reached the same impasse from another direction, arguing over whether Christ merely concealed his divine powers or actually left off using them.

  2. THE OBJECTION02He never restricted anything; the limits are only apparentThe two natures remain wholly intact and unrestricted; the divine nature continued in full exercise throughout, and what looks like limitation belongs to the human nature alone while the person always retained full divine use.Its case, in fullIt guards the deity absolutely, and it has no trouble with Colossians 1:17 or with the moments where Jesus plainly does know what no man could know: Nathanael under the fig tree, the woman's five husbands, Lazarus dead before the news arrived.It keeps Chalcedon's 'without change' at maximum strength.Some strands of high Reformed and Lutheran scholasticism, and popular preaching that stresses Christ's omniscience during his ministry.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. It has to make Mark 13:32 mean something other than what it says, and it thins the humility Philippians 2 is praising. If nothing whatever was set aside in the way the Son lived, it is hard to say what the passage is holding up as an example.

Where was Jesus between the cross and the empty tomb?

4 more passages on this7 in all

The claim · this site's tradition

This site's tradition reads Peter straightforwardly: after his death Christ went and made a proclamation to 'the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah.' Those are the rebel angels of Genesis 6, the Watchers, and what he made was an announcement of victory, not an offer of a second chance. On a site that holds the Watchers reading, this is not an odd corner of Scripture; it is the closing of a loop that opened in Genesis 6.

Peter's own markers point there. He calls them 'spirits,' a term the New Testament almost never uses for dead humans without qualification. He dates their disobedience to the days of Noah. And he says they are imprisoned, which is exactly what Peter says elsewhere about angels who sinned, cast into chains of gloomy darkness, and what Jude says about angels who did not stay within their proper domain, kept in eternal chains.

The word Peter uses isn't the word for preaching the gospel; it's the word for a herald making a public announcement. A herald doesn't ask for a response; he announces what has already happened.

The background literature makes the picture sharp. In First Enoch (which Jude quotes and which MannaFest carries as a labeled study resource), Enoch is sent to the imprisoned Watchers to tell them there will be no pardon. Peter's readers knew that story. Christ, descending, delivers the counter-announcement: the seed of the woman has come, and it is finished.

This does not stand alone in Peter's argument. He is writing to Christians under pressure, and his point is that the same Christ who is now at God's right hand with angels and authorities subject to him first walked into the deepest cell in the universe and announced that he had won. That is a pastoral argument, not a curiosity.

Where others land: 3 positions, each with what it costs

  1. THE OBJECTION01Christ preached through Noah to Noah's generationThe pre-incarnate Christ, by his Spirit, preached through Noah to the people of Noah's day while the ark was being built. Those people are 'now' spirits in prison because they rejected that preaching and died in the flood.Its case, in fullIt fits the immediate context, where Noah and the eight saved through water are the focus, and it makes the passage a straightforward encouragement: preach faithfully to a hostile generation as Noah did.Peter says elsewhere that the Spirit of Christ was speaking in the prophets, so the mechanism is one Peter already uses.It avoids any suggestion of a post-mortem opportunity to repent, which is a real pastoral concern.Augustine, who proposed it; the Reformed tradition broadly; in modern scholarship Wayne Grudem has defended it at length.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. It requires reading 'went and proclaimed' as something that happened centuries before, through someone else, while the sentence structure ties it to Christ being 'made alive in the spirit.' And it has to explain why Peter calls them 'spirits' rather than the dead, given his own use of 'spirits' for angelic beings two chapters earlier in his second letter.

  2. THE OBJECTION02The harrowing of hell: Christ freed the righteous deadBetween his death and resurrection Christ went to the realm of the dead, broke it open, and led the Old Testament righteous, waiting in Abraham's bosom, into his presence.Its case, in fullPaul quotes 'when he ascended on high he led a host of captives' and comments that he first descended into the lower regions.Peter's sermon at Pentecost applies to Christ the psalm that says God would not abandon his soul to Sheol, implying he was there.Jesus's own account of the rich man and Lazarus describes exactly such a waiting place with a great chasm in it, and it is his account, not a later legend.It is the reading the church prayed for well over a thousand years, which is not nothing.The patristic and medieval tradition, East and West; the Apostles' Creed's clause that he descended to the dead; the Eastern icon of the resurrection, in which Christ hauls Adam and Eve out by the wrists.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. The direct textual support is thin: Ephesians 4:9 may simply mean the descent to earth, and Acts 2 may mean no more than that he was truly dead. Jesus also told the thief 'today you will be with me in Paradise,' which sits awkwardly with a mission to a holding cell.

  3. THE OBJECTION03The descent was the cross itselfThe creed's 'descended into hell' does not describe a journey but the depth of what Christ endured: bearing the full weight of God's wrath and the terrors of the damned, which is why he cried out that God had forsaken him.Its case, in fullIt takes the cry of dereliction as the real content of the descent, which is theologically weighty and pastorally powerful.It refuses to build a doctrine on a geography Scripture never maps.It keeps the creed's clause meaningful without asserting events the Gospels do not narrate.John Calvin (Institutes II.16.8-12), public domain.

    THE ANSWER

    The honest difficulty. It reads the creed out of order, since the clause comes after 'was crucified, dead, and buried.' And it does not really engage 1 Peter 3:19, which describes a going and a proclaiming.

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The works this page stands on

Public domain: read the whole thing

Out of copyright. This site quotes them in full, and so may you.

In copyright: named, not reproduced

We cite these at fifty words or fewer and send you to the book itself.

  • Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor
  • Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter (Tyndale Commentary)for the 'preached through Noah' reading
  • Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm and Reversing Hermonfor the Watchers reading of 1 Peter 3:19
  • P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christfor kenotic Christology
  • C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
  • Chuck Missler, Return of the Nephilim and Alien Encounters (with Mark Eastman, 1997)on the Genesis 6 storyline running through to 1 Peter