The Line That Confuses Everyone
Every Sunday, Catholics recite the Apostles’ Creed and say, without flinching, that Jesus Christ “descended into hell.” Then they move on to the Resurrection without pausing to consider what they have just professed.
But visitors, children, and thoughtful adults do pause — and they ask: did Jesus go to hell? The hell of the damned? The place of fire and punishment? Did He suffer there? Was He punished? And if so, why?
The answer is no — not the hell of the damned. The Creed is saying something far more interesting, far more hopeful, and far more important than a trip to the place of punishment.
What “Hell” Means Here
The confusion arises because the English word “hell” has narrowed in meaning over the centuries. In modern English, “hell” means one thing: the place of eternal damnation. But the Creed was not written in modern English. It was written in Latin, and the Latin word used is inferos — “the lower regions” or “the abode of the dead.”
In the ancient world — both Jewish and pagan — the dead were understood to descend to a shadowy realm below. The Hebrews called it Sheol. The Greeks called it Hades. It was not a place of punishment for the wicked (that concept developed later). It was the place where all the dead went — the righteous and the unrighteous alike — to wait.
Wait for what? The righteous dead of the Old Testament — Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, all who had lived in faith before Christ — died before the gates of heaven were opened. They could not enter heaven because the redemption had not yet been accomplished. They waited in Sheol — in what the tradition calls the “limbo of the Fathers” or the “bosom of Abraham” (Luke 16:22) — for the Saviour to come and set them free.
This is where Jesus went on Holy Saturday. Not to the hell of the damned. To the abode of the righteous dead — to bring them the good news that the wait was over.
What He Did There
The New Testament gives us glimpses — tantalizingly brief — of what happened.
1 Peter 3:18–19. “Being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison.” Christ, in the interval between His death and Resurrection, went to the place of the dead and proclaimed the Gospel. The “spirits in prison” are the dead — held in Sheol, awaiting liberation.
1 Peter 4:6. “For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God.” The Gospel was preached to the dead — not to give them a second chance (there is no second chance after death) but to announce to the righteous dead that their salvation had been accomplished.
Ephesians 4:8–9. “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives… In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?” Paul connects the Ascension to a prior descent — and describes Christ leading “captives” upward. These captives are the righteous dead, freed from Sheol and brought into heaven by Christ.
The image is powerful: Christ descends into the realm of death — not as a victim but as a conqueror. He breaks open the gates. He takes the righteous dead by the hand. He leads them out — into the light, into the presence of God, into the heaven that His death and Resurrection have opened.
The ancient tradition calls this the “Harrowing of Hell” — from the Old English word hergian, meaning to plunder or to despoil. Christ plundered the realm of the dead, taking from it everyone who had been waiting for Him.
The Iconography
The Eastern churches have a magnificent icon of this event — the Anastasis (Resurrection) icon, which is the principal Easter image in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic traditions. It shows Christ standing on the shattered gates of Hades, reaching down to grasp Adam and Eve by the wrists and pull them out of their tombs. The righteous dead surround Him — kings, prophets, patriarchs — rising with Him into the light.
The image is theologically rich. Christ does not merely open the door and wait for the dead to walk out. He reaches down and pulls them. It is an act of rescue — active, vigorous, personal. He does not invite. He seizes. The salvation He offers is not passive. It is a hand thrust into the darkness, grabbing hold of those who cannot save themselves.
Western art has its own tradition of depicting the Harrowing of Hell — from medieval manuscript illuminations to Renaissance paintings. But the Eastern icon captures the theology most perfectly: Christ the Conqueror, standing on the ruins of death, dragging humanity out of the grave.
Why It Matters Theologically
The descent into hell is not a minor footnote. It completes the arc of the Incarnation.
Christ entered every dimension of human experience. He was born. He lived. He suffered. He died. And then He descended — into the place of the dead, into the ultimate consequence of the Fall. There is no aspect of the human condition that Christ did not enter. Even death — even the realm beyond death — has been penetrated by His presence.
This means that no one is beyond His reach. No situation is too dark. No depth is too deep. “If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there,” the Psalmist says (Psalm 139:8). Christ’s descent proves it. He went to the lowest place — and He went there as a liberator.
The righteous of the Old Testament were saved by Christ. Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, the prophets — they were not saved by a different God or by a different method. They were saved by Christ — but retroactively. They lived in faith, looking forward to a salvation they did not yet see. When Christ descended, He brought them the salvation they had trusted in. Their faith was vindicated. Their waiting was rewarded.
This has implications for how we read the Old Testament. It is not a separate story with a separate ending. It is the first act of the same drama — and Christ’s descent is the moment when the heroes of Act One meet the Saviour of Act Two.
Death is conquered from the inside. Christ did not defeat death by avoiding it. He defeated it by entering it — by going into the realm of the dead and breaking its power from within. Death thought it had claimed another victim. Instead, it had admitted its conqueror. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).
Holy Saturday
The descent into hell corresponds liturgically to Holy Saturday — the day between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. It is the day the Church is silent. No Mass is celebrated. The tabernacle is empty. The altar is bare. Christ is in the tomb — and below the tomb, in the realm of the dead.
Holy Saturday is the hardest day of the Triduum to observe, because nothing happens. There is no liturgy until the Easter Vigil after nightfall. The Church waits — as the Apostles waited, as the world waited, not knowing what was coming.
But something is happening — something invisible, below the surface, in the depths. Christ is harrowing hell. He is reaching into the darkness and pulling out the dead. The silence of Holy Saturday is not emptiness. It is the silence of a rescue operation — the silence before the explosion of Easter morning.
What It Says to You
The descent into hell says something to everyone who has ever felt that they are beyond God’s reach — too far gone, too deep in sin, too buried in despair.
You are not beyond His reach. He has been to the lowest place. He has entered the realm of the dead and come back with captives. Whatever pit you are in — grief, addiction, moral failure, spiritual darkness — Christ has been deeper. And He is reaching down, as He reached down to Adam in the icon, to grab your wrist and pull you out.
“He descended into hell” is not a line to recite and forget. It is a promise: there is no darkness deep enough to defeat Him, no grave strong enough to hold Him, and no soul lost enough to escape His love.