Ov. 5-11 To Restore Apostles’ Creed to Historical Form regarding Christ’s “Descent into Hell”

Ov. 5-11 To Restore Apostles’ Creed to Historical Form regarding Christ’s “Descent into Hell”

Status: Respectfully Declined in approved convention Resolution 5-14

Reason: Contradicts our confessional standard (the 1580 Book of Concord has the phrase “niedergefahren zur Hölle” in the Apostles’ Creed); therefore violates Constitution, Article II

This overture is more lengthy than average and gives a detailed explanation as to why the authors of the overture have reason to think that the phrase “descent into Hell” in the Apostles’ creed is currently misunderstood when compared to the original intention of the creed. The arguments are somewhat complicated, but there are two ideas that are key to understand.

• The English word “Hell” is overly broad and is often used interchangeably for several distinct Biblical concepts.

• The Latin word inferos was originally referring to the place that was known in Hebrew as Sheol and in Greek as Hades. Where the word “Hell” leads us to think of the place of eternal punishment, but Sheol/Hades is referring to the realm of the dead, which is not the same thing. When the original Latin version was saying that Jesus “descendit ad inferos” it was getting across the idea that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead (Sheol/Hades). He completed the human process of dying in its entirety. There was no sense in which He was incompletely dead. Over time the Latin word inferos came to be associated with fire (inferno) which helped to further improperly associate the place with the fires of eternal punishment.

Today the phrase “He descended into Hell” is most often associated with Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison from 1 Peter 3:19. In this case the overture says that “Hell” is still not a good word to use because it is conflating the prison where the spirits are preached to with the place of eternal punishment, which should not be assumed to be the same place. Also, if it is referring to the preaching to the spirits in prison, then it should be described as happening after Jesus’ resurrection (not before) because He was able to do this thing because He was already “quickened by the Spirit” in 1 Peter 3:18. It does not mean anyone is denying Jesus preached to the spirits in prison, it just means that the Apostle’s Creed was most likely not talking about that.

The overture calls on the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) and pastors to study the issue. By way of ultimate resolution (if after studying the matter it is agreed a change should be made) the overture suggests either removing the phrase from the Apostles’ Creed altogether, which would be in line with the Greek precursor to the Latin Apostles’ Creed, or to change the phrase to either “He descended into Hades” or “He descended into the realm of the dead” which the overture states would do a better job of conveying the original meaning of the Latin version.

One piece left out by the overture was the German translation, as exposed by the reason given for declining the overture. The reason for declining the overture seems to be that because the German version of the creed as published in the Book of Concord uses “Hölle” (Hell), it has to remain “Hell” in English. I agree that the phrase could not be removed entirely, but a translation should not get in the way of trying to more thoroughly understanding and adhering to the original. It is not like other parts of the Book of Concord where the German and Latin were written concurrently and so would have more-or-less equal weight.

One additional thing is that this would also be an issue for the Athanasian Creed. Curiously, the Triglot Concordia translation of the Book of Concord uses inferna for the Apostles’ Creed and inferos for the Athanasian Creed. I don’t know if that means anything, but looking into the history of the Athanasian Creed at the same time may also shed some light on things. Both are Hölle in German.

Thank you to those individuals who put the time into authoring this resolution. It was well done. I see no reason why people could not study the issue to make sure everything is accurate.