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Religion Dispatches
Ed Simon
April 2, 2015
Jesus Went to Hell, But Nobody Wants to Talk About It
“It was Saturday that Jesus Christ went to Hell.”
This is one phrase that Christians, whether mainline or evangelical,
Catholic or Protestant, will likely not hear from the pulpit this week. And
yet
the story of Christ’s descent to the underworld has deep roots in tradition.
The fourth century Apostle’s Creed tells us that following his crucifixion,
but before his resurrection, Jesus “descended to the dead.” The
Athanasian Creed of at least a century later is more explicit, Christ
“descended
into hell.” Depending on context and translation Jesus either journeyed to
Sheol, Hades, or Hell. But allowing for differences in language Christianity
held—and technically still holds as a central tenet—the view that Jesus
spent the gap between his death and resurrection “harrowing” Hell, that is
journeying to the underworld to liberate the imprisoned souls of the Hebrew
patriarchs who had been imprisoned there since their deaths.
Contemporary congregations will often translate “hell” into a more
palatable “death” or “the grave.” There is something unseemly in the idea of
Jesus among the murders, rapists, fornicators and heretics of Hell. And yet it
was central to Christological accounts of salvation for two millennia that
God Himself be present in the lowest rung of creation to justify
redemption for all mankind.
Holy Saturday was a day in which God was not in His heaven, but rather in
his Hell.
It was a theme fervently embraced in the medieval world. Christ’s “
harrowing” (a word that comes to us from Middle English) seems to have been
prefigured in classical sources: Ulysses visits Hades; Orpheus, the father of
poetry, barely made his escape from the underworld. Perhaps it’s these pagan
associations that make the idea so unpopular today. In the Inferno Virgil
tells Dante of the “mighty one” who spirits the Hebrew patriarchs off to
heaven (as he is in hell the Latin poet is unable to actually speak Christ’s
name). The Middle English poem of Sir Orfeo conflated Orpheus and Christ in
their harrowing, and one can easily see the war-like Anglo-Saxons being
attracted to the militarism of a conquering Jesus crashing through the gates
of hell as if through a medieval city.
As far as credal confessions of Christianity go, the harrowing of Hell may
be the least remarked upon in the contemporary world. Some Protestants,
citing a lack of scriptural backup, have abandoned it; others have softened
the edges around the word “hell.”
I’d argue that this relative silence reflects a discomfort with some of
the frankly weird aspects of Christianity. As a faith Christianity has always
been defined by its paradoxes: God can become a man, God can die, God can
be one and three at the same time, the King of Heaven can spend a day in
Hell. If anything the heresies of the patristic era—Arianism, Monophysitism,
Nestorianism and so on—are attempts to make Christianity more rational. It’
s a fascinating aspect of Christianity that often the heretics are the more
sober and rational ones while orthodoxy embraces enigma. Broadly
speaking, the Eastern Orthodoxy has been more comfortable with paradox and the
irrational, but in the Latin West Catholics and their Protestant inheritors
have attempted to tame the scandal of Christianity with the rational equations
of systematic theology.
In this way the positivist and the fundamentalist are strangely unified in
their opposition to Tertullian’s infamous aphorism: _c_
(http://www.tertullian.org/articles/sider_credo.htm) _redo quia absurdum_
(http://www.tertullian.org/articles/sider_credo.htm) (“I believe it because
it is absurd”).
The fundamentalist with his embarrassment over paradox denies the weirdness
of his faith. The positivist can do no such thing and like Mr. Jefferson
takes his razor to the Bible to excise the strangeness.
But central to the Christian vision is a profound and undeniable weirdness,
and one of its strangest accounts is passed over in many a Holy Week
homily. The passion story is filled with puzzles and uncertainty, from the
harrowing to Christ’s cry of “My God, why have you forsaken me?” when, as GK
Chesterton noted, God Himself seemed to be an atheist.* It’s these moments
that constitute what the Slavoj Zizek names “_the perverse core of
Christianity_ (http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/puppet-and-dwarf) ,” the
anti-Gospel as
Gospel—a tradition that is too often silent during Holy Week.
* “…let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one
divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God
seemed for an instant to be an atheist.”
–GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
__________________________________________
A personal note:
What separates me from orthodox Christians -there actually are several
issues where there are significant differences but this is at the top of
the list-
is the conclusion I reach about the record of the ancient religious past
from Mesopotamia as it relates to the stories in the Bible.
I am perfectly comfortable affirming two kinds of truth, starting with the
fact
that the whole idea of visiting Hell and the association of that idea with
the
theme of resurrection dates to ca 2650 BC -but including the story with
which
most people are far more familiar, that of Jesus. That is, yes, for sure,
no question about it, the first known story of the Harrowing of Hell
dates to the time when Inanna lived on Earth as a High Priestess
in the city of Uruk (hence "Iraq"), later known by her Semitic name,
Ishtar, or in one variant that passed into the Bible, Esther.
Inanna / Ishtar died, visited the netherworld (Hell), and after three days
arose from the dead to bring salvation to the world.
"O, come on, do you believe that stuff?"
What I believe is that this story is just as plausible as the drama that
took place
in classical era Judaea, and, indeed, if you accept the truths of one
you should accept the truths of the other. And, while I simply do not know
all kinds of things about physical world truth-claims on this subject,
some experiences I have had in life, -no ghosts, no ethereal lights,
no miraculous healings, etc- but Very Strange Events, call them
bizarre coincidences if you want to, and it seems to me that some kind
of resurrection is possible and the ancient records just might be
providing us with evidence.
This is far from the Christian view that, for certain, Jesus arose from the
dead
and the story in the Gospels is 100% correct. But it is even further from
the
Atheist view that it all is poppycock and so much mythology.
What makes the best sense to me is that the Holy Spirit was present
in human form in 2650 BC as, more-or-less, God's beloved daughter,
to be followed in 0 AD by Jesus, as God's son.
The story rings true not because of any physical "proof" but because
it resonates with so much that is part of ecumenical culture, which
I take as necessary -in all kinds of senses including physical-
that clearly some kind of important truth is in play here
and it would be foolish to deny it.
That is, at a "deep ecology" level this story, or some variant,
expresses a basic truth about who we are as human beings.
Hence not only the Greek story of Orpheus but also the
Buddhist story of the Bodhisatva Jizo, a Christ-like figure
who is prominent in many schools of Japanese Buddhism.
Jizo, too, visits Hell, with the wrinkle that he does so especially
to rescue the souls of children. That is, his story offers
a number of parallels to that of Jesus.
I can understand why most people would dismiss the Orpheus legend
but (even though it, too has had influence given all the classical music
it has inspired and much visual art in the process), but why should
I be dismissive of Buddhist beliefs and values? To please
the anti-religious political Left?
My opinion of the anti-religion Left can be summed up in two words:
F*ck you.
Or three words, "f*ck you, a**hole."
Well, this is hardly a glowing endorsement of traditional Christian beliefs
but I feel good about it because, while I feel sure Christians are wrong
about any number of things, they have what is most important
exactly right.
Billy
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