Going Under: Christ's Descent into Hell and Our Baptism

We are steeped in a cultural soup of ascent. From religious life framed as the journey upwards, to transcending human limitations through technology, or climbing the corporate ladder, the mentality of ascent is ubiquitous. Perhaps the ascent mindset pervades society and religion so extensively because it comes so naturally and resonates so deeply with experiences of daily life. Do this, get that. Want more, do more. And so it goes. The opinio legis runs deep within human nature. As John Mueller penned in his 1934 Christian Dogmatics, the opinio legis is “the common denominator of all religions outside of Christianity; the erroneous opinion that a man must save himself by good deeds.”[i] Mueller further explains, the “natural man, knowing nothing at all of the true God and His glorious salvation through faith in Christ, is compelled to hold the opinio legis, or salvation by good works, to be the supreme religious precept.”[ii]

The desire to ascend Godward—however disordered its expression—is a residue of some primordial hope, which Scripture reveals is accomplished paradoxically not through human ascent, but by Divine descent. Christianity turns the whole ascent paradigm on its head. True spirituality is ultimately a matter of descent—the descent of God to humanity and the bringing down of human will and pride before the God who condescends. This theme of descent plays a central role throughout redemptive history and culminates in Christ, who came down from heaven in the ultimate descent that unites God and man, heaven and earth, in the great mystery of the incarnation. But Christ’s descent to earth went further still: into hell itself. And this complete journey of descent is ours in baptism, as we descend into the waters of death and ascend to new life in union with Christ and communion with the Holy Trinity.

The Motif of Descent in Scripture

The dynamic of descent plays a surprisingly prominent role throughout redemptive history. The Old Testament is replete with imagery of descent, or coming down. In the Flood, the world descends into the waters of death and destruction. And Noah, the preacher of righteousness, and his family are delivered through the watery chaos of death by means of a wooden ark. It is an ark of salvation, but it is also a tomb. For Noah, his family, and the animals too, the ark is like a wooden coffin that emerges from the deathly waters in a resurrection to new life.

Consider also the juxtaposition of the Tower of Babel as man’s attempt at ascent, building “a tower with its top in the heavens” (Gen 11:4) with God’s descent in the account of Jacob’s Ladder. Upon first glance this may appear as an ascent passage, offering Jacob an upward path to the Divine. But closer analysis reveals that it is Yahweh who descends not a ladder but a staircase, akin to the ancient ziggurat towers like Babel.[iii] It is on this staircase where Yahweh stands over Jacob, pronouncing blessing upon him and his descendants. Jacob then responds “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it” (Gen 28:16). Jacob did not penetrate the heavenly realm through meditation or moralism; God descended to his place, his realm, his world.

The motif of descent can be traced further, with Joseph’s descent into the pit at the hands of his brothers (Gen 37), his descent into slavery in Egypt, and down into the dungeon at the hands of Potiphar (Gen 39). Generations later, God mightily descends to deliver his people from the hands of the Egyptians in the Exodus as they descend into the waters of the Red Sea and emerge victorious. The life of Israel in the wilderness, in the Promised Land, and in exile is marked with God’s periodic intrusions and the accompanying refrain “the Lord came down.”[iv]

The descent motif continues. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are cast into the fiery furnace and descend to what should have been their death. But they emerge unharmed, saved by the fourth man in the furnace, who Nebuchadnezzar said looked like a son of the gods (Dan 3:1-30). Jonah is another notable descent account. Upon receiving God’s call to preach to Nineveh, he refuses and flees “from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1:3). Thus begins his descent, down to Joppa, down into the belly of the ship, where he laid down. To calm the storm, then came his further descent, down into the sea and down into the belly of the great sea monster (Jon 1:3-17). From this three-day tomb he cries out: Save me from the depths of Sheol! Bring up my life from the pit (Jon 2:2, 6). And he emerges from the world below to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh.

The New Testament continues this theme, as the descent motif climaxes in the ultimate descent of God to earth in the incarnation of the Son. Old Testament types like Jacob and Jonah are fulfilled in Christ, who makes explicit references to these two figures. Jesus draws on the imagery of Jacob’s Ladder when he tells his newly called disciples, “You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (Jn 1:51). Christ is the staircase, the gate of heaven, granting access to the Father. So too, Christ is the greater Jonah, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12:40). Regarding this connection, Augustine offers, “The prophet Jonah, not so much by speech as by his own painful experience, prophesied Christ’s death and resurrection much more clearly than if he had proclaimed them with his voice.  For why was he taken into the whale’s belly and restored on the third day, but that he might be a sign that Christ should return from the depths of hell on the third day?”[v]

Christ’s descent definitively accomplishes the long sought-after ascent. For it is only Christ, who “by the power of an indestructible life” (Heb 9:16), cannot be held by death and earns the right to ascend and share the spoils of victory with His own. And he shares those spoils in baptism, where his perfect life, death, and resurrection become ours. But there is an overlooked aspect of this: in our baptism we are also united to Christ’s descent into hell where he proclaimed victory over death and the devil.

Descent and Baptism

We might not normally think of connecting Jesus’ descent into hell with our baptism, but there is biblical and historical warrant to do so. 1 Peter makes this exact connection, as do some church fathers and several of the historic prayers, chants, and Scripture readings used on Easter Vigil.[vi] The connections to Easter Vigil are especially relevant because in the ancient church that is when adult catechumens were baptized. In other words, this suggests that at least in some way the early church was making the connection between baptism and Christ’s descent into hell and his victory over the forces of evil as he bursts forth from the tomb in resurrection, just as it was being experienced by those baptized on that most holy night.

John Chrysostom makes the connection between baptism and Christ’s descent into hell explicit: “Being baptized and immersed and then emerging, is a symbol of the descent into Hades and return thence. Wherefore also Paul calls baptism a burial, saying, ‘Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death.’”[vii] Some of the fathers also make an interesting connection between Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan with his descent into Hades or Sheol. Kilian McDonnell explains this tradition, especially as seen in early Syriac sources like Ephrem and Jacob of Serugh: “Sheol and Jordan are merged. Jesus descends for three days into Sheol/Jordan to search out the lost Adam who bears his image, groping for him in the mud of the dead, where the Serpent had hidden him, and finding him, as one finds a precious pearl, leads him out….Life enters into the very domain of death and conquers the gods of death.”[viii] Jean Danielou notes similarly how in Christ’s baptism he is “shown as triumphing over the dragon hidden in the waters.”[ix]

But even more important than liturgical or patristic support, the connections between baptism and the descent are present in the New Testament itself. Peter writes in 1 Peter 3:18-22:

Christ suffered also once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Here Peter weaves together Christ’s descent into hell, the Flood, baptism, and Christ’s resurrection and ascension. Christ suffered and was put to death. He experienced real, bodily, human suffering and death, which pays for our sins. Then he was made alive by the Spirit, and went in his whole person—body and soul, God and man (FC, SD 9)[x]—to announce his victory in the depths of hell itself. Peter tells us he proclaims victory to the evil spirits that once roamed the earth in the days of Noah.[xi] And that flood, which judged mankind’s evil and those evil spirits that played a role in it, is connected with baptism. Just as Noah and his family, eight souls in all, were brought safely through the waters of death, this too is how salvation is applied to humanity, being brought safely through the waters, not to remove dirt from the body, but for a true washing away of sins, and the basis for a good conscience before God. Peter then builds from Christ’s descent to his ascent: what began in his victorious announcement from the depths below continues in his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God, with all the powers subjected to him.[xii]

What profound connections Peter makes in this one text. The descent into hell, the flood, the resurrection, the ascension, all connected with baptism. Danielou summarizes nicely: “Between the deluge and baptism, we must also place the descent of Christ into the world below, for it is here that we have the substantial realization of the mystery of the flood. In the death of Christ, the sinful humanity he had assumed is annihilated by the great waters of death, and he rises from them as the firstborn of the new creation.”[xiii]

Yet Christ doesn’t go to hell to suffer. The hell of suffering he brought to completion and fulfillment on the cross when he cried “it is finished” (John 19:30). His descent into hell begins his great triumph of glorification, his great victory march over the Dragon, as he bursts forth from the tomb like the Eastern morning sun and brings Christians with him in his glorious train, as part of his triumphal procession. Paul writes in Ephesians 4 that “when [Christ] ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” But Paul then clarifies that this glorious ascension and giving of gifts in the church is only possible because Jesus first descended into the lower parts of the earth, to the world below, and that he who has descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things (Eph 4:8-10). Lenski argues that Paul is referring to Christ’s descent into hell when he uses the phrase “world below” or “lower parts of the earth.”[xiv] Kretzmann similarly notes that Christ’s “ascension to the right hand of Power in the heavenly places corresponds to His descent and victorious entrance into the kingdom of Satan. Christ, having been made alive in the grace, as the transfigured God-man, according to body and soul, descended into hell; and the same God-man then, before the eyes of His astounded disciples, ascended up into heaven bodily.”[xv] The descent is of a piece with the ascent, all part of the exaltation and glorification of Christ as the world’s rightful king who has trampled his enemies and smote his foes. As David Scaer notes, the descent “is the proclamation of victory in hell, just as the resurrection is the declaration of that victory on earth.”[xvi] Irenaeus of Lyons struck the same note nearly two millennia ago: “It was for this reason, too, that the Lord descended into the regions beneath the earth, preaching His advent there also. And He [declared] the remission of sins received by those who believe in Him.”[xvii]

Luther on Descent and Baptism

What has been put forward in this paper, drawing from the Scriptures and the fathers, is also consonant with Luther’s theology of baptism, and what we do know he said about the descent and about baptism.[xviii] This could be explored further, but what follows is suggestive at the very least. In his 1533 Torgau sermon on the descent into hell, Luther highlights the descent as victory over the devil, and connects this victorious ascent from death to life to baptism, in which we rise with Christ by faith.[xix] His Flood Prayer,[xx] while not specifically mentioning the word descent, certainly resonates with the theme of descent as it highlights the flood, the crossing of the Red Sea and Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, all of which have overtones of descent as explained in this meditation. Furthermore, Luther’s baptismal rites of 1523 and 1526 both include at least some form of exorcism as part of the rite, which again nods towards the cosmic defeat of the devil that Christ accomplished in his death, descent, resurrection, and ascent, and which is applied to the individual in baptism.[xxi]

Implications

By highlighting the connections between Christ’s descent and our baptism, we are not just meddling on an obscure point of theology. This is a glorious doctrine of comfort and strength for the Christian, knowing that all Christ did for us is ours in the waters of holy baptism. His perfect life, vicarious death, and earth-shaking defeat of death and the demonic hordes belong to all who have gone under the waters with Jesus. Jesus takes us down into death and pulls us back up into resurrection life, snatching us from the clutches of death and the devil as we arise to new life. This understanding enriches our understanding of the cosmic nature of baptism. While baptism is, to be sure, a personal event between you and God, it is also a cosmic transitus, an event between you and the world and you and the devil.

Following St. Peter’s lead, when we connect the flood, the descent, and baptism together, we are brought more fully into the rich and multifaceted experience of our baptism and all that it entails. “There is a theological resemblance between the Flood, the descent into the lower world, and baptism, for here we see at work the same divine ways,” Danielou explains. “In all three cases, there exists a sinful world which is to be annihilated by the punishment, and in all three cases a just man is spared: this just man, in the Flood, is Noah; in the descent into hell, Jesus Christ; in baptism, the Christian conformation to Jesus Christ. Thus baptism is a sacramental imitation of the descent into hell, both being prefigured by the flood.”[xxii] Jesus’ descent brings about our ascent into his very life. And here we find the resolution of the ascent-descent dynamic present in society, religion, and Scripture. In Christ’s descent to earth and even into hell itself, we are brought with him, through baptismal union, up into the divine life.

[i] John Mueller, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1955), 9.

[ii] Mueller, Christian Dogmatics, 97.

[iii] John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 81. In the ancient near eastern world of the Israelites and the surrounding nations, at the center of a city was a temple, a tower. These were called ziggurats. They looked like a pyramid staircase reaching toward heaven. They were a simulated mountain, for it was upon mountain peaks that many ancient cultures believed the gods dwelled, and could come down to earth via the temple at the top of the mountain or tower.

[iv] See, for example, Exodus 19:11, 18, 20; 34:5, 2 Samuel 22:10, Ps 18:9; 144:5, Proverbs 30:4, Isaiah 64:3, Hosea 11:4, Micah 1:3.

[v] Augustine, The City of God XVIII, vol. 2, p. 376, in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, ed. Philip Schaff, 14 vols. (1886–1889; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), hereafter NPNF1.

[vi] Commission on Worship of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, Lutheran Service Book Altar Book. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 2006).

[vii] John Chrysostom, Homily on 1 Corinthians XL, vol. 12, 245, in NPNF1.

[viii] Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996), 166, 169.

[ix] Jean Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), 75.

[x] Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000).

[xi] This could be human spirits who are in hell, or the evil spirits that were chained in gloomy darkness, as hinted at by Peter and Jude in their epistles. The interpretive options on this small point don’t impact the connections between the descent and baptism.

[xii] David Scaer, Baptism, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, vol. XI (St. Louis, MO: The Luther Academy, 1999), 33-34.

[xiii] Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy, 77.

[xiv] R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians (Columbus OH: The Wartburg Press,1946), 522.

[xv] Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible: The New Testament, 2 vols. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, [1921]–[1922?]), 2:277.

[xvi] David Scaer, Christology, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, vol. VI (St. Louis, MO: The Luther Academy, 1989), 88.

[xvii] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV.27.2, vol. 1, pg. 499, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 10 vols. (1885–1887; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).

[xviii] In his massive corpus there may well be several other connections he makes between the descent and baptism.

[xix] Martin Luther, “Third Sermon for Easter Day, Torgau, 1533,” translated by Paul A. Rydecki, Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe [Schriften], 73 vols. (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883 2009), 37:62-72, available https://www.godwithuslc.org/martin-luthers-sermon-on-christs-descent-into-hell/.

[xx] Commission on Worship of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, Lutheran Service Book (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 2006), 268–69.

[xxi] Martin Luther, Liturgy and Hymns, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 53 of Luther’s Works, ed. Ulrich S. Leupold and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenberg/Fortress; St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1965), 95-109. While Luther does remove many of the medieval accretions by the time of his 1526 rite, he does keep an opening exorcistic prayer.

[xxii] Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy, 78.

Joshua Pauling is a classical educator, furnituremaker, and contributing writer at Salvo Magazine and Modern Reformation. He has written for FORMA, Classical Lutheran Education Journal, Front Porch Republic, LOGIA: A Journal of Lutheran Theology, Mere Orthodoxy, Merion West, Public Discourse, Quillette, The Lutheran Witness, Touchstone, among others. He studied at Messiah University, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University. He is currently vicar at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, NC and is completing additional studies through Concordia Theological Seminary towards ordination. He and his wife Kristi have two children.