Chapter 23

The Descent to the Dead — Christ's Activity Between Death and Resurrection

Introduction: What Was Jesus Doing on Saturday?

If you grew up in a church that recited the Apostles' Creed, you probably learned a strange line right after "was crucified, died, and was buried." It says, "He descended to the dead" — or in older versions, "He descended into hell."¹ Many of us said those words for years without ever stopping to ask what they actually mean. What was Jesus doing on Saturday? His body was in the tomb. His disciples were hiding. The Sabbath was being kept. But where was He?

That question matters more than it might seem. In the previous two chapters, we looked at the broader problem the triduum mortis creates for any view that denies the human soul. In Chapter 21, I argued that physicalism cannot make sense of Holy Saturday at all. In Chapter 22, I argued that physicalism dissolves the hypostatic union at the moment of death. This chapter narrows the focus to one specific claim: Christ was active during those three days. He went somewhere. He did something. He preached, He proclaimed, He led captives. That activity is the theme of Christ's "descent to the dead" — and it is impossible on a physicalist anthropology.

My thesis in this chapter is straightforward. Scripture and the early creedal tradition teach that the Person of the Son was consciously and personally engaged with the realm of the dead between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. If physicalism is true, then there was no Person of Jesus to descend anywhere, no soul to be in paradise with the thief, and no spirit to proclaim victory to imprisoned spirits. The descent passages don't just bend under physicalism — they break.

The Creedal Witness: "He Descended to the Dead"

Let's start with the creed itself, because the descent clause has a long and sometimes confusing history. The phrase "descendit ad inferos" (Latin: "He descended to the lower places") was not part of the very earliest forms of the Apostles' Creed. It appears clearly in the Aquileian version around AD 390 and was firmly established in the Western tradition by the early Middle Ages.² The clause was meant to summarize what the New Testament — and the unified voice of the early church — already taught: that between His death and resurrection, Christ entered the realm of the dead.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it well: the New Testament's repeated language of being "raised from the dead" already presupposes that Jesus first went to the dead. He really died. His soul, like all human souls, departed His body and joined the others in the realm of the departed — but He went there as Savior, not as captive.³ Eastern Orthodox iconography pictures this stunningly: in the great Resurrection icon, Christ stands triumphant over shattered gates of Hades, pulling Adam and Eve up by the wrist. The descent is not a sad pause between two acts; it is itself an act of saving power.

I want to set the creed aside for a moment, though, because some readers will immediately say, "But the Bible doesn't need to say what the creed says. Show me the verses." Fair enough. Let's go to Scripture.

Acts 2 and Luke 23: Christ's Soul in Hades, Christ's Person in Paradise

Two of the clearest descent passages come from Luke's writings, and they fit together remarkably well. The first is Jesus' word to the dying thief: "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43, ESV). The second is Peter's Pentecost sermon, where he quotes Psalm 16:10 about the Messiah: "For you will not abandon my soul (psychēn, ψυχήν) to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption" (Acts 2:27). Peter then explicitly applies this to Christ: David, he says, "foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption" (Acts 2:31).

Notice what Peter is doing. He is not speaking poetically. He is making two parallel anthropological claims about Jesus during the triduum: (1) Christ's flesh (the body) did not corrupt — it stayed in the tomb but was preserved from decay; and (2) Christ's soul (psychē) was not abandoned to Hades — it was there, but God did not leave it there. This is straightforward dualist anthropology. The flesh has one location and condition; the soul has another. The body in the grave; the soul in the realm of the dead. Then on Easter, God brings them back together.⁴

Now layer this with Luke 23:43. Jesus tells the thief, "today" — sēmeron (σήμερον) — you will be with me in paradise. The word's position at the front of the sentence emphasizes its temporal force.⁵ This isn't future-tense kingdom language; it's same-day language. Jesus is saying: before this Sabbath ends, you and I will be together, conscious, alive, in paradise. John Cooper rightly notes that "today" most naturally means Friday — the day of crucifixion — and that the grammatical, semantic, and historical evidence all point this direction.⁶

So how do we hold "in paradise with the thief" together with "soul in Hades"? Easily — if we know the Jewish geography of the afterlife. In intertestamental Judaism, Hades/Sheol was understood as a multi-compartment realm of the dead, with paradise as the blessed region where the righteous waited.⁷ Jesus could be in paradise and in Hades simultaneously, because paradise was located in the broader realm of the dead. There is no contradiction — only a coherent picture of where Jesus' human soul went on Friday afternoon.

What does this do to physicalism? It demolishes it. On a physicalist reading, "He was not abandoned to Hades" must somehow be reinterpreted. Peter cannot mean what he plainly says, because there is no soul to be in Hades. The whole verse becomes either a mistake or a metaphor. But Peter is preaching the foundational sermon of the Christian church, citing inspired Scripture, drawing the very point on which the resurrection argument turns. This is not a stray verse to be explained away. This is the apostolic Easter message.

1 Peter 3:18–20: The Spirit Made Alive, the Proclamation in Prison

Now we come to one of the most discussed passages in the New Testament. Here is Peter again, this time writing rather than preaching:

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh (sarki, σαρκί) but made alive in the spirit (pneumati, πνεύματι), in which he went and proclaimed (ekēryxen, ἐκήρυξεν) to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah" (1 Peter 3:18–20).

Peter's grammatical structure here is key. He sets up a deliberate parallel: thanatōtheis men sarki, zōopoiētheis de pneumati — "having been put to death indeed in flesh, but having been made alive in spirit." The two datives sarki ("flesh") and pneumati ("spirit") describe the two dimensions of Christ's experience of death. He was put to death with respect to the flesh. He was made alive with respect to the spirit. This is not "spirit" as a synonym for "the spiritual realm" or "by means of the Holy Spirit." The parallel demands that pneumati describe a real dimension of Christ Himself, just as sarki does.⁸

Then Peter continues: "in which (en hō) He went and proclaimed." In which what? In the spirit. In that very dimension of His being that survived death and was made alive while the flesh lay in the tomb. He went — the verb poreutheis (πορευθείς) implies movement, locomotion. He proclaimed — ekēryxen, the word for a herald's announcement. Whatever else this passage means, it pictures the post-mortem Christ as a conscious, mobile, communicative agent. He was alive in the dimension of spirit; He traveled; He preached.

Who were "the spirits in prison"? This is where interpreters disagree. Three main options have been defended: (a) human beings who died in the flood and now wait in the realm of the dead; (b) fallen angels from Genesis 6, who are bound until judgment; or (c) human beings still alive in Noah's day, to whom the pre-incarnate Christ preached through Noah.⁹ I find option (a) the most natural reading, partly because of the parallel in 1 Peter 4:6 ("the gospel was preached even to those who are dead"), and partly because the language of "going" most naturally describes Christ's post-mortem journey rather than a pre-incarnate ministry of inspiration.

But here is the wonderful thing: for our argument, the choice doesn't matter. On any of the three options, this passage describes Christ as personally active in the spirit between His death and resurrection. Even if the "spirits" are fallen angels, Christ went to them in His spirit. Even if the "spirits" were the pre-flood living, He preached to them by His Spirit before His incarnation, which still presupposes a non-bodily mode of existence and activity. There is no way to read 1 Peter 3:18–20 that fits a physicalist anthropology, where death is the cessation of personal existence until a future re-creation.

Cooper rightly notes that this is "an extremely obscure passage" in many of its details, but he also concludes that the most defensible reading takes the spirits to be human dead in the intermediate state.¹⁰ What is not obscure is the basic shape of the verse: Christ was alive in spirit while dead in flesh, and He acted in that spiritual state. That alone is fatal to physicalism.

Ephesians 4:8–10 and 1 Peter 4:6: The Wider Witness

Two more passages support the descent. Paul, in Ephesians 4:8–10, quotes Psalm 68 about the ascending conqueror who "led a host of captives." He then comments: "In saying, 'He ascended,' what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth (ta katōtera merē tēs gēs, τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς)?" The phrase has been read two ways. Some take it to mean simply that Christ descended to the earth (the lower region of the universe) in the Incarnation. Others take it to mean He descended into the earth — specifically, into the realm of the dead beneath. Both readings have ancient defenders.

I lean toward the descent-to-Hades reading for two reasons. First, the comparative katōtera ("lower") naturally suggests something lower than the earth's surface, not just the earth as such. Second, the parallel with leading "captives" makes far more sense if Christ descended to where captives were held — the realm of the dead — and led them upward in His ascension. The verse pictures a great triumphant procession out of Hades.¹¹

And then there is 1 Peter 4:6: "For this is why the gospel was preached (euēngelisthē, εὐηγγελίσθη) even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does." Whatever the precise scope of "those who are dead" — whether all dead, or only those who heard during their earthly lives and then died, or those evangelized during the descent — the verse plainly assumes that the gospel could and did reach the dead. On physicalism, that is impossible. The dead don't exist to be preached to. There is no audience.

The Physicalist Problem

Now let's lay it out plainly. Physicalism, in its various Christian forms, holds that human beings are wholly physical — there is no immaterial soul that survives bodily death. When a person dies, the person ceases to exist until divine re-creation at the resurrection. Apply this to Jesus.

If the Person Jesus was constituted entirely by His physical body, then when His body died on Friday afternoon, the Person Jesus ceased to exist. There was no Jesus from sometime around 3 PM on Friday until early Sunday morning. Nothing of Him remained except a corpse in a borrowed tomb. And this means:

There was no Jesus to be "with" the thief in paradise. The thief, being also physicalist (presumably), also ceased to exist at his death. Two non-existent persons cannot be together anywhere, including in paradise. Jesus' words to the thief, on physicalism, can only mean: "Today you will cease to exist, and at some future re-creation we will be together." But Jesus said "today," and He said "be with me." The most plain meaning of His words is excluded by the physicalist account.

There was no Jesus to descend anywhere. Peter's careful flesh/spirit parallel in 1 Peter 3:18 must be flattened into something like, "He was put to death physically, but God will eventually raise Him spiritually" — which not only mangles the grammar but eliminates the whole "went and proclaimed" sequence.¹²

There was no Jesus to be "not abandoned to Hades." Peter's distinction between Christ's flesh (uncorrupted in the tomb) and Christ's soul (preserved in Hades) becomes incoherent if there was no soul. Peter, on Pentecost, would have been preaching nonsense.

And there was no Jesus to bring captives up from the lower regions. The triumphal harrowing of Hades — celebrated in Christian art and proclaimed in Christian preaching for two thousand years — would be reduced to mere literary flourish.

Counter-Arguments and Responses

Let me try to give the strongest physicalist response I can. Charles Taliaferro, defending dualism, frankly admits the most common physicalist move: treat the descent figuratively. After all (the argument runs), descent and ascent language already involves metaphor — heaven is not literally "up" in any spatial sense, and the dragons of Revelation are clearly symbolic. Why not read the descent the same way? It might just be a dramatic expression of how God's love reaches even into death.¹³

I find this response unconvincing for several reasons. First, the language of descent into hell is granted to be metaphorical in the spatial sense — no one is claiming Christ literally moved downward through the earth. But the metaphor of descent describes a real event: the post-mortem activity of Christ's soul. Saying "she descended into addiction" is metaphorical with respect to direction but describes a real process. Likewise, "He descended into hell" is metaphorical about direction but realistic about location. Christ's soul really was in the realm of the dead.

Second, Taliaferro rightly notes that there is no metaphysical reason to deny the coherence of personal post-mortem existence. If God is omnipotent, He can sustain the realm of the dead and the souls within it. The descent is not a piece of mythology that modern Christians need to demythologize. It is theologically credible and biblically attested.¹⁴

Third, the physicalist may try to soften the blow by saying: "Yes, the New Testament uses language that presupposes dualism, but that's just the cultural framework Peter and Paul lived in. The actual theology doesn't depend on it." But this move runs aground on the fact that the apostolic preaching about the resurrection — the foundation of the gospel — explicitly anchors itself in the dualist framework. Peter at Pentecost is not making a side comment about Christ's soul in Hades; he is making the very argument that establishes the resurrection. To strip out the dualism is to strip out the apostles' resurrection logic itself.

Finally, some Christian physicalists appeal to Aquinas, who saw Christ's death as the separation of body and soul, with both remaining united to the Word.¹⁵ But this is a hylomorphic dualist view, not a physicalist one. Aquinas requires precisely the soul-body distinction that physicalism denies. Drawing on Aquinas to support physicalism is borrowing the dualist's framework while disowning his anthropology.

Connection to "Beyond the Grave"

Readers of my earlier book, Beyond the Grave: A Biblical and Theological Case for Postmortem Salvation, will recognize this material. There, in Chapters 11 through 13, I treated the descent passages at length as evidence for a postmortem opportunity for salvation. The dead — at least some of them — heard the gospel from Christ Himself. That is a profound and (to my mind) deeply hopeful biblical theme, and I commend that earlier discussion for those who want the full case.

What I am doing in this chapter is different. I am not asking what the descent accomplished for the dead. I am asking what the descent requires about Christ's anthropology. The two questions are connected — you cannot have postmortem evangelism without an evangelist — but they are not identical. Even a Christian who rejects postmortem salvation should still recognize the basic anthropological point: Christ was active during the triduum. That activity required a soul.¹⁶

Conclusion: A Christ Who Goes Where We Cannot Follow

I want to close with a pastoral observation. The descent has often been celebrated in Christian devotion as the most tender expression of God's pursuit of the lost. Christ does not save us from a safe distance. He goes where we cannot reach — into death itself, into the realm of the dead — to claim us. Wilkinson's Chalcedonian anthropology helps me see this with new clarity: because the eternal Son became truly human, with a real human body and a real human soul, He could enter every dimension of human experience, including the experience of death and the post-mortem state.¹⁷ What is not assumed is not healed; the Son assumed our entire humanity, including our dying.

If physicalism is true, this whole story collapses. There is no Person of Jesus to descend, no soul of Jesus to enter Hades, no spirit of Jesus to proclaim victory to the captives. The most poignant scene in the Christian story — Christ harrowing hell, leading Adam and Eve up by the wrist into resurrection light — becomes nothing more than pious fiction. We are left with a God who saves from a distance, not with the God who entered death to save us.

I cannot accept that. The biblical witness, the apostolic preaching, the creedal tradition, and the church's worship all tell the same story: between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning, the Son of God was personally, consciously, savingly present in the realm of the dead. He went. He proclaimed. He led the captives free. And He could do all of that because He had, and has, a true human soul united to His true human body — both of them held in the unbroken embrace of the eternal Son.

The descent does not just illustrate the truth of dualism. It depends on it. And in turn, it shows us a Savior whose love is wider than death itself.