To Restore Apostles’ Creed to Historical Form regarding Christ’s “Descent into Hell”

Official Workbook overture source text

5-11 
To Restore Apostles’ Creed to Historical Form 
regarding Christ’s “Descent into Hell” 
WHEREAS, All Scripture is God -breathed and is useful for 
teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 
3:16); and 
W
HEREAS, God’s Word is never to be added to nor subtracted 
from (Rev. 22:18–19; Deut. 18:20); and 
WHEREAS, God’s Word is very clear that Christ Jesus died, was 
buried, and was fully dead in the grave until raised to life by God 
on the third day, Sunday (Matt. 12:40; 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:18–19; 
27:50–28:7; Mark 15:37– 16:6; Luke 23:44– 24:8; John 19:30 –
20:18; Acts 2:22–32; Rom. 4:24–25; 8:11; 10:9; 1 Cor. 15:3–8); and 
WHEREAS, Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27 and 2:31 reference Christ 
Jesus not being abandoned to the grave (Sheol in Hebrew, Hades in 
Greek), meaning abandoned in the realm of the dead; and 
WHEREAS, The Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek word H ades 
are not the equivalent of our English word hell; and 
WHEREAS, The English word hell, in contemporary 
understanding and usage, is the sum total combination of multiple 
biblical words and concepts, including 
• Gehenna — the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, 
formerly the place of child sacrifices before Jerusalem 
became the holy city of the Israelites, a place where there 
was a constant fire because of the garbage being burned; 
• Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4) — the place where God sent the angels 
who had sinned, placing them in chains of darkness to be 
held for judgment; 
• The abyss (Luke 8:31; Rev. 9:1– 2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3) 
—a place of confinement and perhaps suffering for the evil 
spirits; 
• The lake of fire and brimstone (Rev. 20:10) — a place of 
torment into which the devil will be thrown, where the beast 
and the false prophet have already been thrown, to suffer for 
all eternity; 
• A final judgment place for those who did not confess (Rom. 
10:9) and believe in (John 3:16; Mark 16:16) Christ as Lord 
and did not serve Him with their lives on earth, or said 
another way— “who do not know God and do not obey the 
gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess. 1:8), described as a place 
of great suffering, where there is weeping and gnashing of 
teeth (Matt. 8:12), where their worm does not die and the fire 
is not quenched (Mark 9:48), where there is everlasting 
punishment (Matt. 25:46) in the eternal fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41), punished with everlasting 
destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and 
from the majesty of his power (2 Thess. 1:9), and  
• Abaddon (mentioned in the Hebrew text of Job 26:6; 28:22; 
31:12; Prov. 15:11; Psalm 88:11; and the Greek text of Rev. 
9:11), which seems to be a place of destruction in the Old 
Testament references and the literal Hebrew name of the 
angel who reigns as king over the bottomless pit in the 
Revelation text, also known as Apollyon in Greek; and 
WHEREAS, The Greek word φυλακή , used in 1 Pet. 3:19, which 
is often translated as prison  in the English text, literally means a 
place where something or someone is carefully watched, protected, 
or guarded, and is also the exact word used by Luke in Luke 2:8 as 
the shepherds “kept watch” over their flocks by night, is never used 
to imply a place of suffering or punishment; and 
W
HEREAS, Francis Pieper in his Christian Dogmatics  ([CPH, 
1951] II:314) cites 1 Peter 3:19 as the proof text for Christ Jesus’ 
descent into hell spoken of in the modern Apostles’ Creed; and 
WHEREAS, Even if this text from 1 Peter 3:19 was referencing 
our modern understanding of hell it would still be properly placed 
in the Creed after Christ Jesus was “made alive by the Spirit,” after 
the resurrection, not before as is stated in the modern Apostles’  
Creed; and 
W
HEREAS, The Old Roman Creed, upon which the Apostles’ 
Creed was based, does not contain any mention of Jesus’ descent 
into hell (e.g., Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom [New 
York: Harper and Row, 1931], 46–47); and 
W
HEREAS, The Nicene Creed, which predates the Apostles’ 
Creed, also does not contain any mention of a descent into hell by 
Jesus following His death; and 
WHEREAS, There is no clear text of Scripture that speaks of Jesus 
“descending” to some place after His death, nor any text of 
Scripture that speaks of Jesus going to a place called hell  nor to a 
place that carries with it our modern understanding of that term; and 
WHEREAS, The only reference to Christ Jesus descending to the 
lower parts of the earth is in Eph. 4:9, and is most probably a 
reference to Jesus’ incarnation, to His descent from heaven to earth 
(Phil. 2:7), used in contrast to His ascent back into heaven (Eph. 
4:8); but if this descent is a reference to Psalm 16:10 or Acts 2:27, 
31, then it is a reference to Sheol and/or Hades, not a reference to 
our modern understanding of hell; and 
WHEREAS, The earliest versions of the Apostles’ Creed were 
written in Greek, and the oldest record we have of this Creed is in a 
letter from Marcellus of Ancyra to Pope Julius I in or about A.D. 
340–341 and has no inclusion of the phrase “descended into hell”