The narrative of what Christ is held to have done between the crucifixion and the resurrection: descending to the realm of the dead, breaking its gates, and leading out the righteous of every generation before him, with Adam and Eve taken by the wrist at the head of the line. No canonical gospel narrates it. It is built from a handful of allusive verses about preaching to the spirits in prison and about descending to the lower parts of the earth, is told at length in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and is confessed in the clause of the Apostles' Creed about the descent. In Eastern Orthodox practice the scene, not the empty tomb, is the standard icon of Easter, showing Christ standing on the shattered doors of the underworld with the broken locks scattered beneath his feet.
Facts
Disputed
Point in DisputeEastern and Western Christian tradition read the descent's scope differently: Eastern Orthodox teaching holds it freed all of the righteous dead of every nation and era, the reading built into the Anastasis icon's crowd of freed figures, while some later Western theology narrowed the descent's reach to only those explicitly awaiting Christ under the old covenant. 3 Both readings share the same creedal clause, that Christ descended to the dead, but differ on who among the dead that reaches. The Eastern icon tradition depicts a crowded scene, Adam, Eve and a whole line of the righteous led out together, consistent with a universal reading of the rescue. Western scholastic theology, working through the same clause centuries later, more often confined the descent's beneficiaries to those who died in genuine expectation of a coming Christ, a narrower population than everyone judged righteous. Neither side treats this as a settled question the atlas can resolve on its own authority; both remain live positions within Christian doctrine today. Text
Source Text1 Peter 3:18 to 3:20 and 4:6, Ephesians 4:8 to 4:10 and Acts 2:27 2 Source TextThe Gospel of Nicodemus, also called the Acts of Pilate 1 History
Historical NoteThe doctrine is affirmed in the Apostles' Creed's clause that Christ descended into hell, or to the dead, a clause absent from the creed's earliest versions and added later, its precise wording and theological weight differing since among Western liturgical traditions. 3 Historical NoteWestern theology that limited the descent's reach to the righteous who died before Christ names the place they were held Limbo of the Fathers, Limbus Patrum, a category distinct from the unrelated limbo sometimes proposed for unbaptized infants, and understood as emptied once Christ leads its occupants out. 3 Meaning
Central MotifA descent to the realm of the dead that breaks its gates and brings the dead out 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteThe Anastasis, not the empty tomb, is the standard Eastern Orthodox image of the resurrection 3 Scholarly NoteThe apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus dramatizes the descent as a confrontation between personified figures, Hades and Satan, who argue over Christ's approach before the gates are broken, giving the otherwise doctrinal event a theatrical scene of dialogue not found in the sparse canonical verses the doctrine is built from. 3 Sources
Primary SourceThe Gospel of Nicodemus survives in two distinct textual traditions, Greek and Latin, with the harrowing narrative forming its second, later attached part, the Descensus Christi ad Inferos, generally dated well after the first part's own composition. 1 Learn More
Breaking the Gates
The narrative concerns the interval between the burial and the resurrection, which the gospels leave entirely blank. In it, Christ descends to the realm of the dead, the gates are broken, the bars are shattered, and the righteous who had died before him, from Adam and Eve onward, are brought out. The most developed telling is in the Gospel of Nicodemus, an apocryphal work also known as the Acts of Pilate, which reports the scene through two men raised from the dead who are asked to write down what they saw: the dead sitting in darkness are suddenly lit; John the Baptist announces the one coming; Adam and the prophets recognise the moment; and a voice demands that the everlasting doors be lifted up, at which Hades and Satan argue with each other in dismay before the doors give way.
The canonical basis is slight and allusive. A letter attributed to Peter speaks of Christ preaching to the spirits in prison who had formerly been disobedient, and adds that the gospel was preached even to the dead. A line in Ephesians speaks of a descent to the lower parts of the earth. A verse in Acts applies a psalm about not being abandoned to the grave. From these the tradition was assembled, and it entered the Apostles' Creed in the clause about descending to the dead, which is why a narrative found in no canonical gospel is recited weekly by millions.
The Anastasis Icon, and the Vernacular Stage
In Eastern Christianity the descent, rather than the empty tomb, is the standard image of the resurrection. The Anastasis icon shows Christ standing on the shattered leaves of the doors of the underworld, which lie crossed beneath his feet with the broken locks, nails and hinges scattered around them, while he takes Adam by the wrist, not by the hand, and pulls him bodily out of a sarcophagus, with Eve reaching from the other side and the righteous of the older covenant ranked behind. The detail of the wrist is deliberate and is remarked on in Orthodox commentary: the one being rescued is not cooperating in the rescue. This icon is what appears in Orthodox churches at Easter, and its theology is that of Holy Saturday, the day between.
In the Latin West the same material took a more dramatic form. The confrontation at the gates, with its shouting, its argument between devils, and its scattering of the underworld's furniture, was among the most popular episodes in the vernacular mystery play cycles of late medieval England and the continent, where it gave the stage carpenters an excuse for a hell mouth with hinges that could visibly be broken. Later Western theology grew more cautious about the imagery and tended to restate it as a doctrine about the completeness of the descent into death rather than as an event with a plot, but the image had already fixed itself in art, drama and popular speech, where the phrase about harrowing hell long outlived any memory of what it referred to.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Adam, Figures Taken by the wrist at the head of the rescued in the Anastasis icon
Belongs to Tradition
Originated In
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