The Lord’s Descent into Hades – a peculiar view by John Calvin

By Protopresbyter Fr. Basil A. Georgopoulos, lecturer at the School of Theology of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki

The opinion (phronema) and belief of the Church throughout the years is that the event of our Lord’s Descent into Hades is an expression of His regal status and a chapter of His overall salvific opus within the framework of the overall character of salvation.  It simultaneously constitutes an expression of Christ’s inconceivable love and philanthropy, as well as a confession of in-Christ freedom and the abolition of death.1

This opinion of the church in regard to the Descent of the Lord into Hades and the universality of in-Christ salvation is recorded with clarity in Orthodox hymnology and hagiography also, both of which highlight with their own realism Christ’s victory over death.

One of the leading and topmost personages of Protestantism, John Calvin, had formulated an entirely paradoxical theological view and interpretation on this basic parameter of the God-man Christ’s salvific opus, which is also contrary to the perennial phronema of the Church.

Whereas Calvin had initially accepted that Christ’s descent into Hades is an event confessed by all Christians and the position held by all ecclesiastic authors2, he in parallel asserts – inaccurately – that it gradually became an accepted article of faith3.  Later on, he radically differentiated himself, as regards the understanding of the event.

He stipulates with clarity the weird position that Christ’s Descent into Hades should be seen as Christ undergoing all the terrible torments of the soul – which had the character of punishment – from the moment of His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane through to His Crucifixion, inasmuch as the torments of  His soul reach the highest degree of intensity at that point.

While on the Cross – continues Calvin – Christ’s words “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matth.27:46) represent condemned humanity’s terrible pangs on account of its sinfulness4, which are felt by Christ in humanity’s place5.

It is necessary that these tortures of the soul – Calvin mentions – be suffered by Christ’s soul, because if Christ’s soul didn’t participate in the punishment, then Christ would have been the saviour only of bodies6. The Lord’s bodily passions – always within the framework of juridical understanding – are (according to Calvin) suffered by Christ on the Cross as an expression of divine anger and punishment7, because that way, the weightiness and the worth of the ransom that was offered for the salvation of man8.

The sensation of the tortures of soul and body upon the Cross by Christ are the outcome of divine wrath and God’s aversion to human sins, except that Christ suffers them as the representative of the human race, thus satisfying God’s violated justice9.

This bizarre stance by J. Calvin – on account of his predominant position in the space of Protestantism – garnered a broader acceptance and was also adopted by the Symbolic Texts of Calvin’s sphere, as, for example, was the Heidelberg Catechism with the weight that this text carried in the space of the Confessions fo the Reformation.  Calvin’s positions on this matter are adopted in full, in the responses given to questions 37 and 44 of the Catechism 10.

In briefly evaluating Calvin’s view in regard to the Lord’s Descent in to Hades, we need to point out the following:

i) It is a view that embodies the Western, juridical-penal version and view of the divine Passion,
ii) it is entirely incompatible with the ecclesiastic understanding of the event of salvation,
iii) it is checked – within the frame of ecclesiastic Christology – for its manner of understanding the pangs of the soul,
iv) it goes contrary to the Holy Bible (Psalm 106:16. Isaiah 49:9l Matthew 12:40; 1 Peter 3:19)
v) it highlights Protestant subjectivism and individualist adequacy as the hermeneutical principle opposite the Holy Bible.
vi) it is in opposition to the Lutheran position – as recorded in the «Formula Concordiae» - as well as  the view by Luther’s own view naturally, and
vii) it essentially denies the event of the Lord’s Descent into Hades, inasmuch as it regards it, not as an actual event, but only metaphorically.

Notes:
1.    see  John of Damascus, Precise Edition of the Orthodox Faith, III, 29, PG 94, 1101Α.
2.    see J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 8.
3.    see J. Calvin Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 8.
4.    see J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 11.
5.    see J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 10.
6.    see J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 12.
7.    see J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 1-2.
8.    see J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 5.
9.    see J. Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis II, 16, 2, 10.
10. see E.F.K. Müller (Hrsg), Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierte Kirche, Leipzig 1903, p.692, 694. O. Weber (Hrsg), Der Heidelberger Katechismus, Gütersloh 19904, p.28, 30.
11. see Unser Glaube. Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, Gütersloh 19863, p.827-828. H. G. Pöhlmann - T. Austad - Fr. Krüger, Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, Gütersloh 1996, p. 199-200.

Newspaper ORTHODOX PRESS, Edition No.2023, 23 May 2014

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