He descended into hell.
That's heaven's sunrise I saw and snapped looking off to my east by east northeast this morning. The pinks stirred with yellows and oranges of creation's most beautiful roses.
My growing up years, our Sunday morning profession of faith was the Apostles Creed, said in Morning Prayer, our Sunday worship all but the first Sunday of each month.
Every first Sunday we had Holy Communion, and so we did get to know the Nicene Creed, familiar and we could say it without the book. But it was not our usual and certainly not our preference, long and peculiar, heavy with unbiblical christological assertions. And we wondered why, in the Nicene Creed, Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord did not descend into hell, as he did all other Sundays a month:
The Apostles' Creed
Officiant and People together, all standing
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell.
maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
None of us, I'm speaking of us youngsters of the YPSL (Young Peoples Service League, as was named the Episcopal youth group which we called "League") ever asked the rector about that. There were no such discussions, in fact for the most part our interest every Sunday evening was to gather, have what passed for a business meeting, Tom Sale presided 1951-52 and I presided 1952-53, have supper together, and then pile into our brown 1949 Plymouth woody station wagon
and hit the back roads of Panama City for the main part of Sunday, nine to maybe a dozen high school kids loving life and each other, our small group. Who sat in the front middle seat close to me, the driver, changed early in our senior year at Bay High; but that's not where I'm going this morning nearly seventy years on.
If Sunday evenings were light on religious discourse, not so with summer mornings at Camp Weed, Carrabelle, Florida on the screened front porches of our cabins that during World War 2, recently ended and still sharp in memory, had been Army barracks at Camp Gordon Johnston. Our group leaders and discussion leaders were men just a few years older than us, young priests and men in seminary at Sewanee, many of who in their lives were deans, and bishops, and high positions in General Convention, the ruling body of the Episcopal Church. Fondly I remember Bob Parks as a bright, kind and gentle priest, rector of St Paul's Quincy, of St Paul's by the Sea Jacksonville Beach, dean of St John's Cathedral Jacksonville, where my great grandfather was rector in the late 19th century, rector of Trinity Wall Street NYC, where he was the much revered Dr. Parks, whom the Archbishop of Canterbury rang up when he needed money for some key project. The last time I saw Bob Parks was a quarter century later, 1980 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, visiting with him when he came down from New York for the consecration of our new bishop, Charlie McNutt.
As a young thirty-something adult, Bob Parks was gentle and kind and easy and fun for us teenagers to be around. Always friendly and approachable, he was a popular leader of the front porch discussion groups at Camp Weed those years. One morning a topic must have been the creeds, and someone asked, I don't think we called him Father Bob, there was Father Frank Dearing of St Mary's Jacksonvile who once was our rector here in Panama City, but Bob was pretty low church, so it was either Bob or Mr Parks; someone asked about Christ descending into hell, why was that? and why was it in the Apostles Creed but not the Nicene Creed?. We were told that it came from Ephesians 4 and First Peter 3. The Latin Vulgate Bible, he descended into inferos, Hell, and he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. So Latin Vulgate, basically a Roman Catholic construction in the Western Church. But why? because, as tradition had it, he offered salvation to those in Hell.
That was the early 1950s. Things come back to me, wandering memories come rolling in, and that one does whenever I look at Ephesians 4 or, our second reading this coming Sunday, 1st Peter 3. Unless we're in Morning Prayer, which is no longer anyone's liturgical favorite, or doing Compline, we never say the Apostles Creed anymore. Our closest is the Baptismal Covenant, which is the same, with five promises "I will, with God's help" added to the three I believe questions. And where Jesus doesn't descend into hell, but descends to the dead.
I say nobody's favorite, Morning Prayer properly sung with Anglican Chant is incomparable, the worship of the angels in heaven (at least I certainly hope so). And I eternally prefer the Baptismal Covenant with its promises, to the Nicene Creed, saying We believe things that were decided we must believe, by gatherings of old men under an emperor, centuries after Jesus to settle disputes; in the fourth century AD, sixteen hundred years ago, an age with completely different world views, assertions about God that are beyond human knowing that we say We believe anyway.
Below, scroll down is our 1 Peter 3:13-22 reading for Sunday, as well as various quotations and links that were helpful to me in putting this reminiscence together.
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1 Peter 3:13-22 (NRSV)
Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, 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 made subject to him.
the phrase "descendit ad inferos" ("he descended into hell") echoes Ephesians 4:9, "κατέβη εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς" ("he descended into the lower earthly regions"). It is of interest that this phrase first appeared in one of the two versions of Rufinus in AD 390 and then did not appear again in any version of the creed until AD 650.
Latin Vulgate 1 Peter 3:19 in quo et his qui in carcere erant spiritibus veniens praedicavit
In which also coming he preached to those spirits that were in prison:
KJV Ephesians 4:7 But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. 8 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. 9 (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)
Latin Vulgate Ephesians 4:9 quod autem ascendit quid est nisi quia et descendit primum in inferiores partes terrae
Now that he ascended, what is it, but because he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles%27_Creed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Roman_Symbol or Creed