The brawl over the Apostle's Creed

The descent clause in both the Apostle’s Creed and the Athanasian Creed declares that after being crucified, Jesus descended into the realm of the dead, from which he ascended on that first Easter morning.

While the descent clause has fallen on hard times recently—well, ever since Calvin rejected it as a Roman Catholic hangover I suppose—I still hold to it.



I think it represents biblical teaching, well attested in church history, and more importantly, because it intersects with so many other areas of theology, it’s probably best not to tinker with it. It is the kind of theological thread that when you pull it in one place, you find it snags in so many other unexpected places.

This Easter, in particular, I was reminded of the importance of the doctrine of the descent of Christ. Of all Holy Saturdays I’ve experienced, this was the one closest to what the disciples went through on that first Saturday after the crucifixion.




They were in lockdown mode. It was the Sabbath, and so all of Jerusalem would have been self-isolating.  But the disciples even more so. Cut off from the world, cut off from their friends, and cut off from the future they had expected. Unable to leave their homes, and uncertain about what would happen next.



To a lesser degree, that is what everyone in the world is going through now. We don’t know when we will be allowed back out, back to church, back to the future we had planned. We want to believe that God is at work through this for his glory and our good, but it can be hard sometimes to see how.

There is a truth that comes from that Holy Saturday that is particularly helpful to us today. Even when we are in isolation, Jesus is working. Even when we taste defeat, Jesus is declaring victory. When our world is silent and shuttered, Jesus is still proclaiming the glories of the cross, and that should give us confidence and hope in the resurrection.




Here are a few practical truths that I was encouraged by this past Saturday:

When Jesus died, he really died. The descent shows us what was obvious to the Centurion, the soldiers, the crowd, John and Mary, and Joseph and Nicodemus. Jesus really died. He didn’t tap out form the cross and reunite with his Father prematurely. No, he stayed on the cross, he stayed in his flesh, he stayed on earth, all the way through to the end. He saw his mission through.

When Jesus really died, he really experienced death as people do. Jesus did not merely give up his spirit, leave his body, and reunite with his father.

Whatever happens to a soul when a person dies, Jesus went through that. People fear death because it is unknown. But Jesus went through it. Every inch of it. He went before us in life (being tempted in all ways like we are), and went before us in death. As people are mourning the loss of loved ones form Coronavirus, understand that Jesus knew what it was like to face death as a mourner, and Jesus knew what it was like to face death as a human being. He trod the same path that we too will one day travel. 



When Jesus experienced death, he reoriented it. In the Old Testament, those who died descended to the grave. Death was always down. For the righteous, Sheol was described as a place of rest and reunion. It was nevertheless down. And in death, the OT saints waited while they rested.

But when Jesus came and proclaimed his victory over both death and the grave, he reoriented death itself for the church. When we die, we go up, not down. We got to worship, not rest. We go to rewards, not to waiting. We go to heaven, not to Sheol. Just as Jesus reoriented history around himself, he also reorients the afterlife.



In reorienting death, Jesus was at work on Saturday. While the disciples were in lockdown mode, sheltering in place and waiting to see what Rome would do next, Jesus was working.

Specifically, he was proclaiming victory over the grave and the fulfilment of his earthly mission. Don’t miss the fact that while we wait, wondering what it could be that God is doing—it is often in those times when his work is made most manifest. Even while we wait, Jesus is still accomplishing his will by proclaiming the glories of his triumph over sin and the devil.

That is the message of the descent. This year that message should hit home even more than usual. While we wait, Jesus is at work, revealing the triumph of the cross in a world that still runs from the very death which he died, and which still fears the very grave which he conquered.