Do our Standards agree or disagree with this quote?

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Dan N

Puritan Board Freshman
"As to the body of Jesus Christ, he descended into the state of death...as to the soul of Jesus Christ, he suffered the agonies of hell."

Please tell me why it does or why it does not.

Grace and peace.
 
I think our standards were composed with that essential idea (which you have quoted) as a widely held opinion of the time among the Reformed and their near ecclesiastical cousins.

Heidelberg Cat.
44. Q. Why is there added: He descended into hell?
A. In my greatest sorrows and temptations I may be assured and comforted that my Lord Jesus Christ, by His unspeakable anguish, pain, terror, and agony, which He endured throughout all His sufferings[1] but especially on the cross, has delivered me from the anguish and torment of hell.[2]

[1] Ps. 18:5, 6; 116:3; Matt. 26:36-46; 27:45, 46; Heb. 5:7-10. [2] Is. 53.


Westminster Larger Cat.
Q. 50. Wherein consisted Christ’s humiliation after his death?
A. Christ’s humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried,200 and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day;201 which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, He descended into hell.

Note that it is in connection to the cross that Jesus is said to experience hellish torments of his soul, not that he spent time after that in soul-torment. Remember, it was to the penitent thief the Savior declared, "Today you will be with me in paradise." Christ's body continued for his three-day sojourn committed to the realm of the dead, its proper place in that utterly humiliated condition.
 
"As to the body of Jesus Christ, he descended into the state of death...as to the soul of Jesus Christ, he suffered the agonies of hell."
I echo everything that Bruce wrote above. The confessional view seen in the WLC and Heidelberg Cat. originates in Calvin and combats the errant idea that Jesus' soul was tortured in the fires of hell.

When studying the descent to the dead, a lot of the literature you'll read is sort of bogged down by Hans Urs von Balthasar's modern and imaginative formulations, as well as Barth (who in many ways echoes Calvin). However, the inclusion of the descendit ad inferna ("he descended to the dead") in the Apostles Creed has been a subject of debate for centuries, as it isn't found in the earliest credal prototypes. The descendit was the source of much patristic imagination regarding atonement: Jesus going to Hell to pay a ransom to Satan, Jesus fighting a 3 day war with Satan and his armies, Christ preaching to the Old Testament saints, etc. Even late apocalyptic gospels (not gnostic) were written about Christ's descent into Hell... they're essentially ancient fan fictions.

Nowadays there are plenty of evangelicals and some conservative reformed folk who think it shouldn't be confessed as a part of orthodox Christianity, but Calvin said in response to similar opinions, that,
If any persons have scruples about admitting this article into the Creed, it will soon be made plain how important it is to the sum of our redemption: if it is left out, much of the benefit of Christ’s death will be lost (Calvin 1960, 513) [1].

I recently wrote an essay on the descendit ad inferna. My essay isn't worth sharing, but here are some articles and books I'd recommend if you're interested:

“He Descended to the Dead”: The Burial of Christ and the Eschatological Character of the Atonement by Matthew Emerson. This is not confessional but informative. Emerson also has a fairly dense book on the descendit that's a great resource.

Here's an excellent resource on Christ's descent from a confessional Reformed perspective: In Defense of the Descent: A Response to Contemporary Critics - Explorations in Reformed Confessional Theology by Daniel Hyde. Another is Descendit: Delete or Declare by Jeffrey Hamm. It's an article in the Westminster Theological Journal vol. 78.

[1] Calvin, John. 1960. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1. Edited by John T. McNeill. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
 
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