Talk Five: Recognising the Abyss
I begin this talk with part of a video by Jordan Peterson entitled What Talking to Sam Harris Made Me Realize in the Past Few Month. There is an edited transcript of the relevant parts in the appendix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_ENmvKoV8&feature=youtu.be
As mentioned in my Introduction, Peterson has emerged in the last few years as a lecturing and media phenomenon able to creatively engage with the best minds on the planet. One of those is Sam Harris, the most articulate of the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen of the New Atheism, the other three being Dawkins, Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens. Peterson is a clinical psychologist, interested in myths and religion and spirituality. He is able to engage the world of ideas in a way I think no churchman could I think. We are far too defensive and concerned for our authority. A comment published with this video reads, ‘The Peterson-Harris debates are a perfect example of how people who don't agree with one another can have excellent conversations simply by not assuming bad faith on the part of their rhetorical opponent.’ How different western history might have been if that capacity had prevailed earlier in the Church and society generally. Hopefully it is not too late.
The point in playing this video is to show that a very ancient mythological trope, and its importance to the human condition, is alive and well in the minds of some people in our day, despite the efforts of evidence based medicine and our materialistic culture. Certainly the examples Peterson uses, Simba the lion and Pinnochio, are hardly earth shattering. But he uses them to bring out the underlying popular psychology version of what is a very ancient process, at least for men but also for modern women. Gaining our self hood in the world can involve, depending perhaps on what has gone before in our lives, facing ‘the abyss’ in which we encounter the dark side of life and our own mortality. If we prevail, we become a self in the world that can make a difference; we can take on, to varying degrees, the role of the hero and responsibility for ourselves.
Facing the abyss, or going into the underworld is referred to as a katabasis.
Simba and Pinocchio both experienced a katabasis, or descensus, and in each case this was followed by an anabasis, a descent and a rising, a going down and a coming up. So also did Odysseus, Aeneus, Juno, Proserpina, Orpheus, Enlil, Ishtar, Gilgamesh, Baal, Osiris, Re, Kirdir, Inanna, Dante, to name a few; and the sun descended to the netherworld each day, as well, only to rise again in the morning, renewed and victorious. In the words of the Wikipedia article on katabasis,
The trip to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world.
This underworld has been known by many names, Hades, Sheol, the Shades, the Abyss, the netherworld, Hell, the place of the dead, the Grave, and so on; a universal myth that took in both the heroes of traditions and the everyday reality of people growing up and engaging the world responsibly.
But whereas the trip to the underworld for the ancients was to a place that was believed to actually and objectively exist, somewhere under the earth, for Simba and Pinocchio the underlying assumption in Peterson’s mind, and for us moderns generally, is that katabasis is psychological, real mind you, but not objectively so in any scientific sense.
There is something here very important I think for a modern understanding of Christ’s death and resurrection, and the period in between, traditionally referred to as Holy Saturday and taken very seriously by Catholics and the Orthodox, but largely neglected or ignored by Protestants until quite recently.
At the time of Christ, it was generally accepted that when you died your soul descended to the dead, to one of a number of possible compartments, paradise (Abraham’s bosum) for instance, or the abyss or Tartarus, and so on. So of course when Christ died he descended to the dead. According to Matthew, Jesus himself spoke about this descent.
It is only in Matthew that Jesus himself speaks of his descent into the underworld between his death and resurrection. The Scribes and the Pharisees demand a “sign” from Jesus and he tells them that the only sign that will be given to them is “the sign of the Prophet Jonah”. Jesus further
explains this sign. “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12: 40). Therefore, the origin of the doctrine of the Descensus may be able to be traced to the very ipsissima verba of Christ. (Bass 2274-2281 Kindle edition)
Other references to Christ’s descent in the New Testament are still argued about by scholars, but what does seem clear is that at least from the time of 1 Peter, much reflection was put into just what Christ might have been doing in this descent, between his death and resurrection.
All in all, the historical argument for the doctrine of Christ’s Descensus is one of the most primitive and most agreed upon teachings of the ancient church. We have found that from Ignatius on, the Fathers believed that Christ had released the OT saints from Hades and most of them also mention his preaching to them. In the late third and fourth century, the battle imagery receives vivid detail as Christ destroys the gates of Hades, defeats Satan, rescues Adam, and tramples on Death and Hades. (Bass, Kindle Locations 649-652).
The sealing of Christ’s destiny as in fact a descent into Hell came when the original words ‘descensus ad inferos’ in the Apostles’ Creed was changed to ‘descendit ad inferna’ possibly to counter the heresy of Apollinarianism. It has been this version of the Creed that has prevailed to our day, but now some modern translations have returned to the original and declare that Christ ‘descended to the dead’, as is the case in Uniting in Worship 2. But as many scholars have pointed out, when the ancients said ‘descended to the dead’, they meant a whole lot more than that he was buried. So paradoxically, this return to the original Greek in our day in some translations misrepresents the ancient tradition and would be repudiated by the Church Fathers. To descend to the dead was to descend into the netherworld. For which moderns does the netherworld still exist.
The Reformers fully embraced the traditional descensus to Hell, with two notable exceptions.
Calvin is the first to understand the phrase metaphorically for Christ experiencing (descending into) hell on the cross before his burial instead of after his burial, but Calvin is still affirming that the Descensus is taught in the Scriptures. (Bass, Kindle Locations 632-634)
The descent on the cross for Calvin is to a place of punishment, God’s wrath, something Christ was taking on for us. This was very different from the tradition. But perhaps more significantly for the current debate, at least two of the Reformers denied a literal descent.
Zwingli’s Zurich colleague Leo Jud (AD 1482– 1542) in a 1534 catechism and Martin Bucer (AD 1491– 1551) were the first to argue that the Descensus meant merely that Christ descended to the grave (burial) and thus rejecting this doctrine of a literal descent after fifteen centuries of the church affirming it. (Bass, Justin. Kindle Locations 637-639). Justin Bass, one of the leading Protestant thinkers reasserting the importance of the descensus in our day said this about Bucer.
To equate the Descensus with Christ’s burial was nothing more than a pre- Bultmannian attempt to demythologize the NT text because Bucer and those who followed him could no longer accept an underworld beneath the earth. (Bass, Justin. Kindle Locations 644-646).
Nonetheless, this denial has been reaffirmed in our day by theologian Wayne Grudem in his much discussed paper Christ did not Descend into Hell published in 1991. My sense in Grudem’s case is that he is not so much wanting to demythologize the text because of no longer accepting an underworld beneath the earth, but rather because he is offended by the idea that God the Son could ever possibly enter Hell, a place of punishment. At the same time he seems to hold a Calvinist substitutionary understanding of Christ’s death as a bearing of our sins. He argues his case from the original version of the Apostles’ Creed and his own interpretations of the relevant biblical texts. As indicated above, he negates the ancient tradition and understanding.
Interestingly, however, Grudem’s difficulty in thinking God the Son might enter Hell in any sort of negative way is reflected in the Catholic Church and always has been. The traditions of Holy Saturday have been a very important part of Catholic doctrine, carefully enunciated in the two major Catechisms still used. It is referred to as the Harrowing of Hell, a triumphant descent into the netherworld to release Adam and Eve and all the saints of antiquity, completely reflecting the received tradition. However, the Catholic Church’s most distinguished twentieth century theologican, Hans Urs von Balthasar has challenged this.
Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has attempted to synthesize the RCC view and the Calvinian position, arguing that Christ’s descent occurs on Holy Saturday and that in it Jesus in his hypostatically unified divinity and humanity experiences the final judgment, separation from the Father, on behalf of humanity. This has been met with serious opposition from many fronts, but has also been argued by at least one RCC theologian to be a legitimate interpretation of Catholic doctrine. (Emerson)
It may interest you to know that the debate around Balthasar’s understanding of Christ’s death and descent is being actively pursued at the moment in Catholic circles. The strongest criticism and some of the strongest support has come from women. Lyra Pitstick in 2016 attacked Balthasar’s interpretation as heretical, only to be countered in 2018 by Riyako Hikota. Traditionally the descent in Catholic circles was entirely victorious, as taught in the Catechisms. For Balthasar it was the complete isolation of Christ from God in Hell for our sakes, to be then followed by the ascent.
I will have succeeded in this talk if I have left you feeling a little confused. I am wanting to leave you with the thought that the idea of the abyss is alive and well psychologically in our modern world, even at a popular level, as attested to by the likes of Jordan Peterson; and that this reflects a universal myth in the ancient world of descent into the underworld followed by an ascent; and that the Church from its earliest days attested to this experience for Christ, but with significant differences from the myth and with some claim to historical certainty. That the netherworld or place of the dead was a real place somewhere was assumed. With many variations, this descent was seen as triumphant, followed by the resurrection. Not so for Calvin and Balthasar.
For them the descent was dark and horrific, redeemed by the ascent.
Another significant Protestant thinker who is reflecting on all this is Matthew Emerson. Let him have the last say, and I intentionally emphasize the last sentence.
Although the doctrine, and even the event itself, is questioned today, it is clear that the early Christian theologians, and subsequently most of historic Christianity, have affirmed that Jesus descended to the dead and accomplished something there. The question throughout the history of doctrine has been what exactly Christ accomplished in his descent.(Emerson)
Like the atonement, it is still an open question.
In my next talk, I am going to suggest what that accomplishment might have been. This suggestion comes directly out of my own experience that started me on my journey with God, and my reading of our modern world.
I begin this talk with part of a video by Jordan Peterson entitled What Talking to Sam Harris Made Me Realize in the Past Few Month. There is an edited transcript of the relevant parts in the appendix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_ENmvKoV8&feature=youtu.be
As mentioned in my Introduction, Peterson has emerged in the last few years as a lecturing and media phenomenon able to creatively engage with the best minds on the planet. One of those is Sam Harris, the most articulate of the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen of the New Atheism, the other three being Dawkins, Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens. Peterson is a clinical psychologist, interested in myths and religion and spirituality. He is able to engage the world of ideas in a way I think no churchman could I think. We are far too defensive and concerned for our authority. A comment published with this video reads, ‘The Peterson-Harris debates are a perfect example of how people who don't agree with one another can have excellent conversations simply by not assuming bad faith on the part of their rhetorical opponent.’ How different western history might have been if that capacity had prevailed earlier in the Church and society generally. Hopefully it is not too late.
The point in playing this video is to show that a very ancient mythological trope, and its importance to the human condition, is alive and well in the minds of some people in our day, despite the efforts of evidence based medicine and our materialistic culture. Certainly the examples Peterson uses, Simba the lion and Pinnochio, are hardly earth shattering. But he uses them to bring out the underlying popular psychology version of what is a very ancient process, at least for men but also for modern women. Gaining our self hood in the world can involve, depending perhaps on what has gone before in our lives, facing ‘the abyss’ in which we encounter the dark side of life and our own mortality. If we prevail, we become a self in the world that can make a difference; we can take on, to varying degrees, the role of the hero and responsibility for ourselves.
Facing the abyss, or going into the underworld is referred to as a katabasis.
Simba and Pinocchio both experienced a katabasis, or descensus, and in each case this was followed by an anabasis, a descent and a rising, a going down and a coming up. So also did Odysseus, Aeneus, Juno, Proserpina, Orpheus, Enlil, Ishtar, Gilgamesh, Baal, Osiris, Re, Kirdir, Inanna, Dante, to name a few; and the sun descended to the netherworld each day, as well, only to rise again in the morning, renewed and victorious. In the words of the Wikipedia article on katabasis,
The trip to the underworld is a mytheme of comparative mythology found in a diverse number of religions from around the world.
This underworld has been known by many names, Hades, Sheol, the Shades, the Abyss, the netherworld, Hell, the place of the dead, the Grave, and so on; a universal myth that took in both the heroes of traditions and the everyday reality of people growing up and engaging the world responsibly.
But whereas the trip to the underworld for the ancients was to a place that was believed to actually and objectively exist, somewhere under the earth, for Simba and Pinocchio the underlying assumption in Peterson’s mind, and for us moderns generally, is that katabasis is psychological, real mind you, but not objectively so in any scientific sense.
There is something here very important I think for a modern understanding of Christ’s death and resurrection, and the period in between, traditionally referred to as Holy Saturday and taken very seriously by Catholics and the Orthodox, but largely neglected or ignored by Protestants until quite recently.
At the time of Christ, it was generally accepted that when you died your soul descended to the dead, to one of a number of possible compartments, paradise (Abraham’s bosum) for instance, or the abyss or Tartarus, and so on. So of course when Christ died he descended to the dead. According to Matthew, Jesus himself spoke about this descent.
It is only in Matthew that Jesus himself speaks of his descent into the underworld between his death and resurrection. The Scribes and the Pharisees demand a “sign” from Jesus and he tells them that the only sign that will be given to them is “the sign of the Prophet Jonah”. Jesus further
explains this sign. “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12: 40). Therefore, the origin of the doctrine of the Descensus may be able to be traced to the very ipsissima verba of Christ. (Bass 2274-2281 Kindle edition)
Other references to Christ’s descent in the New Testament are still argued about by scholars, but what does seem clear is that at least from the time of 1 Peter, much reflection was put into just what Christ might have been doing in this descent, between his death and resurrection.
All in all, the historical argument for the doctrine of Christ’s Descensus is one of the most primitive and most agreed upon teachings of the ancient church. We have found that from Ignatius on, the Fathers believed that Christ had released the OT saints from Hades and most of them also mention his preaching to them. In the late third and fourth century, the battle imagery receives vivid detail as Christ destroys the gates of Hades, defeats Satan, rescues Adam, and tramples on Death and Hades. (Bass, Kindle Locations 649-652).
The sealing of Christ’s destiny as in fact a descent into Hell came when the original words ‘descensus ad inferos’ in the Apostles’ Creed was changed to ‘descendit ad inferna’ possibly to counter the heresy of Apollinarianism. It has been this version of the Creed that has prevailed to our day, but now some modern translations have returned to the original and declare that Christ ‘descended to the dead’, as is the case in Uniting in Worship 2. But as many scholars have pointed out, when the ancients said ‘descended to the dead’, they meant a whole lot more than that he was buried. So paradoxically, this return to the original Greek in our day in some translations misrepresents the ancient tradition and would be repudiated by the Church Fathers. To descend to the dead was to descend into the netherworld. For which moderns does the netherworld still exist.
The Reformers fully embraced the traditional descensus to Hell, with two notable exceptions.
Calvin is the first to understand the phrase metaphorically for Christ experiencing (descending into) hell on the cross before his burial instead of after his burial, but Calvin is still affirming that the Descensus is taught in the Scriptures. (Bass, Kindle Locations 632-634)
The descent on the cross for Calvin is to a place of punishment, God’s wrath, something Christ was taking on for us. This was very different from the tradition. But perhaps more significantly for the current debate, at least two of the Reformers denied a literal descent.
Zwingli’s Zurich colleague Leo Jud (AD 1482– 1542) in a 1534 catechism and Martin Bucer (AD 1491– 1551) were the first to argue that the Descensus meant merely that Christ descended to the grave (burial) and thus rejecting this doctrine of a literal descent after fifteen centuries of the church affirming it. (Bass, Justin. Kindle Locations 637-639). Justin Bass, one of the leading Protestant thinkers reasserting the importance of the descensus in our day said this about Bucer.
To equate the Descensus with Christ’s burial was nothing more than a pre- Bultmannian attempt to demythologize the NT text because Bucer and those who followed him could no longer accept an underworld beneath the earth. (Bass, Justin. Kindle Locations 644-646).
Nonetheless, this denial has been reaffirmed in our day by theologian Wayne Grudem in his much discussed paper Christ did not Descend into Hell published in 1991. My sense in Grudem’s case is that he is not so much wanting to demythologize the text because of no longer accepting an underworld beneath the earth, but rather because he is offended by the idea that God the Son could ever possibly enter Hell, a place of punishment. At the same time he seems to hold a Calvinist substitutionary understanding of Christ’s death as a bearing of our sins. He argues his case from the original version of the Apostles’ Creed and his own interpretations of the relevant biblical texts. As indicated above, he negates the ancient tradition and understanding.
Interestingly, however, Grudem’s difficulty in thinking God the Son might enter Hell in any sort of negative way is reflected in the Catholic Church and always has been. The traditions of Holy Saturday have been a very important part of Catholic doctrine, carefully enunciated in the two major Catechisms still used. It is referred to as the Harrowing of Hell, a triumphant descent into the netherworld to release Adam and Eve and all the saints of antiquity, completely reflecting the received tradition. However, the Catholic Church’s most distinguished twentieth century theologican, Hans Urs von Balthasar has challenged this.
Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has attempted to synthesize the RCC view and the Calvinian position, arguing that Christ’s descent occurs on Holy Saturday and that in it Jesus in his hypostatically unified divinity and humanity experiences the final judgment, separation from the Father, on behalf of humanity. This has been met with serious opposition from many fronts, but has also been argued by at least one RCC theologian to be a legitimate interpretation of Catholic doctrine. (Emerson)
It may interest you to know that the debate around Balthasar’s understanding of Christ’s death and descent is being actively pursued at the moment in Catholic circles. The strongest criticism and some of the strongest support has come from women. Lyra Pitstick in 2016 attacked Balthasar’s interpretation as heretical, only to be countered in 2018 by Riyako Hikota. Traditionally the descent in Catholic circles was entirely victorious, as taught in the Catechisms. For Balthasar it was the complete isolation of Christ from God in Hell for our sakes, to be then followed by the ascent.
I will have succeeded in this talk if I have left you feeling a little confused. I am wanting to leave you with the thought that the idea of the abyss is alive and well psychologically in our modern world, even at a popular level, as attested to by the likes of Jordan Peterson; and that this reflects a universal myth in the ancient world of descent into the underworld followed by an ascent; and that the Church from its earliest days attested to this experience for Christ, but with significant differences from the myth and with some claim to historical certainty. That the netherworld or place of the dead was a real place somewhere was assumed. With many variations, this descent was seen as triumphant, followed by the resurrection. Not so for Calvin and Balthasar.
For them the descent was dark and horrific, redeemed by the ascent.
Another significant Protestant thinker who is reflecting on all this is Matthew Emerson. Let him have the last say, and I intentionally emphasize the last sentence.
Although the doctrine, and even the event itself, is questioned today, it is clear that the early Christian theologians, and subsequently most of historic Christianity, have affirmed that Jesus descended to the dead and accomplished something there. The question throughout the history of doctrine has been what exactly Christ accomplished in his descent.(Emerson)
Like the atonement, it is still an open question.
In my next talk, I am going to suggest what that accomplishment might have been. This suggestion comes directly out of my own experience that started me on my journey with God, and my reading of our modern world.
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