A reader (a pastor who has faced these questions from his congregation) asks:
“Many people still question the use of the term ‘hell’ in the Creed. Some are even upset because for them it connotes eternal damnation and irreparable separation from God, despite the best efforts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to explain it’s reintroduction in the Creed replacing the term ‘the dead’. Even article 635 of the Catechism uses the term ‘death’ rather than ‘hell’. How can we help people to better understand this in light of the long popular understanding of ‘hell’ which, in all honesty was taught very vigorously by many clerics in the past?”
Thank you for your question Father!
Yes, of the many changes to the English translation we went through a couple years back, this is certainly one of the most jarring and probably requires the most pastoral attention because of precisely the issues you allude to. It is easy to get the impression that someone somewhere is reintroducing an approach to Catholicism that many of the faithful have experienced as painful in their past.
First of all, your parishioners are right: hell does connote eternal damnation and irreparable separation from God. Nevertheless, I want to argue that this is not some kind of move backwards into a kind of fear-mongering Catholicism. Rather, I think that careful attention to the context of this passage, and of its reintroduction to the liturgy, will be very helpful in seeing the intention of the Church here.
First of all, this is not a change in theology at any kind of official level. The theology of the Church is that hell exists, at least as a possibility, but that we don’t know for sure if anyone is there. Catholics of good will can disagree on how full or empty they think hell might be, but no one can teach either that hell does not exist or that we know for certain that any particular person is in it, and still be in line with the understanding of the Church, which holds out hope for the salvation of all.
(For more on my own views of hell, see the following: http://vox-nova.com/2011/05/11/why-i-believe-in-hell-and-purgatory-too/)
Rather than a change of theology, this is only a change of translation. The Latin original on which the translations of the other languages depend always said “hell,” and many other languages did as well. It was a particular approach to translating that got us “to the dead,” not a change in theology. The same goes for the reverse.
So much for the context of the new translation. The more important context is the context of the creed itself.
While the Church does not teach that any particular person is in hell, it does teach that one particular person has gone there at some point. Jesus has descended into hell. This is the context of the word “hell” in the creed. The creed is not talking about the eternal condemnation of human persons, but of the triumph of Jesus Christ over the powers of death and hell. In other words, the mention of hell in the creed is not a negative but a positive! This is about the defeat of hell by Christ, not a threat of condemnation to the people in the pews.
Now, the question remains: Why was the term “descended to the dead” ever seen as an appropriate way of conveying this message in the first place? Indeed so much so that it remains in the Catechism even after the change to the translation of the creed in the liturgy?
Death and hell have always been closely related in Christian theology. Indeed, this was the case in the Old Testament, even before Christianity. To see the intimate connection, let’s look at the following passage written by Joseph Ratzinger in his excellent book Introduction to Christianity:
In truth – one thing is certain: there exists a night into whose solitude no voice reaches; there is a door through which we can only walk alone – the door of death. In the last analysis all the fear in the world is fear of this loneliness. From this point of view, it is possible to understand why the Old Testament has only one word for hell and death, the word sheol; it regards them as ultimately identical. Death is absolute loneliness. But the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is – hell.
This brings us back to our starting point, the article of the Creed that speaks of the descent into hell. This article thus asserts that Christ strode through the gate of our final loneliness, that in his Passion he went down into the abyss of our abandonment. Where no voice can reach us any longer, there is he. Hell is thereby overcome, or, to be more accurate, death, which was previously hell, is hell no longer. [Emphasis added] Neither is the same any longer because there is life in the midst of death, because love dwells in it. Now only deliberate self-enclosure is hell or, as the Bible calls it, the second death (Rev 20:14, for example). But death is no longer the path into icy solitude; the gates of sheol have been opened. From this angle, I think, one can understand the images – which at first sight look so mythological – of the Fathers, who speak of fetching up the dead, of the opening of the gates. The apparently mythical passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel becomes comprehensible, too, the passage that says that at the death of Jesus tombs opened and the bodies of the saints were raised (Mt 27:52). The door of death stands open since life – love – has dwelt in death. (p. 301)
This is the same man who oversaw the new translation as Pope Benedict XVI! As you can see, not only is there an intimate connection between death and hell but, in the case of either translation, this line in the creed is about the victory of Christ, not an angry and vengeful God looking to damn people.
From a pastoral point of view, we might want to challenge our people to think of the reintroduction of this language as highlighting just how good the good news is. Hell is defeated! Alleluia!
