Letters 164.1–164.22

The question which you have put to me from the letter of the apostle Peter usually troubles me very greatly, as I think you are aware: how those words are to be taken as said about the underworld. I therefore send the same question back to you, so that, whether you yourself can, or you find someone who can, you may remove my doubt about it and settle it. But if I am able to do so first, when the Lord grants it, and can share it with you, I shall not defraud your love. For now, however, I shall set out what troubles me there, so that in the light of these points you may either think about those apostolic words yourself or consult whomever you find competent.

When he had said that Christ was "put to death in the flesh, made alive in the spirit," he at once added that in this very spirit he came and preached to the spirits who were shut up in prison, spirits who had once been unbelieving in the days when the patience of God was still waiting, in the days of Noah, when the ark was being built, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. Then he added: "which also now saves you, in a like form, baptism." It troubles me, then, if the Lord, when he died, preached in the underworld to the spirits shut up in prison, what good those alone deserved who were unbelieving when the ark was being built. For after the times of Noah many thousands of so many nations died up to the passion of Christ, whom he could have found in the underworld; I do not mean those who had believed in God, such as the prophets and patriarchs of the stock of Abraham, or, further back, Noah himself and his whole house, which was saved through water (except perhaps one son, who was afterward rejected), or others besides the progeny of Jacob who believed in God, such as Job, such as the city of Nineveh, and any others who either appear in the Scriptures or lie hidden in the human race; but I mean the many thousands of people who, ignorant of God and given over to the worship of demons or idols, departed this life from the times of Noah to the passion of Christ. How, finding them in the underworld, did Christ not preach to them, but only to those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah when the ark was being built? Or if he preached to all, why did Peter mention only those, passing over so innumerable a multitude of the others?

That the Lord, put to death in the flesh, came into the underworld is well established. For one cannot contradict either the prophecy which said, "For you will not leave my soul in hell" (which, lest anyone dare to understand it otherwise, the same Peter expounds in the Acts of the Apostles), or the words of the same Peter in which he asserts that Christ loosed the pains of hell, by which it was impossible for him to be held. Who, then, but an unbeliever would deny that Christ was in the underworld? But if it troubles anyone how the statement that the pains of hell were loosed by him is to be understood (for he had not begun to be in them as in bonds and then loosed them as if he had loosed chains by which he had been bound), it is easy to understand that they were loosed in the way that hunters' snares can be loosed so that they do not hold, not because they did hold. It can also be understood that we believe he loosed those pains by which he himself could not be held, but by which others were held whom he knew were to be freed.

But who these were it is rash to define. For if we say that absolutely all who were found there were then freed, who would not rejoice, if we could show this, especially for the sake of some who have become familiar to us through their literary labor, whose eloquence and genius we admire; not only the poets and orators, who in many places of their works showed that those same false gods of the nations were to be despised and ridiculed, and sometimes even confessed the one true God, though they worshiped those superstitions with the rest; but also those who said these things not in poetry or declamation but in philosophy; and also many whose writings we do not have, but in the writings of the former we have learned of lives praiseworthy in a certain way, so that, except for the worship of God, in which they erred by worshiping vain things that had been established for public worship and serving the creature rather than the Creator, in their other conduct (frugality, self-restraint, chastity, sobriety, contempt of death for the safety of the fatherland, faith kept not only with citizens but also with enemies) they may deservedly be held up for imitation? All these things indeed, when they are referred not to the end of right and true piety but to the empty pride of human praise and glory, themselves in a way become empty and are rendered barren. Yet by a certain natural disposition of the mind they so delight us that we would wish those in whom they were found to be freed from the torments of hell, either especially or with the rest, were it not that human feeling is one thing and the justice of the Creator another.

This being so, if the Savior freed all from there and, as you wrote in your inquiry, emptied hell, so that from then on the final judgment would be awaited, these are the things that not unreasonably trouble me in this matter, which usually occur to me as I think about it meanwhile. First, by what authority this opinion is established. For what is written, that at Christ's death the pains of hell were loosed, can be understood as referring to himself: that he loosed them so far, that is, made them ineffective, that he himself should not be held by them, especially since there follows: "by which it was impossible for him to be held." Or, if the reason is sought why he willed to come into the underworld, where those pains were by which he could not be held at all, since he was, as it is written, "free among the dead," and in him the prince and ruler of death found nothing that deserved punishment, then what is written, that the pains of hell were loosed, can be taken to apply not to all but to some, whom he judged worthy of this liberation; so that he is not thought to have gone down there in vain, without benefiting any of those who were held shut up there, nor does it follow that what divine mercy and justice granted to some must be thought to have been granted to all.

And concerning that first man, the father of the human race, that Christ freed him from there, almost the whole church agrees; and it must be believed that it did not believe this in vain, from whatever source it was handed down, even if no express authority of the canonical Scriptures is brought forward for it. Although what is written in the book of Wisdom, "She guarded him who was first formed, the father of the world, when he alone had been created, and brought him out of his offense, and gave him strength to rule all things," seems to favor this opinion more than any other interpretation. Some add that this benefit was also granted to the ancient saints, Abel, Seth, Noah and his house, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other patriarchs and prophets, that they were freed from those pains when the Lord came into the underworld.

But how Abraham, into whose bosom that godly poor man too was received, can be understood to have been in those pains, I for my part do not see; perhaps those who can will explain it. That only two, namely Abraham and Lazarus, were in that bosom of memorable rest before the Lord descended into the underworld, and that it was said to that rich man of these two only, "Between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, so that those who wish to pass from here to you cannot, nor cross from there to here," I do not know whether there is anyone to whom this does not seem absurd. Further, if more than two were there, who would dare to say that the patriarchs and prophets were not there, to whom so remarkable a testimony of righteousness and piety is borne in the Scripture of God? What benefit, then, he who loosed the pains of hell conferred on them, who were not in those pains, I do not yet understand, especially since I have not been able to find the underworld itself named anywhere in the Scriptures in a good sense. And if this is nowhere read in the divine authorities, certainly that bosom of Abraham, that is, the dwelling of a certain secret rest, is not to be believed to be some part of the underworld. Although in these very words of so great a Teacher, where he says that Abraham said, "Between us and you a great gulf has been fixed," it is sufficiently apparent, I think, that the bosom of such great happiness is not a part and as it were a member of the underworld. For what is "a great gulf" but a chasm widely separating the things between which it not only is but is fixed? Therefore, if holy Scripture had said that Christ after his death came into that bosom of Abraham, without naming the underworld and its pains, I wonder whether anyone would dare to assert that he descended into the underworld.

But since clear testimonies mention both the underworld and its pains, no reason occurs why the Savior should be believed to have come there except to save people from those pains; but whether all whom he found in them, or some whom he judged worthy of that benefit, I am still asking. That he was in the underworld, however, and conferred this benefit on those placed in its pains, I do not doubt. Hence I have not yet found what he conferred, when he descended into the underworld, on those righteous who were in Abraham's bosom, from whom I do not see that he ever departed according to the beatifying presence of his divinity; just as on that very day on which he died he promised the robber that he would be with him in paradise, when he was about to descend to loose the pains of hell. Certainly, then, he was already even before in paradise and in Abraham's bosom by his beatifying wisdom, and in the underworld by his judging power; for where is the divinity not, which is confined by no place? Nevertheless, according to the creature which, remaining God, he became man by assuming at a certain time, that is, according to his soul, Scripture plainly declares that he was in the underworld, both foretold by prophecy and sufficiently explained by the apostle's interpretation, in which it was said: "You will not leave my soul in hell."

I know that some think that by the death of the Lord Christ there was already granted to the righteous such a resurrection as is promised to us at the end, since it is written that in that earthquake, by which at his passion the rocks were split and the tombs opened, many bodies of the righteous rose and were seen with him, when he rose, in the holy city. If these did not sleep again with their bodies laid down once more, it must be seen how Christ is understood to be the firstborn from the dead, if so many preceded him in that resurrection. But if it is answered that this was said by anticipation, so that the tombs are understood to have been opened by that earthquake while Christ hung on the cross, but the bodies of the righteous to have risen not then but when he had risen first, although, as I said, it was added at that point by anticipation, so that Christ may be believed without ambiguity to be the firstborn from the dead, and it was granted to those righteous immediately, with him going before, to rise to eternal incorruption and immortality; there still remains what troubles me: how Peter could say (and it was most truly said, when he asserted that through that prophecy not David but Christ was foretold) that his flesh did not see corruption, to which he added about David that his tomb was among them. For he would certainly not have refuted them by this if David's body was no longer there; because, even if David had risen earlier, at Christ's recent death, and his flesh had not seen corruption, that tomb could nevertheless have remained. Yet it seems hard that David should not have been in that resurrection of the righteous, if eternal resurrection has already been given to them, David, from whose seed Christ is so often commended, with such clearness and such honor. That too will be endangered which is said in Hebrews of the righteous of old, that God provided better things for us, so that they should not be made perfect without us, if they have already been established in that incorruption of the resurrection which is promised to us at the end, to be made perfect.

Why, then, Peter wished to mention only those to whom, shut up in prison, the gospel was preached, who were unbelieving in the days of Noah when the ark was being built, you see how obscure it is and what troubles me, so that I do not dare to affirm anything from it. Add to this that, when the apostle had said, "which also now saves you, in a like form, baptism: not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the appeal of a good conscience to God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, swallowing up death that we might be made heirs of eternal life, having gone into heaven, angels and Powers and Virtues having been made subject to him," he at once added: "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same knowledge, that he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sins, so as to live the rest of his time in the flesh no longer by human desires but by the will of God"; then he added: "For the time past suffices for having done the will of men, walking in lusts and desires and drunkenness, revels, carousing, and unlawful idolatries; in which they are astonished that you do not run together into the same confusion of excess, blaspheming. They will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead"; after these words he joins: "For this is why the gospel was preached also to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."

Who would not be troubled by this depth? He says the gospel was preached to the dead. If we understand by these those who have gone out of the body, they will be, I think, those of whom he spoke above, "who were unbelieving in the days of Noah," or certainly all whom Christ found in the underworld. What, then, does "that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit" mean? How are they judged in the flesh, which they do not have if they are in the underworld, or which they have not yet received again if they have even been freed from the pains of hell? For neither, if, as you say in your inquiry, hell was emptied, must all who were then there be believed to have risen in the flesh; nor did those who appeared risen with the Lord receive flesh for this purpose, to be judged in it according to men. Nor do I see how this can be taken even of those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah; for it is not written that they lived in the flesh, nor can it be believed that the pains of hell were loosed so that those freed from there should receive flesh to pay a penalty. What, then, is "that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit"? Or perhaps it was granted to those whom Christ found in the underworld to be made alive in the spirit through the gospel, although they are to be judged in the flesh at the future resurrection, so that they may pass through some penalty of the flesh into the kingdom of God? If so, why is this said only of those who once did not believe in the days of Noah, and not also of the others whom Christ's visitation found there, who revived in the spirit through the preaching of the gospel, to be judged afterward in the flesh with a passing penalty? And if we take it of all, the question remains why Peter mentioned only those who were unbelieving when the ark was being built.

This too troubles me: that those who try to give an account of this matter say that when Christ descended into the underworld, those penal places, like prisons, were emptied of those who were found there, because they had not heard the gospel, which was not being preached throughout the world while they lived, and they had just reasons why they had not believed what had not been announced to them; but that from then on those who despise the preaching of the gospel, celebrated and spread through all nations, will have no excuse; and therefore, those prisons having been emptied then, there now remains a just judgment, by which the stubborn and unbelieving will be punished even with eternal fire. Those who hold this do not notice that all who departed this life even after the resurrection of Christ, before the gospel reached them, can have this excuse. For it is not the case that, after the Lord returned from the underworld, no one has been allowed to go to the underworld without having heard the gospel, since so many have died throughout the whole world before this announcement reached them. All these will have the excuse which is said to have been taken away from those to whom the Lord, when he had come, is said to have preached in hell because they had not heard before;

unless perhaps it is said that these too, who died or are dying after the Lord's resurrection without the gospel having yet been announced to them, could or can hear it there in the underworld, so that there they may believe what is to be believed about the truth of Christ, and may also themselves have the forgiveness and salvation which those deserved to whom Christ announced it there. For his fame was not extinguished there because Christ ascended again from the underworld; for he also ascended from here into heaven, and yet by the announcement of him those who believe in him will be saved. For this is why he was exalted and given the name which is above every name, that at his name every knee should bow, not only of those in heaven and on earth but also of those in the underworld. But if we admit this opinion, by which it may be thought that people who did not believe while they lived can believe in Christ in the underworld, who could bear the absurd consequences, contrary to the faith, that follow? First, that we would seem to grieve in vain for those who have gone out of the body without this grace, and in vain to take care and urgently exhort people to receive it before they die, lest they be punished with everlasting death. Or, if only those believe uselessly and fruitlessly in the underworld who were unwilling to believe here when the gospel was announced to them, while it will benefit those to believe who did not despise here what they were unable to hear, then a more absurd consequence follows: that the gospel should not be preached here, since all are certainly going to die and ought to come to the underworld without any guilt of having despised the gospel, so that it may benefit them when they believe there; and to hold this is impious vanity.

Therefore let us hold most firmly what faith holds, established by the most firmly founded authority: "that Christ died according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day according to the Scriptures," and the other things written about him with most well-attested truth. Among these is also this: that he was in the underworld, and, having loosed its pains, by which it was impossible for him to be held (from which he is also rightly understood to have loosed and freed whom he willed), he took back the body which he had left on the cross and which had been placed in the tomb. But in the question you proposed about the words of the apostle Peter, since you see what troubles me, and other things might perhaps trouble us if they were discussed more carefully, let us seek further, either by thinking about these things among ourselves or by consulting those whom it is fitting and possible for us to consult.

Consider, however, whether perhaps all that the apostle Peter says about the spirits shut up in prison, who did not believe in the days of Noah, does not concern the underworld at all, but rather those times, whose type he has transferred to these times. For that event was a type of things to come, so that those who now do not believe the gospel, while the church is being built among all nations, are understood to be like those who did not believe then, when the ark was being built; while those who have believed and are saved through baptism are compared to those who were then saved through water in that same ark. Hence he says: "So also baptism, in a like form, saves you." Let us therefore fit the rest too, about the unbelievers, to this likeness of type, and let us not suppose that in the underworld the gospel was preached, or is still being preached, to make believers and free them, as if a church had been established there too.

Those who believed that Peter meant this seem to have been drawn to the sense that troubles you because he said it was preached to spirits shut up in prison, as though the souls which were then in the flesh and shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison could not be understood as spirits. From such a prison he desires to be freed who says: "Bring my soul out of prison, that it may confess your name"; this prison is elsewhere called the shadow of death, from which, not in the underworld but here, those were freed of whom it is written: "Those who sat in the shadow of death, on them a light has dawned." But to those in the days of Noah it was preached in vain, because they did not believe, though the patience of God waited for them through the time of so many years in which that ark was built (for its very building was in a way a preaching), just as now people like them do not believe, who, under the same type, are shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison, vainly watching the church being built throughout the world while judgment is imminent like the flood, in which all the unbelievers perished then; for the Lord says: "As in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man: they ate, they drank, they married, they took wives, until Noah entered the ark; the flood came and destroyed them all." But because that event also signified a future reality, the flood there signified both baptism for the faithful and punishment for the unfaithful; just as, in a figure not of an event but only of a saying, what is written of the stone by which Christ was signified foretold two things: a stumbling block for the unfaithful and a building for the faithful. Sometimes, however, in the same figure, whether enacted or spoken, two things signify one thing, as the timbers fitted together for the building of the ark signified the faithful, and so too did the eight souls who were freed in that same ark; just as in that gospel comparison of the sheepfold, Christ himself is both the shepherd and the door.

Nor should it hinder this understanding that the apostle Peter said that the same Christ preached to those shut up in prison who once did not believe in the days of Noah, so that we would think it is not to be understood this way because at that time Christ had not yet come. For he had not yet come in the flesh, as he came when afterward he was seen on earth and lived among men. Yet from the beginning of the human race, whether to rebuke the wicked, as Cain and earlier Adam himself and his wife, or to console the good, or to admonish both, so that some might believe to their salvation and others not believe to their punishment, he himself certainly came, not in the flesh but in the spirit, speaking in fitting visions to whom he willed, as he willed. And as for my saying "he came in the spirit," the Son himself, in the substance of deity, since it is not a body, is certainly spirit. But what does the Son do without the Holy Spirit or without the Father, since all the works of the Trinity are inseparable?

The very words of Scripture under discussion indicate this sufficiently, I think, to those who pay careful attention: "Because Christ," it says, "died once for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, put to death indeed in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also, coming, he preached to the spirits shut up in prison, who had once been unbelieving in the days when the patience of God waited, in the days of Noah, when the ark was being built." Now, I think, the order of the words is noticed: Christ, put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which spirit, coming, he preached also to those spirits who had once been unbelieving in the days of Noah; because, before he came in the flesh to die for us, which he did once, he often came before in the spirit to whom he willed, admonishing them by visions as he willed, certainly in the spirit, by which spirit he was also made alive when in his passion he had been put to death in the flesh. For what does "he was made alive in the spirit" mean, but that the same flesh, in which alone he had been put to death, rose again by the life-giving Spirit?

For who would dare to say that Jesus was put to death in the soul, that is, in that spirit which belongs to man, since the death of the soul is nothing but sin, from which he was entirely free when he was put to death in the flesh for us? For if the souls of all human beings come from that one which was breathed into the first man, "through whom sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed into all men," then either Christ's soul is not from there, since he had no sin at all, original or personal, on account of which death would seem to be owed to him (for he paid for us the death which he did not owe, he in whom the prince of the world and ruler of death found nothing; nor is it absurd that he who created a soul for the first man should create one for himself too); or, if it too is from there, he cleansed it in assuming it, so that he might be born of the virgin, coming to us without any sin at all, whether committed or transmitted. But if souls are not propagated from that one, and only the flesh draws original sin from Adam, the Son of God created a soul for himself as he creates souls for others, yet he did not join it to sinful flesh but to the likeness of sinful flesh. For he took from the virgin the true substance of flesh, yet not sinful flesh, because it was neither sown nor conceived from carnal concupiscence; mortal indeed, and changeable through the ages of life, as most like sinful flesh, yet without sin.

And therefore, whichever opinion about the soul is true (none of which I yet dare to affirm rashly, except only to reject that by which souls are believed to be thrust one by one into individual bodies as into prisons in accordance with the merits of I know not what previous acts of theirs), certainly the soul of Christ was not only immortal according to the nature of other souls but also neither put to death by any sin nor punished by condemnation, the two ways in which death of the soul can be understood; and therefore it could not be said in respect of it that Christ was made alive in the spirit. For he was made alive in that in which he had been put to death. It was said, then, of the flesh; for it revived when the soul returned, because it had died when the soul departed. He is said, then, to have been put to death in the flesh because he died according to the flesh alone, but made alive in the spirit because, by the working of that Spirit in which he used to come to whom he willed and preach, the flesh itself too was made alive and rose, in which he has now come to men.

Accordingly, what was said afterward about the unbelievers, "who will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead," does not imply that we must understand by the dead here those who have gone out of the body. For he may have called the unbelievers dead, that is, dead in soul, of whom it is said, "Let the dead bury their own dead," and the living those who believe in him, not hearing in vain: "Arise, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light"; of whom the Lord himself also says: "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." Accordingly, what Peter goes on to say, "For this reason the gospel was preached also to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit," does not compel us to understand it of the underworld. For this reason the gospel was preached in this life also to the dead, that is, to the unbelieving and the wicked, so that, when they believe, they may be judged according to men in the flesh, that is, in various tribulations and in the very death of the flesh (hence the same apostle says in another place that it is time for judgment to begin from the house of the Lord), but may live according to God in the spirit, because in this too they had been put to death, when they were held by the death of unbelief and impiety.

Whoever is displeased with this explanation of Peter's words, or, even if not displeased, finds it insufficient, let him seek to understand them as referring to the underworld. If he is able to resolve the points which I mentioned above as troubling me, so as to remove the doubt about them, let him share it with me too. If that happens, those words can be understood in both ways; this interpretation is convicted of no falsehood. As for the questions you sent earlier, except for the vision of God through a body, for which a greater work must be undertaken, I have answered as I could and sent it by the deacon Asellus, which I think you have already received. In your recent memorandum, to which I have now replied, you had asked two things, both of which have been treated, one at greater length and the other more briefly: namely, the words of the apostle Peter and the soul of the Lord. The copy of your letter containing the question whether the substance of God can be seen bodily as if in a place also went astray with us somehow and could not be found, though long sought; I remind you again, please do not mind sending it.