Why did Jesus descend into hell?

Unless they regularly recite the Apostles Creed or their church happens to have a mural depicting it, most Catholics are not that familiar with the church teaching about Jesus' descent into hell. But it's an important belief, because it addresses the salvation of those who died before Jesus was born and of those who, in our own time, die without faith.

It might be hard to believe that changing just two letters at the end of an ancient word might have contributed to the loss of Christ's descent as a key tenet of Christian faith. But sometime in the fourth century, Christ's "descent to the dead" became the "descent into hell." The growing awareness of human sinfulness and original sin darkened the Christian view of human nature and occasioned the switch.

The descent into hell, the later version, is just another way of expressing that in the church and in Christ sinners are reconciled. But without Christ's descent to the dead, two key elements of faith are missing. First, that we humans can be saved and brought into the life of God even after we have died. This is a supreme consolation to those who worry about family members and friends who died outside the embrace of the church.

Second, though the 20th century witnessed the preaching of the Good News universally in space, i.e., around the globe, without Christ's descent to the dead, Christianity does not address universality of faith in time as well--both before the Incarnation and in the future. The descent reminds us that the Good News of God's love transcends time and will bring together all who have lived, who are alive, and who have yet to be born.

The loss of this teaching is great. These tenets prompt us to recognize how extravagantly God loves us and--knowing this--how reckless must our love be in our families, in our parishes, in the world, in imitation of Christ, whom God sends to the dead as well as to us.

So what might be done to reawaken this ancient story of God's bountiful love? Some churches have taken to professing "he descended to the dead" whenever they had previously professed "he descended into hell." And we might also include the descent in our recounting of the Paschal Mystery realized in Christ during the Nicene Creed: "He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead, and on the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures."

God's embrace is always wider than that of the church, and the profession of the descent to the dead proclaims again the gospel of God's loving embrace.

MARTIN F. CONNELL is a professor of theology at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.