Christ's Descent into Hell

"For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison . . ." 1 Peter 3:18-19

On 28 April, 1960 C. S. Lewis wrote to a correspondent:

"The N. T. always speaks of Christ not as one who taught, or demonstrated, the possibility of a glorious after life but as one who first created the possibility -- the Pioneer, the First Fruits, the Man who forced the door. This of course links up with Peter 1.III 20 about preaching to the spirits in prison and explains why Our Lord 'descended into Hell' (=Sheol or Hades). It looks v. much as if, till His resurrection, the fate of the dead actually was a shadowy half-life -- mere ghosthood. The medieval authors delighted to picture what they called 'the harrowing of Hell', Christ descending and knocking on those eternal doors and bringing out those whom He chose. I believe in something like this. It wd. explain how what Christ did can save those who lived long before the Incarnation." Collected Letters, Volume III, p. 1148

"'Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend--a man can sympathise with a horse but a horse cannot sympathise with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.'

'And will He ever do so again?'

'It was not once long ago that He did it. Time does not work that way when once ye have left the Earth. All moments that have been or shall be were, or are, present in the moment of His descending. There is no spirit in prison to Whom He did not preach.'" C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945, p. 114.

The Good News of Christ is that he has descended into and preaches right now to us in our individual hells; even now he offers us his hand to draw us up and out of our shadowy half-lives into his abundant and everlasting glory.

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