Commenting on 1 Pet 3:18-4:6 and the teachings on water baptism, Alyssa Lyra Pitstick wrote:
Christian Baptism as Participation in Christ’s Descent
In this context of the typology of baptism and the Descent, it is appropriate to flesh out how the individual Christian’s baptism unites him to Christ by being a sacramental participation in His descent. Sacramental liturgies are the preeminent mode of participation in the mysteries of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. In them, the Church is configured to her Head by the action of Christ in a real though veiled way. In virtue of this union, she participates in the perfect cult of glory He gave to the Father throughout the mysteries of His life and death, and which He continues to give.
In the most ancient liturgies, the events of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday were not commemorated separately. This liturgical unity reflected the unity of the paschal mystery itself: Christ’s death was not a simple end, but a passover to perfect life. Conversely, His resurrection is necessarily a resurrection from the dead. Given this intrinsic interrelation, the unity of these mysteries as emphasized by the single ancient commemoration is not fundamentally ruptured when the liturgies of the days of the Triduum and Easter each re-present and contemplate one aspect more than the others, as they do today.
The distinct feature of the liturgy of Holy Saturday, including the current practice of having no celebration of the Eucharist until the Easter Vigil, is the contemplation of the death of the Lord. By death is here meant not His sacrificial dying on the cross (commemorated on Good Friday), but His sojourn in the abode of the dead. What is this sojourn, and what is its significance for mankind? First, the profession that Jesus was buried or, more specifically, descended to those below indicates simply that Jesus was dead. He partook of the general human fate. The simplicity of this observation masks its importance: The confession of Jesus’ death is also a confession that He is really human, i.e., it is a specific affirmation against heresies that deny this fundamental truth of faith. More specifically yet, the profession of Jesus’ death means He descended to those who died before Him: The abode of the dead has no passage out until Christ Himself makes one. His descent is to open the way to heaven, to the Father’s bosom. Still more specifically, because He was perfectly just, He descended to the abode of the holy dead. Christ’s descent will then address the concern, motivated by charity, of whether any were saved from among those who died before Christ instituted the sacraments and established the Church, the ordinary means of salvation. At the same time, to those who hope to join the holy dead in the presence of the Father, death need no longer be a terror.
All that has been said thus far considers the true humanity of Christ, and the specific character of the general human fate of death He underwent. As Christ is also God, however, the significance of His descent cannot be limited to the normal possibilities of human fate: Christ is mankind’s Savior, and descends to the dead having redeemed mankind in the blood of His cross. Hence, in descending to the holy dead, He does so to apply to them the fruits of this redemption. Here another reason is seen why Christ descends in His soul only to the holy dead: In view of the redemption wrought by Christ, God gives every man the grace necessary for salvation, whether he died before Christ’s coming or was born after it. The fruit of salvation is then fitting only to those in whom the divine life of grace took root, lived, and flourished.
It is particularly significant that among these holy dead is Adam, the first human lord of creation but also the cause of the Fall that affected all creation. As a result of his sin, paradise was closed. If heaven is now opened to him, it is, as it were, a return to paradise (albeit an infinitely more perfect one): As suggested by the presence of the Good Thief in some artwork depicting Christ’s descent, this new paradise is wherever Christ is. The whole order of creation is re-established in virtue of the New Adam’s salvation of the old, and creation is set free from the slavery of Satan to celebrate the eternal Sabbath.
The incorporation of the individual man into this new order of creation, with its passage to heaven, is accomplished through baptism. The sacramental baptism of the New Testament is the Christian’s bridge from the prefigurations and shadows of the Old Testament to the eschatology already begun in grace, though yet to be perfectly fulfilled in the final resurrection. Baptism is a passage from death to life, with Christ and in virtue of the archetypal passage made by Him. The person baptized not only dies (sacramentally), but dies specifically the death of Christ and is buried with Him, in order that he may rise with Him. Thus baptism exhibits the same essential unity as the entire paschal mystery, as seen earlier in the quotation of Romans 6:3–4. From this unity derives the possibility and legitimacy of emphasizing links between baptism and the individual mysteries commemorated from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Generally speaking, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is the definitive origin of the sacrament and its efficacy: From the side of the paschal Lamb (Ex 12:46; Jn 19:36), blood and water flow forth as a purifying nuptial bath for the Church (Eph 5:25–27), the Bride of the Lamb (Rev 21:9). The effect of the sacrament is seen in connection to Easter Sunday: a new life in God, dead to sin and the world, free from death and the devil. The sacrament itself, however, is typified in connection to Holy Saturday. The Scriptural images for baptism are those connected in the Catholic exegetical tradition to Christ’s descent, because baptism is a sacramental participation in Christ’s descent. Here is the passage through the waters of death, the Exodus from slavery to freedom through the Red Sea, the entrance into the Promised Land through the waters of the Jordan where Jesus will be baptized, the washing of the bridal bath that cleanses the sullied image of God.
The catechumen who dies with Christ in baptism hopes to rise with Him in glory after the end of his earthly life. This desired passage to glory was made already by the holy men and women who were dead with Christ in the flesh but alive in the Spirit. By the sacrament he is about to receive, the catechumen passes from the general fate of mankind to that of Christ and of those conformed to Him by faith. Olivier Rousseau summarizes five principal themes of the primitive catechesis of the Descent that find their echo in the one baptized into Christ:
First, Christ descends into the realm of death, and likewise the catechumen descends into the waters. The waters of death, cleansed by Christ’s baptism, now mean death to sin.
Second, He illuminates the holy dead, and also the catechumen. Developed out of Scriptural language about the sons of light (e.g., Jn 12:35; Eph 5:8; Heb 6:4; 1 Thess 5:5), a very early name for baptism was φωτισμός (enlightening). Baptism as an illumination is imaged in the Easter Vigil, the premiere celebration of baptism in the liturgical year. During the Vigil, the Easter candle is lit for the first time and its base plunged into the water that will be used for baptism. The candle represents the column of fire that led the Israelites through the desert by night, so that, in the words of the Exultet, sung at the Easter Vigil, “The night will be filled with light as the day.” In fact, Christ’s triumphal descent into hell is one of the standard illustrations found on medieval Exultet scrolls.
Third, Christ vivifies the holy dead in His descent, and in baptism gives the catechumen the new, divine life. Like the holy dead awaiting Christ, the catechumen is disposed by faith and hope to receive the new life Christ brings. This life was glory for the holy dead and is grace for the baptized. Baptism is a return to paradise: Like the miracles of physical healing that are signs of the spiritual healing brought by Christ, resurrection from the death of sin through the life of grace means one is captive no longer to the death that entered the world through sin; baptism and the new life it brings thus are a prelude to the final resurrection of the body. Note here the eagerness, so to speak, of God to share the gift of His life: In virtue of Christ to come, men after the Fall did not have to wait for His actual coming before living again the life of grace. Similarly, although the holy dead awaited Christ’s descent, they did not have to await the end of time before entering essential beatitude. Likewise, the one living in grace now already has a foretaste of glory.
Fourth, Christ triumphs over the strong man in his own realm. Through His perfect human obedience unto the death of the cross, Christ reversed the defeat of mankind through the temptation of the devil that had death as its result. Consequently, He enters the realm of death as victor. The catechumen shares in Christ’s victory in the form of the catechumen’s renunciation of Satan, his pomps, and works; the baptismal exorcism; his reception of the ‘arms’ of God (Eph 6:12–18); and his being ordered by baptism to the ultimate victory.
Fifth and finally, Christ rises again, and so too the new Christian is raised from the waters. Christ’s resurrection reveals its ultimate archetypal form in the Ascension, when He goes to the Father, body and soul; the baptized who abides in the life of God will follow Him.
Thus, in its connection to Holy Saturday, the baptismal descent into the water symbolizes not only dying, but also death as the entrance into the abode of the dead and a sojourn there; the triple immersion recalls the three days before the resurrection; and the coming up from the waters in the new life of grace mirrors the liberation from death of those who belong to Christ. The one plunged into the water and blood from Christ’s side through baptism or martyrdom is cleansed in the nuptial bath of the Church.
Again we see why Christ liberated only the holy dead in the limbo of the Fathers: Only they had washed their garments in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7:14), and hence were fit to partake in the wedding feast itself (Mt 22:11–13). As the Descent was the efficacious application of the redemption wrought by Christ on the cross to the individual for the sake of eternal life, so is baptism. Conversely, as baptism is the passage to the new life of grace for the living united to Christ by faith, Christ’s descent meant passage to the new life of glory for the dead united to Him by faith. The profession of faith solemnly made at baptism and during the liturgical vigil of Easter is also relevant in this connection: Those who believe and are baptized reject the slavery of the devil and, being freed from it, are made sons and heirs of the kingdom.
The unity of the paschal mystery, the role of the Descent, and the participation of the faithful in it may be illustrated in a summary way by the Eucharistic liturgy of the Ethiopian Catholic Rite. In the Anaphora of the Apostles, the priest prays just before the Consecration,
He extended His hands to the passion; suffered that He might deliver (redeem) the sufferer who trusted in Him. He offered up Himself of His own will to the passion that He might overcome death, break the bonds of Satan, trample upon hell, lead forth the saints, establish the covenant and reveal His resurrection.
It is by participating in the mysteries of Christ, by being assimilated to Christ as one’s archetype, that one comes to bear the name Christian: Earlier, at the proclamation of the Gospel, the congregation offers praise to Christ, saying,
Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods?… You manifested Your might to Your people and You saved them with Your saving arm. You went into the nether world and set free those who were in captivity. You delivered us once again, for You came and saved us.
Hence to commemorate the Descent is to commemorate not only this mystery of Christ as it reveals His true humanity and divinity, but also its significance for the individual Christian in his baptism, for the larger Church in the salvation of the holy dead, and for the universe in general which, in those liberated by Christ, tastes the first fruits of redemption. (Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007], 42-46)
For more on 1 Pet 3:18-20 and baptismal regeneration, see the section discussing this passage and Acts 2:38 in the article: