With respect
to 1 Pet 3:19, while rejecting the interpretation that Jesus is preaching to
the spirits in Hades, Baptist Matthew Emerson wrote the following about why
many of his fellow Protestants have conflicting interpretations of this
passage:
One wonders if the modern evangelical notion
of “gospel,” focused almost exclusively on the salvation of individual souls
rather than on Christ’s holistic work in his death and resurrection, is to
blame for this consternation over 1 Pet 3:19. If we define the gospel first and
foremost as what Christ did, namely that he died, remained dead, and rose in
such a way that he atoned for the sins of those who believe and achieved victory over all earthly
and heavenly powers, then it is not such a problem that Christ “preached the
gospel” to the spirits. In fact, he did preach the gospel—the good news that he
has atoned for sin and thereby vanquished the powers of evil in his work. (Matthew
Y. Emerson, "He Descended to the
Dead": An Evangelical Theology of Holy Saturday [Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 2019], 63 n. 143)
Latter-day
Saint Scripture allows for both the preaching of the gospel including a proclamation of Jesus’ victory as part-and-parcel of
the preaching to the dead, particularly D&C 138, a vision received by
Joseph F. Smith. In this text, we read of how the dead were awaiting Jesus’ atonement
which would bring about their redemption from death itself, and such is part of
Christ’s “everlasting gospel” (vv. 16, 19), and in v. 23, we read:
And the saints rejoiced in their redemption,
and bowed the knee and acknowledged the Son of God as their Redeemer and
Deliverer from death and the chains of hell.
Responding to critics of Latter-day Saint theology about the meaning of κηρύσσω in 1 Peter 3:19
