Friday, October 28, 2022

Simon Gathercole on Jesus' Descent into Hades in The Gospel of Peter

  

The Gospel of Peter, being roughly contemporaneous with Justin, Hermas, and Irenaeus, probably had a similar understanding of the preaching of the gospel to the dead and of its effects. Not much detail about the Gospel of Peter’s particular understanding can be gleaned from the bare question (εκηρυξας τοις κοιμωμενοις) and its affirmative answer (ναι), but three points can be made.

 

(1) Unlike 1 Pet 3:18-20, which places proclamation by Jesus to imprisoned spirits after his resurrection, the Gospel of Peter has it prior to the appearance of the risen Jesus. The fact that it is the cross that acknowledges the preaching may mean that Jesus accomplished it after his crucifixion (e.g., on Holy Saturday), although it may have been the first act of the risen Jesus before his appearance.

 

(2) The scope of the audience of the kerygma is not defined. It may have comprised patriarchs and prophets, and/or, given the outlook of the Gospel of Peter, righteous gentiles. However, some of the ambiguity in 1 Pet 3 about whether the proclamation is beneficial to the spirits is removed in the Gospel of Peter, the reference to those “asleep” probably implies temporary death from which they will wake up. They have “fallen asleep” (κοιμαομαι) rather than “perished” (απολλυμι). This is the conventional understanding of Christ’s descent in the second century—that Jesus makes a positive, saving proclamation.

 

(3) Clearly the divine question is not voiced because God was unsure of the answer. The dialogue is recounted so that the event can be publicly announced. It was a step too far even for the Gospel of Peter to narrate the harrowing of hell. The purpose of the resurrection appearance, then, is in large measure to announce that Jesus has brought about the salvation of the sleepers.

 

The reference in the Gospel of Peter, therefore, to the harrowing of hell is the clearest statement in the Gospel of how Jesus is “the savior of mankind” (4:13). As Robinson remarked, “No subject had a greater fascination of the early Christian mind than the descent of Christ into Hades and the Harrowing of Hell” Robinson and James, Gospel According to Peter, 25). This is certainly true for the Gospel of Peter. While the death and resurrection of Jesus do not appear to be themselves straightforwardly soteriological events, the resurrection is in the Gospel of Peter the occasion for the public announcement that this missionary journey has indeed taken place. (Simon Gathercole, The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2022], 313-14)