Thursday, June 27, 2024

The descensus ad inferos in the Council of Toledo (AD 625) and the Council of Rome (AD 745)

In Robert Sungenis’s book, Not By Faith Alone, we read the following in a footnote:

 

The Church also holds as dogma that the souls of most Old Testament saints were released from “Sheol” (Hebrew: שׁאול) or “Hades” (Greek: αδης) when Christ visited this realm immediately after his death, in accord with the statement in the Apostles Creed “he descended into hell.” The descent into Sheol or Hades corresponds to other Scriptures which refer to the conscious abode of the dead, both righteous and unrighteous, before the resurrection of Christ, e.g., “he went and preached to the spirits in prison” (1Pt 3:19); “the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead” (1Pt 4:6); “the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:40); “Abraham’s bosom” (Lk 16:22-26); “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God...and live” (Jn 5:25); “the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life” (Mt 27:52-53); “he also descended to the lower, earthly regions” (Ep 4:9); “you and your sons will be with me” (1Sm 28:19); “consign to the earth below...with those who go down to the pit” (Ez 32:18ff); “he leads down to Hades” (Tb 13:2); “the dominion of Hades” (Ws 1:14; 2:1; 16:13). These interpretations were upheld at the Council of Rome (745 AD; Denz. 587); the Council of Toledo (625 AD; Denz. 485). See Catholic Catechism, ¶¶631-635. (Robert A. Sungenis, Not By Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification [2d ed.; State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Inc., 2009], 64 n. 90)

 

For those curious as to the Councils of Toledo and Rome, here are the relevant entries from Denzinger (I know Latter-day Saints are always interested in discussions of the descent of Christ into hades):

 

HONORIUS I: October 27, 625-October 12, 638

 

485-486: Synod of TOLEDO, begun December 5, 633

 

. . .

 

Trinitarian and Christological Creed

 

(Chap. 1) In conformity with the Sacred Scriptures and the teaching that we have received from the holy Fathers, we confess that the father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit <are> of one unique divinity and substance; believing the Trinity in a diversity of Persons and proclaiming unity in the divinity, we neither confuse the Persons nor separate the substance. We say that the Father <was> neither made nor generated by anyone; we affirm that the Son <was> not made by the Father but generated; we truly profess that the Holy Spirit <was> neither created nor generated but proceeds form the Father and the Son. However, our Lord Jesus Christ himself, Son of God and creator of all things, was generated before all ages from the substance of the father, and in the latter times, for the redemption of the world, he descended from the Father, he who never creased being with the Father; he truly became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, the glorious holy Mother of God, and he alone was born from her. The same Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Holy Trinity, receiving the complete soul and flesh of man but without sin, remains what he was and assumes what he was not: equal to the father in regard to divinity, less than the father in regard to humanity, having in one Person the properties of the two natures; for in him <are> two natures, God and man, not, however, two sons and two gods, but the same Person in both natures; he underwent his Passion and death for our salvation, not in the power of divinity, but in the weakness of humanity; he descended into hell to free the holy ones being held there, and, after having conquered the rule and domination of death, he rose again, ascended then into heaven, and, in the future, he will come to judge the living and the dead. Cleansed by his death and blood, we have attained remission of sins in order to be resurrected by him in the last days in that flesh in which we now live and likewise in the form in which the Lord was resurrected: some receiving eternal life from him for merits of justice; others, the sentence of eternal punishment because of their sins.

 

This is the faith of the Catholic Church. This is the profession of faith we conserve and hold; and whoever will guard it with great firmness will have eternal salvation. (Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash [43rd ed; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012], 166-67)

 

587: Synod of ROME, Session 3, October 25, 745

 

. . .

 

Descent of Christ into Hell

 

587 . . . Clement, who by his stupidity rejects the decisions of the holy Fathers and all the synodal acts and who introduces Judaism even for Christians when he preaches that it is licit to assume the wife of a dead brother and who, moreover, preached that the Lord Jesus Christ, in descending into hell, delivered from there all the pious and the impious, is stripped of all priestly function and bound by the chain of anathema. (Ibid., 204)