The Gates of Hades (16:18)
The phrase ‘Gates of Hades’ is the Greek equivalent to the ‘gates of
Sheol’ (or ‘gates of death,’ e.g. Job 38:17; Ps 9:13–14; Wis Sol 1:13). Thus it
refers to the undifferentiated realm of the dead, the underworld, or, more
specifically, death’s destroying power (cf. Rev 6:8; 20:13–14). Some
commentators identify Hades with the Greek Tartarus, that section of the
underworld reserved for the punishment of the wicked (e.g. Hilary of Poitiers;
Jerome; Erasmus). Early English translations (e.g. Wycliffe Bible; AV;
Douay‐Rheims) opt for the potentially misleading ‘gates of hell,’ i.e. the
place of eternal punishment for the wicked. The ethics, and politics, of
translation is acutely raised by the Kenyan Gĩkũyũ version of Matthew, produced
by colonial missionaries. For ‘Hades’ they used the Gĩkũyũ equivalent ‘the
abode of spirits,’ understood negatively so as to undermine positive indigenous
beliefs about the ancestors (Kinyua 2015: 17).
Jesus’ promise to Peter that these gates will not prevail against ‘it’
(literally ‘her,’ Greek autēn) is
ambiguous. The feminine pronoun could refer to the ‘rock,’ a position espoused
by Ephrem the Syrian, Origen, and Ambrose, and in the modern period by Adolf
von Harnack (for references, see Luz 2001:363–364; also Robinson 1984). In this
case, it is a promise that Peter and the other apostles would be preserved from
death, a view already dismissed by Jerome, who sees it contradicted by their
subsequent martyrdoms. More commonly, it is understood as a promise that the
gates of Hades will not have the upper hand against the church. Erasmus sums it
up well. Christ will so fortify his church, i.e. his house and palace, ‘that no
force of the Tartarean kingdom will be able to take it by storm’ (Erasmus
2008:246). This view is reflected in the popular hymn ‘Onward Christian
Soldiers’ by the nineteenth‐century Anglican priest Sabine Baring‐Gould:
Gates of hell can never
Gainst the Church prevail,
We have Christ’s own promise,
And that cannot fail.
Martin Luther is more circumspect. Christ’s promise refers to the power
of the devil being ineffective against the church, but only when it ‘stands
firm in faith and without sin’ (in Ramm 1962: 214; a similar view is expressed
in the eleventh century by Theophylact).
Some also offer a figurative interpretation of the phrase. For Jerome
(following Origen), the ‘gates of Hades’ signifies ‘vices and sins,’ or
heretical doctrines which lead people into Tartarus (Jerome 2008: 192).
Augustine similarly understands heresies (On
the Creed 14; also Theodoret of Cyrus, Ep.
141), while Augustine’s mentor Ambrose, in his commentary on the Lucan
parallel, gives the phrase a moral meaning: fornication, apostasy, and mortal
sin (Taheny 1961:22). (Ian Boxall, Matthew through the Centuries [Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley
Blackwell, 2019], 254-55)
