What about the Apostles' Creed?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and Tom, could you explain Ephesians:4:7-9 [7] But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. [8] Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. [9] (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?
See All... to me? Is this the verse to which the Apostles' Creed refers?”

Tom: I’ll read Ephesians 4, starting with verse 7, “But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men, (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things).”

Dave: Now give us the Apostles' Creed referring to that.

Tom: I don’t have it in front of me, but it talks about on the third day He descended into hell…

Dave: That’s right, right.

Tom: …those verses which I had to memorize as a Roman Catholic.

Dave: Descended into hell. Well, what do you mean by hell? It sounds like the place of torment.

Tom: Well, that’s how we understood it as Catholics.

Dave: Is that how you understood it as Catholics?

Tom: Mm-hmm, yeah. You never knew that sheol might just be the grave, or the….

Dave: So He went into hell and He suffered in hell. That sounds like Kenneth Hagen or Kenneth Copeland who said that although Jesus on the cross said, “It’s finished...Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit,” and He said to the thief who believed in Him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” These people teach that, in fact, He went into hell, where He was tortured for three days and three nights by the demons. Satan dragged His emaciated spirit body up and down the corridors of hell. You even have a song—I won’t say who made it popular, but I think he’s actually basically a good guy, at least I thought so—but still, he popularized the song “Holiday in Hell,” and the demons are rejoicing because Jesus is dead and He’s in their clutches.

Tom: No, we never believed that as Catholics. We didn’t go that far, Dave, so this would be the word-faith people.

Dave: It sounds like—it sounds like it because He’s in hell, in the flames apparently…

Tom: Probably make a connection.

Dave: …suffering for sin, is that right? I don’t know what else hell would be.

Tom: I don’t know, either.

Dave: But if Jesus paid the full penalty on the cross, which He did, He said so, then He went to Paradise. What was Paradise? Well, it was Abraham’s bosom. Jesus told us about that, or we wouldn’t have known, at least in such detail.

Tom: So, Dave, let me interject this. So, the lower parts of the earth—is this what you’re saying could be paradise? Is this Abraham’s bosom?

Dave: It was.

Tom: Just so we can make a distinction here—some people would say, “No, we’re just talking about how He was put in the grave,” but would you go beyond that?

Dave: Tom, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Paradise and Hades, the area of torment, were somehow in the bowels of the earth. I think that would be more a figure of speech. I don’t know where it would be. I don’t think it would have necessarily some geographical location, a physical location, because these are spirit beings. These are the souls of spirits of the dead. Their bodies are in the grave. And although the rich man says, “Please send Lazarus to put a drop of water on my tongue,” his tongue was in the grave, and he doesn’t know he’s in spiritual torment. And he still is, as he was in the physical world, trying to satisfy a spiritual thirst with physical food and water and alcohol, sex, and orgies or whatever. But, Tom, certainly that Apostles' Creed, or the Nicene Creed, certainly needed some clarification. Maybe people at that time understood what it meant. And I can’t recall exactly what they thought, but I would rather think that they meant He went to the place of torment suffering for our sins. Simply not true. As we just mentioned, He said, “It is finished—Tetelestai, paid in full." And He told the thief, “You will be with me in paradise.” And He said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” But Hagen and Copeland and these other men that follow this teaching on TBN and Paul Crouch—does he believe it? I don’t know, apparently he at least has them there and they teach it there, have taught it there—say, “No, he ended up in the hands of Satan.” But Jesus said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” He said, “It is finished.” So this is what we’ll take.

So the Apostle’s Creed, at the very least, is misleading without a clarification of what it means by “he descended into hell.” What does that mean? Well, He went into the place of the dead, because at that time, whether they were believers or unbelievers, no one entered into heaven. Now, there would be a couple of exceptions. There would be Enoch.

Tom: Yep, right.

Dave: And then Elijah, taken up to heaven, it says, in a flaming chariot. But all the rest were held in a place called Paradise, or Abraham’s Bosom. And they were there—as confined to that, their souls—until Christ paid the full penalty for our sins, and He went into that place, it says in Peter, that He preached the gospel to them. And I would take it that those in the other part of this who were in torment, who were suffering, they could hear this, because Christ says there was a conversation going back and forth. Now, not that everybody was talking to everybody else. I don’t think so. But at least that was possible. God allowed the rich man to be able to see what was going on. I don’t think everyone could see that.

Tom: Right. But there was no opportunity to respond to the gospel.

Dave: Oh no, and there’s no way that anyone could pass from one to the other as Abraham very clearly said. So at the least it’s misleading. Christ did not sink into the place of the damned. He paid the penalty on the cross. So I could not repeat conscientiously, biblically, the Apostle’s Creed. Furthermore, it doesn’t tell us that He paid the penalty for the sins of the world. It’s not biblical. You will not find the gospel in any of these creeds. And yet people say,  “Oh, Protestants and Catholics, oh we agree on the creeds.” Well, there’s not much to agree on, because it leaves out a great deal that is important.

Tom: The essentials for salvation.

Dave: Right.