The Apostles’ Creed is one of the earliest and most enduring confessions of Christian faith. Though not written directly by the apostles themselves, it restates an earlier version or encapsulates their fundamental teachings and has served for centuries as a baptismal creed and a standard of orthodoxy. It likely took shape between the 2nd and 4th centuries as a concise, catechetical statement of belief. Unfortunately, from then on, each Christian denomination introduced its own creeds, creating additional layers of doctrines that Christ’s apostles did not necessarily acknowledge.
Here is the traditional form (with minor wording variations across traditions placed in brackets):
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to hell [or: “to the dead”]. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic [that is, universal] Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
The phrase “he descended to the dead/hell” has been the subject of debate for centuries.
The Greek version of the Apostles’ Creed reads κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα, (“katelthonta eis ta katôtata“). Meaning, “descended to lower ones,” or “descended to those below.” The Latin version reads “descendit ad inferos,” where “inferos” (not infernos with an “n”) means “those below,” like the word “inferior.” So the Latin “inferos” corresponds pretty accurately with the Greek κατώτατα.
In the earliest centuries, when the Creed was forming, “hell” was understood in the sense of Hades or Sheol — the realm of the dead, the grave, the place where all souls go to rest awaiting the resurrection. To say that Christ descended there was simply to affirm that he truly experienced death in full and entered the common fate of humanity in order to conquer it from within (through resurrection). It wasn’t about Jesus entering a place of fiery punishment — it was about Him fully sharing in our human death and then triumphing over it.
The confusion came later. When the word ‘dead’ was first translated as ‘hell,’ it still carried the meaning of ‘grave.’ But over time, the English word hell shifted in meaning, coming to signify eternal torment in hellfire — something the original text did not intend. Over time, especially under Catholic theology of the Middle Ages, “hell” hardened into the idea of an infernal realm of eternal punishment. When the Protestant reformers broke away from Catholicism in the 16th century, they inherited this same translation and carried forward the medieval interpretation of “hell” as eternal conscious torment. Then, countless Christians began to see God as sadistic and cruel rather than compassionate and merciful. Small wonder so many today deconstruct their faith: they cannot reconcile God’s love with the idea of eternal punishment divorced from discipline and growth. Punishment without purpose is not justice; it is sheer sadism.
But this was not universal. Eastern Christianity, for instance, never quite read the text this way, continuing to emphasize Hades as simply “the realm of the dead” — the grave that Christ broke open in victory. And in the first few centuries, no Christian would have imagined Jesus visiting the furnace of torment that modern fundamentalists project onto the text. The Creed was never meant to depict God’s Son descending into a torture chamber, but to affirm that He entered fully into death with us — that He passed through the grave in order to shatter humanity’s coffin.
When we return to the Creed’s original meaning, a far more hopeful vision emerges: Jesus truly died, truly shared humanity’s common fate, and from within death itself broke open the path to resurrection and life everlasting:
“For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:21–22)
Who died because of Adam? All of us. Who will be made alive through Christ? All of us. And then comes judgment. No one is being BBQ’d in God’s furnace now; all who have died remain in the grave, awaiting the resurrection and the final judgment.
Who do you think better understood the gospel: the first-century Jews who actually knew Jesus personally, walked the same dusty roads, and spoke His language — or a 16th-century gentile European lawyer named John Calvin, sitting in his study and filtering Jesus’ message through Western legal categories? Honestly, the very comparison should make us smile. On the one hand, eyewitnesses who lived the story itself; on the other, a lawyer half a world and fifteen centuries removed, trying to systematize it into a courtroom framework. Which sounds closer to the heart of the gospel?
