The Good News in Hades

But just as the proclamation has come now, at the fitting time, so at the fitting time the Law and the Prophets were given to the non-Greeks, and philosophy to the Greeks, to train their ears for the good news. So the Lord who rescued Israel says, “In an acceptable time I listened to you, and on a day of salvation I helped you. And I have given you as a covenant to the nations, so that you might settle the land and receive the inheritance of the desert, saying to those in chains, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’” For if the ones in chains are the Jews — the people to whom the Lord says, “Come out from your chains, you who are willing” — meaning men bound by their own choice, who have taken on themselves the “burdens hard to carry” that human rules lay down, then plainly “those in darkness” are the people whose ruling part of the soul lies buried in idolatry. [a]

For those who were righteous by the Law, one thing was missing: faith. That is why the Lord, when he healed them, said, “Your faith has saved you.” But those who were righteous by philosophy needed more than faith in the Lord. They had to leave idolatry behind as well. And the moment the truth was uncovered, they too repented of the way they had lived before.

That is why the Lord preached the good news to those in Hades. Scripture says as much: “Hades says to Destruction, We have not seen his form, but we have heard his voice.” Clearly it is not the place that heard the voice, in the words just quoted, but the people who have been put into Hades and have given themselves up to destruction — like men who have thrown themselves overboard from a ship into the sea. They are the ones who hear the divine power and voice. For who in his right mind would suppose that the souls of the righteous and the souls of sinners lie under one and the same sentence? That would be to charge Providence with injustice.

But how could it be otherwise? Do the Scriptures not show that the Lord preached the good news to those who perished in the flood — or rather, who had been put in chains — and to those kept “in prison and under guard”? And it was shown in the second book of these notes that the apostles, following the Lord, preached the good news to those in Hades. For it was necessary, in my opinion, that there as here the best of the disciples should imitate their Master: he was to bring to repentance the people who belonged to the Hebrews, and they the nations — that is, the people who had lived righteously under the Law and under philosophy, and had ended their lives not in perfection but in sin. It suited God’s ordering of things that men of greater worth in righteousness, whose lives had stood out, should repent of their offenses and be saved, even though they were found in another place, since they were admittedly among the people of God Almighty — each one according to the knowledge he had.

And in my view the Savior puts his strength to work as well, since saving is his own work. That is what he did, drawing to salvation everyone who was willing, once the message was preached, to believe in him, wherever they were. Now if the Lord went down to Hades for no other purpose than to preach the good news — and he did go down — then he preached either to everyone or to the Hebrews only. If to everyone, then everyone who believes will be saved, even if they come from the nations, once they make their profession there. God’s punishments save; they are discipline; they lead a man to turn. God chooses a sinner’s repentance rather than his death. And souls, even when darkened by their passions, can see more clearly once they are released from their bodies, since that paltry flesh no longer stands in the way.

If, then, he preached only to the Jews, who lacked knowledge of the Savior and faith in him, it is plain that — since God shows no favoritism — the apostles too preached the good news there, as they did here, to those among the nations who were ready to turn. And it is well put in the Shepherd: “So they went down into the water with them, and came up again. But these went down alive and came up alive, while those who had fallen asleep went down dead and came up alive.” The Gospel says further “that many bodies of those who had fallen asleep rose” — plainly because they had been moved up into a better rank. So a general movement and transfer took place through the Savior’s ordering of things.

One righteous man, then, differs in no way from another righteous man, as righteous, whether he belongs to the Law or is a Greek. God is not the Lord of Jews only, but of all people — and more nearly the Father of those who know him. For if living well and by the law is living, then living by reason and by the law is living too; and those who lived rightly before the Law were reckoned under faith and judged righteous. So it is clear that those outside the Law who lived rightly, because of the particular character of the voice, turned at once and believed when they heard the voice of the Lord — whether he spoke it in person or worked through his apostles — though they were in Hades and under guard. For we remember that the Lord is “the power of God,” and power can never be weak.

So I think it is proved: since God is good and the Lord is powerful, they save with a righteousness and a fairness that reach everyone who turns to him, here or anywhere else. God’s active power does not run ahead only here; it is everywhere, and always at work. So in the Preaching of Peter the Lord says to the disciples after the resurrection, “I chose you twelve disciples, judging you worthy of me.” These were the men the Lord wanted for apostles, having judged them faithful, and he sent them into the world to the people on the earth so that they would know there is one God, making clear by the faith of Christ what was going to happen: that those who heard and believed would be saved, and that those who did not believe after hearing would bear witness, with no excuse to plead — no saying, “We never heard.”

What then? Did the same arrangement not hold in Hades as well, so that even there all the souls, on hearing the proclamation, might either show repentance or admit that their punishment was just, because they had not believed? It would be an act of no ordinary caprice for those who departed before the Lord’s coming to receive either salvation or punishment — people who never had the good news preached to them and never gave any ground of their own, by believing or not believing. It is not right that they should be condemned without trial, and that only those who lived after his coming should have the benefit of God’s righteousness. But to all rational souls this word was spoken from above: “Whatever any of you did in ignorance, without clearly knowing God, if he comes to himself and repents, all his sins will be forgiven him.” For it says, “See, I have set death and life before your face, so that you may choose life.” God says that he set them, not that he made them both, so that the choice could be weighed. And in another Scripture he says, “If you listen to me and are willing, you will eat the good of the land. But if you do not listen to me and are not willing, the sword will devour you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.”

Again, David says it outright — or rather the Lord, speaking in the person of the holy man; and from the foundation of the world it is one and the same man who is saved at each different period, and who will be saved, by faith — “My heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced, and my flesh too will rest in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with gladness in your presence.”

So, just as the people was precious to the Lord, so is the whole holy people — including the man converted from the nations, who was prophesied under the name of “proselyte,” alongside the Jew. For Scripture rightly says that “the ox and the bear will graze together.” The Jew is meant by the ox, since an animal under the yoke counts as clean by the law: the ox both parts the hoof and chews the cud. The Gentile is meant by the bear, an unclean and wild animal. And this animal gives birth to a shapeless lump of flesh, which it shapes into the likeness of a beast with its tongue alone. For the man converted from among the nations is shaped by the word out of a beast’s life into gentleness, and once he is tamed he is made clean, just as the ox is. For example, the prophet says, “The sirens and the daughters of the sparrows and all the wild animals of the field will bless me.” Wild animals of the field are known to belong among the unclean animals — animals of this world, that is; for people who are wild where faith is concerned, and filthy in the way they live, and not cleansed by the righteousness the law requires, are called wild animals. But once faith in the Lord changes them out of being wild animals, they become men of God, moving on from wanting to change to actually changing. Some the Lord urges on; to those who have already made the attempt he stretches out his hand and pulls them up. For “the Lord is not afraid of anyone’s face, and he will not stand in awe of greatness; he made both small and great, and he cares for all alike.” And David says, “The nations are sunk in the ruin they made; their foot is caught in the trap they hid.” And again, “The Lord became a refuge for the poor man, a helper at the right time in trouble.” So the people who were in trouble had the good news announced to them at the right time. And that is why it says, “Declare among the nations the things he does” — so that they would not be judged unjustly.

If, then, he preached the good news to those in the flesh so that they would not be condemned unjustly, how can anyone think he failed, for that same reason, to preach it to those who had left this life before he came? For “the Lord is righteous and loves acts of righteousness; his face looks on what is upright.” “But the one who loves wickedness hates his own soul.”

If, then, all sinful flesh perished in the flood, the punishment being inflicted on them to correct them, we must first believe that God’s will, which disciplines and does good, saves those who turn to him. Besides, the soul is the finer substance, and it could never take any harm from water, the coarser element; its fine and simple nature makes it impossible to touch, and that is why it is called bodiless. But whatever is coarse, made so by sin, is thrown away along with the fleshly spirit that craves against the soul.

Now Valentinus too, the leading man among those who champion fellowship, writes as follows in his book On the Fellowship of Friends: “Many of the things written in the books held in common are found written in the church of God as well. For those sayings that come from the heart are empty. For the law written on the heart is the people of the Beloved — loved by him and loving him.” For whether it is the Jewish writings he calls “the books held in common” or the philosophers’, he makes the truth common property.

And Isidore, who was at once Basilides’ son and his pupil, writes in the first book of his Expositions of the Prophet Parchor, in these words: “The Attic writers say that certain things were signaled to Socrates by a spirit that attended him. And Aristotle says that all men have spirits attending them for the whole time they are in the body — taking this piece of prophetic teaching and carrying it over into his own books, without acknowledging where he had lifted the statement from.” And again, in the second book of his work, he writes this: “And let no one think that what we say belongs to the chosen alone was said first by any of the philosophers. It is no discovery of theirs. They took it over from our prophets and credited it to the man they count wise.” Again, in the same book: “For it seems to me that those who profess to do philosophy do so in order to learn what the winged oak is, and the embroidered robe on it — everything Pherecydes used as an allegory about God, having taken the images from the prophecy of Ham.”