Those who enjoy listening to Choral Evensong, which I do on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from St. Thomas Fifth Ave, one of the last of the Anglican churches to preserve that great tradition of a boys’ choir, the majority having succumbed to a combination of liberalism, in abolishing boys choirs for reasons of political correctness (a fate destined to befall St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London next year, and its renowned choir next year, which is to be made co-educational on the grounds that it is somehow discriminatory, the existence of numerous celebrated exclusive girls’ choirs at many English and Welsh cathedrals, most notably that of St. David’s in Wales, not being enough to spare it from those feminists who cannot withstand the idea that pre-pubescent boys and girls are often shy of each others companies and in many cases prefer at least a degree of separation, and that the tradition of the boys choir is not in and of itself an offense to egalitarianism - indeed, St. Thomas Fifth Ave operates an excellent girls choir, which operates from a period between Trinity Sunday and Michaelmas, with the boys singing from Michaelmas through Whitsunday or Trinity), would have had the pleasure of hearing as the appointed New Testament lesson 1 Peter 3:18-19, which is one of several scriptural proof texts for this ancient doctrine, along with another important one in 1 Peter 4.
What the early church believed, like with the Eucharist, is simply literally what was expressed by the text:
1 Peter 3:18–19: "For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ..."
1 Peter 4:6: "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does."
From this, we can assert that our Lord descended into Hell not that He might be tormented (or at least, not merely, but I reject this idea altogether*), as Calvin suggested in a rare moment of direct contradiction of the New Testament on his part, a rare instance in which one can prove Calvin wrong on a textual basis**, but rather, that He might share the Gospel with those among the righteous who, owing to having died before His incarnation, did not have access to it and thus did not have access to the means of salvation, except in a few extraordinary interventions such as the salvation of St. Elijah by means of Assumption into Heaven.
Thus, if we adhere to the teachings of the early church, as opposed to the very unpleasant, and in this case, actually unscriptural, doctrine of Calvin, then we can rest assured that no one was denied salvation arbitrarily due to having been unlucky enough to not have been born before the Gospel was preached. This concept also connects with another Roman Catholic Scholastic doctrine, but this one more logical and less disagreeable than that of Anselm of Canterbury, the idea of Invincible Ignorance, that being that those who have no opportunity to hear the Gospel are not automatically damned because of it. While this doctrine is not to my knowledge formally asserted in Orthodoxy in a sophisticated manner, it is also not to my knowledge contradicted, although I would be interested to note the opinion of my most pious friends
@prodromos @HTacianas @FenderTL5 and
@dzheremi concerning the concept of Invincible Ignorance. I suppose the only technical objection that we might have with it would be that if the doctrine were interpreted too broadly, it would discourage the Baptism of all Nations as is commanded by Matthew 28:19 however, if it is adhered to in a manner consistent with the Harrowing of Hell and with a certain realism, that there are very few people, for example, uncontacted Amazonian tribes, and the North Sentinelese, who have perhaps not heard the Gospel by this time, and furthermore I think under Orthodox theology we are responsible for spreading it,*** that at least the idea of Invincible Ignorance might be considered a valid theologoumemnon, (theological opinion) even if it is not a doctrinal component of the Apostolic Tradition.
Additionally, the doctrine of the Harrowing of Hell ensures that all who are saved, it is made plain, are saved through the direct action of Christ our True God, the Word of the Father, who is revealed by St. Peter to be the savior not only of Christians but of the righteous Jews and Hebrews and the early prophets and anyone else who died before His incarnation and the Great Commission made Baptism in the faith accessible, so that all children and all decent people of all time have had access to His Gospel and the potential to benefit from it. This does not reduce, I should add, the privilege of Christians, for it is clear from the New Testament as a whole that it is a great blessing to have been born in the Years of our Lord, rather than in the truly horrible epoch that preceded His Incarnation. But the monstrous idea, which evangelist and fundamentalist preachers (for instance, Dr. Hal Lindsay) spent so much effort trying to work with as a basis for some kind of theological argument, that there exists an arbitrary chronological cut off, so that no one, however otherwise decent and worthy, from before Christ, could be saved, or worse, the idea that one could be saved without Christ, via the Temple sacrifice system of the ancient Hebrew religion and of Second Temple Judaism, which is clearly a typological prophecy of Christ and a foreshadowing of His sacraments, but not in and of itself efficacious, except through its connection to Christ, which introduces an unacceptable soteriological division into the Holy Trinity.
Thus, we find the true Apostolic doctrine as established not only in the first epistle of St. Peter, but of all the Apostles, as we also see in Matthew, for example, “ "And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, 'Truly this was the Son of God!'"
And this will be conveyed in a few weeks for those Byzantine Catholics, and also the small number of Eastern Orthodox, on the Gregorian calendar, and this year, some weeks later for the majority of Eastern Orthodox celebrating Pascha according to the Julian calendar, by the immutable sermon always preached at midnight on the Feast of the Resurrection, for no Easter sermon before or since has been as good, the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom, written most likely between 390 and 406 AD:
“ If any be devout and God-loving, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumph. If any be a good and wise servant, let him enter rejoicing into the joy of his Lord. If any be weary of fasting, let him now receive his reward. If any have labored from the first hour, let him receive today his rightful due. If any have come at the third hour, let him feast with thankfulness. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him in no wise be in doubt, for in no wise shall he suffer loss. If any be delayed even until the ninth hour, let him draw near, doubting nothing, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him not be fearful on account of his lateness; for the Master, Who is jealous of His honor, receiveth the last even as the first. He giveth rest to him that cometh at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that hath labored from the first hour; and to the last He is merciful, and the first He pleaseth; to the one He giveth, and to the other He bestoweth; and He receiveth the works, and welcometh the intention; and the deed He honoureth, and the offering He praiseth. Wherefore, then, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord; both the first and the second, receive ye your reward. Ye rich and ye poor, with one another exult.
Ye sober and ye slothful, honor the day. Ye that have kept the fast and ye that have not, be glad today. The table is full-laden, delight ye all. The calf is fatted; let none go forth hungry. Let all enjoy the feast of faith, receive all ye the riches of goodness. Let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom hath been revealed. Let no one weep for his transgressions, for forgiveness hath dawned from the tomb. Let no one fear death, for the death of the Saviour hath set us free. He hath quench by it, He hath led hades captive, He Who descended into hades. He embittered it, when it tasted of His flesh. And foretelling this, Isaiah cried: "Hades," he saith, "was embittered when it encountered Thee below." It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered. It received a body and encountered God. It received earth, and met heaven. It received that which it saw, and fell to what it did not see. O death, where is thy sting? O hades, where is thy victory?
Christ is risen, and thou art cast down.
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.
Christ is risen, and life flourisheth.
Christ is risen, and there is none dead in the tombs.
For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of them that have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.”
* The idea of penal substitutionary atonement was absolutely unknown in the early church, since it derives directly from the Satisfaction soteriology of Anselm of Canterbury, which was a Scholastic innovation of the Roman Catholic Church that one will not find in the Patristic corpus, for it derives from Medieval concepts of chivalry and the idea that God’s honor required satisfaction of the slight against it that our disobedience posed, a concept rooted in Western European feudalism that represented much of what I consider to be Dark about the Dark Ages in Western Europe.
** There have been innumerable debates concerning whether or not Calvinism is scriptural on this forum. It is my position, having once been Calvinist, and having great respect for Reformed theology, particularly in its more interesting insights, which have been shared with us on occasion by our friend
@hedrick , that, as a general rule, Calvinism does not contradict the Scriptural text but rather only contradicts Patristics, and then, only insofar as Calvin, lacking, I would argue, the benefit of more historical knowledge, dismissed substantial portions of the Patristic corpus as being in error and took the side of the Monergists and the Iconoclasts, essentially disagreeing with the Fifth and Seventh ecumenical councils, but not the the first Four, nor, in all probability, the Sixth (concerning Monothelitism; I have never seen any hint of Monothelite theology in Calvin), but in general Calvin had a reverence for at least some of the Church Fathers, and for those parts of Tradition he deemed as apostolic; it was rather the neo-Orthodoxy of Karl Barth which sought to set aside Church Tradition as the basis for doctrine, instead relying entirely on systematic theology, essentially, an attempt to use reason to determine dogma from a systematic logical evaluation of the texts themselves, much like the Karaite Jews did with the Old Testament using the Kalaam, one might argue. The problem with Barth’s neo-Orthodoxy is of course that it ignores the context in which the New Testament was written, which Patristics provides, through the study of ecclesiastical history and tradition, particularly liturgical tradition.
However, in the case of the Harrowing of Hell, this is one of those exceptions, since John Calvin was not infallible (indeed no human is; the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches do not recognize human beings as being infallible; Holy Tradition is infallible if correctly understood, because it acts as the means by which the Church, the very Body of Christ, guided by God the Holy Spirit, with our Lord, God and Savior the Incarnate Logos as its Head and High Priest, receives, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, those teachings of the Fathers which are correct, and thus there is a portion of the writings of the Saints we venerate, which along with the a few other materials, for example, the essential components of our Liturgical worship, is dogmatically infallible (but in the case of liturgy, not absolute or immutable, but amenable to regional variation and development to reflect cultural differences and so forth), but even Orthodox saints are known to make theological errors. And of course we do not regard John Calvin to be saint; he opposed Orthodoxy, falsely accusing us of idolatry among other doctrinal errors, but usually his scriptural interpretation was more correct than this (unless he is being misrepresented, which I have found, thanks to
@hedrick , happens with surprising frequency; Calvin does have a tendency to pleasantly surprise, although not to the same extent as Martin Luther, who I must admit thanks to the writings of my friends
@ViaCrucis @Ain't Zwinglian and especially my dear friend
@MarkRohfrietsch I have gone from somewhat disliking to regarding on very favorable terms, much like John and Charles Wesley, or St. Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague (who are officially venerated as martyrs by the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, being the first men widely regarded as Protestant or proto-Protestant to be officially venerated by the Orthodox.
*** in the case of uncontacted tribes, the Indian government prohibits evangelists access to North Sentinel Island due to a fear of infecting them with a disease; also they did kill the last evangelist who visited, however, I maintain that this kind of isolation is unsustainable as a public health strategy for that population, and their small number makes them vulnerable to being extinguished, and rather than simply leaving them and other such tribes uncontacted, it would be safer to set up special biologically secure hospitals and other facilities wherein their numbers might be increased through a breeding program while they are also indoctrinated in the Christian religion, for the benefit of their souls and bodies, for the meagre existence they presently eke out, where they are one famine, ecological disaster, genetic abnormality, infectious disease, or tsunami away from total extermination, and the complete loss of their entire cultural heritage, of which we presently know almost nothing, is not worth preserving, and just as the mentally ill and other vulnerable people can have their agency suspended for a time being for their own best interests, it likewise is in the best interests for uncontacted tribes to be brought into contact for purposes of a medical program of increasing their numbers, developing their immune system, giving them knowledge of the outside world, and also obtaining for our benefit a knowledge of their culture, before allowing them to return and live as they wish, but under conditions where their entire culture cannot be destroyed. However, given that the governments of India and Brazil and other countries do not allow this, which might be for the best due to the risks of corrupt or incompetent bureaucrats causing such a program as I describe to be implemented incorrectly, in such a manner that the uncontacted tribes might be infected with a disease, or otherwise be malnourished or harmed, we can still, due to what amounts to force majeure, rest assured that our God who is love has not forsaken them, owing to the concept of invinsible ignorance, just as He did not forsake the righteous ones who lived before His Incarnation, but rather did vouchsafe to ensure their access to salvation through faith in the only begotten Son and Word of God, Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.
