The Harrowing of Hell

On Sunday it was my pleasure to teach the Abundant Journey class at Highland as they prepare for Easter. During the class I brought in some observations about the Orthodox Easter icons.

Interestingly, Orthodox Easter icons do not portray the empty tomb which is the typical representation in Western Christianity. Rather, the Easter icons of the Orthodox church depict the event known as the harrowing of hell.

The harrowing of hell refers to the events between Jesus' death and his resurrection. Specifically, the early church believed that after his death Christ descended into hell and rescued all the souls, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall. Jesus breaks down the doors of hell and leads the souls of the lost into heaven.

This is an obscure teaching in the Western church, but the bible hints at these events. For example:

1 Peter 3.18-20a
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago...

1 Peter 4.6
For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

Ephesians 4.8-10
This is why it says:
"When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men."
(What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

This belief that Christ descended into hell is also captured in Peter's Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 (v. 27, 31). Consequently, the early Apostle's Creed had the, eventually controversial, mention of the descent into hell:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
born of the Virgin Mary.
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand
of God the Father Almighty.
From thence he shall come again to judge the living and the dead...

The Nicene Creed, which followed the Apostle's Creed, removed the mention of the decent into hell.

In the Easter icons of the Orthodox church you see two common motifs. First, if you look at the three icons presented here, you see Christ standing over the broken gates of hell (hell is the dark pit at the bottom of each icon; in the first icon we even see two angels in the pit binding Satan). Next, we see Christ pulling two figures up out of hell. This is Adam and Eve, imprisoned in hell since their deaths. Imprisoned, along with all humanity, due to sin. Eve is generally depicted in a red robe.

Beyond iconography, the harrowing of hell is also the dominant symbol of Orthodox Easter liturgies. Again, in Western churches the empty tomb is what you will see depicted on Easter Sunday. But Orthodox services recreate the harrowing of hell. Specifically, the priest exits the church with a cross. The sanctuary is immersed in darkness and the doors are closed. The priest then knocks on the door and proclaims, "Open the doors to the Lord of the powers, the king of glory." Inside the church the people make a great noise of rattling chains which conveys the resistance of hell to the coming of Christ. Eventually, the doors are opened up, the cross enters, and the church is lit and filled with incense. Which is pretty cool. I would have liked an Easter service like this when I was a kid.

The Orthodox focus on the harrowing of hell helps fill in what is often left out of the Western focus on the empty tomb. That is, the empty tomb isn't very theological. Yes, it can be, but it needs some interpretation. What, exactly, is going on during Easter? What does the empty tomb signify?

The harrowing of hell gives us one answer. Specifically, we see Christ as the new Adam, rescuing humanity from its past and starting history anew. Here are some observations along these lines from Rowan Williams in his book The Indwelling of Light:

"The resurrection, then, has to do with the creation of the new humanity, where resentment and hostility are 'unfrozen'..."

"As [Christ's] hand grasps the hands of Adam and Eve, Jesus goes back to embrace the first imaginable moment of rebellion and false direction in human life...we are reminded that he goes fully into the depths of human agony. He reaches back to and beyond where human memory begins: 'Adam and Eve' stand for wherever it is in the human story that fear and refusal of God began--not a moment we can date in ordinary history, any more than we can date in the history of each one of us where we began to forget God. But we are always dealing with the after-effects of that moment, both as a human race and as particular persons. The icon declares that wherever that lost moment is or was, Christ has been there, to implant the possibility, never destroyed, of another turning, another future..."

"The resurrection, remember, is an introduction--to our buried selves, to our alienated neighbors, to our physical world."

"The Christ of this icon, standing on the bridge over darkness and emptiness, moving into the heart of human longing and incompletion, brings into that place the mystery out of which his life streams, represented in the mandorla against which his figure is set. The locked gates of death, the frozen lives cut short, these are overcome in the act of new creation which we are witnessing."