Heinrich Schmid · 45 of 78

§ 38. · Part 2

[8] HOLL. (768): “The state of self-renunciation lasted from the first moment of conception to the last moment of rest in the sepulchre.” QUEN. (III, 367): “The beginning of the exaltation (terminus a quo), and that through which it was attained, is the preceding passion and self-renunciation. The limit to which (terminus ad quem) is infinite glory and majesty (John 17:5; Eph. 1:20; Phil. 2:9, 10), here considered with reference to their employment and distinct degrees.”

[9] The doctrine, as here stated is not so clearly set forth in the FORM. CONC. This asserts, indeed, very decidedly, that Christ, already here upon earth, was in possession of the divine glory, even according to His human nature; but, along with passages in which it is said that Christ, during His life upon earth, renounced the exercise of this glory, there are also others in which a renunciation is not mentioned. To passages of the former kind belong the following: FORM. CONC. (Sol. Dec. VIII, 26): “From this union and communion of natures, the human nature possesses, since the resurrection from the dead, that exaltation over all creatures in heaven and on earth, which is really nothing else than that Christ entirely laid aside the form of a servant, and yet did not lay aside the human nature, but retains it to all eternity, and that, according to His assumed human nature, He was raised to the full possession and use of divine majesty. Moreover, He had this majesty immediately at His conception, even in the womb of His mother; but, as the Apostle (Phil. 2:8) says, ‘He humbled (exinanivit) Himself,’ and, as Luther teaches, in the state of His humiliation He possessed it secretly, and did not always make use of it, but only so often as seemed good to Him. But now, since He has ascended to heaven, not in a common manner, as any other saint, but as the Apostle (Eph. 4:10) testifies, ‘He ascended up far above all heavens,” and really ‘fills all things,’ and, everywhere present, not only as God, but also as man, He rules and reigns from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth.” FORM. CONC. (Ep. 16): “And this majesty, by reason of the personal union, Christ always possessed, but in the state of His humiliation He humbled (exinanivit) Himself, and, for this reason, truly grew in age, wisdom, and favor with God and men. Wherefore, He exercised this majesty not always, but as often as seemed good to Him, until, after His resurrection, He fully and entirely laid aside the form of a servant, but not human nature, and was invested with the full employment, manifestation, and declaration of divine majesty, and in this manner entered into His glory. (Phil. 2:6, sq.) Therefore, now, not only as God, but as man also, He knows all things, can do all things, is present to all creatures, and has under His feet and in His hand all things that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. (Matt. 28:18; John 13:3; Eph. 4:10.)” FORM. CONC. (Sol. Dec., VIII, 65): “But, in the state of humiliation, this majesty of human nature was for the greater part concealed, and, as it were, kept secret.”

To the second class (Sol. Dec., VIII, 73): “But this certainly does not occur in such a manner, that as man He knows and can accomplish only some things; just as other saints, by the power of the Holy Ghost, know and can accomplish certain things. For, since Christ, by reason of His Divinity, is the Second Person in the Holy Trinity, and from Him, no less than from the Father, the Holy Ghost proceeds, . . . undoubtedly, through the hypostatic union, the entire fulness of the Spirit has been imparted to Christ, according to the flesh, which has been personally united to the Son of God. Moreover, this exerts its entire power most freely in and with the human nature of Christ, and through it; not in such a manner as that Christ, according to His human nature, knows only some things and is ignorant of others, and can accomplish certain things yet cannot accomplish others; but even now, according to His assumed human nature, He knows and can accomplish all things . . . 75. Moreover, it is manifest from history that there was a sect called Agnoetae, because they imagined that the Son, as the Word of the Father, indeed knew all things, but that His assumed nature was ignorant of many things. This heresy also Gregory the Great refuted.”

The FORM. CONC. was still undecided in regard to this topic, because the Dogmaticians of that day were not agreed upon it. Some, following BRENZ (De divina majestate Domini nostri Jesu Christi ad dextram Dei patris et de vera praesentia corporis et sanguinis ejus in coena, 1562) asserted that Christ, even in the state of humiliation, was not only in possession of the divine glory, but also exercised it here, only not openly. (“He lay dead in the sepulchre, in humiliation; living, He governed heaven and earth, in majesty; and this, indeed, during the time of His humiliation, before His resurrection.”) The others followed CHMN. (De duabus naturis in Christo, 1570), who, it is true, also ascribed the possession of divine glory to Christ, but taught a partial renunciation of the use of it during His life upon earth. (“The human nature, in the first moment of the union, received and possessed the majesty, the fulness of the Deity, but during the time of the humiliation did not always exercise and use it.”) The FORM. CONC. did not deem it necessary to express a decided judgment upon the question. Later (1619), the question was again started, and a controversy arose between the Theologians of Giessen and those of Tübingen. The starting point was the omnipresence of the flesh of Christ (comp. § 33, note 20, near the end). The Tübingen theologians (L. OSIANDER, NIKOLAI, and THUMMIUS) were of the opinion that the omnipresence of Christ was so strictly an immediate consequence of the personal union, that the flesh of Christ was to be regarded as omnipresent from the moment of His conception; and they defined the omnipresence as an absolute presence (nuda adessentia) or propinquity to creatures, by which He was closely present to all creatures. They assumed, therefore, an absolute omnipresence (in the sense in which BR. (com. § 33, note 20) had denied it). This opinion, then, had its influence upon the doctrine of the state of humiliation and exaltation. Omnipresence, considered as a mere nearness, was necessarily predicated also of the human nature of Christ, as it was an immediate consequence of the personal union, and there could be no question as to the use or renunciation of it; and then, too, dominion could not readily be denied to the same nature to which uninterrupted nearness was ascribed. Hence, they maintained that there was a difference only in the manner in which Christ exercised this dominion, in one way in the state of humiliation, and in another in the state of exaltation. The only difference between the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation they held to be, that in the former Christ exercised this dominion in the form of a servant, hidden from the eyes of the world, and in the latter, openly and in a form corresponding to His majesty. (“They taught, that Christ in His humiliation governed heaven and earth, in the same way that He exercises this government in the state of exaltation, sitting at the right hand of the Father; with only this difference, that in the state of humiliation He covered and concealed that government under the form of a servant, but now, having laid aside that servile condition, He declares and manifests the same gloriously and majestically.”

According to this theory of the Tübingen Theologians, there was, therefore, no κενωσις (renunciation) in the proper sense of the word, but merely a κρυψις (concealment); for the divine dominion, according to this view, was exercised also during the state of humiliation by the human nature, only in a secret manner, not perceptible to men (hence also from the statement: “That Christ, according to His human nature, already from the first moment of His conception sat at the Right Hand of the Father, not indeed in a gloriously majestic manner, but without that and in the form of a servant”); and the assumption of the form of a servant and of human infirmities on the part of Christ, could not be explained, though the Tübingen theologians wished to do so, as such a real κενωσις, or self-renunciation. According to this theory, also, the same exaltation, which, according to the other, did not take place until after the resurrection of Christ, was assumed as existing at once from the moment of the incarnation (“That, most strictly speaking, there is one exaltation, and only one, most perfectly accomplished in the moment of the assumption, which (by reason of His essence) could not be greater and more exalted; but that the later meaning of the exaltation (i.e., the exaltation of Christ following His resurrection) was not the new addition of dignity and excellence, but the majesty previously given and communicated in the moment of the assumption and union, covered over in the state of humiliation, and veiled under the form of a servant, but in the state of exaltation abundantly revealed, uncovered, manifested, and demonstrated before the inhabitants of heaven and all other creatures”). And the only difference between the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation was this, that in the two the manner of the exercise of the divine majesty was different. (“That the exaltation, following upon the resurrection of Christ from the dead and His ascension into heaven, did not confer anything upon Christ, in His humanity, but only the mode of something, i.e., that Christ, restored to life as man, and exalted at the Right Hand of God, did not indeed attain the full use of the divine majesty in the government of the world, but merely received a new mode of government, viz., one majestically glorious and manifest; for, in the state of humiliation, He had been as to His person ignominious and obscure.”)

This view was opposed by the theologians of GIESSEN (MENZER and FEUERBORN), who adopted that of CHEMNITZ. The question at issue was this: “Whether the man Christ, having been taken into union with God, during the state of His humiliation governed, as a present king, all things, though in secret?” This question the Giessen theologians denied, and those of Tübingen affirmed. In the case of the former, the doctrine naturally assumed a different aspect in consequence of a different conception of omnipresence. They rejected absolute omnipresence; therefore they did not assume that Christ, according to His human nature, in the state of humiliation, was present to all creatures; but defined omnipresence as a divine work. (“They held that the idea of a work belongs to the definition of omnipresence and to its constitutive character, as they call it, and that the essential part is, that Christ, in His humiliation, did not exhibit Himself as present in the same sense as that held by the Tübingen theologians.” COTTA, Diss. II, in GRH., Loc. IV, 62.) According to their view, there followed from the personal union only this, that the real possession of the divine attributes belonged to the human nature of Christ; but the use which the human nature made of them they inferred, not so much from the personal union as rather from the divine will. The personal union did not, therefore, seem to them as if dissolved, when the human nature made no use of these divine attributes; just as they also believed that, without detriment to the personal union, they could assume that the divine nature of Christ was intimately present to creatures at all times, but not so the human nature. QUEN. (III, 187): “Although, during the whole period of the humiliation, the divine nature of the Word was present to all creatures, so that meanwhile the human nature, taken into union with God was not present, but was very far removed, even in its substantial nearness, from those creatures to whom the λογος was present; nevertheless, the union is not broken, the person is not divided, the natures are not separated.”

They also believed themselves, therefore, not to be hindered by the previously prevalent assumption, that Christ, according to His human nature, had for a season renounced the use and exercise of the divine dominion; and they maintained that Christ, according to His divine nature, exercised dominion over the world until the completion of His work of redemption, without His human nature taking any part therein. According to their theory, moreover, the exaltation was real (as indeed the positive statements of the Holy Scriptures seemed to them to demand) in such a sense that, not until it occurred, therefore not until the resurrection, did the human nature obtain the full use and the full exercise of the divine dominion; whereby, however, it was not meant to deny that the human nature partially, and by way of exception, as in the performance of miracles, made use of this dominion (which feature was made especially prominent by the Saxon theologians). The difference between the state of humiliation and that of exaltation they held to be this, that the human nature did not assume the full use of the divine dominion until the introduction of the latter. By this means, they thought to avoid the absurdities that followed from the views of the Tübingen theologians, according to whose theory it must be held that, at the time when Christ was lying in the cradle and in the grave, or hanging upon the cross, He was also, according to His human nature, filling all things and present everywhere and to all creatures.

After the decision (1624) pronounced by the Saxon theologians, which in the main was favorable to the Giessen theologians, those of Tübingen modified their views in this direction, in this one point, that they also admitted a humiliation in a literal sense, with reference to the functions of the sacerdotal office, in accordance with which, therefore, Christ, in relation to these, renounced the use of the divine glory during His passion and death, and in connection with everything that He did in behalf of the work of redemption. But this difference still continued between the two parties, that the Tübingen theologians, adhering to their former opinion, so far as the prophetic and the regal offices are concerned, regarded the humiliation as a mere occultation, and characterized it as only exceptional, when Christ, during His life upon earth, in certain cases renounced the exercise of the dominion belonging to His human nature; while the Giessen divines, in direct opposition to this view, considered it exceptional, when Christ, during His life upon earth, made use, on the part of His human nature, of the right of divine majesty that belonged to Him. The controversy was interrupted by the Thirty Years’ War, but the succeeding theologians adopted the views of the Giessen and Saxon theologians, as above stated, with the exception of some of those of Tübingen, who afterwards, indeed, attached no great importance to the controversy, but still favored the doctrinal tendency of their University (comp. COTTA, Diss. II, GRH., in Loc. Th., IV). A full discussion of this doctrine and description of the controversies connected with it may be found in QUEN. III, 389, sq. and THOMASIUS: “The Person and Work of Christ,” Part II, second edition, 1857, p. 429.

[10] QUEN. (III, 338): “The self-renunciation of Christ in general consists of two acts, viz., the abdication of the full and universal use of imparted majesty, and the assumption of the form of a servant. This form or condition of a servant, in turn, includes under it certain acts in which it was most clearly manifest.”

Other distributions than those given in the text are as follows: GRH. (I, 361): “Conception, the being borne about in the womb, birth, growth in age and wisdom, obedience in the form of a servant even to the death of the cross, which was followed by burial.” KG. (161): “Conception, birth, suffering, abandonment, death, burial.” QUEN., as KG., only he adds thereto: “Subjection to the Law in circumcision.” BR., as HOLL., only he omits circumcision.

[11] HOLL. (769): “We now are considering this not absolutely, with respect to itself, but in so far as it pertains to the state of self-renunciation, or, in so far as the flesh of Christ, although not of male seed, was nevertheless formed in the womb of woman; in connection with which it is certain that some infirmities occur.”

GRH. (I, 361): “From the fact which I have mentioned, that conception, and the being borne about in the womb, and birth from the womb of His mother, belong to the state of self-renunciation, if we reflect, it can be understood that Adam was a true man, who, nevertheless, was neither conceived in the womb nor born from the womb of a mother; therefore, in the same manner, the Son of God, without such a conception and birth, could have assumed human nature, but He wished in all things to be made like to His brethren, Heb. 2:17.”

[12] BR. (483): “In this” (birth) “the fact is especially considered that the fruit of Mary’s womb, having passed through the accustomed months of gestation, was thus at length brought to light, in accordance with the common lot of men. But the opinion of some, that Mary brought forth her son while her womb was closed, is uncertain; more certain and manifest are the lowliness of His birth and the humble condition and poverty of His parents.”

[13] HOLL. (769): “Circumcision is an act of most humble obedience on the part of Christ, by which He not only lay in a very low state of self-renunciation beneath the knife of the circumciser, but also was made subject to the divine Law, although He was the Lord of the Law, Matt. 12:8; Mark 2:28.”

[14] HOLL. (770): “According to which, Christ voluntarily subjected Himself to the care of His father, Joseph, and the commands of His mother, Mary, Luke 2:51.”

[15] BR. (484): “He was made subject to the magistracy and regarded equal or inferior to others; for the purpose of satisfying hunger and thirst, He ate and drank ; being wearied, He slept, and endured the troubles of labors and journeys, dangers, temptations, sadness, poverty, reproaches, etc.”

[16] BR. (484): “Especially the aggregation of afflictions which Christ suffered during the period of two days before His death; in connection with which the forsaking, mentioned in Matt. 27:46, is especially to be regarded. Manifestly Christ was forsaken, not indeed as though either the bond of the personal union were broken, or He had been altogether rejected from the face of God, never to be taken back again into grace, nor that He, actually and properly speaking, despaired; but that, in that greatest accumulation of evils, because of the sins of men imputed to Him, He, while bearing the part of all sinners, so felt the wrath of God, or that God was estranged from Him, that He felt no comfort within Himself from the fulness of the indwelling “Godhead. In this manner, also, that must be understood which is elsewhere said, viz., that Christ bore the pains of hell.”

[17] QUEN. (III, 360): “Its formal nature consists in the true, voluntary and local separation of the soul from the body (Luke 23:43, 46), the bond of the personal union meanwhile remaining unimpaired. From the dissolution of the soul from the body the dissolution of the union of the two natures in Christ is not to be inferred. For, although the natural union between the soul and body was broken, yet the personal union existing between the λογος and the assumed nature was not separated, but the divine nature in Christ remained truly united to the soul, which then was in heaven, and truly united to the body in the sepulchre. Even in death, the λογος, I say, remained a suppositum of parts physically separated, namely of body and soul. The entire divine nature was in the separated soul, and the entire divine nature was in the body left upon earth, without any division or distention, as either of these would conflict with a divine nature.” HOLL. (772): “The passion and death of Christ were true, not imaginary; voluntary, not forced; undertaken not by accident, but according to a certain plan and purpose of God; bloody and ignominious; vicarious; meritorious, and satisfactory.”

[18] HOLL. (776): “Ζωοποιησις, or quickening, is Christ’s liberation from death and the reunion of soul and body, by which Christ, according to His flesh, began to come again to life. This is not a peculiar grade of exaltation, but a prerequisite condition for preparing the subject, namely, Christ, to receive the full and universal use of divine majesty.”

[19] HOLL. (776): “The revived Christ exercised His divine majesty through certain clearly marked grades: (1) by descending ad inferos, He exhibited Himself alive to the wicked spirits and condemned men as the conqueror of death; (2) by rising again, He declared to the apostles, and, through them, to the entire world, that through His death He had made satisfaction to divine justice; (3) by ascending to heaven, He showed angels and blessed men that He was the conqueror not only of death, but also of wicked spirits, and the Savior of men; (4) by sitting at the Right Hand of God, He exercises most full and universal dominion over all creatures that are in the kingdom of power, of grace, and of glory.” As the exaltation was completed with the sitting at the Right Hand of the Father, HFRFFR. (339), instead of assuming degrees of exaltation, as others do, distinguishes (1) “the State of Glorification into which Christ entered after His resurrection, when, laying aside the infirmities of human nature, He was transferred to the condition of glorified bodies,” and (2) “the State of Majesty of Christ as a man, into which, after His glorious ascension into heaven, He was transferred, being placed at the Right Hand of God the Father.”

[20] QUEN. (III, 373): “The moment of time of the descent is, according to 1 Peter 3:19, the time that intervened between the quickening and the resurrection of Christ, properly so called.” To the assertion, that the descent preceded the resurrection, and therefore did not succeed the vivifying, HOLL. (668) replies: “A distinction must be made between an outward and an inner resurrection. The former is the going forth from the sepulchre, and the outward appearance to men, and is described in the Apostles’ Creed; the latter is the quickening itself.”

[21] HOLL. (778): “Christ descended into hell, not for the purpose of suffering any evil from the demons (John 19:30; Luke 24:26), but to triumph over the demons (Rev. 1:18; Col. 2:15), and to convince condemned men that they were justly shut up in the infernal prison, 1 Peter 3:19. The preaching of Christ in hell was not evangelical, which is proclaimed to men only in the kingdom of grace; but legal, accusatory, terrible, and that too, both verbal, by which He convinced them that they had merited eternal punishments, and real, by which He struck frightful terror into them.” To the question, “Why did Christ preach in hell to those alone who were unbelieving in the time of Noah?” HOLL. replies (ib.): “(1) Others are not excluded, but these are presented as monstrous examples of impenitence and unparalleled examples of divine judgment; (2) The Apostle especially named these to teach that even the antediluvians ought to have believed in Christ; . . . (3) That the Apostle might pass conveniently from the flood, as a type, to its antitype, baptism.”

[22] QUEN. (III, 371): “The descent of Christ ad inferos, figuratively taken, is understood either metaphorically, as denoting that most exquisite and truly infernal pain and anguish which, in the time of His passion, Christ felt and bore in His most holy soul, Ps. 16:10; or, by metonymy, as denoting the virtue and efficacy of Christ’s passion and death, Zech. 9:11 (as though the sense were, ‘Christ, by His passion and death, effected and purchased by His merit our deliverance and redemption from hell’). But neither signification pertains to this article.” HOLL. (777): “But, taken literally, the descensus ad inferos denotes a true and real departure into the place of the damned, inasmuch as Peter (1 Pet. 3:19) calls it a πορεια, or going, cf. Matt. 5:25; Rev. 18:2; 20:6; 2 Pet. 2:4.” The observation is added: “Although the descent of Christ ad inferos was true and real, yet the motion was not physical or local, but supernatural. For physical and local motion is peculiar to natural bodies; but the revived body of Christ was a glorified body. Nor was the movement successive; it was made, εν πνευματι, i.e., by divine power, which knows nothing of tedious efforts.”

[23] QUEN. (III, 372): “Christ, the God-man, and therefore His entire person (and hence not only according to His soul, or only according to His body), after the reunion of soul and body, descended to the very place of the damned, and to the devils and the damned manifested Himself as conqueror. For the descent, since it is a personal action, cannot be ascribed otherwise than to the entire person of the God-man. And, as in the Apostles’ Creed it is said of the entire God-man that He suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, so also it is said of the same that He descended into hell.” The descent is very naturally, predicated of Christ, the God-man, i.e., it is taught that Christ, the God-man, was for a time in hell; but the descent itself is predicated only of the human nature of Christ. “Christ descended into hell, not according to His divine nature; for, according to this, He was in hell before, filling all things through His dominion . . . . Therefore, Christ descended, according to His human nature. For the predications θανατωθεις σαρκ and ζωοποιηθεις, belong to the human nature alone.” (QUEN., III, 373.)

[24] The doctrine as here set forth belongs to the period of the later Dogmaticians. Until the time of the FORM. CONC., no explanation whatever was attempted of the phrase, “Descendit ad inferos,” which was found already in the Apostles’ Creed. The FORM. CONC., however, was led to make a statement concerning it, mainly in consequence of controversies originating with the Hamburg Superintendent, JOHN AEPIN (1549). According to him, the descent of Christ was “a part of that entire obedience which He rendered for our redemption.” (“The simple and plain confession of AEPIN: I believe that the descent of the soul of Christ to hell was a part of Christ’s passion, i.e., of the contests, dangers, difficulties, pains, and punishments, which, for our sake, He took upon Himself and bore; for the reason that, in the Scriptures, to descend into hell means to be involved in extreme and the deepest griefs, pains, and difficulties. I believe that the descent of Christ to hell was a part of His obedience, predicted in the prophets, and imposed upon Him because of our sin.”) The descent of Christ is, therefore, “one act of His humiliation, and, indeed, its final stage.” (“I believe that the descent of Christ belongs to His humiliation, not to His glorification and triumph . . . . The final grade of this humility and self-renunciation, and the extreme part of the obedience and satisfaction imposed upon Christ by the judgment of God, was His descent to hell.”) While the body of Christ lay in the grave, His soul descended into hell; He did not descend with body and soul after their reunion, before the resurrection, but with the soul alone (“Peter clearly teaches, Acts 2, that the soul of Christ, while His body rested in the sepulchre, experienced the pains of death and hell”), and “the descent was not a public act of victory and triumph, but an act of suffering, to which Christ submitted in the same sense in which He subjected Himself to the condemnation of death.” (“The testimonies of Scripture nowhere show, by even the least indication, that to descend to hell is to triumph, and that the descent itself is a joyful, glad, splendid, and manifest triumph. There is, therefore, nothing certain and well-established in the caviling of those who contend that the descent of Christ was nothing else than the fierceness, manifest force, and triumph of Christ, by which He utterly crushed, and, with violence, oppressed those in hell.”) “Christ has, indeed, destroyed hell for us, and robbed the devil of his power, not, however, by violent destruction or suppression, but by righteousness and obedience; as He conquered and destroyed death by His dying, so also did He the same to hell by His descent into it.” (“As Christ did not vanquish death by force and manifest violence, but in death by truly dying, so He overthrows those in hell, not by warlike or glorious violence, and the manifest oppression of the devil, but by righteousness, by truly dying, by descending for us to those in hell, and rising again from death.”) AEPIN constantly protests against the use of the Petrine passages in the discussion of the doctrine of the descent of Christ to the lower world . . . . As proof passages for this article of faith, in addition to the Apostles’ Creed, the following are applicable: Ps. 16:10; 68:19; 30:4; Hos. 13:14; Acts 2:27; Matt. 12:40; Eph. 4:8, 9; Rom. 10:6, 7.

A question of entirely different character was agitated, in 1565, by the court chaplain, John Parsimonius, in Stuttgard. “He called in question the locality of the lower regions. Hell was, in his opinion, no locality, no corporeal fire, no corporeal darkness.” (“Scripture, indeed, calls hell a place, and says that it is situated beneath and below us; but these expressions are to be understood not according to Aristotle and mathematically, but theologically and according to the usage of Scripture . . . . The terms, ‘place,’ ‘upward,’ ‘downward,’ ‘above,’ ‘beneath,’ ‘within,’ ‘high,’ ‘deep,’ and the like, are not terms of the spiritual but of the bodily world; and when Scripture speaks of spiritual things and those of the other world, it borrows terms from bodily and earthly things, and uses them not literally but metaphorically.”) “Hell is where God’s wrath is, and the perception of this wrath. Accordingly, the descent to hell cannot be a corporeal, local movement, but only a change of condition, according to the measure of the conception above given of the lower regions . . . . Christ did not, therefore, after being made alive in the grave, before the resurrection, descend in a corporeal and local manner to hell. How Christ descended, and when, this the Scriptures have not specially revealed to us.” (Holy Scripture wishes us to believe that Christ descended to those in hell, and freed us from the kingdom of Satan, and the perpetual torments of hell; it does not wish us to know when and at what point of time He descended to those in hell, otherwise it would have revealed it to us.”) “Christ, after His death, suffered nothing at all; but, during His lifetime, He endured the pains of hell and in this sense He descended, illocally, into hell. In either case, however, Christ exhibited Himself as victorious and triumphant.”