*Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this series are not intended as an official statement of CBTS or a uniform position of its faculty. This material is offered in the spirit of faith seeking understanding and to encourage further theological reflection. As more installments of this series are released, they will be linked here.
The Problems with a Netherworld for Old Testament Saints
In Hebrews 11:5 we read, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.” If Old Testament saints were not allowed to enter the third heaven and dwell before God’s throne until Christ actually died and rose again, how could God make exceptions?
11 And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. 12 And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more.
(2 Kings 2:11–12a)
Were Enoch and Elijah’s sins somehow fully paid for already in a way untrue of any other Old Testament saint? Such questions are well worth pondering. On the other hand, if the point was only that Enoch and Elijah were spared physical death, then Enoch and Elijah simply went to heaven like all other saints, but without the step of physical death. We can easily make the comparison to those New Testament saints who will be instantly glorified at Christ’s return, without the experience of physical death.
In Psalm 9:17, David declares, “The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God.” Notice here that Sheol is the destination of the wicked in a way that it is not for the righteous. Some respond that this is just about David’s enemies suffering defeat and an early death. On the contrary, this statement is broader than that narrow application, and it points to the aspect of death which is punishment beyond the grave for the wicked. Sheol here seems to be, at the very least, death in its full terror under God’s judgment, and perhaps akin to how Jesus speaks of the wicked in the torments of Hades.
What of the righteous in the Old Testament era? What was their hope immediately after death? David’s words in Psalm 23:6 are well known for good reason: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Here there is the sense that, once the days of David’s life are ended, things only get better, for then he goes to the Lord’s house, the heavenly temple, from which David will never be turned out. Consider also Psalm 49:
7 Truly no man can ransom another,
or give to God the price of his life,
8 for the ransom of their life is costly
and can never suffice,
9 that he should live on forever
and never see the pit.12 Man in his pomp will not remain;
he is like the beasts that perish.13 This is the path of those who have foolish confidence;
yet after them people approve of their boasts. Selah
14 Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
death shall be their shepherd,
and the upright shall rule over them in the morning.
Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell.
15 But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me.(Psalm 49:7–9, 12–15)
In distinction from the fate of boastful, wicked fools, the psalmist expects a quite different death. “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.” That word translated receive in verse 15 is the same verb which Genesis 5:24 uses for God taking Enoch. Enoch “was not because God took him.” The same word is used in 2 Kings 2 of the prophet Elijah’s translation to heaven. These two extraordinary events gave Old Testament saints the vivid hope of heaven. The same verb is used by Asaph in Psalm 73:24: “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.” He continues in verses 25–28:
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.27 For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
28 But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
that I may tell of all your works.
Again, as in Psalm 23, there seems to be the comfort of guidance in this life immediately followed by heavenly glory.
Then there is the account of Christ’s transfiguration. “And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:30–31) Remember that Moses had indeed experienced physical death, and the Lord had buried him (Deuteronomy 34:5–6). According to the compartmental theory of Sheol, at the time of Christ’s transfiguration, Moses should still have been awaiting his release from Sheol, not experiencing heavenly glory (let alone basking in a visible manifestation of Christ’s divine glory).
The compartmental theory of Sheol/Hades claims that Jesus promised the repentant thief that the two of them would that very day be together in the paradise section of Sheol, awaiting Jesus’ resurrection.
39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
(Luke 23:39–43)
The problem is that the meaning of the word paradise and its use throughout scripture refer to dwelling in God’s glorious presence, not to mere rest or blessedness elsewhere. In 2 Corinthians 12:2–3, Paul equates “the third heaven” with “paradise.” In Revelation 2:7, Jesus declares, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” This must be compared with Revelation 22:2, where the tree of life grows on the banks of the river of the water of life in the heavenly city.
Paradise is an anglicization of παράδεισος (paradeisos), a term in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek Old Testament) for a magnificent garden, often with special reference to Eden, the garden of God. What was the whole point of Eden? It was holy ground, where God walked and talked with man in unhindered communion. Paradise is hardly a fitting word for a place, however pleasant, which keeps people out of God’s glorious presence. But it is the perfect word for the heavenly place of full communion between God and his saints, Eden restored and perfected.
Here is the real crux of the issue: Did the Old Testament saints already have full forgiveness and remission of sins before Christ’s death and resurrection, or were they barred from God’s heavenly presence, though “saved on credit” (as some have put it)? Geerhardus Vos answers decisively (though I would apparently differ with Vos on the topic of sacraments):
The doctrine of the limbus patrum collapses together with the proposition that the Old Testament saints did not partake of complete salvation. If they had justification, regeneration, the full sacraments, then there is no reason at all for denying them salvation at their death. A local descensus ad inferos [descent into hell] has been refuted earlier.[1]
Indeed, Thomas Aquinas plainly wrote that this doctrine was required because the Old Testament righteous were still condemned for Adam’s sin. In Part One, Chapter 235 of his Shorter Summa, Thomas explains the limbus patrum as a punishment of sorts:
So His [Christ’s] soul went down to Hell as a place, not to undergo punishment there, but rather to release from punishment others who were detained there because of the sin of the first parent for which He had already made full satisfaction by suffering death….
When Christ descended into Hell, He freed those who were detained there for the sin of our first parent but left behind those who were being punished for their own sins. And so He is said to have bitten into Hell but not to have swallowed it, for He freed a part and left a part.[2]
Contrary to this explanation by Thomas, the apostle Paul declares that God put forward Christ Jesus “as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith… to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” (Romans 3:25) God did not reserve punishment in the afterlife for the sins of Old Testament believers, even for the sin of their father Adam. He passed over these former sins. The apostle then adds, “It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:26) In the very next chapter, Paul affirms that the Old Testament saints already possessed the same justification Christian believers have in Jesus. Abraham is given as an example of a completely justified sinner, as is David:
5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”(Romans 4:5–8)
If those who are justified now are without condemnation, even for the sin of Adam, then those who were justified in the Old Testament were not condemned for Adam’s sin either.
Consider lastly Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. Lazarus, a believer under the Old Covenant, died the first time before Jesus’ own death. And yet Jesus at that time clearly referred to Lazarus as one who believed in him and who therefore, though dead, already experienced eternal, resurrection life.[3] This goes far beyond the notion of a restful but confined existence separated from the heavenly presence of the living God.
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
(John 11:23–26)
Conclusion
The Old Testament word Sheol sometimes refers to the grave, sometimes to the intermediate state in general (that is, the disembodied condition which begins at death), and sometimes it includes a further reference to the place and condition of torment for the unrighteous after death. We have already seen Old Testament implications of a tormented existence for the wicked immediately following physical death; this doctrine did not reach its fullest clarity, however, until Jesus Christ came. Next we must examine the New Testament teaching on this topic.
[1] Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, translated and edited by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), 1104.
[2] St. Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas’s Shorter Summa: St. Thomas Aquinas’s Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2002), 303.
[3] This is not to deny the resurrection of the body from the grave on the last day, but rather to affirm that the disembodied spirits of the righteous dead have already entered the first phase of heavenly, eternal life (cf. “the first resurrection” in Revelation 20).
