Collateral Bloggage

Since I read 1 Peter this week, I thought I’d muse a bit on one of the more enigmatic passages you’re likely to read anywhere in the Scriptures.

I’ll tell you right off the bat here that I don’t really know what this passage means. I know of a few theories, and I know which one I favor, but I’m open to a new and better interpretation if I find it.

By the way, I’m going for informative here, not boring, but I fear the bore-meter may spike a bit.  So if you’re not up for it, I’ll understand.

How about if I introduce the three interpretations I’m familiar with, then give their pros and cons?

The Harrowing of Hell:

First, we have the Harrowing of Hell idea. By the way, “Hell” here has the same sense as it has in much of the King James Bible (and the Apostles’ Creed). That is, it means “Hades” or the undifferentiated Place of the Dead (”Sheol” in the OT). Don’t picture flames and such (if you even believe in the flames and such, which I increasingly don’t).

Anyhow, the Harrowing of Hell idea is that Christ descended into the place of the dead, where everyone who had previously died was. Among them, of course, were the Old Testament Saints, like Abraham, Moses, David and John the Baptist. Why should they be in Hades instead of Heaven? Well, traditionally, Heaven wasn’t opened until Christ was resurrected or ascended, depending on who you ask (the source passage for this idea is generally Ephesians 4:8-9). By that logic, even the righteous who died before Christ were just in Hades (or Limbo) until Christ came.  (BTW, the First Circle of Dante’s Inferno may have a tie-in here.)

So, Christ preached to them, and those who were looking for him were then taken to Heaven.

Something to do with those troublesome Nephilim:

The next idea involves Genesis 6, that wonderful passage that speaks of the “Sons of God” and the fact that they took wives of the “daughters of men” and had families. This position requires that the Sons of God were angels who took on flesh, then spawned half-demonic children who became giants known as the Nephilim. In this interpretation, Jesus went and preached to the fallen angels or “Spirits in prison.”

Christ preaching through Noah:

Lastly, we have the interpretation that doesn’t require any particular supernatural travel by Christ. By this way of thinking, the “made alive in the Spirit” isn’t the key.  Rather, it’s the “In it he went” that’s the key.  That is, it should be read like this: “Christ was made alive in the Spirit.  This is the same Spirit through whom Christ previously had preached to Noah’s generation.”  And how did Christ preach to Noah’s generation?  Through the Spirit, and through Noah.

Analysis:

So, what do these have going for them or against them?

The major problem with the Harrowing of Hell idea is that the passage says that whatever preaching was done was aimed at the “disobedient,” which certainly wouldn’t bring to mind Abraham and Moses or any of the OT Saints. It’s also explicitly stated that the particular disobedient folks lived before the Flood.  To my mind, if the Harrowing of Hell is to be believed, it needs to be believed on other grounds than Peter’s writing.

The Nephilim interpretation rests on what I think is an erroneous interpretation of Genesis 6. I won’t go into the whole explanation here because I’ve dealt with it before. To sum up, though, there’s no reason to assume that the Nephilim were a unique production of demonic/human pairings. Why? Well, because then we’d have to believe they were destroyed in the Flood. Since they show up in the Bible again after the Flood, that just doesn’t work. So, I have a really hard time with this explanation. In fact, I can find nothing to recommend it other than its matching better with the idea of Christ preaching to the disobedient.  Besides, it attempts to explain an enigmatic passage by reference to another enigma.  In fact, I think this may be why many theologians hold to it.

So, we come to the final explanation, whereby Noah preached to his generation through the same Spirit who raised Christ. Now, Noah, if he preached at all (and he did according to 2 Peter), wasn’t very effective since his generation apparently didn’t respond. But basically what this explanation has going for it is that it shows that Noah’s generation was without excuse for their behavior and, ultimately, their destruction. If Christ truly preached through them through Noah, that ends the discussion as far as their guilt.

Conclusion:

If you hadn’t guessed, I favor the Noah interpretation.  To me, it’s the simplest explanation, and I dig simple.  What do you think?