HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
Dates: c. 235 · Wikipedia
Summary: Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170–235), in the discourse Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe (also titled the address to the Greeks concerning Hades), gives the most fully mapped early geography of the intermediate state. Hades is one subterranean place where the souls of all the dead — righteous and unrighteous alike — are detained until the resurrection, guarded by angels at a single gate. But it is internally divided: at the gate the souls part ways, the righteous "conducted in the light toward the right" to a luminous region called Abraham's bosom, the unrighteous "dragged toward the left" toward the fire. A "deep and vast abyss" fixed between them lets the wicked see the rest of the righteous — and the glow of the coming judgment — yet none can cross. This is a temporary detention; at the appointed day God raises the bodies themselves.
But now we must speak of Hades, in which the souls both of the righteous and the unrighteous are detained. Hades is a place in the created system, rude, a locality beneath the earth, in which the light of the world does not shine … This locality has been destined to be as it were a guard-house for souls, at which the angels are stationed as guards, distributing according to each one's deeds the temporary punishments for (different) characters.
— Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe, in Fragments — Dogmatical and Historical, historicalchristian.faith. For Hippolytus there is a single subterranean Hades — not separate destinations — into which "the souls of all are detained until the time which God has determined." Angels keep it as a "guard-house," meting out only temporary recompense; the "lake of unquenchable fire" set apart there is reserved and as yet untenanted, "prepared against the day determined by God" — final punishment belongs to the resurrection, not the interim.
For to this locality there is one descent, at the gate whereof we believe an archangel is stationed with a host. And when those who are conducted by the angels appointed unto the souls have passed through this gate, they do not proceed on one and the same way; but the righteous, being conducted in the light toward the right, and being hymned by the angels stationed at the place, are brought to a locality full of light … And we call it by the name Abraham's bosom.
— Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe, in Fragments — Dogmatical and Historical, historicalchristian.faith. The single gate of Hades opens onto two ways. The righteous are escorted "toward the right," hymned by angels, into "a locality full of light" — Abraham's bosom — where "the righteous from the beginning dwell," free of toil, "neither fierce heat, nor cold, nor thorn," their faces "always smiling, as they wait for the rest and eternal revival in heaven which succeed this location." It is rest and expectation, not yet the final reward.
But the unrighteous are dragged toward the left by angels who are ministers of punishment, and they go of their own accord no longer, but are dragged by force as prisoners … forcing them down into the lower parts … And those who are so near hear incessantly the agitation, and feel the hot smoke … For a deep and vast abyss is set there in the midst, so that neither can any of the righteous in sympathy think to pass it, nor any of the unrighteous dare to cross it.
— Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe, in Fragments — Dogmatical and Historical, historicalchristian.faith. The wicked are forced "toward the left … as prisoners" to "the confines of hell," near enough to feel "the hot smoke" and to "shudder in horror at the expectation of the future judgment, (as if they were) already feeling the power of their punishment." Hippolytus reads the "great gulf" of Luke 16:26 into this geography: "a deep and vast abyss is set there in the midst," impassable from either side — the wicked can see "the place of the fathers and the righteous," and that very sight is part of their punishment.
Thus far, then, on the subject of Hades, in which the souls of all are detained until the time which God has determined; and then He will accomplish a resurrection of all, not by transferring souls into other bodies, but by raising the bodies themselves.
— Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe, in Fragments — Dogmatical and Historical, historicalchristian.faith. Against the Greeks (and Plato's transmigration), Hippolytus insists the interim in Hades is precisely interim: it ends not in the soul's reincarnation but in the bodily resurrection, when "to every body its own proper soul will be given again." The luminous right and the fiery left are anticipations awaiting that day — the righteous "wait for the rest and eternal revival in heaven," the unrighteous tremble before "the future judgment."
… because He was also reckoned among the dead, preaching the Gospel to the souls of the saints, (and) by death overcoming death.
— Treatise on Christ and Antichrist, §26, newadvent.org. The same subterranean Hades that Hippolytus maps in Against Plato is the place Christ entered at His death: "reckoned among the dead," He preached "to the souls of the saints" and "by death overcoming death." He even gives the descent a forerunner — John the Baptist, slain by Herod, goes ahead "that there too he might intimate that the Saviour would descend to ransom the souls of the saints from the hand of death" (§45). This Baptist-in-Hades conceit is distinctive to Hippolytus — no other Father has the Baptist preach as a forerunner among the dead, and Scripture says nothing of his activity after death; it is weighed on its own as the forerunner-in-Hades argument (assessment: weak — a coherent homiletical flourish, but a single-witness extension with no scriptural warrant). The descent it heralds, however, is the common tradition: the righteous detained in Hades' luminous "Abraham's bosom" are precisely those the descending Christ comes to ransom — making Hippolytus an early witness for the descent-to-the-dead argument as well as for the geography of the interim state.