HistoricalChristian.Faith

Polycarp of Smyrna on the Intermediate State

Dates: c. 125 · Wikipedia
Summary: Polycarp of Smyrna (c. 69–155), a disciple of John writing to the Philippians, confesses that God raised Christ "having loosed the bands of the grave." The phrase quotes Acts 2:24, and on one reading of that verse it carries an early — if implicit — echo of Christ's victory over the realm of the dead.

Claims & evidence

God raised Christ, "having loosed the bands of the grave"

… who for our sins suffered even unto death, [but] "whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the bands of the grave."

— Epistle to the Philippians, ch. 1, historicalchristian.faith. Polycarp opens his letter by praising the Philippians' faith, which "bringeth forth fruit to our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered even unto death" and whom God raised again. The clause "having loosed the bands of the grave" quotes Acts 2:24 (Peter's Pentecost sermon). The wording matters: in the so-called "Western" text of Acts 2:24 the verse reads "having loosed the pains of Hades" (ANF's translators note here, "Literally, 'having loosed the pains of Hades'"), a reading that assumes Christ entered and was released from the realm of the dead. Most manuscripts, however, render Acts 2:24 more neutrally ("loosed the pains/bands of death"). So Polycarp's line is best read as a descent-assuming echo of Acts 2:24, not as an explicit teaching about Hades — it presupposes that Christ passed through death's domain and was loosed from it, without spelling out a doctrine of the intermediate state.

Notes

• Polycarp gives no developed account of the soul between death and resurrection; his witness is one phrase, leaning on Acts 2:24. Its weight depends on the textual tradition behind that verse — strong if the "Hades" reading stands behind his quotation, slighter if he echoes the neutral "death" reading. The honest claim is that the line is compatible with, and most naturally read as presupposing, the descent to the dead — not a freestanding doctrine of it. See the argument page on the descent to the dead.
• He does, in the same letter (ch. 9), locate the martyred dead "in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom also they suffered" — a passing note that the faithful departed are already with Christ, though again without a worked-out scheme of the interim state.
• Polycarp belongs alongside Ignatius of Antioch, his contemporary and correspondent (Polycarp forwarded Ignatius's letters), among the earliest witnesses whose resurrection language assumes Christ's victory over the realm of the dead.