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Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Satan welcoming the damned people to his realm where he can torment them as if he were God's very own high executioner, doing His work for Him.

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In the tomb with the body and in hell with the soul, in Paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, wast Thou, O boundless Christ, filling all things.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Apropos of nothing, this prayer is spoken during the Great Entrance on Holy Saturday:

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In the tomb with the body and in hell with the soul, in Paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, wast Thou, O boundless Christ, filling all things.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Interestingly, in a number of Bible verses, Satan and the demons are the ones being tortured in the eternal fire. They're the tortuees, not the torturers.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
How can God be one in substance but three unconfused persons? How can God be transcendent yet also imminent? It might seem like a cop out but I would say, try not to think how, just wonder. Trouble begins when we start to think too linear.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
How can God be one in substance but three unconfused persons? How can God be transcendent yet also imminent? It might seem like a cop out but I would say, try not to think how, just wonder. Trouble begins when we start to think too linear.

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Originally posted by daronmedway:
Let me try to ask the question another way. Did the mighty resurrection and glorious ascension of the Son of God actually change anything, or was it just a mop up operation with objective soteriological effect? I ask because it seems to me that we're suggesting a sort of over-realised soteriology which doesn't actually require the real, historical, time-bound resurrection and ascension of Christ for the gospel to be effectual.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
2.15am begin sermon, ...
2.45am, I end sermon

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Why divide them and try to pinpoint as specific moment in time? It seems to me an all too linear way of thinking about the cross, resurrection, ascension and our salvation, and I'd even go so far as to say that it is positively unhelpful.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
2.15am begin sermon, ...
2.45am, I end sermon

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That can't possibly be right. Half an hour for a sermon? That's barely long enough to start warming up to the first point!

OK, that's also flippant.

But, on your "time table" I have a more serious question. Why knock on the door to the place of the dead, find it locked and then kick it in?

I've always been more inclined in my limited thought on the subject to have a view that is more like:

1) Jesus died. Really, truly, totally dead. And, he then experiences the same as everyone else who is totally dead. For people who consider the spirit or soul to be seperable from the body, a way to illustrate that is to say that his soul/spirit went to the place of the dead with all the other souls/spirits of the dead.

2) Jesus (or his soul/spirit) is then already inside the place of the dead. No need to knock down a door to get in, the nails knocked into his wrists were knocking enough.

3) Jesus bursts open the door from the inside providing a means for returning to the place of the living. It is the Ressurection that breaks that door. In so doing, he opens the way for others to follow him; he is the first born from the dead.

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Originally posted by daronmedway:

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Why divide them and try to pinpoint as specific moment in time? It seems to me an all too linear way of thinking about the cross, resurrection, ascension and our salvation, and I'd even go so far as to say that it is positively unhelpful.

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Well, IME, time is linear and my life seems to be inexorably panning out in a linear manner. YMMV. However, the gospel texts themselves testify to that reality: they start with the incarnation and birth of Christ and they move on through time to his death and resurrection and then finish with ascension. In fact, the whole bible seems to take time quite seriously One can only assume that this is because the order of events in time somehow matters.

I guess we can try to cut the gospel free from all constrain of time and history thereby creating some kind of mystical religion in which actual historical events are subsumed into something more akin to hinduism. But it wouldn't be Christianity.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I don't think anyone is saying that, daron. The only difference between us is that I don't see that the fulfilment argument excludes some kind of proclamation to the dead, or to fallen angels.

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Originally posted by daronmedway:
So, the proclamation was prospective and anticipative of the resurrection? Where did this incomplete gospel get its saving power?

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Originally posted by daronmedway:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Apropos of nothing, this prayer is spoken during the Great Entrance on Holy Saturday:

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In the tomb with the body and in hell with the soul, in Paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, wast Thou, O boundless Christ, filling all things.

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Nice. But how can an unrisen, unascended Christ do that?

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
This might sound ad hominem and please forgive me (in advance, in advance of linear time ... if it is) ...

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by daronmedway:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Apropos of nothing, this prayer is spoken during the Great Entrance on Holy Saturday:

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In the tomb with the body and in hell with the soul, in Paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, wast Thou, O boundless Christ, filling all things.

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Nice. But how can an unrisen, unascended Christ do that?

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What makes you think He can't?

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
What am I missing that daronmedway seems so able to see that the rest of us can't?

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by daronmedway:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Apropos of nothing, this prayer is spoken during the Great Entrance on Holy Saturday:

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In the tomb with the body and in hell with the soul, in Paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, wast Thou, O boundless Christ, filling all things.

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Nice. But how can an unrisen, unascended Christ do that?

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What makes you think He can't?

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daronmedway: I want to know why you think he can. Maybe you could convince me.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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daronmedway: I want to know why you think he can. Maybe you could convince me.

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He's Almighty. Duh.

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Alan Cresswell: That's an answer that is too easy. It begs a whole load of questions: If he's Almighty, why couldn't He just forgive us our sins? Why did Christ need to die and rise? What did it achieve? The NT authors in inummerable places state clearly that the death and resurrection of Christ (and incarnation, ascension etc) achieved something that could not have been achieved any other way. Why wasn't there another way?

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Thank GOD Angus! I've been saying it for years here to no response whatsoever. May be the time is right. You can have ALL the glory mate.

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I don’t think I deserve any glory – R T France can have all the credit as far as I’m concerned.

Having taken Hostly advice, I don’t think I’d better quote from the book I referred to as extensively as I’d like to. This is a pity, as France writes very logically and lucidly, and re-phrasing in my own words will only produce a less elegant version. However, here goes:

We need to be aware of the whole world of Jewish mythology which is foreign to 21st century minds, and Jewish apocalyptic writings often refer to the passage in Gen.6:1-4. According to such writings, these ‘sons of God’ were thrown out of heaven because of their sin, and imprisoned to await their punishment at the last judgement. Until then, they – or their offspring – were believed to be the source of evil on earth. In the passage in 2 Peter referring to the fallen angels they are linked to Noah and the flood, which is recounted in the subsequent verses of Gen 6. The extra-biblical books Testament of Naphthali (3:5) and Jubilees (10:5) also make this link (with the former stating that the flood came because of the sin of the fallen angels.)

However, it is the Book of Enoch that gives most detail about the sin, imprisonment, and punishment of these angels, which is covered in many passages in that book. There are several parallels between these passages and 1Pet.3:19-20, notably in Enoch chapter 12 where Enoch is given a commission to go and proclaim the impending punishment to the imprisoned angels. This is a remarkable parallel to the mission that Christ performed, as recorded in 1Peter.

France concludes this discussion with: “The evidence is more than sufficient to indicate that [in 1Pet3:19] ta en phulakē pneumata* must be the fallen angels who, according to tradition, sinned at the time of Noah, and are in custody awaiting their final punishment. To us the reference is obscure; to a church which knew and prized the Book of Enoch (as the author of Jude so evidently did too) it would need no explanation.” (New Testament Interpretation ed. I Howard Marshall. Paternoster, 1977 p.270)

On the subject (as debated in several posts above from Barnabas62, daronmedway, and Ad Orientem) of whether what was preached was the gospel, I don’t think that it was. The verb used is kērusso which means ‘to announce in a formal or official manner by means of a herald’** not euangelizō ‘to communicate good news concerning something (in the NT a particular reference to the gospel message about Jesus)'** The confusion on this is probably caused by older versions (KJV, RV, RSV) translating both of these verbs as ‘preach’, obscuring the difference between them. (cf. ESV which translates as ‘proclaimed’).

As for when this mission was performed by Jesus, there is nothing in 1Peter that indicates that it was in between his death and resurrection. Thus there is no conflict with Matt.12:40 as referenced earlier by daronmedway. I trust that shipmates can now appreciate why I refrain from saying the phrase of the creed under discussion.

A final comment on my approach to this sort of subject, for Evensong’s benefit if he or she is reading this as prompted by my post on another thread. Theologically I probably fit best into the ‘conservative evangelical’ category in regarding the Bible as the primary and definitive source for belief and practice. But in order to understand firstly what that primary and definitive source meant in its original context, I will use every scholarly resource – linguistic, literary, socio-cultural, etc. – that I can get my hands on.

Angus

* Original Greek script transliterated to Latin script
** Definitions from: Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains

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Originally posted by daronmedway:
I want to know why you think he can. Maybe you could convince me.

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Originally posted by daronmedway:
I guess the fact the the Apostle Paul said that unrisen, unascended, unglorified Christ would make Christians the most pitiable people on earth. That suggests to me that the bodily, historical resurrection achieved something concrete and objective that is crucial to the faith.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell
That's an answer that is too easy. It begs a whole load of questions: If he's Almighty, why couldn't He just forgive us our sins? Why did Christ need to die and rise? What did it achieve? The NT authors in inummerable places state clearly that the death and resurrection of Christ (and incarnation, ascension etc) achieved something that could not have been achieved any other way. Why wasn't there another way?

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