- Feb 5, 2002
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All the dungeons of death have been thrown open by the Lord of Life.
What is the bottom line of Christian faith? Is there an essential element, the expression of which says everything? And if so, is it reasonable to expect people living today to believe it?
These were questions that a young German professor by the name of Josef Ratzinger wrestled with in the summer of 1967, laying them before his students in a series of lectures which later became a famous book called Introduction To Christianity. A book so captivating that on the strength of its argument Pope Paul VI practically made him a bishop on the spot, thereupon setting in motion a series of elevations that would eventuate in his becoming pope — Benedict XVI.
While I cannot speak for others concerning the impact the book had on their lives, it certainly produced a great sea change in my own, turning my head in a definite theological direction, one from which I have never looked back.
What particularly moved me about the book was the section in which he undertook to explain what is surely the strangest article of the Church’s faith, namely, the Descent of Christ into Hell. Of the 12 articles in the creed, there is none so dark nor so deep. The fact that it is situated square in the center of the Creed, moreover, suggests that it is perhaps the most pivotal. His description of it so galvanized the attention that, once read, one could never get over it. Certainly I have not stopped wondering, or writing about it, since.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
What is the bottom line of Christian faith? Is there an essential element, the expression of which says everything? And if so, is it reasonable to expect people living today to believe it?
These were questions that a young German professor by the name of Josef Ratzinger wrestled with in the summer of 1967, laying them before his students in a series of lectures which later became a famous book called Introduction To Christianity. A book so captivating that on the strength of its argument Pope Paul VI practically made him a bishop on the spot, thereupon setting in motion a series of elevations that would eventuate in his becoming pope — Benedict XVI.
While I cannot speak for others concerning the impact the book had on their lives, it certainly produced a great sea change in my own, turning my head in a definite theological direction, one from which I have never looked back.
What particularly moved me about the book was the section in which he undertook to explain what is surely the strangest article of the Church’s faith, namely, the Descent of Christ into Hell. Of the 12 articles in the creed, there is none so dark nor so deep. The fact that it is situated square in the center of the Creed, moreover, suggests that it is perhaps the most pivotal. His description of it so galvanized the attention that, once read, one could never get over it. Certainly I have not stopped wondering, or writing about it, since.
Continued below.
Christ’s Descent into Hell is the Strangest Truth of All
All the dungeons of death have been thrown open by the Lord of Life.
