¹ E.g., Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996 [1932, 1938]), p. 342; Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1985), pp. 89–90; Justin Bass, The Battle for the Keys: Revelation 1:18 and Christ’s Descent into the Underworld (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), p. 17; Matthew Emerson, ‘He Descended to the Dead’: An Evangelical Theology of Holy Saturday (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2019), pp. 90–4.

² ‘Forerunner’ in this article is employed in the sense advanced by Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought, trans. Paul L. Nyhus (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966). Identifying ‘forerunners’ to Calvin can help avoid overstating Calvin’s continuity/discontinuity with the pluriform movements of scholasticism and humanism preceding him, while still placing Calvin within the context of his world, which was no doubt affected by these movements. See Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: OUP, 2000), pp. 13–4.

³ This research is given fuller expression in Preston McDaniel Hill, Holy Saturday and Christ’s Descent into Hell in the Theology of John Calvin (New York: T&T Clark, forthcoming).

⁴ The Formula of Concord, Epitome, IX.1, in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Theodore Gerhardt Tappert (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1959), p. 492.

⁵ This sermon was wrongly thought by the Concordianists to have been preached at Torgau in Easter of 1533. While the sermon they thought they had can be found in WA 37:62–72, the so-called ‘Torgau sermon’ they referenced was actually preached at Wittenberg on Easter day (March 31), 1532; it can be found in WA 36:159–164. This reconstruction commands consensus today among Lutheran scholarship. See Erich Vogelsang, ‘Luthers Torgauer Predigt von Jesu Christo vom Jahre 1532’, Lutherjahrbuch 13 (1931), pp. 114–30. References to Luther’s works in German are from the Weimar Ausgabe (WA), D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 120 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883-2009). References to Luther’s works in English are from Luther’s Works (LW), ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman, 55 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress; Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1955–1986).

⁶ Quotes from Luther’s Torgau sermon (hereafter ‘Torgau Sermon’) in English are from the translation by Jayson S. Galler and Susanne Hafner, ‘The Third Sermon, on Easter Day’, Logia, 12/3 (January 2003), p. 42.

⁷ ‘All the devils must run and flee, as if to escape death and poison, and all hell with its fire puts itself out because of him.’ Ibid., p. 43.

⁸ ‘I do not want to treat this article in a high and mighty fashion, theorizing how it happened…For there have been many who have wanted to grasp the meaning with reason and their five senses, but with that approach they have reached or achieved nothing.’ Ibid., p. 41.

⁹ These labels come from the intra-Lutheran Hamburg controversy (1549–1551) which was a sort of precursor to the Mansfeld Confutation of 1565, in which Lutherans hardened further as ‘consummatists’ (triumph) about the descensus against the growing Reformed ‘infernalist’ (suffering) position reflected in the Heidelberg Catechism, paving the way for the definitive Lutheran statement in the Formula of Concord. See David Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther? The Problem of Christ’s Descent into Hell in the Long Sixteenth Century’, Perichoresis 6/2 (2008), pp. 181–90. The historical dichotomy between consummatism and infernalism epitomises a core thesis of this study, namely, that Christology and soteriology are simply too expansive to be conflated into either one of these reductions: Christ’s victory is best understood as a victory-through-suffering, and his suffering a suffering-toward-victory.

¹⁰ Deus meus, deus meus…quare me dereliquisti (‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’).

¹¹ See WA 5:603–604. This lecture is not available in English (cf. LW 10: ix-xii). Bagchi has posited that the American edition of Luther’s Works reflects a preference for the viewpoint of Lutheran orthodoxy on Christ’s descent into hell. See Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 194.

¹² For example, Gayling Schmeling, ‘The Descent into Hell’, Lutheran Synod Quarterly 25/3 (1985), p. 18. My heartfelt thanks go to Lyle D. Bierma for summarising much of this research in his unpublished paper ‘Calvin, Luther, and Ursinus on Christ’s Descent into Hell’, (paper presented at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18, 2016).

¹³ WA 44:524.6–7; cited in Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 191. Bagchi also cites Luther’s expositions of Ephesians 4 (WA 23:702.11–703.1) and Jonah 2 (WA 19:225.12–16, 28–29).

¹⁴ Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 193.

¹⁵ ‘Torgau Sermon’, pp. 42–3.

¹⁶ Truemper’s dissertation turned the tide of English scholarship in recognising the lost gem of Luther’s suffering motif. See David G. Truemper, ‘The Descensus ad inferos from Luther to the Formula of Concord’, STD diss. (Concordia Seminary in Exile [Seminex] in Cooperation with Lutheran School of Theology Chicago, 1974).

¹⁷ Paul Althaus, ‘Niedergefahren zur Hölle’, Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 19 (1942), pp. 365–84; cited in Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 193, and Bierma, ‘Calvin, Luther, and Ursinus on Christ’s Descent into Hell’, p. 7.

¹⁸ Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 196. A remarkable recent study by Russ Leo concurs, seeing Luther ‘emphasizing Christ’s human agony as opposed to his glorious triumph’. Russ Leo, ‘Jean Calvin, Christ’s Despair, and the Reformation Descensus ad Inferos’, Reformation 23/1 (2018), pp. 53–78.

¹⁹ Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 194. Alan Lewis’ theology of Holy Saturday, strongly influenced by Eberhard Jüngel, is constituted beautifully throughout by a similar thesis of God’s presence-in-absence. Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids, MI: William B, Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 234–60).

²⁰ T. H. L. Parker, ‘Interlude: Theologia Gloriae aut Crucis?’, in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God: A Study in the Theology of John Calvin (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1952), pp. 57–8.

²¹ John Calvin, Comm. John 17:1 (CO 47.375). Compare with Comm. John 12:23 (CO 47.288), ‘The ignominy of death is no obstruction to his glory.’ References to commentaries in English are from Calvin’s Commentaries [Comm.], 22 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998 [1843-56]). References to Calvin’s works in Latin are from Ioannis Calvini Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia [CO], 59 vols., ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz and E. Reuss (Brunswick: Schwetske and Son, 1863–1900); and Ionnis Calvini Opera Selecta [OS], 5 vols., ed. Petrus Barth and Guilelmus Niesel (München: Kaiser, 1926–1962).

²² Truemper, ‘Descensus’; also cited in Leo, ‘Jean Calvin’, p. 64.

²³ Paul Buehler, Die Anfechtung bei Martin Luther (Zuerich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1942), pp. 4, 58. See also M. Vernon Begalke, ‘Luther’s Anfechtungen: An Important Clue to His Pastoral Theology,’ Consensus 8/3 (1982), pp. 3–17. David Scaer paints a vivid picture: ‘In the Anfechtung of his death, the Christian is threatened by judgment, destruction, and hell. Here again the Christian sees God’s wrath, views God as the hangman, and sees nothing by thunder and lightning.’ David P. Scaer, ‘The Concept of Anfechtung in Luther’s Thought,’ Concordia Theological Quarterly 47/1 (1983), pp. 15–30.

²⁴ Noted in Bierma, ‘Calvin, Luther, and Ursinus on Christ’s Descent into Hell’, p. 4. For the English text, see ‘The Heidelberg Catechism’, Q&A 44, in Our Faith: Ecumenical Creeds, Reformed Confessions, and Other Resources (Grand Rapids, MI: Faith Alive, 2013), p. 83; for the German text, see Der Heidelberger Katechismus und vier verwandte Katechismen, ed. August Lang (Leipzig: Deichert, 1907), p. 19. See also An Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism: Sources, History, and Theology, ed. and trans. Lyle D. Bierma (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005). For a delightful summary of the theology of the Heidelberg Catechism, see Hendrikus Berkhof, ‘The Catechism as an Expression of Our Faith’, in Essays on the Heidelberg Catechism (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016), pp. 93–122.

²⁵ Bierma, ‘Calvin, Luther, and Ursinus on Christ’s Descent into Hell’, p. 1.

²⁶ John Calvin, Psychopannychia, in Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, ed. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1958), 3:482–483; CO 5.225. It is remarkable that Calvin changes ‘My God’ to ‘My Father’ (pater, pater, ut quid me dereliquisti?), intensifying the relational fracture of dereliction. It is possible that Calvin inherited the exegetical shift from ‘God’ to ‘Father’ from a similar pattern detectable in the reformist Psalter of French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. See Quincuplex Psalterium: Fac-similé de l’édition de 1513 (Geneva: Droz, 1979), pp. 31–4.

²⁷ John Calvin, Letter CXV to Viret, March 1544, in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1858), 1:409 (CO 11.688).

²⁸ John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion [hereafter Institutes 1559], 2 vols., ed. J. T. McNeill, trans. F. L. Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 2.16.12 (CO 2.379; OS 3.499).

²⁹ Calvin, Psychopannychia, p. 485 (CO 5.227).

³⁰ Ibid., p. 480 (CO 5.224). Also, ‘The grave is called sheol…these words, therefore, here denote not so much the place as the quality and condition of the place…’ Calvin, Comm., Psalm 16:10 (CO 31.157).

³¹ Calvin, Institutes 1559, 2.16.9 (CO 2.376; OS 3.494).

³² WA 19:225.12-16, 28–29. Cf. Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 192.

³³ Calvin, Comm. Hebrews 2:15 (CO 55.33).

³⁴ Calvin, Comm. 1 John 3:2 (CO 55.330). Calvin says that ‘hell has opened to receive him’ when one feels the ‘protracted sorrow’ and ‘mental distress’ of a ‘terrorized conscience’. Calvin, Comm., Psalm 6:6–7 (CO 31.77).

³⁵ The first descent by suffering on Friday’s cross, the second descent by victory on Saturday’s conquest (WA 46:308.15–17; trans. Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 197).

³⁶ Calvin, Institutes 1559, 2.16.9 (CO 2.376; OS 3.494).

³⁷ Rodney Howsare, ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell’, in T&T Clark Companion to Atonement, ed. Adam J. Johnson (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), p. 270.

³⁸ Despite this quip, it is to be noted that Calvin maintained room for a bare-bones account of the old harrowing mythology in his exegesis of the infamous 1 Peter passage, wherein Christ shines his Spirit post mortem on the righteous and wicked, bringing joy to the former and dismay to the latter (see Calvin, Comm. 1 Peter 3:19; CO 55.265). Although Calvin states to those who think this passage refers to the descent into hell that ‘these words mean no such thing; for there is no mention made of the soul of Christ’, this reflects a self-correction Calvin made later in his career since in the first edition of the Institutes (1536), he called the Petrine passage a ‘portion of the descent into hell…not at all superfluous, containing as it does the greatest mysteries of the greatest things’. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1536 Edition, ed. F. L. Battles (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), p. 56 (CO 1.70).

³⁹ ‘Believers in the midst of death acknowledge him as their leader (dux)…we have Christ as our leader (dux) and companion (comes).’ Calvin, Psychopannychia, pp. 436, 483 (CO 5.191, 226); cf. p. 466 (CO 5.213): ‘Christ is our Head (caput)…we shall follow our Prince (princeps)…’.

⁴⁰ ‘Condemned’ and ‘triumphant’ are Calvin’s own words for describing the state of Christ in his descent into hell: what kind of state it is (damnati) and what is obtained by it (triumphum/victoriam). Calvin, Institutes 1559, 2.16.10, 11 (CO 2.377, 378; OS 3.495, 497).

⁴¹ ‘He couples human nature with divine that to atone for sin he might submit the weakness of the one to death; and that, wrestling with death by the power of the other nature, he might win victory for us.’ Ibid., 2.12.3 (CO 2.342; OS 3.440).

⁴² Ibid., 2.16.7, 10 (CO 2.374, 376; OS 3.491, 495).

⁴³ It is telling that Calvin and other French Evangelicals were simply labelled ‘Lutheran’ by Catholic authorities during the Placards of 1534 and the Decrees of the Sorbonne in 1543 (see Bernard Cottret, Calvin: A Biography, trans. M. Wallace McDonald [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000], pp. 73–88, 266–8). Incidentally, these were also the years when Psychopannychia was written (1534) and published (1542). See CO 5.165–6. It is this early French Lutheran milieu which Heiko Oberman labels ‘the heartland of the initia Calvini’, noting in particular of the descensus theology found in the Psychopannychia that ‘Calvin did not learn this striking psychological interpretation of the abysmal Descent into Hell in a medieval school but in the school of life.’ Heiko Oberman, ‘Initia Calvini: The Matrix of Calvin’s Reformation’, in Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor: Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture, ed. Wilhelm Neuser (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994], pp. 135, 152.

⁴⁴ It is possible that Luther’s descensus theology was mediated to Calvin through the catechetical writings of Guillame Farel, in particular Farel’s exposition of the Apostles’ Creed in Le Pater Noster et le Credo en françoys (see Jason Zuidema & Theodore Van Raalte, Early French Reform: The Theology and Spirituality of Guillaume Farel [Abingdon: Routledge, 2016], p. 114), which was apparently a translation of Luther’s Betbüchlein of 1522, itself an amended reprint of the 1520 Eyn kurs Form (see Francis Higman, ‘Theology for the Layman in the French Reformation 1520–1550’, The Library 9/2 [1987], p. 109). For further explanation, see Preston Hill, ‘“The Useful and Not-To-Be-Despised Mystery of a Most Important Matter”: The Place of Christ’s Descent into Hell in the Theology of John Calvin’, in Calvinus Frater Domino: Papers of the Twelfth International Congress on Calvin Research, ed. Karin Maag and Arnold Huijgen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020).

⁴⁵ Bagchi, ‘Luther versus Luther’, p. 196.

⁴⁶ Robert Kolb, ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell as Christological Locus in the Era of the Formula of Concord: Luther’s “Torgau Sermon” Revisited’, Lutherjahrbuch 69 (2002), pp. 101–18.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 108.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 114.

⁴⁹ Lutheran and Reformed theologians recognised that the faulty Christology of their opponents was mirrored and multiplied in their conceptions of the sacrament. The result was that sacramentology inevitably sparked christological controversy. See Bruce L. McCormack, ‘For Us and Our Salvation: Incarnation and Atonement in the Reformed Tradition’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43/1–4 (1998), esp. pp. 282–4. The Lutheran desire for substantial presence in the Eucharist tends toward a neo-Eutychian Christology, while the Reformed desire for authentic humanity and spiritual presence in the Supper leaves open the charge of a quasi-Nestorian Christology. If the communicatio idiomatum is too strong, it dissolves into a static monotony of nature (communio naturarum); if it is too weak, it fails to bridge the gap required for communion, presenting the Holy Spirit as participation’s stop-gap.

⁵⁰ Luther, ‘Torgau Sermon’, p. 42.

⁵¹ See Calvin, Institutes 1559, 2.16.11.

⁵² Ibid., 2.12.2.

⁵³ ‘For Calvin, to say that Christ is really present and that he is spiritually present are synonymous.’ David Willis, ‘A Reformed Doctrine of the Eucharist and Ministry and Its Implications for Roman Catholic Dialogues’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 21/2 (1984), p. 295. Cf. Calvin, Institutes 1559, 4.17.33 (CO 2.1034; OS 5.392): ‘For us the manner is spiritual because the secret power of the Spirit is the bond of our union with Christ.’

⁵⁴ Martin Luther, A Sermon on Preparing to Die, in LW 42:105 (WA 2:690).