Texts in Conversation
1 Peter says the gospel was proclaimed to the dead, suggesting that hope continues after life. The Christian theologian Tertullian develops this, using it to address the question of how people could be redeemed before Jesus was born.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1 Peter 4:6
New Testament
4 So they are astonished when you do not rush with them into the same flood of wickedness, and they vilify you. 5 They will face a reckoning before Jesus Christ who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 Now it was for this very purpose that the gospel was preached to those who are now dead, so that though they were judged in the flesh by human standards they may live spiritually by God’s standards. 7 For the culmination of all things is near. So be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of prayer. 8 Above all keep your love for one another fervent because love covers a multitude of sins.
Date: 80–90 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Tertullian, Concerning the Soul 55:3
Early Christian
For us the underworld is not believed to be a bare cavity, nor some sewer of the world under the open sky, but a vastness in the pit of the earth and in its depths, a hidden profundity in its innermost parts; since we read that Christ spent the three days of his death in the heart of the earth, that is, in the inmost and internal recess, covered by the earth itself and shut within it, and built over still lower abysses. But if Christ, God because also man, dead according to the Scriptures and buried according to the same, also satisfied this law, fulfilling the form of human death in the underworld, and did not ascend into the heights of heaven before he descended into the depths of the earth, so that the patriarchs and prophets there could share in him—you have reason both to believe the region of the underworld subterranean and to push aside those who, proudly enough, do not think the souls of the faithful worthy of the underworld: servants above their lord and disciples above their master, scorning, if you please, to receive in Abraham's bosom the comfort of awaiting the resurrection.
Date: 198–200 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... 1 Peter 4:6 uses the passive voice to describe proclaiming the gospel to the dead (thus making the agent of the preaching unclear). There are two ways to interpret this proclamation. (1) Those who demonstrated faith in God prior to the advent of Jesus are now saved through the same gospel so that they too might live in the spirit (Horrell 2003; compare Hebrews 11:39–40). (2) Those who accepted the gospel but have passed away before Jesus’ glorious return still live in the spirit (Dalton 1965; compare 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18) ..."
Brian Han Gregg, “1 Peter,” in The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament, ed. David E. Aune, The Blackwell Companions to Religion (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 591.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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