The descent into Hades (or “He descended into hell”) is the clause of the Apostles’ Creed affirming that Christ, after His death, entered the state or realm of the dead—a clause whose precise meaning has been understood variously and which calls for careful interpretation. The English “hell” in the creed translates the Latin inferna / inferi (the lower regions, the realm of the dead), corresponding to the Greek Hades and Hebrew Sheol—not, in the first instance, the place of final torment (Gehenna). Several interpretations have been held by the orthodox. The Reformed, following Calvin, generally understand the clause not of a local descent but of the depth of Christ’s spiritual sufferings—the anguish of bearing the wrath of God and the pains of hell in His soul, especially in Gethsemane and on the cross, when He cried, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ On this view the descent expresses the full extremity of His penal suffering for our sins. Others, taking the clause more literally of His state after death, hold simply that His soul went to the realm of the dead (Paradise, as He told the thief) while His body lay in the tomb, affirming the reality of His death and His entrance into the condition of the departed. The Lutheran tradition has often read it as a triumphant descent, Christ proclaiming His victory over the powers, appealing to the difficult text of Peter concerning the spirits in prison. The Roman view of a descent to the limbo of the fathers, to release Old Testament saints, the Reformed reject as unscriptural. Whatever the precise sense, the clause affirms at least that Christ truly died, truly entered the state of the dead, and so sanctified the grave for His people—and, in the Reformed reading, that He suffered the very depths of hell’s anguish in His soul, that we might never suffer them at all.