Hades in Christianity
In some Christian traditions, hades is the abode of the dead where the righteous
and unrighteous alike await resurrection and judgment. Hades has two sections,
the bosom of Abraham for the righteous and a place of torment for the
unrighteous, with a chasm or abyss separating them. The concept of hades is
found in Eastern Orthodox teaching, but Western Christianity does not include
hades in its cosmology.
Like other 1st-century Jews literate in Greek, early Christians used the Greek
word "hades" as the translation for the Hebrew word "sheol." This use appears in
Luke's story of Lazarus and the rich man. Both underworlds had originally been
dark and gloomy with no relation to afterlife rewards or punishments. Since the
writing of the Hebrew Bible, however, the popular concept of sheol had come to
include particular judgment. Thus hades was seen as a place of comfort for the
righteous (in the bosom of Abraham) and torment for the wicked. Here the dead
awaited the universal resurrection on Judgment Day. Early church fathers
defended this view of the afterlife against the view that the soul went
immediately to heaven or to hell after the death of the body. In A Treatise on
the Soul, Tertullian wrote that every soul is held in hades until the day of the
Lord .
While those damned to hell are generally considered past redemption, those in
hades are sometimes said to be redeemable. Clement of Alexandria wrote that God
was too just to consign those who died before Christ to perdition without a
chance to accept the truth, and that those in hades still had the opportunity to
repent and be saved. Similarly, in the Acts of Paul and Thecla (160),and in the
Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (202) Christians successfully pray for dead
people who are almost certainly unbaptized, comforting one or translating
another to a place of happiness.
Like its Hellenistic namesake, hades was traditionally considered to be
underground. Tertullian wrote that "you must suppose Hades to be a subterranean
region, and keep at arm's length those who are too proud to believe that the
souls of the faithful deserve a place in the lower regions" .
The doctrine of hades exists in substantially its original Christian form in the
Eastern Orthodox Church. It also exists in its Old Testament form, as the abode
of the unconscious dead, in certain other denominations, such as the Jehovah's
Witnesses. In mainstream Western Christianity, however, it has largely been
replaced by the concept of the soul going straight to hell, heaven, or (in Roman
Catholicism) purgatory.
The Eastern Orthodox Church usually portrays suffering in hades as involving
darkness and constraint rather than fire. The happiness and suffering in hades
is often seen as not so much reward and punishment as the souls' different
responses to the divine presence. Those who love God feel the presence as joy
while the unrighteous feel the same presence as torment.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, prayer for the dead is said to help those in
hades, even possibly saving those who otherwise would be damned. Saint
Perpetua's prayer for her dead, unbaptized brother seems to reflect this belief.