The Spirits in Prison
1 Peter 3:18-20, the descent to the dead, as the early church read it
Between the cross and the empty tomb, where was Christ? Peter gives a startling glimpse: "put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit," He "went and preached unto the spirits in prison." The early church read this, with the Apostles' Creed, as the descent of Christ to the realm of the dead, the "harrowing of hell": the Lord went down to Hades and proclaimed His victory there, bringing the saints of old, the patriarchs and prophets who had hoped in Him, into the salvation they had awaited. Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria in their own words below, with a plain restatement.
The Fathers' words are verbatim and attributed (Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, public domain; selected from the running prose, footnote apparatus omitted). The box marked "In plain terms" is our own restatement, never the Fathers' words.
1 Peter 3:18-19 · KJVFor Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
"It was for this reason, too, that the Lord descended into the regions beneath the earth, preaching His advent there also, and declaring the remission of sins received by those who believe in Him. Now all those believed in Him who had hope towards Him, that is, those who proclaimed His advent, and submitted to His dispensations, the righteous men, the prophets, and the patriarchs, to whom He remitted sins in the same way as He did to us."
St. Irenaeus of LyonsIrenaeus reads it plainly: the Lord "descended into the regions beneath the earth," to the dead, and preached there too. And those who received Him were "those who had hope towards Him", the righteous of the old covenant, the patriarchs and prophets who had looked forward to His coming. They are forgiven "in the same way as He did to us." The cross reaches backward as well as forward; the saints who died before Christ are not left behind, but gathered in by the same grace.
1 Peter 3:20 · KJVWhich sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
"Wherefore the Lord preached the Gospel to those in Hades… Do not the Scriptures show that the Lord preached the Gospel to those that perished in the flood, or rather had been chained, and to those kept 'in ward and guard'? And it has been shown also… that the apostles, following the Lord, preached the Gospel to those in Hades."
St. Clement of AlexandriaClement fastens on the very people Peter names, "those that perished in the flood," the disobedient of Noah's day, now "kept in ward and guard." To Hades itself, he says, the Lord brought His preaching. Clement goes further than Irenaeus and hopes that even some who had lived as best they knew, under the law or under conscience, might turn at that preaching, a wide hope the later church did not adopt as doctrine. But the shared core is firm: the death of Christ was no mere pause; the living Lord carried His gospel even into the place of the dead.
Where the traditions diverge
That Christ truly descended to the dead is among the oldest confessions of the church, written into the Apostles' Creed ("He descended into hell," that is, Hades, the realm of the dead) and held by Catholic, Orthodox, and the Reformers alike. The divergence is over what He did there and to whom. The dominant early reading, the harrowing of hell (Irenaeus, and the Eastern church especially, whose Easter icon shows Christ pulling Adam and Eve up by the wrist), is that He proclaimed His triumph and led out the righteous of old who had awaited Him. Augustine and much of the later Western and Reformed tradition read the "preaching" more cautiously, some taking it as Christ preaching through Noah's Spirit to that wicked generation while the ark was building (so the "spirits in prison" are those people, now imprisoned), precisely to rule out any idea of a second chance after death. A third, modern reading takes the "imprisoned spirits" as the fallen angels of Genesis 6 (compare 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6), to whom the risen Christ proclaimed His victory, not an offer of salvation. The drift to resist, then, is at the edges: pressing this verse into a general second chance after death (which neither Irenaeus nor the creed teaches), or emptying it of the real descent the whole early church confessed. The settled center is simple and glorious, even death could not hold or silence the Lord, and the saints who died in hope were not forgotten. (See the resurrection and the triumph of the cross.)
Patristic text from Irenaeus, Against Heresies (IV.27.2), and Clement of Alexandria, Stromata (VI.6), in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (public domain), selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. This passage in the Study Bible; 1 Peter 3 at BibleHub.