Hades in Christianity

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In some Christian traditions, hades is the abode of the dead where the righteous and unrighteous alike await resurrection and judgment (similar to 1st century "sheol"). In some descriptions, 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. In Eastern Orthodox teaching, hades is the presence of Christ, which is light and rest for the righteous and the opposite for the unrighteous^[1]. Western Christianity does not generally include hades in its cosmology; instead, the righteous and unrighteous go to different afterlife destinations, and the terms "sheol" and "hades" are commonly translated as "Hell."

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^[2]. In A Treatise on the Soul, Tertullian wrote that every soul is held in hades until the day of the Lord ^[3].

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^[4]. Similarly, in the Acts of Paul and Thecla (160),^[5]and in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity^[6] (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" ^[7].

The doctrine of hades exists in substantially its original Christian form in the Eastern Orthodox Church^[8]^[9]. 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^[10], 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.