Jesus from that old Texas town of El Paso, listening on Guadalupe Radio, you
are on with Brandon Vogt, what's your question, Jesus? Okay
yes, thanks for taking my call. My question is, and it's just something
for me, because in the Apostles' Creed it says, of course, that the Lord was
crucified, died, and was buried, and then he descended into Hell. Yes.
Why? What was the purpose of Him going into Hell? That's a
great question. The Catechism of the Catholic Church
talks about this, somewhere around the 600s, like 620 or 630, something like
that. So go in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and you'll read
the section in there on this part of the Creed, and it says that Jesus descended
into Hell as a saviour to preach the good news to those who had died and gone
before Him. You also find this echoed, by the way, in the letter of 1 Peter,
1 Peter 3:19 says the same thing, that Jesus preached the good news to the
spirits in prison there. Does this mean that Jesus went down to save those who
were damned? No. Does it mean that Jesus destroyed the Hell of damnation? No.
Scripture uses that word "Hell" in a couple different ways. It usually, in the
Old Testament, refers to Sheol, or the Abode of the Dead, which consisted of
both the righteous and the unrighteous who are in there together, so--and
this line in the Creed refers to Jesus going down into Sheol to preach the good
news to the righteous and welcome them into his kingdom.
So again, look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I don't have it right in
front of me, I think it's somewhere around paragraph 600, 620, something like
that, and you'll find a good explanation of that part of the Creed. Okay Jesus?
Thanks, yes. Could you answer another question?
Sure Jesus, real quick. I having a problem--not a problem--but I'm having a little
duel with a former Catholic, now she's a she's a chiropractor and she...
So she converted from Catholicism to chiropracty.
Do you have to make a formal act to do that? You have to call the bishop? Well, she
irritated me by saying that the Virgin Mary was just an ordinary woman, and I
just shot back at her and I said, "Well, what do you think, how about your mother,
somebody was talking about your mother or calling her a lowly person, what
would you say?" And she changes, "Oh," she said, "No, we're not talking about MY
mother, we're talking about Jesus' mother." That's
right! She was talking about God's mother. How can you belittle her? You know? My question was
about her anyway, about the Virgin, if--did she write the Magnificat? That's a really
interesting question, I was just looking into this the other day. So the
Magnificat, of course, is found in Luke chapter 1, and many Catholics wonder how
could Mary possibly have spoken in such eloquent poetic language? So was the
Magnificat something that Luke came up with, or was he recording the accurate
words that Mary spoke? We gotta keep a couple things in mind before answering
that. First of all, the Magnificat is an echo of the canticle of Hannah from the
book of 1 Samuel. And so when Mary's singing the Magnificat, she's signaling
that she is a new Hannah, which would mean that her son Jesus is a new Samuel.
And so there's a theological significance to the words that she uses,
and I think that's the important takeaway from the Magnificat. It's not, "Oh,
look how beautiful these words are," it's, "What are these words pointing to?" That
said, even though Mary was likely a young illiterate girl, it is plausible to think
that she would have been familiar with Hannah's canticle, and thus plausible to
think that she could have spoken the Magnificat the way it's written down. But
again, not super important whether these are the exact words that Mary spoke, or
whether Luke was exercising literary poetic flair; the important thing is that
Mary's signaling herself as a new Hannah.