There\u2019s a cute little harrow at the bottom of this scene from the 11th-century Bayeaux Tapestry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThis can be confusing for 21st-century Christians because the word \u201cHell\u201d can be traced back all the way to early Christianity, but the contemporary understanding of what that word means \u2014 both denotation and connotation \u2014 didn\u2019t come around until much, much later. So we read the creeds talking about how Christ \u201cdescended into Hell\u201d and we imagine they meant the same thing we understand when we see that word. This is a bit like someone reading Nietzsche\u2019s references to the \u201csuperman\u201d and interpreting that as him talking about Clark Kent.<\/p>\n
Anyway, neither of these \u201cdoctrines\u201d \u2014 Hell or the harrowing thereof \u2014 really took off in the Christian imagination until visual artists got ahold of them. That brought about the earliest version of the art\/doctrine feedback loop or the pop-culture\/doctrine cycle we have now. The preacher talks about \u201cHell\u201d and the artist is inspired to paint something loosely based on it. The next preacher\u2019s description of Hell is based, in part, on that painting, thus inspiring the next artist\u2019s creation. Lather, rinse, repeat. For centuries. Etc.<\/p>\n
This process is still happening, which is why today, in 2018, when a revival preacher warns of \u201cHell,\u201d he\u2019s not just referring to the place \u2014 whatever it is \u2014 that the creeds say Jesus descended unto, but also to the place Dean Winchester<\/em> descended unto. And that\u2019s true even if neither the preacher nor his congregation ever watched Supernatural<\/em>, because that preacher also never read \u201cParadise Lost\u201d or \u201cThe Inferno\u201d or the Gospel of Nicodemus or the Visi\u00f3n de Tundal. He and that congregation are certain that this word \u201cHell\u201d refers only to a word they imagine comes from the Bible, but their understanding of that word comes from Milton, Dante, Bosch, Jack Chick, Dario Argento and, yes, even Eric Kripke.<\/p>\nAll of which is to say that the \u201cHarrowing of Hell\u201d is \u2014 like \u201cHell\u201d itself \u2014 better understood as Christian folklore<\/em> than as Christian doctrine.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s reflected in the name for it \u2014 an English<\/em> name. The English language \u2014 even the Old<\/em> English from which we get this word \u201charrowing\u201d \u2014 didn\u2019t exist until centuries after the creeds first suggested something about Christ descending into Hell. The \u201cdoctrine\u201d of the Harrowing of Hell didn\u2019t flower into anything like its current state until after medieval English writers \u2014 and, more importantly, medieval English theater<\/em> troupes \u2014 ran with it. That\u2019s where we first get the idea that Jesus didn\u2019t merely descend into the underworld, but that he \u201charrowed\u201d Hell.<\/p>\nOdd word, \u201charrowed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrow doesn\u2019t get used much anymore as a verb. It\u2019s still quite often used as an adjective<\/em>, though.\u00a0We say something is \u201charrowing\u201d to mean that it is distressing or painful in a deeply unsettling way \u2014 something that is not just agonizing but traumatizing. It leaves a mark, a deep groove that cuts below the surface. A harrowing experience is painful in a way that changes<\/em> us.<\/p>\nThis adjective still bears traces of the much-older verb and its Old English origins. To \u201charrow\u201d meant to plunder or pillage. That had an analogical meaning related to the agricultural tool we still call a \u201charrow.\u201d That\u2019s a big frame with spikes or blades that can be dragged across a field to break up clods and weeds (or to smooth out the infield during the seventh-inning stretch). I\u2019m not sure which meaning came first \u2014 whether what the tool did to soil was named after what invading armies did to villages or vice versa \u2014 but it\u2019s easy to see how they are related one way or the other.<\/p>\n
So, then, what was Jesus up to down there in the \u201cHarrowing of Hell\u201d? Whatever it was, the experience was harrowing for<\/em> Hell \u2014 unsettling and traumatizing, leaving the place forever after scarred and wounded by it. Jesus, this odd story\/folklore\/doctrine says, plowed through the place, raking it to pieces, plundering and pillaging.<\/p>\nIt reminds me of the scene in one of Wendell Berry\u2019s Mad Farmer poems, when the farmer, drunk on communion wine, runs amok:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an awesome event
\nwhen an earthen man has drunk
\nhis fill of the blood of a god,\u201d
\npeople said, and got out of his way.
\nHe plowed the churchyard, the
\nminister\u2019s wife, three graveyards
\nand a golf course. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think the Harrowing of Hell should pay a bigger part in our thinking about the imitation of Christ. WWJD? He would harrow. And what would he harrow? Hell, and all its works. Harrow the principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spiritual wickedness in high places.<\/p>\n
We need to do a lot more harrowing. We need to make things more harrowing for those principalities and powers, those princes of Hell in all its forms. Break their big pieces into little pieces, carve out their weeds, pillage and plunder, proclaim liberation to the spirits in prison. Harrow, and harrow, and harrow some more.<\/p>\n
And if we\u2019re going to say anything at all about \u201cHell,\u201d let it be what the creeds had to say. Hell was the thing that Jesus raked apart and plundered. Hell was whatever it was that found the healer harrowing.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What does this very strange story\/folklore\/doctrine of the “Harrowing of Hell” tell us that Jesus was up to down there? It says he plowed through the place, raking it to pieces, pillaging and plundering and leaving it forever traumatized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":37741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[92,19],"class_list":["post-37732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church","tag-hell"],"yoast_head":"\n
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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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