ATDDTA (8) By Hook Or By Crook (213:12ff)

[Keith]

The image of hooks in Hell alludes to the Christian imagery of Christ  
as bait on the Cross tossed (in the 3-day Descent) into Hell to  
capture Satan. As is the nature of this section, the imagery is  
reversed with the hook being tossed upwards and used for ascent.


Many seized on the idea, however, and embellished it. About 400 C.E.
Rufinus of Aquilea suggested that "The purpose of the Incarnation ...
was that the divine virtue of the Son of God might be as it were a hook
hidden beneath the form of human flesh
... to lure on the prince of this age to a contest; that the Son might
offer him his flesh as a bait and that then the divinity which lay
beneath might catch him and hold him fast with its hook ... Then, as a
fish when it seizes a baited hook not only fails to drag off the bait
but is itself dragged out of the water to serve as food for others; so
he that had the power of death seized the body of Jesus in death,
unaware of the hook of divinity concealed therein. Having swallowed it,
he was caught straightway; the bars of hell were burst and he was, as
it were, drawn up from the pit, to become food for others."

In all its assumptions this scenario is patently absurd. We remember
that in the Book of Revelation God chains up the Devil for a thousand
years, and has no trouble doing so. But we also remember that in the
Book of Job--usually to the shocked surprise of those reading it for
the first time--God treated Satan as an equal and confederate in
letting him torment poor innocent Job. According to Matthew and Luke
the Devil finds occasion to tempt Jesus three times. When Jesus rejects
the temptations, the Devil departs unscathed, vowing to continue his
efforts another time. Presumably an omnipotent God consents to whatever
powers the Devil at any time possesses.

In theology, where nothing can be proved, any idea, however extreme or
absurd, unless it is formally declared a heresy, may win adherence from
theologians or ordinary worshippers. The decision to declare a doctrine
a heresy is often the result of pressures and compromises that have
little to do with religion. Even about eternal truths the Church can
change its mind!

The idea of the crucifixion as hooked bait to catch the Devil hung on
for nearly a thousand years. In The Masks of God: Creative Mythology,
Joseph Campbell reproduces a drawing from a handbook prepared by a 12th
Century abbess for the nuns who taught in her convent. The drawing
shows God lowering a fishing line to the Devil, who squats below in the
guise of the sea monster Leviathan. Weighting the line are medallions
with the heads of the royal line of David. At the end hangs the
crucified Jesus, with a hook beneath his feet.

Campbell explains it this way: "The Devil, through his ruse in the
Garden of Eden, had acquired a legal right to man's soul, which God, as
a just God, had to honor. However, since the right had been acquired by
a ruse, God might justly terminate it by a ruse." God knew, Campbell
writes, as the Devil did not, that the incorruptible second person of
the Trinity had taken on flesh as Jesus. "Christ's humanity was thus
the bait at which the Devil snapped like a fish, only to be caught on
the hook of the Cross, from which the Son of God, through his
resurrection escaped." Such gamesmanship still had the power in the
16th Century, during the Reformation, to delight Martin Luther, whose
taste in humor was on the coarse side, as witness his scatological
abuse of the Pope. http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/god-kill.htm

Christ descended into hell not as another victim of the devil, but as  
Conqueror. He descended in order to ‘bind up the powerful’ and to  
‘plunder his vessels’. According to patristic teaching, the devil did  
not recognize in Christ the incarnate God. He took Him for an  
ordinary man and, rising to the ‘bait’ of the flesh, swallowed the  
‘hook’ of the Deity (the image used by Gregory of Nyssa). However,  
the presence of Christ in hell constituted the poison which began  
gradually to ruin hell from within (this image was used by the 4th- 
century Syrian author Jacob Aphrahat). The final destruction of hell  
and the ultimate victory over the devil will happen during the Second  
Coming of Christ when ‘the last enemy to be destroyed is death’, when  
everything will be subjected to Christ and God will become ‘all in  
all’. http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/11/1/5.aspx