If Christ went to Hades, prophets went ahead as heralds

These things, then, show that the words are not false and that it is Samuel who has come up. What then is a medium doing here? What is a medium doing about the bringing-up of the righteous man’s soul? That first speaker fled—so as not to seem to have a contest against so many other questions in the passage—and says: “It is not Samuel; the demon lies, since the Scripture cannot lie.” But the Scripture’s words are not from the demon’s person but from her own: “And she saw Samuel,” “Saul said…”—the things spoken from Samuel. How then will the medium’s matters in the passage appear when solved?

I ask the one who said the earlier things (“Samuel in Hades?” and what follows) and let him answer the question: Who is greater, Samuel or Jesus the Christ? Who is greater, the prophets or Jesus the Christ? Who is greater, Abraham or Jesus the Christ? Here no one who has once come to know the Lord as Jesus Christ, the one proclaimed beforehand by the prophets, will dare to say that the Christ is not greater than the prophets.

When therefore you confess that Jesus Christ is greater—Christ in Hades, or did he not come to be there? Is what was said in the Psalms not true, interpreted by the apostles in their Acts, concerning the Savior’s having gone down into Hades? It is written that the fifteenth Psalm is borne upon him: “For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you give your holy one to see corruption.” Then Jesus Christ is in Hades. Do you fear to say that yes—and there too he goes down to prophesy and to come to the other souls?

Then after this if he answers that Christ has gone down into Hades, I will say: Christ has gone down into Hades to do what—to conquer, or to be conquered by death? And he has come down into those regions not as a slave of those there but as a master wrestling—as we said earlier when interpreting the twenty-second Psalm: “Many calves surrounded me; fat bulls enclosed me; they opened their mouth at me, like a lion seizing and roaring. My bones were scattered.” We remember, if we remember, the sacred writings; for I remember them said toward the twenty-second Psalm. Therefore the Savior has come down to save; has he come down there proclaimed beforehand by the prophets, or not? But here he was proclaimed beforehand by the prophets, and elsewhere he comes down not through prophets? And Moses proclaims him as about to sojourn with the human race, so that it is well said by our Lord and Savior: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” And Christ has sojourned in this life, and Christ is proclaimed beforehand as sojourning in this life. But if Moses prophesies him here, do you not want him to have gone down there also, so that he may prophesy that Christ will come?

What then? Moses—yes—but not the prophets after him? And not Samuel? What is out of place in physicians going down to those who are badly off? And what is out of place in the chief physician also going down to those who are badly off? Those were many physicians; but my Lord and Savior is chief physician; for even the desire within, which cannot be healed by others, he himself heals—which “could not be healed by anyone” of the physicians; Christ Jesus heals it. Do not fear; do not be stunned: Jesus has come to be in Hades, and the prophets before him, and they proclaim beforehand Christ’s sojourn.