Objection:
During the time between His crucifixion and His resurrection, Christ preached to the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:18-20). That proves there is an immaterial spirit—the real person—which departs from the body at death.
Answer:
The passage reads thus: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:18-20).
We wonder why Protestant believers in the immortality of the soul should quote this passage. Suppose it gives them aid and comfort on this one doctrine. In that case, it gives them significant discomfort on two other doctrines, or rather heresies, according to orthodox Protestantism—purgatory and a second probation. If Christ went to preach to certain sinners after their death, the clear inference is that a second chance, or probation, was being extended to them. And if there was this second probation, then the place of torture in which they were confined was one from which there was an escape, which is perilously close to the idea of purgatory.
Furthermore, if Christ preached to lost spirits upon death at His crucifixion, why did He single out only the spirits of those who were “disobedient” “in the days of Noah”? Were none others entitled to a second chance? Away with such an interpretation of Peter’s words that would make him support such heresies!
Peter teaches the opposite of the second-probation doctrine, declaring that the preaching occurred “when once [or, at the time when] the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” The phrase, “which sometime were disobedient,” is simply an interjected explanatory statement. If we read the passage without this phrase, we can easily see the time of the preaching: “He went and preached unto the spirits in prison… when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.”
But how did Christ go to preach to these people? The text says, “By which also he went and preached.” Now the “which” refers back to “the Spirit.” Thus, Peter declares that Christ preached to these “spirits in prison” in the days of Noah by the agency of the Spirit.
Christ told His disciples that the Spirit would “reprove the world of sin” (see John 16:7-9) and that they were, therefore, to wait until they were endued with the Spirit before they started to preach. When the disciples brought conviction to sinners in the Christian Era, the real source of the preaching was the indwelling Spirit of God.
Now was there a preacher of God in antediluvian days through whom the Spirit could preach to men? Yes, Peter tells us that Noah was “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). In the inspired account of God’s plan to destroy the earth by a flood, we read, “The Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive [or, plead] with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3). Then follows the account of God’s calling Noah to make ready for the Flood. In other words, God’s Spirit preached to these antediluvians through Noah, “a preacher of righteousness,” waiting, in His long-suffering, a hundred and twenty years before finally destroying them.
But why should these people be said to be “in prison”? The Bible describes those who are in the darkness of sin as being “prisoners” and as being in a “prison house.” And specifically, the prophet Isaiah declares that the work of Christ, with “the Spirit of the Lord God” upon Him, was “the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (See Isaiah 42:7; 61:1; cf. Luke 4:18-21). The work of the Spirit in antediluvian times was the same as in the time of Christ—the preaching to prisoners of sin, offering them a way of escape.
Only one query remains. One will ask why Noah called those he preached to “spirits” if they were alive on the earth. We will let an eminent commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, answer this. The fact that he is a believer in the immortal-soul doctrine makes his testimony on this passage particularly valuable. After declaring that the phrase “he went and preached” should be understood to mean “by the ministry of Noah,” he remarks:
“The word πνευμασι, spirits, is supposed to render this view of the subject improbable, because this must mean disembodied spirits; but this certainly does not follow, for the spirits of just men made perfect, Hebrews 12:23, certainly means righteous men, and men still in the Church militant; and the Father of spirits, Hebrews 12:9, means men still in the body; and the God of the spirits of all flesh, Numbers 16:22; 27:16, means men not in a disembodied state.”
Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, Comments on 1 Peter 3:19.
Another learned commentator, Dr. J. Rawson Lumby, in The Expositor’s Bible, remarks that during the earlier centuries, which was the period when the Catholic religion, with its belief in purgatory, was dominant, the passage was interpreted to mean that Christ went to preach to souls in hell.
“But at the time of the Reformation the chief authorities expounded them [these words of Peter] of the preaching of Christ’s Spirit through the ministry of the patriarch. [Noah].”
The Expositor’s Bible, Comments on 1 Peter 3:17-22.
Dr. John Pearson, in his Exposition of the Creed, a classic Church of England work, observes:
“It is certain then that Christ did preach unto those persons which in the days of Noah were disobedient, all that time ‘the long-suffering of God waited,’ and, consequently, so long as repentance was offered. And it is as certain that He never preached to them after they died.”
Exposition of the Creed, p. 166.
Why should we be asked to explain this passage in harmony with our views when eminent theologians, who believe in the soul’s immortality, admit that the immortal-soul doctrine is not even taught here?
