But the stars that marked our starting fall away.
We must go deeper into great pain,
for it is not permitted that we stay.
– Dante, The Divine Comedy
I will penetrate to all the lower parts of the earth, and will behold all that sleep, and will enlighten all that hope in the Lord.
(Sirach 24:45)
There’s a line in the Apostle’s Creed that always causes me pause: He descended into hell. After Jesus suffered under Pilate’s hand, was dead and buried, en route to his resurrection, he stopped by hell. This part of the narrative gets my mind spinning. It’s clear there were witnesses to Jesus’ death, hands that placed him in the tomb, even eyes that gazed upon him resurrected, but no one can attest to his descent. Scholars and theologians have pondered over it for ages. Neither the creed nor Scripture expounds upon this happening any further. I am entangled in mystery by this subplot of the salvation story.
Another figure of interest that has “travelled” to hell is Dante, that is, the author’s fictional surrogate in The Divine Comedy. I’ve not read all of this work, but from what I have it seems his descent through the underworld’s twenty-four circles was born of a sense of wonder. Only Christ and the damned have knowledge of this place, so humanity’s imagination drifts there grasping for an understanding of its eternal torment.
While watching the new action film John Wick, I sensed the same drifts of wonder. Keanu Reeves is John, an ex-assassin who has just buried his wife. Before dying of terminal illness, she arranged for a puppy to be sent to him after her death, a gift of hope for his soon-to-be grieving heart.
As death’s shadow settles upon Wick, the dark specters of his past find their way back into the assassin’s life when the ignorant son of a New York-based, Russian mobster—John’s ex-boss—robs and beats John and kills his new puppy. John then sets out to find his ex-boss’ son in the criminal underbelly of New York—a neon-flamed hell-scape where the damned wallow in the torment of pleasure—and kill him. He begins at the mob’s club-hideout the Red Circle then journeys to a church used to front the same mafia ring. From circle to circle, John descends into hell’s bowels.
John Wick deals with grief-as-hell not in sentiment, but through cartoonish ultraviolence. Where Christ wielded compassion, sacrifice, and meekness as weapons against hell, Wick brandishes a torrent of bullets and an execution-like killing style. It’s The Divine Comedy amid a flood of gun-fu and bloody vengeance.
Though the violence is not for the fainthearted, the action’s effectiveness and purpose are compelling. When the body count rises, it seems that not actual people are dying but minions of hell trying to thwart John’s journey to restore hope, Christ’s descent as first-person shooter.
From what we know of history, neither Jesus nor Dante were assassins. It’s possible that puppies were involved in their lives at some point, but again, this isn’t certain. Watching John kill his way through the ruthless circles of organized crime hell, I couldn’t help but think of Jesus’ and Dante’s journeys. Each is an immersion into hell in hopes of establishing an enlightened hope on the other side.
Dante seeks spiritual enlightenment via his observational submersion; John tries to hold to the light of the new life he experienced with his wife by destroying the darkness of hell. Jesus journeyed not for mere personal vindication but to establish a real and living hope rooted in a completed redemption.
For true hope to reign, hell must lay in ruin. Jesus journeyed from the universe’s highest point down into creation’s depths to redeem it. The cross stands as a flag claiming this redemption, and Christ’s descent presses that stake deeper into the very bowels of the universe. It is His world fully, from its innermost place to its loftiest, and his descent makes the hope tangible. He returns from hell a victor, having staked his claim upon every surface of creation.
So as I ponder what “He descended into hell” could mean and the story which lies behind it, I know that no matter my speculation, the cross has pierced the pit of hell and destroyed the evil therein. John Wick reminded me that I can grasp at the mystery in ways that will bring a sense of renewed hope. Action can be allegory and can take us deeper into the pain to remind me that I am not left in the depths consumed by hell’s flames.
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