THE GATES OF HELL (MATTHEW 16:18)

As I said in my earlier post on “Gates in the Bible,” the above passage which follows Peter's Great Confession deserves a discussion all on its own: “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” The preceding words have been discussed in endless debates concerning the significance of Peter's name change and exactly who or what the church was founded on, but I have heard little from the pulpit about the exact meaning of the last part of Matthew 16:18 quoted above. My own simple-minded approach to this clause underwent a complete shift recently as I looked at the words more closely. So I decided to see what others had to say regarding its interpretation.

I will start out with the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery: “The gates of Hades, representing the power of evil forces, will attack the church but cannot overcome it.” However, my gut feeling is that this interpretation is incorrect for three reasons. In the first place, the image of gates attacking anything is utterly absurd. In the second place, Hades represents the land of the dead, not the power of evil forces. And in the third place, it is obvious that the Church is the aggressor in this cosmic battle, not the one on the defensive.

So I next turned to the comments of other scholars to see if I was off-base in my judgment. When I did, I was actually quite surprised as to the diverse opinions that have been offered on the subject. There appeared to be nowhere near a consensus, and I found several combinations of interpretation concerning the definition of Hades, the exact nature of this conflict, which party was the aggressor and which was the defender, the direction in which the gates were opened, what the verb “prevail” meant, and when this conflict did or will occur. Let me try to break down some of these issues into separate parameters for ease of discussion. 

What does Hades represent?

On one hand, we have the many scholars who explain that the Greek word hades used in this passage is the rough equivalent of the Hebrew word sheol, meaning the shadowy land inhabited by the dead.

    Nixon: “The gates suggest the picture of a fortress or prison which lock in the dead and lock out their rescuers. “The gates of Hades means “the powers of death.”

    Stuart feels that the image “gates of Hades” draws on the imagery in Jonah 2:7 used by him when he thought he was dead. “...the fact that the Underworld's bars prevented one from returning back to life once dead [is a] metaphor for the finality of death.”

    Ellison feels that the RSV translation of “the powers of death” is a good rendering of “the gates of Hades.” “It is not a question of Satanic powers, but of death, which Jesus was to conquer in His resurrection.”

    Barbieri: “Jews would understand Hades' gates to refer to physical death.”

    J.B. Green: It stands for “the grip of the underworld (i.e. death).”

    Hill: “The view that 'gates of Hades' actually denotes Hades, the abode of evil spirit...seems forced and unnatural.” In contrast, he feels that it means that the gates of Hades “will not close to imprison (in death) those who belong to the messianic community.”

    Bruce: “While it [the church] maintains that confession, the gates of the prison-house of Hades (that is, death) will never close on it.”

In the opposing camp are the following three scholars. Note that several of them do not deny that Hades is the realm of the dead, but they associate it with the Satanic realm as well:

    R.E. Brown: Gates of hell “probably” refers to “Satanic destructive power.”

    Albright and Mann: “The community has just been referred to as a building, and here the forces of evil also have a fortress or city, the realm of death...The sense here is that the powers of evil cannot contain or hold in check the new community.”

    Blomberg defines Hades with “the Hebrew Sheol –the grave – probably, as with hell, in the sense of 'Satan's domain.'”

Note that two of these three hedge their bets by using the same word “probably.” So is Hades, the realm of the dead, really the same as the popular concept of Hell as an underground kingdom where Satan rules and his minions of evil torture the damned? Actually, that idea combines together three completely different otherworldly realms in biblical thinking. Without going into all of the theological arguments, Bietenhard, writing in the Dictionary of New Testament Theology, defines the three key Greek terms:

    “Hades is the temporary abode of the dead, to which they are banished.”

    “Abyssos [the abyss] means a particular place of terror which constitutes a refuge for demons.”

    “Gehenna is the eschatological fiery hell to which the ungodly will be eternally condemned at the last judgment.”

From these generally accepted definitions one can eliminate all interpretations of Matthew 16:18 which try to turn Hades into the realm of Satan and his followers. And actually, none of the above realms is said to be the present abode of Satan himself. He is pictured in the NT as having his field of operations as either in the sky (Ephesians 2:2) or the surface of the earth (Revelation 12:7-17).

Who is the aggressor in this spiritual conflict?

Most of those quoted above who treat Hades (correctly, in my mind) as the realm and force of death agree that the church is the only force that can release people from their prison. Thus, it is the church who is the aggressor in the battle, not vice versa. Boettner summarizes the stance of these scholars:

    Boettner: “The statement that the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against the church has usually been understood to mean that the church will be able to defend itself against all its foes, that even the worst that the enemies can bring against it will not be able to destroy it.” But then she counters that opinion by rightly responding: “Gates are not offensive by defensive weapons. Hence the real meaning of this verse is that the church will take the offensive...”

As an aside, when I was a rather obnoxious know-it-all in junior high school, I once publicly corrected my history teacher who had just explained that Pickett's charge during the American Civil War was so named because all of the soldiers stood firm like picket fences. I held up my hand and asked him, “Then why is “Pickett” spelled with two t's and how can they have charged if they were standing still?”

His rather embarrassed reply was: “Well, there are always two ways to interpret history.” If I had had even more nerve than I possessed at the time, I would have said, “Yes, the right way and the wrong way.”

If you have read the previous blog on “Gates in the Bible,” you will find in no surprise that the literal function of gates in biblical times was to both keep aggressors out and keep prisoners in. However, at least two writers have come up with a way of justifying the opposite opinion, i.e. gates represent an attacking party.

Blomberg starts out by admitting the difficulty of his position “because gates are naturally seen as defensive protection, while 'overcome' suggests an army on the offensive.” He asks the logical question whether Jesus is saying that Hades cannot conquer the church or that it cannot resist the church's advances. He opts for the former based on two rather shaky grounds: (1) appeal to extrabiblical Jewish literature commenting on Isaiah 38:10 in which the phrase “gates of Hades” is equivalent to “powers of death” and (2) the historical reality that the early church was under constant attack from its opponents.

The weaknesses in Blomberg's arguments are obvious. In the first place, even though death can be said to have a power, that does not mean that it goes around on the offensive to wipe out the church. As to the second point, Blomberg is confusing the evil forces of Satan that attempted to crush the church in a number of ways with the power of death. Also, one could easily point out with Tertullian that “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

Hendricksen takes a different tack by treating “gates of hell (sic)” as a metonymy (i.e. a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole) representing “Satan and his legions as it were storming out of hell's gates in order to attack and destroy the church.” Hendricksen's main rationale for going to such an extraordinary length to defend his position is that he cannot picture how one can possibly suggest that “the gates of that realm (i.e. of the dead) are striving to overpower the church.” Of course, that perceived problem simply goes away once one realizes with the majority of commentators that it is the church who is on the offensive, not the gates.

When will this occur, or has it occurred already?

To some extent, the answer to this question depends on one's eschatological viewpoint:

    Barbieri, writing from a dispensational viewpoint, states: “Building His church was a yet-future work of Jesus Christ, for He said, 'I will build (future tense) My church,' but His program for the nation Israel had to be concluded before another program could be set in motion. That is why Jesus said not even 'the gates of hades' would 'overcome' this program...Jesus was thus telling the disciples His death would not prevent His work of building the church.” In other words, Matthew 16:18 was fulfilled with Jesus' resurrection. Colin Brown expresses much the same belief that the particular death in view here is that of Christ himself.

    However, Lorraine Boettner from the postmillennial camp expresses the opinion that Jesus' words mean “that the church will take the offensive, that it will advance throughout the world and that nothing, literally nothing, will be able to resist its onward march.” I would have to agree with much of what she says but would have to draw the line at the postmillennial conclusion that the church will eventually convert the whole world, ultimately resulting in a heaven on earth. 

Conclusion

R.T. France comes close to summarizing my current understanding on the subject:

After reviewing all of the references to gates in the Old Testament, he concludes “The metaphor, when seen against its OT background, does not therefore encourage the suggestion of some interpreters that 'Hades' represents not death but the demonic powers of the underworld, which are then pictured as making an eschatological assault on the church. Still less does it support the romantic imagery, sometimes derived from the traditional but incorrect translation 'gates of hell,' of the church as a victorious army storming the citadel of the devil. The imagery is rather of death being unable to swallow up the new community which Jesus is building.”

While I totally agree with France's contention that Hades is not the realm of Satan and that this verse it does not at all refer to Satan and his forces being on the offensive, He has left out one very attractive possibility based on the other use of walls in the Bible: to keep prisoners in. Thus, the picture in Matthew 16:18 could in fact be that of the last days in which the righteous dead of all ages will break down the prison gates of death from the inside and, in that manner, the last enemy, death, will be  conquered, as Paul states in I Corinthians 15:23-26.

Of course, the promise of this general resurrection from the dead came about first when Christ broke the bonds of death and the stone to the tomb was rolled away. In fact, at least two commentators (Colin Brown and J. Barbieri) go so far as to state that Jesus was predicting his own resurrection in Matthew 16:18.