In this special episode, Dr. Taylor Marshall explains the importance of Holy Week and the metaphysical implications of Christ's victory over death in the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the descent into hell, the harrowing of hell.
00:02:43.700And joining us on this auspicious day is none other than Dr. Taylor Marshall to explain to us the importance, not only of the story that we all know, but also the metaphysical implications of Christ's victory over death.
00:03:01.720Dr. Taylor Marshall, thanks for joining us once again here on Human Events.
00:04:01.300It continues also through Holy Saturday with the descent into hell, the harrowing of hell, as is taught to us in the Apostles' Creed, which then culminates on Easter Sunday.
00:04:16.800Can you walk us through that and what you've been able to unpack so incredibly well in your work?
00:04:24.380Yeah, well, we have to remember on this Easter that all the other religions have prophets, teachers, so-called, but Jesus Christ, the Messiah, rose on the third day.
00:04:37.820We truly believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and rose on the third day.
00:04:42.760And as you just mentioned, the events in Holy Week are all linked up so that in the eyes of the earliest Christians, they perceived it as one event.
00:04:54.100So you have Christ instituting the Eucharist, the Last Supper, on Thursday night, and then that moves into the betrayal, the agony in the garden, and then into the Passion, the scourging, the crucifixion, the death, the harrowing of hell, which we'll talk about today, which is Christ descending into the realm of the dead, as we say in the Creed, descended into hell.
00:05:15.660And then the miraculous, glorious resurrection, all of that is a package.
00:05:38.180Well, and just to throw in there, because, of course, you know, Tanya, my wife, comes from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, that even to her, it's much more common.
00:05:48.740She's more familiar with the word Pascha.
00:05:53.960They still celebrate on the older calendar, the Julian calendar.
00:05:57.200And so for her, you always get those sort of pop history articles around this time of year saying, oh, Easter is based on this ancient pagan holiday and the bunny and all this.
00:06:12.060And it's like, no, that's literally just the language of English that does that.
00:06:16.940That's in every single—almost every single other country in the world, they actually refer to it as Pascha.
00:06:23.060We call it the Paschal season for a reason.
00:06:27.320And so it's silly that they play these language games to try to say, oh, you know, it's all based on this pagan holiday.
00:06:46.180It's Joe Rogan's five questions about Christianity.
00:06:49.280And I remember you really, really focused on the fact that when you're defending Christianity to anyone or just explaining it, that you have to uphold the resurrection.
00:06:59.660Because that is actually the singular moment that proves that Christianity, number one, is real and then also proves that Christ is the Messiah.
00:07:13.140And if you—everyone kind of knows the Ten Commandments, even if you've read in the Bible or seen the Charlton Heston film, the whole idea is that in order to preserve the firstborn of Israel, they took a lamb, they killed the lamb, they spread the blood of the lamb over the doorposts, and then they ate the lamb.
00:07:31.120And Christ comes, and before he sheds his blood, he institutes a ceremonial sacrament, the Eucharist, where he says, take, eat, this is my body.
00:08:07.260But a lot of people are confused, especially those from an evangelical background who have not heard this.
00:08:11.460All the church fathers, all the earliest Christians, and we'll see in a little bit in Peter, Paul, the book of Acts, they understand that after Christ died on the cross, he continued his salvific mission in the realm of the dead.
00:08:26.680And it's absolutely beautiful, it's fascinating, and I think if people meditate and pray about it over this Easter, I think it'll really enrich their faith to see that Christ in his redemption doesn't just extend into his present or into the future where we live, but actually into the past, into the Old Testament.
00:08:47.040Right, and this is something that, and I want to get into it in the next segment in more detail, but it's something, again, we're using corporeal language that we've created, English, or if you want to even get into Greek or Latin, those are still human-created languages.
00:09:04.920So we're using language and concepts and forms from the physical world to try to describe things that are taking place on the preternatural metaphysical stage.
00:09:18.640So the idea that we're ever going to, you know, when people say it's hella place, it's, you know, you Catholics believe in purgatory.
00:09:28.760And so the idea that he can reach across time, well, what is time to God, right?
00:09:35.620What is time to someone who sits outside of time?
00:09:38.060And that is a concept in and of itself that we, in this space, have no ability to even begin to comprehend.
00:09:47.220Yeah, there's definitely a metaphysical, preternatural, and supernatural element here.
00:09:52.440And, yeah, we, I think it was the, I think it was the fourth ladder in council that says whenever we're talking about God or theological concepts, there's always a similarity and a dissimilarity when we're talking about theology because of the limits of finite created minds.
00:10:10.880Like, you're and mine, you know, we don't have perfect brains, we make mistakes, but also just the failings of temporal finite language.
00:10:18.540So I think that's a principle whenever we do theology, we can be accurate by using language, but we have to realize there's always a similarity and a dissimilarity when we're talking about these, these concepts, these mysteries.
00:10:31.380And the Eastern Church, I think, does a great job by using.
00:10:34.460In the rosary, they're called mysteries.
00:10:41.340We're not fully comprehending these divine mysteries.
00:10:45.940No, I think, yeah, didn't mean to cut you off, but that's exactly right.
00:10:49.020That even in just something as basic as the rosary, it's referred to, these are the mysteries, the sorrowful, the glorious, the joyful, luminous, if you choose.
00:11:01.140And that it's still, there's an extent that we're not supposed to be able to understand what's going on.
00:11:08.240And people will say, you know, well, that could never happen.
00:11:28.300But as what's the best way for people to start thinking about this, you would say?
00:11:35.300Well, I mean, the best way is for 2000 years, we've had these rituals, these liturgies, these services that have been, according to tradition, developed by the 12 apostles and passed down through the centuries.
00:11:50.140So there's, there's special prayers and liturgies for what we call Maundy Thursday, which is the evening of the Last Supper, Good Friday.
00:11:58.060I mean, we, we have early records going back to what was going on in Jerusalem in the 300s and then on Saturday and then on Sunday.
00:12:07.400So, you know, the earliest Christians, it wasn't just reading the Bible and remembering Jesus.
00:12:12.680They were actually living, going through these, these mysteries, as we said, with a group, with their church, with their community through Thursday, Friday, which was a day of strict fasting, no food.
00:12:27.340Saturday and then on Sunday, the greatest, biggest party that people experienced all year, bigger than Christmas, was always on Paschal Sunday, Easter Sunday.
00:12:37.760And I think that's the proper way for us to meditate and live these mysteries.
00:24:32.860One piece of this that it mentions in Catherine Emmerich, and I'm pulling up the section right here, and it's so brief, but even beyond me and me having watched your video on this and then read more about it, and even in the Eastern Church, and this is something that Tanya showed me, they have icons that depict the harrowing of hell.
00:24:59.820And it always shows Christ going to, and he goes to the earliest parents of all of us, the earliest father and the earliest mother, and that's Adam and Eve.
00:25:10.580And then raising up Adam and Eve, and that it's this incredible icon that you always see in the Eastern Church of Christ descending and then bringing them first into heaven.
00:25:19.780And that it, but beyond that, and of course the demons have to, of course, obey Christ because he's still their creator as well.
00:25:28.640So that when they see him, that when the angels bring him before, so he's, he's really rescuing all these people who have been waiting in Abraham's bosom.
00:25:36.280But there's another line that says, when the gates were swung open by the angels, one beheld before him a struggling, blaspheming, mocking, howling, and lamenting throng.
00:25:51.900I saw that Jesus spoke some words to the soul of Judas, words to the soul of Judas.
00:26:01.340And he's not mentioned anywhere else in these writings.
00:26:04.540And what, and I, you know, see if, see if Mel Gibson addresses this in the film, if he's, if he's going to depict all of this, but I've just been racking my mind for at least a year since I first read this.
00:26:19.600What did Christ say to Judas when he descended into hell?
00:27:24.980So it, it seems like he's repenting for the betrayal.
00:27:29.140And yet he then goes, he kills himself.
00:27:31.840It becomes the potter's field, the field of blood.
00:27:34.280Uh, walk me through that because it's, it's confusing for on a theological question that I think for some, maybe, um, that, that Judas seems to acknowledge his sin.
00:28:23.440And I want to be forgiven and I want to have fellowship with God and a, and a bond of love and charity with God and by extension to your neighbor.
00:28:32.160And I think what we see in Judas is we see a regret.
00:28:36.100I think he knows he's betrayed innocent blood.
00:28:38.520That's why he returns the money, but he doesn't turn himself to Jesus Christ, which was an option.
00:28:45.460And remember you've been to Golgotha, Jack.
00:28:47.920I mean, it's not that far out of the city.
00:28:50.560I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's even now.
00:28:55.300So, so Judas only had to walk a couple minutes and he would have been at Golgotha and he could have knelt down next, next to the board Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and St. John and said, I'm so sorry, forgive me.
00:29:39.660And so that leads him to that place because, because yet aren't there people who say though, that if you, if you admit that you've committed a sin and if you believe in Christ, that's all you need, right?
00:29:51.140Isn't that, that's the formula, right?
00:29:53.620Well, we, we believe in faith formed by love.
00:29:57.600You know, if you love me, keep my commandments.
00:29:59.640So there has to be some kind of love for God.
00:30:03.520You're not going to go to heaven without love for God.
00:30:07.740So the soul has to have grace in the soul and must have love for God through Jesus Christ.
00:30:15.080And so if, even if you regret, even if you're, man, I shouldn't have done that.
00:30:19.960Oh my, I'm so, I'm despairing and all that, but you don't have love for God, or in this case, love for Jesus Christ, who you've condemned to death.
00:31:03.500I mean, that, that's a hard thing to say, especially when you're the second person of the Holy Trinity and you say it's better that that person was never born.
00:31:12.620That means Judas has a eternal punishment waiting for him as, as not good.
00:31:18.100We, uh, uh, you know, funny enough is of all the things that, um, you know, people ask me and I know you and I chatted about this the last time I was on your show that, uh, they said, Hey, didn't you have dinner with president Trump recently?
00:31:32.100And we did that Trump keto thing, uh, which seems to be working for him by the way.
00:31:36.600Um, that, uh, one of the things that believe it or not, and I'm just going to say, I don't even know, I don't even think I've said this publicly yet, but one of the things that I spoke about with president Trump while we were at dinner, I kid you not.
00:31:54.660You and Donald Trump had a layers of hell discussion.
00:31:59.020So I brought it up because through the, I've, I use Dante to bring it up.
00:32:03.840Basically I use Dante's description because of course this is probably, I think the most popularly known description of the circles of hell, uh, obviously a little bit different.
00:32:14.160And his is, uh, nine, I think in total nine and, uh, in the, in the classic, but there's certainly parallels to what we see.
00:32:21.760And he's, he's sort of riffing off of, of what we see there.
00:32:25.900And I mentioned something to president Trump that, uh, the lowest circle of hell in Dante's telling is, so this, I I'm, I'm guessing that in this section, you know, he's, he's referring to the layers of the damned.
00:32:39.900So this is the final section of hell when you have been accursed, when you've been sentenced, that even within that final section of the accursed, there are these other nine circles.
00:33:14.700And even in that there are, there's a further sub layer.
00:33:19.820And one of the lowest sub layers of there is the Judasian layer, which is actually for Judas for not only a man who betrays his friend, but for a man who betrays his Lord.
00:33:35.000And that's, you know, who's in there is Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.
00:34:03.940We just got, we just got our, our show title producer, Angelo, Satan's bubble gum, um, came here to talk about the harrowing of hell and chew Judas.
00:34:10.720Cause yeah, but so, so, and then the final, of course, no, it's not even a layer, but it's just within that final layer is the center of that layer.
00:35:03.100And, uh, you know, that's, if you rebel against God, if you hate God, if you hate your neighbor, um, you begin, you begin to become cold, frozen.
00:35:49.180He offers himself as a Passover sacrifice and sheds out all of his blood so that he can redeem sinners, people who have rebelled against him.
00:35:59.200And he gives him this chance, uh, to come back a second chance to love God.
00:36:03.920And then even the people who died before him, like Adam and Eve and everyone, he even goes to them and redeems them and descend into hell.
00:36:12.580So the whole thing is, is, is quite beautiful.
00:36:15.440And there's the contrast between the people in, in Abraham's bosom or in limbo who did have love for God, like Adam, Eve, Isaiah, Elijah, you know, Esther, they have the love, the charity of God in them.
00:36:32.060And they are ascending to heaven with Christ, but all those evil demons, and like you mentioned, Jack, Judas, they're left behind.
00:38:13.580And I myself bring the promise of my father upon you.
00:38:17.040But you must wait in the city until the power from above comes down upon you.
00:38:21.380And I think that's interesting, too, because you look at cynicism in the world today, and particularly you see this among the younger generation that's coming up now for Zoomers and so many people.
00:38:35.640It's this idea that if you're not cynical, if you don't have this cynical aloofness to anything, if you're serious, if you're earnest, if you want to have an actual relationship, like if you want to have a relationship with a girl, well, okay, now you're a simp.
00:38:49.100And if you're serious about something, oh, you're cringe.
00:38:52.120Or if you try to do something out and then you're an incel, and there's all these different words.
00:38:57.900So you have to be, you know, you just have to be sarcastic and cynical and disconnected from everything and pretend you're above everything and you're just sort of providing this running commentary to life.
00:39:09.700Last time I checked, that's not actually living, is it?
00:39:27.020And I think anyone who has lived a full life and people that we admire as heroes, they're the people who sacrificed, whether that's your grandparent, your parent, a spouse.
00:39:39.100Jack, you and I are both, we have kids.
00:39:41.520That's a life of suffering and there's great joy.
00:40:06.080This is why I'm a follower of Jesus Christ.
00:40:07.840I have realized through grace that being a disciple of Jesus Christ and taking up your cross daily means, yes, I do have to humble myself and deny myself.
00:40:18.180But to the extent that I do that in Christ's grace is to the extent that I find meaning, purpose, fulfillment, joy, and ultimately salvation in the next life.
00:40:28.760And if we can all live that way, we all know the world would be a better place.
00:40:42.580He comes from heaven as the son of God and enters into space, time, earth, through the womb of a blessed Virgin Mary and comes to live amongst us.
00:40:54.780And if he did that, we can do that with other people.
00:40:56.600We can enter into life and community and into suffering and into fellowship, even though it hurts and even though it's hard.
00:41:03.880And that ultimately is joyfulness, not happiness, joyfulness.
00:41:07.880And that's really the message, I think, of the resurrection.
00:41:10.680And it's always the message of the resurrection that that comes through the sacrifice.
00:41:15.200And he's not asking us to make those kind of sacrifices because he's already done it.
00:41:19.680And I think that on this Easter is a message that we should all remember, is that you can only achieve those things through putting everything in, through going through the sacrifice, through walking through that fire in order to attain the ultimate joy.
00:41:49.080And the whole idea, we talked about this before, Easter baskets, the whole idea is you just spent 40 days in Lent not enjoying the food that you like.
00:41:58.760And what happened is, is people would then put everything in a basket, decorate it, bring it to church.
00:43:50.900Well, that's a good, that's a, that's a good answer, by the way, to, for, um, or good, a good trick question, I think, for people to try to put the, try the, try tie the tradition together.
00:44:01.020Because here in the West, we don't necessarily own chickens that much anymore.
00:44:05.120But if you're from an area that you actually know how that works and how chickens work, um, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but do chickens stop laying eggs just because it's lent?
00:44:26.220Uh, and it's a cheap, plentiful form of fat, protein, and calories.
00:44:31.340And, you know, I think when people forgot about Lent and stopped practicing Lent and they're like, what's the deal about Easter bunnies and eggs?
00:44:38.580They forgot that there's this ancient penitential practice that Christians have been doing since the 200s, right?
00:46:03.400It's actually, you've been doing it for years, but I found that just in the last couple months, it's somehow, how does this guy keep getting better?
00:46:15.620You know, in movies like The Jesus Film, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, these used to just be part of American culture and growing up, even as late as the 1980s, even the early 90s, even elementary school, public schools would show these films.