Q: I have always wondered where good people from the Old Testament like Abraham or Moses went after they died. It seems they could not go to heaven because Christ had not yet redeemed them from original sin, but they should not have gone to hell either.
This is a frequently asked question and the answer given by the medieval theologians is that the good people of the Old Testament went to what they called the “Limbo of the Fathers”. The word “limbo” means a border and is used here to refer to the border of hell.
As you say in your question, as a consequence of the original sin of our first parents it was not possible for anyone to go to heaven until Christ came to redeem humankind. That is, Adam and Eve lost for themselves and for their posterity the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace, which was a sharing in God’s own life and a state of intimacy with him.
That loss deprived the descendants of Adam and Eve, all of humanity, of the Beatific Vision of heaven. This is a dogma of faith defined in two ecumenical councils, the Second Council of Lyons (1274) and the Council of Florence (1438). Those councils declared: “The souls of those who die in original sin as well as those who die in actual mortal sin go immediately into hell, but their punishment is very different.”
The word “hell”, as used here, is a translation of the Latin word “infernum”, meaning the “lower region” or the “realm of the dead” in general, not the hell of the damned. It means the state of deprivation of the Beatific Vision of heaven.
That is why the councils say “but their punishment is very different”. The souls of the just who were in original sin but died in God’s friendship suffered only the loss of the Beatific Vision and were very happy, while the souls of the damned suffered in addition the eternal pains of hell.
Before Christ’s redeeming death on the cross, then, no one could go to heaven. But it is clear that while some people may have deserved to go to the hell of the damned, there were also many who deserved to go to heaven, but were unable to do so.
Among them would be the many figures of the Old Testament like the ones you mention, but also people from the time of Christ like St Joseph and St John the Baptist.
All of these souls remained in that state of natural happiness known as the “Limbo of the Fathers”, awaiting Christ’s death and resurrection.
After Jesus died on the cross to redeem us from original sin, his soul too passed into the realm of the dead while his body remained in the tomb. It is of this that we speak when we say in the Creed that “he descended into hell” or “he descended to the dead”.
According to the Tradition, while he was in the realm of the dead, or the “Limbo of the Fathers”, Jesus announced the good news of redemption to the souls detained there.
For example, St Ignatius of Antioch, who died in 107, writes to the Magnesians that Christ “awakened the prophets from the dead, who were his disciples in spirit, and who awaited him as their teacher on his arrival” (Magn. 9, 2).
St Irenaeus, later in the second century, quotes an apocryphal passage from the prophecy of Jeremiah, in which he sees Christ’s descent to the dead foretold: “The Lord, the Holy God of Israel, thought of his dead who slept in the earth of the grave, and He went down to them in order to announce to them the salvation” (Adv. haer. IV, 33, I, 12, and V, 31, I).
In the thirteenth century, St Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Summa Theologiae: “Consequently, when Christ descended into hell, by the power of his Passion he delivered the saints from the penalty whereby they were excluded from the life of glory, so as to be unable to see God in his essence, wherein man’s beatitude lies, as stated in the I-II, 3, 8. But the holy Fathers were detained in hell for the reason that, owing to our first parent’s sin, the approach to the life of glory was not opened. And so when Christ descended into hell he delivered the holy Fathers from there (STh III, 52, 5).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up this teaching: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Saviour in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell” (CCC 633).
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