A match made in hell: Luther and Calvin on the descensus ad inferos

Abstract Contrary to longstanding opinion, it was Luther, not Calvin, who first interpreted Christ’s descent into hell as an event of suffering and feeling forsaken by God. Though Lutheran tradition afterward emphasised a victorious interpretation taken from Luther’s famous ‘Torgau sermon’, a more ambivalent legacy exists in his own writings. Sufficient attention is therefore warranted to view Luther as a forerunner to Calvin’s use of the cry of dereliction to interpret the descensus . Understanding this nuance can smooth the edges of a myopic age-old debate between the two traditions, since the two Reformers have more in common than not on the doctrine.