Humiliation, Exaltation, and the Descent into Hell: John Boys and Intra-Reformed Diversity Concerning the Descent Clause in Early Modern England

This paper examines the theology of John Boys, clergyman and Jacobean English postiller, concerning Christ’s descent into hell. The Reformation debate on the descensus partially coincided with the development of the doctrine of the two states, and it is often assumed that Lutheran theologians nearly unanimously assigned a victorious descent into hell to the period of Christ’s exaltation against the Reformed, who followed Calvin in allocating the descensus to his humiliation. However, examining John Boys’s theology on the descent within the context of the wider development of the doctrine of Christ’s descent into hell, I show that Boys provides an example of a Reformed theologian who places Christ’s descent into hell within the state of exaltation. This bolsters the view of some historians who have argued that there were surprising intra-confessional differences in positions on the descensus.