And was buried

The Text

A single Latin participle, sepultus, “having been buried.” The translations are uniform and uncontroversial. The only minor shift is the 1662 ordering “dead, and buried” against the modern “died, and was buried” — a verbal/participial preference, not a doctrinal one.

Translation Notes

Sepultus is the past participle of sepelio, “to bury,” and carries the ordinary Roman sense of interment — body placed in a tomb. There is no ambiguity in the Latin and no contested rendering in the Greek. The clause is doing simple, declarative work.

Historical Context

This clause is present in the Old Roman Symbol (c. 215) and in every subsequent Western form of the creed. It is also in the Nicene Creed (sepultus est, ταφέντα), drawn directly from 1 Corinthians 15:4 — “that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” Paul’s pre-Pauline tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 is generally regarded as the earliest Christian creedal formula on record, dating to within a few years of the crucifixion.

The clause is short because it is doing load-bearing work that needs no elaboration. Burial completes the reality of death. A body left exposed is a body that might be revived; a body in a tomb is a body that has been let go of by the living. The disciples buried Jesus. The women came to anoint a corpse. The tomb was sealed.

The clause is also a hinge: it concludes the humiliation and prepares the descent. Without burial there is no descent into Hades and no third-day return.

Lines of Interpretation

Patristic

Tradition: Ignatius, Tertullian, the anti-docetic Fathers

The burial clause was deployed against docetism — the early heresy that Christ only appeared to have a body and only appeared to suffer. Ignatius of Antioch (Trallians 9, c. 110) hammers the point: Christ “was truly born, ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died… and was truly raised from the dead.” Burial is part of the chain of truly-truly-truly. Tertullian later mocks the docetists: a phantom does not bleed, a phantom does not need a tomb.

Strengths

• Establishes the bodily reality of Christ’s death against every spiritualizing alternative
• Anchors the resurrection in physical, locatable history — a known tomb, known witnesses

Weaknesses

• The clause itself does little theological work beyond the affirmation; everything else is built on it

Reformation

Tradition: Calvin, Institutes II.16.7

Calvin treats the burial briefly: it confirms the reality of the death, and it is the moment from which the resurrection’s glory begins to be measured. He notes the irony — gospel echo — that Jesus, having no place to lay his head in life, is buried in a borrowed tomb belonging to a wealthy disciple, fulfilling Isaiah 53:9.

Strengths

• Connects the clause to the prophetic Scriptures
• Avoids the speculative excess of medieval relic-veneration around the Holy Sepulchre and the Shroud

Weaknesses

• Quite brief; Calvin moves quickly to the descent, which interests him more

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s treatment of the burial is similarly brief. In the Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament on Matthew 27:57–61, he comments primarily on Joseph of Arimathea — “a rich man, a counsellor, a good and just man, who waited for the kingdom of God” — taking the burial as an occasion to note that the gospel reaches the wealthy as well as the poor, and that Joseph’s courage in claiming the body when the disciples had fled is itself a kind of faith. This is characteristic Wesley: the doctrinal point is assumed, the practical and pastoral point is drawn out.

In Wesley’s abridgment of the Thirty-Nine Articles for the American Methodists (1784), the burial is retained without alteration in Article II “Of the Word, or Son of God, Who Was Made Very Man”: “who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.” Wesley keeps the clause; he does not gloss it.

Hymnody

Charles Wesley’s “And Can It Be” (1738) gives the burial a single, characteristic line — “Tis mystery all: the Immortal dies!” — and moves on. The Wesleyan hymnic instinct is to sit briefly at the tomb only long enough to feel the weight of the paradox: the deathless God laid in a grave. The 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists contains no hymn devoted to the burial; it appears as one beat in larger Passion or Easter hymns. This is in marked contrast to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, whose Holy Saturday liturgy lingers extensively over the Tomb.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

To pray “and was buried” is to refuse to skip Holy Saturday. The clause names a day when nothing happens — when the body is in the tomb, the disciples are scattered, and the women wait. For congregations grieving a death, the burial clause is permission to grieve fully before resurrection hope is spoken. The dead are buried. So was Jesus.

Further Reading

• Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians 9 — the foundational anti-docetic deployment
• Tertullian, De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ), esp. chs. 5–6 — the polemical case for Christ’s real body and real burial
• Augustine, De Symbolo ad Catechumenos (On the Creed: A Sermon to the Catechumens) — homiletical treatment of the creed clause-by-clause
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion II.16.7
• John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament on Matt 27:57–61, Mark 15:42–47, John 19:38–42
• John Wesley, “The Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church,” Article II — Wesley’s abridgment of the Anglican Article II
• 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 — the earliest Christian creedal source for the clause