What are the “spirits in prison” in 1 Peter 3:19?

18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, 19 in which he also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison 20 who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. In it a few — that is, eight people— were saved through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you (not as the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him. – 1 Peter 3:18-22 (CSB)

You’re not alone if that passage leaves you scratching your head—Martin Luther said, “I still do not know what the apostle meant.”^[1]Martin Luther, Sermons on the First Epistle of St. Peter, in Luther’s Works, vol.30, 113. Below you’ll find some discussion, but here’s the short answer: while there’s no solid scholarly consensus on the matter, thankfully there’s quite a bit we can say for sure in the passage’s surrounding context. That being said, let’s get into it.

A theological aside

Out the gate, we have to recognize that whatever this passage is saying about these “spirits in prison” is a marginal theological point. Note how this bit about the spirits is a side comment within the passage itself. Peter begins in verse 18 by addressing how Jesus’s example enables us to stay faithful in the midst of suffering, then at the end of 3:18 he talks about the spirit which kicks off his meandering course from spirits in prison to Noah to baptism, i.e. being saved from the midst of judgment. This brings him to what we appeal to God for in baptism: salvation, as evidenced through Christ’s resurrection, and freedom from guilt over sin (“a good conscience”). If you keep reading to 4:1, there Peter returns to Christ’s suffering in the flesh, roughly where he left off in 3:18. All that to say, reading the surrounding context we can conclude that 3:19-20 is a digression from the main point: following Jesus in the midst of suffering.

Yeah, but what is he saying?

Noting the context around this passage helps us tack down what we do know. At the broader level, Peter is talking about salvation in Christ, which is both our eternal hope and a temporal hope for enduring suffering in the here and now. Baptism proclaims this hope, and if you want to understand baptism further you can look at various stories throughout the Old Testament of God’s decisive salvation of his people, such as his rescue of Noah and his family from the flood waters (i.e. judgment for sin) through his act of grace (the parting of the Red Sea is another example, cf. 1 Cor 10).

Specifically in verses 18b-20, Peter is talking about Jesus’s death and resurrection. “He was put to death in the flesh.” To conclude, we know that, whatever the whole “proclamation to the spirits in prison” means, the surrounding context is Jesus’s death and resurrection as the hope for our enduring suffering. Onto what we don’t know for sure.

Two positions

Questions about this passage can be summarized around 1. Who are the spirits in prison? 2. What did Christ preach? And 3. When did he preach?^[2]William Barclay, “1 Peter” in A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament, 464. There are literally hundreds of different interpretations of this, but I’ll talk about the two primary ones that seem the most likely.

1. Many people conclude that the spirits in prison are human spirits in bondage to sin during the time of Noah, such that Christ’s preaching was in the Spirit through Noah as a prophet (i.e. a message of repentance). Thus Peter is recounting something the pre-incarnate Christ did prior to his life, death, and resurrection.

The benefit of this interpretation is that it’s a far less weird than some alternatives. It sticks to the norms we know through Scripture, that Jesus has always existed, that he worked through the Spirit in the Old and New Testaments (cf. 2 Cor 3:18), and that Jesus didn’t go to hell to preach a sermon the day between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. On that last note, Catholic and Protestant readings of the New Testament have struggled to come to a consensus on what exactly Jesus did between his death and resurrection, notable in the differing ways the Apostle’s Creed is read with either Jesus “descended into hell” or “descended to the dead.” Some readers of 1 Peter have concluded that Jesus went to give people in hell a second chance to repent; other early Christians and Orthodox traditions conclude that Jesus went to Sheol to free Old Testament believers (the so-called “harrowing of hell”). We won’t get into that debate here, but this first position on the “spirits in prison” sidesteps the issue by concluding that’s just not what Peter is talking about here. But don’t let this sound like merely a convenient answer; this was and is the position of many noteworthy Christians, St. Augustine being one of them.

That being said, this position has some strikes against it. The New Testament almost every time uses “spirits” to describe supernatural beings like angels and demons, not human souls. Furthermore, the NT never uses the term “prison” to describe hell, though it does use it to describe the place for Satan and his fallen angels (2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6; Rev 20:7).^[3]Thomas Schreiner, Notes on 1 Peter 3:19 in The ESV Study Bible, 2410.

2. Several modern day commentators and early church fathers conclude that the spirits in prison are fallen angels who plagued the world during the time of Noah. That means that Christ, after his death but prior to his resurrection, went and proclaimed a message of triumph over these spirits, over whom he would reign in his resurrected state.

This is obviously the weirder interpretation. But ,in its defense, this position has plenty of contact with the actual flood account Peter is referencing, which discusses something like fallen angels having offspring with human women in Genesis 6:1-4 (though positions on this are highly divided). It also has some contact with Jewish literature from the first-century, such as the extra-biblical 1 Enoch, which discusses fallen angels imprisoned in the depths of the earth. And though 1 Enoch isn’t inspired and without error like the Scriptures, it still tells us something about what Peter and his audience were familiar with.^[4]Karen Jobes, 1 Peter, 2nd ed., 243.

Additionally, Peter goes on in the passage to describe Jesus’s reign over “angels, authorities, and powers,” all language that is typically used to describe spiritual beings (ex. Eph 6:12), and this interpretation makes better sense of the use of “spirits” and “prison,” as mentioned above. Finally, it holds to the timing that seems most evident in the passage; rather than interjecting an event from thousands of years prior, Peter is talking about events that were concurrent with Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Of course, this interpretation makes for strange reading, and some big things are standing against it. First are the various positions taken against the “harrowing of hell,” as mentioned above, but perhaps more apparent are the very few mentions elsewhere in the Bible about a spiritual prison for fallen angels. 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 both mention fallen angels being imprisoned, awaiting final judgement, but give few details about all this. Revelation 20:7 indicates a future punishment and imprisonment for these beings in Jesus’s eternal kingdom, but says nothing about a present spiritual prison.

Conclusion

Ultimately, reading 1 Peter 3:19 is an exercise in humility—there’s simply only so much we can say for sure. However, regardless of how we read it, either as a comment on the message of salvation in Noah’s time or a disclosure of Jesus proclaiming triumph over spiritual beings, we can rest firmly on what we do know about this passage, that Jesus offers definitive and final salvation through his death and resurrection, and this gives us hope. When we suffer we look to a suffering savior who can sympathize with our suffering, and to a resurrected savior who assures us that one day his perfect reign will be inaugurated over all things, a day when suffering will be called a thing of the past (Rev 21:4).

More Resources →