In the “Stages of Existence” article you wrote, you said “No soul in Heaven will ever fall, but souls in Hell are not necessarily precluded from ascending (more in a subsequent article).” Can you explain what you mean by “ascending”? I thought that scripture teaches that those who go to Hell will be burning for all eternity.
You are completely correct. When I wrote that article, I was responding to some (rather niche) theology that I was reading at the time, and I should have been far more clear about that fact. The comments about Heaven (Paradise) and Hell were in the context of the logical/chronological ordering of the Judgement, Christ’s Descent into Hell, and the “times of ignorance” (Acts 17:30) and pagans who died having never known Christ. In light of the fact that I have a larger audience to whom I owe greater precision and the insufficiency of my original wording, I recant the wording of the original article and have unpublished it. I will rewrite it when I have time. Thank you for the reminder.
To answer your specific question: The ‘ascending’ of which I spoke was the possibility that Christ during the descent into Hell not only proclaimed to the spirits imprisoned, but also took with Him (thereby robbing the devil of his captives) certain of the men there imprisoned. This is found in a number of Church fathers and others, and I was highlighting the possibility of it being true (I have no actual position on the matter, because I do not believe Scripture tells us enough to conclude one way or the other).
I find Article IX of the Solid Declaration to be a sufficient statement of the nature of the Harrowing of Hell, and am content to leave it at that.
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