If God Is Not in Hell How Did Jesus Go There?

Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” – Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek – because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him. (Catechism, 663)

In this case “hell” is not the abode of the damned but merely the abode of all the dead prior to the opening of the gates of heaven. This is the Sheol described by the Old Testament and which Jesus speaks of in Luke 16:22-26.