1. Did you read the part about scripture being the sole rule and standard? Is no appeal to the fathers permitted under the Reformed view of sola scriptura? 2-4. Does the following answer all your questions?
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The Timing of Christ's Descent to Hell in Relation to the Apostles' Creed by Kenneth L. Wenzel
Those who rationalize the hypostatic union of Christ often stray from the Bible's simple statements. Quenstedt follows the antirationalism of the hypostatic union as any Bible reader should, and therefore he writes this for us:
"Christ, the God-man, and therefore His entire person (and hence not only according to His soul, or only according to His body), after the reunion of soul and body, descended to the very place of the damned, and to the devils and the damned manifested Himself as conqueror. For the descent, since it is a personal action, cannot be ascribed otherwise than to the entire person of the God man. And, as in the Apostles' Creed it is said of the entire God man that He suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, so also it is said of the same that He descended into hell." The descent is, very naturally, predicated of Christ, the God man, i.e., it is taught that Christ, the God-man, was for a time in hell; but the descent itself is predicated only of the human nature of Christ. "Christ descended into hell, not according to His divine nature; for, according to this, He was in hell before, filling all things through His dominion… Therefore, Christ descended, according to His human nature. For the predications qanatwqei\j sarki/ and zw|opoihqeij, belong to the human nature alone. "...
Verse 19, as just noted, also has something to say for our understanding of the timing in the Apostles' Creed. The verse begins with e0nw{| to tell us that Jesus descended in His glorified state. It is a dative of circumstance. poreuqei/j is an aorist participle pointing out that Jesus really completed His act of going. Where did He go? fulakh~| means "prison," and it is another word for hell as noted in Matthew 5:25 and II Peter 2:4&5. It is also a very real place and not as many of the Reformed teach. They claim that Christ's descensus is only to be taken in a figurative sense and time it as part of His humiliation. This is still their understanding as many others do with the timing of the descensus in the Apostles' Creed. Rufinus (ca. 390 A.D.) timed the descensus of the Apostles' Creed in apposition to the burial. He talks as if the descensus is an unnecessary redundancy in the formula. What did Jesus do in hell? He went to khrussei/n or to proclaim or to herald. Colossians 2:15 clearly describes how Jesus preached. He did not go to preach the Gospel and give the spirits' another chance to be saved as some interpret (Origen, Marcion). Rather, Jesus went to publicly shame hell. The Lord triumphed over them in the ancient manner. He paraded the defeated enemies of God and man before Himself. Paul's comments on Christ's descensus are important. He talks about a time of triumph and glory and not one of suffering and pain. Paul, then, as also Peter, by inspiration directs us to time Christ's descent to hell with the Lord's exaltation when we confess the Apostles' Creed. Before summarizing the conclusions of the first section, it was stated above that more should be said on the timing of the vivificatio of the Savior. When was Jesus made alive in His glory to descend is the question. The Bible points out that Jesus' spirit at the time of His death went into the hands of His Father (Lk. 23:46). It also declares that on the same day of His death Jesus was in paradise (Lk. 23:43). In addition, we have every reason to claim that Jesus lay in the grave for the full time He predicted (Mt. 12:40, 26:61, 27:40&63; Mark 8:31; Jn 2:19&20). Finally, there is Peter's record that makes it clear that Jesus was vivified and descended for a very short time before he appeared to man. Does this mean then, that we should change the Apostles' Creed to proclaim "on the third day He arose again from the dead; He descended into hell?" Indeed, there is no need for such a radical change. But we should remember that the term "resurrection" is used either restrictedly or comprehensively. The Apostles' Creed uses the latter. Quenstedt comments to this point as he writes:
The moment of time of the descent is according to I Peter 3:19, the time that intervened between the quickening and the resurrection of Christ, properly so called. To the assertion, that the descent preceded the resurrection, and therefore did not succeed the vivifying, Holl, (668) replies: "A distinction must be made between an outward and an inner resurrection. The former is the going forth from the sepulchre, and the outward appearance to men, and is described in the Apostles' Creed; the latter is the quickening itself."
