Tag: Universalism

Salvation, judgment, and hell in the New Testament: Luke-Acts

A few weeks ago, I posted some broad-brushstroke thoughts about my experience reading through the New Testament, seeking out every passage that touches on judgment, heaven, hell, who goes where, and for how long. This little experiment was inspired by reading Rob Bell’s Love Wins earlier this year. I thought I’d dive a little deeper into one book in particular, Luke.

Luke is one of two volumes from the same writer. Luke tells the story of Jesus, while volume two (Acts) unpacks the movement he ignited.

More than any other gospel, Luke highlights the radically inclusive nature of Jesus. Time and again, Jesus subverts the “natural order of things.” Those who think they’re entitled to God’s favor end up on the wrong side of things. Those typically excluded — women, foreigners, the diseased, etc. — end up pleasantly surprised.

The gospel of Luke mentions hell (a.k.a. Gehenna) only once, in Luke 12:5. Three times if you also count references to Hades (Luke 10:15; 16:23).

In Acts… not one mention of hell.

As for judgment, there’s plenty to be found in Luke. But it’s not always what you’d expect.

John the Baptist warns of an unquenchable fire in Luke 3. But he also connects fire with baptism. One fire, different results — depending on what kind of person you are.

Twice (Luke 9:25-26; 12:8-10) Jesus says he’ll disown anyone who’s ashamed of him. The second time, Jesus also warns that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

And just what is blasphemy against the Spirit? This statement is set against the backdrop of Jesus’ clash with those who cynically credit his work to the devil and insist he prove his identity by performing signs at their command (Luke 11:14-16).

Two things worth mentioning…

First, you have to know someone in order to be ashamed of them. These texts say nothing about those who’ve never heard of Jesus.

Second, Jesus aims his rebuke at those who knowingly, persistently reject him. Those who see God at work and call it the devil.

Elsewhere, Jesus prophesies that three Galilean villages — Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum — will suffer a fate worse than Sodom because of their unbelief (Luke 10:1-15).

In Love Wins, Rob Bell reflects on a similar passage in Matthew, suggesting that maybe there’s hope for Sodom (p. 83-84). But that doesn’t seem to be the point of Luke’s text or the parallel account in Matthew.

Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum are sometimes known as the “evangelical triangle.” This was Jesus’ home turf. Several of the disciples came from these villages. The evangelical triangle was home to some of the most devout, God-fearing people in ancient Palestine.

According to Luke, the fate of these otherwise good people who rejected the Messiah will be worse than that of the notoriously wicked who never met Christ (e.g. Sodom).

That’s because judgment is directly related to knowledge. Elsewhere, Luke quotes Jesus: “The one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows,” while those who know better “will be beaten with many blows” (Luke 12:47-48).

And in his next installment, Luke writes about a God who has overlooked human ignorance.

Does ignorance get someone off the hook for bad behavior? Not entirely. But the full force of judgment is reserved for those who ought to know better.

And then there’s the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31). In this story, Jesus describes Hades as a place of “torment.” There’s a “great chasm” separating Hades from paradise — though the rich man’s refusal to accept Lazarus as his equal, even after their fortunes have been thoroughly reversed, is as much a chasm as anything else in this story.

Most scholars will tell you not to read too much theology into parables. But this story does reveal another dimension of judgment: it is in part about evening the score, providing justice for those who didn’t get any in this life (see also Luke 6:20-26).

In fact, if there’s one group of people for whom it’s almost impossible to enter the kingdom of God, it’s the rich (Luke 18:18-29). Which is small comfort for those of us who find ourselves among the wealthiest 1% of people on the planet.

Last, we have the religious leaders — Jesus’ nemeses in all four gospels.

Near the end of his life, Jesus singles out the religious establishment in a parable about a vineyard owner who executes his wicked tenants (Luke 20:9-19). No one misses the point (which is remarkable for one of Jesus’ parables): the “teachers of the law and the chief priests” are the wicked tenants.

A few paragraphs later, Jesus warns that the religious leaders “will be punished most severely” for making a mockery of religion and exploiting the vulnerable (Luke 20:45-47).

So yeah… there’s plenty of judgment in Luke. We’re talking more than just a slap on the wrist, too:

“Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell.”

“Will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades.”

“These men will be punished most severely.”

But Luke also seems to believe that not all sins are created equal. In God’s cosmic justice, the punishment always fits the crime.

This is a far cry from the brand of Calvinism which says that every sin — from breaking the speed limit to genocide — is equally repugnant in the eyes of a holy God.

But there’s more.

In Luke, Jesus is radically inclusive and divisive all at once.

When Jesus’ disciples try to stop someone driving out demons in his name, Jesus tells them to leave the guy alone, saying, “Whoever is not against you is for you” (Luke 9:49-51).

But in the very next section of Luke, he says, “Whoever is not with me is against me” (Luke 11:23). (This was in response to those attributing his powers to the devil, for what it’s worth.)

Jesus insists he came not to bring peace but division (Luke 12:51), and he butts heads with the religious leaders… a LOT.

Yet Luke also says the religious leaders “rejected God’s purpose for themselves,” once more highlighting the radically inclusive nature of Jesus’ message. Even the establishment — as corrupt as it was — was meant to be part of what God was doing.

It turns out God wants everybody, even misfits. Even outcasts. And even the ones oppressing the outcasts. That’s the whole point of Luke’s gospel.

One last thing to take from Luke: judgment isn’t our business. It’s God’s.

In Luke 9, as Jesus makes his way toward Jerusalem — toward his death — he and his disciples pass through a Samaritan village. The people refuse to welcome him. (Let’s just say there was a bit of ethnic hostility between Jews and Samaritans back then.)

The disciples ask if they should call down fire from heaven to destroy the village… which was just a bit presumptuous on their part, don’t you think?

Jesus will have none of it. Luke simply says that he “turned and rebuked them.”

There’s a scene in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo laments that his uncle Bilbo didn’t kill Gollum when he had the chance. To which Gandalf replies: “Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.”

The same warning applies to all of us to debate heaven, hell, and who goes where. It’s God’s business, not ours.

Even those who have a relatively narrow view of salvation should hope and pray they’re wrong — that God will withhold whatever judgment he’s got in store and spare whoever they seem to think will be on the receiving end.

After all, if you figure the odds based on the New Testament, those of us who qualify as “religious insiders” have a better chance of being on the wrong side of things… precisely because we’re so sure we’re right.

But the good news is that God wants everybody. Outcasts, insiders, everyone.

 

6 observations on salvation, judgment, and hell after reading the New Testament

5013022837_d35e0419be_b

Shortly before Love Wins came out, I started reading the New Testament for Lent. Since Rob Bell had recently blown up the Interwebs with his provocative promo video, I decided to make note of every passage mentioning judgment, either directly or indirectly.

I finished just before Good Friday. I wound up with 75 some-odd pages of notes. For me, the experience affirmed much of what Rob says in Love Wins. But it clarified some areas where I have a different understanding of hell and judgment, too.

In general, I’m more convinced than ever that Rob has started an important conversation. We need to wrestle with the questions he raises Love Wins, not dismiss or distort them. Above all, we need to explore these questions without the vitriol that’s characterized much of the discussion to date. (This is, after all, the week of the Rally to Restore Unity.)

Here are some general observations…

1. Judgment is part of the New Testament story… a BIG part.

Like I said, 75 pages of notes.

It’s hard to read the New Testament and NOT get the impression that a day will come when God separates good from evil, darkness from light — banishing one from his presence. Maybe forever.

There’s hardly a book in the New Testament that doesn’t address judgment head-on. (Possible exceptions include Philemon, 2 John, and 3 John — all of which share one thing in common: they’re tiny.)

Speaking of tiny…

2. Hell is a tiny part of what the Bible has to say about judgment.

If you’re trying to craft a New Testament theology of judgment, you won’t get far by doing a word search on “hell.” In most translations, “hell” occurs just 23 times. And it may not even be the best translation, since “hell” is used for three different terms — each of which had a distinct meaning and origin.

I’ve said it before; and after reading the New Testament, I’ll say it again: our picture of hell owes more to a medieval caricature than it does the Bible. The fiery torture chamber that many of us imagine has little to do with the biblical picture of judgment.

3. Not all judgment is restorative.

This is one of the really big questions that Rob raises in Love Wins: do people get a second chance after death?

C.S. Lewis explored the idea of postmortem salvation in vivid detail. Martin Luther accepted the possibility, but cautioned it’s purely speculative. It can’t be proven from Scripture, he argued.

And that’s pretty much the sense that I get.

In the New Testament, there’s a strong hint of finality to judgment — or at least one aspect of judgment. Maybe those in hell can repent (as Lewis suggested) between now and some future, final judgment (i.e. the judgment depicted near the end of Revelation). But there’s a strong indication that at some point the curtain will drop. And whichever side you’re on, that’s it.

Yes, there is restorative judgment — i.e. discipline. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves,” and all that. But the Bible also talks about “everlasting destruction, “the second death,” and the like.

It’s one thing to suggest that “everlasting” doesn’t exactly mean what we think it does, as Rob argues in Love Wins. But even if that’s so, there’s still the matter of words like “destruction” and “death,” which have an unmistakable ring of finality.

4. Annihilationism and conditional immortality are at least as plausible as eternal conscious torment — if not more so.

The fact that the Bible talks about “everlasting destruction” and “second death” is a big part of why I believe in an irreversible judgment.

It’s also why I think we should take annihilationism and conditional immortality more seriously. (They’re two related but different theories of what happens to those who reject God.)

In my journey through the New Testament, I found two passages that I think could be read to support the notion of eternal conscious torment. There were a heck of lot more that talk about destruction, death, etc. Not exactly happy stuff. But as John Stott and others have noted, it’s hard to reconcile these images with the evangelical notion of eternal conscious torment.

5. Judgment is focused on those who knowingly, persistently reject God and work at cross-purposes with him.

The Bible has a lot to say about judgment. The question is: judgment for whom?

Judgment, as depicted in the New Testament, seems focused on a rather narrow set of people.

In the gospels, Jesus mostly directs his judgment diatribes at religious insiders — i.e. those who should’ve known better and rejected him anyway. In his letters, Paul refers to the judgment awaiting those who knowingly, consciously reject God. Revelation depicts judgment as vindication for the persecuted faithful.

I didn’t find a single passage where judgment is directed at those who’ve never heard about Christ or those who heard a toxic distortion of the gospel. These are questions the New Testament doesn’t address directly, but there is reason to believe that people aren’t judged for their ignorance.

6.  Simplistic, dismissive answers will not do.

When you ask about the fate of those who never heard the gospel, there’s a tendency in some circles to quote Acts 4:12.

As if that somehow settles the matter.

As if this passage is somehow talking about those who never heard.(It’s actually a warning to the Jewish religious leaders that if they reject the Messiah sent by God, no one else is going to come and save them.)

It’s one thing to say Christ is the only way to God. It’s another matter to presume to say how God can and can’t use Christ to bring people to himself.

Quoting a single line of Scripture — out of context, no less — doesn’t do justice to the immensity or complexity of the questions at hand.

We have to do better than that.

Related post: Six(teen) views on hell

Photo by Joseph Novak on Flickr / CC BY 2.0

First book-length response to Love Wins (not counting certain book-length blog posts…)

Mike Wittmer (my former thesis adviser at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary) recently published Christ Alone, the first book-length response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins.

It’s a sign of the times that Christians can publish their reactions to things they don’t like so quickly. (Creating lightening-fast responses to the Da Vinci Code became a cottage industry after Dan Brown released his abomination against all good writing. Christian publishing has never been the same since.)

The quality of thought often suffers for the sake of speed to market. But I hope that’s not the case with Mike’s book.

I’m sure Mike will find plenty to criticize in Love Wins. (Though, given that he’s also the author of this book, he should find at least one or two things to like about Rob’s description of heaven, if he’s fair.)

Mike is committed to Reformed theology. But in my experience, he tends to present his views without John Piper’s rancor, Mark Driscoll’s adolescent tantrums, or Kevin DeYoung’s egregious misrepresentations of other people’s views.

I hope that turns out to be true of his critique of Love Wins.

Six (or sixteen) views on hell

Many Christians assume there’s only one way to think about hell — and everything else is heresy.

So I counted the different theories of hell, focusing only on those that find a home somewhere within the Christian tradition. (I’m not taking into account an atheist’s view of hell, for example.)

By my count, there are at least six major theories on the nature of hell. When you count all the variations, and add to the mix various ideas of who goes where… you end up with more than a dozen different perspectives.

1. Hell as a place of unspeakable torment

The traditional perspective, according to many evangelicals. But labeling yours the “traditional” view can sometimes be a cheap way of trying to win the argument without proving the merit of your ideas.

Besides, the Eastern Orthodox Church has been around way longer, and they have a very different take on hell. That doesn’t mean they’re right and evangelicals are wrong, but let’s dispense with unhelpful arguments over whose view is more “traditional.”

In any case, the “unspeakable torment” view says those who die without Christ experience unimaginable agony — and they’re fully awake for it. This view is often referred to as “eternal conscious torment,” because most adherents believe it’s an unending state. There is no reprieve, no second chance.

2. Hell as a ghost town

Next we wander into universalist territory.

There’s a difference between Christian universalism and plain old, generic universalism, though both end up with an empty (or nonexistent) hell. Generic universalism says everyone is basically good and all paths lead to God.

Christian universalism is different. It says there’s only one way to God. It accepts the reality of hell, but also believes those in hell are able to repent and escape.

There are, in fact, two varieties of Christian universalism:

  • The confident variety: Those who fall into this category are quite certain hell will be empty someday. God’s victory will be absolute and all-inclusive. (If universalism and Calvinism had a baby, this would be it.)
  • The hopeful variety: This is the universalism (if you can call it that) of Rob Bell and George MacDonald. They argue there is hope for every person who ever lived. They may even think it’s very likely that everyone will eventually embrace God — because God has all eternity to melt hearts, and he will never give up. But hopeful universalism stops short of saying everyone will definitely be saved in the end. It respects human freedom too much to go there.

3. Purgatory now, hell later  

Basically, this view says those who die apart from Christ go to hell, though it isn’t hell in the fullest sense. Not yet anyway.

Residents of this not-quite-hell are invited to switch their status from “damned” to “saved,” but the invitation has an expiration date. There will come a day of final judgment, at which point everyone must live with their decision for eternity.

This is the picture C.S. Lewis paints in The Great Divorce. For those who escape, hell will turn out to have been purgatory. (Though Lewis means something very different by “purgatory” than your average Catholic.)

It’s better to think of this kind of hell as “Hades.” Which is a word we actually come across in the Bible — though you may not know it, since it’s often translated “hell.” And it does seem to be rather like a waiting room for the dead.

When reading Lewis, you’ll find varying degrees of optimism about how many people find the emergency exit in hell. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis says that, “Hell is locked from the inside.” But in The Great Divorce, he suggests that some do accept Christ’s invitation to escape.

4. Annihilationism

Basically, the unrepentant are exterminated after judgment, instead of being endlessly tormented. Apparently it’s the official view of the Church of England. John Stott, one of the most influential British Christians since C.S. Lewis, is a non-dogmatic annihilationist.

Moving on…

5. Conditional immortality

Not quite synonymous with annihilationism, but close. To most ears, annihilationism implies that God terminates the unrepentant person. Conditional immortality takes a different route to the same destination. It starts by questioning the assumption that humans are inherently immortal. In fact, only God is immortal, as Paul told Timothy.

The notion that we’re immortal — specifically, that our souls cannot die — doesn’t come from the Bible. It comes from ancient Greek philosophy. The kind that said everything physical is temporary (and evil), while everything spiritual is forever (and good). It’s also known as Gnosticism, which the early church rejected as heresy.

Note how Genesis implies that Adam and Eve must keep eating from the tree of life in order to go on living. Once they’re kicked out of the garden, they’re denied access to the tree, and they eventually die.

Eternal life, then, is a gift which only God can give — not something we possess by right. To be condemned is simply to miss out on immortality. That’s why Paul says the “wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” And that’s why John describes the final judgment as the “second death.”

6. Subhuman existence

This view is something of a halfway point between eternal conscious torment and conditional immortality. It says that the more a person persistently, defiantly sins against God and others, the less they reflect the image of God. They become less than fully human.

And if they carry on like this until death, there will be no turning back. They will persist in the afterlife as ex-humans. As N.T. Wright says in Surprised by Hope, they will pass “not only beyond hope but also beyond pity.”

____________

And those are just the theories about the nature of hell. There are many more theories to consider about who will end up there.

There are exclusivists like John Piper who say only those who consciously put their faith in Christ — or as Piper, ever the good Calvinist, would say: only those who were predestined to put their faith in Christ — go to heaven.

There are accessibilists like Terrence Tiessen and possibly Ben Witherington, who leave room in God’s kingdom for those who never had the opportunity to accept or reject Christ. God judges, they remind us, according to our level of knowledge.

There are Christian pluralists like Dallas Willard, who say that God can even save adherents of other religions — that such people will meet Christ in the age to come and realize he was the one they were seeking all along.

There are weak and strong versions of Christian pluralism, with different understandings of just how far God’s undetected grace will extend.

And of course, there are agnostics who insist we simply cannot know — like a friend of mine who said recently, “I’m just going to let God worry about it.”

All of these views have found expression within the Christian tradition. Some are more popular than others. All of them appeal to Scripture for support.

So when someone argues that it’s really quite simple understanding heaven, hell, who goes where, and for how long — remember… it may not be as simple as we think.

N.T. Wright on hell (part 3)

In Surprised by Hope, Anglican theologian N.T. Wright rejects fundamentalism’s almost gleeful obsession with eternal torment, as well as he perceives to be the naïve overconfidence of universalism.

Wright briefly considers “conditional mortality,” reminding us that immortality is not a natural part of human existence — despite what many church doctrinal statements profess with hardly a second thought.

Wright points to 1 Timothy, where Paul teaches that only God is immortal. He could just as easily have mentioned John, who writes that only the person who does the will of God “lives forever” and that “whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Or Revelation, where the “lake of fire” is a metaphor for “second death.”

God can share immortality with anyone he wants. But as far as we’re concerned, it’s a gift and nothing more. Immortality is not something we possess by right or by nature.

In the end, however, Wright’s view of hell falls somewhere in between eternal conscious torment and conditional mortality. Which means that for him, hell is something other than a land of limitless second chances.

Wright argues:

When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around.

For example, those who love money not only worship it; they begin to see others merely as a potential source of revenue or expense. And so they dehumanize themselves and others.

Wright continues:

After death, [such people] become at least, by their own effective choice, beings that were once human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body… they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity…

These creatures still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, can no longer excite in themselves or others the natural sympathy some even feel for the hardened criminal.

Now…if you read the last Harry Potter book, this might sound familiar. After being “killed’ by Voldemort, Harry wakes in an ethereal King’s Cross. (Note that he’s “more than disembodied thought.” N.T. Wright would be pleased.)

Before long, Harry notices something on the ground:

Something furtive, shameful… curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

When Harry asks Dumbledore (who meets him in the other-worldly King’s Cross) what the thing is, Dumbledore replies, “Something that is beyond our help.”

The strong implication being that the writhing creature is what’s left of Voldemort’s soul after being spliced so many times, thereby reduced to something less than fully human.

That, according to N.T. Wright, is the fate of those who persistently, knowingly reject God. They lose the image of God — the divine imprint. They cease to be human, but they do not cease to exist.

And THAT is a fate worse than death.

To his credit, Wright acknowledges that he has “wandered into territory that no one can claim to have mapped.”

But two things are worth noting. First, this sort of hell has little to do with those who act (or fail to act) out of ignorance. I suspect that N.T. Wright takes at face value Jesus’ statement in John 15: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin.” For Jesus, responsibility and knowledge go hand in hand.

Second, Wright leaves the door open to the possibility that all sorts of people we instinctively exclude from God’s favor might find themselves on the right side of the pearly gates in the end:

The description of the New Jerusalem in [Revelation] 21 and 22 is quite clear that some categories of people are ‘outside’… But then, just when we have in our minds a picture of two nice, tidy categories, the insiders and the outsiders, we find that the river of the water of life flows out of the city; that growing on either bank is the tree of life, not a single tree but a great many; and that ‘the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.’ There is a great mystery here, and all our speaking about God’s eventual future must make room for it… God is always the God of surprises.

My guess is that while Wright himself is not a universalist, he hopes for something very close to universal salvation.

And that’s where I find myself. Whether you think books like Love Wins are inspired genius or heretical drivel (or something in between), we should all hope the universalists are right in the end.

Or at the very least, we should hope that God’s mercy extends way beyond our capacity to imagine.

N.T. Wright on hell (part 2)

In Surprised by Hope (did you buy it yet?) N.T. Wright recalls his time at Oxford in the 60s and 70s, when it became popular for liberal theologians to suggest that “though hell may exist, it will at the last be untenanted.”

And this is where Rob Bell and N.T. Wright, for all their apparent similarities, seem to part company. Wright is far less hopeful about the duration and population of hell (or more realistic, depending on your perspective) for two reasons:

1. Universalism doesn’t deal seriously enough with evil. 

Mind you, we’re not talking about the breaking-the-speed-limit kind of evil. We’re talking about “genocide, nuclear bombs, child prostitution, the arrogance of empire, the commodification of souls, the idolization of race.” To this kind of evil, Wright insists, judgment is the only answer:

Judgment—the sovereign declaration that this is good and to be upheld and vindicated and that is evil and to be condemned—is the only alternative to chaos.

He describes universalism as a kind of fast-food theology which has become “depressingly flabby, unable to climb even the lower slopes of social and cultural judgment let alone the steeper reaches.”

And in one of the most rhetorically powerful passages in Surprised by Hope, Wright suggests (I’m trying hard to avoid typing “Wright writes”):

One cannot forever whistle ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’ in the darkness of Hiroshima, or Auschwitz, of the murder of children and the careless greed that enslaves millions with debts not their own…

The massive denial of reality by the cheap and cheerful universalism of Western liberalism has a lot to answer for.

2. Universalism doesn’t take into consideration the whole biblical picture of judgment.

Wright accepts that there are “those scriptural passages that appear to speak unambiguously of a continuing state for those who reject the worship of the true God.”

He specifically rejects the idea put forth in Love Wins that God will continue to offer salvation after death until the last person in hell accepts.  Citing Desmond Tutu’s work on the South African Commission for Truth and Reconciliation, Wright insists that you can’t have one (reconciliation) without the other (truth):

Where those who have acted wickedly refuse to see the point, there can be no reconciliation, no embrace.

Next up: So just how are we to understand hell?

N.T. Wright on hell

It’s no big secret that one of Rob Bell’s theological heroes is the former Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright.

It’s not hard to see why, given how much they have in common. They share similar perspectives on the kingdom of God.

They share a common nemesis in John Piper (though Wright got a whole book out of it; all Rob got was one lousy tweet).

And both Rob Bell and N.T. Wright have written several books themselves (though apparently one believes in paragraphs and the other doesn’t).

Also, Wright is British. Deep down, I think Rob secretly wishes he was British. (I remember once introducing a friend of mine from the UK… Rob was beside himself with delight the minute he heard my friend’s accent.)

I’m making my way through N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope (stop reading and buy it NOW) and just came to a section called “Beyond Hope, Beyond Pity,” in which he explores the biblical notion of hell.

There are a couple of noteworthy points of comparison with Rob Bell’s Love Wins — and one or two points of departure.

First, the points of comparison…

Both writers reject what Wright refers to as “childish depictions of hell” — i.e. hell as a literal “lake of fire” (which is a rhetorically powerful oxymoron if there ever was one) or as a medieval torture chamber in heaven’s basement. However, by pointing out that such caricatures are what drive some Christians to universalism, Wright hints early on that he’s not about to embrace universalism himself.

Both writers agree that much of what the New Testament says about hell, particularly in the Gospels, has to be interpreted in light of its immediate context. In other words, “hell” in the Gospels is not so much about what happens after you die as what happens in the here and now. Or as Rob says in Love Wins, “Here is the new there.”

Also, Wright lends scholarly credibility to Rob’s understanding of Gehenna, the most common New Testament term for “hell,” as a trash heap and/or ancient pagan site outside Jerusalem. Here’s how Wright interprets Gehenna:

When Jesus was warning his hearers about Gehenna, he was not, as a general rule, telling them that unless they repented in this life they would burn in the next one. As with God’s kingdom, so with its opposite: it is on earth that things matter, not somewhere else.

His message to his contemporaries was… unless they tuned back from their hopeless and rebellious dreams of establishing God’s kingdom in their own terms, not least through armed revolt against Rome, then the Roman juggernaut would do what large, greedy, and ruthless empires have always done to smaller countries… Rome would turn Jerusalem into a hideous, stinking extension of its own smoldering rubbish heap.

When Jesus said, “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish,” this is the primary meaning he had in mind…

Jesus didn’t say very much about the future life; he was, after all, primarily concerned to announce that God’s kingdom was coming “on earth as in heaven.”

Both writers also seem to agree that hell is not a central theme in the Bible. Rob quickly surveys every mention of hell in the New Testament (or, more precisely, every occurrence of one of three terms commonly translated as “hell”). Wright notes that hell “is not a major topic in [Paul’s] letters” and “is not mentioned at all in Acts.”

Which leads me to ask some questions I’ve raised before: What was it that first drew people to the Christian faith? Was it the threat of judgment? Or something else? In the book of Acts, how many times did the apostles use hell in their proclamation to outsiders? Well, N.T. Wright has answered the last one, and it was zero.

Next up, some points of departure between N.T. Wright and Rob Bell…

Revisiting The Great Divorce

 

It’s been at least ten years since I last read The Great Divorce. So I picked it up again last week.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis entertained possibilities that most evangelicals would deem heretical — if anyone other than Lewis had suggested them, that is.

He imagines hell as something other than a place of fiery torment. He imagines the damned are offered periodic excursions to heaven, complete with opportunities to repent and be rescued from hell.

To be fair, Lewis seems to have set his fantasy — and he calls it a “fantasy” in the preface — at some point prior to the final judgment of Revelation 20. And he hints (possibly) that when THAT particular curtain drops, the outcome will be sealed for good.

For example, early in the book, one of the passengers on the bus ride to heaven reveals that the present dimness in hell is to soon be replaced by something far more sinister:

“It will be dark presently,” he mouthed.

“You mean the evening is really going to turn into a night in the end?”

He nodded.

Some might argue that Lewis wasn’t actually suggesting a possibility of reprieve for those in hell. They might point to the disclaimer in his preface to The Great Divorce:

The transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.

But Lewis seems to be referring to his depictions of heaven and hell. There’s no reason to believe he was anything less than serious in exploring the possibility of a second chance after death.

So what did Lewis propose?

For starters, he embraced the possibility of escape from hell — at least up to a point:

If [the damned] leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory…but to those who remain there [it] will have been Hell even from the beginning.

Second, Lewis took at face value the controversial passage in 1 Peter which says that Christ “made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.” Lewis includes the following exchange between the narrator and his heavenly guide (who happens to be George MacDonald…more on that later):

MacDonald: “Only the greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell… Only One has descended into Hell.

Narrator: “And will He ever do so again?”

MacDonald: “It was not once long ago that He did it. Time does not work that way when once ye have left the Earth. All the moments that have been or shall be were, or are, present in the moment of His descending. There is no spirit in prison to Whom He did not preach.”

Narrator: “And some hear him?”

MacDonald: “Aye.”

Third, Lewis turns to the question of universalism near the very end of The Great Divorce… and refuses to give a categorical answer:

Ye can know nothing of the end of all things… It may be, as the Lord said to [Julian of Norwich], that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well…

If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it.

But…if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be…then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears.

Which sounds an awful lot like something Rob Bell says in Love Wins. In fact, the only biggest thing separating the two writers’ viewpoints here is their degree of optimism. Rob strikes a relatively hopeful note, suggesting a real possibility that “all will be well” for everyone in the end. Lewis sounds less hopeful by comparison, quoting John Milton at one point:

The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” There is always something [the damned] insist on keeping even at the price of misery…

But for me, the most interesting thing is Lewis’ choice of George MacDonald as the heavenly guide in The Great Divorce. MacDonald had a profound influence on Lewis, not to mention J.R.R. Tolkein, Madeleine L’Engle, and a host of other writers.

MacDonald was also a hopeful universalist — one who accepted that some might reject God to the last but was far more hopeful that God would eventually melt every heart. He rejected the penal substitutionary theory of atonement, which John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and others in the Neo-Reformed camp have made into a nonnegotiable tenant of orthodoxy.

In other words, the theology of C.S. Lewis’ heavenly guide bears a striking resemblance to that of a certain book called Love Wins.

So…who wants to label George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis heretics? Any takers?

 

It’s been at least ten years since I last read The Great Divorce. So I picked it up again last week.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis entertained possibilities most evangelicals would deem heretical — if anyone other than Lewis had suggested them.

He imagines hell as something other than a place of fiery torment. He imagines the damned are offered periodic excursions to heaven, complete with opportunities to repent and be rescued from hell.

To be fair, Lewis seems to have set his fantasy — and he calls it a “fantasy” in the preface — at some point prior to the final judgment of Revelation 20. And he hints that when this particular curtain drops, the outcome will be sealed for good.

For example, early in the book, one of the passengers on the bus ride to heaven reveals that the present dimness in hell is to soon be replaced by something more sinister:

“It will be dark presently,” he mouthed.

“You mean the evening is really going to turn into a night in the end?”

He nodded.

Some might argue that Lewis wasn’t actually suggesting a possibility of reprieve for those in hell. They might point to the disclaimer in his preface to The Great Divorce:

The transmortal conditions are solely an imaginative supposal: they are not even a guess or a speculation at what may await us. The last thing I wish is to arouse factual curiosity about the details of the after-world.

But Lewis seems to be referring to his descriptions of hell and heaven — one as a rather sprawling, derelict town (think Milton Keynes or some of the older housing projects of Chicago) and the other as a wild, rugged country where everything is even more real and more solid than on earth. There’s no reason to believe that Lewis was less than serious in his exploration of a second chance after death.

So what did Lewis propose?

For starters, he embraced the possibility of escape from hell—at least up to a point:

If [the damned] leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory…but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.

Second, Lewis took at face value the controversial passage in 1 Peter, which says that Christ “make proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.” Lewis includes this exchange between the narrator and his heavenly guide (who just so happens to be George MacDonald…more on that later):

MacDonald: “Only the greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell… Only One has descended into Hell.

Narrator: “And will He ever do so again?”

MacDonald: “It was not once long ago that He did it. Time does not work that way when once ye have left the Earth. All the moments that have been or shall be were, or are, present in the moment of His descending. There is no spirit in prison to Whom He did not preach.”

Narrator: “And some hear him?”

MacDonald: “Aye.”

Third, Lewis turns to the question of universalism near the very end of The Great Divorce… and refuses to give a categorical answer:

Ye can know nothing of the end of all things… It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well…

If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it.

But…if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be…then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal years.

Which sounds an awful lot like what Rob Bell suggests in Love Wins. The only thing that seems to separate the two is the degree of optimism. Rob sounds a relatively optimistic tone, expressing the hope that “all will be well” for everyone in the end. Lewis seems less hopeful, quoting John Milton:

The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” There is always something [the damned] insist on keeping even at the price of misery… Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends.

But for me, the most interesting thing is Lewis’ choice of George MacDonald as the narrator’s heavenly guide in The Great Divorce. MacDonald had a profound influence on Lewis, not to mention J.R.R. Tolkein, Madeleine L’Engle and a host of other writers.

MacDonald was also a hopeful universalist — one who accepted the possibility that some might reject God to the end but was far more hopeful that God would melt every heard in the end. He rejected the penal substitutionary theory of atonement, which John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and others in the Neo-Reformed camp have made into a nonnegotiable tenant of orthodoxy.

In other words, the theology of C.S. Lewis’ guide to heaven bears a striking resemblance to the theology of a certain book called Love Wins.

So…who wants to label George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis heretics? Any takers?

 

4 (more) final thoughts on Rob Bell’s Love Wins

I my previous post, I shared 4 final thoughts on Love Wins. Well, I wasn’t quite done. Here are four more parting observations…

1. Let’s be willing to ask the hard questions.

Rob raised a lot of them in Love Wins. But for me the biggest are still:

  • What about those who never had a chance to accept or reject the gospel?
  • What about those who seemingly reject Christ but in reality are rejecting a misrepresentation of him, as opposed to the real thing? Who will God hold accountable? Those who reject the distortion or those who created it?

What might a God who is “rich in mercy” have in store for those who never had a chance to embrace the real thing? If God has “overlooked such ignorance” before, what’s to keep him from doing so again?

Furthermore, if you believe (as I do) that infants who die go to be with God — in spite of the Bible’s silence on this question — why is it so unthinkable that God might save those who never heard or those who were presented a toxic caricature of the real thing?

These are not easy questions. And my goal here isn’t to answer them. But as Scot McKnight recently suggested, to play the agnostic — to answer “I don’t know” or “It’s in the Lord’s hands” without seriously considering the issues at stake — is a copout.

These questions have to be wrestled with. And simplistic, patronizing answers will not do.

Loads of people were asking these questions long before Rob Bell wrote Love Wins. He may have given a fresh voice to their inquiries, but they’ve been asking for a long time. We might as well create a safe space for questions like these to be explored.

6. For those who disagree with Rob: stop putting words in his mouth.

To say that Rob soft-pedals sin, denies the bodily resurrection, or rejects some other tenant of orthodoxy (all of which has been postulated in response to Love Wins) is not only reading between the lines; it’s reading the worst possible meaning into his book.

Granted, if you’re one for doctrinal checklists, you may never be satisfied with what Rob has to say. But consider the evidence from Love Wins:

  • Rob acknowledges every human being is affected by sin (p. 42).
  • Rob acknowledges that heaven and hell are real (p. 42, 55, 71, 79).
  • Rob acknowledges the incarnation — the fully divine, fully human Christ (p. 146-149).
  • Rob acknowledges the resurrection (p. 133).

It is possible to disagree with Rob without being inquisitorial. (Scot McKnight provides a good example of the right way to disagree with someone.) Unfortunately, far too many have taken it upon themselves to denounce Rob as a heretic. What kind of hubris does it take for some random blogger/pastor/armchair theologian to decide for the rest of us who’s a heretic and who isn’t?

7. Also for those who disagree with Rob: practice what you preach.

Rob could’ve been more careful citing Scripture and other sources to make his case. No argument there. But you might want to stop misquoting Love Wins before you take him to task for such alleged carelessness.

Exhibit A: Martin Bashir. After his confrontational interview with Rob, Bashir went on the Paul Edwards Program to explain what got him so worked up. Bashir was irritated at how Rob (allegedly) misquoted key sources — namely, Martin Luther. Actually, Rob didn’t misrepresent Luther, but I digress.

Bashir explained he cannot tolerate anything less than the highest standards of journalistic accuracy when quoting a source.

Then he proceeded to misquote Rob:

He says in his book, God’s love melts everything in the end. And that at the end of the day, you can be antagonistic to Christianity, but after you die, God’s love will melt your opposition and you will walk into heaven.

Except Rob never said this. He says many believe that God’s love will melt even the hardest heart in the end (p. 108) but that we can’t know for certain whether this will, in fact, be the case (p. 115).

Let’s all deal with the planks in our own eyes before worrying about the speck in someone else’s, shall we?

8. We can (and should) do a better job telling the good news.

Near the end of Love Wins, Rob Bell makes perhaps the most important statement of his book: “The good news begins with the sure and certain truth that we are loved” (p. 172).

Is that really the story we tell? The one where “God so loved the world”? Really?

When the fledgling Jesus movement was getting off the ground, what drew people in by the thousands? Was it the threat of judgment? Was it Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

Or was it the promise of victory over death? Was it the radical, equalizing love the believers had for one another?

Read the book of Acts and count how many times the apostles use the threat of hell in their proclamation to outsiders.

Read the gospels (particularly Matthew, which scores highest on the “hellfire and brimstone” meter) and ask: who was Jesus speaking to when he warned of judgment?

You may find the answer a bit unsettling if, like me, you’re a religious insider.

Love Wins is not a perfect book. Nor is it the heretical train wreck some have made it out to be.

There were things I resonated with and things I disagreed with. But in Love Wins, Rob does what he does best: he forces difficult questions to the surface.

And that’s a good thing. Because people were asking them long before Rob wrote Love Wins. So let’s dispense with simplistic answers and self-righteous denunciations and actually wrestle with the questions in this book.

Is he or isn’t he? Yet another review of Love Wins (part 6)

Back to the really big question of Love Wins: Does God get what God wants?

Rob Bell doesn’t just like to ask questions. He likes to ask “the question behind the question.” And in this case I can think of at least two underlying questions:

1. What does God want?

Does God want all people to be saved or not?

I suggested in a previous post that if you answer “no” (like many in the neo-Reformed camp), then you’ll have to contend with some rather direct statements in Scripture to the contrary — not to mention the whole trajectory of the Bible.

2. Does God have to get everything he wants in order for love to win?

 

Rob seems to think so.

C.S. Lewis agreed with Rob that any outcome other than universal salvation represents a partial defeat. But Lewis wasn’t nearly as bothered by this. In fact, he saw in this one of God’s most awe-inspiring attributes:

What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to… become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity.

Two thoughts…

First, redemption is a messy, ugly business. Whatever theory (or theories) of the atonement you subscribe to, at the heart of our story is this: God came to earth and died at the hands of his own creation. Not everyone was delighted by the incarnation. Not everyone is thrilled by the prospect of heaven cashing into earth.

In the gospels, Jesus laments over his rejection by some of the very people he longed to embrace. In Romans, Paul is so grieved by the unbelief of his countrymen that he contemplates giving up his own salvation.

There is tension in this story. Universalists try to resolve the tension by saying God wants everyone; therefore everyone must be saved in the end. The neo-Reformed resolve it by saying God doesn’t really want everyone to be saved, so it’s perfectly all right that only a handful make the cut.

Neither view does justice to the paradox of redemption: that an all-powerful God who wants everyone, who would rather forgive than condemn, might not be wanted by everyone in return…

That God might not use his infinite power to rig the outcome…

An all-powerful God who doesn’t get everything he wants… not because of impotence but because he gives us space to accept or reject him.

I’m with C.S. Lewis. This kind of God is far more awe-inspiring than either the god of universalism or the god of the neo-Reformed.

Second, we need to ask one more question-behind-the-question:

What does it mean for love to win?

 

Does it mean, as Rob (apparently) suggests, that everyone (hopefully) turns to God in the end? If so, where does judgment come into the picture?

Now it’s true that for too long, our notion of judgment has been hijacked by Dante’s Inferno, Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and fundamentalism’s hellfire-and-brimstone sermonizing. I think Rob’s book is, in part, a reaction to this.

But that doesn’t mean judgment has no place in our story. As N.T. Wright says in Surprised by Hope, God’s judgment is actually good news for many (if not most) people:

Throughout the Bible, not least in the Psalms, God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over… In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be.

Evil happens all around us. Every day. Just ask the people of Libya. Ask those who lost everything to Bernie Madoff’s ponzie scheme. And of course there are a thousand other less dramatic — but no less real — examples.

According to Scripture, love does win in the end. But justice — which the Bible defines (in part) as vindication for the victims of evil — is part of the equation.

This is why Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. A rumor had reached Thessalonica that the “day of the Lord” had come and gone. But the faithful were still being oppressed. And their oppressors didn’t seem to be suffering any visible signs of God’s judgment.

For them — and all who suffer unjustly — the question is: What good is the “day of the Lord” if it doesn’t bring vindication?

Put another way, in a broken world like ours, love can’t win without justice.

I seriously doubt Rob Bell would argue with this. I imagine he’d agree that judgment is part of the equation, though he might suggest (as he does elsewhere in Love Wins) that even the harshest judgment seeks the eventual restoration of the one being punished.

Also, it’s important to note that the Bible makes a distinction between those who actively, knowingly resist God’s plan and those who act out of ignorance. When the Bible speaks of judgment, it’s usually talking about the first group.

So does God get everything he wants? Maybe not.

Maybe there’s more to “love wins” than that.