McKnight - A Critique of Love Wins 7

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/04/15/exploring-love-wins-7/

Exploring Love Wins 7

by Scot McKnight
April 15, 2011
Filed under: Atonement

The 5th chp in Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is called “Dying to Live.” I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,

which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,

without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.†

In this chp Rob seeks to communicate into today’s idiom the significance of the cross and resurrection. Which means he’s touching on atonement theory, surely one of the most discussed topics of our day, but he shifts the conversation from atonement theory to another topic. More of that below.

How would you explain what Rob says about cross and resurrection in this chapter? Do you think it is adequate? Do you see a shift in topic — from salvation and atonement theory to moral theory?

The big theme of this chapter is that the Bible speaks of the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection through a variety of images, each designed in different ways to speak to humans/Israel/church. In other words, this chp enters into atonement theory. Bell then proposes looking at the cross through the lens of elemental features of the universe.

Here are the atonement images in the Bible: Sacrifice, reconciliation, justification, victory, redemption.

Which is the correct one? His answer, “Yes.” Which is to say, each is true. Rob Bell then tries to get to the bottom of atonement theory. Here are his words: “The point then, as it is now, is Jesus. The divine in flesh and blood. He’s where the life is” (129).

First cross, and then resurrection, and in this he works out what I’m going to call an “elemental theory of the cross.”

It is clear that his “elemental theory” is neither the Christus Victor theme made so clear in Tom Wright nor the solidarity theory seen in the writings of Moltmann. Here’s where he goes:

1. Death gives way to life in all of nature, and in relationships. “It’s how the world works” (131). The cross is a “symbol of an elemental reality.”

2. The resurrection is cosmic — “The tomb is empty, a new day is here, a new creation is here, everything has changed, death has been conquered, the old has gone, the new has come” (133-134).

3. The resurrection is personal: “When we say yes to God, when we open ourselves to Jesus’s living, giving act on the cross, we enter in to a [new] way of life. He is the source, the strength, the example, and the assurance that this pattern of death and rebirth is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires” (136).

And: “Lose your life and find it, he says. That’s how the world works. That [sic] how the soul works. That’s how life works when you’re dying to live” (136).

A few points:

First, I summarized where all those atonement theories were headed in Rob’s view just before the jump, and I think he’s shortchanged and simplified them. Again, he says the point is Jesus. He is where life is. No one wants to disagree with that, but even if I agree, that’s not how to get to the “point” of all those atonement words. The point of each one of them is this: humans are sinners and enslaved and entombed, God has done something mighty to rid them of their sin problem, and what God has done can be expressed as sacrifice, reconciliation, justification, victory and redemption. Yes, the point is Jesus and Yes the point is life, but the Jesus of these images is the Savior — the one who steps in and gives himself in our place (vicarious) and who removes our sins at the cost of his own life — and who by his death and resurrection brings us into new life. Inherent to each of these is the removal of sin as precondition with the forgiving, etc, benefits that follow.

As I read this chp, Rob shifts the topic from sin removal to cross as paradigm of elemental factors.

Second, Jesus, too, says there’s something elemental about death and life. John 12:24. But I can’t quite comprehend how the atonement-sacrifice work of Christ can be so elemental and at the same time a “scandal” and a “rock of stumbling.” There’s not enough here about sin removal and not enough here about something God does, and more an elemental principle that death leads to life — but why death? How does death work? These are the elemental things atonement theories work out, and his “elemental theory” doesn’t explore that.

Third, I agree with Rob in that the cross and resurrection have to be tied together — one without the other is no gospel. Too many today have a Good Friday only gospel. Rob wants it to be cross and resurrection.

Fourth, I’m all for seeing atonement language as various metaphors (see A Community Called Atonement: Living Theology - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0687645549/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jescre-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0687645549).

And I’m all for finding a way to bringing them into our modern world. And how we do that matters. But however we do the transfer, it needs to be comprehensive. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s got to retain and sustain the various dimensions of those biblical metaphors.

Here’s how I see what I see as a shift in this chp: the “elemental theory” seems to drop the sin and drop the Savior and instead explores perhaps the most significant moral theory in the entire Bible, and it is a cruciform moral theory: we die and in dying we learn to live.

And I want to emphasize how much I agree with Rob on this moral theory: the essence of flourishing is loving God and loving others; the essence of loving is giving to the other and that means surrendering — it means dying to our ego and living to God and to others. So, yes, totally, dying to live. I agree. But that’s not atonement, nor does it explain the meaning of the cross of Jesus as atoning.

On the cross Jesus shouldered the sins of all. 2 Corinthians 5:15: “And he died for all…” and 5:19: “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.” 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is the stuff of atonement.

Humans today — modern and postmodern — experience guilt, and they experience broken relationships, and they experience a sense of being out of sorts with God so that they experience God’s displeasure/wrath, and they experience a sense of futility and being trapped and being captured in the systems and in their own private worlds, and they experience being enslaved — and so those old Bible images still work. And they work well. I see no need to say they are just back then. There is a way to bring those very images into our world to speak to the conditions of postmoderns.

McKnight - A Critique of Love Wins 6

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/04/13/exploring-love-wins-6/

Exploring Love Wins 6

by Scot McKnight
April 13, 2011
Filed under: Universalism

Today’s topic, from Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is the one of the big ones — is Rob a univeralist? — and our post begins with a prayer. I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,

which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,

without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.†

Rob Bell is not a universalist, and he can’t be if he is as committed to freedom as he says. Now to explain…

What “category” do you think Rob fits into when it comes to his view of how [one] gets in and how many [will] get into The Age to Come? Do you think there’s biblical grounds for “second chances”? What texts would you use in this discussion? Do you think it is right and good to hope for the salvation of all?

I will say this again: what Rob is asking in this question one of the most important questions being asked today. Will God’s grace and love eventually compel all to turn to him or not?

The chapter is titled and it begins with this question: Does God get what God wants? Of course, this all depends on what “wants” means, and Rob narrows God’s “wants” to his desire, found in 1 Timothy 2:3-4: “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

Others might define God’s “wants” in ways that permit other factors, but this is Rob’s book and this is what he focuses on. He asks some almost facetious questions – like “How great is God?” – meaning is God great if he doesn’t get what he wants and what he wants is the salvation of all. By Rob’s own logic, though, and this needs to be listened to, as this chp unfolds God doesn’t necessarily get what he “wants”. [this is a theological paradox posed by Rob that cannot be answered – sh].

Bell opens up the universalism question here, which means that all humans — every last one of them in the past, present and future — will in the end be saved. He quotes passages in the Bible that have both “gospel going to all people” and reconciliation of all themes. The verses can’t be denied. Colossians 1 can’t be ignored: “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” But that’s not the end for Rob Bell in this chp.

Yes, he has some “Is history tragic?” questions and some “Will God shrug God-size shoulders?” And then discusses various options beside the universalism option.

1. We have one life and one life only to decide, and then eternity is settled. It’s rooted in freedom and God won’t override human freedom. That’s standard exclusivism.

2. Another view can be called diminishment to the point of dissolution.

3. Others believe after death people will get a second chance, and he misuses Luther here but that’s been pointed out by others already. Some, not many, do believe in second chances. (The Roman Catholic view of purgatory, though, is not about second chances.)

4. He offers yet another option: endless opportunities to choose. Endless second chances. And given enough time, everyone will choose. This is a kind of compatibilist universalism with God’s grace being just too good to resist eternally.

Bell then trots out some theologians who have been more or less universalist, including Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Eusebius, … and observes that others (like classic Reformed theologians of the 19th and 20th Century) think many if not most will be saved, like Jerome and Basil, and Augustine said at his time many thought this way. [I've not seen this in Augustine but would appreciate a reference if someone knows it.]

This leads Bell to three observations:

1. There is diversity in the church on this one. He’s right, but I’d appreciate it if he’d say very few have been universalist and many of them got into hot, hot water for it. It’s not as simple as variety. Exclusivism has ruled, with other options but they are minority with various degrees of trouble for proponents.

2. A theoretical point, one not often seen as theoretical by Bell’s readers, is his view that the story of some going to hell forever is not as a good a story as everyone going to heaven.

3. Whatever view you have, it is “fitting, proper and Christian to long for” the better story. [I recently talked with a significant Christian evangelical leader in the USA who said this to me: "If you don't long for that, you need to spend more time with God." And he was most decidedly not a universalist.]

This leads him to Revelation, and it is here that I will engage him a bit:

First, “But the letter does not end with blood and violence” (112). Well, I’m unconvinced because Revelation 20 is part of the end of this book and it is “violence” if you consider being thrown into the Lake of Fire violence. So there are two ends in Revelation: the Lake of Fire end and the New Heavens/New Earth end. But it is true that the final ending in Revelation is the New Heavens and New Earth.

Second, the new creation of Revelation 21 eliminates murder, destruction and deceit. He goes back to his freedom theme here, and I can’t tell if he’s ignoring the elimination of those who reject God in Rev 20 or leaving open the option for those in the new creation to choose against God. It appears to me he’s assuming the validity of the endless second chance theory. (Without arguing for it.) But he asks here how someone could not leave the old ways … and suggests some will/can choose that option.

Third, this is where I believe Bell overtly denies universalism: “So will those who have said no to God’s love in this life continue to say no in the next?” [Again, he seems to avoid what happened in Rev 20.] He goes on: “Love demands freedom, and freedom provides that [to say no to God] possibility. People take that option now, and we can assume it will be taken in the future.” This is non universalist. Universalist is an option for Bell, but it’s up to humans. And since they have freedom, one can’t know for sure.

Fourth, the gates of the new heavens and new earth — the new Jerusalem — are open. He sees choice in these open gates, but I disagree: the gates were for protection, and open gates means there is no need for protection. Why? Because the New Heavens and New Earth are Shalom, everywhere, forever. Again, leaving the gates open is caused by Rev 20, the elimination of those who reject God and do evil. But Rob wonders if people can be banished — he doesn’t say where but perhaps he means in the Lake of Fire (it’s not clear) — and at the same time there can be gates open for them to return. He goes on…

Fifth, and here we have another non universalist position: Rob Bell says we can’t know. “Will everybody be saved…? Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for freedom that love requires” (115). Love wins. This is definitely not universalism. Bell is open to it, he hopes for it, but it’s up to humans to decide. If you can’t know, you can’t be universalist because universalism knows.

Sixth, and I like this one: the new heavens and the new earth are full of endless possibilities and potentialities for God. It will be new and keep on being new.

Finally… he answers does God get what God wants? This is the universalism question. His answer: the question is not Does God get what God wants but “Do we get what we want?” The answer to that is “a resounding, affirming, sure and positive yes” (116). We get what we want.

This is not universalism. It is pure emphasis on libertarian free will. In the heart of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

McKnight - A Critique of Love Wins 5

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/04/11/exploring-love-wins-5/

Exploring Love Wins 5

Scot McKnight
April 11, 2011
Filed under: Hell

I’ve never seen a response to a book, or a person, like the response to Rob Bell’s book. People seem either to hate it or love it. For this reason I am beginning these discussions of Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, with a prayer. I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,

which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,

without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.†

Today we will examine what Rob Bell says about hell. Chapter 3 in his book is surely one of the most controversial chapters and that means I will have to sketch what he says before I offer my own critique and raise some questions for conversation. Up to this point Bell’s book has been at best mildly controversial; from this point on his controversial points come to the surface.

Bell makes five points about hell, organized by how the Bible talks about hell. First, the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) where we find the term Sheol [pit, underworld, etc]. “The Hebrew commentary on what happens after a person dies isn’t very articulated or defined … a bit vague and ‘underworldly’” (67).

Second, Gehenna. He opts for the flippant hell = garbage dump, yes I believe in hell, I believe my garbage goes somewhere. Gehenna is the “town garbage pile.” [Rob's just wrong here and I'll get to that below. Also, rule #1 about hell: never be flippant.]

Third, Tartarus and Hades. Both are Greek words for the underworld, more or less Jewish substitutes for Sheol.

“And that’s it.”

At this point Rob explores “hell” as existential realities in the world today — missing arms and legs, raped, children of those who have committed suicide, cocaine addict, cruelty … all powerful horrible existential realities, none of which having anything to do with any text he’s seen in the Bible or what hell means in the Bible. He concludes that hell is this: “God gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it” (72). He emphasizes the rhetorical potency of hell language, and he says we need this language to express what happens to those who reject goodness and God’s life and it is good for those who propagate evil.

Third, Luke 16:19-31’s parable of the rich man and the poor beggar. I assume you know the parable. Rich man goes to Hades, the poor man to be with Abraham (=heaven in the traditional sense). Rich man wants mercy, and water to cool his tongue, “for I am in agony in these flames.” Abraham says to him, You had your chance. And, Abraham says: between us there “a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and one can can cross from there to us.” He begs Abraham to send message to his family. Abraham says they’ve got Moses and the prophets, they can listen to them; and he says even if someone was raised from the dead and spoke to them they would not be convinced. Bell sees the problem in the rich man’s wanting the poor man to remain his servant and get him water. And he says the “great chasm” is “the rich man’s heart… it hasn’t changed … he’s still clinging to the old hierarchy.” The parable is about equality. [More below.]

Bell then says there’s hell now and there’s hell later. We are to take both seriously.

Fourth, other passages in the Bible that don’t mention hell. Some of this language is about the war with Rome in 66-73AD; he’s right. Some of it is. And he says much of the rhetoric about hell is addressed to those who thought they were “in” and he’s right about that. He makes a statement that sounds more potent than it is: “Jesus did not use hell to try and compel ‘heathens’ and ‘pagans’ to believe in God, so they wouldn’t burn when they die” (82). Yes, that’s right, but I can count on less than one hand how many Gentiles Jesus engaged in the pages of the Gospels. And the Gentiles who show up in the Gospels are good examples — like the centurion in Matthew 8 or the Gentiles of John 12. And John sure does in the Book of Revelation, and Paul’s rhetoric works that way in Romans 1.

Fifth, Rob enters in this chp into the judgment leads to restoration theme; consequences are for correction. I haven’t decided how to respond to this part yet and will do so in a later post. This is a major point in his book. In this context he brings up the Greek word kolazo (it should be kolasis since the noun is used in Matthew 25), and Rob says something that must be flagged as unfair. He says kolazo “refers to the pruning and trimming of the branches of a plant so it can flourish” (91), and the noun is combined with aionion (he uses aion) and says this is an “aion of kolazo” or a “period of pruning.” Again, check BDAG [infliction of chastisement, punishment, transcendent retribution, punishment; under kolazo, the verb, penalize, punish … finishing with “Aristotle’s limitation of the term… to disciplinary action … is not reflected in gener. usage”. My point: it is simply disingenuous to say without qualification that it means pruning, and it is unfair to readers not to say that most — if not almost all — instances refer to a kind of retributive punishment and chastisement — there is very little emphasis in this word’s usage that suggests punish to improve and much more punish full stop. Here’s the big point: this is about Life and Kolasis/Punishment in The Age to Come. The Age to Come is everlasting.

I have indicated a few problems with Rob Bell’s contentions about hell. I want to draw attention to two notable absences in this chapter.

1. The first one is fatal for his argument because he said “And that’s it.” He does not discuss the Lake of Fire, and it appears to me that it cuts across his central arguments. Bell’s book is driven by a New Heavens and New Earth eschatology, and I agree with making sure our view of “heaven” leads to the New Heavens and New Earth. That theology derives from Revelation 20-21. There we find a bottomless pit into which the dragon — the Devil and Satan — is thrown for 1000 years as the saints reign with Christ in what many call the millennium, then Satan is released for a little while to do more deceiving and start a war and then fire comes from heaven and consumes them … and the devil was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur … with the beast and the false prophet … “and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (20:10). Then the judgment, death and hades are tossed into the lake of fire. And “anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire” (20:15; see 21:8 where a list of the sort of people is given). Here we find an endless fire — and the most one can argue here against the traditional view of eternal consciousness is to see it as a fire that extinguishes (annihilation) but there’s no indication of anyone coming back from that lake of fire. Then the New Creation in the The Age to Come. Then the heavenly Jerusalem … beautiful shalom and justice and love and worship of God endlessly, the glorification of the Lamb/Lion Christ.

2. Rob rather innovatively makes hell a part of his inaugurated eschatology, which means this: hell begins to do its damage in the now as we turn from God. I find this suggestion attractive but he clearly emphasizes the present-ness of hell and doesn’t do much with the future hell. But I don’t want to press that one now. This present hell-ishness in life now is outside NT language for hell is always future and never present, but it means Rob could have considered Romans 1:18-32 as the way hell begins to do its judging and destructive work in the here and now. In other words, the wrath of God, which is a part of how the Bible describes God as Judge and which is part of the dreadful Day (e.g., Rev 19:15) is already at work in judgment in this world. But this leads to another problem.

3. Rob distances God from hell. Hell is the consequences of our injustices and our refusal to walk in the ways of God. That is, hell is what happens to sinners for their sin. But in the Bible hell is what happens as a result of judgment by God. The texts he quotes about hell include such things as “the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell” and they mention being “thrown” into hell (and that evokes the act of God in Rev 20). His view of hell is too human-driven and not connected enough to the judging act of God.

4. He misreads the Parable of Luke 16: Yes, this parable is about how the wealthy treat the poor. So the theme of “equality” emerges, but it’s less about equality and much more about how those with money treat those without it. They must use their funds for the good of others. But, this parable is also about the dreadful (the rich man is suffering and wants some water just to touch his tongue because he’s so hot) and irreversible consequences (the great chasm is uncrossable from both sides) for mistreatment of the poor. That “chasm” is not the rich man’s heart. The man’s sin is not that he clings to the old ways but that he didn’t respond when he had the chance — that’s the whole point about his wanting someone to tell his loved ones.

5. Finally, and we’ve perhaps all made this mistake. Gehenna was not a dump outside Jerusalem. No matter how many times people say this [(cf. the New Yorker commentary near my comments - res)] — and it has become street truth — there is no evidence that there was a town dump outside Jerusalem in the first century....

As Dale Allison puts it, “[it is] without ancient support.” The place [known as] the Valley of Hinnom was an idolatrous high place called Topheth, was the notorious place of death and idolatry and fire and judgment, but it was not the town dump of Jerusalem. [more so, "a place where children were offered as fire sacrifices to idols" - skinhead]

To use Gehenna for Jesus was to use a metaphor for divine judgment and destruction. See the OT uses in Jer 7:31-32; 19:2-9; 32:35; Isa 30:33. It is not only flippant but inaccurate to say Gehenna is the town dump — it is a metaphor for divine judgment.


 

McKnight - A Critique of Love Wins 4

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/04/08/exploring-love-wins-3/#comment-133238#comment-133238

Exploring Love Wins 4

by Scot McKnight
April 8, 2011
Filed under: Universalism

I will begin these discussions of Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, with a prayer. I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,

which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,

without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.†

The title for Rob Bell’s second chapter — Here is the New There — not only sums up the chapter (and book) but also a burgeoning movement in the evangelical world, and it is one inspired by N.T. Wright’s stuff on eschatology and — to be perfectly honest right up front — sometimes some of Tom’s readers make distortions of what Tom is actually saying. Tom has said over and over that Jesus didn’t save us in order to get us to heaven, but he saved us so that heaven and earth could meet in the New Heavens and New Earth. His emphasis on New Heavens and New Earth is right.

It is that theology that is at work in Bell’s second chapter, and we’ll see if his approach fits the NT.

His repeated words here is that heaven is understood by many as “somewhere else.” Salvation is a story of movement from here to somewhere else and somewhere out there. The Christian story has focused, and he’s surely right here, on heaven and almost as surely that heaven is somewhere else — it’s out there, up there, and somewhere else. And many in the church emphasize who will be there and who will not be there, and he’s surely right about that too.

In your church, is “heaven” somewhere else — ethereal and out there and beyond etc — or is it more earthy? How “New Heavens/New Earth-y” is the kingdom/heaven in your church? When people say “heaven” what do they mean?

The rich man approaches Jesus and asks, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” Jesus’ response is “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” This is from Matthew 19:16.

A summary. Jesus’ response surprises many Christians because he doesn’t give the man the plan of salvation but tells him to do the commandments and to give his money away to the poor. Rob says the issue was the question, and the question the man asked was how to get eternal life… but that didn’t mean to him to be a question about where he would go (to heaven) when he died. Rob says the man’s question was about how to enter into the kingdom life in the here and now. That’s where Rob camps in this chapter, and that is why he focuses on heaven beginning now. Thus, the here is the new there. [The old "there" was somewhere else, heaven in the skies, etc.]

I’ll get to something we need to interact with in a moment, but Bell observes that The Age to Come, or heaven on earth, is for everybody [developed later in his book], it is earthy, and that life will not be all new. There’s lots in The Age to Come that is not new. But it will be the world as God designed it — no more war, all peace and love and joy and justice. Injustices will be made right, our angers will be justified. It will be a “restored, renewed and redeemed” earth. This is typical Judaism and pervasively NT-like.

The way to enter into The Age to Come is to live the commandments. Here’s his theme of continuity: do now what will happen then and you will be ready and prepared. Back to the rich man… Jesus gave five commands, and it bugs me that Rob missed the love your neighbor from the Jesus Creed here, but I’ll forgive him. The rich man was greedy and greed will have no place in The Age to Come.

So Jesus takes the man’s question about his life then and makes it about the kind of life he’s living now. But the odd thing here is that Rob hereby flattens his eschatology, while I think Rob has a both-and in his theology, and I suspect that man did too, and I suspect Jesus did too. What happens now continues into the life of The Age to Come. That means it is not just now but both now and then. So I agree that what we do now is of immense (and eternal) value. If there is an afterlife or a “heaven,” and if it is eternal, then it an act of colossal foolishness not to live now in light of then.

And I agree that heaven will have lots of surprises. He seems to suggest that it is character that gets a person into heaven (on p. 53). Then this piece of poetic language: “heaven is as far away as that day when heaven and earth become one again and as close as a few hours” (55). He seems to be getting at heaven being super reality of the current reality.

I don’t know where he gets the idea that aion means “intensity of experience that transcends time” (57). I’m thinking it could come from something like John 10:10 where Jesus said he came to bring life to its utter fullness. But I don’t think the Greek term means that except by associations with ideas connected to The Age to Come.

And I agree on the eternal life that is something now and through and beyond death. We are now playing the piano while wearing oven mitts. Nice one. But that very point lands Rob right back where he began, and it cuts against the theme of his aversion to the “somewhere else” idea for heaven, which is part of biblical faith from the time of Daniel 12:1-3 on (resurrection to judgment or salvation; shine like stars).

This response has to be a little long so I’ve put the main points in bold. Just read those lines if you want to see the big picture.

Three points that deserve some scrutiny... the big point I will make is this: Rob sets up an either-or (heaven is out there vs. heaven is here) and pushes hard on Jesus talking not about an endless eternity but about the present, but closer inspection shows that Bell operates (correctly) with a both-and (heaven is both here and there, both now and then, both continuous and discontinuous). In the language of the scholars: he operates with an inaugurated eschatology but seems to overdo the realized dimension. Or he operates with a realized eschatology but also has a bit of an inaugurated eschatology at work.

First. There’s a reason why the ancients, both Jews and Greek and Romans, used a word like “heaven” for where God is and where folks go when they die. Yes, there’s lots of variety in the ancient world; and they used a variety of words, but the NT word is “heaven” and that word means “sky.” And there all kinds of Jewish texts about ascending into heaven. Why did Jesus and the early Christians fasten on that word for doing the lion’s share of work on where God is? Obviously this is phenomenology. God was above and beyond and when we die, if we are righteous, we go to be with God and that means we go to heaven (in the skies). This is at work in the NT but .., but… but… and this is where Rob camps and he’s right. The NT modifies this: it eventually lands not on just ascending into heaven (into the skies) but on a meeting of heaven and earth in the New Heavens and the New Earth. Most Christians need to learn this and the sooner the better. The “final” place in the Bible is the New Heavens and the New Earth — and these two meet in Jerusalem! Read Revelation 20-22. Bell’s emphasis here is correct and important.

Second, I want to argue the rich man in Luke 18 was asking about the future world too and not just the present world. For Jews of Jesus’ day, The Age to Come distinguishes itself from This Age. So, there was This Age and The Age to Come. Bell seems to equate Eternal Life with The Age to Come and to emphasize it as now, but Jesus says those who give up their lives for him will — and this is my translation of Luke 18:30 — “will not fail to receive [first] abundance in This Age and [second] in The Age to Come eternal life.” So it does not appear to me that “eternal life” is quite the same as The Age to Come so much as a property or characteristic of The Age to Come. Eternal life then is the kind of life one has in The Age to Come. [Rob somehow uses the word aion when the Greek word is aionion. The first means "age" with a beginning and an end, and he drives this idea hard. But the second one, the one Jesus uses, according to the standard specialist lexicon, means "pertaining to a period of unending duration, without end." The Latin equivalent of aionion was perpetuus. Rule for writers: use the standard lexicons and if you differ from them you better have good evidence because you are disagreeing with some mighty good scholars who have for centuries pondered the evidence in the original languages.]

So, let me put together what Jesus says in Luke 18: Jesus says his followers will acquire “eternal life” in The Age to Come, which is endless, and that means they would possess a kind of life appropriate to that Age. That eternal life, or aionion, is beginning to work its way into the present. It appears to me, then, that the rich man and Jesus were referring to a future endless reality; in fact they were referring to the future reality and saying it could invade time now — the future can begin now but it is still the future …

But Rob wants to push against this harder (p. 58): “heaven is not forever in the way that we think of forever, as a uniform measurement of time, like days and years, marching endlessly into the future.”

Third, Jews did conceive of The Age to Come in terms of endless time. Rob’s ideas need to be sharpened because Jews did think of The Age to Come in a measurement of time. I could draw on a number of texts but one NT that makes this clear is that the Book of Revelation describes the Age to Come with this description: it involves a Lake of Fire, and the Lake of Fire — which is John’s equivalent for Gehenna in Jesus, which is also called the “second death” — lasts “for ever and ever” (Rev 20:10), and there the words are aionas ton aionon, or “ages of ages.” Their way of saying this would be like this: The Age to Come is one Age piled on top of another on top of another. It is not some kind of abstract infinity but a measurement of time expressed in an endless quantity of Ages: Age after Age. [See below for more of this.] The New Heavens and the New Earth have that same property, but instead of a fire it is a place where all things become New (21:1-8). In fact, I would say the Jews did think of The Age to Come in a measurement of time. And they used what was the longest one they knew: ages upon ages.

Now let me turn this inside out, and for those who are deconstructionists, that’s what this is. “Here is the new there” is Rob’s line. OK, but… the new heavens and the new earth are different enough from what is now here that Rob’s here-is-the-new-there is actually somewhere else because it is not the same place as we have now right here. The here-is-the-new-there is all new so his now-here is not his there but a new-here and a new-there. It may be here, but here will be so different that we can take off our oven mitts and play the piano and dance to the eternal music. The minute you start talking about taking off our mitts you enter into the “somewhere else” (at least in part).

Now reduced to its simplest form: When the rich man asked Jesus about eternal life and Jesus used “life” in his response, they were both talking and thinking about what it takes to participate in The Age to Come, that future endless glorious rule of God when heaven and earth meet in the New Heavens and New Earth. Jesus was saying it can begin now, but that now will continue into The Age to Come, which is eternal and where death will be no more. The Here, then, is a foretaste of the There.

The rich man, I suggest, was asking a 1st Century version of what some ask today when they say “How do I get to heaven?” Our answers will nuance “heaven” but they aren’t in a different category altogether as Rob contends.

[Another Jewish expression for eternal as endless is found in the Jewish Josephus, when commenting on the Pharisees, and he was one of them at one time in his life, says the "souls of the wicked suffer eternal punishment." Jewish War 2.163. The term "eternal" here is not aionios but aidios, and that word (like aionios) comes from aei, which means "always." Josephus, the Jew, the former Pharisee, sees punishment as endless in duration. The good have a soul that passes into another (eternal?) body via resurrection. See also Antiquities 18.14, which gives a variant on this same idea with aidios again meaning eternal punishment and the good souls being given a new (eternal) life. More at Jewish War 2.154-155, where endless punishments are stated.]



McKnight - A Critique of Love Wins 3

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/04/06/exploring-love-wins-2/

Exploring Love Wins 3

by Scot McKnight
April 6, 2011
Filed under: Universalism — scotmcknight @ 5:01 am

I will begin each post in this series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, with this prayer. I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,

which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,

without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.†

People ask questions about the faith for a variety of reasons and I want to sketch four — there are of course other reasons. Some ask questions because they want to know. This sort of person asks a good question and then sifts through the Bible and sorts out theological history and intellectual options in an attempt to find the truth. Some people ask questions in a more careless fashion — they ask questions, some of them quite good — like How can God be all powerful and all good and have a world like this? — but don’t seem to want to find answers. They just don’t work hard enough. They are proud of having good questions. Some ask good and middling questions but the questions are a cloak for doubt. They don’t ask to find an answer but they soften their overt doubts or unbelief by expressing them in a question. Others ask questions to befuddle and to bewilder — all with a desire to confuse in order to lead to other questions that are behind those questions in order to find deeper answers. I think Rob is trying the last approach in the chp we are looking at today. [Again, help out this conversation by FB sharing it or by Retweeting it.]

The questions he asks in the first chapter are piled on top of one another, one after the other, question, question, question. They are probing one major issue: If we believe in an afterlife, and if that afterlife is entered as a result of some “condition”, what does it take to get in? What do you think? Please stop and answer that one. That’s the question this chp provokes.

Touching on one Gospel text after another, he is led to this laundry list of options, and I eliminate his white space: “Is it what you say, or who you are, or what you do, or what you say you’re going to do, or who your friends are, or who you’re married to, or whether you give birth to children? Or is it what questions you’re asked? Or is it what questions you ask in return? Or is it whether you do what you’re told and go into the city?” (16-17)

Bell observes that “almost everybody, at least at first, has a difficult time grasping just what Jesus is” (17). Then this: “Except for one particular group.” Then he points to the demonized people. Not that this matters that much but, no, that’s not right. The Gospels clearly present a spectrum from outright rejection (those who sin against the Spirit) to passive inattentiveness (“this generation”) to various forms of belief and obedience, like the disciples. The disciples, in their sometimes failures, represent those who have genuine faith. And then he points also to the woman who washes his feet know him — but why choose her? Aren’t there also plenty of others? Well, he’s sampling and dipping in and out.

His point, so I would infer: getting in might be the way the gospel is presented, but there’s a list of options about how one gets in. His chp rhetorically baffles the reader to get us to ask: What does it take to get in? [If we believe in the "in vs. out" gospel. I do.] And what does this whole getting in or not getting in stuff say about God and what the faith is all about? Is getting in what it is about? Do many present the gospel this way — in an “in vs. out” approach? Let’s take a good look at what we’re doing and saying and ask this question.

But is there confusion on the part of the Gospels? I don’t think so. One needs only to read the Gospel of John to see his terms for proper response, like faith/believe, and abide, and obey. Or examine the “enter into the kingdom” sayings of Jesus — and I can’t quote them so will list them (Mark 9:43-48; 10:15; 10:17-27; Matthew 5:20; 7:21; 21:28-32). But Jesus’ rhetorical aim is not to bewilder by listing but to provoke his listeners in order to gain their attention so they can see the all-consuming claim of Jesus on life.

I will put this differently: from one person to the next the Gospels show us that Jesus did not say the same thing. He didn’t say “Do these three or four things and then you can enter the kingdom.” Shame on our evangelistic simplicities. No, he summoned each person out of their own particular and concrete realities, revealed what it was that stood between them and him, summoned them to see that this is the First Commandment all over again — have no other gods before me — and make the absolutely stunning claim. It’s all about coming to Jesus, surrendering to Jesus, trusting Jesus, obeying Jesus, or following Jesus. Variants on a theme, folks. Variants on a theme.

That trust in and commitment to him was the new first commandment. These demands aren’t designed to bewilder but to stun us into attention and to dig into the depths of our soul and say “Will you give yourself to me or not?” Rob’s book never really comes back to this listing of options, but I think his book does answer the list of questions by synthesizing an answer in chp 7 into this: We respond to God properly by accepting his love story of us instead of the bad story we’ve got of ourselves. He summons us out of our story into God’s story. I like that approach too.

There’s much more to say, and we don’t have space for it. You can read my take on the theme of this post in One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, pp. 109-119.

McKnight - A Critique of Love Wins 2

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/04/04/exploring-love-wins-4/#more-15446

Exploring Love Wins 2
Scot McKnight
April 4, 2011
Filed under: Hell, Universalism

Because of the firestorm created, I am beginning these discussions of Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, with a prayer. I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,

which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,

without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.†

Hell. That’s the subject of conversation today. And God. Our view of God is implicit and explicit in our view of hell. The question then is what view of God is suggested by your view of hell? And, how does your view of God shape your view of hell? [Forgot: If you like this conversation, please FB share it or Retweet it.... thanks.]

I want us to sit back for a moment to consider the single-most important problem Rob Bell is facing and seeking to resolve in this book. That problem for him is how many in the church, and by and large most in the 19th and 20th Century of American evangelicals, have understood hell and who and how many populate hell. And what that view implies about God. Here are the three big facts, and you correct me if I’m wrong here.

• Those who have heard the gospel and who have accepted it will go to heaven.

• Those who have heard the gospel and not accepted it will go to hell.

• Those who have not heard the gospel will also go to hell.

I am aware that some, I don’t know how many, believe in a fourth line:

• Those who have not heard the gospel may be in a special class, and could be judged in a different way — on the basis of the light they have received from natural revelation. [At the end of this post I briefly discuss other options.]

But my experience in the evangelical world, which historically has been more or less exclusivist (salvation only in Christ, but also understood as consciously responding in this life to the preaching of the gospel itself [again see end of this post]), does not lead me to believe that there’s much reason for hope for those who have not heard. And there’s no hope for those who have heard and who have not accepted the gospel. Yes, some are much more optimistic about the fate of those who have never heard the good news about Jesus Christ, but Rob is not responding to the optimistic evangelical.

But this sketch of three or four points isn’t all of Rob Bell’s problem.

If one takes that third fact seriously, and many evangelicals have done just that, it means that most — let’s say the vast majority — of humans will go to hell because most have not heard the gospel at all. And vast numbers who have have not accepted it. Witness contemporary Europe for instance, or much of Russia. Add now to this the millions and millions in the Far East, most of those in Africa until the missionary movement, those in Muslim countries and millions in South America and other places not mentioned on this good globe of ours… and then add to this those who a thousand years or ago in far off places … you get the picture. The problem that arises from these three (or four) facts is that God created millions and millions of human beings over time and only a select number of them will go to heaven. The problem that arises, therefore, entails what we believe about God.

Of course, there are some theologians and probably loads of Christians who have believed otherwise. But the fact is that if one believes salvation is only in Christ (exclusivism) and that to be a believer one must consciously believe the gospel, then Rob Bell’s caricatures or exaggerations are not as far fetched as some might be suggesting. And the more one fudges in the direction of inclusivism — that there’s a wideness in God’s mercy, or that there’s a different judgment for those who have not heard (and it’s merciful etc etc), that those who died before they were born, or before the age of accountability, etc — the less one fits the stronger exclusivist category. It’s fair to ask “Why infants who die will be saved but not those who have never heard?” And it’s fair to ask “If infants can be saved, why not others?”

I don’t believe anyone should be "for-or-against" Rob Bell’s book until one has grappled with this problem. It won’t do just to poke at Rob’s soteriology, or lack of interest in how the atonement occurs … yes, those issues need examination. But the problem probed in this book, as I see it, and this is dawning on me the more I ponder it and the responses, is this:

I believe most evangelicals Christians, and I won’t speak for Catholics and Orthodox etc, suppress this problem to where it doesn’t really matter. Furthermore, they not only suppress that question but they suppress what it makes them think about God in quiet moments. So, there’s a fifth approach that many take today:

We don’t know what becomes of the millions, perhaps billions, who have never heard the gospel.

But, this appeal to agnosticism is for far too many a cop-out. It is too often born in a conviction that doesn’t have courage. Many of these are true-blue exclusivists but don’t like its implications, so they say “I don’t know” or “That’s in God’s hands.” [On other kinds of agnosticism, see below.] Some use agnosticism as a cloak for a universalism or pluralism they don’t want to admit.

So, I contend we have to get inside this problem and explore it through the problem itself and not explore it simply through our already confident soteriology or doctrine of Scripture. The problem is that no matter how strong your view of Scripture or salvation you have to come to terms with who and how many are in hell or who and how many will be saved. We might not know numbers, but our theology will inform us about the “who” and that will also mean the “how many” is also clarified.

I’ve asked a question like this — how many North Koreans will be in hell? – a number of times to friends in the last month and I’ve had very few say “All” or “Most” but instead there’s been a nice genteel “I don’t know.” But that “I don’t know” seems to me to fly in the face of the dogmatism against Rob’s much softer — almost all or all or he hopes all — view.

You can’t condemn Rob’s view until you face the problem and tell the world your quantification theory. The more you say “I don’t know” the more Martin Bashir is asking you what he asked Rob Bell.

Some other options:

1. Double predestination, which is appealed to rarely and even more rarely claimed publicly in this sort of discussion, would say "For those who have not heard the gospel ... if they were elect, they'll be saved. If not they, they'll not be saved."

2. Other terms often used are inclusivism (that God saves through Christ but includes others on the basis of what work, and that inclusion is based on response to truth) and accessibilism (that God somehow reveals his saving truth to all humans who have ever lived, and has done so at least one time in the life of each person, and judges on that basis but salvation is only through Christ). I am ignoring post Vatican II Catholic thinking and Orthodox thinking because it does not appear to me Rob is speaking into those contexts.

3. Religious instrumentalism teaches that God uses other religions to point us toward God and, in some forms, that Christ is present in those other religions though in a lesser way than is present in the Christian faith.

4. It seems to me that many evangelicals, if not most, understand exclusivism through the lens of what Terry Tiessen calls "ecclesiocentrism": salvation is coextensive with the church whose responsibility it is to proclaim the gospel. So, exclusivism here means through Christ but that "Christ" is known only through the gospel, which is made known by the church's witness.

5. There are two other kinds agnosticism: some are optimistic, like John Stott and R. Mouw, and others are pessimistic, like J.I. Packer and D.A Carson.

This sketch was helped along by T. Tiessen, Who Can Be Saved?: Reassessing Salvation in Christ and World Religions:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0830827471/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jescre-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0830827471

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Selected below are miscellaneous comments to McKnight's blog above that show the various struggles Christians go through in attempting to work out the many expressions of God's love and justice; eternity-issues both hear and later; what "the kingdom of God" can mean now and later; what the good news of the gospel really is (or isn't); the expressions of Christ's atonment v. the TULIP system; how our "theology" more-or-less reflects our view of God, the Cross, the concept of salvation; and the list goes on-and-on. So here are some snapshots that were thoughtfully written by conciencious readers to Rob Bell's book Love Wins.

skinhead

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Mel, there are good reasons to take the “agnostic” view but they have to be good reasons and not — as I often hear — a cop-out from confessing some hard beliefs. I could be wrong on this one, Mel, but it seems to me that part of Rob Bell’s audience is those who don’t want to own up to what they are really saying about hell and about God. I read through a number of studies of late, one by Chris Morgan and one by Terry Tiessen, and don’t see “agnosticism” as a consciously worked out theory so much as one way exclusivists don’t admit to themselves what they believe. For instance, Stott is agnostic but very optimistic; Packer and Carson are only partly agnostic because they are (I use this word guardedly) pessimistic.


Dan, how is that statement “unfair”? I believe it’s the case. One should say what one thinks if one is going to say Rob’s view of how many go to hell is wrong. Yes, I agree, many do say what they think. I’m not sure what apologetics books are saying has anything to do with the current wave of criticism of Bell’s book. I am asking those who speak against his view say what they think.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 7:26 am
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Bill, brother, you’re jumping the gun on this one. Yes, all the problems and issues are interconnected but first we’ve got to get the “problem” sorted out – the problem Rob Bell is addressing. Do you think the “number in hell” and what that says about God is the problem Rob Bell is addressing?

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 7:47 am
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Jeff, I don’t say it is “illegitimate.” I clearly outline a few kinds of agnosticism. I am against using agnosticism as a cop out, and frankly I’m seeing it on both sides today: some use it to cloak universalism or pluralism while others use it to avoid stating the real implications of their exclusivism.

Rob Bell, so I think, is asking people to own up to what they say they believe.

BTW, I doubt very much that most careful thinkers on this topic are actually full blown agnostics.

And I also doubt very much that “I don’t know” was at work in the missionary movements of church history.

Comment by Scot McKnight — April 4, 2011 @ 8:12 am
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I really like this paragraph:

“Faith is being confident about what God has promised; presumption is being confident about my own speculations. God obligates Himself by His word, but He is not in any way obligated by my speculations.”

If we get to heaven and Rob Bell turned out to be right I will dance an eternal jig that everyone I have loved, but who haven’t loved Jesus in this life, has been shown mercy beyond what I thought was taught in scripture. However, though I would be delighted to discover Bell was right all along, I don’t think that is clear in scripture, and while it is a great thing to hope, it can be a dangerous thing to believe and teach.

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 8:41 am
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I heard a Sunday school lesson several years ago by Sam Waldron, he is definitely a old school, calvinistic baptist and is fairly influential in the reformed baptist movement (he has written one of the only modern expositions of the 1689 Baptist (Calvinistic) Confession of Faith).

For some reason he was on the topic of hell and children, especially newborns. His basic points were that (1) the bible teaches hell is the destination for people who do not repent and believe and (2) we need to trust in the goodness and mercy of God that whatever the conclusion is, God is still good and just.

I think he wanted to be both faithfully exclusivist and hopeful at the same time. That is where I find myself.

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 8:46 am
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Robin,

Good points, but let me push back slightly. It is not without import to say that one’s view of how many go to hell says something about God. And I’m not making a case for what to believe here. For many, to say that God sends millions, or billions, to hell forever — and we can say it is their fault and that God doesn’t “send” but that people “choose”(forget the nuances a minute) — is to say something about God, too. In other words, there’s a “theology” at work in what we believe about hell and it has a direct connection to what God is like. It is a fact that some think this shows that God is sovereign, gracious to those whom he is gracious, and to others that God gives us freedom and to others that God is sadistic. I don’t take that last view, but I don’t think it is deniable that a theology is at work in one’s view of hell. Two simple options: for some it proves God is holy and just, eternally so, and for Rob Bell, because he hopes for an empty hell, that God is loving, eternally so. Yes, of course, there’s a spectrum here but my only point is that hell implicates God.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 8:51 am
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Jamie,

I think your comment (26) is partially true and partially false. While I agree that more spreading of the gospel is demanded from an exclusivistic theology, the gospel is almost exclusively spread in this age, and in the past several centuries by people who held an exclusivist theology.

William Carey, George Whitefield, Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, C.T. Studd, John Paton, David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards, Jim Elliot, Amy Carminchael, Lottie Moon, the moravian brethren, John Knox, John Calvin, Martin Luther, etc. there isn’t a single, famous, missionary since the reformation that I can think of that didn’t hold an exclusivistic theology.

Likewise, in our time, the biggest senders of missionaries, by far, within evangelicalism are Southern Baptists, but we could also talk about Heartcry, China Inland Mission, etc. Exclusivists support missions a great deal, but I do agree they could, and should, always do more.

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 8:51 am
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 Jose,

Are you sure that the Jesuits weren’t exclusivists. I seem to recall that the whole reason they did stuff like torturing people during the inquisition was to save the people from heresy (and hell).

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 9:04 am
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I do agree that I, being an exclusivist, am usually a practical agnostic because I just don’t like dealing with the weight of hell. I abhor the thought of it, and cannot bear to think very long about it, but it has never really negatively affected my view of God. It could be because I was an adult convert and knew what I was signing up for, and loved Jesus despite that doctrine.

The fact that this doctrine repulses me personally, doesn’t change the fact that I still see God as infinitely loving and just.

Last thought, if the eternal (time) punishment of hordes of sinners makes us recoil in horror and question the nature of God, why doesn’t the infinitely horrible (intensity) punishment of God own perfect, sinless, spotless son, who never deserved any punishment for anything, but bore the full weight of the father’s wrath, similarly make us recoil.

I ministered to a muslim in college who found to thought of a father pouring out his wrath on his blameless son incomprehensible and refused to the gospel for specifically the reason that doesn’t give most Christians a second thought.

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 9:13 am
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Yes, I see a connection between how we view hell and how we view God. What is being assumed here, however, is that the traditional view of hell is somehow biblically accurate. This is a huge assumption.

Which Hebrew word means “hell” in the OT? Sheol? That is NOT the traditional hell, so the OT does not support the traditional hell view.

Which Greek word means “hell” in the the NT? Gehenna? Hades? Gehenna was an actual place in Israel. One could walk over and see it. It would be like me writing about Manhattan, and years later translators substituted their word “hell” for my word Manhattan as though I was talking about hell and not Manhattan. Hades is also a word with a meaning in Greek — but in Greek mythology. If we assume that their mythology is correct on this point, then Hades is where everyone goes when they die. This is not the traditional view of hell, either. Moreover, is Jesus validating Greek mythology when he says Hades?

So, it appears to me that neither OT nor NT vocabulary support the traditional view of hell. I was raised believing this view, and do not consider myself a liberal, agnostic, or atheist. I am a Christian, but am having a difficult time continuing with the traditional view of hell anymore. The word is just not there in the Bible!

Therefore, my view of hell is that is not a doctrine clearly defined in the Bible. Yes, punishment and judgment, but these are not the same thing as hell. God, to me, is then the one who loved the world, sent his son, and will reconcile all things unto himself (Colossians 1:20).

Comment by keo — April 4, 2011 @ 9:22 am
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keo,
 
Thanks for your comment, but it is ahead of our discussion of hell next week. But I’ll give you a hint of where we are going. As I explain in One.Life “Gehenna” is as surely a burning pit outside Jerusalem as “heaven” is the blue sky (ouranos means sky), but neither Jesus nor his Jewish contemporaries were so flat-footedly literalistic to think “Gehenna” could not also be a metaphorical term for a final destination. And any study of the Jewish apocalypses makes that abundantly clear. The traditional view of hell, I would suggest, is more derived from Revelation 20-21 than just “Gehenna” in Jesus’ teachings. More of this next week.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 9:30 am
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Robin, purgatory for Catholics is for Christians who need to be purged of venial sins. Rob connects purgatory to hell, which is decidedly not (or mostly not) Catholic (for Catholics purgatory is the antechamber to heaven and not at all connected to hell). Furthermore, he pushes the universalism theme in connection to purgatory so he’s got far more going into purgatory than Catholic theology, which again is only for Christians who are certain of hell and how need to be purged of sins. So far as I can see purgatory is not about a second chance, and Rob explores that theme too.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 9:43 am
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K. Rex Butts,

I agree that there are difficulties with these issues, but the way to deal with them is to get the evidence on the table — say Acts 10:34-35; Rom 2:14-16; Acts 17:24-30; Romans 10:9-10 — and to process theories in light of what the texts say and don’t say, so that we say is within those parameters. There are really solid reasons why the Church has always been exclusivist, for instance, and why it has been more than wary about universalism and second chances, and there are reasons why there have been discussions about those who have not heard, but yet not entirely optimistic either. These issues deserve exploration.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 9:46 am
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Scot – I may be misreading you, but it seems like you’re saying “I don’t know” is not an okay answer and is a copout. Why? I’ve always understood that we should speak where Scripture speaks and be silent where its silent (generally…I know there’s always implied things we say, etc.). Since Scripture doesn’t say anything clear about all those that haven’t heard the Gospel, then why do I have to have a strong opinion. The times that I’ve said “I don’t know” to non-Christian classes of students they have appreciated it and it became a starting point of conversation. When I say “I don’t know” I truly mean that I really don’t know. There’s no hiding what I really think. Just my experience and opinion. Again, I could have misunderstood and want to understand better.

Comment by Matt — April 4, 2011 @ 10:34 am
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To add to that last post, I come from a conservative exclusivist background. If I had to answer I would say that God would only hold them accountable for what they knew and it’s very possible people from Korea who don’t hear the Gospel could get in based on God’s grace and mercy. But again, I feel like I’m talking about something I am unsure of.

Comment by Matt — April 4, 2011 @ 10:37 am
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Matt,
 
I’m not saying that and I’ve not communicated it clearly enough so I will say it again: For some agnosticism is a cop out; I think I said “for far too many”. Others are in the bracketed discussion at the bottom of the post, and those are being agnostic about what the Bible is not clear about. But there are many, many who really are strong exclusivists who may have hope for a few but overall think all the others are going to hell who say “I don’t know.” That’s the agnostic I’m picking on here.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 10:57 am
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I’ve noted jabs at making God’s love the controlling attribute (e.g., Rob Bell) and others arguing for God’s holiness being supreme. With belief in the unity of God and that God’s attributes do not create schizophrenia in God, we need to ask how does “hell” equate with God’s justice? If as a finite being I sin 75 years worth of sins (i.e., a finite number) how is God just in *punishing* me eternally? Secondly, if Jesus died for my sins (even if I never believed in him or received him), why does God require a second payment? Mine. Is that not double jeopardy? Jesus paid it all (in my case) and I have to pay it all for eternity. Let’s talk justice, too, and not just love and holiness.

Comment by John W Frye — April 4, 2011 @ 10:52 am
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John Frye (72),

That is why calvinists will contend that you cannot say Jesus died “for every individual”…he died for his elect.

To put it more succinctly, I think this was Boice’s paraphrase:

Calvinists believe in limited atonement, explicitly, they believe that the atonement procured by Jesus was limited in scope, it only secured salvation for God’s elect. However, (exclusivistic) arminians also believe in limited atonement, implicitly, they believe that Jesus’ death provided a limited atonement for every individual, but that the atonement was “limited” in its effectiveness. It doesn’t actually forgive all of your sins, bring you into right relationship with God and usher every individual to heaven, it requires that each individual, who already received this “atonement” cooperate in some manner for the atonement to be effectual.

For this reason calvinists are, generally, very ready to say that universalism is a much more logical position if you believe that Jesus died “for every individual” because they see little reason for Jesus to pay for the sins of someone on the cross, only to see that person, let’s say Hitler (assuming he never repented and believed), also pay for those sins a second time.

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 11:00 am
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Robin,

Thanks for commenting on atonement justice (77). I am aware of TULIP and the dreaded middle L–limited atonement. Within the TULIP system, it all fits symmetrically. But double predestination or God actively choosing some and passively passing over many, leaves us with a God who decrees the eternal conscious torment of billions. And according to comment 66, God finds “pleasure” in the eternal torment of billions of conscious being bearing God’s image because, after all, God is God. Yet, may Calvinists back off the L and say, as Arminians do, that Jesus’ atonement is sufficient for all, but applied only to those who respond. IMO, that implicates God participating in the double jeopardy for one set of sins….Jesus’ death (sufficient to satisfy the wrath of God for ALL) and requiring the eternal punishment of the unhearing-the-gospel sinners and the gospel-hearing, but unrepentant sinners.

Comment by John W Frye — April 4, 2011 @ 11:28 am
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John Frye,

I think that it is important to remember that TULIP is, at best, a sincere attempt to harmonize scripture in a logically consistent manner. I think there is a biblical basis for its teaching, but the only reason there is an “L” in TULIP is that people starting asking “If Jesus has already ‘paid for the sins’ of the entire human race, then why are some people still going to end up in hell?”

Calvinism has a lgical answer – “he didn’t really pay for the sins of the entire human race”

Universalism has a logical answer – “you’re right, they won’t”

And other belief systems, on this point, are murkier or less logical.

Likewise regarding other dilemmas, calvinism and universalism are less logical, biblically faithful, or both.

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 11:51 am
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“Any thoughts on why this teaching is so strongly resisted?”

or

“Why people that are exclusivist are so against the idea of Heaven and Hell being present here and now through the decisions that we make?”

This isn’t about exclusivists just loving the doctrine of hell, and that God sends people to hell, and that it is eternal. It isn’t about our preferences at all, it is about what we view as the most biblically faithful exposition of scripture. We could be wrong, but that is, generally, the motivation for people who aren’t fond of Bell’s theology.

I have said on this comment page that I will dance a jig in heaven if he is right, or if any universalist is right. Throw Hitler and Pol-Pot in heaven too and I will still be ecstatic that no-one is suffering, but it isn’t about what I want heaven to look like. I, and most exclusivists, think the bible teaches one thing and that some people teach something contrary to the bible and that teaching things contrary to the bible can have bad consequences if they do indeed turn out to be wrong.

You could contend that even if he is wrong, it isn’t a big deal because noone is going to stop evangelizing, or telling people to repent and believe, or that noone will really believe they can put of repentance until after death and keep enjoying their vices in this present life. I think that, based upon my reading of the bible, widespread acceptance of a “second chance after death” theology could have terrible consequences and eternity is at stake, so up to this point, I’m not a fan of it.

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 12:42 pm
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I have a few issues with your discussion – 1)”Many of these are true-blue exclusivists but don’t like its implications, so they say “I don’t know” or “That’s in God’s hands.” [On other kinds of agnosticism, see below.] Some use agnosticism as a cloak for a universalism or pluralism they don’t want to admit.”

When I say I don’t know or It is in God’s hands means that I have grappled with an issue, sought clarity through scripture and truly can’t find a clear answer. This isn’t a cop out. If we could totally understand/quantify God, then He wouldn’t be God. There is a reason that God didn’t spell out totally ABC what Hell was/looked like. But if you believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God, then Christ is the only way to heaven (you know – I am the Way, the Truth, the Life, no one comes to the Father, except by Me., I am pretty sure He meant that). SO, where does that leave the little man in Tibet (what my friends and I have affectionately named those who have never heard the name of Jesus)? I don’t know. If you can say with certainty that you do know, I would like the scripture upon which you base this knowledge. I do know antedoctal evidence where missionaries have reached new people groups and when reached, they said we were just waiting for the name of that which we already know.

The issue I have with Love Wins (and what my friends and I can’t get past) is that they say that if everyone is not reconciled in the end, then it says or shows the blood of Christ was not enough. I say that to deny the existence of an eternal consequence of not accepting Chrsit is to deny the Justice of God. We have so neutered God. If you read through the WHOLE Bible, God is a God of mercy – yes, but He demands Justice. Even after Christ, He demanded justice – Revelations anyone?????

My other issue is that if everyone is reconciled in the end, if Love conquers all, then why earth. Why waste our time on earth, which is a poor shadow of heaven, if not to see as many saved as can be saved? If there is no eternal consequences to our choices, then why not bring heaven back NOW and let us get on with eternity? I don’t get it. That would be a cruel God that I would want no part of.

Comment by Lori Jefffries — April 4, 2011 @ 1:44 pm
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Lori Jeffries: Why waste our time on earth, which is a poor shadow of heaven, if not to see as many saved as can be saved?

And there it is: the one-sentence summary of why the usual exclusivist, Four-Spiritual-Laws, “all the non-Romans pages of my Bible are stuck together” evangelical soteriology sucks.

It tells me that my life is a waste of time and I’d be better off dead. It is objectively pro-suicide.

Discuss.

Comment by Mark Z. — April 4, 2011 @ 2:41 pm
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I disagree DRT. I think I would go full bore epicurean if all this world was just sounds and fury, signifying nothing. If there is no heaven or hell, then we should, in the immortal words of Dave Matthews Band “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die…tripping billies”

Comment by Robin — April 4, 2011 @ 2:49 pm
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Robin#122, One of the great joys of my life that I have found is that the upside down teachings of Jesus are indeed true. I have found my greatest pleasure and most satisfaction in giving rather than receiving, and in the relationships with others and the world rather than making the world the way I want it.

Without a heaven or hell I think we should still live the life that Jesus teaches us because he is right, we can experience the Kingdom of God here and now and it is wonderful and beautiful unlike anything else.

Comment by DRT — April 4, 2011 @ 3:02 pm
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Lori #113 I wonder if you see the dualism presented in this comment “if Love conquers all, then why earth. Why waste our time on earth, which is a poor shadow of heaven”. Do you see you are pitting earth against heaven? The physical (bad) against the spiritual (good)? It’s dualism… more specifically gnosticism. Maybe that’s not what you meant, but that’s how it sounds when I read it. I think we can all agree that in Genesis God declares His creation “very good” and in the Incarnation I see God re-affirming His declaration. We were not designed for Heaven, we were designed for earth… that is where God put us from the beginning. In Jesus, we see God bringing about his Kingdom here on earth “as it is in heaven”.

N.T. Wright wrote a wonderful book about this “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church”.

Comment by Ann — April 4, 2011 @ 3:08 pm
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The kingdom is a society doing the will of God — on earth.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 4, 2011 @ 7:41 pm
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Thanks Scot. Now, I hope the following is clear. To “get inside” the problem, as you invite us to do, I think we have to deal with what it means to “be saved”, which also means dealing with the question “What is the good news?”. Remember a while ago when you were asking questions about the subject of another book (sorry, can’t remember which) and you were trying to ascertain what peoples’ experiences had been wrt what they were told -as Evangelicals- about “how to be saved”? And the significant majority of people said that what they were taught “in the pew” was basically “turn or burn”? And remember how you kept saying, no, that’s not what’s taught, it’s more nuanced than that? And remember how people kept telling you, “But Scot, that *is* actually what we heard and understood, not only as children but also as adults.” What people heard was hardly anything like your definition, except sometimes the relational aspect vis-a-vis God and others was included. But really, the only message of salvation most of us heard was, “Accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior so that you can go to Heaven (a far-off place) after you die, and avoid Hell (also -probably- a far-off place).”

Both of these questions touch on the Kingdom of God, because that is the subject of the announcement of the good news, according to the Gospels. As an Evangelical, I heard that the KoG was what we got when we “got to Heaven” and/or was “only spiritual” – again, having nothing to do with your definition. A notable exception was John Wimber, who, as someone who believed the Gospels should be the lens through which the rest of the bible was to be interpreted, at least grappled with the concept and incorporated it into his vision for the church. (He didn’t have the formal linguistic and historical training to do much more with it than that, which was perhaps a good thing at the time.)

The interesting thing to me is, in your comments in the post, you go along talking about “being saved” and “accepting the gospel and going *to* Heaven/Hell” with seemingly no reference to the definitions you just gave me. I see an incongruity there, an incongruity I’m not sure you grasp: it seems you are using the same vocabulary that you say isn’t really involved in the “Evangelical message” of “salvation”. I think this is at least part of the inner problem you want us to address, and is related to eschatology as well. (So the circles of theological ripples widen… )

I think Rob is addressing the on-the-ground, in-the-pew teaching. I think at least part of the reason you couldn’t, in your part 1, “hear” what he was calling toxic is that maybe you can’t yet see the incongruity. The way Joel in comment 70 explained it was the way I read the quote with which you had difficulty. Now, I could be wrong. At the same time, I’m just putting it on the table that you might have a bit of a “tin ear” to what Rob is hearing from people who tell him their stories, because you couldn’t seem to hear the common thread in the overwhelming majority of the stories people were telling you in that other series about what they were taught was “the Gospel” and what constituted “salvation”.

That said, I really, really appreciate the tack you are taking. It sounds like the book is, more than anything else, an interaction with a sort of “sociological” circumstance that Rob keeps encountering, and you recognize its importance as the real issue, not simply a matter of bare doctrinal correctness.

Dana

Comment by Dana Ames — April 4, 2011 @ 11:31 pm
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Dana, I agree: the categories being used in the various lines are the categories used by the very common approach to salvation, and it is the categories Rob is using in his book and seeking to deconstruct. And, yes, I would not frame the gospel story this way. The first book you are talking about is McLaren’s — and your summary is a softened version of his Greco-Roman narrative. Rob’s approach is much closer to the ground level of how the average evangelical hears the gospel message.

Comment by scotmcknight — April 5, 2011 @ 5:53 am