After hours upon hours of reading and reviewing this book and after an unintended week hiatus from this blog, I’m going to bring my review of this book to a close here.  I appreciate you all trucking along with me!  Here are my final thoughts on the book.

1.  What does Bell believe exactly? I wrote a brief entry in this series talking about how hard it was finding it to pin down exactly what Bell’s beliefs were.  Again, maybe I’m an idiot and just not catching what he’s saying.  But here’s what prompted that entry.  He spends an entire chapter talking about Hell and emphasizing the theme of universal reconciliation and then, in another chapter, ponders the possibility of God bringing “proper, lasting justice, banishing certain actions- and the people who do them- from the new creation while at the same time allowing and waiting and hoping for the possibility of the reconciliation of those very same people…Will everyone eventually be reconciled to God or will there be those who cling to their version of their story, insisting on their right to be their own little god ruling their own little miserable kingdom?  Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?” (p.117- Advance Reader Copy)  His conclusion?  “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 the freedom that love requires.”  Uhh…what?  This is the passage that Bell-supporters will point to whenever someone claims he’s a universalist.  His point in this passage seems to be that God is loving enough to give us what we want, even if that’s Hell.  The better question for him is not “Does God get what he wants?” but “Do we get what we want?” (p.118)

The part I quoted above came completely out of left-field in my opinion and seemed to undermine much of what he said in his chapter on Hell.  So does God ultimately reconcile everyone to himself?  Or does he love them enough to give people what they want when what they want is not God?  Or am I missing the point by assuming these things are mutually exclusive?  I don’t know, because Bell never really clarifies this.  For him, it’s a tension we should live with.

That’s one of my biggest complaints about Love Wins.  It’s unclear.  My complaint isn’t primarily “ROB BELL’S A UNIVERSALIST AND IS GOING TO HELL SO LET’S POINT OUT ALL THE WAYS HIS BOOK IS WRONG BLAH!”  I think I know what theology Rob Bell is promoting, and I do believe it’s false.  But I have a lot more tolerance for false teaching that’s clearly stated than I do for this book.   Bell seems to have written this book in such a way as to allow Christians from all theological stripes to find common ground in it.  For the people who believe in a forever, conscious place of torment called Hell, he makes clear that he believes Hell is a real place.  For those who think eternal suffering isn’t reflective of a God of love, he makes a long argument about how the love of God will melt the hardest of hearts.

Bell is vague.

Very.  Very.
Vague.

For a guy like me who doesn’t look to Rob Bell for his teaching, this isn’t that big of a deal.  The ambiguity is an annoyance and not much more.  But Bell does have people who look to him for teaching and guidance.  And that makes a book like this dangerous.  He is either inaccurate in his theology or, if orthodox, unclear about his orthodoxy.  Neither situation is acceptable.  As a pastor and a teacher, Bell needs to be clear about what he believes and why.

2. “Bell’s facilitating discussion though, and we should be thankful that he’s getting people to talk about this doctrine.” I’ve been hearing this a lot.  To be sure, it is a great thing that, as a result of Bellmageddon, people are looking afresh into the doctrine of divine punishment. But that’s not quite the same thing as saying that we should be thankful for what Bell has done by writing this book.  For example, for the first couple centuries after Christ, believers kind of took it for granted that Jesus was God and was the Son of the Father who was also God.  They didn’t really question it.  Our understanding of the Trinity today is due in large part to the views of a man named Arius who taught that Jesus was pretty awesome and powerful, but not co-equal with God the Father.  His teachings spread and this caused the church to gather together to investigate, clarify, and articulate its theology of the Trinity.

In a very true way, the Arian controversy led to a deeper understanding and appreciation for the doctrine of the Trinity, which is a good thing.  But as for Arius’s teachings, they were condemned as heretical.  We shouldn’t be grateful for the fact that he spread false teaching and deceived many.  Like with the story of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis 50, what the brothers meant for evil by selling Joseph into slavery, God meant for good.  Now, I’m not calling Bell a heretic.  But what I am saying is that it’s one thing to be grateful for the result this book is having, and another to be grateful for Bell and what he is teaching.  In God’s providence, good results can come from false teaching.  Let’s just be wise enough not to equate the two.

One final thing on this point: Bell raises a lot of questions in this book.  No doubt he’s going to get a lot of believers to start asking themselves questions about why they believe what they believe concerning divine judgment.  Again, good thing.  He’s gotten me to evaluate what I believe.  A good teacher will always get people to examine what it is they believe.  But the problem is when dialogue and discussion are treated as ends in themselves rather than the means to something.  As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”  The net effect of this book, in my humble opinion, is to open the mind and nothing more.  While a good teacher asks great questions, in the end he must make a solid case for why one belief is right and the alternatives false.  As I mentioned in the first point, after spending a chapter unpacking the theme of reconciliation in Scripture along with the finiteness of Hell, he gives himself an out in the next chapter by seemingly allowing for the possibility that some people will “perish apart from God forever because of their choices…” (p.117)  Instead of declaring what Scripture says about Heaven, Hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived, Love Wins is more of Rob Bell’s 200-page way of saying “Eternal Judgment.  Discuss…”

3. Which “love” wins? I ended my first entry in this series saying that I agreed with Bell when he said that “love wins” but that I disagreed with what that meant.  Bell’s definition of “love” seems to be the love a father has for a child.  A good father will never give up his pursuit of his wayward son.  Similarly, God’s pursuit (“love”) will eventually melt the hardest hearts (“wins”).  But as I’ve argued throughout these posts, God is not pursuing his children.  He pursues his enemies, adopts them, and calls them his sons and daughters.   He loves in the fact that he sent his own Son to suffer and die for his enemies, the ones who deserved nothing but wrath.  God’s love wins in the fact that any of these enemies are made sons and daughters.  “Out of the anguish of his soul”, writes Isaiah concerning the suffering servant (Jesus) “he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make may to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:11)  Christ will be satisfied with the result of his sacrifice.  In other words, he wins.

1 John 4:10 says this: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  ”Propitiation” is a fancy theological word that basically means that Jesus has satisfied God’s wrath.  We have sinned against God, and he shows his love in that he absorbs the punishment for it.  He doesn’t retaliate.  To forgive is to absorb a cost.  If someone hits your car and you forgive them, tell them it’s no big deal, and drive off, you’re putting on yourself the cost of either paying for the repairs yourself or driving around in a damaged car.  If you free the person who wronged you from any responsibility, it costs you something in the end.  Love is what makes a person willing to do that.  Love is when reconciliation is worth the cost it takes to forgive.  For God, that was giving his only Son to die on our behalf.  To minimize wrath is to minimize love.  Love does win, but I think there’s a better way to say it.  Love wins because God is love and in the end God wins.  Just as the word “love” is so prone to misuse in our culture, so is the phrase “love wins.”  God, in all his fullness, wins.  God’s love wins.  God’s holiness wins.  God’s justice wins.  God’s the point, not us.  It’s about him, not us.  If we have the audacity to look at what Jesus did on the cross and claim that God is unloving because not everybody benefits from it, we are man-centered and God-centered.  But when we marvel at what Jesus did on the cross and the love that caused the Father to send him to save anybody, that’s a God-centered (and thus proper) mindset.  People who look at the number of the saved and complain that it’s not high enough for them are operating under the assumption that all men deserve God’s love.  Those who rejoice that any are saved correctly recognize that none of us deserve that love, and that’s what makes grace amazing.

4. A book of “eisegesis.” Bell is guilty of eisegesis (reading something into the text). For example, while Scripture is abundantly clear that God is love, Bell forces his own definition of “love” into the Biblical text instead of running with Scripture’s own definition of the word.  His eisegesis is also evident in his general use of Scripture.  Bell cites a lot of verses in the book but fairly consistently and conveniently leaves out the very contexts which undermine the way he is using them.  For example, while talking about God’s relentless pursuit of sinners, Bell cites Genesis 18:25- “…’Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’”(TNIV) Reading even just all of verse 25 though, we see that the “right” thing that Abraham prays for is that the righteous people won’t be destroyed along with the wicked.  To say it another way, he wants the Judge of the earth to do right by separating the righteous from the wicked.  The selective use of this phrase (rather than the whole verse) is an example of his inserting his own understanding of “right” into the text.

Final Thoughts

We need more answers and understanding on the doctrine of divine judgment than Rob Bell provides in Love Wins.  He’s vague enough to allow people from many theological persuations regarding Hell to find at least some common ground with him, and I can’t help but wonder if that was his intention.  When he does seem to be actively arguing something (such as Hell being a temporal place of correction), he does so with out-of-context verses and/or wrongly-interpreted verses.

Bell’s promotional video for Love Wins cuts between him and an artist’s brush strokes on a canvas.  The pieces of the painting look beautiful, and it’s only at the end of the video that we are far enough back to see what the artist has been painting for the duration of the video: a sign that says “Love Wins.”  This book feels very similar in some ways.  Bell’s not a bad writer.  He paints many beautiful strokes throughout the book which seem to be building up to a beautiful picture.  But when you pull back and look at the picture, it’s a jumbled product.  The book is too vague for the subject it explores.  After all, it matters a great deal whether we believe that Hell is a final destination or a detour.  For the sake of our own souls and the souls that we would go and preach to, we need clarity in this subject.

If you want a book about God’s love, this is one you can skip.  Just read 1 John.

Hello my faithful Bloggees!  Well I was planning on ending this series here, but then I started writing this one and got carried away.  I’ve sort of stopped caring if these are long or short.  So this one, plus on more probably on Friday, and my review will be complete!

To dive into this one, I’m going to give a Robbellian answer (margins included) to the question that titles this entry:

No.
And yes.

I’d say “no” in the sense that he doesn’t seem to be advocating an “All roads lead to heaven” view nor a “We’re all blind men touching different parts of the elephant” one.  Rob Bell would affirm without hesitation that Jesus Christ is the only way to God.  (And orthodox Christianity claps its hands.)  But when you peel back the onion you begin to see that what he means by that is pretty different from what most people mean by that statement.  A term unknown to me until Bellmageddon arrived is “universal reconciliation.”  This is the view that, although some souls may go to Hell, ultimately (however long it takes) those people will be reconciled to God.  And this, friends, is where Bell seems to land in his book.

The chapter entitled “There Are Rocks Everywhere” is the chapter most devoted to the universal reconciliation view.  The question that frames the chapter is: If Christ was present in the exodus (see 1 Corinthians 10:4- “the Rock was Christ”), “[w]here else has [he] been present? When  else? With who else? How else? Paul finds Jesus there, in that rock, because Paul finds Jesus everywhere.” (p.146)  Support for this comes from several verses.  Again, I quote Bell: “John begins his Gospel by claiming that through Jesus ‘all things were made.’  It’s written in Hebrews 1 that Jesus is the one ‘through whom also [God] made the universe’; in Colossians 1, ‘He is before all things’; in Ephesians 4 he’s ‘the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe’; and in 1 Corinthians 8 he’s ‘Jesus Christ,’ the one ‘through whom all things came and through whom we live.’” (p.148)  Summary: Jesus is dang big, nothing can contain him, and he is “the ultimate exposing of what God has been up to all along.”  (p.150)

Since Jesus is that big, then it’s obvious that he’s “bigger than any one religion.  He didn’t come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day.  He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called ‘Christianity.’” (p.152)  That to me is one of the most confusing paragraphs of the book, because he doesn’t really clarify it.  In what way does Jesus transcend Christianity?  And why especially Christianity?  He never says.  Citing John 12:32 (“‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’”) and John 6:51 (“‘…And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’”), he comes to the conclusion that “Jesus is supracultural.  He is present within all cultures, and yet outside of all cultures.  He is for all people, and yet he refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one culture.  That includes any Christian culture.  Any denomination.  Any church.  Any theological system.  We can point to him, name him, follow him, discuss him, honor him, and believe in him- but we cannot claim him to be ours any more than he’s anyone else’s.” (p.153-154)

Okay, a bit of personal analysis here.  Bell seems to attract a lot of young people who have had it up to here (picture me holding my hand really high) with the faith they grew up on.  Growing up, their parents made them go to church, sing in the choir, get fat on goldfish crackers, not drink or smoke or have sex, negative, negative, negative.  The Christianity they reject is one concerned with Do’s and Don’t.  It’s the Christianity that creates “Testamints” to counteract the spread of the clearly-Satanic Tic Tacs, and tows the line of copyright infringement by created shirts that say “Spirit” instead of “Sprite” while using the Sprite font.  In short, the Christianity they’re rejecting is a culture.  It’s American Christianity, and for most of us that’s all we know.  I think that for a lot of people, Christianity = America.  In other words, Christianity is an American (or at least Western) subculture.  And we’re living in a day and age in which we’re realizing that America isn’t exactly the center of planet Earth.  And I think so many church-kids-turned-disillusioned-adults have so united Christianity and America that as their appreciation for America drops, so does their view of Christianity.  Young people today are disatisfied with such an inseparable tie between their culture and their faith that they are reacting to it.  Some are learning to get radical and to divorce their faith from the American dream, realizing that they are not one and the same pursuit after all.  Others can’t divorce their faith from their culture, and so they mold their faith to conform to culture’s “approved” list.  Bell, in my opinion, falls in this latter camp.  That’s not to say that he isn’t preaching things that the wider culture would find offensive.  It’s bold to say that Jesus is the only way to God.  He’s going to lose people on that statement.  But if you let him talk just long enough, most people would probably say that his view sounds at least worthy of consideration (even if they still believe it’s wrong). I say all that to say that Bell seems unable to divorce modern, orthodox Christianity from Western culture.  Because God is at work in all nations and not just among people in the Bible Belt, maybe we should even start to rethink what Western Christianity has taught us.

For Bell, Jesus is the only way to God.  And what he means by this is that “he, and he alone is saving everybody.” (p.157)  His view isn’t so much “All roads lead to God” as it is “Jesus is re-routing all roads to the One road.”  In John 14:6, Jesus says “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.’”  Bell comments on this verse: “What he doesn’t say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him.  He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him.  He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him.” (p.156)  However, recent Biblical scholarship which has informed us that context is important when interpreting verses.  That Jesus doesn’t talk about “in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him” in John 14:6 doesn’t mean he does talk about it in, you know, the surrounding verses.  ”‘Believe in God; believe also in me.’” (John 14:1)  ”‘Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.’” (John 14:11)  Widen the scope to the whole Gospel of John and we see belief in Jesus as that mechanism (1:12, 3:16, 20:31, see also 10:9).

Bell’s correct in asserting that in John 14:6 there is an element of exclusivity and inclusivity.  He calls this verse “an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity.”  He contrasts solely exclusive and solely inclusive interpretations of salvation.  The exclusive side says “Jesus is the only way.  Everybody who doesn’t believe in him and follow him in the precise way that is defined by the group doing the defined by the group doing the defining isn’t saved, redeemed, going to heaven, and so on.  There is that kind of exclusion.  You’re either in, or you’re going to hell.  Two groups.”  And the inclusive side is the “kind that is open to all religions, the kind that trusts that good people will get in, that there is only one mountain, but it has many paths.  This inclusivity assumes that as long as your heart is fine or your actions measure up, you’ll be okay.” Bell presents a middle ground though.  The “exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity…insists that Jesus is the way, but holds tightly to the assumption that the all-embracing, saving love of this particular Jesus the Christ will of course include all sorts of unexpected people from across the cultural spectrum.” (pp.156-157)

There again in that last sentence we see Bell’s emphasis on the plurality of cultures that’s represented in Heaven.  But that’s the problem with his view of salvation.  To say that “God only saves Christians” seems to sound a lot like “God only saves Westerners” to him.  If you look closely at his descriptions of the “exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity” and the purely “exclusive” side, they’re not incompatible.  To say that there are only two groups (those going to Heaven and those going to Hell) in no way presumes that all cultures won’t be represented in the one group going to Heaven.  To say it another way: why can’t the one group going to Heaven include Americans, Chinese, Ethiopians, Indians, Germans, Japanese, and South Africans who have put their faith in Christ?  And why can’t the one group going to Hell include Americans, Chinese, Ethiopians, Indians, Germans, Japanese, and South Africans who have refused to put their faith in him, thus allowing the wrath of God to remain on them (John 3:36)?

This is going to sound ridiculous, but if you were to ask Bell “Will Hindus get into Heaven?” and “Will Indians get into Heaven?”, he might respond: “I don’t see the difference.”  Okay, I don’t believe he actually believes that or would say that.  But his book does seem to carry the presupposition that religion is just culture by another name.  ”As soon as the door is opened to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Baptists from Cleveland, many Christians become very uneasy, saying that then Jesus doesn’t matter anymore, the cross is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter what you believe, and so forth.  Not true.  Absolutely, unequivocally, unalterably not true.” (p.157)  But why it’s untrue remains unclear, at least to me (I don’t know, maybe I’m an idiot).  I’m in the exclusive camp that Bell talks about, but I have no problem saying that “all sorts of unexpected people from across the cultural spectrum” will get into Heaven.  Why?  Because the Jesus who preached Hell preached that he would draw all people (read: all kinds of people, not just Jews) to himself.  The Book of Revelation, which tells us of the final destination of the devil, his angels, and the unsaved, also tells us that Christ will save people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

Christianity is both an exclusive faith and an inclusive one.  I agree with Bell on that.  The doctrine of an unending place of punishment called Hell doesn’t negate that.  Isaiah 2 presents us with the picture of the last days: “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’  For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.” (vv.2-3)  The Gospel is exclusive. There is one mountain that will stand (one kingdom), and there is only one way into that kingdom: Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:13-14).  The Gospel is inclusive.  Anyone can come.  Any person of any culture who believes in Jesus will not perish but will have eternal life.  As hard as it is to believe, there will be people in Heaven who never, ever heard of DC Talk this side of eternity.

“He is for all people, and yet he refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one culture.”  Culture isn’t what saves you nor is it what sends you to Hell.  Culture isn’t the point.  Bell is preaching to a Western culture who believes that Christianity is its “gift” to the world, but which also believes that there are far more cultures to learn from than just our own.  And this means that there are far more religions to look at than just “our own.”  We’re a pluralistic society now, and thus to say that Christianity is the only way to God is considered to be equivalent to saying that one culture is better than another.  I believe this is why Bell can say that Jesus “refuses to be co-opted or owned by any one culture” only one page after he says that Jesus “will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called ‘Christianity.’”  He has divorced Jesus from Christianity.  Jesus saves you.  Christianity doesn’t.  So while Jesus alone saves you, you don’t have to be a Christian for that to happen.

Bell says that “we cannot claim him to be ours any more than he’s anyone else’s.”  Again, here’s Bell’s anthropology.  What God is to one, he is to all.  But this isn’t true.  Christ can claim us to be his and not claim others (1 Corinthians 3:23, Philippians 3:12).  Those who follow him belong to him.  And those who follow him are found from all over the world.  This is the beauty of the Gospel.  It’s an open door to a narrow path.  All who turn to Christ will be saved, but only those who turn to him.  All kinds of people, from the greatest to the least, men and women, black and white, Iranian, Sudanese, French, old women, young men, circus folk, eskimos, Mumford and Sons fans, Nickelback fans, boring people and fun people.  The Gospel levels the playing field.  God is no respecter of persons.  All may come to him (John 6:37), and all kinds of people will be represented in Heaven as victims of God’s grace.

“Sin, refuse to repent, harden your heart, reject Jesus, and when you die, it’s over.  Or actually, the torture and anguish and eternal torment will have just begun.  That’s how it is- because that’s what God is like, correct?  God is loving and kind and full of grace and mercy- unless there isn’t confession and repentance and salvation in this lifetime, at which point God punishes forever.  That’s the Christian story, right?  Is that what Jesus taught?”
(p.66, “Love Wins”)

In an attempt to answer this question, Bell seeks to take the reader through every reference to Hell or eternal torment found in the Bible.  I’ll skip the Old Testament part of his tour since it’s pretty boring, and because the bulk of his information and argument are found in the New Testament.  So here we go:

“The actual word ‘hell’ is used roughly twelve times in the New Testament, almost exclusively by Jesus himself.  The Greek word that gets translated as ‘hell’ in English is the word Gehenna.  Ge means ‘valley,’ and Henna means ‘Hinnom.’  Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, was an actual valley on the south and west side of the city of Jerusalem.  Gehenna, in Jesus’s day, was the city dump.” (p.69)  So far so good.  In times past, children had been sacrificed to Molech there.  In New Testament times, trash was thrown in the valley into a fire that was continually burning.   Dead people who had no family to bury them got thrown in here too, and they would burn and be eaten away by maggots.  He goes on to quote or allude to all the verses in which “Hell” or similar words appear.

Bell then makes another tour of Scripture to highlight the recurring themes of judgment and restoration.  He starts in Genesis 19 and talks about God’s judgment and destruction of the evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Ever since that episode, “the words ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ have served as a warning, an ominous sign of just what happens when God decides to judge swiftly and decisively.”  Again, so far so good.  But what strikes Bell as fascinating is how “this isn’t the last time we read of Sodom and Gomorrah.” (p.85)  We see them again in Ezekiel 16:53- “‘I will restore their fortunes, both the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters, and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughters, and I will restore your own fortunes in their midst”.  And then they show up again in Jesus’s day when he tells his disciples “‘if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust of your feet when you leave that house or town.  Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.’” (Matthew 10:15)  Bell points our attention to the apparent fact that the fate of the two cities will be reversed.  ”What appeared to be over, isn’t.” (pp.86-87)

He cites many other verses in passing, but one he points out that’s worth mentioning is Jeremiah 5:3- “O LORD, do not your eyes look for truth?  You have struck them down, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction.  They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent.”  Bell observes: “That’s the point, according to the prophet, of the crushing.  To bring about correction.  According to the prophets, God crushes, refines, tests, corrects, chastens, and rebukes- but always with a purpose.  No matter how painful, brutal, oppresive, no matter how far people find themselves from home because of their sin, indifference, and rejection, there’s always the assurance that it won’t be this way forever.”  So for Bell, punishment is for correction.  And this conviction carries over into how he understands what Jesus says about Hell.

Going into this book, I was really anxious to see what Bell did with verses like Matthew 25:46- “‘And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”  Pretty cut and dry right?  Eh, maybe not.  Bell analyzes the words aion (“eternal”) and kolazo (“punishment”) and makes the following points: “Aion, we know, has several meanings.  One is ‘age’ or ‘period of time’; another refers to intensity of experience.  The word kolazo is a term from horticulture.  It refers to the pruning and trimming of the branches of a plant so it can flourish.  Depending on how you translate aion and kolazo, then, the phrase can mean ‘a period of pruning’ or ‘a time of trimming,’ or an intense experience of correction.”  Regarding the typical english translation as “eternal punishment” and the fact that many read that to mean “‘punishment forever,’ as in never going to end”, he says: “But ‘forever’ is not really a category the biblical writers used.”  He cites the Hebrew word olam as the closest word that Biblical writers had for our concept of “forever.”  When used of God, it means forever (such as in Psalm 90:2).  Other times though it’s far more relative.  It can even just refer to the span on a person’s life as in Psalm 77:5.  And such appears to be his attitude toward the word aion as well.  ”So when we read ‘eternal punishment,’ it’s important that we don’t read categories and concepts into a phrase that aren’t there.  Jesus isn’t talking about forever as we think of forever.”  (pp.93-95)

So what the “hell” do we make of Bell’s thoughts? (See what I did there?)  Well yes, aion can mean “long period of time,” but it can also mean “unending.”  The same exact thing can be said about the Hebrew word olam that Bell references.  Context is key.  Take Daniel 12:2 for example.  It reads: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”  ”Everlasting” here is olam.  Does it mean “forever” or just a long time?  Well, note that life and contempt here are being juxtaposed.  If “everlasting life” means that we will be with God forever, then for “everlasting contempt” to refer to anything other than that same amount of time would be unreasonable.  And the same applies to Matthew 25:46.  There’s a very clear contrasting of the fates of the sheep and the goats in Jesus’s parable here.  The meaning of aiōnion here in the Greek is “without end,” referring to an age that does not cease.  And the function of kolazo here isn’t to say that this will be a time of pruning.  It will be a time of punishment and torment.  I’ve had three semesters of Greek, so while you all would think I’d be the most respected Greek scholar in the world, you’d actually be wrong.  Maybe kolazo can refer to “correction” or “trimming” or “pruning.”  I don’t know.  But in all the references I’ve checked, it doesn’t appear to be the common meaning of the term.  Again, context is key.  Here in Matthew 25:46, something unending is in view.  (I do know that in John 15:2 when Jesus talks about the Father pruning the branches that bear fruit so that they would bear more fruit, kolazo is not the word used there to describe this process.)

Once again, I think Bell’s view of man is coloring his belief that Hell is a place of correction (even if that correction must take a while).  Most of the verses he cites to show that judgment is always temporal are verses addressed to the post-exilic people of Judah who, as I’ve already mentioned in another entry, were in a unique sense God’s children.  With that in mind, let’s take a look at Hebrews 12:

“And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?  ’My sons, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.  For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’  It is for discipline that you have to endure.  God is treating you as sons.  For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?  If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”  (vv.5-8)

God sent his people into Babylonian exile in order to discipline them as sons, the purpose of which was restoration.  So to look at verses like Nahum 2:2 (“For the LORD is restoring the majesty of Jacob as the majesty of Israel, for plunderers have plundered them and ruined their branches.”) and conclude, as Rob Bell does, that this type of restoration following a period of punishment is the pattern for how God relates to every single person is to ignore the context of these verses.  Based on the Old Testament verses he uses to build his argument, and his translation of Matthew 25:46, it seems to me that Bell’s argument is solely supported by out-of-context information.  Again, when it comes to salvation, some are God’s children and some are not.

“Scott, you’re blowing my mind bro!  But what about Sodom and Gomorrah?  Israel may have been God’s son, but they sure weren’t.  And Ezekiel 16:53 says they’ll be restored!”  Oh yeah.  Touche, fictional person.  Ezekiel’s point in this passage is that Judah’s sins have surpassed even the despised Sodomites and Samarians.  For those who know God to turn and rebel against him makes them worse off.  So if God can restore Judah who is at the bottom of the barrel, surely it’s a small matter for him to restore Sodom and Samaria.  God’s grace is the great leveler, and one day it would no longer be confined to the Jews but would include the hated and despised Sodomites.  ”Sodom” here, as is frequent in the prophets, is representative of something.  One day, Gentile enemies of the Jewish people would be incorporated into the same body as the Jews (see Romans 11).  Those who were not God’s people would become God’s people (1 Peter 2:10).  In short,  the point isn’t that the actual people who were killed in Sodom back in Genesis 19 were going to get a second chance.  The point isn’t that all people will one day be restored to God.  The point is that Gentiles, and not just Jews only, would get saved.

Regarding Jesus’s comment in Matthew 10:15 that it would “‘be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for’” the town that rejected the apostles, he’s not saying that there’s still hope for the two cities.  The emphasis is that those who rejected the apostles were even more screwed than those cities, an emphasis which is lost if Jesus is saying that there’s still hope for Sodom and Gomorrah.

There’s a lot more that can be said about this chapter in Love Wins, and a ton more that can be said on the subject of Hell, but I’ll leave it at this.  My goal was mainly to show what Bell believes about eternal punishment.  It’s important to follow his thoughts through.  If the “eternal punishment” in Matthew 25:46 does not refer to an endless period of time, what ground do we have for assuming that “eternal life” is endless?  The fire that the goats in the parable of Matthew 25 are sent to is the fire that has been “‘prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matthew 25:41), a place where there is torment “day and night forever and ever.” (Revelation 20:10, see also Revelation 14:11)

At the start of the book’s fourth chapter (“Does God Get What God Wants?”), Bell quotes doctrinal statements from several unnamed churches’ websites.  The first round of quotes has to do with the fate of the unsaved: “The unsaved will be separated forever from God in hell.”  Another: “Those who don’t believe in Jesus will be sent to eternal punishment in hell.”  And finally: “The unsaved dead will be committed to an eternal conscious punishment.” “All this,” he writes, “on a website.  Welcome to our church.” (pp.97-98)  He continues:

“Yet on these very same websites are extensive affirmations of the goodness and greatness of God, proclamations and statements of belief about a God who is ‘mighty,’ ‘powerful,’ ‘loving,’ ‘unchanging,’ ‘sovereign,’ ‘full of grace and mercy,’ and ‘all-knowing.’  This God is the one who created ‘the world and everything in it.’  This is the God for whom ‘all things are possible.’  I point out these parallel claims: that God is mighty, powerful, and ‘in control’ and that billions of people will spend forever apart from this God, who is their creator, even though it’s written in the Bible that ‘God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim.2).  So does God get what God wants?” (pp.98-99)  And again on page 100 he asks: “Will all people be saved, or will God not get what God wants?”

As the quotes above indicate, he seems to believe that this definition of Hell is irreconcileable with the idea of an all-powerful, all-loving God.  History is tragic if it all ends with billions of people “suffering infinitely for the finite sins they committed in the few years they spent on earth…”  It means that God simply gave up his pursuit of sinners. (p.104)  This idea of Hell also doesn’t make for a very good story.  ”Telling a story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn’t do or say or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn’t a very good story.” (p.112)

Bell’s challenge to the popular view of Hell appears to be rooted in his conception of God as the Father of every person.  For instance, imagine a person gets hit by a car and dies later the same day.  If they didn’t believe in Jesus, and God was forced to send them to unending, conscious torment in hell, then “God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being to them forever.  A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony.  If there was an earthly father who was like that, we could call the authorities.  If there was an actual human dad who was that volatile, we would contact child protection services immediately.  If God can switch gears like that…that raises a thousand questions about whether a being like this could ever be trusted, let alone be good.  Loving one moment, vicious the next.  Kind and compassionate, only to become cruel and relentless in the blink of an eye.  Does God become somebody totally different the moment you die?  The kind of God is simply devastating.  Psychologically crushing.  We can’t bear it.  No one can.” (pp.175-176)

I’m in full agreement with Bell that this view of God is a caricature.  Happy, loving, and in full pursuit of us, only to become a severely vicious and angry God…all because we stop breathing.  That is the view of God often presented in our culture, even if only subtlely.  But while I do agree with Bell that this view is inaccurate,  I disagree with him on why.  At least I think I do.  Citing verses like Malachi 2:10 and Acts 17:28, Bell observes that the “writers of the scriptures consistently affirm that we’re all part of the same family.  What we have in common- regardless of our tribe, language, customs, beliefs, or religion- outweights our differences.  This is why God wants ‘all people to be saved.’  History is about the kind of love a parent has for a child, the kind of love that pursues, searches, creates, connects, and bonds.  The kind of love that moves toward, embraces, and always works to be reconciled with, regardless of the cost.” (p.101)

It sounds like Bell’s criticism of the caricature God two paragraphs up is that a loving God suddenly becomes wrathful.  He argues that our heavenly Father isn’t that unstable.  My criticism with the caricature though is that it assumes we all have a Father-child relationship with God.  I argued in Part III that by nature we are God’s enemies and thus we don’t have that Father-child relationship.  The important difference here is that in the interpretation I’m advocating, God’s wrath isn’t something that begins suddenly upon death.  We are all by nature sinners, and as those who have descended from Adam (every human being), we deserve God’s wrath.  The state of spiritual death we’re in is the backdrop of God’s love and mercy.  That love is seen in the context of the Hell that we deserve.  The love of God and the wrath of God are not two mutually exclusive ideas, but two realities we must come to terms with.  The greatest demonstration of this love (the cross) involves the outpouring of God’s wrath, just not on the people who deserved it but on the one person who ever lived that didn’t.

In Numbers 21, the story is told of the Israelites complaining yet again as they wandered through the wilderness.  Same old complaint: “Egypt was better. Following God is lame.”  As punishment, God sent among the people fiery serpents who began to bite the people of Israel so that many of them died.  Realizing the folly of their ways, they repented and begged Moses to pray on their behalf.  Moses did so, and the Lord listened.  He commanded Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” (Numbers 21:8)  If any Israelite was bitten by a serpent, they only had to look at the bronze serpent on the pole and they would be healed.  Now everyone and their pet iguana knows John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”), but we tend to forget about John 3:14-15- “‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’”  In Numbers, it was people who were perishing that needed to look upon the serpent.  And in John 3, Jesus is comparing salvation to that incident.  We often interpret “For God so loved the world” to mean “God loved the world SOOOOOO much”, but that’s not the function of the word translated “so.”  That word in Greek (outōs) means “thus” or “in this way.”  ”In this way, God loved the world…”  As perishing people were healed by looking at the bronze serpent, so Hell-bound sinners will be healed by looking at the Son of God.  God did not send his Son to condemn the world, because the world already stands condemned now (John 3:17-18, 36).

Connected with this thought is the doctrine of God’s fatherhood.  Bell paints God’s pursuit of sinners as a father’s pursuit of his children.  Granted, there is a sense in which all human beings are children of God (Acts 17:28).  But what he doesn’t mention is the different ways in which that term is applied to God.  Just as the word “church” can have different meanings depending on context (the worldwide Church or a local body of believers), so does “Father” when applied to God.  He is Father to his one true Son, Jesus.  He is Father to the people of Israel (Exodus 4:22-23, Deuteronomy 14:1, Malachi 2:10).  And as we’ve seen, he is Father to all created things (Acts 17:28-29, Luke 3:38).  But God’s fatherhood is displayed in far more intimate terms in the New Testament than just Creator-creatures.  To those who have looked on the Son and been healed, he has given his Spirit to live in them.  God’s children are those who are led by the Spirit and who, by that Spirit, cry out to him “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:14, Galatians 4:6).  Those who believe in Jesus are given the right to become children of God (John 1:12).

God sent his Son into the world not to pursue children but to pursue sinners so that he might make them his children.  So for God to allow anyone to suffer an eternity apart from him isn’t the same as saying that he’s abandoned his children.  While it’s true in one sense that all men are God’s children, there is a far deeper and more important sense of God’s fatherhood found in Scripture which very clearly does not apply to every person.  Some men have God as their father.  Others have the devil as theirs (see John 8:44, 1 John 3:10).  Sonship in its most important sense is something which has its beginning in salvation and is distinctive of believers in Christ (John 1:12, Ephesians 5:1, Philippians 2:15, 1 Peter 1:14, 2:10, 1 John 3:1).

What’s the moral of all this?  The moral is that God is not the kind of Father who children come to only to be kicked out onto the streets for their rest of their lives because they didn’t agree with him on something. The picture in the Bible is not that people come to God’s door but that they’re running from it.  And God goes on the hunt to save some.  The “some” he saves are those who respond to his call to turn to him.  Not all people make that response.  A question that every believer should ask themselves is this: “Which is unfair- Heaven or Hell?”  The beauty of the Gospel is that it is spectacularly unfair.  People will often claim it’s unfair that we’ve inherited the guilt from Adam’s sin.  Sure, it stinks.  Because he sinned, he doomed us all and we come into this world as fallen creatures.  We reap the reward of our representative head.  Lame.  But is it?  The good news is that this same logic applies to our salvation.  God sent Jesus into the world to save sinners by becoming a new representative.  Just as we’re sinners because of Adam, now we’re righteous in God’s sight because of Jesus (Romans 5:12-21).  Think of that: God looks on you and sees  Jesus’ perfect life.  Not bad.  It’s not fair that a perfect man suffered the wrath of God for imperfect people.  It’s not fair that we get rewarded for his perfect life.  But who’s really going to complain?  We shouldn’t wonder how a loving God could send people to Hell.  We should wonder how a just and holy God could send anyone to Heaven.

I say it all because it’s an important perspective to keep in mind when dealing with the topic of Hell.  I don’t know for sure if all this is stuff that Bell would disagree with, but on page 104 he does write: “Is God our friend, our provider, our protector, our father- or is God the kind of judge who may in the end declare that we deserve to spend forever separated from our Father?”  Regardless of whose question this really is (Bell’s or if he’s just playing devil’s advocate), it presents a view of God’s fatherhood which is inconsistent with Scripture, which in turn makes Hell harder to understand.  2 Thessalonians 1:9 says of those who do not know God that they “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”.  Bell’s view of man makes it easier to see eternal torment as the result of an abusive Father.  But God is not the bad guy.  He’s the good guy who redeems bad guys.  Bell’s picture of love seems to be: “God won’t allow anyone to go through that.”  But the biblical picture of love is knowing that Jesus went through that and for his enemies.  In other words, God’s love is greatly demonstrated in the quality of the people he saved rather than the quantity (Romans 5:8).  That’s love.

This understanding of God’s fatherhood also colors Bell’s discussion (and his understanding, it seems) of Hell and its duration.  That’s next.

So I just finished a rough-draft of part IV of this series!  Not sure why I set the precedent of using roman numerals but I’ve made my e-bed and I’ll have to lay in it.  Before posting it though, I felt another mini-post was in order.  Why, you ask?  Great question, [insert your name here]!

I spent a couple hours on Sunday afternoon working on the next entry in this review.  As is necessary to writing these things, I spent time going back and re-reading pages of the book that were relevant to what I was writing on.  As I was re-reading some things on Sunday though, I felt I had reached a sort of impasse.  I’ve already mentioned how sometimes it can be tough to decipher what Bell really believes about some things because of the way he writes/teaches.  I re-read some things on Sunday that I had believed to be straight-up declarations of his beliefs the first time around, only to wonder the second time around if that’s really him saying that.  He seems to play devil’s advocate at times.  And he seems to ask rhetorical questions.  On top of that, he presents the viewpoints of others in such a way that it’s tough to tell if he’s the one saying it or if he’s just presenting their beliefs.

An example of this is found on page 109 and 110.  He mentions a handful of early church fathers who believed that God would eventually reconcile every single person to himself.  (That passage made me lament the fact that Bell doesn’t believe in citations.)  He writes: “Central to their trust that all would be reconciled was the belief that untold masses of people suffering forever doesn’t bring God glory.  Restoration brings God glory; eternal torment doesn’t.  Reconciliation brings God glory; endless anguish doesn’t.  Renewal and return cause God’s greatness to shine through the universe; never-ending punishment doesn’t.”

What’s clear to me is that the italicized section presents the view of the church fathers he referenced.  What’s not clear to me is whether or not Bell agrees with them.  He doesn’t say.  He follows up that paragraph by saying that “an untold number of serious disciples of Jesus across hundreds of years have assumed, affirmed, and trusted that no one can resist God’s pursuit forever, because God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest of hearts.”  Is he one of those “untold number”?  He doesn’t say.  At least not right there.  He seems to be, but that’s about all I can say.  But I would answer whoever is declaring that eternal torment doesn’t glorify God by ambiguously asking:

“Eternal torment doesn’t glorify God?  It doesn’t?  And someone knows this for sure and felt the need to let the rest of us know?”

I approached this whole review with the aim of not putting words in Rob Bell’s mouth or twisting the ones he did write.  That level of care has just multiplied by a thousand because I’m less sure about what he actually does believe.  As I was wrestling through this, I remember thinking to myself that this book feels like a facilitator of discussion rather than a declaration of doctrine.  And then I was like, “Well, from what I hear about Rob Bell that would make total sense.”

So from here on out, words and phrases like “seems” and “It sounds like Bell is saying…” could abound, because in many cases I’m not entirely sure what he actually believes.  Those words will be very intentionally used.  I’m holding in a very open hand that what I present as Bell’s view on something might not actually be his view.  So I’m going to try and do my best to interact with the questions he raises instead of giving myself a headache trying to determine whether or not they’re his questions.  Gregory Boyd in his review of the book also seems unable to conclude definitively whether or not Bell is a Universalist (read the whole article, not just the title).  So for Rob Bell to stump two guys who have actually read his book on what exactly his views are…well, let’s just say that if nothing else I have a lot of criticism of Bell’s writing style and teaching methods.  It’s hard to know whether someone is presenting orthodox beliefs or heresies when it’s unclear what they are presenting in the first place.

So again, I’m going to deal more with the questions he raises without concerning myself too much about whether or not he’s the one asking them.  The next entry will be a follow-up to the Biblical view of man one.  Then there will be an entry on HELL (dum, dum, dummmmmm), Universalism, and then one with my concluding thoughts on the book.  I reserve the right to add more, but as it is I’m going to try and finish all this in four more entries.

Alright I’ll be honest: this is very much a transition entry.  There’s some theological groundwork I want to lay before delving into other areas of the book.  This entry will be followed up by one that deals with the Robbellian view of man (pretty proud of that term).  The one after that will be the fun one about Hell and what Rob Bell believes about it.

[Witty transition]

I once heard a seminary professor say that a church’s doctrine of anthropology is more important than its doctrine of justification (being declared righteous before God), because anthropology informs it.  In other words, our view of man determines our understanding of what man’s need is, and our understanding of what man’s need is determines our understanding of what Jesus came to do.  There’s been a lot of different views of salvation over the centuries, and they usually flow out of differing views on anthropology.  Take Calvinism and Arminianism for example.  The Calvinist believes that ultimately God chooses who is saved because man in his natural state is so corrupt that even his will is consistently bent toward evil.  So for him to ever choose God, God must first give him a new heart with new, God-bent desires.  The Arminian believes that the corruption, while extensive, is not quite that deep.  God woos us and beckons us, but ultimately we must exercise our will, choose God, and thus be saved.  Ultimately, the difference between the two isn’t about whether man must choose God or not.  It’s about the grounds on which man is able to choose God, which is an issue of anthropology.  The question is: are we controlled by, or in control of, our wills?  The goal here isn’t to debate Calvinism and Arminianism.  The goal is to illustrate the fact that there are different anthropologies behind each belief system, and that this anthropology informs soteriology (the doctrine of salvation).

Why do I say all this?  Because Rob Bell’s view of man (like any of ours) determines what salvation looks like to him.  To determine whether his view is biblical, it’s worth taking a brief look at what Scripture’s view of man is.

God created man in his image and declared him good (Genesis 1:27, 31).  To be an image-bearer meant that man is like God, represents him, and reflects his glory. In man, God would make himself visible in the earth.  Adam, the first man, was called “the son of God.” (Luke 3:38)  Man then rebelled and sinned against God, and when sin entered the picture, God’s image in man was severely tarnished.  The creature meant to reflect God’s glory became dim in his reflection.  Theologians have debated for a long time the extent to which man still possesses the image of God in himself.  It seems clear from Scripture though (particularly in Genesis 9:6 and James 3:9) that although he is a fallen creature, man still in some sense bears the image of God.  But he is not what he should be.

Whereas Adam before the Fall was called the son of God, post-Fall is a very different picture.  Humans are now referred to as children of the flesh (Romans 9:8), sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2), children of wrath (the very next verse), children of hell (Matthew 23:15), and the one that stings a little: sons of the devil (John 8:44).  All of humanity (you, me, Carrot Top) are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1).  The core of our being is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), and none of us seek God (Romans 3:11, 8:7-8).  We have fallen short of God’s glory (which we were made to reflect) and our sins deserve death (Romans 3:23, 6:23)- a.k.a. the wrath of God.

Based on the above assessment, our need as humans becomes clear.  We as children of wrath need a new Father.  As those dead in our sins, we need to be resurrected.  The core of our being (our heart) needs to be taken out and replaced so that we would seek God.  The image of God in us needs to be restored, and our sins which condemn us need to be forgiven.

In comes Jesus, the true Son of God, and the ultimate image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3, John 1:14).  He is both fully God and fully man.  He lives the perfect life that we can’t.  God’s justice demands that he punish us for our sin, but being merciful he sent Jesus to be our Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7).  He died the death we deserved and was raised.  We are justified by putting our faith in him (Romans 5:1).  As a result, God adopts us to be his sons and daughters (Romans 8:14-17, 1 John 2:28-3:10) and begins the process of remaking us into the image of God by remaking us into the image of the true image of God, Jesus (Romans 8:28-30, Ephesians 5:1-2, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Ephesians 4:24, 1 Corinthians 15:49, Colossians 3:9-10).  When your Father looks on you now, he sees the perfect life of Christ.  Your record is now as spotless as Jesus is spotless, and because of that, there’s nothing to condemn in you (Romans 8:1, 33).

Okay, I’m done bombarding you with Scripture (though I make no apology for it).  Here’s what’s relevant in all that to the discussion at hand:

• Man in his natural, fallen state is an enemy of God.  He does not desire God.
• As an enemy, man deserves God’s wrath.  God, being holy and just, must punish sinners.
• God is also merciful though.  He desired to save sinners, so he sent his only Son to die in their place .  In this way, his justice is not compromised nor his mercy thwarted.
• Mercy and justice meet at the cross.  The cost of God’s love was great.
• To call God “Father” is the exclusive right of those whom he has adopted, those who are led by the Spirit of God.

So with that groundwork laid, I’ll get back into the book in the next entry.