As Paul writes:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Throughout the Christian Scriptures, Jesus and his Apostles make clear the fundamental difference between the Law and the Spirit.  Jesus’ primary beef with the Pharisee party was that it had built up a series of regulations, or “hedges”, around the law to prevent anyone from possibly breaking it.  Yet, in doing so, even though they followed the letter of the law, their hearts were not changed.  The Law, itself, was not evil, but it could not change the hearts of men.  Jesus’ teaching on the importance of loving God with all of oneself, and loving their neighbor was one of freedom, not coercion.  Later, Paul noted that what we eat does not make us sinful, but if we abuse our freedom in a way that hurts others, we are sinning – not against a law, but against God’s desire.

And so, we have freedom – liberty.

It is God’s desire that we should love Him, but we can also reject Him.

It is God’s desire that we should care for the poor, but we can insulate ourselves and never even meet them – or, at best, send them a check.

It is God’s desire that we should be generous, but we can keep our blessings for ourselves.

It is God’s desire that we should have joy and contentment in Him, but we can be dissatisfied with what we have and covet.

It is God’s desire that we should be open and honest, but we can be insular, closed and secret.

It is God’s desire that we should care for our earthly bodies, but we can abuse them, to our own detriment.

It is God’s desire that we should love our neighbor, but we can despise them because they are different that we are.

The aim of God’s desire cannot be legislated, because the heart cannot be changed by a law.  Compliance is not acceptance.

America the Free?

For all of the things they got wrong, the founders of America got at least one primary concept right – an underlying principle that eventually eroded the most glaring error of those fathers: the allowance of slavery

That principle was this: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty

The only rights held by men were those given by God, not the government.  The purpose of the government was to protect those rights, not to grant them.  Those rights, given by God, would allow free men to choose whether to do good or to do ill.   The laws of the land only existed to prevent people from depriving other people of those God given rights:

Freedom of expression – whether in support of God or against Him.

Freedom to worship God – or to reject Him.

Freedom to associate with anyone else – or to reject them.

Freedom to own property – whether or not one was a godly steward with it.

Freedom to live and to work – or to be lazy and die.  The freedom to succeed, or to fail.

These freedoms, given by God, as we all should know from our own experience, do not guarantee outcomes.  An evil person may prosper and a good person may suffer.  Even so, it is the freedom, itself, that is a gift and is a reflection of the Spirit of the Lord.

Pharisee Nation

Recently, I’ve read The Tragedy of American Compassion, by Marvin Olasky, which traces the roots of charity in America and its drifting from its original purpose (to help those in poverty to help themselves in escaping those conditions) to its present manifestation (which actually enslaves those it desires to “help”).  Olasky points out that charity is shared, personal, one-to-one suffering with those who are in need, not blind handouts, and that for almost a century and a half, the church managed the care for the poor far more effectively that the government could do, or has done since.

One of the things most clear to me, in reading it, is that many of us have shifted our reliance on God as the source of rights to reliance on the government to secure our rights.  While the Spirit of the Lord only guarantees us freedom, government seeks to guarantee our success and to outlaw failure.  In doing so, it has enslaved many – even in the church – and is doomed to fail, in the name of “compassion”.

We have taken the words of the Psalmist:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from?  My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.

And we have altered them to be:

I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from?  My help comes from Washington, the righter of wrongs.

And we now suffer for it.

The church used to care for the poor and the sick and the needy.  (How many hospitals are named after various Saints?)  Now we don’t need to, because Washington has it taken care of.

The church used to care for widows and orphans, but now the government has it taken care of.

The church used to care for the elderly (and to instruct families to care for their parents and grandparents), but now we’ve got Social Security and Medicare to take care of that for us.

The church used to help those who suffered from failure.  Now we have Uncle Sam to bail us out:

Banks fail, but don’t worry, Washington will bail them out.

Car companies fail because they churn out crap cars with overpriced labor governed by byzantine rules, but don’t worry, Washington will bail them out.

People who bought houses they couldn’t afford with money they didn’t have go bankrupt, and we cry out to Washington to bail them out, as well.

All in the name of “compassion”.

But really, now, let’s get a clue.  There is absolutely no such thing as government “charity” – Charity is something freely given in direct accordance and relationship with the person receiving it.  Taking money from Peter, under coercion, for the sake of “compassion” on Paul is an abomination that sets up the agent of “compassion” as the true god of those who support it.  At that point, God is no longer the guarantor of rights.  He is now absent from the transaction.

And we all suffer for it.

But the church can’t handle the need is a cop out and an utter lack of faith in a God who parted the seas, ruptured the grave, fed the masses and rescued the lost.  It is the voice of despair from the acolytes of the church of man in support of a system that is doomed to failure.  “But the church can’t handle the need” is the cry of the Baal worshiper in the face of Elijah.   It is a story nearly as old as the Bible, like the prophet of God, Balaam, who sold out to His enemies because he thought he was choosing the winning side.

We have become a Pharisee nation, where we feel we must regulate the hearts of men, lest they make a bad decision.

Smoking is bad for you, so we must ban you from smoking.

Trans-fat is bad for you, so we must ban you from eating it.

Wearing a seat belt is good for you, so we must require you to do it.

Health insurance is good for you, so we must require you to buy it.

And on and on.

The only help the church and the people of America need from Washington is for it to become utterly inconsequential in their lives.  Allow the church to become the church and stop trying to regulate away failure and legislate the hears of men.  It won’t work, so stop trying.

I don’t believe that God chose you, and blessed you so that you could heap those blessings up upon yourself. I believe God chose you, and you, and you, and every one of you others because He wants to make a difference in this world. And you know what? what I think is scary about God is He didn’t come up with any ‘Plan B.’ That He left the Church here, and the Church is the only group of people, and the Church is the only institution in the world that can bring about a change. This government cannot do it, so stop depending on the government. Educational systems cannot do it, so stop trusting educational systems. The Church was chosen by God to make a difference. – Rich Mullins

Amen.

R.I.P. Rich Mullins

I was reading an article about how good news no one talks about is out there. One of those was about the gulf’s recovery from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It made this point:

“What we will talk about is how no one expected fish, crab and shrimp catches to be average compared to past years or that oil chomping microbes would go to town feeding on our disaster. And more importantly, the Loop Current that was on track to carry the oil to the Florida Keys just broke. As in, it broke off into a big swirly hilariously named Franklin Eddy, which unexpectedly contained the oil in a tidy circle of cool. We’d like to think of Franklin as a bongo-playing beat poet who doesn’t have to play by your current rules, maaan.

Had it not been for Franklin, the oil would have hit the Keys and made its way up the East Coast, and there wouldn’t have been a whole lot we could have done to stop it. Thanks to Franklin, which no longer exists, much of the Florida coast was spared from the oil altogether.”

I don’t really have much of a point except to say maybe the hand of God is was in this. Its nice to remember this when life fights dirty.”

I found this profound for a couple of reasons: First off, it is a demonstration of how God is such an awesome engineer (says the professional engineer), who has contingency plans within contingency plans within contingency plans for when we make things go awry. Secondly, it just reminded me how negative I sometimes feel when I listen to too much news – because bad news sells, so we rarely hear good news (or Good News) from the news media.

The second article, 7 “Ancient” Forms of Mysticism That are Recent Inventions, made me laugh even more:

Yoga as we know it today — a set of postures (asanas) combined with breathing techniques — dates back to around the grand old year of 1960. In other words, yoga is as old as Bono.

So all of the Yoga wars that have been fought “for God” by Johnny Mac an others are all just pretty much (as previously noted) bunk.

So, maybe quoting Cracked.com from time to time is a little bit like quoting Cretin poets.

“Whatever objections a person might have to [Universal Reconciliation], and there are many, one has to admit that it is fitting, proper, and Christian to long for it.” (111)

Scot McKnight, following up on this observation of Rob’s had this to say:

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.

And the leader Scot spoke to was right. As Christians, it should be our desire that God might find a way that nobody would spend eternity in hell – be it literal fire, eternal conscious torment, empty separation or annihilation. As one writer put it:

While I do believe in a literal hell for those who do not have a relationship with Christ, I take no pleasure in that. Is it Christian to take satisfaction in people going to hell, or would you be ok with God devising a means that everyone made it? I will have no disappointment in discovering that people that I didn’t think would make it, made it, because I am fully convinced that God is just and will do right.

With this as a background, it now brings me to a question, a lament and a thought.

The Question, the Lament and the Thought

Quite often in the discussion since Love Wins‘ publication, I have seen/heard the basic question:

If God saves everyone in the end, what is the point of following Him now?

I’ve seen this question, and its variations, in multiple articles and comment threads, and – in particular – howled by some of the harsher critics. And I have to say … Really? So Jesus’ life, teaching, death and resurrection are meaningless if nobody ends up being tortured forever?

And what’s funny is that, in the past I’ve observed that, in its practical effects, it seems that Fundamentalist Christianity is little more than a viral marketing campaign for fire insurance – where eternity is everything and the temporal is an afterthought – in stark, ironic juxtaposition with the focus of the ministry and teaching of Jesus Christ.

This observation has been met with lots of denials from folks that their faith, and their view of Christianity, is one of marketing fire insurance, and that such a categorization is unfair.

But they are also the same people who ask “What is the point of following Jesus if everybody were to be saved in the end?”

And that very question proves the lie of their denial of vocation – an insurance salesman/woman. The question, itself, becomes somewhat damning, because all of the insistence that theirs is not a theology of evacuation evaporates in the same facade as Queen Gertrude in Hamlet – the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

This is so incredibly sad, and when I hear it, it becomes no wonder to me why Christians are stereotyped as such an aloof, humorless lot.

We might protest that we’re not just insurance salesman (whether the pushy, street-corner variety, or the personal one-on-one type), but we don’t see any real benefit prior to our demise (or, at best, we pay it lip-service by trying to compare the length of time after death to the short span of life).

We might defensively proclaim that we do not hold a theology of evacuation, but we see no true and lasting point of what we do today, apart from that which secures our (or someone else’s) seat at the banquet tables after our earthly bodies become worm food.

And when we do this, we’ve completely missed the point. We do not need hell, we do not have the need for God to create people solely as “objects of wrath” for our benefit, we do not need natural or man-made disasters to prove the “wrath of God” to us.

As one of the PPP writers, Phil, noted to me:

I didn’t marry my wife out of fear of not marrying her. I married her because I couldn’t imagine my life without her, and because I was captivated by her.

And this should be our attitude towards Jesus, the bridegroom of the Church, to which we belong – Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Reformed, non-denominational and all flavors between – We should not choose Jesus out of fear of an eternity without Him. We should choose him because we cannot imagine our lives without Him, and because His presence captivates us.

Everything else should be icing on the cake – including eternity.

Additionally, I’m simultaneously posting a separate article about the nature of hell and a number of different viewpoints on the subject (and why there might be room for doubt in the study of pareschatology – the study of what happens between death and the final state).

The Short Review

First off, there is nothing really “new” in this book that you won’t find in some form in the writings of other Christian authors, whether in the early Church fathers or in famous writers like C.S. Lewis, whose The Great Divorce and The Last Battle both communicate many of the themes mentioned in Love Wins. Additionally, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary (where Bell was trained), after reading the book, notes that Bell’s theology is still within the stream of Orthodox Christianity.

Let’s start with a quick Q&A style review (You can see a transcript of one interview here) for those of you that just want the answers to the most-often asked questions about this book:

Is Rob Bell a Universalist?

No. He has reiterated this in multiple interviews since the publication of the book. In Universalism, as in Determinism, there is no room for free will, and according to Bell, one of the primary characteristics of love is the freedom to choose apart from coercion. Thus, in Universalism, Love does not Win.

Does Rob Bell believe in Hell?

Yes. In the book, and in subsequent interviews, he makes it clear that he believes that Hell truly exists, both now on earth and in the future, past death. He states, “I believe in Hell now. I believe in Hell when you die. I believe God gives people the right to say “no”, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story. There’s a whole chapter in the book on Hell, and I think we should take Hell very seriously.”

Does Rob Bell believe that Hell will be empty?

No. While he does communicate the rationale for an empty Hell that Christian Universalists give, he does not assert it as certain truth, again stating that there are people who reject God and will be in Hell. Additionally, in his November 2010 sermon at Mars Hill Bible Church on Matthew 25 (the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids), he states that each of us will have an end date, past which we can no longer join the wedding party – and that we should be urgent in being prepared. His co-pastor, Shane Hipps, also confirms this Mars Hill Church teaching in his March 6 sermon, “When the Bowl Breaks”. (You can read the MHBC FAQ on Love Wins, as well, for more of the church’s view on its’ pastor’s new book.)

Why did Bell write this book?

Many people, as they come to learn about Christ and Christianity, have questions about the afterlife – often times conflicting questions. Bell believed that these folks were being mis-served by answers that treat these questions all under an umbrella of certainty (regarding eternal, conscious punishment, and the Gospel being functionally sold as fire insurance), where there have been a multiplicity of views throughout Christian history. Thus, ultimately, voices of certainty may have done more harm than good. This interview from MSNBC has a good response from Bell on this question, as well.

Then what is the hubub about?

Bell states (similarly to first century Rabbinic Judiasm) that the Kingdom of God/Heaven exists both here and now, and then later into eternity, when God renews the earth. Similarly, Hell exists both here and now on earth, and continues into eternity. In his view, there are a number of churches who treat the Gospel as a message of relocation. It is all about getting your ticket now to avoid hell after you die, at which point you will be whisked away to some other place called “Heaven”. Instead, he says that the Kingdom of God/Heaven has already come and that it has already begun to exist today and will continue on after we die. The Gospel is about how we treat people and live now, and we trust in God to take care of what happens when we die.

No, really. What is the hubub about?

Fear and loathing. In short, a vocal group of Christians have mistaken contending for the faith with contenting for their systematic interpretations.

It is about a group of Christians who feel threatened when a position they have carved out with certainty (on a topic about which the Bible is neither explicit nor clear in terms of God’s mechanism and action) has been undermined. A popular pastor outlines a number of different possibilities that have existed throughout the history of Christianity – possibilities that mess with the systems these people have built their faith on – so they have decided to circle the wagons.

Bell’s writing is not didactic – a logical paper laid out on an orderly outline – but, rather it is a narrative, with more questions than answers, and room for uncertainty. Those who crave certainty do not find it in his writing, and therefore feel that Bell is threatening the faith of others who should be given that certainty – even if no such certainty exists in the Bible.

What if Bell is Wrong?

In the same interview as above, he states, “If there are billions and billions and billions of people – if God is going to torture them in hell forever – people who have never heard about Jesus are going to suffer in eternal agony because they didn’t believe in the Jesus they never heard of, then at that point we will have far bigger problems than a book from a pastor from Grand Rapids.”

So should I buy the book?

In my opinion, both Sex God and Velvet Elvis are his better works, though Love Wins is still pretty good, though probably written more for group discussion than solo pleasure reading. Probably the most important concept that he conveys is the importance of harboring epistemic humility – of being just as skeptical of your own interpretations of non-essential, unknowns (like pareschatology and eschatology) as you are of those who disagree with you. If you have had questions about the afterlife you were afraid to ask, or if you’ve been abused by “Turn or Burn” theology, this is probably a book for you. Even so, I would still encourage it as a group book, rather than as a solo book. Discussion is very important to any tough subject – especially one with as many unknowns and misunderstandings as the mechanics of the afterlife.

The weakest arguments in the book are around the use of aion – the linchpin of the Christian Universalist position on Hell – and some of the poor prooftexting regarding this same view. I do not think he probably gave this view the defense that its true believers would have preferred, but probably enough to get the gist of their argument. I think his use of the rockthat Moses struck in Exodus in his discussion on inclusivism is also a stretch, as well (though I understand he was using it as a metaphor, not a justification). Even so, some of his observations on invclusivist views (like with the age of accountability, and with those who have never heard Christ’s message) were still well-presented.

One thing that really annoyed me, in a departure from his previous books, was the lack of footnotes/endnotes. All of his previous books were heavily endnoted, and those notes provided a good deal of interesting, funny and insightful information – both on the sources of his material, and (for readers longing for more didactic exposition) rationale for its inclusion in the book. Love Wins has no footnoting or endnoting, and it suffers greatly for its absence, particular for readers wanting to follow up or “Bereans” wanting to test what was written. I do not know if this was Bell’s choice or that of his publisher, but it was definitely a mistake.**

The Longer Review

This book is somewhat of a Rorschach Test – if you are looking for it to confirm what you already believe about Rob Bell, it will probably supply you with the self-confirmation you seek (though if you’re purchasing a book to confirm what you already believe, perhaps you can spend your $15 on something more productive).

For the Big-R Reformed Crowd

If you are Reformed and you believe that “Not Reformed” is analogous to “Not Saved” or “Heretic”, you will hate this book.

In fact, the Reformed Crowd, dubbed “Team Hell“, jumped the starting blocks, blasting away at this book weeks before it was even published (with the Godfather of All Things Calvin helped cast Bell as Michael Servetus, dismissively tweeting “Farewell, Rob Bell”). The promotional materials from HarperOne and the promotional video (in which Bell questions the certainty of Ghandi’s being in hell – not that he claimed Ghandi was in heaven. No, Bell just had the temerity of pondering that maybe we ought to let God decide exactly who is in hell, rather than pronouncing who we believe for certain to be there) were enough to set off Team Hell. Following this, Martin Bashir, a congregant of Calvinist Tim Keller, tossed a bit of red meat to Team Hell by playing a bit of gotcha journalism, doggedly hounding Bell with number of false dichotomies in a TV interview (which Bell seemed much better prepared for in a later interview with Sally Quinn).

Basically, you could say that the Big-R Reformed crowd, in general, reacted exactly the way the public has come to expect their caricature Christians to react – intolerant, mean, and ready to eat their own young before going after yours.

Why, you might ask?

Newsflash – Bell is not a Calvinist, nor does he support systematic theology.*

In Love Wins, Bell pretty much confirms this. In fact, he probably sets himself up as an anti-Calvinist. And in the Christian blogosphere, where this 5% of Evangelical Christianity screams louder, longer and meaner than the other 95% of Christianity combined, it’s no surprise that Love Wins has been received with very little that might resemble love.

As one blogger tweeted, on seeing the trending of Rob Bell in Twitter:

“For a moment I was afraid Rob Bell had died. But then I realized that it was just a few Calvinists hating him into a trending topic.”

First and foremost, Calvinism is dependent on a hell which exists as eternal, conscious torment – the seat of sinners in the hands of an angry God. As such, any doubt about this hyper-exclusive view of the afterlife is anathema. Bell’s multiple options on how hell has been historically viewed (even though he claims none of them fully) will be one of Team Hell’s primary obstacles with Love Wins. What, they ask, is the motivation for accepting Christ, if people outside of right-thinking, right-believing Christians might still wind up escaping the flames of hell?

(In an interesting side-note, if it wasn’t so sad, it would be amusing to note all the twisted ways the theology of the accusers have to go in attacking Bell: like with the insistence that we cannot forgive others, unless we can depend on the wrath of God to punish them for us. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem like forgiveness…)

Next, and almost as important to the Big-R Reformed crowd, is Bell’s view of man as having free will to choose or reject God – because one cannot truly love if that “love” is borne of coercion. This flies in the face of the deterministic view of strict Calvinism, which has no room for human free will, insofar as it pertains to accepting or rejecting Christ.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Bell also portrays Christus Victor, Ransom Theory, and other theories of atonement as equally valid means of communicating Jesus’ sacrifice as PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) (the only Reformed view of atonement). Bell treats the different views of soteriology as metaphors used to convey the importance of Jesus’ sacrifice, rather than choosing one (PSA, of course) as the concrete, certain mechanism of atonement. And then, to add insult to injury, Bell (via the Apostle Paul) expands the view of atonement beyond the individualistic view of salvation to one of reconciliation of all creation.

And finally, Bell gives voice to a belief that most Christians hold to some degree – that of a limited inclusivism. This is a view that people who have never had an opportunity to hear about Christ, or understand his message, still might have a place in the world to come. If you believe in the “age of accountability”, you already hold to a form of inclusivism. If you believe that it is possible for God to show mercy to an indigenous inhabitant of a distant island, who has never even met or heard of a Christian, you already hold to a form of inclusivism. This view runs counter to Reformed Christianity, as well, though it also runs afoul in broader Evangelical circles, if their impetus for missionaries is to “save people” who would otherwise (in their view) be certainly damned if they were never ministered to.

What it comes down to, Bell argues, is in living the Gospel (as a set of actions – not works that save, but as acts of gratitude) rather than teaching the idea of Gospel (as concept/belief with required assent). We have the choice of bringing about heaven or hell in our lives here on earth by living or rejecting the Gospel, and when we die, we will continue on in those choices we’ve made.

So when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will “get to heaven”, that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer into the club.

The good news is better than that.

This is why Christians who talk the most about going to heaven while everybody else goes to hell don’t throw very good parties.(178)

For the Rest of Us

So, if you’re not in the Big-R Reformed crowd, and you can accept a little bit of mystery in Scripture, you very well may enjoy this book. Realize, as I noted earlier, it is not didactic – so if you’re looking for a structured set of apologetics, you will be sorely disappointed. Additionally, you need to realize that one of Bell’s aims is simply to expose the readers to some other views from the history of Orthodox Christianity, not to claim one specific view as the “correct one”. As he noted in his pre-publication interview:

I’d say it’s very important when you’re bumping up against [mystery], to not turn your speculation into dogma. And I think we’ve seen a lot of that, which is people saying, “This person’s there, this person’s there, this is how this will unfold.” But we have no available video evidence. So I think it’s very important for people of faith to say, yes, I believe in heaven. Yes, I believe it’s real. Yes I believe it’s somehow intermingled with this reality, and yet somehow separate from this reality. How exactly all of that works out, I don’t know… And beyond that, there is a point where we are firmly into mystery and speculation. Let’s enjoy that speculation, but when someone drives their stake into the ground and says, “No it’s this.” Well, great, that’s what you think.

The realm of pareschatology is very much the realm of speculation. Yes, we have some Biblical direction on that speculation, but it is not explicit in its descriptions of the mechanics of the afterlife, but it is rich with symbolism and metaphor and light on logistics. Love Wins attempts to create room for this uncertainty from the standpoint that the ambiguity we have been given by God is intentional, because our actions today matter and what comes tomorrow – in life or in death – is God’s.

Probably the best chapter of the book is the second to last, “The Good News is Better than That”, which uses the parable of the Prodigal Son as the underlying metaphor for how those inside and outside the church can fail to see the good news presented by Christ. In this chapter, Bell tackles the “theology of evacuation” that has permeated much of American Christianity. In it, he also tackles the subject of self-appointed “watchmen” and their poisoned keyboards:

Inquisitions, persecutions, trials, book burnings, blacklisting – when religious people become violent, it is because they have been shaped by their God, who is violent. We see this destructive shaping alive and well in the toxic, venomous nature of certain discussions and debates on the Internet. For some, the highest form of allegiance to their God is to attack, defame, and slander others who don’t articulate matters of faith as they do. (183)

The book is not without its faults. I cannot express strongly enough how disappointed I am in its lack of footnoting (as above). In his previous books, the footnotes have been very helpful in group discussions, and knowing where Bell pulled various Scriptures or ideas from. They were far more helpful than those in most books. Additionally, Bell probably tries too hard when he lays out the Universal Reconciliation position on hell by pulling some Scriptures which are obviously out of context, or by quoting Augustine selectively. Even so, he does a commendable job of weaving in the Eastern Orthodox view in the chapter on Heaven and with hints in subsequent chapters. Truthfully, this may be because the latter has more logical Biblical and cultural support than the former.

All in all, Love Wins is a good book. Not necessarily a great one (a category in which I would include his previous works, Sex God and Velvet Elvis), both for its brevity and its shortcomings noted above. Even so, it raises a number of questions that ought to be honestly discussed. The optimist in me hopes that pastors and their followers will actually have those honest discussions, leaving room for disagreement. The realist in me, though, suggests that there are churches and tribes who will use these questions (and their “correct” answers) as tests of faith, thus instituting their own versions of hell on earth.

Shalom

*-Whether you see this as an indication of heresy or sanity may be another Rorschach Test, in and of itself.
**- I tend to believe it was probably HarperOne’s decision, as mass-market book readers do not tend to like footnoting/endnoting, because it breaks the flow of the text and interrupts the reader. Even so, it should have been included in the book, somehow

Hell in the Bible

First off, you won’t find any references to hell in the Old Testament. The only thing you will find referenced after death is Sheol, which is translated as “the grave”. All people die and go to Sheol, the righteous and unrighteous. Their bodies remain there, but they are still viewed as individual souls. In the Septuagint, this word is translated Hades – a word used a few times by Jesus – where Hades, in Hellenistic mythology was a state of limbo where all souls dwelt, awaiting the final judgment.

In the New Testament, Hades is mentioned five times – Matthew 16:18 (in this case referring to a literal place in Caesarea Philippi called the “Gates of Hades”), Revelation 1:18; 6:8; 20:13; 20:14. This is also translated as “death”, “the grave”, and “the pit”.

In one case, 2 Peter 2:4, the word “hell” is translated from the word “Tartarus” – a place in Hellenistic mythology, recorded by Plato in 400BC, there the judged dead are imprisoned:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to Tartarus, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment.

This reference comes from The Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish mythological work also quoted by Jude, and (as noted by Peter) it was a place for imprisoning fallen angels, not human souls.

The third and final word translated “hell” in English versions of the Bible is Gehenna. This word comes from ge hinnom – The Valley of Hinnom. The Hinnom Valley lies alongside the Old City of Jerusalem, and by the first century AD was a city dump. Earlier, it had been the place of child sacrifice to the god Molech, and was thus considered cursed ground. In order to prevent the spread of disease and stench, along with reducing the volume of garbage, Gehenna was constantly kept burning, while dogs roamed around the edges, fighting over scraps of maggoty meat, their teeth gnashing at one another.

Jesus refers to Gehenna 11 times, and his brother James, once:

“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of genenna.” (Matthew 5:22)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into genenna. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into genenna.” (Matthew 5:28-30)

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in genenna.” (Matthew 10:28)

“And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of genenna.”(Matthew 18:9)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of genenna as you are.” (Matthew 23:15)

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to genenna?” (Matthew 23:33)

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into genenna, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into genenna. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into genenna, where “‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’” (Mark 9:22-28)

“I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into genenna. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:4-7)

“The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by genenna.” (James 3:6)

These are all of the times “hell” is mentioned in the Bible.

Exploring Gehenna

So, since Sheol/Hades is “the grave” for all people, this is not what we would consider “hell” (as a place of punishment). Since Tartarus is only mentioned once and is clearly a reference to a mythological place for the imprisonment of angels (not men), it is also not what we would traditionally consider “hell”. Therefore, Gehenna is the word we would most associate with “hell”, as a place of punishment.

So, some observations we can make about Gehenna from these passages:

1. All of Jesus’ references to gehenna are made to religious people, and are made in reference to sinful behavior. None of them are spoken to unbelievers or in reference specifically about unbelievers – and for that matter, none are made in reference to one’s lack of belief or orthodoxy.
2. All of the references to gehenna can be reasonably viewed as references to the literal location – a burning garbage dump, where bodies are filled with maggots (worms that, to the ancients, appeared to have come from nowhere and do not die – transforming, instead, into flies) are consumed in the flames.
3. If we look specifically at the passage from Mark, which is the one most often quoted by those supporting a view of gehenna as a place of eternal, conscious punishment, Jesus refers to it as “where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.’” This is a direct quote from Isaiah 66, where the prophet describes the view of the fallen Assyrian army (in the Hinnom Valley) “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” It is a view of dead bodies on a funeral pyre, full of maggots, being burned to ash.

A problem we’re faced with, in trying to create a systematic or logistical description of hell – gehenna – from these passages is that there is scant information contained therein as to how gehenna operates.

Now, one reasonable question we can ask is “what did the people associate with the word gehenna?” If Jesus’ audience considered gehenna to be a place for the eternal punishment of the souls of the wicked, we can reasonably assert that he never needed to explain what it was or how it worked. So what do we know about contemporary views of gehenna?

Gehenna does not show up in any of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Philo, Apocrypha, or the Pseudepigrapha. The only ancient literature that gehenna shows up in as an eternal place of suffering are in the Rabbinic writings of the Mishna and the Talmud. But in these cases, gehenna is a place similar to Purgatory, where the souls of most sinners go to be purified for up to one year of suffering – with Sabbaths off. At the end of the time of purification/suffering, the souls of all but the most wicked enter the world to come, while the most wicked (a very small number) are then permanently destroyed (see Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin (7) Ch. 11 “Chelek”; and also here). So, the only context under which the people would have understood gehenna (depending on the accurate dating of the Talmud, which is believed to have been orally transmitted during the Babylonian captivity, hundreds of years BC, but was not written down until the third century AD, we can say that it was between 400 BC and 300 AD) is either as a temporal city dump OR as a form of Purgatory.

So – looking at the passages that simply refer to gehenna doesn’t give us a very clear or complete picture of hell. Where else might we look?

The Rich Man and Lazarus

In Luke 16, we read the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

So does this give us logistical or systematic information about hell?

1. First off, this is a parable in a series of teachings that are also parables, so it is highly unlikely that Jesus is conveying a real story about real people, so we cannot definitively say that this is a story meant to convey literal truth.
2. This story does reference some beliefs from pseudepigraphic books – The Book of Enoch and The Apocalypse of Zephaniah, along with the Rabbinic work, Genesis Rabbah. In these beliefs, Sheol/Hades has different places, separated by a chasm or a river, where the wicked dead and righteous dead are kept until a day of judgment. So, the question becomes – did Jesus consider these works authoritative, or was he using them as common Jewish mythologies his audience would have been familiar with?
3. We know nothing about the rich man or Lazarus’ temporal life, in terms of their orthodox belief, just that the rich man was rich, and that Lazarus was poor and afflicted with sores. We do not know why the rich man was in Hades and Lazarus in the Bosom of Abraham.
4. Ultimately, this is a story of ethics, not one trying to teach about the cartography of hell. While we might make some guesses, we do not know if Jesus was teaching about a literal truth or a literary truth (a story familiar to his listeners).

Sheep and Goats

The next Scriptures often referenced in arguing for a conscious, eternal punishment view of hell comes from Matthew 25, in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

So let’s examine this passage:

1. Once again, we’re dealing with parables, as opposed to literal description, so we cannot assume that this is a literal description of the Judgment. The purpose of this passage is not to describe the logistics of hell, but to make an ethical point.
2. Even if it is a description of Judgment, the criteria for separating sheep from goats is the treatment of those in need – the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the unclothed, the sick and the imprisoned. What separates the sheep from the goats is their works for the poor, not their orthodoxy of belief. Arguing that this is a literal story, rather than a parable, opens an entire can of worms when trying to explain grace, faith, works, etc.
3. “Eternal Punishment” – this could encompass annihilationism (being destroyed for eternity) as well as eternal, conscious punishment. Additionally, the Greek for this phrase (kolasin aionion) translates to “an age of pruning/correction”. This, too, could support annihilationism, and even the Rabbinic view of gehenna (similar to Purgatory), in addition to eternal, conscious punishment.

The Lake of Fire

One of the most vivid descriptions referenced in talking about hell is the Lake of Fire from Revelation. In Revelation 20, we read:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

This passage has a lot of meaning that could be unpacked. Some of the high points, as they relate to our conversation on hell:

1. This is from a genre of writing called “apocalyptic literature“, which is highly symbolic and sometimes hyperbolic. Arguing for symbols in Revelation to be literal is quite difficult, and often inappropriate (leading to all sorts of wild interpretations).
2. Just from this passage, we have a number of problems of making the “lake of fire” literal. Not only are the wicked dead (whose names are not in the book of life) thrown into the lake of fire, but “death” and “Hades” are thrown into the lake of fire. So we have to argue that “death” and “Hades” are figurative, but the “lake of fire” they are thrown into is literal. Additionally, “death” and “Hades” are ended when their are thrown into the “lake of fire”. But to argue that the “lake of fire” is eternal, conscious punishment, we must argue that the wicked dead thrown into it are not ended. So, in essence, we must make a couple illogical steps to support a view of conscious, eternal punishment.
3. The dead are judged “according to what they had done”, not according to their having the right orthodoxy. Aside from this, there is no indication of what determines whether or not one’s name is written in the book of life (be it literal or figurative).
4. The lake of fire is referred to as “the second death”. This seems to argue more for annihilationism (or the Rabbinic view of gehenna) than for conscious, eternal punishment.
5. This does indicate that there are those whose names are not found written in the book of life (be it literal or figurative), and that they are thrown into the lake of fire (be it literal or figurative). This would seem to be a good argument against pluralism or Universal Reconciliation.

What About Paul?

The Apostle Paul, the “Apostle to the Gentiles”, is silent on the issue of hell, and that his few references to the wicked in the world to come reference “destruction” or “death” rather than “punishment”. This would support an annihilationist view moreso than other views of hell. Additionally, one could argue, if hell was conscious, eternal punishment for all but cognizant, believing Christians, Paul would have spent much more time and space in urgently outlining it, explaining it and clarifying the right steps that have to be taken to make sure you avoid it. But that’s not the case.

What to Think

So what should we think? Probably one of the best articles I’ve read on this subject is by pastor Glen Elliott (written a two or three months before Love Wins became a subject of debate), who posits (like Bell) that we not hold to a pareschatological doctrine as a test of faith or fellowship. There is enough room for doubt as to the cartography and mechanism of hell, along with the criteria God uses for His righteous judgment, that we ought not demand a specific view from Christian believers, but that this should fall under the auspices of non-essentials.

From examining the Scriptures and the likely cultural understanding of their First Century audience, we can somewhat safely assert that multiple views are possible (with varying degrees of certainty): Annihilationism, eternal conscious punishment, and possibly the inclusion of a purgatory-like state from the Rabbinic view of gehenna.

Even so, pluralism or pure Universal Reconciliation (with the Rabbinic exception, noted above, which would allow for Revelation 20’s view of the book of life and the lake of fire – literal or figurative – to be true) are not supported in Scripture.

Regarding “who’s in and who’s out” – this is ultimately up to God, and we have no business judging whether or not someone who has died is in hell (be it Ghandi, Spurgeon, or Hitler). The Scriptural support for a strict exclusivist paradigm (where only a small group of individuals who believe the “right” doctrine are “in” and all else are bound for hell) as the only viable model is quite thin. Most Christians actually hold to some degree of “exclusive inclusivism” – where they believe that there are people (children, the mentally disabled, those who have not had the chance to accept or reject the Gospel) whom Jesus will save in the afterlife who were not fully cognizant Christians in life, but that the criteria for this are up to God. They often point to Romans 1 for some evidence of this:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

As Bell notes in Love Wins, the teaching Jesus and his disciples passed on to us is about how we should live, love and believe today, and that we should trust Him to take care of tomorrow. How we live today determines how the Kingdom of God looks to others today – and thus it is urgent that we live righteous and upright lives, and that we make disciples of all nations. Not as a form of fire insurance, but as a form of worship of our Creator and for our own salvation, today. We trust God with our todays, and we can trust Him with our tomorrows, whether we are alive or dead.

Shalom

A new friend of mine from work, Len, connected with me in a rather roundabout way last week. As we are of like minds on both our faith and our passion for the Hebrew roots of our faith, I am sure we will have many long discussions in the future.

Please check out his blog, Manna and Coffee.  You can also read more of his vision and what got him started here.

Shalom,

Chris

All too often, I have heard Christians lament the lack of opposition from within the German Church to the rise of Hitler and National Socialism. Sadly, there is some truth to this, but I have found more and more stories – like those of the White Rose, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Claus von Stauffenberg and others – which show that not all of Germany, nor its Christians, were in agreement with their government’s actions.

How many of us would be comfortable standing not only for our faith, but for its teachings, in such a situation? I wish I could say I would be, but I wonder how it would be when the rubber met the road…

Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.

In this time of remembrance and recognition of the coming of our Messiah, one of the words that most comes to me is “Compassion”.

My oldest son and I were talking yesterday as we were wrapping gifts, and we happened upon the topic of stories which could bring tears to our eyes. The written word is sometimes hard to infuse with the passion and weight it truly deserves. Even so, I told him of the one passage in Scripture which still brings tears to my eyes – with the first time being five years ago when I read it as part of my first time reading the Bible from cover to cover.

When the Old Testament comes to a close, even though the children of Israel have returned to Jerusalem and set the foundations of the Temple. But even so, their longing for a Messiah is a palpable, bottomless ache. The prophecy of Isaiah 40, which pointed to the return of Israel from Babylon, also held for them a deeper, more fulfilling promise.

And this deep yearning comes to the fore in the story of the Essene, Simeon, in the Temple:

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.

And I can see this man, whose patience had been lifelong, hoping for the comfort promised by God through his prophet, 700 years before.

Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

And so it is, this old man, whose only heart’s desire is to see the Messiah, is given the privilege of blessing him at the time of his circumcision. He was able to hold the Creator of the universe in his hands and offer a blessing to Him and to his mother and adopted father.

The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

And it is in Simeon that we first feel the full weight of the joy at the coming of the Messiah, and the first contemporary glimpse at Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles”. And so it was, this Good News, came to us about 2010 years ago, and whose story we tell and cherish today.

And it brings us such great comfort and joy.

And I can’t help but see in the root causes (apart from the obvious cheapening of faith) the breakdown in our standards of communication.  As we move away from “presence” and face-to-face communication to texting, emails and blogging – where the standards of communication are much lower, it seems that we keep moving farther and farther away from understanding how to resolve conflicts.

And the results are heartbreaking.

This afternoon, I was talking to one of my sons about how it has become so much easier to give up on friendships when the going gets tough than it is to work through our differences – especially if they really hurt.  On how tenacity and doing the “tough work” is a virtue.

In my own marriage, I was quite awful at this for the longest time – because (as a fierce competitor), conflict management was all about how to win an argument, rather than how to establish peace.  Fortunately, what we had going for us was a strong faith, and good examples in our own parents of the need to be tenacious in working out differences.  It was never really easy, but it was always worth it.

Today, I am thankful that we’ve gotten much better at such mundane but necessary things – even though it is still never easy to say – or hear – “what you did really hurt me”.  Even so, by avoiding the problems of stuffing problems (where they just grow bigger and then explode all at once) or blowing small things out of proportion (and escalating things that need not be escalated), we’ve learned how to do this.

Shane Hipps, in his book The Hidden Power of the Electronic Culture, talks about how the key thing we’ve lost today is the “power of presence” – in which we are physically, emotionally and thoughtfully present with one another – where we learn to mend our breaks with one another to become stronger where we once were broken, to dance with those who dance, and mourn with those who mourn.

Being “present” is a lot more raw and unpredictable than our esoteric exchange of electronic information – but in the end, it helps us grow toward one another, and our Creator.