Pages

Sunday, March 06, 2011

What's so great about hell?

The initial objection to Justin Taylor’s post on Rob Bell is that Justin “jumped the gun.” But, predictably, the objection is now shifting to, “Okay, so what if Bell is a universalist? What’s so bad about universalism, anyway?”

One way of answering that question is to see what’s involved in denying the Biblical doctrine of the final judgment. A number of transcriptions of Bell’s now famous (or infamous) video are floating around the internet, and the “questions” he poses do a pretty good job of illustrating what’s at stake. Ken Silva (of Apprising Ministries) has a transcript, and I’m going to reproduce (and boldface) the key paragraphs in the Bell’s video to illustrate the issue in Bell’s own words.

Gandhi’s in hell? He is? And someone knows this, for sure; and felt the need to let the rest of us know? Will only a few, select, people make it to heaven? And will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell? And, if that’s the case, how do you become one of the few? Is it what you believe; or what you say, or what you do, or who you know—or something that happens in your heart? Or do you need to be initiated, or baptized, or take a class, or converted, or being born again—how does one become one of these few?
And then there is the question behind the questions, the real question: What is God like? Because millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message—the center of the Gospel of Jesus—is that God is going to send you to hell, unless you believe in Jesus. And so, what gets, subtlety, sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. But what kind of God is that; that we would need to be rescued from this God? How could that God ever be good; how could that God ever be trusted? And how could that ever be good news?
This is why lots of people want nothing to do with the Christian faith. They see it as an endless list of absurdities and inconsistencies; and they say: “Why would I ever want to be part of that?” See, what we believe about heaven and hell is incredibly important because it exposes what we believe about Who God is, and what God is like. What you discover in the Bible is so surprising, unexpected, and beautiful, that whatever we’ve been told or taught, the good news is actually better than that; better than we could ever imagine.


For now I’m not going to discuss whether or not Bell is voicing his own opinion. Rather, I’ll just run with how he chose to contrast the alternatives.

i) Calvinism has no official position on whether the elect represent the majority or minority of the human race.

ii) Accentuating the alleged fewness of the saints also insinuates that God is obligated to save everyone, or try to save everyone.

iii) The word “select” is invidious. Yes, Calvinism has a doctrine of unconditional election. So you could say, quite correctly, that God unilaterally selected who will be saved.

However, words have connotations as well as denotations. The phrase “select few” suggested a meritocracy, like the Marines (“The few, the proud”).

But, of course, Calvinism doesn’t view election as a meritocracy. Just the opposite.

iv) There’s a presumption that Gandhi is in hell because Biblical salvation is normally predicated on faith in God’s promises. Believing the gospel. Repenting of your sins. And there’s no reason to think that Gandhi was ever a Christian.

I say “ordinarily” because we can debate special cases (e.g. the mentally incompetent, those who die before the age of discretion).

And this isn’t a Reformed distinctive.

v) If universalism is true, then, by this logic, the God of non-universalism (e.g. Calvinism, Lutheranism, evangelical Arminianism) is evil and untrustworthy. Essentially, the God of non-universalism is diabolical.

To say that God will send you to hell unless you believe in Christ “isn’t even good news.”

So you couldn’t have a starker contrast. There is no mediating position. No middle ground.

Either God or Satan–and for the universalist, the God of non-universalism might as well be Satan. Evil. Untrustworthy. Unworthy of our worship.

So that’s the issue. It’s not that hell is so great. Rather, it’s what-all the universalist must deny to deny hell.

At the same time, there is something great about the wicked receiving their due. 

4 comments:

  1. And so, what gets, subtlety, sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. But what kind of God is that; that we would need to be rescued from this God?

    There's nothing subtle about this teaching.

    Jesus does save sinners from God, more specifically He saves them from the wrath of God.

    The reason we need to be rescued from God's wrath, Rob, is because He is infinitely Holy, Holy, Holy and we are rebel sinners who have broken covenant with Him, and we have no capacity to save ourselves.

    It took the sacrifice of the perfect and spotless Lamb of God to effect that rescue and appease that wrath (Isiah 53:10).

    Bell is apparently ignorant of (or else he simply repudiates) the doctrine of vicarious penal substitutionary atonement.

    I'm dumbfounded that apparently no one has ever explained the Gospel to Rob Bell.

    That man is not a pastor, he's a poseur.

    In Christ,
    CD

    ReplyDelete
  2. I will venture to quantify how many are going to Heaven based on these Scriptures:

    Gen 13:16 I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.

    ...


    Gen 15:5 And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

    ...


    Rom 9:6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,
    Rom 9:7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named."
    Rom 9:8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.


    Based on God's own words to Abraham in those places cited from Genesis and Paul's reiteration in Roman's, my guess is there will be a lot of souls that go into Paradise when they die leaving behind the flesh to go back to ashes and dust; that is the Living Hope those believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God hope in and dying in Christ, believing He is Lord and that God raised Him from the dead.

    Now, of course, the phrase "a lot" is an unknown quantity nevertheless!

    Just a few more verses that come to mind to post so as to tether the soul to them, too, to those already cited above:

    Heb 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
    Heb 9:28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

    ...

    Rev 1:7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.


    I know this, loosely paraphrasing, Jesus did say if you die in your sins, you won't be waking up in Paradise!

    I know this, Jesus did say He chose us, we did not choose Him and the Love of God is God's Love for Christ He put into us!

    Joh 17:25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.
    Joh 17:26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

    ReplyDelete
  3. "There’s a presumption that Gandhi is in hell because Biblical salvation is normally predicated on faith in God’s promises. Believing the gospel. Repenting of your sins."

    The problem is that there isn't a universal definition of "faith" or even "sin".

    Thornton Stringfellow (http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/string/string.html) knew the Bible quite well and professed himself a believer in the God of that Bible. However, he didn't seem to think that keeping Negroes as unpaid laborers was a sin.

    He was unrepentant about this, by all accounts. Is he in Heaven or Hell, then?

    Go here: http://kkk.bz/

    True Christians who are simply misguided in their interpretation of Scripture or children of Satan? Get past their name and read their commentaries. (http://kkk.bz/main/?page_id=643).

    "The liberal agenda of the gun grabbers is the same core ideology of those who support abortion on demand, illegal alien “rights,” sex instruction in school, acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle and in general fight against our traditional Christian values being taught in the classroom."

    ReplyDelete
  4. "If universalism is true, then, by this logic, the God of non-universalism (e.g. Calvinism, Lutheranism, evangelical Arminianism) is evil and untrustworthy. Essentially, the God of non-universalism is diabolical."

    I've frequently heard from Arminians that the "Calvinist" God is a moral monster.

    "To say that God will send you to hell unless you believe in Christ “isn’t even good news.”

    So you couldn’t have a starker contrast. There is no mediating position. No middle ground.
    "

    Amen. An absolute binary. An absolute either-or.

    ReplyDelete