I was prompted to begin this post in response to
Rob Bell’s book on Heaven and Hell, Love Wins, because of the popularity of his teaching. Rob Bell may not be a name you know, but he features prominently in Time Magazine’s April 25, 2011 issue What if There’s No Hell? In his book Bell raises crucial questions about God, Heaven, Hell, and the fate of every person who has ever lived. In fact, his questions, at least 350 of them, seem to be a vehicle for smuggling in assumptions that contradict clear biblical statements. Love Wins contains many issues that deserve a lengthy response, but I will limit this response to those of greatest concern.
The fundamental flaw in the book, the place where everything that is not orthodox begins to drift from truth, is Bell’s view of Scripture. In Rob Bell’s mind, the Bible is not the Word of God, truthful and trustworthy in all respects. Exactly what authority the Bible does have for Bell is less clear, but it is clearly no more than a product of human ideas. He believes that the Bible is just part of, or the result of, a community discussion among spiritually-minded humans. The allusion to unknown sages in the preface invites us to treat our speculations with the same reverence we accord to Scripture.
The ancient sages said the words of the sacred text were black letters on a white page – there’s all that white space waiting to be filled with our responses and discussions and debates and opinions and longings and desires and wisdom and insights. We read the words, and then enter into the discussion that has been going on for thousands of years across cultures and continents.
Later, in a discussion of the meaning of the crucifixion, Bell assigns to human authors total responsibility for penning Scripture.
Don’t
“miss the brilliant, creative work these first Christians were doing when they used these images and metaphors. They were reading their world, looking for ways to communicate this epic event in ways their listeners could grasp.” What is missing from this book is any sense that God is the Author of Scripture.
This of course leaves Bell with amply leeway to re-interpret Heaven, Hell, the crucifixion, and the resurrection in ways that suit his own cultural sensitivities.
When Bell has been interviewed, he has taken pains to declare that he is not a Universalist, referring to the belief that
everyone goes to Heaven.
Perhaps Bell disagrees with some who accept the label “universalist,” but his beliefs have the identical result.
He speculates that some may go to Hell, but will eventually see the error of their ways and end up in Heaven. This makes him an “eventual universalist”.
Bell speculates that there must be a second chance, or unending chances for heart change, even after death.
He then extends that thought to its logical conclusion.
“….given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God.” While Bell claims that real love on God’s part requires his view, there is no attempt to show this to be the teaching of Scripture.
In fact, what Bell does with Scripture is to twist Jesus’ teaching to mean nearly the opposite of what Jesus said.
Luke 16 is an example.
Jesus tells a story of what happens after this life and Bell dismisses the after-life aspects as “surreal.”
Since there is mention of resurrection at the end of the story, Bell takes this as permission to skip over everything about the afterlife and reinterpret the story as essentially a parable about failing to appreciate the value of one’s fellow human.
Bell refuses to allow Jesus to teach anything about a real Heaven or real Hell in this account.
If the Bible actually taught what Bell is claiming about Hell, Luke 16 would be the place for Abraham to explain to the rich man in torment that this is one of his many chances to have a change of heart.
Then he won’t need Lazarus to touch his lips with water, instead he will be allowed into Heaven and can drink his fill.
In addition to radically reinterpreting biblical accounts, Bell is selective use of Bible verses is deceptive.
He claims that he will share every place in Scripture were the word “Hell” is used, and he does.
What he selectively excludes are the biblical images where the idea of eternal torment stands-in for the word “Hell,” these include the “fiery furnace” and the “lake of fire.”
Bell avoids these passages because they do not fit with his view of Hell as primarily internal torment based on rejecting God’s love.
· Revelation 20:10 (NLT) Then the devil, who had deceived them, was thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur, joining the beast and the false prophet. There they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
· Revelation 20:15 (NLT) And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.
· Matthew 13:49-50 (NLT) That is the way it will be at the end of the world. The angels will come and separate the wicked people from the righteous, throwing the wicked into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Possibly the most glaring omission in Bell’s work is his failure to understand the work of Christ on the cross. When one dismisses Hell, or claims that all will eventually end up in Heaven, the question that must be answered is: Why did Jesus have to die? If everyone escapes Hell eventually anyway, then Jesus’ death is the greatest and most senseless of all tragedies! In attempting to show God as too loving to allow people to stay in Hell, He makes God appear to be One who would send His Son to be crucified to deliver us from something that we will escape eventually anyway. Bell riffs on the love of God but completely fails to address the justice of God. In order for God to be truly good, He must be both loving and just, as A. W. Tozer wrote, “God spares us because He is good, but He could not be good if He were not just.” Only the view that realizes that Jesus Christ takes our death penalty as a substitute accounts for both God’s love and justice.
As mentioned, there are many issues pleading for correction by biblical truth in this work.
Bell repeatedly claims the mantle of orthodoxy, but a careful reading of
Love Wins makes the claim difficult to believe.
Beyond the above issues, Bell’s dismissal of the resurrection as an expected part of the cycle of life, like a tree losing leaves in winter and developing new ones in spring,
cannot be shoe-horned into orthodoxy.
Rob Bell is popular, well spoken, includes many pieces of truth in Love Wins, and asks many questions. What I cannot say is that Rob Bell is orthodox. The theology packed into Love Wins lies a great distance outside the historic Christian understanding of Scripture, the atonement, the resurrection, and the clear biblical teaching on Hell. Love Wins is an attempt to allow our cultural sensitivities to serve as the arbiters of truth. We would like Love Wins to be true. Since Love Wins is incompatible with Scripture and disagrees with Jesus, we must choose who we will believe, and I for one, choose Jesus.
