Heresy and Hell: An interactive Blog Experience!!

It hasn't been that long since Love Wins was released. Yet the explosion of writing on it makes it feel much longer. The vanguard of reformed othrodoxy anathemesized Rob Bell. The two most notable leaders have been Piper who declared "Farewell Rob Bell" and Pastor DeYoung who cried heresy.

Heresy. That's not a weak charge. Could you tell me what you really think, Pastor DeYoung?

Do you remember what it was like to be a younger Christian? Maybe you can listen to a little story. When I was younger evangelical I knew -or at least thought I did- who was in and out when it came to the Christian faith. Evangelicals were in. Catholics were in, but not as in as Evangelicals. Mormons were completely out. Conservative protestants were in. Hippie new-age Christians were out. Orthodox/Near-Eastern Christians were maybe "in" but only with great suspicion. Of course, back then it was never clear to me why that list existed. Or which beliefs were essentials or why those beliefs but not others.

Why, for instance, could Christians disagree about the whole Calvinism/Arminianism thing, but not the Trinity? Why was is kissing icons considered pagan, but not keeping Christmas trees? Can you believe in baptizing infants and still be a full Christian?

If you have ever wondered about that -and you probably have- than you may be equally confused. However, this blog is not about what I think, but it will be about what you think. Yes, this blog is interactive today! Why read this? Why follow along? Because this issue of hell and heresy is something that all Christians are going to have to think about, so please grab a pen and paper and attach your thinking camp now. It is going to be fun!



Here are four ideas that Christians believe, in no particular order:

• Christians look forward to a physical, bodily resurrection.


• God is three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit


• Those who reject Jesus will suffer unending, conscious, torment in hell.


• Jesus Christ is both 100% God and 100% human, known as the incarnation

You have probably heard them all in sermons, books, and blogs. Think about what your pastor emphasizes in his sermons. Remember the feelings that you have about each one. How do these influence your life? Do they come to mind in times of prayer or worship? Are they in your church's statement of faith? Ponder this for a moment, then continue reading.







Now with that pen and paper -and please do use a pen and paper- write them all down in order of importance and number them 1 to 4. Yes, they may all be equally important. This is only a thought experiment. Still, your intuition will probably guide you. Take only a few minutes, and then continue reading.







Now look at number 4 -your least important belief- and cross it out.

Let's now pretend that we are figuring out the essentials of the Christian faith. Numbers one, two, and three are what matter most to Christians. To violate these is to be anathematized and decidedly "out." Number four could be very biblical, but it is not an essential. Christians can disagree about that one.

Why did number four sink to the bottom, for you? What took precedence over it and why? Do you think about number four the least often? Is number two or three mentioned more often in the praise and worship songs of your church? Is number one frequently mentioned in your pastor's sermons? Or is there another reason entirely?

Now you might be thinking, "hey, we don't need to limit the essentials to three things. We don't even have to put them order. All four could be equally important! You're a mean blogger!" If you do, you are absolutely right*. The list is only a thought experimentand there is no need to limit the essentials to only three beliefs. It is entirely possibly that all four are equally important.

That is, in fact, what Kevin DeYoung and those who likewise anathematize Rob Bell are committed to. At minimum, a belief in eternal torment is as important as the hope for a future bodily resurrection, the Trinity, and the incarnation. This is true whether they are explicit about it or not.

In your comments you can share your list and your thoughts on this matter. Go ahead and skip this next part, scroll down, post, and share with friends of facebook because every evangelical is going to confront this sooner or later.



For me such a thing feels just plain weird. I could never consider all four beliefs equally important and equally essential. Certainly, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and future resurrection are lifted from scripture. They are equally emphasized in the major creeds, which Christians often use as arbiter between who is "out" and "in." Those three beliefs have become incredibly important to me in Sunday worship, the songs I sing, and how I interact with others. The Trinity reminds me of the importance of community. The bodily resurrection reminds me of hope after death and hope in this world today.

Eternal torment in hell simply isn't in the same category. It is as if I have to believe in three things that are good, that inspire Christians to do good, and then add on the loudest fear-appeal in history! Remember sesame street? "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong..."

It is simply way too weird.




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*except maybe the mean blogger part. I'm a nice guy! I swear! I think....

Book Review for Love Wins

My initial plan with this review was to write first about all the nasty things that have been said about Rob Bell and his book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. However, I think that writing an actual review of this book might be a bit more urgent at this point. I will still be writing a blog about the common criticisms of Rob Bell (some of which are good, and many of which are bad), but that will probably have to wait until the weekend. For now, I'll say that I don't believe that a belief in eternal torment in hell is an essential for the Christian faith, and I sometimes get a little frustrated with those who do.

Now to the review. Rob Bell is an incredibly lucid and talented writer. Many people accuse Rob Bell of "confusion" and insist that people need "clarity" instead of the emergent theology or such. Honestly though, if you read the book, you will probably find it pretty clear.

Maybe "confusion" is thoughtful questions to assumed doctrines. If that be the case, than I think a little bit of confusion is needed. In fact, Rob Bell's questions were my favorite part of the book. The first part of his questions could be summed up in the phrase "Hell: isn't it a little bit weird?" Secondly, he believes that there might not be a clear way to tell whether or not someone is "in" or "out" when it comes to heaven/hell. To support this claim, Rob Bell cites several Bible passages -about a dozen- that show that there is a great deal of ambiguity on this subject.

This is something that many Christians know already -espeically those who are emergent. The fact that evangelicalism wants this to be clear and exclusive might be part of the reason why evangelicalism can be culturally clueless. If you think that you and your exclusive club are the only one's who get in, than those are the only people you deeply associate with. If those are the only people you associate with, than you have a self-perpetuating social-proof of what makes someone "in." It becomes harder to understand those who are "out." It is a sub-culture that things it is relevant to the main culture, when it is in fact semi-autistic.

There is another charge that was tossed against Rob Bell. Rob Bell does "hermenutical gymnastics" to make his points. For sake of example, you can probably examine Rob Bell's assertion regarding the word "hell" in the Gospels. It comes from the word Gehenna when spoken by Jesus. This is really important point since many assert that Jesus spoke of eternal torment and hellfire, since he did -in fact- mention "hell." However, Rob Bell says that when Jesus was saying gehenna he was referencing Jerusalem's disgusting, burning, city dump. Here's why:

• The etymology of word Gehenna


• Relevant historical facts about Jersusalem in Jesus' time


• The usage of the word Gehenna in Jesus' time.

How is that "hermenutical gymnastics"? Isn't that what you are supposed to do when you exegete a Bible passage?

I obviously haven't read every last internet critique of Love Wins, but I have not found anyone who actually addresses Rob Bell's point here: When Jesus says "hell," he is not referring to the nine layers of Dante's inferno. He is referring to garbage dump outside Jerusalem. This only one example of Rob Bell's exegesis, and cannot address all of them for you here.

Now many have criticized Rob Bell for not dealing with certain issues. It is true that Rob Bell did not address any of the predictable objections to his view. Yet, sometimes these critics demand to much. For instance, why did not Rob Bell discuss the two wills of God or limited atonement? I would venture to guess it is because Rob Bell is not a Calvinist (which should be obvious!) and is not writing to Calvinists. Why didn't Rob Bell expand on a particular issue, like penal substitution? I suppose because he is writing a popular book -which introduces and surveys a topic- rather than a article for an academic journal -which is very specific and narrow.

Despite all that, I still feel that the major weakness of Rob Bell's book was that he never answered any particular objections. Doing such, in my opinion, is one of the most important things you can do when you drop a bomb like this. Greg Boyd's God of the Possible was equally if not more controversial. In that book, Boyd devoted an entire chapter to answering objections in fair, direct, and polite manner. A simple addendum to Love Wins would have been equally desirable. It would have been nice if Rob Bell offered an alternative to penal substitution in this book too.

Ultimately though, I feel that all reviews of the book will fall short. Much of the internet does not deal with the substance of the Love Wins, but instead cry "liberal" or other anathemas. Like the Harry Potter series, many evangelicals have decided that it is wrong already and have not bothered to give it read.

The next blogs will mention a few of those other anathemas. Until then, thank you for reading, commenting, and reposting.

"Check your premises" all about hell

LOVE WINS. - Available March 15th from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

There's a new virus spreading on the internet. It's called "Rob Bell releases a new book."

People have already begun to accuse Rob Bell of universalism. I'll keep my opinion of Rob Bell quiet until I get a chance to read the book, which comes out later this month. Nevertheless, there is already a huge blog buzz about a prominent evangelical pastor making statements that sound like universalism. He would not be the first minister to be anathematized as such.

The purpose of this blog is not to take a position on exclusivism (only Christians go to heaven), inclusivism (Christians and some others go to heaven), universalism (everybody goes to heaven) or annihilationism (there is no hell), but rather to frame the debate. Specifically, I feel that detractors of Rob Bell (or anyone else who sounds universalist) might consider checking their premises.

What I mean is this: people who argue for the necessity of hell or God's wrath often assume that certain premises are true and undisputed. They are so deeply assumed that people often forget how to defend them. This is bad, because -mark my words- debates about universalism/inclusivism will lead to additional debates about the three premises I am about to mention. If other Christians want to persuade Rob Bell or others, they must be prepared to defend these major premises, and not make the mistake of assuming that they are self-evident and undisputed. Reformed Christians especially (forgive the generalization) seem to make this mistake.

Also, yes, this kind of thing is important for everyday Christian living. After all, another Pastor, Kevin DeYoung argues that we need hell to even forgive our enemies.

Let us begin:

Premise number 1: Justice is avenging evil-doers. This seems to make sense right? Justice, especially divine justice, is making sure that the evil-doer gets what's coming to them. Think of the death penalty. A famous Texas comedian once remarked "If you kill someone [in Texas], we will kill you back." A more academic example is Kant, who said that the death penalty was not just an option, but a moral requirement in the case of a murder. Even the Christian saint Thomas Aquinas said that "Justice was getting what is due to you."

However, this is not the only vision of justice. This idea of retribution has been criticized. An alternative is the idea of restorative justice. This type of justice is not concerned about smiting evil, but restoring what was lost to evil. Instead of "If you kill someone, we will kill you back" it says "If you kill someone, God will raise them back to life." It also implies that all are corrupted by evil, and restorative justice seeks to "restore" what evil did to the soul of the evil-doers themselves.

Premise Number 2: Penal Substitution is the best/only atonement theory. Penal Substitution is common idea. It is so popular that many do not know of any alternatives. I had to get a degree in theology before I heard of alternatives!

It works like this: Humanity has offended God with sin. Since God is infinitely good, so the debt of sin also infinite. Humanity is finite and cannot pay the infinite debt. God must somehow "pay" the infinite debt since no one else can. So God became human in Jesus in order to pay the infinite debt on the cross. This is very dry and technical, but I think it sounds familiar to everyone.

Now, please look for that description of atonement in the New Testament. Yes, please find something very specific. Make it as specific as Anselm's Cur Deus Homo ("why God became man"). A Lutheran minister once shared that penal substitution comes down to us from the middle ages -and he's right. Anselm wrote in the 12th century. That does not make his theory of atonement wrong, but it does put it up for debate doesn't it? When we think about penal substitution, we should not think "how does the Bible teach this?" but rather "did Anselm get it right?"

Premise Number 3: Things are made right/good because God says so. Of all the things mentioned here, I think this one is the quickest to come up. Someone might say that heaven doesn't seem good if there's a tiny torture chamber somewhere near it. Similarly, someone might mention that God's goodness does not allow room for eternal suffering. A common response is something like "God decides what is good" along with pious appeal to Romans 9:16-19.

The problem with this, is that it assumes a certain answer to the famous Euthyphro dilemma. The question is "Are things good because God loves them, or does God love them because they are good?" I think many Christians answer "good because God loves them" and may even endorse baby eating if God said so. I don't think, though, that the question is so easily settled by an appeal to Romans 9 or similar passages. That passages tells that we don't know the reasons for God's choices. God may not tell us his reasons for mercy, or those reasons might be beyond our keen, but neither one of those implies no reasons at all. Not all Christians are happy with "because God says so" type of answers. This blogger sure isn't

Now of course it is possible that someone might believe all three of these premises and be a full blown universalist. Alternately, they may disagree with all three and still be an exclusivist. No matter what though, these things are going to come up in the internet debates, magazine articles, and book reviews about Rob Bell's new book. If Rob Bell really is a universalist, and his detractors uses these premises to condemn him for it, they will need to articulate and defend them quite carefully.

Reposts, retweets make me happy. So also do your welcome comments.

Rob Bell - Love Wins

LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

Community living - to be in change together...

Hello! I have just had a brilliant day... and a great weekend preceding it...

On Saturday afternoon I was at our church school for the Summer Fair. The weather was brilliant! I even caught the sun! I spent a wonderful hour on the gate with the deputy head and I hae really valued spending the time getting to know her better. What was wonderful was that between us we spoke to everyone who came into the fair today - fab. Lots of people, lots of fun, building community.

Today has made me think more about what community is. Wikipedia tells me '...Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix com- (which means "together") and the word munis probably originally derived from the Etruscan word munis- (meaning "to have the charge of...'

Community must be about bringing people together. It must be about shared hopes, values, and ideals. But how often do we think of our communities being in charge of anything?

That said any community we may well be part of must be about a shared perspective or ideal, but they must also be about a group of people being in charge of at least their destiny. Despite another low turn out, that is one brilliant thing about elections - communities in charge of their own destinies!

Some time ago now I read, enjoyed and empathised with, 'Utopian Dreams' by Tobias Jones. He searches for a 'perfect community.' He starts his search in Damanhar, a village 30 miles north of Turin, where a messianic figure called Falcon has founded a New Age community based on what he experienced when he travelled 6,000 years back in time. They have their own currency, their own flag, their own shops and factories, and each of the residents is given their own silly name (Goat, Crab, Vulture). They believe in alchemy. At the annual sports day, there's a telepathy competition.

From there, he soon flees south to Tuscany and then Sicily, before leaping back to England. He visits Quaker bungalows, Catholic foster parents and farms built on confiscated Mafia land where recovering drug addicts press premium olive oil.

Everywhere, he finds elements to admire or condemn, but he doesn't feel passionately about any particular place until he reaches Pilsdon in Dorset, a Christian community which welcomes "wayfarers" - tramps and drifters - alongside anyone trying to put their life back together and overcome addiction or trauma.

Bells ring throughout the day, announcing meals and services. Priests and nuns form the backbone of the staff. There's no need to be a believer, although an atmosphere of "undercover Christianity" fills the place. Here, he finds a community that he admires, even loves, and where he can be happy.

Contentment does come at a price: he also discovers the real cost of living with others. "At the beginning of this trip I thought living in community would be tough because you're living cheek by jowl with people you might have little in common with, people who you wouldn't necessarily choose as friends ... But the true difficulty of living here is that there's nowhere to hide. The place holds a mirror up to yourself and shows you what you're really like."

When he offers his own definition of a perfect community, he describes a place which sounds pretty much like Pilsdon. It will be a group of between 15 and 25 people. They will be self-sufficient and often silent. They'll have to have "a full-size snooker table, a chess set, a library, a football pitch and a piano". Most importantly, they will share a common belief, a shared purpose, one faith - "something for which one is prepared to give one's heart".

Hmmm a common purpose and belief, something for which one will be able to give one's heart... A place that hold's a mirror up to oneself so that we can see what we're really like...

I wonder if those are words that we could use to describe the church? There is certainly a common belief but would members of any our churches say that they would be prepared to give (or had given) their heart for Christ and His church?

There's a lot of "heart imagery" in the Bible. One example, '...That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved...' (Romans 10:8-9).

Belief in our hearts. The seat of the emotions. The place where the world engages with us in love and pain. And yet this is what the church is and how that community is as Tobias Jones suggests, a mirror in which we see ourselves. For the church is a disparate group of people gathered to engage with each other, with God and with the love and pain of the world.

By the end of the book, Jones has finally decided what he's been looking for. It's not a house, a plot of land or a group of people. It's just a place where he can express his faith and live according to his beliefs. He and his wife decide to stop travelling - "rather a daft decision for a travel writer" - and settle in Bristol. On a map, they draw a circle with a radius of one mile, the bullseye being their own red front door. "We were, in some way, responsible for everything inside that tiny community."

Community - together, to have charge of. If only we took the Jones model and saw our parish like that. That somehow, with each other and with God engaging with us, we are responsible, in charge of things within that imagined boundary. It becomes a place to where we can express our faith in God and actively live out those beliefs.

I am reading Rob Bell's 'Velvet Elvis' at the moment. He talks about actively living out what Jesus teaches. He reminds us that Christianity was orignally known as the Way. It was about living a certain way, the way that Jesus teaches us. He writes:

"... [T] kind of way that Jesus taught is possible. And I think that the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.

This isn't irrational or primitive or 'blind faith.' It is merely being honest that we are all living 'a way.'

I'm convinced being generous is a better way to live.

I'm convinced forgiving people and not carrying around bitterness is a better way to live.

I'm convinced having compassion is a better way to live.

I'm convinced pursuing peace in every situation is a better way to live.

I'm convinced listening to the wisdom of others is a better way to live.

I'm convinced being honest with people is a better way to live...'

This is Jesus' way to live and it is as challenging and enthralling as it always was. It is as compelling and community-building as it always was. If only we opted to actively live it...