Tough Love Wins (Part Four)
More Arguments Against Hell
Let’s look at a few of Rob Bell’s other points and arguments in “Love Wins”.
Bell pokes fun at the various answers given as to just what somebody has to do to be saved. For example, he criticises emphasising having ‘a personal relationship’ as the key to salvation, saying
“The problem is that the phrase ‘personal relationship’ is found nowhere in the Bible. Nowhere in the Hebrew scriptures, nowhere in the New Testament. Jesus never used the phrase. Paul didn’t use it. Nor did John, Peter, James, or the woman who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews. So if that’s it, if that’s the point of it all, if that’s the ticket, the center, the one unavoidable reality, the heart of the Christian faith, why is it that no one used the phrase until the last hundred years or so?”
Of course the problem with this line of argument is obvious. Just because a phrase doesn’t appear in Scripture, it doesn’t follow that the concept itself is unscriptural. After all, the word Trinity is found nowhere in the Bible. But we hold to the Trinity, don’t we?
In fact, when we look at the Bible as a whole, the motif of God’s marriage with His bride is part and parcel of both Old and New Testaments. And, if you stop to think about it, you can’t get a much more personal relationship than a marriage.
Another argument Bell uses is to point out all the promises God makes to Israel about future restoration. If God is all about restoration, after all, then why can’t we believe that He will one day restore everybody? This seems to me to be a really weak argument. The Old Testament certainly speaks much of Israel’s restoration – but it also speaks about the judgment of other nations. God doesn’t promise restoration to the Amalekites, or to Midian – so why should we suppose that His promises of restoration are all inclusive to every individual, irrespective of whether they embrace the promises or not?
However, the biggest weakness I found in “Love Wins” is Rob Bell’s tendency to rigorously examine the traditional beliefs on Hell in the light of culture and history – yet he fails to do the same to his own beliefs.
For example, he lays great stress (in my opinion too much stress) on the idea that most of Christ’s warnings about judgment to come were about the Roman destruction of Jerusalem that would occur in 70 AD. He warns:
“Because of this history, it’s important that we don’t take Jesus’ very real and prescient warnings about judgment then out of context, making them about someday, somewhere else. That wasn’t what he was talking about.”
Yet, interestingly enough, he doesn’t do the same thing with all Jesus’ promises of eternal life and salvation. For some reason the warnings are all to do with the events of 70AD, but none of the promises are about escaping the events of 70AD. Strange that, isn’t it?
Also, as with the references to Gehenna, flames and the gnashing of teeth, Bell stresses that we should recognise these as cultural allusions to being cast into the rubbish dump – we’re not to suppose that they actually describe a reality in the future.
Yet, later in the book, he sees great significance in the description of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation – particularly the detail about the gates never being shut. He takes this to mean that people will always be free to come and go.
But, if we are as careful at recognising cultural allusions as we were with Gehenna, then we will readily understand what this means. Cities used to shut their gates at a set time each evening to protect the inhabitants. A city whose gates were never shut, then, was a city that dwelt in such peace and security that no attack was ever feared. To take that, and turn it into a promise that people will keep getting extra chances after death to accept the Gospel is really a case of grasping at straws.
Similarly, Bell takes the phrase Jesus used about Capernaum in Matthew 10 where He says, “It will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for you.” This leads Bell to write:
“There’s still hope? And if there’s still hope for Sodom and Gomorrah, what does that say about all of the other Sodoms and Gomorrahs?”
Come on! We use phrases like that all the time. For example, if someone says “You’d be better off dead” then does that mean we can say, “Oh death might not be too bad then? And if death isn’t so bad then maybe other things aren’t so bad either?” I’m sorry, that just doesn’t cut it as an argument.
Yet, in the next breath, Bell writes,
“This story, the one about Sodom and Gomorrah, isn’t the only place we find this movement from judgment to restoration, from punishment to new life.”
Hang on. Jesus used Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of real wickedness. The only reason he mentioned them was to say things would be even worse for Capernaum. That’s it. There’s no hint in that of Sodom and Gomorrah somehow shifting to restoration, let alone new life!
So, for me, Rob Bell’s arguments came across as weak and unconvincing. I like his style, but this time the substance is lacking.
But, in one area at least, I think Bell’s points deserve closer attention. He argues that the ideas of flame and fire were symbolic. Now, I don’t have a problem with that idea per se. After all, the Bible contains many symbols. None of us take the Bible completely literally. For example, none of us really think that Jesus was a literal vine with branches sprouting out of the top of his head. Nor do we think Herod was a real literal fox with a red bushy tail. So, no matter how much we claim that we believe the Bible literally, all of us recognise that at least some things are symbolic.
Jesus described hell both in terms of fire and of outer darkness. Now that, to me, suggests that a bit of symbolism is in play here. Fire gives light – so it seems unlikely that anyone is going to burn in literal fire and still be in literal outer darkness.
But, and I think this is a key point to grasp, symbols in the Bible are not exaggerations to scare us – like a bogey man. If Jesus used fire as a symbol for hell, then He wasn’t saying “Ah, it’s not that bad really. Just like sitting on your own in a dark room for a while.” The likelihood is that, if Jesus did indeed use fire as a symbol, then He was using it as a symbol for something even worse – a spiritual reality that human language can’t describe.
Tomorrow I’m going to share some suggestions of my own that might help us comprehend this spiritual reality we call hell – eternal separation from God – and how it fits in with human freedom, God’s love, and God’s justice. This will inevitably involve much more of my own thinking and go far beyond simply reviewing “Love Wins.”
Then, on Sunday, I’ll wind this series up by looking at how all this should cause us to look at Rob Bell.
