This Past Weekend I Preached About Hell

This past weekend at Basileia, I preached a sermon addressing the question, “How Could a Loving God Send People to Hell?”  It was a challenging and sobering sermon, and I can honestly say that I’m glad I don’t have to address such emotional and sobering topics every week.  You can listen here if you’re interested.

In preparing to address this topic, I thought it might be prudent to reacquaint myself with the controversy surrounding Rob Bell’s book Love Wins.  When the book came out about two years ago, I knew I didn’t agree with Rob’s view, but frankly I just didn’t feel like getting overly involved in the controversy.  As it was, a few off-handed comments I made on Facebook got me more involved than I meant to be.  But I’ve waited to read the actual book until an opportune time presented itself.

So this past week, I quickly “audio-booked” a copy of Love Wins.  I followed my reading with a few reviews on the book by people I trust, but then I decided to go ahead an “audio-book” a copy of Francis Chan’s book, Erasing Hell, which is sort of a rebuttal.  To call Erasing Hell a rebuttal is a bit of stretch honestly, it does address Bell’s views, and it was written in response to Love Wins, but it basically just takes a fresh look at what the Bible says on the topic of heaven and hell.

I’m Not Sure There’s Much of a Point in Writing a Detailed Review

There’s really no reason for me to get into a detailed review of each book (because there’s a ton of reviews on the interwebs).  However, I will say this:  I think Rob Bell is a great writer and a compelling communicator, but I also think he’s misrepresenting the Bible on the issue of heaven and hell.  Bell can claim that he is technically not a universalist because he still believes in the concept of heaven and hell, but readers should know that he completely redefines the definitions of both.  Rob’s somewhat unique ideas have been alluded to in his other books and sermons for quite some time, but he really fleshes them out in Love Wins.  Love Wins is an extremely convincing book until you begin to look closely, and then everything falls apart.

When I Was in Junior High, Starter Jackets Were All the Rage.

When I was in Junior High, Starter jackets were all the rage.  To be cool, you had to have a Starter jacket.  And I really wanted one, but I didn’t have a hundred dollars, and neither did my parents.  But my best friend, Chris Medina, had a step dad who was overseas in the military, and he could get Starter jackets for thirty-five dollars.  Finally I had my chance!  I could afford thirty-five bucks!  I chose a Washington Redskins jacket (I still have it to this day) and I couldn’t wait for Chris’ dad to ship it back from overseas.  However, when the jacket finally arrived, things just weren’t quite right.  It looked like a Starter jacket, and it felt like a Starter jacket, but I noticed the stitching was a little off. Starter’s normal high quality seemed a bit “jankey.”  The Starter logo didn’t look right, and the tags on the inside of the coat didn’t seem authentic.  I quickly realized that I had a fake.  It was a pretty good looking fake, but it was fake. Everything seemed ok, until I looked closely.  Rob Bell’s theology in Love Wins looks and sounds great . . . at first.  But as you begin to examine it more closely, you begin to realize everything is a little off.  The facts don’t add up.  It begins to seem “jankey.” It looks good at first, but it’s a fake.

Like a 300 Pound Linebacker

The best way to examine this reality for yourself is to read Bell’s book and then read Chan’s book Erasing Hell back to back.  I actually like Chan’s rebuttal of Love Wins more than anyone else’s.  He’s extremely gracious and careful and thorough.  And he writes in a somewhat similar fashion, for a similar audience, and with a similar sized book.  To put it bluntly though, Erasing Hell annihilates the theology in Love Wins, but it does so in a really nice way.  It’s like getting tackled by a 300 pound linebacker, and then having that linebacker help you back up off the ground.  But honestly, it’s hard to even take Bell seriously after reading Chan.  You just realize that Bell did really poor exegesis, really poor historical research, really poor word studies, and a really poor job of exploring the Bible’s overall scope on the topic of heaven and hell.  I highly recommend Erasing Hell, and honestly I can’t say enough about how helpful a book it is on this entire topic.  Thank you Francis Chan!

I know some of you who may read this blog post will disagree with much of what I’ve just said, and that’s fine.  You’re entitled to your own opinion, and I’m entitled to mine.  But, I would urge anyone who is wresting with the issue of heaven and hell, or who has read Rob Bell, and read about the controversy surrounding Love Wins, and wonders if Rob Bell is telling them the truth or lying, to please consider reading Erasing Hell. Just give it a shot.  And then read the Bible passages that each book mentions for yourself.  Read them in context, and ask yourself, “What is the Bible really saying?”  And finally, ask God to reveal to you what He has really said on the topic of heaven and hell.

You May Not Like What You Find

If you examine closely and honestly, you may not like what you find.  But God continually asks us to trust Him and embrace hard truths throughout the Bible. We have to do this with the topic of judgment and hell too.  Honestly, we cannot afford to be wrong on this issue.

Related Posts:

• Book Review: Jonathan Edwards On Heaven and Hell by Strachan and Sweeney
• Five Sentence Review: What is the Gospel? – Greg Gilbert
• Brief Book Review – Forgotten God by Francis Chan
• Book Review: Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
• A Quick Review of Sex God by Rob Bell

Several months ago I set out to understand the theological debate between N.T. Wright and John Piper about the meaning of “justification” in the Bible (in the Greek the phrase under consideration is “dikaiosyne theou” – the righteousness of God).  Here’s what I read, and the order in which I read it:

Paul In Fresh Perspective – by N.T. Wright

The Future of Justification:  A Response to N.T. Wright – by John Piper

Justification:  God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision – by N.T. Wright

A Review of:   Justification:  God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision – by Michael Horton

And finally a few blog posts by Kevin DeYoung about this whole discussion

Here’s what I learned:

• Piper and Wright (and I should add Horton & DeYoung) are all really smart.
• They are all much smarter than I am.
• Both Piper and Wright have given us a rather good picture of what a debate between brothers in Christ should look like.  Now I know there’s quite a bit of hubbub about this whole ordeal in the blogosphere, and this may lead one to think that these two men aren’t really playing nice, but if you read their books and responses to one another, it’s all rather cordial.
• Both men add useful information to the discussion about the nature and meaning of justification, and more specifically to the topic of imputation as a feature of justification.
• In order of who is the most difficult to read:  Wright is the toughest, followed by Horton, and then finally Piper and DeYoung.  This leads me to want to side with Piper simply because he writes in a more precise way and is easier to understand.
• If I put aside my bias in favor of Piper (because of the aforementioned clarity with which he writes), and really just try to understand what is being discussed here, I think I come down in the middle, albeit more notably on Piper’s side.  Despite all of Wright’s arguments to the contrary, I am still inclined to believe that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to believers, and that at the final judgement, people will be judged ‘righteous’ based solely on Jesus’ merits and not our own.  Our deeds do demonstrate the reality of saving faith within us (and thus bear witness to the fact that we are really in Christ), but they are not in any sense the ground of our righteousness.  Jesus alone makes us righteous.
• I do think that Wright has correctly called our attention back to the meta-narrative of Scripture and covenant, the importance of the church, and the importance of examining Scripture not just bottom-up, but also top-down.  I think he’s a brilliant scholar, and I plan to read him more in the future.  But I think he’s a little off on this discussion.  Two things are especially condemning in my final estimation of Wright in regards to this subject:  1) He seems to misunderstand much of the reformed tradition that he critiques (read Horton’s review for an explanation of this point), and 2) despite the sheer volume of works that he’s written on this subject, he still seems to lack the precise clarity and forthrightness that make his viewpoints easy to pin down and judge accordingly.
• I should note, I’m not the only one expressing this frustration about clarity.  Several others have mentioned this. In fact, there was much discussion following the 2010 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society about whether or not the view that Wright expressed during those meetings had changed from the view He expresses in his writings.  (see:  http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/11/26/what-n-t-wright-really-said/)

Overall Fun Reading!!! I think I’ll go listen to a Robert Ludlum audiobook now, and put my brain in relax mode.

Related Posts:

• Book Review: The Lazarus Vendetta by Robert Ludlum & Patrick Larkin
• Five Sentence Review: What is the Gospel? – Greg Gilbert
• Five Sentence Review: Think: The Life of the Mind and Love of God – John Piper
• Book Review: The Ambler Warning by Robert Ludlum
• Deep Church by Jim Belcher – Quick Thoughts

Initially promising, but ultimately unsatisfying.  That’s how I would describe Dual Citizens:  Worship and Life between the Already and the Not Yet by Jason Stellman.  Now I want to be clear that I’m not on a witch hunt for Jason Stellman’s head.  I’ve never met him, but clearly he’s a brother in Christ, and I would say that he seems like a pretty cool guy.  I randomly discovered his book while browsing Nashville’s local reformed bookstore (logos), was highly intrigued by the subject matter, and purchased it with an extreme excitement and eagerness to begin reading.  And, I’ll happily admit that the introduction to this book rocked my world – helping to construct some much needed theological framework.  But, by the end of the book I feel like Stellman kind of lost steam.

The basic concept of Dual Citizens is that there is a necessary division between the sacred and secular in the lives of Christians.  Contrary to the opinion of many – including John Frame (whom Stellman quotes and disagrees with in the intro – ballsy!) – there should be a distinction between how Christians operate when gathered for worship as a church and when scattered throughout the week as citizens of earth.  I should make clear that Stellman is not arguing for any sort of antinomianism position that allows Christians to act like “hell” during the week and act like “angels” during church service.  But, he is arguing that the main way in which Christians are countercultural is through their gathering on the sabbath to participate in the preaching of Word and the taking of sacrament (Lord’s Supper and Baptism).  He decries any sort of seeker-sensitive, “let’s be relevant” approach to church.  Church is not supposed to be relevant to culture, but obedient to the Bible.  And Stellman argues that the Biblical pattern for our gatherings are:  Word and sacrament, period.

The book is divided into two main sections.  The first seven chapters describe Christian worship, and the last seven chapters describe Christian life.  In my opinion, the first half (Christian worship) forms a more cohesive whole than the second half of the book.  I don’t agree with all of Stellman’s conclusions in this first section, but he does a better job writing this section than he does in the second section.  One of my main critiques is that, Stellman over-argues his point about the church gathering being free from cultural influences.  I’m not sure that’s a good thing or even possible.  He argues that “culture, then, is never to be the determining factor in a church’s worship” (8).  But I would argue that all churches necessarily take on cultural forms both because they are composed of people from specific cultures and because they attempt to clarify the gospel to these specific cultures.  Certainly the attempt to be “relevant” can go too far and water down the gospel, but so can the attempt to avoid this pitfall.  The opposite of the “relevant” pitfall is to be so culturally insensitive that the gospel fails to even be understood.  You can argue all day long that the church is not composed of seekers but of saints; however, any church that loves people will be filled with both saints and the seekers.  Cultural sensitivity and even acclimation will always be necessary to make the gospel clear.  Without clear cultural understanding the gospel may be mistranslated altogether.  Having argued this point, I still think that Stellman does a fair job of deconstructing a lot of seeker-sensitive nonsense that Christianity seems to be so captivated by, but I think he could have made his point in a more even-handed way.

My other critique of this book is that while the first seven chapters were captivating (if overstated), the last seven were kind of boring.  Having read Stellman’s arguments for “worship,” I had a lot of questions about his conception of “life,” but he didn’t really answer many of my questions.  This is why I say that the book kind of lost steam.  The last seven chapters were more of a shotgun approach with bits and pieces of the puzzle being put together, but clearly with some frustrating gaps in clarity.  Two of the chapters:  9) Egypt’s Unworthiness:  Joseph, Moses, and Vanity of Time and 11) Worldliness:  Puritans, Pagans, and the Proper Place of Pleasure were on point, but the other chapters seemed to deal with secondary or even tertiary issues rather than the main subject matter at hand.  Maybe Stellman is just lacking a conclusion or an introduction to the second half of the book, but I can’t shake the taste of confusion that the book left on my tongue.  I would have appreciated more information about how Christians should participate in the culture.  How should they work, enjoy and create art, raise families, and participate in politics?  I’m not looking for answers from the Religious Right, I’m looking for answers from the Bible, but Stellman doesn’t really help me any in this endeavor.  He does briefly touch on some of these issues, but never for long, and never in a complete way.  Personally, I could have done without a few of the chapters that he did write (even though they were fine in and of themselves) and done with a few of the chapters he didn’t write on cultural engagement.  And to reiterate again, I think Stellman would benefit from a conclusion to pull all the pieces together.

So…for a first book this is pretty decent (I mean I’ve never written a book!), but I think it could use some additional clarity in the second half, and a more nuanced approach overall.  Also, I couldn’t help but feel that Stellman occasionally mischaracterized some of those whom he critiqued (which is why I would appreciate a more nuanced approach).  (And hopefully it won’t be said that I lacked a nuanced approach while writing this review, which is brief at best, but I’ll gladly accept any dialogue about my comments if anyone disagrees.)  At the end of the day, I think it would be a blast to sit down with Stellman at a coffee shop and talk theology, and maybe some day I’ll run into him and we’ll do just that.  Probably not, but maybe.  Anyway, I hope he writes another book because the nugget of understanding that he provided for me in the introduction about cult and culture was worth the whole book.

I’ll end by saying that if you are interested in the subject matter of dual citizenship, I don’t think you can go wrong with Living at the Crossroads by Bartholomew and Goheen.  In my opinion it’s a clearer and more well-rounded approach to this same subject.  At least read it first, and then read this book second.

Related Posts:

• Two Great Quotes that are Currently Rocking My World…
• Book Review – Living at the Crossroads by Bartholomew & Goheen
• Book Review: The Escondido Theology by John Frame
• Book Review: A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards by George M. Marsden
• The Kingdom of Christ by Russell D. Moore

“As citizens of God’s kingdom, we may not just write off the present earth as a total loss, or rejoice in its deterioration.  We must indeed be working for a better world now.  Our efforts to bring the kingdom of Christ into fuller manifestation are of eternal significance.  Our Christian life today, our struggles against sin – both individual and institutional – our mission work, our attempt to develop and promote a distinctively Christian culture, have value not only for this world but even for the world to come.”

- Anthony Hoekema, The Bible & the Future, page 287.

In Plato’s thought, salvation is:

• vertical (our destiny is upward in heaven)
• otherworldly (our souls are saved into another spiritual world)
• an escape (we are saved not as part of this world but rather from this world)

But a genuinely Christian worldview contradicts the Platonic view at each of these points, since biblically, the goal of salvation is:

• horizontal (we look forward in history to the renewal of creation)
• of this world (the creation is to be renewed)
• integral to God’s ultimate plan for this world (no escape is necessary)

- Michael Goheen & Craig Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads, page 52.

Related Posts:

• The Bible and the Future by Anthony Hoekema
• Book Review – Living at the Crossroads by Bartholomew & Goheen
• The Kingdom of Christ by Russell D. Moore
• Book Review: Total Church by Tim Chester & Steve Timmis
• Extended Quote of the Day: Craig Bartholomew & Ryan O’Dowd