Who's in hell? 'Love Wins' book by evangelical Pastor Rob Bell sparks sparks eternal debate

By TOM BREEN, Associated Press

DURHAM, N.C. -- When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.

The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.

Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.

"I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity of torment," Holtz said. "But I can understand why people in my church aren't ready to leave that behind. It's something I'm still grappling with myself."

The debate over Bell's new book "Love Wins" has quickly spread across the evangelical precincts of the Internet, in part because of an eye-catching promotional video posted on YouTube.

Bell, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., lays out the premise of his book while the video cuts away to an artist's hand mixing oil paints and pastels and applying them to a blank canvas.

He describes going to a Christian art show where one of the pieces featured a quote by Mohandas Gandhi. Someone attached a note saying: "Reality check: He's in hell."

"Gandhi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?" Bell asks in the video.

In the book, Bell criticizes the belief that a select number of Christians will spend eternity in the bliss of heaven while everyone else is tormented forever in hell.

"This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear," he writes in the book.

For many traditional Christians, though, Bell's new book sounds a lot like the old theological position of universalism - a heresy for many churches, teaching that everyone, regardless of religious belief, will ultimately be saved by God. And that, they argue, dangerously misleads people about the reality of the Christian faith.

"I just felt like on every page he's trying to say 'It's OK,'" said Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler at a forum last week on Bell's book held at the Louisville institution. "And there's a sense in which we desperately want to say that. But the question becomes, on what basis can we say that?"

Bell argues that hell has assumed an outsize importance in Christian teaching, considering the word itself only appears in the New Testament about 12 times, by his count.

"For a 1st-century Jewish rabbi, where you go when you die wasn't the most pressing question," Bell told The Associated Press. "The question was how can you enter into the shalom and peace of God right now, this day."

Bell denies he's a universalist, and his exact beliefs on what happens to people after death are hard to pin down, but he argues that such speculation distracts people from an urgent point. In his telling, hell is something freely chosen that already exists on earth, in everything from war to abusive relationships.

The near-relish with which some Christians stress the torments of hell, Bell argues, keep many believers needlessly afraid of a loving God, and repel potential Christians who might otherwise be curious about the faith's teachings.

"The heart of the Christian story is that God is love," he said. "But when you hear the word 'Christian,' you don't necessarily think 'Oh, sure, those are the people who don't stop talking about God's love.' Some other things would come to mind."

About the only thing everyone agrees on is that this is not a new debate in Christianity. It stretches to antiquity, when Christianity was a persecuted sect in the Roman Empire, and the third century theologian Origen developed a theory that contemporary critics charged would mean that everyone, even the devil himself, would ultimately be saved. Church leaders eventually condemned ideas they attributed to Origen, but he has had a lasting influence across the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions.

Those traditions often disagree, even internally, on what awaits souls after death. The Catholic Church, which has a formal process for identifying souls in heaven through canonization, pointedly refrains from saying that anyone is without a doubt in hell. Protestants reject the concept of purgatory, in which sins can be atoned for after death, but disagree on other questions. The lack of consensus is enabled partly by ambiguities in the Bible.

Evangelical opposition to Bell is exemplified in a succinct tweet from prominent evangelical pastor John Piper: "Farewell, Rob Bell."

Page Brooks, a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, thinks Bell errs in a conception of a loving God that leaves out the divine attributes of justice and holiness.

"It's love, but it's a just love," Brooks said. "God is love, but you have to understand you're a sinner and the only way to get around that is through Christ's sacrifice on the cross."

Making his new belief public is both liberating and a little frightening for Holtz, even though his doubts about traditional doctrines on damnation began long before he heard about Rob Bell's book.

A married Navy veteran with five children, Holtz spent years trying to reconcile his belief that Jesus Christ's death on the cross redeemed the entire world with the idea that millions of people - including millions who had never even heard of Jesus - were suffering forever in hell.

"We do these somersaults to justify the monster god we believe in," he said. "But confronting my own sinfulness, that's when things started to topple for me. Am I really going to be saved just because I believe something, when all these good people in the world aren't?"

Gray Southern, United Methodist district superintendent for the part of North Carolina that includes Henderson, declined to discuss Holtz's departure in detail, but said there was more to it than the online post about Rob Bell's book.

"That's between the church and him," Southern said.

Church members had also been unhappy with Internet posts about subjects like gay marriage and the mix of religion and patriotism, Holtz said, and the hell post was probably the last straw. Holtz and his family plan to move back to Tennessee, where he'll start a job and maybe plant a church.

"So long as we believe there's a dividing point in eternity, we're going to think in terms of us and them," he said. "But when you believe God has saved everyone, the point is, you're saved. Live like it."

Comments

[Donna]

There is no truth to what is in the Old and New Testament so get over it. Close the churches and make them art museums.

[Donna Adams]

If I had a dime for each church leader that I have know who was either a drunk, coke head, free baser, pervert, pedophile or complete fraud for the Mafia I would retire.

[Kellye]

Thanks for this article - I was at Marc Driscoll's sermon last night, and I was curious if some of his passion was in opposition to recent debates.

Donna - I'm sorry you've had such negative experiences with the church; even when a group of people believe in Jesus, they still remain human.

[sonsof thunder]

Most Christians choose to believe what our Lord Jesus states concerning all things as opposed to man's limited worldly thoughts. Christians dont let the musings of this pastor stumble you to believe Satan's lies.

There are over 162 references in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) that warn of Hell.

Over 70 of these references are attributed to Jesus.

According to the gospels, Jesus spoke more on Hell than on any other subject. However, many skeptics and religious liberals suggest that the frequency with which Hell appears in individual gospels may reflect the beliefs of their authors or of the authors' faith group more than that of Jesus.

The word Hell in the Christian Scriptures appears frequently in: Mark (3 occurrences),

Matthew (12),
Luke (3),
Acts (2),
Revelation (4).

[Theophile]

Revelation states "death and hell" will be thrown into the lake of fire. that makes hell and the "lake of fire" separate places, for now. Fortunately Christ has the keys to hell and death.

[Theophile]

Hey Donna, better reread that Bible, it seems You and Jesus agree on church leaders! might be true?

[RUSaved?]

Salvation is not free - it costed the life of God's only Son. He died to pay the penalty of sin (death).
That is why there are three stages of salvation:
justification (freed from the penalty of sin), sanctification (freed from the power of sin) and glorification (freed from the presence of sin). While we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us that we may have eternal life. Unconditional love is given to allow repentance, but there is no forgiveness without confession and repentance. (go to salvation123.com)

[Aaron]

Maybe instead of arguing theology we ought to feed the poor or care for orphans and widows? Probably not enough recognition or self-righteousness in that to make it worth-while though.

[Scott]

HA! As a church goer myself, it is about time those of us who realize there is something wrong with the church as it is to stand up. I wonder what the world would be like if we all actually practiced what we preached. Completely.

[Joseph]

Hell is referenced 15 times in the New Testament and 11 of them come from Jesus' own mouth. So either Jesus is a liar, a lunatic or He is Lord. You choose! God wants you to choose Him ,but He loves you enough to let you choose It is simple. If you choose God, you will go with Him to His home - Heaven. If you don't choose God, you by default choose Satan and you will go to his home - hell. Can it be more plain? God does not send you to hell, we send ourselves based on our own choices.

[AAJD]

Nothing in this debate is new. It goes back to at least second-century Alexandria, as I demonstrate here: http://easternchristianbooks.blogspot.com/2011/03/is-rob-bell-right.html

[Shirley]

I believe Jesus loves me and you so much, He died for our sins, rose again, went to prepare a place in heaven for us. I also believe in God's word,the Holy Bible; Revelation 20:10 (KJV)
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Don't be sorry. Why take the chance of 'for ever and ever' (everlasting) Hell when Heaven is FREE? Accept Christ as your savior today.