Below is my reply to an article (Then All H–ck Broke Loose) that the founder of my organization Orphan Justice Mission Tim Stoner wrote recently. It's a great piece and adds to the discussion regarding Rob Bell's new book Love Wins.
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Tim, well done. I always appreciate your sense of historical context and it's a reminder (which Rob mentions also in his piece on Good Morning America's website) that we are just another link in the long chain of sinners and saints who have for ages been wrestling with God over these big questions. Is there an older one than "Can a good God allow suffering?" (isn't Job the oldest book in the Bible?).
I respect Rob. I spent time at Mars when I was in G.R. and I learned a lot from him. My main take away was the repetitive teaching that Christianity is not about tickets to heaven, but about God's transformative work in our lives now, that He's Lord now, not just someday but here, in this moment. This was a powerful motivation in my effort to get involved with Orphan Justice Mission (as we discussed at that first meeting in the M-6 Panera) and still informs my Christian worldview. I've also known he's been theologically controversial in the past, and I have given him grace, knowing that all of us, like it or not, get something wrong, possibly even our strongest convictions. Yet what I witnessed during my time at Mars was a sincere love of Christ, an appreciation for the scriptures and call for faith-based action (and some of the best worship I've ever been a part of).
That being said, this one has me worried. I think it's extremely difficult to argue that Hell is not Hell (even if you rely on the faulty assumption that God some how changed between the Old and New Testaments). God is not clear on everything, much to the surprise of my more fundamental friends. I have always appreciated Rob's emphasis on the discussion, or the "white space" surrounding the black characters on the pages of scripture, as he calls it. This is not saying there isn't truth or that somethings can't be known for sure, but the very fact that God has decided to entrust his record to stories, poetry and letters says that he's okay with us having questions, with having to dig and debate and wrestle to find truth. Hell is certainly one of those topics in which we are given only small snippets of and we ought to be careful not to claim we know all there is to know about it. What the scriptures do make clear, however, outside of hyperbole or metaphor, is that it exists, it will suck and is for those who have rejected Jesus Christ. Hard, yes, but that's the Bible, so I appreciate your point that God defines God, not man, and He has decided to show us all of his qualities, Love and all the other traits that help us understand what holy love is. I will read Rob's book and hold onto my hope that he's not going where everyone says he's going. I remain indebted to much of his teaching, but if he has become a universalist, well, that's lame and shows a blatant disregard for core teachings of scripture.
Just a few left over thoughts:
I think your position that Rob can't conceive of a God who causes, engages in, is present during suffering is faulty. I have not read his book Drops Like Stars, but I think that's the whole idea, that God actually uses suffering in our lives to create beauty. Mars Hill has also used Lent in a very orthodox sense as a time of reflection on human suffering and the Passion narrative.
Also, for those railing Rob and triumphantly, boldly, cockily celebrating the existence of Hell out of a sense of pious scriptural orthodoxy, I would say be careful (not talking about you here :) ). One of my greatest frustrations with Rob's opposition is their arrogance. For example, I once heard John MacAurther on the radio essentially insulting Rob, not just his theology or his teachings, but him personally. And the now famous tweet from John Piper "Farewell, Rob Bell." Rob's teaching may be dangerous, but the posture and behavior of some of our best evangelical theologians fits easily into the definition of hypocrite. The write well about the Spirit of Christ in our lives, but don't present it well in public. The one thing the universalists may have going for them is that they have a more complete understanding of the terribleness of Hell, and more love for those who would be/are doomed to such a fate than those of us who so boldly talk of the judgment of God because we believe we are protected from it. They simply can't hold the tension between love and holiness and so remove it rather than allowing God to remain above a perceived paradox. Evangelicals may have it right by acknowledging God's judgement, but I would love to see those who fight so vehemently for Hell's existence work just as hard keeping people out of it. And that takes way more than just clean cut doctrine.
I found this section helpful:
ReplyDelete"God is not clear on everything, much to the surprise of my more fundamental friends. I have always appreciated Rob's emphasis on the discussion, or the "white space" surrounding the black characters on the pages of scripture, as he calls it. This is not saying there isn't truth or that somethings can't be known for sure, but the very fact that God has decided to entrust his record to stories, poetry and letters says that he's okay with us having questions, with having to dig and debate and wrestle to find truth."
I have come from a highly conservative (bordering on fundamentalist) evangelical background for most of my life. There are many of my past acquaintance who would be appalled at the statement that the Bible is not an encyclopaedic repository of all knowledge. God a problem? Go to your cross-referenced topical index to see what God says! They would yell even louder at the idea that God ever speaks with shades of gray or anything but perfect clarity. I have since divorced myself strongly from those points of view and have consequently found a hunger for the Bible I never had before. Viewed through the lens of poetry, culture, and myth, God becomes to me more of a person and less of a proposition.
It is also amazing to me that for such a seemingly critical doctrine as eternal torment there is a shocking dearth of references to it in the NT (the OT does not mention it at all). Gehenna is the best word that carries the modern concept of Hell; Jesus used it 11 times while Paul used it once. To be sure, number of usages does not prove much of anything, but it does raise the question why God did not see fit to emphasize this more frequently. By contrast, "eternal life" is mentioned 43 times in the NT.
What does all this mean? I don't know that I have the answer yet, but I appreciate the efforts of brothers like you and Rob and Tim to engage the Scriptures and see what can be gleaned from them. There seems to me to be enough "white space" surrounding the doctrine of eternal torment that I would not be comfortable espousing it as essential Christian dogma.
Spencer, thanks for the response and for being part of the discussion, both on Tim's blog and now on mine. I really enjoy the dialogue and hope it continues to sharpen us all. I didn't come from as fundamental a background as you describe, but I've encountered those ideas and have wrestled with them in my own faith journey (isn't the Word of God a person? what does inspiration mean? what happens when a writer like Paul says he's not speaking for God in a book the church has declared to be holy writ? etc.). It's a profitable adventure to be on and I encourage you to let the hunger you spoke of lead you. That's one good thing that's come of this whole Love Wins ordeal (Rob's intended outcome?); I've been convicted to dig back into scripture and consume large quantities hunting for clarity, and it's nothing but a joy to engage and seek after God in that way. And that leads me to a quick thought regarding your final comment, which states you wouldn't be comfortable espousing eternal torment of sinners by the decree of God to be essential Christian dogma. I understand where you're coming from, the quote from my post led you there and it's true, there are a lot of details left out. As Rob said, God hasn't given us video evidence of the afterlife. However, to debate this subject using only the term "hell", be it gehenna or Tartaras or even Sheol is to miss probably the majority of the texts that would give us insight into the eternal damnation question. This is a major frustration I have with Rob's approach, which is to only focus on the word "hell". Those few scriptures rest on a broad network of revelations about God's wrath, judgement, justice, destruction, anger, etc. It's really no good talking about what happens to souls in the afterlife until you've also engaged those concepts and themes. I've reread through Matthew, Mark, Titus, and Revelation (picked somewhat randomly) with my eye out for anything that speaks of those themes and they are numerous. I've come away with a strong confidence that the scriptures do teach judgement, eternal punishment (possibly annihilation if you want to get tricky) and exile from the "kingdom". I was reading Exodus the other day, too, and came across the story of Moses talking God out of the destruction of all the Israelites for worshiping the golden calf. Just another piece of evidence that God is holy, and the fire of His anger can burn hot.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thanks for the thoughts and I hope we're all willing to embrace the parts of the scriptures that are vague and mysterious as well as those that are pretty straightforward and clear, and may the Spirit give us the wisdom to know the difference.
Thanks for the reply, Kyle!
ReplyDeleteYou're right that if nothing else, the universalist controversy (I haven't read Love Wins, myself) is beneficial for sending me -- and us -- back to the Scriptures. I have found more passion for the Scriptures and indeed for God through this search. That's not all that matters, but it's an awful lot of what does.
You mention that the Scriptures do in fact teach judgment, eternal punishment, and exile from the Kingdom. I would only bring arguments against the second of those (i.e., eternal punishment -- Jesus uses the words "aionios kolasin"). To be sure, God will visit His wrath on the ungodly and unrepentant, but the question is about the quality of that wrath -- Is it unending or age-lasting (a possibly better translation of "aionios")? Is it purely punitive or is it corrective (a possibly better translation of "kolasin")? I'm still searching for the answers. Along the way, I've found numerous thematic threads in Scripture that talk of God's anger lasting for a moment, about His everlasting mercy, His unending love, how He will not accuse forever, and the incomparable riches of His grace. It's a delicate balance, but one that Scripture seems comfortable with.
The bottom line is that if I were to finally believe in a finite cleansing Gehenna instead of an eternal punitive Hell, I don't see the conflict with the passages about His judgment and exile from the Kingdom. Only when we assume that His judgment is final and irrevocable or that the exile is permanent will this conflict occur. I think that there is support in Scripture for both points of view – maybe this is an irreconcilable tension. Or maybe, like in the 17th century with Arminianism and Calvinism, this is prompting Christians to wrestle with both facets of the Biblical narrative.