A new book by one of the country’s most influential evangelical pastors, challenging traditional Christian views of heaven, hell and eternal damnation, has created an uproar among evangelical leaders, with the most ancient of questions being argued in a biblical hailstorm of Twitter messages and blog posts.
In a book to be published this month, the pastor, Rob Bell, known for his provocative views and appeal among the young, describes as “misguided and toxic” the dogma that “a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.”
Such statements are hardly radical among more liberal theologians, who for centuries have wrestled with the seeming contradiction between an all-loving God and the consignment of the billions of non-Christians to eternal suffering. But to traditionalists they border on heresy, and they have come just at a time when conservative evangelicals fear that a younger generation is straying from unbendable biblical truths.
I find it interesting reading the comments after the article, how many atheists decide to comment on a story they believe to be surrounding fairy tales.
Whatever dogma there is about beatitude and damnation, the quotation from Bell is a caricature. Here is a more fleshed out version:
It seems: 1. God is the greatest good. God is source of all goodness. God is the good that makes all other good things good. 2. I enjoy God in fits and starts now. Someday I will enjoy God without ceasing. 3. On that day, only those who enjoy God will enjoy other creaturely goods, because creatures will be revealed to be good only because of God.
On the contrary: 4. I enjoy other goods now. It would be unfair if I could not enjoy them when God is revealed to be the source of all creaturely goodness. 5. It is unfair that you will enjoy God and other forms of creaturely goodness when God is revealed to be the source of all goodness.
I reply: 6. God has made a way for you in Jesus Christ. On behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Obey Christ and you may enjoy God and all creaturely goods as God ordains. 7. We will only enjoy God because God has given us grace to do so.
On the contrary: 8. I did not say I want to enjoy God. I enjoy creatures and want to continue doing so. This proves enjoying God first and foremost is unnecessary to enjoying creatures and suggest it is also unfair. 9. Obedience Christ is and unfair and unnecessary condition to enjoying God or creatures. 10. Grace is a euphemism for divine arbitrariness.
I reply: 11. Children enjoy food without toiling in the office or the field. For them to say that thus it should ever be for all people is understandable but mistaken. 12. God cannot unbecome the source of all creaturely goodness without those goods ceasing to be. That is what God is and what creatures are. 13. Desiring to enjoy creatures without enjoying God first and foremost is what will prevent people from enjoying creatures. 14. That obedience to Christ may be unpalatable or uninteresting to some people is not itself a reason that such obedience is unfair or unnecessary. 15. Divine arbitrariness is a dyphemism for God’s uncompelled action and love.
It’s too bad that this vital topic has been taken up by a flake. I know only too many people who believe that only a few Christians will ever see paradise because Christ has said that the only way to the gate is through him to the Father. Yes, yes, i can read too, but there are other contexts that will not yield the same merciless results.
E.g., Mere Christianity suggests that God has not told us his plans for bringing all mankind to Christ – regardless of time or circumstance. He implies that it is hubris indeed to suppose that God should be obliged to explain to us what he is going to do with all of mankind who can know nothing of the historical Christ.
Second, Christ has made it clear who is his audience and for whom he has come. Is it to the Samaritan woman he declares that he has for the children of Israel? This is actually pretty clear. This is his select audience and he speaks to them in language that he knows they, in particular, understand. Accordingly, his remark that one can come to the Father only through him is probably directly aimed at his identified audience, not all mankind (for whom his Father has plans which, for some reason, he failed to to open to us for our complete edification.)