{"id":84082,"date":"2019-07-23T13:10:25","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T17:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=84082"},"modified":"2019-07-23T18:18:03","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T22:18:03","slug":"je-jeffrey-walton-lutheran-bishops-and-an-empty-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=84082","title":{"rendered":"(JE) Jeffrey Walton–Lutheran Bishops and an Empty Hell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tip of the hat to Lutheran blogger Dan Skogen, who highlighted<\/a> this exchange. The church historically teaches \u2013 and most Christians today would reiterate \u2013 that God loves everyone and seeks their best interest. But does that love mean that Hell is, as Egensteiner asserted, empty?<\/p>\n

Even among many liberal mainline Protestant luminaries, the doctrine of Hell is taken seriously today more so than in the past two generations. In 2008, the liberal Christian Century<\/em> hosted a symposium on Hell. As IRD\u2019s Mark Tooley reported<\/a> somewhat surprisingly, most of the respondents seemed to believe in it. This stands in stark contrast to early and mid-20th<\/sup> Century liberal Protestants who rejected the existence of Hell outright.<\/p>\n

This old Protestant liberalism was embodied by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong<\/a>. Tooley notes that Spong gained celebrity in the 1980s writing books denying supernatural Christianity and insisting rationalism was the only way to \u201csave\u201d the faith for younger people. Meanwhile, his Episcopal Diocese of Newark lost nearly half its members under his watch, and the seminars he taught in retirement attracted only the elderly.<\/p>\n

Rarely today do Tooley or I encounter liberal Protestants similar to Spong who are under 60 (Egensteiner turns 62 next month). \u201cModernist\u201d views are now pass\u00e9, and liberal Protestants under age 50 typically believe in an afterlife and sometimes even Hell.<\/p>\n

But Hell isn\u2019t just about the afterlife. As I reported<\/a> last year on an Anglican workshop that addressed preaching on the subject, the Doctrine of Hell has consequences today for the living including Christology, evangelism, human dignity and our \u201ctone in life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHell is empty and we should have no concern about our eternal fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why be a #Christian<\/a>? What\u2019s the point?#religion<\/a> #lutheran<\/a> #elca<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/WaVSfPXrOm<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Dennis Lennox (@dennislennox) July 23, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n