What the H?!!

The battle has been raging for the past few months over the understanding of hell within the American Evangelical realm. Where is hell? What is hell? Does it exist? If it exists, who goes there? If people go there, how long are they there and what is it like? Some of the young guns in American Evangelical Christianity are shooting it out in the streets, while some of the old guys are shooting from the rooftops and lobbing grenades.

If you’re new to the debate, or if you’ve missed some of the important contributors, here’s a sort of timeline (not necessarily in chronological order) that will catch you up.

Hell: Round 1
Rob Bell started it off with the video promoting his new book, “Love Wins”, published by Harper.

Hell: Round 2
He was followed by numerous detractors including Justin Taylor, Kevin DeYoung, and John Piper in the form of a Tweet (all very good “Reformed” folk by the way).

So, we had the bunch of Quick-Draw-McGraws sounding off as fast as they could, but then we even had the good pleasure of hearing from those who think Satire is the best way of dealing with stuff like this.

Hell: Round 3
Some level-headed Joes began pointing out the inadequacy of responding to a book that had not been read yet. These included Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Scot McKnight and others. At this point, if you've checked any of my links, you will find that almost all of them end up linking to the others and to many more that I'm not listing.

Hell: Round 4
The other’s who had read advanced copies or chapters started to give their input. No links here. Start investigating.

Hell: Round 5
It all hit the mainstream. Time Magazine had the cover story.

Then, everyone who was opposed from the beginning, read the book and started giving the expected critiques.

Some more old hands started chiming in. John MacArthur threw the False Teacher Bomb, as usual.

Hell: Round 6
I was really happy when N.T. Wright weighed in with his “You Silly Americans” routine brought to you by Kurt Willems at The Pangea Blog. People quickly responded to him.


Interlude
As i was tracking all of this, I began asking other kinds of questions. By the way, attempting to track all of this is extremely difficult and is really why i decided to write the whole post. It brings up an entirely different issue, which the InternetMonk talks about in his post on Harold Camping, Plowboys, and the Peril of Jouissance. Though he’s using the recent May 21st Judgment Day Scare as his example I think we can see that we are having the same problem, no matter what issue we’re talking about.

This whole process is fascinating to me. It is totally different than how the church used to have these discussions and it’s all because of changes in the way we communicate with things like social media (i.e., blogging, twitter, facebook. etc.), the instant availability of information, and the fact that everyone who can read a Bible can then say whatever they want about it.

Now, not only are blogs being written in response, but whole books. This can be both great and very confusing!

Hell: Round 6
Mark Galli started working on a response book God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News Is Better than Love Wins. Now Francis Chan along with Preston Sprinkle are submitting their own response in Erasing Hell: What God said about eternity, and the things we made up.

Of course, Francis appeared in a video which people are now responding to, without having read his book yet.

Here’s one response to Francis by Jeff Cook. Here’s a response to Jeff responding to Francis by C Michael Patton. And here’s John Shore responding to Francis and even bringing Preston into the picture, recognizing that if the author is listed as So and So #1 and So and So #2, then most of the book is probably written by So and So #2. That’s true. John tries his best to use logic to explain God and solve the whole problem, but he’s not helping us very much.

My Final Thoughts for Now

I applaud Francis for desiring to get everything out on the table. I always appreciate his heart and I think the book he’s working on with Preston will show more of what Scripture actually says as a whole about hell. All of this is producing a lot of disunity at the moment. I happen to know that unity is a big deal to Francis and Preston, so i’m trusting they will do a great job of bringing people together.

One problem is that there is not really one table where everyone is sitting. There are a bunch of little tables that don’t make room for everyone. And when one person overhears what was said at one of the little tables, they share it with all their friends at their own smaller table and usually get most of it wrong. I believe this is all a result of something Alister McGrath calls Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution--A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First. Everyone can read and interpret the Bible for themselves. Protestants say we don't like Popes, but we actually just end up assigning a bunch of little ones to our liking. Now, a bunch of our new, young popes are fighting and we don't really know what to do about it.

My next post will contain all the hell related verses I could find that I assume Francis and Preston will talk about along with some of my thoughts about hell.