You could say that 2011 was the “year from hell.”
I didn’t see it coming. In January, a friend from Australia sent a manuscript of a book on hell and asked if it would fly in the United States. Steve Bagi had written an excellent book on “Pastor Pain.” I told Steve I didn’t see his “hell” book catching on here.
John Chandler
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Then Rob Bell published Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Has Ever Lived. Fellow pastor and writer John Piper famously tweeted, “Farewell, Rob Bell,” dismissing Bell from the ranks of evangelicalism. The raging debate was on. Hell is a “hot” topic again. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself!)
Thought-leaders Tim Keller, Francis Chan and Mark Galli (Christianity Today) have since published books on hell. Ancient debates of Dante, Milton and C.S. Lewis are current again. Accusations of universalism, heresy, and meanness fly across the table.
Professor Jeff Cook argues that the spectrum of perspectives within biblical orthodoxy ranges from:
• Hell is a place of unending punishment whose fires torment without end.
• Hell is a place of rehabilitation whose fires restore the damned.
• Hell is a place of annihilation whose fires consume everything wed to sin and death.
• Hell is a reality whose details have not been clearly told.
Cook says each perspective can claim biblical warrant. He also laments that Christians don’t seem to talk about the topic with other Christians without, well, condemning opponents to hell.
Francis Chan says that the discussion on hell has exposed “how unhealthy we are as believers and as a body, especially in the U.S. We don’t know how to disagree well. We revert to name-calling or labeling, belittling, versus getting into the Word and loving each other. … Everyone runs to their camp.”
The bad news is that the trending debate about hell has surfaced ugly argumentative habits, even though schism has classically been considered worse than heresy in the church.
The good news is that the conversation about hell reminds us of the eternal stakes in the conversation about Jesus, and the urgency to have those conversations with those who seem oblivious to it. So, talk with humility, but talk quickly with people about hell!
Trending is written by John Chandler, leader of the Spence Network, www.spencenetwork.org./equip.htm. He is a member at All Souls, a Baptist congregation in Charlottesville, Va.