I’m not quite done with McLaren’s The Last Word and the Word After That but I’ve come to a point where I want to put some of his book in perspective. Two observations tonight. First, a smaller one but one that needs to be said. McLaren’s essential stance in this latest novel (or whatever one calls a book where we’ve got two fellas sorting out their theology) is rhetorical. That is, he’s trying to get a conversation going about hell... Read more

If you’ve followed these blogs about hell, you’ll know that I got them going before I started reading The Last Word and the Word After That. And of the blogs I had planned had to do with the role historical judgment has played in how many speak of hell. My mind is slow after a day of chatting and drinking tea on the back porch with Kris and the kids (and their spouses). Luke and Annika are “fixin” to move... Read more

When my editor friend suggested that I blog, I balked. Mostly because I didn’t know what it really was all about, but also because I never anticipated it would be this much fun. Maybe I’ll burn out with this and someday just stop but for right now this has been a wonderful ride with others on their journey of faith. If you looked at Books and Culture to see the piece by Corcoran, and then looked above it, you will... Read more

In yesterday’s very active blog about Dark Thoughts some commented on what they “hoped” while some others thought such “hopes” were unbiblical and misplaced. I offer here not so much what I believe and what I will eventually state in these blogs, but why it is that many of us really do “hope” Dark Thoughts, as traditionally stated, are not the Last Word. I grieve over those who think we shouldn’t “hope” such things, as if our “hoping” is somehow... Read more

As a college student, and over in Belgium on a mission trip where I learned so much about the bigness of the Church, I was fortunate enough to be able to sit daily and listen to John R.W. Stott preach. He said something that has never left me, and it pertains to what we are discussing in this series of blogs about Dark Thoughts. Here it is — and I paraphrase: “Anyone who speaks about hell as the fate of... Read more

Kevin Corcoran, from Calvin, writes in Books and Culture on a topic that many of my students have recently asked me about: hell. The questions came up well before McLaren’s book, which I’ll be working my way through shortly. Corcoran is asking a question that needs to be asked at some serious levels, both lay and professional. It is this: Can Protestants, and this defined in the rather traditional way, affirm some kind of sense of Purgatory or a post-mortem... Read more