I want so badly to transcend the tribalism of the Rob Bell vs. Team Hell battle, but I have to say that I\u2019m frustrated Francis Chan only gave himself three months to write Erasing Hell<\/em>, his response book to Love Win<\/em>s. I guess I should start by saying nice things about his book. I did appreciate the way that Chan was trying to be confessional and vulnerable and sympathetic (22, 163, other places). I also saw that he was trying hard to find ways that his presuppositions had changed over the course of his three-month writing blitz (e.g. maybe annhilationism isn\u2019t heresy, 86). He also acknowledges very importantly (121-122) the way that it\u2019s abominable to proof-text Matthew 25 for \u201ceternal punishment\u201d but then dismiss what Jesus says we have to do<\/em> to avoid hell. Matthew 25:31-46 and Luke 16:19-31 clash with the books of Romans and Galatians and there\u2019s nothing we can do about it. It\u2019s quite astounding when people who preach about \u201cletting God be God\u201d turn around and iron the nuance out of the Biblical witness to fit their systematic theology (a problem which Chan seems to acknowledge, thankfully).<\/p>\n So I recognize that he tried, but I guess I was hoping for something more inspiring from Chan, kind of akin to the way that Skynyrd\u2019s \u201cSweet Home Alabama\u201d was an amazing retort to the other great song about the South, Neil Young\u2019s \u201cSouthern Man.\u201d I really am just trying to understand the issue of hell better so I can be a more effective pastor and preacher. I want to preach a gospel that makes people excited about giving their lives to Jesus and building the kingdom of God. And I agree with H. Richard Niebuhr\u2019s assessment that there is little power in a gospel in which \u201c\u201da God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.\u201d But Chan\u2019s book let me down.<\/p>\n I think I wanted Chan to put a little more effort into his apologetics, showing me more of how his reading of hell is essential to the logic of his interpretation of the gospel rather than settling for the predictable \u201cThe Bible says so, and I shrug my shoulders\u201d response to this issue. To be more effective apologists to people with my sensibilities, there are certain gestures and tactics that writers like Chan need to lose. Otherwise they\u2019ll continue to appeal to people who already agreed with them before opening their books. I\u2019d really like to hear someone else from the \u201chell defense league\u201d give a more adequate presentation of this issue both in terms of substance and tone. So if you\u2019re so inclined, please avoid the following pitfalls.<\/p>\n 1) Don\u2019t airbrush the context out of the passages you quote<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m not really sure how Isaiah 55:8-9 became part of the canned Calvinist explanation for God\u2019s inexplicable predestinarian wrath, but it wasn\u2019t surprising that Chan followed suit, dropping the passage on page 133.<\/p>\n \u201cFor my thoughts are not your thoughts, <\/em>neither are your ways my ways,\u201d <\/em>declares the LORD.<\/em> \u201cAs the heavens are higher than the earth, <\/em>so are my ways higher than your ways <\/em>and my thoughts than your thoughts.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The reason why this is a pet peeve of mine is because the preceding verse in Isaiah 55:7 that this text explicates is about God\u2019s inexplicable mercy<\/em> not His condemnation: \u201cLet the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.\u201d This is an example of proof-texting a passage from the Bible to make it mean the opposite of what it says in its context. <\/em>Sorry but that\u2019s abominable hermeneutics. Please, Calvinists, don\u2019t ever use Isaiah 55:8-9 again as a proof-text for God\u2019s predestined condemnation without explaining why you feel justified unhinging these verses from 55:7!<\/p>\n 2) Shame != Eternal Conscious Torment<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Early on in his book Chan seeks to dispense with \u201cuniversalist\u201d proof-texts, like Philippians 2:9-11, which says that \u201cat the name of Jesus every knee shall bow\u201d (which universalists interpret to mean that everyone will \u201caccept\u201d Christ in the end). The way Chan takes down this proof-text is to trace its midrashic source in Isaiah 45:22-25. He says that \u201cin that passage, Isaiah is referring to God\u2019s salvation, which is witnessed<\/em> among the nations and embraced by some<\/em> but not all\u201d (27). According to Chan, any semblance of universalism in Isaiah 45:23 is undermined by Isaiah 45:24 in which God\u2019s \u201cjudgment\u201d is apparently revealed. Let\u2019s look at the whole passage (vv. 22-25) to see if Chan\u2019s interpretation holds up:<\/p>\n Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity, a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. They will say of me, \u201cIn the LORD alone are deliverance and strength.\u201d All who have raged against him will come to him and be put to shame. But all the descendants of Israel will find deliverance in the LORD and will make their boast in him.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Is being \u201cput to shame\u201d ( \u05d9\u05d1\u05e9) the same thing as eternal conscious torment? Is \u201crag[ing] against [God]\u201d analogous to being the man in the jungle who dies without hearing the official gospel of Jesus Christ? No! Isaiah wasn\u2019t interested in weighing in on our hell debate when he wrote out this prophecy. This passage, like every other passage in the Bible, has a particular narrative purpose that doesn\u2019t snap neatly into the formulaic propositional system that modernists from a scientific age want their theology to be.<\/em><\/p>\n This passage is not talking obliquely about the eternal fate of humanity; its contextual purpose is to describe prophetically the time when Israel\u2019s enemies will be humbled. In fact, within this passage, the fault-line is between Israel and the other nations, not between believers and non-believers or all<\/em> of the nations and some<\/em> of the nations. The \u201cdescendents of Israel\u201d are the only ones who \u201cfind deliverance in the Lord.\u201d There is no basis from this passage for saying with Chan that all<\/em> witness God and some<\/em> believe. Israel is delivered from oppression and all<\/em> who witness declare: \u201cIn the Lord alone are deliverance and strength.\u201d Those who opposed God are \u201cput to shame,\u201d but outside of Chan\u2019s proof-texted deployment of this passage, there\u2019s no reason not to interpret being \u201cput to shame\u201d as the moment when Israel\u2019s enemies are forced to repent of their rage against Israel and accept the \u201cdeliverance and strength\u201d that are to be found \u201cin the Lord alone.\u201d<\/p>\n 3) Jesus was not <\/em>just a first-century Jew<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A big part of Chan\u2019s argument hinges on his \u201chistorical-critical\u201d use of 1st century Jewish views on hell. Chan explains that reading the 1st century views he cites should \u201chelp us erase any twenty-first century ideas of Jesus we may have added\u201d (50). He writes that \u201cso ingrained was the belief in hell among first-century Jews that Jesus would have had to go out of His way to distance Himself from these beliefs if He didn\u2019t actually hold them\u201d (49). So in other words, he\u2019s arguing that if Jesus\u2019 description of hell sounds like the other first-century Jewish descriptions of hell that Chan quotes, then Jesus must agree with other first-century Jews about hell.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure that logic is sound. Here\u2019s why. What if the correspondence between the images and assumptions about hell in Jesus\u2019 teachings and contemporary Jewish writers only illustrates that Jesus was effectively exegeting<\/em> His audience? For example, the presumptions and symbols I use rhetorically to make my case as a preacher are going to be completely different if I\u2019m preaching to a bunch of hippies or if I\u2019m preaching to military veterans. If I make a lot of gestures in my sermon to \u201cAmerican values,\u201d it might be because I think patriotism is important or it might be part of how I make my case for something else that\u2019s important<\/em> to an audience of patriotic<\/em> people.<\/p>\n If Jesus had introduced<\/em> hell as a brand-new idea<\/em> , that would make it a critical centerpiece of his message like his reinterpretation of the Sabbath, Jewish dietary laws, etc. But if Chan is right about how commonplace hell was to 1st-century Jewish discourse, then it seems perfectly valid to conclude that Jesus made use of a concept that everybody else was already talking about to make a different point. <\/em>In other words, if the phrase Jesus uses to describe the consequences for ignoring \u201cthe least of His brothers\u201d in Matthew 25:31-46 \u2014 kolasis aionios <\/em>(eternal punishment) \u2014 was a stock-phrase in 1st-century Jewish discourse, as Chan seems to suggest, then Jesus would have used this phrase not to ensure that 21st-century Christians reading today would be clear on the forever-ness<\/em> of damnation, but for the sake of using lingo that would resonate with and persuade his 1st century audience.<\/p>\n Jesus\u2019 point in Matthew 25:31-46 is not to lay out propositional axioms about the afterlife in modern science lecture format, but to challenge presumptions in his audience about who counts in God\u2019s eyes (the poor, the outcasts, the naked, the prisoners, etc). Chan recognizes the way that many fellow evangelicals try to dismiss the force of this passage by \u201cadd[ing] all sorts of footnotes to fix Jesus\u2019 shaky theology\u2026 justification is by faith, not by works; you don\u2019t really have to help literal poor people, etc\u201d (121). But when we reduce this passage to a propositional proof-text for our systematic doctrine on hell rather than allowing ourselves to be judged and shamed by it as Christians who know that we aren\u2019t hell-bound<\/em>, then we will end up treating Jesus\u2019 words dismissively. The more we need for Matthew 25:31-46 to be about hell<\/em>, the less it has to say to people who aren\u2019t going to hell<\/em>.<\/p>\n Jesus used hell<\/em> as a rhetorical device to make other important points. Marshaling out a bunch of 1st-century texts about hell tells us about Jesus\u2019 context but it doesn\u2019t definitively nail down Jesus\u2019 purpose for using hell rhetorically. Jesus was a 1st-century Jew, but he wasn\u2019t just<\/em> a 1st-century Jew.<\/p>\n 4) Give me more than a word study<\/strong> In Rob Bell\u2019s Love Wins<\/em>, he sets out to contest every reference to hell in the Bible, which in turns into one big word study of Greek terms like gehenna<\/em> (hell) and kolasis aionios<\/em> (eternal punishment). It was probably careless of Rob Bell to advance the theory that gehenna<\/em> was the Jerusalem garbage dump. I kind of liked the theory because I\u2019ve never understood how \u201cworms\u201d that \u201cnever die\u201d are swimming around in a lake of fire (Mark 9:48). It makes a lot more sense to me for the hell-worms to live in a giant pile of decaying matter. In any case, I do wish Chan had taken more than three months to write his book, because then he could have done a lot more than disprove Rob Bell\u2019s garbage dump theory and other word studies.<\/p>\n I guess if Erasing Hell<\/em> is only supposed to be a response to Love Wins<\/em> and not a stand-alone treatise in its own right, then it was reasonable for Chan to focus most of his energy on refuting all of Rob Bell\u2019s interpretations of kolasis <\/em>and gehenna<\/em>. But I really wanted more that that! I wanted Chan to explain how Jesus\u2019 rhetorical use of hell fits in the overall framework of his discourse. I\u2019m not sure what\u2019s supposed to be surprising about Jesus making a \u201charsh statement\u201d (86) in every sentence where he uses unpleasant words like kolasis<\/em> and gehenna.<\/em>\u00a0 about that. But shouldn\u2019t we balance the parables that talk about kolasis<\/em> and gehenna<\/em> with parables like the prodigal son that don\u2019t necessarily use these vocabulary words but may have something to say about the afterlife? It seems like circular logic to consider only passages with words like kolasis<\/em> and gehenna<\/em> in them and conclude that Jesus had a one-sided perspective (because we looked at one side of it).<\/p>\n Does it matter that the older brother in the prodigal son parable chooses <\/em>the outer darkness over his father\u2019s banquet rather than getting cast out <\/em>of the banquet by his father? Is this parable allowed to provide us with an insight that nuances Jesus\u2019 message about hell? What\u2019s particularly frustrating is that nobody raised a stink when Tim Keller made this parable the paradigmatic summary of the Christian message in Prodigal God <\/em>but then Rob Bell got pounced on for following Keller\u2019s lead and wondering if our eternal destiny can be understood as our choice to accept or reject God\u2019s mercy when we discover that we must share it with younger brothers whom we find undeserving.<\/p>\n In any case, rather than just scoping out the instances of several specific vocabulary words in the New Testament and making predictably lopsided conclusions as a result, I would have rather seen Francis Chan grapple with how hell fits into the overall story. I would have rather seen Chan wrestle more with the discrepancy between Jesus\u2019 seemingly Pelagian expectations of those who wish to avoid eternal punishment and the solo fidean<\/em> theology of Paul that evangelical Christianity has accepted as normative, which has clipped the wings of Jesus\u2019 commands for us by making Romans the hermeneutical lens for the rest of scripture.<\/p>\n Chan says that Jesus words about hell \u201ccaught [him] off guard because [he is] so used to people emphasizing His words of blessing, not His words of warning\u201d (86). If we filter Jesus\u2019 teachings to consider only His words of warning without the counter-balance of His words of blessings, then we shouldn\u2019t pretend to be surprised at the unusually harsh-sounding Jesus we create in the process.<\/p>\n 5) Don\u2019t Apologize to God for Not Realizing How Right You Already Were<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n One of the more dishonest rhetorical tactics that preachers engage in might be called the use of a straw-self<\/em>, instead of a straw-man. I\u2019ve used this tactic before and I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll use it again. Basically I attribute to myself the qualities about other people that I want to criticize in order to get credit both for humbling myself in public and for not judging others. Maybe I should trust that Chan is a lot less cynical and devious than I am, but it rubs me the wrong way when he apologizes to God for \u201cwanting to erase all the things in Scripture that don\u2019t sit well with me\u2026 [and] trying to hide some of Your actions to make You more palatable to the world\u201d (139). If Chan had written Love Wins<\/em> himself and then felt convicted and wrote Erasing Hell<\/em> as its sequel, then I could take his prayer a little more seriously. If the cover of his book didn\u2019t have as a subtitle, \u201cWhat God said about eternity, and the things we\u2019ve made up,\u201d then I might be a little less tempted to believe that when Chan says \u201cI\u201d or \u201cwe,\u201d he\u2019s really not talking about himself. Why doesn\u2019t he just admit that this is what he, Francis Chan, has to say about eternity and the things that Rob Bell made up?<\/p>\n Long before Chan wrote this book, he was already a disciple of John Macarthur and John Piper, from the school of high nominalism in which the most important thing to know about God\u2019s nature is that \u201cGod has the right to do WHATEVER He pleases\u201d (17). I\u2019m having trouble seeing how his three month intensive writing experience did much other than reaffirm the convictions he already had. So I have a tough time taking seriously a prayer in which he\u2019s asking God\u2019s forgiveness for not believing stringently enough in what he\u2019s trying to convince the reader to believe. It\u2019s problematic to put confessional prayer, which Jesus tells us to do in a private room behind closed doors (Matthew 6:6), in the rhetorical context of a persuasive essay.<\/p>\n I agree that God has the right to do whatever He pleases, which is why I\u2019m bitterly opposed to any kind of systematic theology that pretends to respect His sovereignty while coming up with strict boundaries for what that sovereignty is allowed to look like. What will we do if for some reason God does<\/em> choose in His sovereignty to let all of humanity into heaven? It almost seems like that<\/em> would be the perfect litmus test of who really sees themselves standing upon God\u2019s grace. Will we complain like the workers who spent all day in the vineyard when the \u201cslackers\u201d who worked less than an hour get paid the same denarius? Will we say, \u201cThe hell with you, God,\u201d and step out of the banquet hall into the outer darkness to sulk like the older brother of the prodigal son? It\u2019s certainly not our<\/em> choice, but disallowing God that possibility is not<\/em> respecting His sovereignty. He certainly made all kinds of threats He retracted against Israel. That was the recurring story of their relationship. Are we going to burn with anger like Jonah if it turns out that God doesn\u2019t make good on the threats we find in the Bible and \u201crepents\u201d like He did with Nineveh?<\/p>\n I\u2019m certainly not banking on universalism. And I can\u2019t imagine wanting any less than for everyone I meet to have the joy that I know continually as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Without Christ, I would hate God\u2019s beauty for making me look ugly. I would want to be the source of my own beauty like God rather than thanking God for letting me participate in His beauty. Because of Christ, I have made peace with being a broken vessel of the beauty that comes from beyond me and does not threaten or indict me. I tremble before God but I delight in Him also (and it\u2019s not like the \u201cdelight\u201d that terrified North Korean schoolchildren pretend to have when they clap for Chairman Kim Jong Il). I know that God is love; I know that God is holy; I know that God is fair. So like Chan, I too \u201ccling to Abraham\u2019s words in Genesis 18:25: \u2018Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?'\u201d (163). Abraham was asking God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah (even though Chan again<\/em> didn\u2019t provide the context for his quote). I\u2019ll make a similar plea whenever people who I care about don\u2019t seem to know God when they die; hopefully God will be as patient with me as He was with Abraham. In the meantime, I\u2019m going to invite everyone I meet to come to the heavenly banquet.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want so badly to transcend the tribalism of the Rob Bell vs. Team Hell battle, but I have to say that I\u2019m frustrated Francis Chan only gave himself three months to write Erasing Hell, his response book to Love Wins. I guess I should start by saying nice things about his book. I did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1934,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[876,989,1199,1333,1337,1632,1793,2375],"class_list":["post-10196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology","tag-erasing-hell","tag-francis-chan","tag-hell","tag-isaiah-45","tag-isaiah-55","tag-love-wins","tag-matthew-25","tag-rob-bell"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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