Stop me if you’ve read this one before.
From February 28, 2011, “Team Hell gets loud“:
But what they never said then in their attacks on Pearson, and what they haven’t said now about Bell’s book, is why anyone, anywhere who has ever actually read the Bible would accept that their fiercely defended doctrine of Hell had anything to do with that book. Because, to be clear, this doctrine of Hell is not biblical.
This is why Team Hell’s strategy is always the same:
Step1: Loudly attack opponents of Hell as heretics and Bible-deniers.
Step 2: Loudly assert that the doctrine of Hell is biblical.
Step 3: Even more loudly re-assert that the doctrine of Hell is biblical.
Step 4: Repeat Step 3 until you’re the only one left talking.
That’s not a very compelling construction for an argument, since it doesn’t involve logic or evidence. But if loud, angry repetition of unsupported assertions isn’t an effective way of winning an argument, it can still be an effective way of ending one or avoiding having to engage one. And since Team Hell doesn’t have access to either logic or evidence as support for their position, they figure that will have to do.
By Team Hell I mean those real, true Christians who adamantly argue for a non-negotiable belief in Hell as a physical place that the Bible says is the destiny of all non-RTCs who will go there to receive eternal torment. This belief, they insist, is central to Christianity and anyone who says otherwise, they claim, is abandoning or attacking the Bible.
But again, this idea cannot be found in the Bible. So what the heck is going on? Why do so many devout “authorities” on the Bible get so very upset at the possibility that someone may have written a book challenging an extra-biblical invention? And why do they all shout so loudly and so enthusiastically that any criticism of this cruel invention constitutes an attack on the Bible itself?
Team Hell, of course, disagrees that the idea cannot be found in the Bible. Check out that CT post or any of the posts linked to it and you’ll find dozens of members of Team Hell loudly insisting that the Bible is all about Hell — that Hell is such a basic and central part of the Bible’s message that to reject the idea of Hell is to reject scripture altogether.
But what you won’t find is any of these members of Team Hell actually discussing where the Bible says this, or what the Bible says, or how what the Bible says could possibly be taken to mean this. Because this supposed “biblical Hell” does not exist. The Bible doesn’t teach this.
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