Locusts and Wild Honey: Hell

Rob Bell's appealing but theologically vacuous bestseller Love Wins has produced a considerable volume of critiques, most of which represent that sector of evangelicalism which has always accepted the doctrine of hell but has never given much thought as to why. In other words, the thin theology of Bell's argument has been countered, in large part, by the thin theology of his critics. Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle are an exception. Their lay-friendly monograph, Erasing Hell, engages Bell precisely at his point of greatest weakness, namely, that of biblical exegesis. However, after reading Chan and Sprinkle, I did not come away feeling that I could use much, if any, of their arguments to persuade Bell's legion of devotees of the danger of their hero's teachings. I wasn't quite sure why I felt so empty. Then, I read Trevin Wax's review of Erasing Hell and everything began to come into focus.

Chan and Sprinkle approach this topic from an analytical, exegetical point of view. And like I said above, at the exegetical level, the book succeeds. But that’s not where the battle is being waged. No one is discarding hell because of the convincing nature of Bell’s eisegesis. No… people are following Bell because of the compelling way he has made his case.

Chan and Sprinkle are analysts. Bell fashions himself as an artist. (It’s no coincidence Bell’s first book is Velvet Elvis.)

Chan and Sprinkle are theologian-pastors. Bell fashions himself as a risky explorer.

The power of Love Wins is not in Bell’s exegesis or in his thoughtfulness. The power of Bell’s book is in its aesthetic qualities. Bell is appealing to the sentiments and emotions in a way that proves effective for many disaffected evangelicals today.

Bell’s book is troublesome, not because it is a thoughtful representation of the optimistic inclusivist position. (See Clark Pinnock’s work if you’re looking for that!) It’s troublesome because it is seeking to make inclusivism beautiful. Bell succeeds at “dressing up” falsehood. Meanwhile, his evangelical critics aren’t even bothering with the wardrobe. We are Nixon, and he is Kennedy. From a purely rhetorical, debating standpoint, we win. But Bell understands the medium.

What is needed is a response that takes into consideration the beauty of Truth. We’ve got the truth portion down when it comes to propositions. What is needed is a beautiful and compelling portrait of Truth – the Person. God is inherently beautiful, but many times, we don’t do well at drawing out the inherent beauty of Truth with a capital T.

I’m not calling out Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle alone on this. God bless them – they care about precious truths and they are working to preserve them. No, I’m indicting myself in this too. We struggle in the area of aesthetics, and I’m not sure why. After all, the Reformed wing of the church is influenced by Jonathan Edwards, who wrote more about beauty than virtually any theologian in Christian history. The study of true beauty is the study of God. So why doesn’t the result of our study reflect that? Of Edwards, Tim Keller writes:

Reason tells me about the truth, but I really cannot grasp what it means; I can’t understand it without art. Edwards said that unless you use imagination, unless you take a truth and you image it – which of course is art – you don’t know what it means. If you cannot visualize it, you don’t have a sense of it on your heart.

Chan and Sprinkle have put forth a historically orthodox understanding of hell, demonstrating the biblical foundation for their views. But Bell challenges this understanding by seeking to appeal to a more beautiful vision of God. The tragedy of Love Wins is that the character of God as described by Bell isn’t, in the final instance, much more than a glorified vision of 21st century man.

The problem with the responses to Love Wins is that, while we are experts at critiquing Bell’s vision of God, we aren’t stepping up with a more compelling portrait of God’s magnificence. We are scribbling down our thoughts under Bell’s chalk drawing instead of taking up the paint brush and creating something that reflects the beauty of biblical truth.

We can write 50-page criticisms of The Shack. Meanwhile, men and women like William Young continue to craft great stories. We grasp the issues, but others grasp the medium.

Beyond that, we often appear pedantic in the grasping of these important issues. In the study of the communication arts, there is a part of the brain known as Brocha’s Area which acts like the gateway to whether people actually listen. Surprising or intriguing Brocha is one way to get that door to open – something that art in its many variations is capable of doing.

Erasing Hell is functional, but not beautiful. From a functional point of view, I recommend it. But I think we need to be pushed on the beautiful side of this equation as well. The gospel shouldn’t shut down our imagination, but rather fuel it and direct it toward the beauty that is inherent to the truth. We need more than analysis; we need artistry.

Inasmuch as he elevates the discussion to a more artistic level, Mark Galli succeeds where Chan and Sprinkle fail. His book, God Wins, is perhaps the most thorough critique of Bell's work to date. The fact that Galli had initially advised caution in the wake of all the advance publicity for Bell's book only adds to his credibility as a thoughtful critic. The issue, according to Galli, is not simply Bell's view of hell but the whole concept of God presented in Love Wins. Galli notes a peculiar irony in this regard.

Ironically, rather than truly affirming that God is love, Love Wins mostly maintains that God gives us good things. The book fills the vast majority of its space describing what God helps us experience and do: God is the Agent who makes us happy and fulfilled. But as I argue in chapter 2, the gospel is this and much, much more. It begins with the eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it ends with the eternal fellowship of God and man.

I believe the reason Love Wins does not actually move beyond God as Agent to God as Lover is that it simply has no role for the Holy Spirit. Although one book cannot cover every biblical theme, it is surprising that a book about God's love like Love Wins does not even mention the name of the Holy Spirit in its pages. It is the Spirit who convicts us of sin and leads us to righteousness. It is the Spirit who guides us into the truth of Christ. It is the Spirit who binds us to the Father and to Jesus, makes us one in fellowship, and thus helps us move beyond God as the giver of good things.

Note the way Martin Luther describes this contrast between God as mere Agent and God as Love in his commentary below on 2 Peter 1:4: "He has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature."

This is one of those apposite, beautiful, and . . . precious and very great promises given to us, poor miserable sinners: that we are to become participants in the divine nature and be exalted so highly in nobility that we are not only to become loved by God through Christ, and have His favor and grace as the highest and most precious shrine, but also to have Him, the Lord Himself, dwelling in us in His fullness.

The Spirit is the very energy and activity of divine love, both to us and in us. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, we end up substituting the mere gifts of God for the gift of God himself.

[Kindle edition, sections 2042-2063]

God as Trinity, the divine community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a beautiful thing, indeed. Moreover, his invitation to us "miserable sinners" to share in his divine life and partake of his divine nature is a joy unspeakable; a message of Good News far more beautiful than any lyrical concoction from the pen of Rob Bell. In the end, how can any work of "art" be inspired or inspiring if it neglects even to mention the blessed, life-giving Holy Spirit?

Ross Douthat argues for the doctrine of hell, and manages to slip in a few pop culture sign posts along the way.

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either. They’re like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.

In this sense, a doctrine of universal salvation turns out to be as deterministic as the more strident forms of scientific materialism. Instead of making us prisoners of our glands and genes, it makes us prisoners of God himself. We can check out any time we want, but we can never really leave.

The doctrine of hell, by contrast, assumes that our choices are real, and, indeed, that we are the choices that we make. The miser can become his greed, the murderer can lose himself inside his violence, and their freedom to turn and be forgiven is inseparable from their freedom not to do so.

As Anthony Esolen writes, in the introduction to his translation of Dante’s “Inferno,” the idea of hell is crucial to Western humanism. It’s a way of asserting that “things have meaning” — that earthly life is more than just a series of unimportant events, and that “the use of one man’s free will, at one moment, can mean life or death ... salvation or damnation.”

If there’s a modern-day analogue to the “Inferno,” a work of art that illustrates the humanist case for hell, it’s David Chase’s “The Sopranos.” The HBO hit is a portrait of damnation freely chosen: Chase made audiences love Tony Soprano, and then made us watch as the mob boss traveled so deep into iniquity — refusing every opportunity to turn back — that it was hard to imagine him ever coming out. “The Sopranos” never suggested that Tony was beyond forgiveness. But, by the end, it suggested that he was beyond ever genuinely asking for it.

Is Gandhi in hell? It’s a question that should puncture religious chauvinism and unsettle fundamentalists of every stripe. But there’s a question that should be asked in turn: Is Tony Soprano really in heaven?