heaven, hell, universalism and rob bell - part 1

A Look at the Theology of Rob Bell & “Love Wins”

Part 1

www.confidentchristians.org

What are we Talking About?

On March 15, 2011, HarperOne

publishers releases Emergent

Church leader Rob Bell‘s new

book ―Love Wins‖.

The promotional video for the

book immediately raised

speculations in Christendom that

Rob Bell was a universalist, and

what has followed since then has

been one of the largest theological

firestorms in some time.


What are we Talking About?

Everything started with a

promotional video that was

released of Bell‘s book ―Love

Wins‖. The video prompted

Justin Taylor of the Gospel

Coalition to speculate that Bell

was embracing and teaching

universalism.


Taylor‘s blog post on Rob Bell‘s book elicited a large response from

many people including Dr. John Piper who simply remarked,

―Farewell Rob Bell.‖

Piper‘s comments communicated that Bell had finally and fully set sail

from orthodox Christianity.


I was asked by gotquestions.org to write

a response to Bell‘s book and the concept

of universalism in general, which I did. It

was posted on the gotquestions.org

website, and I also posted it on my

personal blog. But not everyone agreed

with my conclusions.


The media frenzy caused by the

major discussions happening in

the Christian world caused Time

magazine to do a cover story that

asked the question ―What if

There‘s no Hell?‖

Speaking about the traditional

view of Hell, the article says,

―Bell, a tall, 40-year-old son of a

Michigan federal judge, begs to

differ. He suggests that the

redemptive work of Jesus may be

universal — meaning that, as his

book's subtitle puts it, "every

person who ever lived" could

have a place in heaven, whatever

that turns out to be.‖


Bell‘s book ―Love Wins‖ and

its accompanying

controversy has landed him

on Time‘s 2011 ―100 most

influential people in the

world‖ list.

The reach of Rob Bell has

far outgrown the 10,000+

members of his Mars Hill

church, and therefore it is

important we understand

what his teaching is and how

it affects people‘s spiritual

thoughts and lives.

Defining Terms and a Look Back at its History


What is Universalism/Ultimate Reconciliation?

Universalism (universal salvation),

or its more technical term

―Ultimate Reconciliation‖ is a

teaching that says every human

being, at some point, will

ultimately be reconciled to God.

Because Jesus died for everyone

(satisfying God‘s justice), each

person will – either in this life or

the next – be won over by God‘s

love and spend eternity with Him.


The Teachings of Origen

Origen of Alexandria (185-254 A.D.) is

widely thought to have been a

universalist. The African theologian, who

took an allegorical approach to Scripture

and was heavily influenced by Greek

philosophy, did not believe in the eternal

suffering of sinners in Hell. For Origen,

all created beings, even demons and the

devil, would eventually achieve

salvation, no matter how long it took in

the current life or in the life to come. He

reasoned that because God‘s love is so

powerful, it will eventually soften even

the hardest heart.


―No one can resist God‘s

pursuit forever because

God‘s love will eventually

melt even the hardest

hearts.‖

-Rob Bell

(pg. 108)



―So then, when the end has been restored to the

beginning, and the termination of things

compared with their commencement, that

condition of things will be re-established in which

rational nature was placed, when it had no need

to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and

evil; so that when all feeling of wickedness has

been removed, and the individual has been

purified and cleansed, He who alone is the one

good God comes to him ‗all‘ and that not in the

case of a few individuals, or of a considerable

number, but He Himself is ‗all in all‘. And when

death shall no longer anywhere exist, nor the

sting of death, nor any evil at all, then verily God

will be ‗all in all‘.‖

-Origen

De Principiis, 3.6.3


―And so, beginning with the early church,

there is a long tradition of Christians who

believe that God will ultimately restore

everything and everybody, because

Jesus says in Matthew 19 that there will

be a ―renewal of all things,‖ Peter says in

Acts 3 that Jesus will ―restore

everything,‖ and Paul says in Colossians

1 that through Christ ―God was pleased

to. . . .reconcile to himself all things,

whether things on earth or things in

heaven.‖

- Rob Bell

(pg. 107)



Origin‘s restoration of all beings,

known as apokatastasis, is the Greek

word used in Acts 3:21 for

'restoration', and can be traced back

to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus,

who stated that ―the beginning and

end are common‖. Origen‘s belief in

ultimate reconciliation were

eventually refuted by Augustine and

condemned in 553 A.D. in a council

at Constantinople.


What is Universalism/Ultimate Reconciliation?

―A universalist is someone who believes that

every human being whom God has created or will

create will finally come to enjoy the everlasting

salvation into which Christians enter here and

now. Universalism is the recognized name for this

belief. . . .

Among Christian theological options it appears as

an extreme optimism of grace, or perhaps of

nature, and sometimes, it seems, or both. But in

itself it is a revisionist challenge to orthodoxy,

whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or

Protestant evangelical; for the church has

officially rated universalism a heresy ever since

the second Council of Constantinople (the fifth

ecumenical council, A.D. 553), when the doctrine

of apokatastasis (the universal return to God and

restoration of all souls) that Origen taught was

anathematized.‖

- J. I. Packer


The Teachings of Socinus

An Italian theologian named Laelius

Socinus who lived in the 16th

century, and his nephew Faustus,

revived the 4th century heresy of

Arianism - officially condemned at the

council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 - and

taught that the Trinity was a false

doctrine and that Christ was not God.

In that sense, they were ―Unitarian‖ in

their teaching.


The Teachings of Socinus

But Socinus went further and said that some

of God‘s attributes (e.g. His omniscience,

immutability, etc.) were optional and not

necessary, meaning He didn't have to

manifest them if He chose not to. Socinus

claimed that God‘s justice was optional, but

His mercy is mandatory. In other words, God

always had to be merciful, but He didn't

always have to be just toward offenses

committed against Him. Therefore, the logic

of Socinus progressed as follows: if God's

justice is optional, but His mercy is

mandatory, and if God loves all the world and

Christ died for everyone who would ever live,

then all people will be saved by God. In this

respect, Socinus and his nephew were

―Universalists‖.


The Majority Opinion on Hell

―Until the nineteenth century almost all

Christian theologians taught the reality of

eternal torment in hell. Here and there,

outside the theological mainstream, were

some who believed that the wicked would be

finally annihilated. . . . Even fewer

were the advocates of universal salvation,

though these few included some major

theologians of the early church. Eternal

punishment was firmly asserted in official

creeds and confessions of the churches. It

must have seemed as indispensable

a part of the universal Christian belief as the

doctrines of the Trinity and the

incarnation.‖

-Richard Bauckham

(―Universalism: A Historical Survey,‖ Themelios 4.2 [September

1978]: 47–54)


Recent Poll: Is Universalism True?

How Universalists View Hell


What Purpose Does Hell Serve in Universalism?

Origen saw the church as the great ―school

of souls‖ in which erring pupils are instructed

and disciplined, but for those who do not

choose God in this life, they would continue

their ‗tutelage‘ in the next through an atoning

and sanctifying process of purging fire.

Origen believed that Hell cannot be

permanent for any soul because God could

not abandon any creature. Since God

respects human freedom, the process of

winning over His created beings may take a

long time in some cases, but God‘s love,

Origen believed, will ultimately triumph.

Or as Rob Bell puts it, Love Wins (pgs.197-8).


―We can create all sorts of Hells right now if

we want…‖

-ABC News Interview(never asked the question if he believed in a literal Hell)

―A heretic is someone who is able to

choose…‖

-MSNBC News Interview(never asked the question if he believed in a literal Hell)

―There is a Hell because we see Hell

everyday. Yeah we can resist and we can

reject what it means to be fully human and

good and decent and compassionate. So

yes, there is. And we have that choice now.

And I assume we have that choice into the

future. Yes.‖

-Initial promotional book interview


Bell: ―To the question ‗are you a

universalist‘, first and foremost, no…‖

Question: ―Is it irrelevant as to how you

respond to Christ in your life now to

determine your eternal destiny?‖

Answer: ―It is terribly relevant and terribly

important. Now, how exactly that works out

and how exactly it works out in the future

now when you die, we are firmly in the realm

of speculation.‖

Interviewer: ―What you‘ve done is you‘re

amending the gospel, the Christian

message, so that it‘s palatable for

contemporary people who find the idea of

Heaven and Hell very difficult to stomach.‖

-MSNBC News Interview


Bell‘s view of Hell:

• There are ―all kinds of hell because

there are all kinds of ways to reject

the good and the true and the

beautiful and the human now, in

this life, and so we can only

assume we can do the same in the

next‖ (pg. 79)

• A ―period of pruning‖ (pg. 91)

• ―An intense period of correction‖

(pg. 91)


In Context:

―The goats are sent, in the Greek language,

to an aion of kolazo. Aion, we know, has

several meanings. One is ―age‖ or ―period of

time‖; another refers to intensity of

experience. The word kolazo is a term from

horticulture. It refers to the pruning and

trimming of the branches so it can flourish.

An aion of kolazo. Depending on how you

translate aion and kolazo, then, the phrase

can mean ―a period of pruning‖ or ―a time of

trimming‖ or an intense experience of

correction. In a good number of English

translations of the Bible, the phrase ―aion of

kolazo‖ gets translated as ―eternal

punishment,‖ which many read to mean

―punishment forever,‖ as in never going to

end. But ―forever‖ is not really a category the

biblical writers used.‖


What does the Greek Text Really Say? The word ―aion‖, in context, does not refer to simply a long time and ―kolazo‖ is

nowhere to be found in the way that Bell describes… καταργέω means the waste of a

tree, lose its power, or cause something to come to an end.


What does the Greek Text Really Say?

The word ―kolazo‖ means to punish or penalize and can be used to speak of

a punishment in Hell.

An important look at the Emerging Church’s view of Scripture


Bell on the Clarity of the Bible

―The Bible is still in the center for us‖,

Rob says, ―but it‘s a different kind of

center. We want to embrace mystery,

rather than conquer it.‖ ―I grew up

thinking that we‘ve figured out the Bible,‖

Kristen says, ―that we knew what it

means. Now I have no idea what most

of it means. And yet, I feel like life is big

again – like life used to be black and

white, and now it‘s in color.‖

-Rob & Kristen Bell

Interview in Christianity Today


Tony Jones on Truth and the Bible

―We must stop looking for

some objective truth that is

available when we delve

into the text of the Bible.‖

-Tony Jones

Emergent Church Leader


―In the book, I write about

how some have believed

that all will be reconciled

and while I long for that as I

think everybody should long

for it, I don‘t take a position

of certainty because, of

course, I don‘t know how it

all turns out.‖

- Rob Bell

Interview with Time

Magazine


―Will everybody be saved, or will

some perish apart from God forever

because of their choices? Those are

questions, or more accurately, those

are tensions we are free to leave fully

intact. We don‘t need to resolve them

or answer them because we can‘t,

and so we simply respect them,

creating space for the freedom that

love requires.‖

-Rob Bell

(pg. 115)


But is that what Bell really thinks?

―A staggering number of people have been

taught that a select few Christians will spend

forever in a peaceful, joyous place called

heaven, while the rest of humanity spends

forever in torment and punishment in hell

with no chance for anything better. It‘s been

clearly communicated to many that this belief

is a central truth of the Christian faith and to

reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This

is misguided and toxic and ultimately

subverts the contagious spread of Jesus‘

message of love, peace, forgiveness, and

joy that our world desperately needs to hear‖

-Rob Bell

Pg. viii, emphasis added


But is that what Bell really thinks?

Remember Bell entitled his

book ―Love Wins‖. That alone

communicates which side of the

fence he falls on, which is the

same side as Origen and

Socinus.


A Warning from Edwards

―It is by the mixture of counterfeit religion with true, not discerned and

distinguished, that the devil has had his greatest advantage against the cause

and kingdom of Christ, all along hitherto. It is by this means, principal, that he

has prevailed against all revivings of religion, that ever have been since the first

founding of the Christian church. By this, he hurt the cause of Christianity, in and

after the apostolic age, much more than by all the persecutions of both Jews

and Heathens. The apostles, in all their epistles, show themselves much more

concerned at the former mischief, than the latter.‖

- Jonathan Edwards

We’ll examine that in Part 2 of this series…

heaven, hell, universalism and rob bell - part 1

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