{"id":2597,"date":"2011-03-16T16:00:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel.php"},"modified":"2011-03-16T16:00:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T16:00:46","slug":"critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel","title":{"rendered":"Critics Heated Up by Bell&#8217;s Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) Talk about hellfire! One of the nation&#8217;s rock-star-popular young pastors, Rob Bell, 40, has stuck a pitchfork in how Christians talk about damnation.<br \/>\nPastor Bell&#8217;s <em>Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived<\/em>, arrived in stores Tuesday (March 15).<br \/>\nCritics pounced before the book was even published, provoking weeks of fierce infighting among pastors, theologians and anyone else who scans the Christian blogosphere.<br \/>\nIn <em>Love Wins<\/em>, Bell claims:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Heaven and hell are choices we make and live with right now. &#8220;God gives us what we want,&#8221; including the freedom to live apart from God (hell) or turn God&#8217;s way (heaven).     <\/li>\n<li>Death doesn&#8217;t cut off the ability to repent. In his Bible, Bell sees no &#8220;infinite, eternal torment for things (people) did in their few finite years of life.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Jesus makes salvation possible even for people who never know his name. &#8220;We have to allow for mystery,&#8221; for people who &#8220;drink from the rock&#8221; of faith &#8220;without knowing who or what it was.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Churches that don&#8217;t allow for this are &#8220;misguided and toxic.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Small wonder that traditionalists call him a false teacher of a Jesus-optional gospel, leading innocents to damnation and a traitor to the evangelical label.<br \/>\nIn an interview with USA TODAY, Bell jokes: &#8220;I am not aware that labels are the highest form of goodness and truth.&#8221; He rebuffs critics who say he presents a Jesus-optional Christianity: &#8220;Jesus spoke of the renewal of all things. He said, &#8216;I have sheep who are not of this flock.&#8217; Through him, extraordinary things are happening in the world.&#8221;<br \/>\nBell&#8217;s view is &#8220;that God is love, that he sent Jesus to show us that love, that love demands freedom. So making definitive judgments about other people&#8217;s destiny is not interesting to me. The heart of God is to rescue everyone from everything we need to be rescued from.&#8221;<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a mercy that Bell doesn&#8217;t read his press or social networks.<br \/>\nJustin Taylor of the Gospel Coalition, a network of traditionalist scholars and pastors, says Bell&#8217;s views are &#8220;dangerous and contrary to the word of God. &#8230; If Bell doesn&#8217;t believe in eternal punishment, then he doesn&#8217;t think sin is an offense against a holy God.&#8221;<br \/>\nIt was Taylor&#8217;s critique last month, based on reading a few chapters, that triggered explosive arguments radiating from Christian sites to CNN. Now that he has read all 200 pages, Taylor is even more convinced of Bell&#8217;s errors.<br \/>\n&#8220;Whether you like it or not, the Bible presents true teaching and warns against false teachers, even those who look like great people,&#8221; says Taylor, digging at Bell&#8217;s highly stylized videos circulating online and among churches coast to coast.&#8221;<br \/>\nBut Richard Mouw, president of the world&#8217;s largest Protestant seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary based in Pasadena, Calif., calls <em>Love Wins<\/em> &#8220;a great book,&#8221; well within the bounds of orthodox Christianity and passionate about Jesus.<br \/>\nThe real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between &#8220;generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>(Cathy Lynn Grossman writes for<\/em> USA Today<em>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) Talk about hellfire! One of the nation&#8217;s rock-star-popular young pastors, Rob Bell, 40, has stuck a pitchfork in how Christians talk about damnation. Pastor Bell&#8217;s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, arrived in stores Tuesday (March 15). Critics pounced before the book was even&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Critics Heated Up by Bell&#039;s Hell<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Critics Heated Up by Bell&#039;s Hell\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) Talk about hellfire! One of the nation&#8217;s rock-star-popular young pastors, Rob Bell, 40, has stuck a pitchfork in how Christians talk about damnation. Pastor Bell&#8217;s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, arrived in stores Tuesday (March 15). 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One of the nation&#8217;s rock-star-popular young pastors, Rob Bell, 40, has stuck a pitchfork in how Christians talk about damnation. Pastor Bell&#8217;s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, arrived in stores Tuesday (March 15). Critics pounced before the book was even&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-03-16T16:00:46+00:00","author":"editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel","name":"Critics Heated Up by Bell's Hell","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-16T16:00:46+00:00","dateModified":"2011-03-16T16:00:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/03\/critics-heated-up-by-bells-hel#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Critics Heated Up by Bell&#8217;s Hell"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/58d12601cbe230a61e6f2ea91d341249","name":"editor","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dfc\/dfcc0838a84dd70003db24678b13c234x96.jpg","caption":"editor"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/editor"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/264"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}