Yes, Love Wins…But God Does Not Drag People into Heaven against Their Will

Is Mahatma Gandhi in hell? A while back I watched this YouTube video with Mars Hill Michigan pastor Rob Bell asking this very question. It was a little teaser for his book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. It was certainly a provocative piece, and this preacher with rock star status on the liberal lane of the emergent church highway¹ really got the social media pages buzzing with accusations about him slipping into universalism. After reading the book, my take is that Bell really finds the Christian doctrine of saints being resurrected to eternal life and sinners to eternal condemnation to be “misguided and toxic” (vii). He indeed desires readers to examine their concept of heaven and hell with the intent to open doorways into other ways of understanding the doctrine of hell asides eternal conscious punishment, to understand that heaven and hell can be experienced in the present as well as in the future, and to be open to the ideas that hell is temporary and that second chances for salvation can happen after death.

To Hell for Now: To those who might say, “Rob, did not Jesus teach about hell?” Rob would respond, “Did He?” Bell purports that Luke 16 is not about the intermediate state between the death and the final consummation; rather, it is about God “doing a new work through Jesus, calling all people to human solidarity” (75). So concerning the rich man in torment, he says, “He’s dead, but he hasn’t died…He’s in Hades, but he still hasn’t died the kind of death that actually brings life…He’s alive in death, but in profound torment, because he’s living with the realities of not properly dying the kind of death that actually leads a person into the only kind of life that’s worth living” (76-77, emphasis in original). The rich man’s attitude toward the poor, therefore, creates hell on earth.

Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus does have present implications, as Bell suggests; however, it also has eternity in mind. The Pharisees loved their money more than their God. If they loved their God, then they would have kept their God’s commandments about the poor (cf. Lev. 25:25-28; Deut. 15:2-11; Isa. 3:13-15; Zech 7:8-14). Jesus uses the story of the rich man and the beggar named Lazarus as a medium of communicating about the eternal consequences of sin. Christ plainly states the “poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried” (Luke 16:22). The fact that the rich man in torment sought Abraham to warn his brothers about the fate of sinners in having Lazarus return with warnings from the netherworld (cf. Luke 16:27-27) does not mean both are still alive; rather, it suggest that the soul continues to be conscious after physical death takes place, and there is still yet a final judgment, which is the life after the afterlife. The point is “what the law pointed toward is what Jesus represents” and “failure to listen to God’s revelation already given in the law means that they will not listen to the revelation to which it points, even when that revelation appears in a powerful sign. Jesus’ ministry shows that this is true.”²

The parable of the rich man and the beggar named Lazarus does address the present, but it also extends beyond the present into the future. What people do in the present in light of the revelation God gives to them has eternal consequences. The same principle is communicated in the words: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matt. 6:19-21).

With respect to the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, Bell observes that the Greek word aion can mean “age or period of time,” and that the Greek word kolazo can mean “a term from horticulture;” thus, the “aion of kolazo Jesus spoke of “can mean ‘a period of pruning’ or ‘a time of trimming,’ or an intense experience of correction” (91). He also points out that “ ‘forever’ is not really a category the biblical writers used,” and “the Hebrew word “olam can be translated as ‘to the vanishing point,’ ‘in the far distance,’ ‘a long time, ‘long lasting,’ or ‘that which is at or beyond the horizon,’ ” pointing out that “Jonah prays to God, who let him go down into the belly of a fish ‘forever’ (olam) and then, three days later, brought him out of the belly of the fish,” and concludes “olam in this instance turns out to be three days,” and “when we read ‘eternal punishment,’ it’s important that we don’t read categories and concepts into a phrase that aren’t there.”(92).

It is true that words are equivocal as opposed to univocal; yet, pointing out this reality is insufficient in proving a temporal hell. It is the context that determines the meaning of a word in a sentence, and with only a few special circumstances (e.g. use of double-entendre), no sentence attempts to use a word with its full constellation of definitions. The Greek verb in Matthew 25:46 for “shall go” is apeleusontai, which is the future tense form of aperchomai, meaning “to go away” or “to depart.”³ The verb apeleusontai, therefore, communicates the eternal punishment (kolasin aionion) and eternal life (zoein aionion) is from the Lord’s standpoint still yet to come. Moreover, if one takes “eternal life” is forever, one must also concede the parallel statement “eternal punishment” is likewise forever. Contributing to the view of eternal conscious punishment are Jesus’ statements about “the ‘undying worm’ (Mk 9:48; cf. Is 66:24), the ‘fire that is not put out’ (Mk 9:48; Mt 25:41) and the emotive picture of ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Mt 8:12 par. Lk 13:28; Mt 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; cf. Sib. Or. 2:305).”⁴

(One can also say the same for olam, words are not univocal but equivocal. It needs to be pointed out that Jesus most likely spoke the Olivet Discourse in Aramaic, that Matthew penned his Gospel in Koine Greek, and that the Holy Spirit superintended the production of Matthew’s Gospel, which offers confidence to the belief that the message spoken in Aramaic was accurately delivered in Koine Greek.)

Jesus’ statement about eternal condemnation in Matthew 25 comes from the Olivet Discourse, which is interwoven into the apocalyptic vision in chapter 24 about near future eschatological judgment on Jerusalem and her temple in AD 70. Matthew 24, for the most part, speaks to the near future judgment in AD 70, whereas Matthew 25 encourages faithfulness in the present through the parables of bridesmaids and the talents, and the far future judgment when Christ appears a second time to judge the living and the dead. It can also be pointed out that Daniel (Dan. 12:2), Jesus (John 5:28-29), and Paul (Acts 24:14-15) taught a future resurrection and judgment, one need not make Matthew 25:46 the exception.

Second Chances after Death: If Bell unlocks the door to universalism in suggesting Jesus’ teachings on hell were never meant to communicate eternal punishment, the door is open wide in the suggestion that there may be a second chance after death. Bell actually wants readers to be open to the possibility that there may be “endless opportunities in an endless amount of time for people to say yes to God” (106-107), and that “given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence” (107). The basis for second chances after death from the Old Testament promises on restoration, God’s desire to save people, and the fact that second chances after death had been taught at different times in church history.

Old Testament Promises on Restoration: Bell finds a movement of judgment to restoration in Old Testament prophecies. He points to Sodom in Ezekiel 16 (83-85) to mean “where there was destruction there will be restoration.” He offers a litany of passages from Old Testament prophets Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Zechariah on the return and restoration of Israel from exile (85-87) to say, “no matter how painful, brutal, oppressive, no matter how far people find themselves from home because of their sin, indifference, and rejection, there’s always the assurance that it won’t be this way forever” (86, emphasis in original). He notes the altar of the Lord in Egypt in Isaiah 19, then asks, “Egypt was Israel’s enemy. Hated. Despised. An altar in the heart of Egypt? An altar was where people worshipped. They’ll worship God in…Egypt?” and resolves, “failure, we see again and again, isn’t final, judgment has a point, and consequences are for correction” (88).

Ezekiel 16, on the other hand, offers an allegory of a family: Jerusalem, her Hittite mother, Amorite father, elder sister Samaria, and younger sister Sodom (v. 45). Samaria and Sodom committed many sinful acts but Jerusalem committed such great sins, she made her two sisters look righteous (v. 51).Sinful Jerusalem would be humbled, she would go into exile, yet there would be a restoration of Jerusalem. She would become despised by other nations, and just like Samaria and Sodom, the Lord would restore her fortunes (vv. 53-59). There is nothing in this passage to suggest those in Sodom whom were condemned to hell would one day be restored. The passage anticipates Israel’s exile and return.

Jesus’ statement in Matthew 10:15 that “it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city,” means that each person is accountable to the light God have given to them, that there degrees of punishment in hell, which is consistent with God’s righteousness and justice.

It is true the Old Testament prophets prophesied that sinful Israel and Judah would be exiled, but at the right time God would bring a remnant back from exile (Dan. 9:1-27; 2 Kings 17:3-23; 2 Kings 24:1-25:30; 2 Chron. 36:15-23; Ezra 1-10; Nehemiah 1-13). The litany of passages from the Old Testament prophets offered in Love Wins presents the gist of the idea. One can also point out that God kept His promises in bringing back a remnant during the days of Zechariah, Haggai, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Moreover, these Old Testament realities serve as types and shadows pointing forward to Jesus Christ, who brings lost sinners from their exile from Eden into the promise land of God’s Kingdom, where Paradise lost shall become Paradise restored. Nevertheless, there is a leap of logic in applying these to a future restoration of those in hell, or any notion that that one day hell would be empty of all its occupants.

God’s Desire to Save People: Bell cites 2 Timothy 2 that “God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth,” and then makes this ultimatum: “Will all people be saved, or will God not get what God wants?” (98) To those who say, “We get one life to choose heaven or hell, and once we die that’s it. One or the other, forever,” he retorts, “God in the end doesn’t get what God wants” (103). He then purports “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” (107). He also points out the gates not being shut in Revelation 21:25 and concludes “gates are for keeping people in and keeping people out. If the gates are never shut, then people are free to come and go” (115).

It really is incorrect to suppose that either everyone goes to heaven or God really does not get what He wants. A third way to look at things is that God gets what He wants in the final consummation with resurrection of the just to eternal life and the unjust to eternal condemnation (Dan. 12:2; John 5:28-29; Rev. 20:11-15) because that is the best of all possible worlds upholding the intrinsic worth of autonomous persons who can freely give and receive love. Gary Habermas and J.P Moreland explain, “While hell is in some sense a defeat to God (his desire is that all men be saved), in another sense it is not a defeat. Because it is a quarantine that respects the freedom and dignity of his image-bearers while separating hell from his special presence and the community of those who love him (heaven),” and that “even divine love, cannot coercively guarantee a proper response to it.”⁵

Multiple opportunities for salvation after death goes against the Scripture that teaches “it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Neither is time the solution for emptying out the pit of hell. One can say God gives people all the time they need to repent in this life. “The Lord is not slow about His promises as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3). If a person needed to live just another minute, a year, a decade, or whatever in order to come into a right relationship with God before dying, the all knowing and benevolent God of the Bible would be able to handle that. One must also consider the fact that the way we live shapes our character. The further we move away from God, the less likely we will return to Him. “If God permits a person to die and go to hell, it seems reasonable to think that God no longer believes that this person is savable. Only God could make that type of judgment, but that judgment could clearly be true.”⁶

The doctrine of a Second Chance after Death in Church History: Bell also names influential Christians in support of a universal reconciliation. He purports, “At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church,” he writes, “have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God” (109). “Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation,” purports Bell, “wrote to Hans von Rechenberg in 1522 about the possibility that people could turn to God after death, asking ‘Who would doubt God’s ability to do that?’ ” (106).

A closer look into the context of the statement within the Hans von Rechenberg letter indicates the Reformer had something else in mind. Luther writes,

It is as impossible for God to save without faith as it is impossible for divine truth to lie. That is clear, obvious, and easily understood, no matter how reluctant the old wineskin is to hold this wine—yes, is unable to hold and contain it
        It would be quite a different question whether God can impart faith to some in the hour of death or after death so that these people could be saved through faith. Who would doubt God's ability to do that? No one, however, can prove that he does do this. For all that we read is that he has already raised people from the dead and thus granted them faith. But whether he gives faith or not, it is impossible for anyone to be saved without faith. Otherwise every sermon, the gospel, and faith would be vain, false, and deceptive, since the entire gospel makes faith necessary.⁷

Luther’s point is that no one can prove that a person can be saved by faith in the hour of death or after death, that one cannot be saved apart from faith, since another makes “every sermon, the gospel, and faith” out to be “vain, false, and deceptive.” It must also be pointed out that Article III in The Large Catechism without question distinguishes Christians from others who experience eternal wrath and damnation, who “have not the Lord Christ, and, besides, are not illumined and favored by any gifts of the Holy Ghost.”⁸ The idea that Martin Luther believed hell would not last forever is simply false.

“In their day,” writes Bell, “Jerome claimed that ‘most people,’ Basil said the ‘mass of men,’ and Augustine acknowledged that ‘very many’ believed in the ultimate reconciliation of all people to God” (108).

Unfortunately, Bell does not offer reference to understand the statements made by Jerome, Basil, and Augustine within their context, and while it may be granted that they all recognized a number of people believed in universal reconciliation, these same church fathers also made theological statements that strongly suggested belief in eternal punishment. Jerome wrote, “We should indeed mourn for the dead, but only for him whom Gehenna receives, whom Tartarus devours, and for whose punishment the eternal fire burns” (Letter 39.3). Basil wrote, “What then must those men be who have lived wicked lives? Where then shall that soul hide which in the sight of all these spectators shall suddenly be revealed in its fullness of shame? With what kind of body shall it sustain those endless and unbearable pangs in the place of fire unquenched, and of the worm that perishes and never dies, and of depth of Hades, dark and horrible; bitter wailings, loud lamenting, weeping and gnashing of teeth and anguish without end? From all these woes there is no release after death; no device, no means of coming forth from the chastisement of pain” (Letter 46.5). And Augustine wrote, “As the eternal life of the saints shall be endless, so too the eternal punishment of those who are doomed to it shall have no end” (City of God, 21.23.1).

No source is offered for Eusebius on postmortem salvation, and the church historian is not typically listed with the church leaders who did teach postmortem salvation.

Bell is correct in pointing out that Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and Gregory of Nyssa held to a temporal hell with a universal reconciliation; nevertheless, a majority of Christian theologians in the ancient church affirmed eternal conscious punishment.⁹  However, it is important to note that simply because the teaching on a second chance after death existed within the visible church in history does not make it true. Neither is such warrant for a Christian to give “space” for others to hold on. Some doctrines that come about in the visible church embraces turn out to be unbiblical, and this has been occurring throughout the history of the church. For example, Gregory the Great planted the seeds to the doctrine of purgatory, which led the further biblical errors such as the distinction between venial and mortal sins, prayers for the dead, the treasury of merit, indulgences, and the inevitable Roman Catholic abuse of the indulgences, all of which was rightly rejected by Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, who understood the proper biblical teaching on justification by faith.

The belief in hell as eternal punishment is a key component in the doctrines that for the essentials of the Christian faith, and it is a clear teaching from the Scriptures that cannot be denied.

Conclusion: It should be noted that Bell qualifies his response with the following: “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” (115). Thus, Bell is not saying he believes in a temporary hell with second chances after death; nevertheless, he does open the door wide open for readers struggling with eternal punishment to find a false comfort in embracing those heresies, and for this reason he is guilty of leading others astray. Ultimately one can say love really wins when there is a future final consummation wherein the righteous are raised to eternal life and the unrighteous to eternal condemnation. In each instance, whether life in the new heaven and new earth or in the lake of fire, God honors the decisions made by people bearing the imago Dei. He does not “snuff out” the crowning jewels of His creation. He honors their choices, even the choices of those who would not under any circumstances come to repentance. If people are autonomous, then one must concede that some would reject God without ever having a change of heart.

---

1. cf. Mark Driscoll, “Navigating the Emerging Church Highway,” Christian Research Journal, 31, 4 [2008]: 10-21.
2. Darrell Bock, Jesus According to Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 288.
3. W. Arndt, F.D. Danker, W. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 102.
4. Jonathan Lunde, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. J. B. Green, S. McKnight, & I H. Marshall (Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 311.
5. Gary R. Habermas and J.P. Moreland, Immortality: The Other Side of Death (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992), 167.
6. Ibid., 168.
7. Martin Luther, “A Letter to Hans von Rechenberg, 1522,” in Luther’s Works, Volume 43: Devotional Writings II, (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1968), 54
8. Martin Luther, The Large Catechism” http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/largecatechism.iv_2.html?highlight=eternal#highlight
9. Cf. discussion in W.G.T. Shedd, A History of Christian Doctrine, Vol. 2 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999), 415–417.