[This is yet another of my reviews on Lent.]
Introduction
Earlier this week, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore passed away. This made me think deeply about mortality and final judgement.
Thus I decided to re-read a book I bought a few years ago, called Erasing Hell (2011). Written as a response to Pastor Rob Bell's book Love Wins (2011), Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle set out to closely examine what the Bible's say about hell.
The main issue
In 2011, Bell argued (in Love Wins) that everybody will eventually recognise Jesus as Lord and saviour and be with in heaven, even if they did not believe in Jesus in their lifetime. (In Christian theology this is called universalism. To be fair to Rob Bell, he does not use this term in his book.)
In Erasing Hell, Chan and Sprinkle argues that the person who talks most about hell in the Bible is Jesus Christ. While admitting the temptation to water down the concept of hell is high, the duo managed to present hell and judgement as realities described in the Bible.
For instance, Jesus uses the word gehenna (from the Greek New Testament, one of the earliest copies we have) to refer to hell. Chan and Sprinkle explain that this gehenna is a place of punishment, and Jesus used imagery of fire to described the place, in contrast to Bell who described it as a garbage dump (to be fair to Bell, he got the idea from a commentary of a Middle Ages rabbi David Kimhi).
Theological review
Again, I appreciate the duo's attempt at exegesis. Erasing Hell forces me to think closely about my own theology. Do I believe things about hell because I am comfortable with it? Or do I believe in the real hell that Jesus spoke about?
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