I plan to review Erasing Hell over the course of several posts, each focusing on a different position. Today’s post is a general overview. For an earlier pre-review in response to Chan’s assertion that it’s crucial to get it right on Hell, please check out this post: “so…what if we got it wrong on hell?“
Overall, I’m pleased to have spent the time reading through Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity and The Things We Made Up by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle. Like Chan’s other books, Crazy Love and Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect Of The Holy Spirit, his impassioned approach to the subject kept me interested not only in what he had to say, but the conviction with which he was saying it. Chan has a rare ability to communicate deep conviction with humility and I appreciate that.
Erasing Hell takes the traditional evangelical position on Hell, i.e., that it is a place of eternal punishment that is reinforced throughout Scripture and (perhaps) over-emphasized by both Jesus and the Epistolary authors. I think that Chan knocks it out of the park in terms of defending a historically well-defended position, but stops there — well, sort of. At the end of the book, he includes a FAQ that leaves room for more space to think than the bulk of the book does.
In Erasing Hell, Chan attempts to answer an important question which he poses in the introduction:
Could you believe in a God who decides to punish people who don’t believe in Jesus?
A God who wants to show His power by punishing those who don’t follow His Son?
I think that this is the question that the evangelical approach deals with primarily: does the justice of God need to appear just to us? Great question! $64,000 question! But, it’s not the only question.
Are we reading Love Wins and Erasing Hell do defend what we already think we know?
Are we reading to understand doctrine or destiny?
Are we reading to understand anything or just looking for an exclamation point?
Erasing Hell contains two (non-divided) sections: one that provides proof that the evangelical view is the correct view and another that is application — “so what does all this mean?” This latter section is even made complete with an alter call.
The first part of the book, in my reading, is not an objective presentation of the doctrine, history or tradition of hell, but instead a thinly veiled refutation of Rob Bell’s earlier release on the subject, Love Wins. I have to state now that I am a fan of Bell’s and of Chan’s. I appreciated Love Wins, not because I accept Universalism in any form and in fact didn’t see the book as a declaration of Bell marrying himself to Universalism, but because Bell asked great questions. Questions that folks in my church ask. Questions that people on the street ask. Questions that people who have no connection to faith and/or Christianity ask. There is value in that. No one loses their salvation by questioning or trying to understand hell. That Bell, at points, provided an answer or perspective to some of those questions is no different than what Chan does in Erasing Hell, albeit with less captivating poetry.
At this point in all this Hell Celebrity, I’m starting to ask some other questions. Tomorrow, I will post part two of my review of Erasing Hell, focusing on one of those questions: Jesus never used the word ‘hell’, why are we so in love with it?
In the meantime, let me suggest that as you move forward with reading about Hell, do so with Erasing Hell in one hand and Love Wins in the other (and in your third hand, Four Views On Hell — which brings up another question: Is Chan’s view the only view?) To be honest, to give Hell a robust treatment and proper consideration, you simply must read The Great Divorce alongside the others…perhaps with a fourth hand…or juggle.
Which Afterlife?
In 2011 world population will reach 7 billion (vs. 3 billion in 1960). There are now approximately 2.2 billion Christians. Chan and Sprinkle seem to be saying that 4.8 billion people may be facing eternal hell.
Concepts of an afterlife vary between religions and among divisions of each faith. Here are three quotes from “the greatest achievement in life,” my ebook on comparative mysticism:
(46) Few people have been so good that they have earned eternal paradise; fewer want to go to a place where they must receive punishments for their sins. Those who do believe in resurrection of their body hope that it will be not be in its final form. Few people really want to continue to be born again and live more human lives; fewer want to be reborn in a non-human form. If you are not quite certain you want to seek divine union, consider the alternatives.
(59) True mystics transcend apparent manifestations of the theatrical production called “this life.” Theirs is not simply a search for meaning, but discovery of what is, i.e. the Real underlying the seeming realities. Their objective is not heaven, gardens, paradise, or other celestial places. It is not being where the divine lives, but to be what the divine essence is here and now.
(80) [referring to many non-mystics] Depending on their religious convictions, or personal beliefs, they may be born again to seek elusive perfection, go to a purgatory to work out their sins or, perhaps, pass on into oblivion. Lives are different; why not afterlives? Beliefs might become true.
You are absolutely right. I chose the same heading because my response to both is the same.