The Myth of Erasing Hell

In my study and conversations one of the biggest misunderstandings on the subject of hell is the idea that some Christians want to erase it. This is a myth (with few exceptions). To recap, the main views on hell alphabetically are:

Conditionalism - The belief that the unrepentant will experience a second death of both body and soul in hell passing out of being.

Traditionalism - The belief that the unrepentant will experience conscious torment of both body and soul in hell for all eternity

Universalism.- The belief that the unrepentant will experience conscious torment of both body and soul in hell until they repent and are saved.

As you can see by the bold underlined words above, each view believes in hell. Of course, if you insist on defining hell narrowly as eternal conscious torment as a traditionalist would I suppose you could try to perpetuate this false assertion, which is precisely what has been happening in that camp. However, if we define hell as the place that the 'unrepentant' are sent after being judged then each of the three main positions believe quite strongly in this place we call hell.

I find this definition to be preferable, not only because this is the normal understanding of the word, but because altering it to use this myth is a big distraction. A red herring. A mere rhetorical move. It does nothing to get at the heart of the actual differences of opinion and creates confusion through false accusation. It may be effective in driving an audience away from a particular view to your own temporarily, but this will only work as long as the wool is pulled over their eyes. This kind of deception should be completely unnecessary if one actually thinks they know the truth and have a strong case for their position. I think it's time to lay down the mythology and get to the heart of the matter.

Jonathan Pennington's definition of the gospel

I got this definition of the gospel in my inbox this morning. It's from Jonathan Pennington in his book "Reading the gospels wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introduction" (pg 5, 16-17):

"Consistently throughout the New Testament Epistles the 'gospel' refers to the oral proclamation about Jesus the Christ (meaning the anointed Davidic King) - who he was; what he accomplished through his life, death, and resurrection; the promise of his future return to establish God's reign; and the concomitant call to repent and have faith. This is not a message of moralism or a call to greater religious obedience but rather is a proclamation of God's grace and the invitation to hope. This is why it is rightly called 'good news.'"

"The New Testament authors, building especially on the Isaianic vision, define the 'gospel' as Jesus' effecting the long-awaited return of God himself as King, in the power of the Spirit bringing his people back from exile and into the true promised land of a new creation, forgiving their sins, and fulfilling all the promises of God and the hopes of his people. This Isaianic vision is itself based on God's work at the exodus, which the prophets take up and reappropriate to describe God's future work. Because of this vision, described as the proclamation of good news, the apostles call their kerygma 'gospel,' and it is why the evangelists likewise describe the work of Jesus and the narratives about him as euangelion. In this there is univocality; Paul and the Gospel writers all understand their message to be one of God's reign coming in the person of Jesus through the power of the Spirit. The 'gospel,' whether in oral or written form, is the message of God's comprehensively restorative kingdom."

Thanks to Trevin Wax for his diligent work on this subject.
Check out his blog for more on this and other subjects:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/

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The gospel today (Scott McKnight)

I started my first job as a pastor this week and purposely haven't spent time blogging to take it all in. I have a large post I'm working on, which should be up Friday. In the meantime, i found this great explanation from Scot McKnight about how important it is that we re-think what the gospel is in the light of Scripture. It is partly a polemic defence of his book, The King Jesus Gospel, but in doing so, he articulates the reason I started this blog in the first place. We need to know the gospel according to Scripture.

This is a chart he made within the post:

 

Beside it Scot writes:

"Do you see the massive differences? One only speaks to how I can get saved while the other tells me something about Jesus that saves (me)."

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