(May 9, 2011 at 1:58 am)Hunted By A Freak Wrote: Can you give me a brief synopsis of Rob Bell's perspective on Hell, I have a difficult time seeing myself agreeing with Rob Bell on most doctrinal issues.
Yes, that seems to be a pretty common sentiment. Anyway, Rob Bell mixes C.S. Lewis concept of heaven and hell in the book "The Great Divorce" with Dallas Willard's realized eschatology/ kingdom theology and N.T. Wright's concept of "life after life after death." If you read "The Great Divorce" "The Divine Conspiracy" and "Surprised by Hope" you'll pretty much get the whole of his new book. They are all great books, it's a great combo.
The controversial part: he does add one additional caveat, Rob Bell seems to say that Hell is not forever. He translates the phrase traditionally rendered "eternal punishment" as "age of correction." I read the phrase in context in the UBS Greek New Testament and his rendering does actually check out. So in his view the purpose of Hell (keeping in mind the word "hell" isn't actually in the Bible anywhere) is also loving. The purpose of hell is to make people face all their own anger/unkindness/ignorance and learn to be the kind of people that can be happy and fulfilled in the world-made-right (this present earth, fixed). I'm trying to be fair to Rob Bell here, I haven't had time to fully analyze his argument so I'm not sure where I stand on it. On the surface it is a rather appealing and exegetically sound narrative of eschatology.
