Love Wins?

'Love Wins' is the title of a new book by evangelical pastor Rob Bell. Bell is one of the most famous pastors in the United States. He founded a now huge and very young church in Michigan and has long been admired as a preacher and teacher. His book is currently near the top of the bestseller list and is causing controversy because it seem to imply that all will be saved and no one will go to hell. I have yet to read the book, but the contours of the arguments are familiar. How could Gandhi be in hell?

The controversy comes from the fact that Rob is Evangelical, a part of the Christian world that has often made hell a central feature of their preaching and teaching. Saving people from the fate of hell is one of the primary reasons believers are motivated to spread the good news to others in this older evangelical world view. To question the doctrine of hell is to question one of the pillars of evangelical faith.

It is not so among the mainline churches, which includes the Episcopal Church. For a long time, there have been many who have questioned the doctrine of hell. In the last few decades, a kind of Universalism, that is a belief that salvation is universal, has become even more theologically respectable.

I am not so sure. I used to preach an unapologetic universalism, but the more I read scripture and the more I reflect on human freedom, the less confident I become. Scripture gives us passages that support either stance, sometimes even within the same book. Two examples are Matthew 25 to support the doctrine of hell and 1 Corinthians 15:22 to support universalism.

But as I read the whole of scripture it seems to me that there is some consequence to our choices in this life. God's justice is sure, steadfast and true and if we repeatedly choose the evil over the good there are consequences. In the words of St. Augustine, God does not deign to be embraced with a lie.

St. Augustine also said that while it is proper to Christian hope to hope that all will be saved, so it is proper to Christian faith to believe that some will be damned. If the three great Christian virtues are faith, hope and love, perhaps love is a kind of tie breaker, and, as Bell asserts, Love wins and all are saved. But again, I am not sure.

Does God overwhelm our free choice and draw us to himself even if we have spent our whole lives in active opposition to what he has taught as good and in active rejection of a relationship with him?

I think that when God created us in God's own image, which is what scripture tells us in Genesis chapter one, that included a kind of freedom even to reject him. Love is not love unless it is freely given. The traditional name of the consequence of this rejection of God is hell. Hell, then, is real at least in this life if not the next. People do reject God. Next week, I would like to reflect with you on what hell might be. For now, I hope to hear your own thoughts on universalism and the doctrine of hell.