In 2011, the hottest controversy among theoblogians and readers of religion blogs in the USA, as well as a few other countries, was the subject of "HELL" which was connected to a book called Love Wins by Rob Bell and a tweet by John Piper that simply said "Farewell Rob Bell"
If you're anything like me, you enjoyed the conversation but you never wanted to follow the unthinking masses into consumer hell by buying exactly what the publisher told them to buy.
So you didn't purchase Love Wins. GREAT! Same as me. But you know all about the controversy from the blogs. And you also know that the theology that surrounds the subject goes much deeper than the Reformed vs. Emergent controversy and its related power struggles.
But alas! Despite all the heretic spanking, doctrinal restating and political positioning, we still haven't got hell figured out.
How can someone say that hell contains literal fire that scorches your butt while heaven contains metaphorical wine that you cannot enjoy? That's not consistent. Its also bad news for wine drinkers.
And how can all the words for "hell" in the Greek be interchangeble while the words for "love" are highly nuanced? Something is amiss.
When the raging conversation about the existence of hell hit the blogosphere earlier this year, I suggested reading Andrew Perriman who wrote some good blog posts on the subject. Andrew has just compiled those posts and created a book for Kindle, Heaven and Hell in Narrative Perspective
My posts on the subject in 2011:
Rob Bell and the new Generation
