...But that's ok, according to Rob Bell in Love Wins. For I have now finished the book, a little later than I imagined I would but it's here nonetheless.
To be honest, there's not much to expand upon from my post about his talk, though I can see now why the book had made a few of the questioners rather nervous- Bell does not have footnotes, so his statements can seem a lot more bold in print, in the flesh, he seems more cautious about affirming things.
But yes, the book is largely pastoral and evangelistic, rather than theological or historical. It's concerns do range wide, as he puts it 'from heaven and hell to God, Jesus, joy, violence, and the good news is better than that, among other things'. He stresses the importance of the 'now' over the 'then'; that Hell and Heaven can be a present reality, where Christ is, where Christ is not and we do our own selfish thing, and that this comes with immediate consequences rather than just being something that haunts us after death.
As for the actual matter of heaven and hell, he quotes a number of verses that are popular with Universalists, and asks what seem to me the eminently reasonable questions of 'why is forgiveness available only in this life?' and 'Does eternal torture in hell really a sign of the Loving Father' people both inside and outside the faith ask these questions, and what I tend to find, particularly with the latter is that we try to redefine love to make something completely unrecognizable in human terms, in Christlike terms to square it with the vengeful, wrathful God. Rob Bell though wants to say we don't have to do this. 'Eternity' in Hebrew thought is and 'aeon' an age, a stretch of time but not necessarily unending day after day kind of time, and it is a quality of experience- eternal punishment may be severe and purging, but potentially finite.[1] The gates of the New Jerusalem are never shut- people can travel in and out of them, into heaven or to hell, and potentially return again. There is punishment and there is misery, but it's more corrective and purposeful, often generated by our turning away from God. As far as I can see the message is not 'hell is empty' just that it can be. What does Hell mean when the God-in-man on the cross for doing nothing other than showing and teaching love; liberating, challenging disturbing love, says 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do?'
However whilst people are kicking up a fuss about the insane notion that maybe the Son came into the world not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him, the really provocative thing, the real break with Western Christendom, which nobody seems to have really picked up upon. It's the idea that God's love gives us total freedom. Time and again, Rob Bell asserts we can choose God or not choose God, implying it is up to us, salvation is in our own hands. The book is not comprehensive. As far as I can see there's nothing that addresses the issue of a passage like Rom. 9 11-23, which includes 'What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, as endured with much patience the object of wrath that are made more destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy which he has prepared beforehand for glory..?'
In this passage Paul seems to be emphasizing the sovereign will of God. It was of course this passage that acted as a key to Augustine's predestinarian theology- in his experience he found that there was no way he could've found salvation by his own power - it had to be an act of God, because Augustine in his youth positively delighted in sin and evil. What's more, he found the habit was not so easy to kick once he had become a Christian either, and so concluded that the human factor in salvation was rather negligible compared to the mercy of God. This combines with the idea that God really does get what God wants - he cannot be resisted, if he opts to save you, then you will be saved just like Augustine. Of course what is clear that if it is down to God and not to humans as to who makes it to heaven, then why are their so many unbelievers? The logical answer is because God never intended to have them become believers. They are clay pots made for destruction. He would probably accuse Rob Bell of Pelagianism were they contemporaries. I don't think Rob Bell believes God would make people solely for destruction, I don't want to believe it either, but there it is. It is a question that needs answering Augustine's view has more or less set the tone for Western Christian thinking on this matter ever since, we see it in Luther and Calvin, and the reaction of Arminius.
Of course the matter is confused slightly in the 'Love Wins' because Rob does note that Jesus is bigger than religion, and that God is not limited by human institutions, creeds and ideas seems fair, but there does seem to be the prospect that people can be saved by Jesus without recognizing Jesus specifically, I'm not sure if that a conscious choice towards a Jesus-shaped good is the idea here, or whether its potentially suggesting that in fact, God is plucking people out by his choice. Given the emphasis on freedom in the whole, book I suspect it may be the former.
The other side of this freedom of course is a rather 'american' or even 'consumer' model to Christianity? Don't like what Augustine said? That's fine, plenty don't agree with him, read the Eastern Fathers instead who never had Augustine's hang ups about sin and depravity and who affirm that because we still hold the image of God (having lost the 'likeness' (Gen 1.26) in the Fall) even in a tarnished way, we still have some freedom. He openly insists Christianity has a wide number of options, you can pick them and still be 'Orthodox' in outlook.[2]
On his first trip to America, Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted that there was a distinct distaste for conflict in the theological college he was visiting, and noted they tend to put 'community' before 'confession' if they disagreed, then they agreed to disagree on the matter. He found it quite unlike his European experience. He suggested part of it stemmed from the fact that many who came to America came fleeing religious persecution, and so were hardly going to start it up again now they had arrived in the New World. Of course it wasn't really a problem to be tolerant, it was such a big place that if one disagreed they could simply move out and spread away a little bit further. It seems friendly enough, but it had and has led to a bewildering array of Christianities in America, and Bonhoeffer himself was wary of it because they couldn't all be correct- and where freedom of religion was a noble principle to uphold for the first settlers, he was concerned that with subsequent generations it had become a general assumption about religion that meant people potentially sought accord more than caring about truth.
Can some of that be seen in Rob Bell's writings? I think so- we can disagree on these matters, I'm still going call you a Chrstian, he might say. It's inclusive and welcoming and reflects the fact that we can not ultiamtely grasp God, but it's important that we never stop trying. I said that Rob Bell seems less certain of his standpoint when in person, but maybe if he really believes what he has written is the truth, then he should be ready to defend it as best he can, because if the internet has shown me one thing about this viewpoint, it is that it currently needs a lot of defending.
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[1]This particular bit of the book is probably one of the most complicated and so it's not tremendously surprising to see that those who are claiming to review the book often miss this altogether and note references to eternal punishment, seemingly not realizing that that point has been answered.
[2] Though again the issue gets confused when in the penultimate chapter he notes that believing in the 'wrong God' can lead us to doing the wrong things- Inquisitions, wars of religion and Crusades would be examples of following the wrong God- but isn't the possibility of this happening much increased if there's a reduced need to agree upon the 'right God'?
