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Controversy: Rob Bell's "Love Wins"

So the other night I decided to try get into this whole twitter thing. Yes, I know it's been around forever now but I never really "got it" and just stuck with Facebook. So I go on twitter and discover the trending topics and see a familiar name at the top of the list: Rob Bell.Now I do like Rob Bell and his nooma series etc so I decided to check it out and found what I wish I didn't.. Hate. Lots and lots of hating going on from so-called christians about Rob Bell and his new unreleased book about heaven and hell called: "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived". The marketing makes it...

Book review on Rob Bell's “Love Wins”

This book was quite openly condemned by some prominent Christian leaders when the book was first announced back around Spring 2011, mainly mainly accusing Bell of being a universalist and denying the existence of hell. Lots of leaders formed opinions about the book and thus lots and laypeople took on various opinions as their own without much insight or research. The problem was that these leaders hadn't even READ the book! It wasn't released yet at the time. They decided their opinions based on the blurb and promo video which posed provocative questions about the doctrine of hell. The book starts up asking lots of questions c...

So I'm reading that controversial book.

UPDATE (March 2013) - I finally did the rest of the review on this book... even if it is two years later! Better late than never, right? Go and read it now!Love Wins by Rob BellI ordered this a while ago and had been waiting in anticipation for it to arrive. "Love Wins: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived" by Rob Bell has been causing quite a stir on the interwebs various corners. I'm sure it's not new news to anyone who listens and watches these things that a few major church leaders quite openly condemned this book and its author because of its subject - before it had even been released and...

hell and all that damnable stuff

So on light of all the Rob Bell controversy, it resparked my desire to look into the traditional doctrine of hell. My thoughts on it all began long ago before I went to study theology about 5 or so years ago now. A good close friend of mine was struggling in her faith over the traditional hell concept and found it hard to rectify or justify in her mind. It was the usual question of "how can a loving God burn people forever?" infinite punishment for finite crimes. I had thought about it before then but never in any great depth as I just didn't know where to begin, being a fairly new Christian at the time. I did my best to try w...

Digging through ancient texts

The Orthodox and Catholics have all the books from the Septuagint, which is what most of the early Christians would have known regarding the Old Testament. Those "extra" books that Protestants call the Deuterocanonical books (or that the general laypeople often refer to as 'The Apocrypha'), they're just part of the Old Testament the same as the more familiar OT books.During the Reformation in the 16th century, Luther decided to remove these books (and planned to remove some New Testament books too) as he believed they weren't canonical and cited Jerome as his authority to make this decision. It was Jerome ...