Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

By Rob Bell, HarperOne, 2011

Reviewed by Dr. Kent Kersey, Associate Professor of Ministries

Let me start by saying that I’ve been a fan of Rob Bell. I have used his NOOMA video series many times to illustrate various message points. I’ve benefited from reading his books. I even paid to see him in person a few years ago. I believe Rob Bell is sincerely trying to live out what he sees as Jesus’ way of life.

Despite his sincerity, however, he’s carelessly teaching some bad theology these days. After reading his latest book, Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, I must conclude that he is a theological innovator (theological innovation is not a good thing) who has introduced heresy into the church based on good intentions mixed with bad methodology. In short, it’s impossible to take Bell’s erroneous views seriously since his strategy is so flawed.

The most unfortunate aspect of Bell’s book is his overly-poetic style. Trying to find cogent insights here is like attempting to build an eschatology based on Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Bell’s previous book employed 326 endnotes to establish his arguments; many of these were long and detailed notes. There is not one endnote in this book. Bell wants to be taken seriously as a theologian while remaining elusively hip and lyrical.

The basic argument of the book goes like this: the most important thing about God is His love. Love is essentially unconditional acceptance of people. Therefore, since God loves people, He accepts them unconditionally. This categorical acceptance reveals itself ultimately in an eternal, eschatological union with God for everyone. As much as Bell wants to evade the label, he does sound a lot like a universalist. Bell makes many theological errors in this book. These errors, however, are largely the result of his poor methodology. Specifically, this review will uncover Bell’s erroneous treatment of love, his deviation from orthodoxy, and his poor logic.

At the very beginning of the book, Bell states, “First, I believe that Jesus’ story is first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us. It is a stunning, beautiful, expansive love, and it is for everybody, everywhere.” The only textual support he gives to back up this claim is the first phrase of John 3: 16, “For God so loved the world . . .” That’s it. This is a classic case of question begging; an unsubstantiated premise leads ultimately to unsupported conclusions.

Unless Bell can back up his claim that love is God’s most basic quality, his conclusions must be doubted.  C. S. Lewis warns us that if we aren’t careful, the proposition, “God is love” can become “Love is God.”  Bell’s definition of love is the god of his theology. His notion of divine unconditional acceptance of all leads to his universalist claims.

The second problem with Bell’s methodology is his loose treatment of the Christian tradition. The following quote is long, but worth including here:

And then, last of all, please understand that nothing in this book hasn’t been taught, suggested, or celebrated by many before me. I haven’t come up with a radical new teaching that’s any kind of departure from what’s been said an untold number of times. That’s the beauty of the historic, orthodox Christian faith. It’s a deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences. If this book, then, does nothing more than introduce you to the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus in all its vibrant, diverse, messy, multivoiced complexity—well, I’d be thrilled.

Bell’s pledge to orthodoxy betrays his acknowledgment of potential heresy charges. His redefinition of orthodoxy must be rejected. Orthodoxy, by definition, is not a wide, diverse stream; it is a narrow, homogeneous stream. The point isn’t that Bell’s universalist teachings haven’t been proposed before. The point is that they have been taught and rejected. The essence of orthodoxy is not variance and diversity, but consensus and uniformity.

The third problem with Bell’s methodology is his careless use of argumentation. There are a number of times when he disingenuously poses arguments and points of support that, on closer examination, reveal sloppy writing and thinking. Consider the following quote:

Will “all the ends of the earth” come, as God has decided, or only some? Will all feast as it’s promised in Psalm 22, or only a few? Will everybody be given a new heart, or only a limited number of people? Will God, in the end, settle, saying: “Well, I tried, I gave it my best shot, and sometimes you just have to be okay with failure”? Will God shrug God-size shoulders and say, “You can’t always get what you want”?

A first year philosophy student could identify this as the logical fallacy of the excluded middle. Bell gives us only two choices. Either the loving, powerful God will save everyone or he is not strong enough to save everyone. He provides no other choices.

In one of the book’s most grievous inaccuracies, Bell calls on Luther to support the possibility of postmortem evangelism. Bell writes, “In a letter Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, wrote to Hans von Rechenberg in 1522 about the possibility that people could turn to God after death, asking: ‘Who would doubt God’s ability to do that?’” Bell clearly implies that Luther sees postmortem evangelism as a live option. A cursory reading of Luther’s actual letter, however, reveals his complete opposition to Bell’s line of reasoning. Luther says that Bell’s type of speculation is dangerous since it holds a worldly view of love and compassion over against God’s glorious judgment.

In conclusion, then, I would say that Bell’s book raises important questions about personal eschatology. However, due to careless use of sources and argumentation, it’s hard to take his answers seriously. For those worried about Bell’s long term impact, don’t be. The strongest asset he offers in this book is his hipness and trendiness. And as we all know, those don’t last. I predict that this book will be out of style right around the same time his thick, black-rimmed glasses are no longer fashionable.