In the aftermath of the Rob Bell controversy on universalism, the instigator, Justin Taylor, continues to stoke the fires of his exclusivist agenda:
- Hell Under Fire
- J. I. Packer’s Questions
- The Meaning of “Endless” in the Original Hebrew and Greek
- An Open Letter to Seekers
- Keller and Carson on Hell and God’s Love
- Universalism and the Reality of Eternal Punishment
- How Do God’s Love and God’s Wrath Relate?
- Reviewing Rob Bell
- What is Universalism?
- A Response to Inclusivism
- Rob Bell on Martin Luther and Salvation in Hell
- How Should Preachers Preach on Hell?
- What Happens When You Emphasize God’s Love in the Wrong Way?
- Only the Real God Can Satisfy the Longing of Our Soul?
- If All This Hell Talk Makes You Uncomfortable
- Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell
Taylor’s sidekick at The Gospel Coalition, Kevin DeYoung, has also chimed in:
- To Hell with Hell
- Two Thoughts on the Rob Bell Brouhaha
- Waffling Over Hell
- “Through” Means “Through Faith“
- Carl F.H. Henry: The Awesome Silences of Eternity
Pitch a tent at The Gospel Coalition and you’ll only hear exclusivist voices denounce universalists and marginalize inclusivists. In the midst of all this clamor, a quiet, respectful, and measured voice emerges: Mark Galli, senior managing editor at Christianity Today. See his online essay:
Another sane voice in the mix is Scot McKnight, professor of biblical and theological studies at North Park University Chicago:
I profited from the balanced perspective of Timothy Dalrymple, Associate Director of Content at Patheos:
Finally, check out John Dyer’s article on how social media changed theological debate:
In the coming days I’ll contribute some posts at Bensonian with an alternative view that you won’t hear at The Gospel Coalition.
B E N S O N I A N 
Thanks for pushing the conversation forward and continuing to examine the intricacies of a difficult doctrine. The debate has become over polarized and middle ground must be sought. Sam
Stayed tuned, Sam. Today I’ll have a post on Karl Barth’s view of hell and tomorrow a post on C. S. Lewis’ view of hell.
On the contrary, though, we shouldn’t fall in love with the middle ground simply because it makes us feel like we are the most sensible.
We should be painstakingly clear that what Rob Bell is doing is not “inclusivism” as it is properly understood. Inclusivism involves primarily the situation of someone who has never really heard about Jesus before, and might never.
What Bell is doing should be called “Christocentric universalism.” And whether Bell knows it or not, he’s hearkening back to one of Barth’s distinctives. The neo-orthoxian crowd subscribes to “objective forgiveness” on the cross. Where Calvinists would talk of “limited atonement” and Arminians would talk of “provisional forgiveness” until salvation is appropriated by faith, neo-orthoxians take a step outside of formal orthodoxy as it has been conceived for 1800 years (see the controversy on Origen for this).
Thus, Rob Bell isn’t so much concerned with the person who has never heard of Jesus before. In Bell’s theology, it appears that he thinks that those who actively oppose Jesus for their entire lives will one day be with Jesus for eternity. This is problematic. We shouldn’t be trying to correct the “exclusivist” crowd by posturing a middle ground. The “exclusivist” crowd is, in fact, the orthodox crowd. Any Christian in the 3rd century would have called Bell a heretic.
With all due respect, Dave, I haven’t fallen “in love with the middle ground simply because it makes [me] feel like [I’m] the most sensible.” My view is closer to inclusivism than exclusivism based on reasoning, not feeling. Aristotle’s theory of the golden mean cannot be applied to everything, but in terms of soteriology I think it works: universalism is the excess (“everyone is accepted”), exclusivism is the deficiency (“few are accepted”), and inclusivism is the golden mean (“everyone is accepted, but not all have accepted their acceptance”).
Without having read Rob Bell’s book, I’m not in a position to emphatically call him a universalist. Nevertheless, he’s definitely flirting with universalism in his promotional video.
Karl Barth is commonly misunderstood as a universalist. A former classmate of mine at Wheaton College, Matt Milliner, has written a blog post that addresses this mistake. Read the whole post. Here’s a salient excerpt: