The Rev. Rob Bell is pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, near Grand Rapids. The Mars Hill Church is an independent mega-church that has gained a national reputation, and Bell has become a well-known evangelical figure. Now, he is also a controversial one. His recently published book, Love Wins, has provoked an intense debate among conservative evangelicals because it seems to them to deny the existence of a literal hell after death, and they feel it smacks of "universalism,.” “Universalism,” as they see it, is a heretical doctrine that proclaims an easy salvation where everyone goes to heaven whether they believe in Christ or not. Rob Bell, some think, is guilty of this heresy because he appears to proclaim a “generous salvation” by which God saves most people irrespective of their earthly lives or beliefs.
In the end, such debates are not so much about God as they are about which human ideology we accept. Bell’s detractors are “dualistic exclusivists.” That is, they see humanity as being divided into two camps, the faithful and the faithless (that’s dualism). They believe that the faithful go to heaven and the faithless to hell (that’s exclusivism). So, those who have “a saving faith in Christ” are declared faithful and heaven-bound by the grace of God. All others are “rebels against God,” faithless, and going to hell.
Dualistic exclusivism is a cultural artifact, a way by which people of a particular culture make sense of their world. It happens to be a dominant way in the West, notably the United States. In Southeast Asia, by way of contrast, the prevailing social way of making sense of the world is neither dualistic or exclusivist—but rather non-dualistic and inclusive. It is thus commonplace for people in Thailand to say (as they do repeatedly) that “all religions teach the same thing.” They teach people “to be good.”When I look into the face of Christ as the gospels portray him, I just cannot see a God who is bound by a human ideology that casts the great majority of humanity into eternal torment. I see rather a prophet who defied the narrowly exclusivist ideology of his society. He ate with tax collectors, spoke with Samaritan women, touched lepers, and forgave prostitutes. After his resurrection, his followers opened the circle of their faith to include Gentiles. Women exercised unusually significant (for Roman times) leadership in their congregations. None of this sounds like dualistic exclusivism at all.
