So I went out and read Love Wins and re-read The Great Divorce to confirm my feeling that those conflating Bell and Lewis on salvation were wrong to do so (they are). Here are my thoughts.
Bell is clearly a universalist and he, in important but sometimes subtle ways, seriously misreads the Gospel narrative, but there's a good bit to like about the book. His discussion on the Kingdom of Heaven being in some sense "now" is in the right neighborhood and he corrects, cogently, the popular notion that our eternal resting place is somewhere else, off in the clouds, or that we'll be disembodied spirits forever. And there are some bits about resurrection leading to new life, and the importance of recognizing symbolism, and an interesting discussion (in the chapter There Are Rocks Everywhere) on being saved through Christthough you've never heard his name- a notion a great number of orthodox, non-unversalist Christians have accepted throughout the centuries.
Now to the bad. I'll just point to 4 things because A.) I didn't actually buy the book (read it at B&N) so I'm going off of memory, B.) It cites a great number of verses, mostly in rapid succession and in snippets, and it was hard to tell, as I was reading it, if they'd been taken out of context or how many verses he'd left out that cut against this thesis. I'll leave that analysis to biblical scholars and just look at 3 of the stories he discussed in detail and the chapter that forms the heart of his argument. First the stories. Lazarus, Abraham, and the Rich Man; The Rich Man who asks how he can get eternal life; and The Prodigal Son.
In the first, the Rich Man, who didn't help Lazarus in life, even though the dogs licked his sores (had compassion on him), is in hell and begs Abraham to let Lazarus (who is in heaven) bring him water. Here's Abraham (Luke 16:25-26): But Abraham replied, Son remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone else cross over from there to us.
When the rich man further asks Abraham to let Lazarus go back to earth and warn his family to repent, he gets this reply (Luke 16:31): He said to him, If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
Bell does something extraordinarily odd with this story. First, he folds it into a larger narrative he's making, about how God does the unexpected things when rewarding people - (the Rich Man is punished, Lazarus- filthy, sore-covered Lazarus- is rewarded) which happens to be true, but not really in the way Bell supposes. But he forgets, or ignores, or has something very silly to say (I don't recall which) about the part I've highlighted- the part about their being an uncrossable chasm between Lazarus (in heaven) and the rich man (in hell). This seems important. And it doesn't really help a universalist to note that there isn't a literal chasm. Abraham is plainly saying that there is no communication between heaven and hell. Bell's only response, as best as I can remember, is that there's an uncrossable chasm because the rich man, in asking Lazarus to bring him water, is still clinging to his earthly status (i.e, Lazarus is still my servant and should do what I say). Which, I'm sorry, is an interpretation that can't be taken seriously.
But more extraordinary is the second thing he does with this story: he sort of skips to the end, and notes that the bit about not believing even after seeing a resurrection is really a prefiguring of the resurrection. This is, no doubt, quite true but Bell apparently completely misses its implication. If the Rich Man's family wouldn't repent even after seeing a resurrection, and if the resurrection Abraham mentions is Christ's resurrection, then clearly some people won't repent even after seeing Christ's resurrection. And they will end up with the Rich Man.
Next, Bell takes on the story of the Rich Man asking Christ how he can obtain eternal life. You know the one. Christ names some commandments, the rich man says he's kept those commandments, and then Christ says "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Bell concludes, rightly, that we all have different hurdles to cross, and that wealth was the rich man's. But then he insists that Jesus is telling this parable not because the rich man actually needs to give up his possessions (or, metaphorically, surrender that which keeps him worldly) to inherit internal life but because if the rich man doesn't he won't have as much responsibility in heaven. This is not even hinted at in the text. The only part that could even suggest it, to the wandering eye, is the word "treasures", but this is clearly an example of parallelism (i.e, you're giving up insubstantial treasure to get everlasting treasure)- not an indication that the rich man worries he'll end up the water-boy of heaven.
Finally, Bell tackles the Prodigal son, and contrasts the son who stayed home with the one who went away. The one who stayed home and followed all the rules is at the banquet and unhappy because the father has welcomed the prodigal son home as though he'd never left. This, Bell insists, is hell. Being at the banquet, but being unable to enjoy it because you're caught up with stuff that doesn't matter. And getting to heaven is accepting God's narrative for your life- one in which you're loved, and precious, and can come home at any time and realize the forgiveness your father has already given you. The prodigal son thought he deserved to be a servant in his father's fields. He realized he deserved much more, in spite of his sins.
This is such a bad misreading of this most famous of stories it's hard to know where to begin. The elder son's reaction is a warning to religious folks not to resent those who've come late to the banquet- that part of the story is a direct analogue to the parable of workers in the vineyard. It has nothing to do with personal hell's and the older son is not a villain or one of the religious hypocrites Jesus so scorned. It's simply a message that home matters, not when or how you got there. Which takes us to where Bell really goes wrong: home matters. The first half of Luke 15, the part about the lost sheep and the lost coin, is a story of God's how franatically God tries to bring us home; the second half is the story about, once we decide to come back home, how completely he washes away the past. But repenteth we must. Come home we must. Going back to the parable of the vineyards, the landowner pays all of the workers, even the one's who came late, an equal wage. But there's no suggestion he paid those who didn't come at all. Of course, it may well be that ultimately everyone came- the story doesn't say and so we don't know. At any rate, one has to show up for work; has to come home.
But where, you might wonder, does Bell specifically espouse universalism? And why? What is his argument? The crux of it can be found in the chapter, "Does God Get What God Wants?" Here Bell suggests that, because the Bible says that God "desires that all should be saved", and because God is all powerful, God would not create a system in which all wouldn't be saved. Eventually. Maybe they'll suffer for awhile in a hell of their own making, here on earth and then later in the life to come, but eventually they'll come home.
To this I say that God does not "get" anything. God is outside of time and outside of space. In order to "get" something you must have a future. God doesn't. Similarly, God does not really "want" anything. It is silly to think of God as off somewhere hatching plans or moving chess pieces to bring a grand strategy to fruition. When Bell suggests, tongue-in-cheek, that maybe God is only sort of great because he ultimately fails in achieving one of his wants he is, I'm sorry to say, talking nonsense.
Words like want, when applied to God, are attempts to explain the divine nature in a way we- who are not outside of time and space, and are frequently disappointed or angry or frustrated, or happy or sad- can understand. "Wanting all to be saved" probably translates to something like, "it is in the nature of the Supreme Good to be united with itself" which makes sense if we look at it sort of slantwise, but doesn't really clarify things. So God is not a failure if he "wants" everyone saved but everyone isn't saved; because God "wants" other things as well- or rather, other things go into the divine nature. A sensible attempt to make sense of the Divine Nature tries to reconcile the different aspects of God. Bell just flattens the whole gospel narrative and presses into service of his salvation doctrine. Which is ironic because he spends much of the book railing against Christians who ignore other aspects of the Bible to focus on salvation.
Finally, I'd like to say something about C.S. Lewis and the frequent insistence, from Bell defenders, that C.S. Lewis believed more or less the same thing. It isn't so. There are similarities but the differences are pretty much at the center of the biblical narrative. First the similarities. C.S. Lewis clearly seems to believe that we may be able to "choose" heaven or hell after we die. It's also obvious, from The Great Divorce, that Lewis leans towards Hell being primarily a state of mind. Lewis's character at one point asks his guide (it's a kind of Divine Comedy thing) if Heaven and Hell are just state's of mind and the guide replies with something like, "oh yes, hell is a state of mind, if you like, but heaven is very real".
But there are three enormous differences. One, for Lewis, there's a real separation between Hell/Purgatory and Heaven. It's not simply a case, as it is for Bell, of being in heaven (at the banquet) and not liking it because you choose to hang onto to your own stuff.
Two, although you can still "choose" to repent, accept Christ, after you die, there's a sense in which that choice isn't much of a choice. Something has happened. Almost without exception the people in Hell scarcely recognize Heaven and are continually misunderstanding the people who are trying to lead them there. It's as if they've been severed from understanding. There's all sorts of talk about "how foggy" everything is in hell- theological societies where everyone keeps getting muddled, people wandering aimlessly. At one point Lewis encounters a woman he calls a "grumbler", and he says, surely she'll eventually get to heaven, with such a small separation from God as that. Here's the discussion between Lewis and his guide:
"The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman -- even the least trace of one -- still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there's one wee spark under all those ashes, we'll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there's nothing but ashes we'll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever. They must be swept up."
"But how can there be a grumble without a grumbler?"
"The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye'll have had experiences... it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticising it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine."
Which brings us to the final difference. In Lewis's hell, it's always evening. And there's forever a rumor, among it's residents, that evening will one day turn to night. This is patently a metaphor for a point of no return. Perhaps judgment day. Perhaps something else. At any rate, Lewis anticipates the possibility that one day night will descend and rain will fall and those who have not chosen right will be left out in the cold and dark.
Like I said, these are enormous differences. Lewis leaves room for sin's power to separate us so that, while we have a choice, we no longer understand the options; we're muddled, everything is foggy, and all that we clung to in life stays with us forever.
