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128 reviews for:
Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We've Made Up
Francis Chan, Preston Sprinkle
3.67 AVERAGE
128 reviews for:
Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We've Made Up
Francis Chan, Preston Sprinkle
3.67 AVERAGE
This title is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in learning about what Scripture says about hell. Chan & Sprinkle have thoroughly researched & explained straightforward about what is known about hell and what isn’t. The book does combat Rob Bell’s book Love Wins heavily, but it never loses its focus.
Very very meh. Chapter 6 is the best but that’s really not saying much.
Flimsy reactionary book written in response to Rob Bell's Love Wins.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Very interesting. This made me think and want to research on my own about the afterlife and hell.
Good introduction to the topic and interaction with Bell’s book
This book was good. But now I am surprised I gave it 4 stars. I believe there is a hell so I didn't feel like I learned anything super new.
Some challenging questions, but refreshingly biblical. I like his writing style, really about thinking out how things should apply to your life and not some airy-fairy academic theology. Also not too heavily targeting individual people (ahem Rob Bell), but using the then-interest in this issue to provide some clarity.
Note, this book was read before I got a Goodreads account as part of a challenge to read 50 new books by the end of 2019. I wrote a review for it right after I read it and copy pasted it here.
This was written from a very Baptist perspective. I do like that it at least walks through some of the more commonly cited verses about the Christian afterlife and actually addresses how hard it is to translate from the Greek most of the Gospels and Epistles was written in. They also at least acknowledge that they aren't the ultimate authority on this and do actually use scripture pretty heavily in their analyses.
There's a lot to be disappointed in, however. The most frustrating is that they don't even address the Catholic concept of purgatory. Like, this is literally a book that purports to be about examining the most common Christian beliefs about the afterlife, and it doesn't even address the teachings of the largest Christian denomination. It's not even like it claims to be solely about Protestantism either, it cover quite a bit of pre-Reformation theology. This is especially disappointing because a lot of the verses used to support the existence of purgatory are also used by other Christians to argue in favor of annihilationism and it would be really interesting to look at how those two very different understandings compare. I also feel like they give up on discussing annihilationism surprisingly fast, especially considering they literally say that they were surprised at how persuasive this particular interpretation is. I'm a little surprised at how much attention they gave to universalism considering how much they look down on it, but at least it didn't get ignored.
Btw, if you haven't guessed, their conclusion is that Hell exists, all non-Christians and a large chunk of Christians end up there, too. And Hell is eternal but at greatly varying levels of severe. Not to start a fight or anything, but I go back and forth a bit on the afterlife issue but most often I think annihilationism is closest to what the Gospels describe.
This was written from a very Baptist perspective. I do like that it at least walks through some of the more commonly cited verses about the Christian afterlife and actually addresses how hard it is to translate from the Greek most of the Gospels and Epistles was written in. They also at least acknowledge that they aren't the ultimate authority on this and do actually use scripture pretty heavily in their analyses.
There's a lot to be disappointed in, however. The most frustrating is that they don't even address the Catholic concept of purgatory. Like, this is literally a book that purports to be about examining the most common Christian beliefs about the afterlife, and it doesn't even address the teachings of the largest Christian denomination. It's not even like it claims to be solely about Protestantism either, it cover quite a bit of pre-Reformation theology. This is especially disappointing because a lot of the verses used to support the existence of purgatory are also used by other Christians to argue in favor of annihilationism and it would be really interesting to look at how those two very different understandings compare. I also feel like they give up on discussing annihilationism surprisingly fast, especially considering they literally say that they were surprised at how persuasive this particular interpretation is. I'm a little surprised at how much attention they gave to universalism considering how much they look down on it, but at least it didn't get ignored.
Btw, if you haven't guessed, their conclusion is that Hell exists, all non-Christians and a large chunk of Christians end up there, too. And Hell is eternal but at greatly varying levels of severe. Not to start a fight or anything, but I go back and forth a bit on the afterlife issue but most often I think annihilationism is closest to what the Gospels describe.