Todd Erickson
August 7th, 2011, 02:38 PM
Erasing Hell was written by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle. Sprinkle went to a variety of fundamentalist Baptist colleges and seminary for his education. Chan says in the book that Sprinkle did all of the research, and then Chan wrote the book.
Never mind that this book is a great demonstrative document on logical fallacies (I'm pretty sure it contains all of them). You have to understand a couple of things first.
1. Francis Chan is a reformed, or what is now being referred to as "New Calvinist" teacher. 5 point plus, etc.
2. To Chan, Love is not the primary attribute of God, it is merely one of his attributes, like Wrath. Ultimately, God is unknowable.
3. The majority of Chan's argument is arguing from mystery or the negative...what we don't know about God, what Jesus didn't say, etc.
4. Chan's documentation for hell outside of the bible is almost entirely from books of the Apocrypha, such as Enoch or The fourth book of Ezra.
5. Chan continually presents his findings in terms of 'what they believed in that day and age", but refuses to actually deal with things like Helenization or the actual culture, preferring to read them through the lenses he is comfortable with.
Had his arguments actually been based in reason, it would have been one thing, but he uses the work of other "scholars" as a blunt club to bash his way to victory in this book. At one point, arguing about the meaning of the word "punishment", he essentially says "I read books by 15 different authors from other faiths, and they all said that this word meant "punishment", so they all obviously also mean the same thing by it, and all unquestioned context around it shares the same meaning.
Which is to say, apparently Chan doesn't punish his children, because you only ever punish people because you want to harm them without hopes of correcting them or creating a state of change within them. Punishment comes from wrath, which is simply a lashing out, it serves no other purpose.
But we can't question why God is like this, because He is greater than us.
Just...a fairly disgusting book, overall. Please don't use this in your churches to teach about hell.
Never mind that this book is a great demonstrative document on logical fallacies (I'm pretty sure it contains all of them). You have to understand a couple of things first.
1. Francis Chan is a reformed, or what is now being referred to as "New Calvinist" teacher. 5 point plus, etc.
2. To Chan, Love is not the primary attribute of God, it is merely one of his attributes, like Wrath. Ultimately, God is unknowable.
3. The majority of Chan's argument is arguing from mystery or the negative...what we don't know about God, what Jesus didn't say, etc.
4. Chan's documentation for hell outside of the bible is almost entirely from books of the Apocrypha, such as Enoch or The fourth book of Ezra.
5. Chan continually presents his findings in terms of 'what they believed in that day and age", but refuses to actually deal with things like Helenization or the actual culture, preferring to read them through the lenses he is comfortable with.
Had his arguments actually been based in reason, it would have been one thing, but he uses the work of other "scholars" as a blunt club to bash his way to victory in this book. At one point, arguing about the meaning of the word "punishment", he essentially says "I read books by 15 different authors from other faiths, and they all said that this word meant "punishment", so they all obviously also mean the same thing by it, and all unquestioned context around it shares the same meaning.
Which is to say, apparently Chan doesn't punish his children, because you only ever punish people because you want to harm them without hopes of correcting them or creating a state of change within them. Punishment comes from wrath, which is simply a lashing out, it serves no other purpose.
But we can't question why God is like this, because He is greater than us.
Just...a fairly disgusting book, overall. Please don't use this in your churches to teach about hell.