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Review Summary: Rigorous Academic Treatment of a Controversial Topic |
Date: 2008-11-29 |
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Details: This is one of the best books on hell that has ever been made available. The Zondervan Counterpoints books present multiple views and allow for feedback and rebuttals by the authors. This allows for a lot of comparison and contrast regarding the subject matter. Long story short, if you want to brush up on the four major worldviews on hell in today's postmodern society and be ready to speak about them with authority, this is the book to get. I had to write a paper on this book for one of my seminary classes and it wasn't easy! But it was a great book and I highly recommend it to any layperson or pastor! |
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Review Summary: Excellent Treatment of the Controversy |
Date: 2008-08-19 |
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Details: The subject of hell can be very confusing. This book really helped me to understand what different bible experts say on the matter. I can now understand why it's such a difficult topic, more than I had thought. I feel a lot better and less anxious about the subject after reading this book. |
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Review Summary: Why Not "5 Views on Hell"? |
Date: 2008-05-13 |
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Details: This was an excellent book that vividly captures each author's respective views on hell in a fair and even handed manner. It was hard to put the book down once I started reading and all 4 authors give compelling cases for their view. Clark Pinnock (conditional view) is the most forceful and convincing while Zachary Hayes (purgatorial view) is the least convincing. I especially liked at the end of each argument, the other 3 authors had a chance to rebut with a short assessment of the argument. I would have liked to see a 5th view of hell, as being remedial and temporal with the objective of universally reconciling all rational creatures back to God. This may be a minority view in modern Christendom, but was widely believed in the early church and deserved at least a look. Otherwise, it was a great book and highly worth reading and the exclusion of the universalist view in no way detracted from the quality of the material presented. |
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Review Summary: Two views on hell |
Date: 2008-04-20 |
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Details: Reading through the Zondervan Counterpoint series is an excellent way for anyone to "come up to speed" on the big issues of the Christian faith. These books not only offer thoughtful views from different perspectives but the historical theological developments are also reviewed. The depth is not too shallow nor is it too deep for the individual with a "day job".
However this Counterpoint series book is the weakest I have read to far. Zachary Hayes doesn't even speak to the topic of hell. Walvoord's defense of the literal view was lacking in depth. I found Crockett's and Pinnock's essays to be excellent and therefore I title my review "Two views on hell". I found Pinnock's defense of annihilationism to be particularly compelling which brought a solution to the problems created by the traditional view without compromising the authority scripture or human reason. It is not the traditional view of the church over the last 2000 years but Pinnock's cogent presentation makes one wonder why this view hasn't been embraced more widely. |
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Review Summary: Hell ... and Purgatory too |
Date: 2008-01-21 |
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Details: I was surprised to find a chapter devoted to Purgatory within this book, but it's a pleasant surprise. Fr Hayes's chapter is one of the most thoughtful popular presentations on Purgatory one will come across, reflecting the best in contemporary Catholic scholarship. It almost makes the book worth the price of admission. Particularly helpful, I think, is the way Hayes distinguishes between a Catholic understanding of salvation as process and the Reformation understanding of salvation as a one-time justifying event. It is this difference, and not biblical exegesis alone, that explains the Reformation rejection of Purgatory. Both Crockett and Pinnock seem to understand this. Pinnock also recognizes that the Catholic doctrine of Pinnock may in fact be compatible with his Arminianism.
Walvoord's chapter is wooden and lacking in nuance. Pinnock's defense of annihilationism is vigorously argued, but I think he takes a couple of cheap shots at predestination. It is not correct to assert that say, as Pinnock does, that according to predestinarianism, God "compels" people to believe. That may score a rhetorical point or two, but it's unfair to Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin.
Crockett spends most of his time arguing for the legitimacy of non-literal reading of Scripture and passes-over the harder moral and theological questions. Where is C. S. Lewis when you need him? For a more serious presentation of the metaphorical position, I would recommend Jerry Walls's book *Hell: The Logic of Damnation*. But Walls is a Wesleyan and thus more sympathetic to Catholic understandings of justification and purgatory.
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out of 22 Reviews
