BART CAMPOLO ON HELL

BART CAMPOLO AND THE DOCTRINE OF HELL

By Dr. Peter K. Nelson
Senior Pastor, Goshen Baptist Church
West Chester, Pennsylvania

In his article, “The Limits of God’s Grace” (Journal of Student Ministries, Nov.-Dec., 2006), Bart Campolo challenges the classic biblical doctrine of hell, favoring instead a notion of universal salvation. This is a noteworthy essay, not only because of its strong claims but because it is being presented in a publication that has had a significant influence within evangelical ministry circles. Numerous responses to this work are circulating on the internet. I want to comment on several lines of Campolo’s reasoning and various aspects of the case he makes.

SALVATION AND WORKS

If the logic implicitly followed in the article is made explicit, it boils down to a theology of works. The sorrowful story of a nine-year-old girl who is horribly abused and later rejects the Lord for allowing this tragedy is the backdrop for a merit-based view of relating to God. The implication is that, if you suffer enough, if you endure enough pain and abuse in this life, then it is unthinkable that things could turn out badly for you in the end. In other words, the person who faces a sufficient amount of unjust suffering deserves the eternal favor of God. In fact, it is determined that God would be guilty of acting in a way that is out of line and unconscionable if he were to condemn anyone who had faced such an extent of suffering.

There are two problems here. First, how much suffering is enough to exempt a person from the wrath of God? How deeply painful and traumatizing must the abuse be in order to qualify a person absolutely to escape final condemnation? Surely Campolo would not imagine that someone, say, spanked too hard one time as a child would be, for that reason, necessarily bound for heaven. On the other hand, he is vigorous in the effort to portray as innocent victims those who suffer serious abuse, and for such victims any denial of final bliss would be unthinkable. The lack of an objective measure of the seriousness of one’s suffering is a major flaw of reasoning.

Second, and more importantly, in the Bible it is quite clear that no one is saved on the basis of his or her deserving, but only through the all-sufficient merit of Christ. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9, NIV). “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:4-5a). “We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal 2:15-16a). Scores of additional texts could be cited. It would be hard to overstate the importance of this bedrock biblical theme, which was emphasized by the Reformers and has been upheld by orthodox believers through the ages.

DOCTRINE OF GOD

In addition, Campolo frames the whole discussion so as to magnify the love of God and mask various other divine attributes. There simply is no grappling with the holiness of God, or with divine justice, or with the righteous wrath of the Lord. Rather than presenting a balanced and comprehensively biblical doctrine of God and then building an informed understanding of eternal destinies on that founda­tion, it is assumed throughout that love exhaustively represents the character of God.

The boldness with which Campolo asserts his view is stunning: “I simply am not interested in any God but a completely good, entirely loving, and perfectly forgiving One who is powerful enough to utterly triumph over evil. Such a God may not exist, but I will die seeking such a God, and I will pledge my allegiance to no other possibility because, quite frankly, anything less is not worthy of my worship.” We must bear in mind, however, that church history is littered with misguided movements and tragic distortions of the gospel that have resulted from half-truths and the neglect of the full array of divine attributes.

The end product of this approach to God, of course, is belief in universal salvation, a complete redemption and absolute healing “for all of us.” Campolo states that he is not afraid God will damn people if they do not accept Jesus, nor is he in doubt about the hope of universal redemption. In fact, Campolo goes further and depicts negatively those who do not share this hope, although he does not begin to interact with the reasons for which classical Christian belief has always rejected universalism.

BIBLICAL AUTHORITY

It seems that Campolo forms his convictions regarding eternal destiny in a way that neglects biblical authority. With reference to his claim that God is absolutely and entirely loving, he states, “This is my first article of faith. I required no Bible to determine it, and—honestly—I will either interpret away or ignore altogether any Bible verse that suggests otherwise.” He goes on, “I came to trust the Bible again, of course, but only because it so clearly bears witness to the God of love I had already chosen to believe in.” What is absent here is the humble disposition of letting God set the agenda for our thinking and practice; there simply is no readiness to seek out and submit to “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Campolo provides a clear, if disturbing, example of fashioning firm beliefs without genuinely seeking to ground them in the witness of Scripture.

CANON WITHIN A CANON

Campolo favors the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels over against other sections of the New Testament because the life, death and resurrection of Christ seem to be “the best expression of the ultimate truth of God,” namely grace. But this is putting the cart before the horse: how does one responsibly identify the best expression of the ultimate truth of God but by first reading the Bible—the whole Word of God—and then seeking to discern its overarching message about one topic or another (e.g., eternal states)?

Further, when Campolo summarizes the task of following Jesus in the Gospels as feeding the poor and freeing the oppressed, he does not adequately represent the biblical balance of word and deed in discipleship (see, e.g., Luke 4:18-19; 9:2; Matt 28:19-20; Acts 1:8). A study of Mark’s Gospel, for example, shows Jesus and his followers casting out demons and healing the sick as well as proclaiming God’s Word (e.g., 1:14-15, 21, 34, 38; 2:2, 13; 3:14-15; 4:1; 6:12-13); there is a balance of attention to body and soul, to physical and spiritual needs. Framing Jesus’ ministry in terms of social action, however, takes away from this healthy and balanced attention to the whole range of human needs.

RESPONSE TO TRUTH

Campolo puts himself forward in this article in such a way that that minimizes and makes light of truth and of the importance of distinctions between right and wrong. “John Calvin—or Jerry Falwell for that matter—may well be right after all, but if they are I would rather cling to my glorious hope than accept their bitter truth just to save my own skin.” Without going into the various problems created by lumping Calvin and Falwell together in this way, it must at least be noted that this disregard for truth is as far-reaching as it is bold. The impression given is that the beliefs of various other people with whom Campolo disagrees are foolish to say the least, and perhaps even reprehensible. A parallel impression is that Campolo presumes to have the right to dismiss historic doctrines and the revealed truth of Scripture that undergird orthodox theology, thus allowing him to put forward his own distinctive set of ideas.

Furthermore, there is a flippancy about the horrors of hell in this article. To say, under any terms, that you would prefer hell over the prospect of having to accept the views of people you disagree with is grossly to minimize the seriousness of the biblical fact of God’s wrath. Readers are not helped when truth is made subordinate to this kind of brazen disregard of profound and sobering eternal realities.

At one point Campolo contends, “If those things [i.e., claims about the eternal suffering of those who do not accept Christ, and notions of divine sovereignty encompassing human tragedy] are true, then God might as well send me to hell.” The soul gasps when reading this assertion. By contrast, a fitting, God-honoring response at this point might have been, “If those things are true, then I pray that the Lord would graciously and powerfully work in my life to help me accept and submit without reservation to his ways and designs, because I want nothing more in all the universe than to honor God and embrace the Lord’s saving work, through which he offers me deliverance from final judgment.”

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

In “The Limits of God’s Grace,” Campolo fiercely dismisses what is portrayed as a stiff, unfeeling theology, and aggressively commends instead an avant-garde and fresh perspective on God and life. The fact is, however, that there is nothing new or fresh about these ideas. What they amount to, ultimately, is a return to various errors and imbalances that have harmed the church and misrepresented the Word of God at various times in the past (e.g., universalism, the social gospel movement, adopting a canon within the canon, dismissing divine sovereignty, neglecting major aspects of God’s character).

Perhaps the one thing that is fresh and cutting edge in this article is the staggering boldness, the brazen “in your face” approach with which Campolo dismisses biblical authority and assumes the right to determine for himself just what kind of a God there is and must be. He declares that no other conception produces a God worthy of his worship. In the end, Campolo maintains that he will not respond to God in any way other than the way he deems best, and that he will not consider any other view of the Bible, of theology, or of God. There is a vehemence about this essay, a tenacity which, sadly, is deployed in support of seriously misguided hermeneutical and theological claims.