For which reading do you think a homily on hell would be appropriate?

Second, while the doctrine of free will mandates the necessity of hell, who among would presume to say that anyone is there now, let alone a specific person?

But, while we’re at it, what percentage of the homilies of the Fathers were devoted to hell?

What is your opinion of the doctrine of Apokatastasis as proposed by St. Gregory of Nyssa?

And finally, excessive emphasis on this subject has a nasty tendency of creating the impression that the object of Christian life is to avoid major sins and stay out of hell. Is not the true objective of Christian life to become sharers in the divine nature, becoming by grace what Christ is by nature?

come to think of it, there’s only been one time i’ve heard a homily on the “darkness of our hearts.” i remember being quite surprised — i was on a trip to canada.

but most of the time, it’s as if dr. phil is at the pulpit, blabbing away on pop psychology dressed up as “the word of god.” how much do you want to bet that this sunday’s homily at my home parish is about “being nice?”

so joe is correct. i, for one, am not in any danger of hearing anything other than oprah channelling at my local catholic church.

Only after professing a belief in the Bible does the statement move to a profession of faith in the Trinity. The Bible before God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I think this is a profound mistake, and a basically Protestant one. And surely the manifold divisions among Protestant denominations that presume they know “what the Bible says” before the truth question is engaged demonstrates how problematic this sort of move is. It certainly hasn’t worked to secure the unity of the Body of Christ, despite what “the Bible says” about that (cf. John 17:20ff).

The Word of God did not become text, but flesh. And this didn’t happen in the pages of Scripture; rather, the pages of Scripture attest to it’s having happened in flesh and blood, in real time, and in a real place. By all means, let us affirm the importance of the Scriptures as containing the faith handed down by the apostles. But putting an affirmation of faith in the Bible before everything else is surely symptomatic of the problem you’re trying to diagnose in this post.

I’m having trouble understanding how the places where one might look for such sermonizing could still reasonably be liberal. Fire and brimstone sermonizing, but only if it fits with the Jesus Seminar and works for you?

And I shouldn’t have said that whether Bell’s teaching is true is “the only question that counts.” What I was trying (unsuccessfully) to express was that the question of boundaries is subordinate to the question of truth. You’re right that “whether the doctrine of hell is true” is one question, and “whether evangelical ministers should be going around denying Biblical teaching under the guise of orthdoxy” is another. But you cannot address the second question unless you begin by defining what is and isn’t “Biblical teaching.” In other words, you must address the first question before you address the second.

I haven’t made any kind of effort to systematically look through all the public responses to Bell’s video. So let me ask – not rhetorically but from a genuine desire to know – has anyone responded to it with a scriptural defense of the doctrine? If not, doesn’t that show our priorities are out of order? Shouldn’t it be our first priority to explain why we think Bell is wrong? After all, if Bell is leading people astray, are they likely to be helped back into the narrow path if our response to his teaching is limited to “if you believe that, you’re not one of us”?

Has Bell’s book been released yet? So far, I have seen exactly one review from someone who claims to have read the whole thing, and he writes that Bell is not a universalist and does believe in Hell.