" This could have been SUCH A GOOD BOOK if only it got over itself. It started out so promisingly--the voice was easy to read, the historical contexts of the Jewish concepts of hell and the Christian ones later were well stated and interesting, and there is a deep respect for the topic that I think grounds the book in a way that other responses to universalism don't. If Hell is real--even if it isn't--it's best to treat it with care and utmost attention rather than as a purely academic exercise without applicable meaning, Chan and Sprinkle say. I agree with this, even though I'm an academic who spends lots and lots of time on purely academic exercises. The best way they put this is on p. 118: "So often these hell passages become fodder for debate, and people miss the point of the warning. Jesus didn't speak of hell so that we could study, debate, and write books about it. He gave us these passages so that we would live holy lives. Stop slandering one another, and live in peace and brotherly unity. Jesus evidently hates it when we tear into our brothers or sisters with demeaning words, words that fail to honor the people around us as the beautiful image-bearing creatures that they are."
WELL SAID.
But then it falls apart.
The book ends rather abruptly, I thought; there's this buildup of what is said and what isn't said, and then there's a chapter that basically says keep calm and carry on because heaven is awesome, and that's it. What? Then there's the Appendix of Frequently Asked Questions, as if the universalism debate is a navigable website, filled with the things that were left out "to keep this book a reasonable length." If you want to talk about something, put it in the book proper. Don't give me a 10 page appendix of trite answers.
And the thing that confused me the most was that after all of this space-saving and economy, there's a full chapter of one of Chan's other books tacked on to the end. Really? Fiction writers who have a next part of the series do that. Nonfiction theology writers should not. If I'm that interested in your writing, I'll look at the four other pages you have referencing your works. I picked up this book for this topic, and now you've taken all this extra space to talk about something else--namely, yourself, no matter how you cloak it.
Also, while I'm grateful that this has notes, they're end chapter notes, which are the worst of the three available options (footnotes and end notes after all main text being the others). So boo on that.
All in all, I was pretty disappointed with this. There are some great things said here about the authority of God and the understanding of Scripture, but it gets swallowed by the commercialism of the authors. "
— Jen, 1/22/2014