Hell-bent on salvation

The socially networked generation vibes what evangelical minister Rob Bell says in his best-seller Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived: "When we get to what happens when we die, we don't have any video footage," says the pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church in the US which attracts over 7,000 visitors each Sunday. "(Without proper evidence of afterlife) let's at least be honest that we are speculating," Bell muses. His unconventional speculation is that there is no hell at all.

He insists this is not an unprecedented assumption. For "at the center of the Christian tradition since the first church," he writes, "have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God."

But how good is a world without hell, ask traditionalists. Without sulphur and brimstone; without the prospect of an eternity of suffering where the One with a tail and cloven-feet reigns, what's the incentive for salvation, for sticking to religion and to Jesus? His critics accuse Rob of adopting universalism which rubs off the divide between church and the world. "Then you don't need the church, and you don't need Christ, and you don't need the cross. This is the tragedy of nonjudgmental mainline liberalism, and it's Rob Bell's tragedy in this book too," says R Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Does that mean if it did not exist, it would be necessary to invent hell? Is it like you need spice to appreciate sugar?