This is a tough book to get through not because of its writing, but because of its content. Chapter after chapter run of the mill evangelicals are challenged to abandon status quo theology and instead explore what scripture might actually say. Bibliography would’ve helped me research in depth some of the statements he was making. Since I don’t have his resources I’m left with more questions than answers, and more skepticism than acceptance.

That’s not to say this is a book to avoid. In fact, I’m a HUGE fan of books that challenge the mundane status quo that is evangelicals (usually loosely based on some spawn of reformed theology) that’s left the church utterly powerless today. I recommend picking this title up and taking the ideas seriously, but exploring your own answers to the questions Rudel raises.

The Good: One feature I really liked was at the end of each chapter, there was a section entitled “Summary and Final Notes.”

The Bad: Whoever thought it would be a good idea to bold Scripture quotes in the text, let me tell you…it was a bad idea. In my opinion, it made the book more difficult to read and was a huge distraction.

Something else that irks me about this book was a little disclaimer on the copyright page:

Version 1.3

Due to the author’s zeal overrunning his good judgment, an uncorrected version of this work made it into retail channels previously.

One would think that they now have corrected the typos in this version…but alas, that is not so.

In Mark 9:43-49Jesus… (22)

That was just one of many typos that should have also been fixed between the first version and this version.

Finally, Rudel seems to ignore 2000 years of interpretation history. I don’t recall one quote from the Church Fathers.

The Ugly: None

Overall, I thought the book was interesting. Much like the author of the Forward, there were parts that I agreed with and there were parts that I didn’t agree with. But the book did challenge me. It made me think.

I give this book a solid three stars.

Where I was suspicious of Andrew Farley’s ”The Naked Gospel’s” intent (fearing that the author may have been a Conservative Evangelical Christian with a subterfuge agenda of repackaging and remarketing the same old religion) this suspicion and accusation absolutely cannot be made of David Rudel’s ”The Gospel You’ve Never Heard”. He leaves little to the imagination when he expresses the hope ”…to break the hegemony [of the] evangelicals”, pg. 170. He also goes on the clarify that by “evangelicals” he means “Conservative Evangelicals”, recognizing and apologizing for any overgeneralizations (pg. 7), then goes full-steam ahead.

Where in Andrew Farley’s ”The Naked Gospel” I had asked ”who exactly is this book aimed at?”, David Rudel’s answers point-blank. ”I’ve tried to make the book meaningful to evangelicals, liberal Christians, and non-believers.” (pg. 2).

Although ”The Gospel You’ve Never Heard” by David Rudel is a man after my own heart – namely biblically and theologically ‘gunning’ down the Conservative Evangelical – I have to wonder whether this is a good or healthy position to begin with. I mean, wouldn’t it seem like little more than a debate or rebuke against a preexisting position; a contradicting shadow against another’s position? But once this book is gotten into I’ve found very little evidence to support this concern. If anything, this apparent anti-Conservative-Evangelical angle is little more than a segue to enter David Rudel’s topic at hand.

Having said this, maybe comparing this book to Andrew Farley’s ”The Naked Gospel” isn’t such a good idea. I’m going to inevitably paint a picture otherwise! But Andrew Farley makes some pretty flawed statements (presented as facts) and leaves himself wide open. He states, ”If we accept God’s blood-only economy… blood sacrifice is the only action that results in forgiveness and cleansing. This was true in the Old Testament and there’s no exception today.” Andrew Farley, The Naked Gospel, pg. 135.

Well… if you, my gentle reader, will allow me to use this expression, David Rudel tears him a new one on page 160 in ”The Gospel You’ve Never Heard”.

He begins by addressing the defining differences between expiation and propitiation.

”There is also a need to address God’s wrath that exists in reaction to… sin. The cleansing and removal of sin is referred to as expiation and the addressing of God’s wrath is referred to as propitiation.”, pg. 160

Regarding Vicarious Punishment, he says, ”Strictly speaking, this is not even propitiation, which refers to wrath being cooled due to a change of disposition… The Vicarious Punishment… does not provide actual propitiation. It simply claims the wrath was vented on someone else.”, pg. 162.

He then (I believe somewhat comically) cites and example of ”When God relented of the wrath in store for Nineveh (Jonah 3:10), the Almighty didn’t have to blow up one of Jupiter’s moons to exhaust the pent-up anger”. pg. 163.

Once again, David Rudel cannot be accused of speaking in Christianese (as Andrew Farley has). He is using certain terms and terminology, but clearly defines them.

Andrew Farley’s ”The Naked Gospel” previous quoter’s point being that sacrifices have always been and must always be of blood and that ”Jesus’ blood sacrifice on the cross was the once and for all blood sacrifice” provides the appeasement of God’s wrath now becomes, at the very least, questionable.

Now add to that the numerous biblical examples Rudel provides of non-blood sacrifices.

Exodus 30:15 made through silver. Numbers 16:46 made through incense. Numbers 31:50 through jewelry. Lev. 5:13, Exo. 32:30, Numbers 8:21, 2 Chronicles 30:18. (He even offers the possibility of sacrifices being for a purpose other than expiation or propitiation, ”…passages like Leviticus 19:20-22 suggest the guilt offerings were actually the punishment itself. Rather than a bribe or payoff of God, the sacrifice is more like a fine designed to deter sin”., pg. 162)

Let me just finish off my comparisons between these two books. Andrew Farley’s ”The Naked Gospel” at approximately 70,000 words put me past my ‘allowed’ time frame of 30 days to read and write a review on, while David Rudel’s ”The Gospel You’ve Never Heard”, at over 85,000 words (estimate) took about 12 days.

What’s interesting is that I – personally – like Andrew Farley’s “gospel” (not book) better. It’s a truth I would prefer. David Rudel’s “gospel” (again, not book) isn’t as attractive to me, but more convincing.

This book addresses difficult issues that I know I have (and continue to ) struggle with. The author identifies apparent conflicts between Old Testament and New Testaments. He identifies apparent conflicts between the teachings of Jesus and Paul. He attempts to broach these difficult issues by redefining our understanding of salvation and judgment and presenting the possibility that these two issues may not be intrinsically linked, but separate issues.

He presents the idea that “salvation” be something less juvenile and more mature than simply making it to Heaven, or avoiding Hell; both somewhat spiritually hedonistic endeavors!

One of the most memorable (and continuing to echo in my conscious) questions he asks is, ”What gospel can Christ and His apostles preach if Jesus forbids them to tell anyone He was the Christ, and His disciples do not realize He is going to die after He tells them in private?” pg. 98. It would seem to very strongly suggest the gospel has nothing to do with Judgment or post-Judgment “bliss” (heaven).

In Dead Off-Center I voiced a view and a concern about an option outside of either the Law-only or Grace-only dichotomy. Andrew Farley’s ”The Naked Gospel” does little to explore these concerns, but really – more or less – confirms this dichotomy. David Rudel’s ”The Gospel You’ve Never Heard”, however, seems to identify with my similar concerns. He gives a great analogy – a parable perhaps – of three artists in Budapest running orphanages for artistically talented children (pg. 77-79) demonstrating there are other options than legalism or licentiousness.

This book also brought to light a challenge for me. Although I had said I agreed with Andrew Farley’s ”The Naked Gospel’s” point regarding the Law of Sabbath Observance and Tithing (calling it the church’s modern day Membership and Revenue Stream) as relating to the (now defunct) priesthood of the Old Testament times. However, this does not and cannot “write-off” all observation of Mosaic-law. This does not give us carte-blanc to become antinomian.

When Jesus is asked which is the greatest (Mosaic) Law, he answers to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself (Lev. 19:18). Although we are not bound to tithe we are to help the poor (Deu. 15:7), the orphans, and the widowed (Deu. 24:20).

This is not the abandonment of Mosaic-law…

”Christians marginalize these laws because we, quite frankly, don’t like being told what to do and feel we deserve more from God than a list of rules. Furthermore, there is an unfounded idea that the revelation of God in the Old Testament is somehow no longer applicable.” pg. 113

…but simply not the abuse of it:

”Christians often suggest the Jews erred by focusing on the Law. But the problem was not that the Jews were too focused on the Law. (It is hard to say what else they could have focused on!) The problem was that their leaders abused scripture to give themselves political power. They warped the Torah to their own devices by selectively picking which scripture to emphasize and which interpretation they liked – the Christian church arising afterward did the same.” pg. 113

If forces me to at least question my own motives. Do I use the defunct Tithing “law” to possibly justify not helping the poor, or orphan, or widows? I can only hope not!

We underestimate the Torah.
”The Gospel You’ve Never Heard’s” good news is a people-orientated one. It has precious little to do with the hedonistic and gnostic Heaven of eternal bliss of the Afterlife.
This gospel is much more practical and one of live and caring for your fellow man.

‘Seph

In this book Rudel takes on the “modern gospel message” in all its minimalistic glory, claiming that this is not the message of Jesus, nor his apostles, nor Paul, nor anyone else in Scripture. If your curious, the modern gospel message is basically this: Believe in Jesus and you will get in to heaven. In the face of this slogan, Rudel begins by spending 4 chapters asking difficult questions (like, if this is the answer, then what was Jesus doing to that poor man in Luke 10? And how in the world does the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 fit in? And so on). He then spends 3 chapters, in his second section, exploring what the bible says about judgment, heaven, and hell. Finally, in his last 4 chapters, he redefines salvation.

So, what do I think? First of all, Rudel asks some VERY good questions, questions which evangelicals desperately need to be able to answer. Secondly, Rudel does his best to stay true to scripture and, at most points, he does this well. I think he is right on when it comes to clarifying the call for Christ-followers today, how the gospel is so much more than a message about how to avoid hell, how Paul and Jesus ought to be read so that they do not directly contradict each other, and how our modern gospel message has completely missed the point.

Sadly, I think Rudel is a perfect demonstration of the pendelum swing. Thus, he trades in the modern minimalist gospel message, with its total uselessness in terms of life today, for a full on Jewish gospel, with a new total uselessness in terms of life after resurrection and judgment. Considering how thorough his research was into the items such as Jesus fulfilling Jewish prophecies, Paul’s distinctions between terms such as salvation/judgement/justification, I was sadly surprised to find that Rudel lacks any and all sophistication or proper research when it comes to such literature as Revelation (which he takes to speak of literal physical wrath approaching in the future, and this in spite of having read Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright?).

Overall: 3.5 of 5 stars. Conditionally Recommended. This book demands careful reading, both because of the positive points which we NEED to consider, and because of the negative considerations which ought to make the reader pause.

http://thelogo.blogspot.com/2010/07/david-i-rudel-who-really-goes-to-hell.html

David Rudel’s “The Gospel You’ve Never Heard” is a challenging assault on evangelical Christianity’s modern presentation of the Gospel. The book is subtitled “What a Protestant Bible written by Jews says about God’s work through Christ” — which is a fair way of describing Rudel’s primary thesis: our understanding of the Gospel revealed through Christ in Scripture is contextual and interpretive. The front cover contains yet another subtitle: “A book for those in the church and those offended by it.” Finally, the jacket cover illustration shows a young lady with her arms folded in front of her and the phrase “Who really goes to hell?” scrawled in Sharpie across her hand. Before you even crack the cover, you have a pretty good idea of where Rudel is going.

Rudel’s primary objection to mainstream evangelical Christianity’s presentation of the Gospel is that it simply isn’t biblical. Rudel forces his readers to go rushing back to their New Testaments in an effort to validate what they’ve always believed (or been told to believe) about the Gospel. He claims that we’re guilty of reading Jesus too often through Paul, which results in an emphasis on total depravity as the hallmark of the human condition. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Paul says and we adopt this as our primary identity. Rudel makes a good point here; I believe we should hear Jesus on his own terms as he announces God’s Kingdom reign.

But many of Rudel’s conclusions will challenge and even upset most readers who consider themselves to be Christians. He claims that early belief in Jesus as Messiah had nothing to do with either His death or His resurrection (p17). He also repeatedly claims that we should differentiate between Jesus’ public teachings in the Gospels and his private interactions with the disciples. Such a reading neglects the literary nature of the Gospels as communally formative documents about Christ. Are we to accept that the earliest Christians somehow discounted the narrative portions of the Synoptics that make us privy to Christ’s “extra curricular” sessions with the disciples? Are these texts not meant for our “overhearing” that we might grow as disciples, too?

Rudel seems to base a great many of his conclusions on a close reading of the Synoptic Gospels, specifically the Gospel of Mark. Rudel acknowledges this hermenuetic approach, but it is one of the shortcomings of his text. Rudel prefers to focus on the Gospel accounts in his search for the “real” Gospel — which is fine, except that he fails to give many other New Testament texts (John’s Gospel, Paul’s letters, etc.) a fair reading. In fact, very little is made of John’s Gospel, which is somewhat surprising given Rudel’s preference for Gospel over epistle. When he does turn his attention to John, his treatment of the text is poor, even lazy in places. (See his rushed discussion of John 3.16, pp.26-27.) It seems Rudel may be guilty of the same kind of interpretive construct he accuses evangelicals of propagating.

On the positive side, Rudel’s attention to detail is commendable. He also approaches this work with great respect for the authority of Scripture, something that will appeal to his audience even if they disagree with his ultimate conclusion.

Having just recently read another book with the word Gospel in the title, I have become a bit leery of people who will do so in the future. So I began reading with trepidation as to how Rudel would use the word.

Personally I define the good news as anything which sets you free to love. It is clear that in reading this book, Rudel felt it necessary to be freed from certain church doctrines of which he was previously bound. It is wonderful that the author has found more freedom to love as a result of his understanding of the Bible. Yet, one of my main concerns is that he rails against the term “evangelical” without giving it a personal definition.

As a pastor, within a denomination which considers itself Evangelical, which is nothing more than a group of people who seek to share the good news with others, allowing them to become more free to love (as Jesus’ main commandment is to love God and love your neighbour) it pains me to read his negative references to the word. The truth is that Rudel himself is being evangelical by trying to spread what he believes to be the good news.

Overall, the book is decent, though poor editing makes it difficult to read. I consider myself a pretty good reader, and this is a book I have to put down every few pages just to try and understand the many points made.

I would rate this book a 5/10.

You can view this review in its entirety at: http://kevinstewart.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/the-gospel-youve-never-heard/

So begins a book by David Rudel entitled, **Who REALLY Goes to Hell? The Gospel You Never Heard Preached.** Since I’m already convinced that much of what people think the Bible teaches is not biblical, I was predisposed towards learning whatever new insights his book might reveal.

Yet when Rudel begins his argument by claiming he’ll show that what Paul preached contradicted what Jesus preached, I sat up and took notice. It raised my expectations – not that I believed at the outset that he had to be wrong. I love it when someone can show me I’m wrong — I have no vested interest in maintaining false teaching only because it’s tradition.

But in my years studying both Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings, I have seen no “contradictions” — only people’s disappointingly inaccurate misreading of the Word. Wrongly interpreting either Jesus or Paul can lead to some outstandingly foolish errors.

But excited by this author’s new challenge, I hoped he would show me something new, something more than I’d ever seen previously.

Of which I was yet again disappointed.

Near the start of his book, Rudel makes an odd request. He explains that he’s used so many Bible verses that he wants the reader to “skim rapidly through his book at least once without pausing to closely examine any of the verses”, saving that “closer” examination for a second perusal. Why? Rudel says, “I use over 2,700 verses and you’ll never get through the book if you stop and examine each passage.” To begin with, there’s a touch of arrogance in assuming his readers are going to read his book twice, as most readers will not. But there’s also a hint of theological sleight-of-hand in his saying, in essence, “Don’t look at any of the verses too closely – just go with whatever interpretive spin I put on them as I build my persuasive argument.” If an author is presenting truth that is rooting out older misinterpretation and misunderstandings of Scripture, it seems the reader ought instead to be encouraged to look closely at the Scriptures used in order to see that this author’s re-interpretation (or re-envisioning) of them is in fact accurate.

In a few places I rebelled and looked up his interpretation of Scriptures. Several times I discovered he’d either taken a verse out of context (giving it a meaning it didn’t really have) or gave an explanation (especially “of the Greek”) that I couldn’t find supported in any other scholastic commentaries.

One brief example: He relates a sermon given by Norm Koop (son of the famous Surgeon General) explaining the word “eternal” in John 17.3 which reads, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” Koop said that “in the Greek” (which phrase always needs to be taken with a grain of salt), “eternal” doesn’t refer to a chronological span of time but to its quality. Rudel apparently felt free, with that little expository tidbit, to henceforward dismiss any normal interpretation of “eternal life” and exchange it for what he defends as a truly “Jewish idea” known as the “World to Come”. But as many sources as I checked, none of them gave even the least hint of this interpretation of “eternal life”. Rudel, I suppose, might claim I looked at sources which are biased toward traditional interpretations. Which would make his argument irrefutable.

Yet what drew me to Rudel’s book was the hope that at the very least, he would ask some questions and pose some problems that would prove challenging to the religious status quo in Christendom. Along the way I came across a number of lovely observations he’d made about Scripture passages that I hurriedly adopted as my own. (Thanks, David!)

One precious little insight referred to Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. He observed that though most translations say that the Samaritan was a good neighbor, the Greek verb tense is better translated became meaning that prior to stopping to help the Jew, they were not neighbors. But after seeing the Jew’s need and stopping to render aid, he then became neighbor to the Jew. Absolutely lovely. And upon checking it out in Greek dictionaries and other sources, they confirmed his observation.

Many chapters and sections of chapters are wonderful. In one, for example, he lists seven things Jesus never preached, including any sermons about trusting in His atoning work on the Cross.

Here’s an example of how Rudel’s reasonings can challenge conservative Christian thought: Since Jesus never preached to the Jews about His atoning work on the Cross, yet He went everywhere preaching the Gospel — then the Gospel doesn’t include people understanding (and trusting) His work on the Cross. Give that a moment and reflect: did Jesus preach the Gospel or not? His Gospel had neither Cross nor Blood, so is He a heretic? Or is the common understanding of what makes up the Gospel inadequate? Whether Rudel is “right” or “wrong”, the question itself should rattle the cages of those who have an overly simplistic idea of what is “the Gospel”.

However correct Rudel is in his reflections on “the Jewish perspective”, he has gained many excellent insights by merely asking, “Since the Jews in Jesus’ day were not modern, 21st century Euro-Americans, what did they think Jesus meant in His teachings?” Rudel points the reader back to the Old Testament repeatedly, insisting that many, modern Christians have either neglected it completely or have picked out of it only those verses that make them feel good. He insists that all of the Old Testament must be read as Jesus intended: everything in it pointed prophetically to the coming of the Messiah Who was Jesus. He even points out Jesus’ exasperation in Luke 24.25 with His own disciples’ blindness that the Old Testament was “a type of grand prophecy, a huge picture that… gave clues about the coming Christ [Messiah] so that the Jews of Jesus’ day could recognize Him.” [Which they didn’t.]

Part of the challenge of this book are the questions Rudel asks — questions that most Christians either avoid or ignore. For example: how exactly is it possible for people, before Christ’s death, to be “saved”. What about people who have never even heard about Jesus but who obey within themselves the Law of God (as Paul refers to in Romans 2.) Why is it that Jesus can say to people who have not repented (such as the paralyzed man let down through the roof) that his sins were forgiven him? Or the thief dying next to Him on the Cross that that very day they would be together in Paradise? The thief didn’t repent, showed no indication that he trusted in Jesus for salvation, and he certainly wasn’t baptized. How’d HE get into Heaven? (Or DID he?) How can Jesus say that the people who “inherit the Kingdom” are those who have “given Him” food and drink? Jesus says nothing about repentance or trusting Him or believing in His atoning work on the Cross. Giving someone a glass of water is the basis of being taken into God’s Kingdom?

The question posed in the title, “Who Really Goes to Hell?”, isn’t directly answered anywhere in the book. He briefly refers to it on p. 84 and I won’t give away his solution. Needless to say, it’s in the same section in which he demonstrates that God’s intention never was for any of us to “go to Heaven” — at least, not in any permanent sense. Enter, stage left, the city of New Jerusalem.

Two problems I feel are most difficult for me to resolve. (1) He goes to very great length trying to establish that there are actually two “salvations” referred to in the New Testament — deliverance and regeneration. He asserts that there can be no regeneration aside from becoming one with Jesus Christ (baptized), but deliverance can come in a much more general fashion. My problem is that there are numerous Scriptures that show us that not only regeneration comes through the Cross, but deliverance from sin, death and even sickness (“by His stripes we are healed”.)

The second problem (2) is the hardest for me to resolve. Rudel displays throughout his book an affection for the Law. He reinterprets the Law so that there is the Law which still holds sway over us and the rabbinical “Law” which nullified God’s intentions. In fact, he insists that a person can be made righteous by properly obeying the Law. But however you cut it, it seems to me to encroach on the freedom from the Law that the apostle Paul insists is ours — all the Law.

The one text I observed Rudel does not focus on seriously (at least that I could find) was Paul’s logical explanation in Galatians 2.21 and 3.21 that if it were possible for any person ever to be made righteous by obeying the Law, then “Christ has died in vain.” If a person could become righteous by his or her own efforts, then instead of dying, Jesus could have simply stood back and said, “Get your act together, O Man, or go to hell.” But since there is no righteousness that comes from obeying the Law, Jesus chose to give up His life for on our behalf.

Rudel says he hopes that his book will “turn upside down the worlds of a few” who once had been unthinking followers of traditional dogma. In my opinion, there are ample pages of questions, challenges and radically different perspectives on the traditional approach to Christian teachings on salvation, hell, Heaven and the lot that a reader who ventures into Rudel’s world will come out the other end with some degree of spiritual transformation. As Hopkins writes in the Forward, “if you love God’s Word and treasure God’s Church, this book will be an essential, albeit annoying, challenge.”

Gospel. Good News. What was the actual good news that Jesus and his disciples preached? Was it really about who gets into heaven, or is there more to it?

Many Christians have considered these questions in recent years. This material will be familiar to anyone who reads Brian McLaren, Frank Viola, or Leonard Sweet. David Rudin comes at these issues from an analytical and biblically literal point of view, but still comes to similar conclusions — that Jesus was telling us how to live NOW, not that we needed to believe in him in order to be saved from our sins and get into heaven.

It’s an excellent analysis that will make the reader think, even if he/she doesn’t agree with the conclusions.

What Rudel is attempting to do is commendable. With his book and several websites, he seems to be trying to start a massive theological movement. I wouldn’t even be surprised if deep down inside Mr. Rudel fancies himself to be modern day Martin Luther, and get the sense that the author believes he has stumbled upon a new reformation. Now I won’t disagree that we certainly need a new sort of reformation, and indeed I believe we are in the midst of one currently. But Mr. Rudel’s less than subtle attempts to spark a new one himself with his book and blog comes off as a little naive.

Secondly, if Mr. Rudel wants to be taken seriously he should nix the “biblical heresy press” thing. The logo is amateurish and cheesey. But more importantly, while I get what the author means by the name, many people won’t. I have decided not to lend out my copy of Who Really Goes to Hell to some conservatives in my life because I think the phrase “Biblical heresy” will be too off-putting and color their view of the author’s arguments from the get go.

Thirdly, as other reviewers have noted, there are typos and grammatical errors galore. I also could have done without all the font changes, bold type face and previews of what’s to come in further chapters.

Now that those quibbles, most dealing with style and presentation, are out of the way I would like to say that I really enjoyed the substance of the author’s arguments. I thoroughly resonate with the notion that the modern gospel has been piled upon by centuries of theological lenses that are far removed from the world view and cultural-historical context of the first century Palestinian Jew. Mr. Rudel’s argument that one would come away with a thoroughly different gospel than today’s evangelical one, if he or she were only given the synoptic gospels, is spot on. Furthermore, I found many of my own questions and arguments being brought up in the pages of Rudel’s book.

Because I’m not a bible scholar and I cannot adequately critique all of Rudel’s claims about ancient Jewish beliefs and culture, I’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt that his interpretations of Hebrew and Greek words and his depictions of ancient Jewish thought are accurate. However I would have appreciated Rudel citing his scholarly sources. Here and there he mentions N.T. Wright and David Flusser, but a notes section would have been much appreciated.

Overall, I agreed with much of Rudel’s criticisms of “the modern gospel.” Like Rudel, I grew up in the world of conservative evangelicalism, and found him asking the same questions I have. His observation that the modern gospel comes by way of reading the Jewish gospels through a western protestant lens, and that we must revisit the writings of the apostles through a Jewish lens has been made before. Yet I think that Rudel’s contribution to this view is very helpful and I found his differentiation of deliverance and regeneration intriguing. I’ll definitely be re-reading this book.

And by the way, I agree with his answer to the title’s question.

When I do, I blog here:
http://wconfession.blogspot.com/

and here:
http://chrisostrander.blogspot.com/

I recently read Who Really Goes to Hell – The Gospel You’ve Never Heard, by David I. Rudel. I was initially skeptical about this book for a few reasons: 1) The Publisher is Biblical Heresy Press; 2) I am generally skeptical of supposedly new ways of understanding the Bible, as most have a very Postmodern ring to them (as the next book I will be reviewing, called “The Naked Gospel”.

Don’t let these fool you. As I read on, with fewer and fewer objections along the way, I was brought to a deeper understanding of the gospel than I have ever known. The title of the book seems to be pointed at grabbing the attention of those who might not be interested in a scholarly work on many of the essential doctrines of Christianity; but the book is just that. Now, I do not know my Bible well enough the properly critique the book, but what I read really made sense to me.

The book purports to destroy many of the common Evangelical Protestant doctrines in favour of a much more biblically founded teaching. I would say that the book is successful in this. This book has helped me to understand, or at least know another quality viewpoint on, many major important biblical teachings, including: What is the role of the Holy Spirit?, How are we to be judged after death?, What is justification?, Why does repentance feature so prominently in Jesus’ teachings?, Why do we need to continue to ask for forgiveness?, What is the relationship with faith and good works?, How does Jesus save us?, What is the importance of Jesus’ entire life?, What does the Bible mean by “God’s wrath”?, etc., etc., etc.

This book I so helpful that I recommend it to all who read this review. This is my advice: get this book. Granted, I know that this book will give some people trouble and will dismantle their current faith, but I believe that it will build up something more solid in the reader. Also, at the very least, the book provides an alternative paradigm to Protestant teachings; this is helpful as truth is often best discerned when two or more options are in competition and one shows itself to be more dominant.

I do not wish to give away any of the answers described in this book, but I will warn that it seems to be something much closer to a Catholic teaching, although the author doesn’t seem to like Catholics or Protestants very much for their doctrines.

Give this book a read. I have to read it again to glean more from it and to understand it so that I can put it in competition with other paradigms that I know, but I am already excited to have read this book once. Read this book. I have not said that about any other book that I have reviewed to date. After you’ve read this book, let me know what you think.

http://important-topics-ahub.blogspot.com/2010/06/read-this-book-who-really-goes-to-hell.html

David Rudel steps into the discussion with Who Really Goes to Hell?: The Gospel You’ve Never Heard- What a Protestant Bible Written by Jews says about God’s work through Christ (A book for those in the church and those offended by it).

In the course of the book, Rudel compares modern day Evangelical teaching about what the gospel is and it’s strong focus on escaping hell with what he (of course) calls the biblical gospel or teachings of Jesus. Rudel does a terrific job asking the questions that we mostly have to ignore if we want to accept the modern Evangelical spin on the gospel- questions like, “If that’s all it is about, then why does Jesus teach things like, ‘Forgive and you will be forgiven,’ or ‘In the manner you judge so you will be judged,’ or even ‘If the gospel is all about getting people out of hell, then why did the Disciples take so long to get around to telling others outside of Judaism about it- or could the gospel have more to do with other things than merely hell or heaven for eternity?’”

Rudel certainly takes the Bible seriously, and his scripture work has been extremely thorough. Rudel was a theoretic mathematician, and it is interesting to watch him lay out his evidence and then make logical connections to bring out a more robust and holistic understanding of Christ’s entire life, rather than just his death on the cross. The connections he makes (and fresh insight he brings) to the work of the High Priest in the temple and Jesus’ work on the cross made me smack my head and say out loud “Of course!” I don’t want to give too much away, but the way he brings the teaching of Jesus and Paul together, as well as troublesome passages from the book of Hebrews (troublesome to a modern Evangelical understanding of the gospel) is, to put it simply, beautiful.

This, of course, flies in the face of at least one review I’ve read of his book, which claimed he relied on the now trite argument of “Jesus vs. Paul.” I didn’t see that at all- in fact, quite the opposite. Rudel acknowledges that seeming dichotomy, but then summarily dismantles it by showing how they really are compatible, IF we understand a Jewish perspective on things like judgment, delivery, etc.

This book was independently published, and is offered completely free as a download. So you can expect that yes, there are some editing issues or concerns with layout. Some reviewers seemingly focused on this alone- but don’t let it stop you from completing the book. It really is well thought out and well reasoned, and offers a great perspective on issues of atonement, salvation, judgment, and the gospel.

I have sent a request to the author for a potential interview, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, check out the author’s blog: Fire in The Bones [Biblical, Heterodox Christianity].
You can also check out the website for the book, where you can download the book for free and get some awesome PDF’s (like “What Jesus Never Preached,” “Misunderstood Parables,” “The Modern Gospels Biblical Problems,” and “A Comparison of Biblical and Evangelical Christianity”)

Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The book contrasts the traditional evangelical view of Christianity (that Jesus came to die to save us from our sins so we can go to heaven), with finally freeing God’s people to actually be God’s people.

our salvation addresses the problem God faced throughout the entire Old Testament: How can I have a faithful people with a heart for Me? rather than the nowhere-mentioned problem How can I get people into heaven?(61)

The book is a little difficult to summarize because the chapters don’t entirely build on each other to a climatic point. With the main aim to raise questions about current Christian dogma, so much material needs to be covered in order to cover enough bases to make a point. Instead, topics are somewhat eclectic to cover what the author feels are the most important to help his point to be taken seriously. It is in no way the final word, but instead tries to open a window to let in a fresh breath on scripture.

The writing style was not entirely to my liking, but the tone of the book was very appropriately delicately confrontational. In addressing current modern beliefs, I believe that so much of the current understanding comes from haphazard quoting of the bible without its due context. It may be due to a desire of brevity, but much of the copious scripture quoting in the book is somewhat absent of the context in which it was originally written in. I also suspect that I am obviously not the target audience for the book who may be more interested in this type of point and shoot proof texting. I would be very interested in how this book would strike someone who is new to this mode of thought.

There is an effort to bring continuity of Jewish thought into the NT – showing the dissimilarity between current Christian believes and what would have made sense in first century Judaism. When we say we are saved, we must ask what they thought they would be saved from. When we say righteous, what would that have meant. In this mode of thinking, I was not at all surprised to find a few direct quotes and some heavy borrowing from N.T. Wright.

The book is published by Biblical Heresy Press, and I suspect there will be many who think it an apt name for this book. I think we fear heresy so much that we never truly engage the bible and God himself. If we vow to follow God wherever he would lead, does that also mean that we would allow Him to lead us to those murky grey waters, or are there boundaries that we would stop and say we will follow no further. Would we stand and defend “heresy” if that is where God would want us to be?

original post here

For this reason, I was excited to read “The Gospel You’ve Never Heard: Who Really Goes To Hell.” The author’s convictions about heaven, hell, and who goes where, it certainly outside the mainstream of evangelical Christianity. He tries to do this from a scriptural viewpoint, revealing a high view of Bible and a desire to make it foundational in the development of his theological convictions. He wants to cut away the theology that has developed around the preaching of western evangelicals. These are laudable goals which I greatly appreciate.
Still, I have to say that the book was a major disappointment.

It lacked the depth necessary when addressing such a challenging topic.

It made bold assertions about the need to redefine certain biblical concepts (such as “justification” and “atonement”), but does so without meaningful explanation as to why.

It offered the typically trite “Jesus vs. Paul” conflict, which seems overstated, but has become fodder for many authors of late.

Beyond all of this, the book also was poorly edited. This made it extremely difficult to read on several occasions.

So, while I respect authors and books that challenge the status quo, this book failed to do so on many accounts.

This review can also be viewed at http://nieporte.name

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll cover what strikes me most about the book, and some the insights that are most compelling. Today, I just want to write a few words about what it is and what it is not.

This book is scholarly, but not written by a scholar. The author is a math teacher. He has a deep faith, liberal arts training, and brings a fresh perspective to Biblical Studies. He, however, doesn’t have a PhD in Old or New Testament studies. But this, in itself actually serves to his benefit, because he brings a real intensity to the text. When he has a point to make (and he has many), he drives to it with direct examples, drawing from all over the Bible. He also isn’t writing from an academic perspective, but an Evangelical Christian one. This makes his arguments less about how they fit alongside Crossan’s or Ehrman’s, but how they fit against the preacher down the street. And it is precisely this difference that allows Rudel to get to his primary point: the gospel proclaimed in most churches on Sunday morning (what he calls the “modern gospel”) is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus as depicted in the gospels.

If you want to read it for yourself, you can order it here, get a free ebook for your nook here, or go to the author’s page and download it for free.

More discussion can be found at: http://uncollusion.wordpress.com/

First of all, I must start by saying that rarely have I found a book so enamored of subtitles.

Beyond that, I do wish that theology writers for popular audiences would attempt a bit of humility. The material in this book is not a gospel I’ve never heard; in fact, much like “A New Kind of” this and that, this book sets forth interpretations on things whose influences were easy enough to spot. Very few thoughts in 2010 are entirely new, never-before-heard, or otherwise paradigm-shifting. By virtue of the instant digital connections that characterize the publishing and academic worlds in 2010, what new thoughts do happen (and I’m one of those historicists who thinks that nihil sub sole novum gets used far too often to justify intellectual laziness) tend not to happen in popular-press books. (As a thought experiment, imagine if someone wrote a book on physics claiming to articulate a theory that the world had never seen before. It would take some gumption to claim that, wouldn’t it?) I realize that some folks who have never been to seminary or sat in on a Sunday school class taught by a seminary graduate might never have heard this material, but I’d prefer to see theology books (even those with three subtitles) whose titles say what’s inside rather than trying to convince a reader that what’s inside has never been seen before.

Alright. I feel better now.

Rudel, a mathematician, approaches questions of salvation and judgment in a way that reminds me of that famous ancient lover of mathematics, Plato. Both writers have a keen eye for the contradictions and sloppy thinking that pervade popular religion. Both writers force a careful reader to think about and answer hard questions. And both writers offer answers that are themselves a mix of profound insight and strange misreadings that sometimes provide nice springboards for further thought and other times force that reader to articulate better answers than what are in the text.

All of that said, this is not by any stretch a gospel that I’ve never heard. N.T. Wright was setting forth a historically-informed reading of canonical text a couple decades before this book hit the presses, and Richard Hays was holding forth on the real ethical weight of the Sermon on the Mount and other New Testament texts when I was still an undergraduate. The real content of this book is a polemic against a Calvinist-flavored version of evangelicalism, a focused reading of the canonical gospels and some brief forays into Paul and the General Epistles that take the gospel narratives as logically prior to the epistolary discourse. This is one of the strange features of the book: at various moments Rudel almost seems to imply (though he never directly states it) that the gospels were also in some sense temporally prior to Paul’s letters, an assumption that lets him play Paul against Christ (rather than Paul against Mark or Paul against Luke) as a zero-sum game (36) but which seems to rely on a strange historical assumption.

Rudel’s main hermeneutical move is to draw a sharp distinction between regeneration, which happens here and now; and deliverance, which happens at the Final Judgment (42). Because I spend my professional time thinking about poetry rather than legal precedents, this strong separation strikes me as neglecting some of the real beauty of the scheme of salvation, and beyond that, it forces Rudel to make some strange moves when he writes about the book of Romans (58-59) and about the Eucharist (115). Rudel cites many texts that support his case (though his decision to use a boldface font for every Scripture citation is a bit hard on the eyes after a while), and his attention to the details of the text serve him well when he writes about the apparent upshot of Jesus’ parables in the context of his larger preaching ministry (119-122) and his account of what constitutes Christ’s obedience that saves sinners (149).

Although his close readings of Scripture are good when they’re good, his take on the Church as it’s existed in the intervening centuries is decidedly more spotty. As I noted before, Rudel’s concern in his book is to approach the Scriptures with theological “precision” (115) and to counter what he frames as bad propositional/syllogistic frameworks with more adequate ones. (One moment that amused me, because I do read the Bible as poetic as well as true and probably more true because poetic, is when he initiates an ellipse-filled citation of Galatians with, “Removing some rhetoric…” (139). As someone who has recently taken on the role of rhetoric scholar, I had to wonder why in the world one would want to remove some rhetoric from Paul!) Therefore he’s not quite sure what to do with the generations of Christians from Paul’s generation (remember, the gospels are prior to Paul in his reading) roughly to the age of Protestant Orthodoxy. On one hand he criticizes them for allowing ambiguity to characterize their theology (138), but on the other, he praises them for being “less indoctrinated” (145) than their modern-era counterparts. He gets much more comfortable with Reformed and Evangelical writings from the last four hundred years, give or take, and some of the amusing moments in the book are when he attacks evangelicalism in general for using some very distinctively Reformed-Calvinist language, namely propitiation (160) and “alien righteousness” (140). One doesn’t have to guess too long which sorts of evangelicals Rudel spends his time with.

On balance I think (as I often do) that the strong questions about the canonical gospels, though I have heard them before, are worthwhile as a popular-press introduction to some interesting close-readings of the gospel texts. Because I’m a Sunday school teacher I imagine many books as potential Sunday school or small group texts, and I think that a strongly educated teacher could use this book on one of those settings profitably. Perhaps it’s a gospel that those of us who presume to teach have heard, but nonetheless it might be a good locus of conversation for those who have not.