Heaven Wins: Heaven, Hell and the Hope of Every Person by Don Richardson

Heaven Wins: Heaven, Hell and the Hope of Every Person Reviews

• 
  Matt

  From Peace Child and Lords of the Earth to Eternity in Their Hearts, I've enjoyed reading Don Richardson's missiological and biographical works. He was always something of a larger-than-life figure to me, but I did not meet Don in person until I traveled to Indonesia with him, his three sons and a videographer in 2012. We were there to capture the 50th anniversary of the family's arrival among the Sawi, a (formerly) headhunting tribe, a large percentage of which are now believers. (For what it's worth, you can watch the video here.)
  
  A response to Rob Bell's Love Wins and Mark Galli's God Wins, Heaven Wins is a departure from Richardson's previous works. In spite of the book's title, Rob Bell's universalism is only briefly in his crosshairs. He reserves his most fervent criticism for Calvinism, a belief system he sees as contrary to scripture and a misrepresentation of the character of God.
  
  Heaven Wins is (and I don't mean this as an insult) a work of speculative theology, taking texts that may be less than clear and asking the question, "What if..?" It has become a trite descriptor, but Richardson really does "think outside the box." For the most part, this is a good thing, and the church needs people to take its traditional beliefs and hold them up to the scrutiny of scripture. I remember hearing Don explaining some of these same ideas while we were sitting around a table in the jungle eating roasted sago grubs. They were the sort of cosmological speculations you'd hear at a sci-fi convention and the philosophical and theological ponderings that you may have overheard from Lewis and Tolkien in the Rabbit Room at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford.
  
  In Heaven Wins, Richardson questions the majority evangelical opinion that there will be more people in hell than there are in heaven. God, he says, will not merely win a pyrrhic victory in His quest to save humanity. Many—if not a majority—will be saved, and to arrive at this conclusion, Richardson must dismantle traditional reformed views. The first of these is federal headship (i.e. we are both damaged by and guilty of Adam's sin). He argues that we are all prone to sin—and we will undoubtedly sin if given a chance—but we are not guilty of sin until we commit it. Thus the unborn, infants and children prior to the age of accountability are all welcomed into heaven upon their deaths because they have not committed willful sin. (Yes, he does argue quite compellingly from scripture for an age of accountability.)
  
  Due to high instances of infant mortality and childhood death—particularly in places where the gospel has not penetrated—Richardson purports that there will be many in heaven from cultures that have not yet heard the gospel. He even goes so far as to say that it is a divine act of mercy to prevent these multitudes from reaching the age of accountability and dying without the gospel. Although many follow him in believing that infants and children who die will be saved, they reach this conclusion via a different path.
  
  A second significant area of divergence with historic evangelical theology—and one that is tied to his argument above—is Richardson's contention that general revelation can be salvific. He points to Job as an example of a biblical character who apparently had no access to special revelation, yet was considered an "Old Testament believer." He points to other passages that seem to indicate the effectiveness of general revelation in leading one to salvation—although he admits that this is not normative.
  
  In my view, this topic in itself was fascinating enough to have been expounded in more detail in a separate book. Not only did Richardson offer scripture to support his views, but he cited multiple (albeit isolated) missiological anecdotes of people with no access to the gospel who were for all intents and purposes converted before missionaries arrived to share the gospel. Once again, Richardson does not see this as normative, but as evidence of God's mercy.
  
  An argument for this position that Richardson didn't make, but which came to my mind as I was reading is this: Any good, evangelical theologian would consider the protoeuangelion (the promise of the serpent crusher in Genesis 3:15) to be special revelation, orally transmitted for several thousand years before being written in Genesis by Moses. Is it possible that this story could have been preserved and transmitted in some form to non-Jewish cultures? As Richardson has noted in earlier books, there are multiple instances of accounts of the creation, fall and flood preserved in the oral traditions of isolated tribes. If so, would this not be special revelation? Or is it only considered special revelation if it is formally canonized in Jewish or Christian writings? Here is where the boundaries between special and general revelation become a bit fuzzy, and I'm not sure why Richardson did not exploit this logical weakness in traditional views of revelation.
  
  In the end, Richardson embraces a version of inclusivism that may be unacceptable (and even heretical) to many—opting to allow some into heaven through the back door versus relegating the majority to hell through the front door. While I am unconvinced by many of his arguments, I would be cautious to attribute to Richardson a dampening of passion for missions—which is often an accusation leveled at inclusivists. I've seen firsthand the results of his desire to see the gospel brought to the unreached, so it would be foolish to suggest that he has arrived at his viewpoints by way of missiological laziness or naivete.
  
  At its best, Heaven Wins is valuable for its ability to cause readers to reconsider what they believe and whether it is motivated by allegiance to a theological system or by a plain reading of the text of Scripture.
• 
  Jolene

  This book challenged my thinking and theology in ways that few books do. For that reason along with the author's obvious heart for missions and his look back into the history of missions, I'm giving it 5 stars, even if I remain unsure about some of the arguments presented.
• 
  Sean Brenon

  I can respect opinions that differ from my own, and I enjoy engaging with books that have differing opinions. If nothing else, books like that can help me sharpen my own point of view while helping to understand the other position.
  
  This book is not one of those. Not only is his theology borderline heretical at times, the author intentionally or ignorantly rewrites history to make the originators of ‘Calvinism’ seem bad.
  
  Richardson has a kind of fourfold issue with Reformed soteriology: 1) it is spiritual coercion that denies free will, 2) it assumes that God ‘loses’ to Satan on a numbers basis, 3) reformed Christians are bad at evangelism, and 4) Augustine, Luther, and Calvin are bad people who shouldn’t be trusted.
  
  Now, I don’t mind a healthy critique of a theological system. But, point 1 is a misunderstanding of Calvinism, point 2 is untrue, and his point 4 drastically rewrites history. Only point 3 has any merit, and that’s not because of the theology itself. If he were trying to call us into action, that would be fine.
  
  There are three problems I have that explain exactly why I dislike this book.
  
  First, he argues that there are uncreated worlds with uncreated beings that will look at the story of man’s redemption as a ‘doubly poignant’ persuasion for their salvation (or… as a persuasion against sin?). This sounds uncomfortably Mormon to me, and it uses some really suspect exegesis of a verse like Matthew 24:31, which says that Jesus will gather his elect from throughout the heavens. I have never heard an orthodox believer interpret this kind of thing to imply the existence of future saved aliens.
  
  Second, he argues that general revelation saves on the basis of Cornelius, Job, and Melchizedek. To that end, he interprets Acts 11:14, in which Peter explains to the Jews that he brought Cornelius a message of salvation, as Peter intentionally lying to save himself from the wrath of the Jews. Then he says that Job and Melchizedek were saved without special revelation. Then, he basically says that, through general revelation, just like Job, people can still be saved through general revelation, even if they don’t know the name of God, since Joel says that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And ‘Lord’ is not a name, but a title.
  
  WHERE TO START???? The exposition on Cornelius is so bad and filled with assumptions and eiegesis. Why would we assume that Peter is lying instead of clarifying? He literally spends all of Acts being THE apostle in Jerusalem. As for Job, that book is an epic poem and not a historical narrative. It is not a reflection of things that actually happened (unless he really thinks that people in Job’s day spoke in complex poetry and long soliloquies). Trying to gleam a didactic point about the method of soteriology is foolish; we don’t know if Job received revelation. Regarding Melchizedek: he only appears after Abram wipes his enemies out. He knew who Abram was prior to their meeting, which is at least one form of special revelation. Finally, the word ‘Lord’ in Joel 2:32 is the Tetragrammaton, the YHWH. Whoever calls upon the name of YHWH will be saved. Either Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE life— either no one can come to the father except through Christ— or Jesus is lying. I find Richardson’s stance on this almost heretical.
  
  Lastly, what one thinks of Augustine, Calvin, or Luther has nothing to do with the truth of their points. But to claim that the Donatists were just trying to establish a new denomination and that Augustine asked Rome to send the military in response is straight out a lie. The Donatists were steering people away from the Church in favor of an ascetic lifestyle that didn’t allow for forgiveness in theology. When Augustine wrote to Rome, not only did he make it clear that church discipline of them should be aimed at retrieving them back into the flock, but he also criticized Rome for being to harsh. I think Richardson knew this and retold history anyways.
  
  For Calvin, Richardson cites two incidents: the famous one with the French refugee and then Jacques Gruet. The first guy was initially imprisoned by France twice and advised by Calvin NOT to go to Geneva because Calvin would hand him over to the authorities. And when Calvin handed him back over to the authorities in Geneva, Calvin actually asked for the punishment to be less severe. In the case of Gruet, Richardson portrays it as Calvin inviting his death for being insulted. However, Gruet was involved in a series of attempted preacher assassinations and Calvin was neither involved in his trial or execution. Luther… was a jerk. I don’t feel the need to defend his anti-semitism. Other than Luther, it frustrates me to see Richardson completely misrepresent these guys to assassinate their legacies.
  
  There are many other problems I have, but this is a simple intro to all the terrible ideas this book presents.
• 
  Victor

  Some originals concepts, good book.