Is Osama bin Laden in Hell for eternity?

Where would Dante or Rob Bell, or You, put Bin Laden?

Enter Dante. Hell, for him, was a place of contrapasso, of punishment that directly correlated with sin. False prophets have their heads twisted backwards so they cannot see the road ahead; a man who decapitated a head of state carries his own head around like an oil lamp. Where would Dante put bin Laden? Probably in circle seven, with the violent against neighbors: the murderers and war-makers who, because they wallowed in others' blood during their lives, are condemned to immersion in boiling blood forever.

Did Osama bin Laden go to hell or paradise? Obviously, devout Christians and Muslims will answer this question differently. I yield to blogging colleague Daniel Jackson on what an orthodox Jewish answer would be, if he reads this post.

At any rate, one of the big bestsellers these days in America is Rob Bell's book, "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived." I have not read the book, but the title alone strikes me as rather presumptive - does Rev. Bell really claim to know truly the eternal fate of every person who ever lived? I make no such claim and don't see how anyone else can.

Basically, though, Bell promotes another version of salvation-universalism, a theology that one way or another, everyone will be saved by God at the end of the age, that all sins will be remitted and that regardless of one's religion or spiritual state at death, heaven/paradise is everyone's eternal destiny.

And this is another version of predestinarianism, the idea that our fates are sealed and that nothing we can do or fail to do can change that fact. God being God, after all, gets what God wants. In distinction, there is the theology of Arminianism, named after Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), which holds that God's grace is not irresistible by human beings, that God does not overpower decisions of the human will.

Bell's universalism is not a new teaching at all, as Bell apparently acknowledges. Universalists were found among the post-apostolic church fathers, including bishops. Ultimately universalism was debated thoroughly at an episcopal conference (well, more than one) and finally held to be heretical. And all its adherents were burned at the stake confessed they were in error and returned to their episcopal duties.

A work of universalist theology by a Methodist scholar is David Lowes Watson's, "God Does Not Foreclose: The Universal Promise of Salvation." This I have read, several times in fact (it sits on my bookshelf). I have known Dr. Watson for years and am willing to bet that its theological grounding is superior to Bell's but that may just be my Methodist bias showing. I find Dr. Watson's arguments compelling - but alas, not convincing.

Here is how I work through the topic.