If this is an attempt to advertise the book, I doubt anyone here would have a vested interest in checking out his points. I also doubt there are many here who are interested in Hell or Universalism.
I may be an exception but couldn't find the whole book, but rather this one unbiased review that adresses what he raises. I won't post the whole deal but I find it odd that by the description James contradicts his earlier claims that Universalists are terrorists.
The following is a exerpt of the review for those who are interested and want to save themselves the time or trouble.
====
"In any case, De Young engages these sorts of arguments, and he does so effectively. He acknowledges nuance, as when he admits that there are times when aionios means a long time rather than eternal. He makes a contextual case, however, that aionios means eternal when the subject is eternal punishment."
***
-De Young appears to believe that there are exceptions to the requirement of placing one’s faith explicitly in Jesus Christ to be saved. People who have not heard the Gospel but respond in humble repentance to the light that they have are saved, as far as De Young are concerned. Does that contradict, or at least qualify, the Scriptural requirement that people believe in Christ to be saved? If there are exceptions to that rule, then can we dogmatically proclaim that there is absolutely no possibility that God will grant people opportunities to repent after death? There are times in Scripture when God makes a threat but relents on account of God’s mercy. This is not to suggest that we should be cavalier, but perhaps there is a sliver of hope for loved ones who die without having said the sinner’s prayer.
-De Young would quote church fathers who appear to deny the possibility of post-mortem repentance. Yet, in refuting universalist scholars, he would refer authoritatively to scholars who say that those same church fathers embraced universalism. How can this be?
-De Young states that universalism actually depicts God as cruel: God tortures sinners until they finally repent, as if God is twisting their arm. That is a valid point, but is Eternal Conscious Torment, without any hope at all, any better? Also, in the Hebrew Bible, it does appear that God afflicts Israel in an attempt to encourage her to repent.
-At times, De Young seems to depict hell as God giving unbelievers what they want: separation from God. They sent themselves to hell, and God respects their choice. Yet, De Young occasionally depicts hell as a place of physical pain, the sort of place no one would want to go. On the issue of choice, De Young sometimes sounds like a Calvinist, but sometimes he sounds like one who believes that sinners in this life can actually choose to repent and only have themselves to blame if they do not. In addition, while De Young stresses free will, he appears to deny that people have free will once they are in heaven or hell. The wicked cannot repent in hell, and the righteous in heaven cannot relapse into sin. Otherwise, he asks, how can we rest assured that people in heaven will not rebel and start a fresh cycle of sin?
-De Young briefly refers to the view of Edersheim that the schools of Shammai and Hillel in the first century believed in eternal punishment, that rabbinic Judaism relaxed this view in the second century, and that it returned to eternal punishment in the third century. There may be some truth to this conception of Judaism, as there are Second Temple references to eternal punishment. But there is more to the story when it comes to Shammai and Hillel. According to Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:3, Shammai believed that there was an intermediate group (neither righteous nor wicked) who would cry out to God in Gehenna and receive deliverance; Hillel stressed God’s mercy. Whether this negatively impacts De Young’s argument is not readily apparent, however, since Shammai states that the wicked receive eternal punishment, and he appears to interpret eternity there as eternity, nothing temporary. Still, he does regard Gehenna as a temporary experience for a lot of people.
-De Young contends that hell appears in the Hebrew Bible, and he argues against the idea that the Hebrew Bible lacks a rigorous concept of the afterlife; De Young also briefly engages the idea that the Jews got the idea of hell from the Zoroastrians. If the Hebrew Bible is relevant, though, then certain texts deserve some consideration (not that De Young did not present a robust case with what he did address). There is Isaiah 28:24-29, which may be implying that God does not thresh without end but has a productive purpose for threshing. Would a God with that character torment people in hell without end? There is Ezekiel 16, which predicts the ultimate restoration of Sodom, a city that Jude 1:7 discusses in reference to eternal fire. There are also cases in which eternal punishment is temporary, as is the case with Judah and Jerusalem, which eventually are restored (see Isaiah 33:14; Jeremiah 18:15-16; 23:39-40). On that last point, De Young briefly argues that the temporal destruction in the Hebrew Bible is a type of the eternal punishment in hell in the New Testament, and he points to other examples of types in the Bible. This argument deserves consideration.
-A lot of times, De Young seems to suggest that, if universalism is true, then nobody has anything to worry about. Why would the rich man in Hades want his brothers to be warned, if hell were a place of merely temporary punishment (Luke 16:20-31)? Why would God be delaying the destruction of the world to give people a chance to repent rather than perish, if everyone will receive an opportunity to repent in the afterlife or the new heavens and new earth (II Peter 3:9)? But even temporary torment in hell is not enjoyable.
