"You Are Quite Wrong"

I used to celebrate that the emergent church has gone the way of the buffalo. With Rob Bell jumping the shark and Brian Mclaren's "marriage" of his son to another man it had outed itself as at best a reincarnation of old-school 20th century liberalism and at worst another vehicle for moving large numbers of people out of the church. But the reality is, the ethos and theologically unorthodox impulses haven't disappeared. Even more nefariously these impulses have been incorporated as a part of modern evangelicalism's already sickly emaciated theological assumptions. Perhaps the greatest lasting rhetorical aspect of the emergent methodology was its constant insistence that it was only asking innocent questions.

A few months ago one defender of emergent theological experimentation claimed that one of the godfathers of the emergent movement was publicly crucified. His sin?

• "He deviated. He dared to ask questions. He challenged the status quo. He moved against the grain."
• "He asked a ton of really natural questions about reconciling eternal punishment with a loving God."
• "In the now infamous and pivotal volume that caused the Church to break-up with him, Bell didn’t give many answers. He only asked people, to ask the questions."
• "He’s admitting the real questions that surface in the excavation of deep faith."

In all of these propositional assessments of how Bell was treated, of course, the author seems to assume that mere questions without propositions can be benign. Is it possible for mere "question" asking to be totally innocent? Certainly. You could be asking someone a genuine question and seeking an actual answer. But there is another kind of question-asking that is intended to expose absurdity and turn people away from a particular belief or series of beliefs. Jesus dealt with this exact method of questioning, and he saw right through it.

Near the end of the book of Mark during his confrontation with the leaders in Jerusalem Jesus is confronted by a series of adversaries, each with their own agenda. In the middle of this series of challenges, the Sadducees come to him and offer a challenge of their own (Mark 12:18). They want to argue that the resurrection is an absurdity, and they do it by means of narrative, telling the story of a woman who, for various reasons related to the levirate law (Deut. 25:5) has married a series of seven brothers, each of them dying and leaving her childless. The Sadducees ask Jesus whose husband she will be at this supposed resurrection that is coming. This is a hard question with a great deal of emotional and rhetorical force.

Notice the structure of the rhetoric employed by the Sadducees. They never once make a propositional statement (except when setting up the background of the story they're telling). Everything that they say is either story-telling or question-asking. They're just daring to ask "the real questions that surface in the excavation of deep faith," aren't they? They're only asking "a ton of really natural questions." And yet Jesus says to the Sadducees, "Is this not why you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?"

The Sadducees might just as well respond, "How can we be wrong? After all, we're just trying to start a conversation. We're just asking questions. How can a question be 'wrong'?"

It is also obvious to Jesus what the story is meant to accomplish. It's meant by these people who are "just looking for a conversation" to illustrate in vivid fashion just how silly or problematic the idea of someone being resurrected actually is. Of course, they have underlying assumptions (unstated) that Jesus has to deal with, and he does so first by reminding the Sadducees that heaven is not a place of marriage, and second by reminding them from the Scriptures that "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (12:27). Their problem, according to Jesus, is that their underlying, unstated theological assumptions are wrong and that they don't know their Bibles (v. 24). A truly deadly pair of problems that afflict far too many. Some even find it embarrassing that churches today still employ Jesus' methodology of quoting 2,000 year old Scriptures to settle theological and ethical disputes.

In spite of the supposed 'innocence' of such questions, Jesus responds to them that they are wrong. Contrary to the insistence of many, you can set forth a series of mere questions and stories and still be "quite wrong" (v. 27).

Crucified on a Boogie Board

John Pavlovitz has written a blog post that has been reprinted by Relevant, and because of that it has been given a great deal of visibility. In the article Pavlovitz proposes to extract from the “crucifixion” of Rob Bell some sort of lesson about modern Christianity. When he begins with the words “It’s often been said that we Christians eat our own,” you know that his argument is definitely going to involve playing the meanie card. You can almost write his conclusion for him.

Lots of bands have a way of manipulating the audience into demanding that they come back for an encore. One of my favorite recordings is of one of U2’s live shows where Bono just says, “Let’s cut out all of the encore stuff where we leave and then you cheer for us to return and instead, we’ll just play the rest of our set.” I love it. So refreshing, honest, and respectful of the listeners' time.


I want to do something similar. There’s a script I’m supposed to follow in order to establish with the reader that I’m winsome, friendly, a nice guy. If I don’t, then anyone who reads this will just say that I’m another hater and that my opinion can be written off (hopefully not — this is the same crowd that supposedly loves dialogues, after all). I’m sorry, I sort of want to do the whole thing where I apologize for all the “mean” people in Evangelicalism (God knows they’re out there!) and where I say some of the good things that Bell has done and talk about how Oprah’s not so bad. However, before this post is over, you and I know that I will, of course, end up doing the predictable thing where I say, “But…” and then disagree. Let’s skip all that. I’m a nice guy, it’s true… yada yada yada… Please love me!

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to what I really want to say: If there has been a “crucifixion” of Rob Bell (and I’m not exactly sure that his new TV show, nice beach house, boogie board, and nights sitting barefooted with Jack Johnson around the fire pit really feel all that much like being crucified —I wouldn’t know because I’ve never been crucified before. Maybe it’s not so bad.), what it says about modern evangelicalism is not that evangelicals are big meanies who punish those who go against “the script” as Pavlovitz puts it. Rather, the supposed "crucifixion" of Rob Bell shows that theology does still matter to large segments of the church, and that leaders within evangelicalism believe, by and large, that some subjects are still worth contending for. Now that seem like the more charitable conclusion to be drawn here.

Over and over again throughout the article, Pavlovitz dodges the substantive problems that people have been bringing up with regard to Bell's two-plus year old book. For instance, when he discusses the Love Wins episode, his conclusion is not that Hell (sans post-mortem salvation) is evidently something that most evangelicals today believe is taught in Scripture but Rob Bell denied that important belief. Such a conclusion would be far too accommodating and wouldn’t fit Pavlovitz’ goal of trying to shame Bell’s dissenters and lift up Bell as some sort of martyr dying upon the altar of questions and confusion.

Instead, he concludes that Bell’s error was that “he didn’t stick to the script” (ah yes, so many blog posts and books talked about how “off-script” Bell had gotten…). Or as he puts it elsewhere, “He only asked people, to ask the questions.” It’s such a cliche. And I don’t even think that the emergent crowd really can possibly believe its own press at this point, either. Do Bell’s readers really think he was “only” asking questions? I read the book numerous times over. The book is filled with propositional statements intended to inform the reader and to persuade of his position that post-mortem salvation is a live possibility. He quotes church fathers and does word studies — all in order to dislodge from his readers the historic orthodox (such a dirty word!) position. Bell had a case to make and he did his best to make it. As did the best of those who responded to him (Kevin DeYoung, for instance).

In another place Pavlovitz reductively states that “[Bell] simply reached conclusions that he isn’t supposed to reach, and that really pisses off Church people.” (Wait, Bell reached “conclusions” in his book? I thought he was just asking questions…) I can only speak for myself and those immediately around me, but the whole Bell situation never "pissed" me off; rather, it was a doctrinal error to be addressed that morphed more recently into a sad cautionary tale.

In addition, Pavlovitz' statement ignores the fact that the best people who wanted to engage with Rob Bell did so with references to the issues at hand, not with regard to the narrative that he wasn’t in line with. Let me give you an example: When Francis Chan wrote Erasing Hell, his argument was not, “But Rob Bell isn’t saying what he’s supposed to say!” (in fact, I’m not even sure he mentions Bell by name). Instead, the argument was, “Here’s what Scripture says, and here’s why the denial of this thing that Scripture says is detrimental to the faith.” Will Pavlovitz allow someone to disagree with the substance of what Bell has to say without taking personal pot-shots and calling him a “venom-peddler”? If he is a magnanimous Jesus person who wants to occupy the moral high ground here without slipping into obvious and radical hypocrisy, he really ought to give Bell’s dissenters the benefit of the doubt.

It would have been more honest for Pavlovitz to simply say, “Look, Bell took a chance and told us what he really thought of the possibility of salvation after death, and his view clearly hasn’t caught on.” That, at least would be a simple but fair reading of the situation. Instead, he characterizes Bell’s dissenters as “venom-peddlers” (a “venomous” phrase if there ever was one) and calls them “unforgiving” (has Rob Bell even asked for forgiveness? Pavlovitz states quite clearly that he has not).

This narrative coming from whatever wing of evangelicalism Pavlovitz, Rachel Held Evans, Rob Bell, etc. think they speak for is unsustainable. The only way to have a whole movement centralized around questions without answers, the sound of one hand clapping, and books written like haikus is to have a prior, assumed orthodoxy to leech off of. Evangelicalism as it currently exists has sustained itself on the remnants of an orthodoxy that has been its lifeblood for all of its existence. Eventually, if this crowd has its way, and all the meanies go home and stop caring about doctrinal health in their churches, well there won’t be an orthodoxy left to feed on. It will just be history to study and reminisce about. At that point, what will their movement be? I can’t answer that question completely (I might suggest they start by looking at the mainline denoms), but the words “healthy,” “sustainable,” and “robust” are hardly what come to mind.

New Christian Cliche: "Monopoly on Truth"

I was reading a blog this morning where the author was broadly lamenting how clumsy the Reformed response was to Rob Bell's book from earlier this year. In the comments section, someone named Rob Auld commented: "Maybe we should be less certain we have the monopoly on truth, then the books wouldn't be a big deal." This is just such an ignorant thing to say that I had to respond. (Aside from the incomprehensibility of being "less certain" about truth.) And let me also quickly insert that this "monopoly on truth" phrase which keeps getting pulled out is becoming such a meme in the Christian world that it may actually surpass "my smokin' hot wife" as most annoying thing out there. So what follows was my response to him. I wrote enough that I thought it was worth sharing here:

Rob, this phrase "monopoly on truth" is a worn out cliche. It's becoming meaningless because it ultimately represents skepticism even about ourselves. Everyone believes they have a monopoly on truth, or else they don't really believe what they're saying. Yes, Rob, even you in your above quote. Just for effect, let me throw in a little Chesterton:

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.

And let me suggest that this same intellectual helplessness is endemic in modern Protestant Christianity today, as well. We've made a virtue out of being able to sentimentally say, "I don't really know, and that make me humble." But we're too skeptical to know whether humility is really virtuous. Either own your beliefs, Rob, or don't. But if you don't think it's true, then don't waste someone's time by saying it out loud.

This Just In: Everybody's Christian!

I've made a decision. It's a big one (and it's also sarcastic, so don't take it too seriously). Everyone who claims to be a Christian is now a Christian. As long as you use the specific word "Christian," and say that Jesus is important to you, you're in. At least that's what some would like us to think.

A few weeks ago, Rachel Held Evans lamented that she shouldn't have to keep defending her Christian credentials just because she has liberal theological tendencies.

But the problem is that after ten years, I’m getting tired of trying to convince fellow Christians that I am, in fact, a Christian, even though I may vote a little differently than they vote, interpret the Bible differently than they interpret it, engage with science a little differently than they engage with it, and understand sovereignty and choice a little differently than they understand those things.

And I think a lot of other young evangelicals are growing weary of those arguments too. We’re ready to rebuild in communities where a commitment to love and follow Jesus Christ is enough common ground from which to start.

Once again, she laments:

I haven’t lost hope in the future of evangelicalism, but I’ve lost the desire to fight for my place in it. I’m tired of trying to convince other Christians that I am a Christian.

There is a need on the part of Bell's supporters to - not defend themselves - but to remove the need to defend themselves. Rachel Held Evans is understandably tired - exhausted at the thought that she might need to "contend for the faith," as she sees it. Fellow critics like John MacArthur can't possibly be making it easier for her. In his more recent blog posts, MacArthur has been arguing quite vigorously that Bell is not a fellow sheep, but rather, a wolf within the fold.

I've been asking myself a lot of questions after I read Evans' blog entry a few weeks ago, but perhaps the one that seems the most unfair - and at the same time relevant is this one (and it is a bit off topic, but I have to chase this rabbit for a moment): is there something about Arminianism that makes Arminians just more comfortable dancing/flirting with heretical doctrines? I don't mean this glibly or rhetorically. I mean this honestly. But I also mean it very generally, since I can think of many I would call Arminian whom this criticism does not apply to. However, in general, Calvinists tend to fall on the more conservative, old-school side of theological debates. To quote Spurgeon, "Calvinism has in it a conservative force which helps to hold men to vital truth."

But why is it that Bell's defenders themselves see this battle really falling along the old lines of the debate over Calvinism/Arminianism (Evans says it's between the New Calvinists and New Evangelicals, but it's really the same old debate). Read my review of Love Wins. See if I have had any interest in making this about election or predestination in my critique of the book. And yet Rachel Held Evans and many others see the whole debate as - ultimately - falling along the age-old lines of the evangelical debate over election and predestination. How interesting.

Allow me to use Bell as an example of the encroaching problem I see. Bell's only ground in claiming orthodoxy and historical pedigree for his views is words. He uses the same words that the old creeds do, and even that the Bible uses. These are words which he has clearly, blatantly, undeniably redefined from the way that they were previously understood through most of Christian history. His dissenters (including Ben Witherington, who is certainly not a Calvinist) have recognized this, while his supporters appear indifferent as to preserving the use of words. For Bell's supporters to remain supporters (and here I include Richard Mouw - a Calvinist), they must be indifferent as to whether historical words are used consistently from one generation to the next. And many of them are, to be sure. They argue that the meaning of words do change from one generation to the next. Certainly. But if someone bites their thumb at you, you won't be offended until you discover what this Shakespearean gesture actually means. The same is true of Biblical words. Hell sounds very unpleasant until you discover what Rob Bell means by it. Suddenly, it becomes a rosier destination for all of God's enemies.

So here we come back around full circle to Evans' complaint, once again. Look carefully at what she says near the end of the quote:

We’re ready to rebuild in communities where a commitment to love and follow Jesus Christ is enough common ground from which to start.

Now here is where we really must protest against Evans. She has requested that the lines be drawn so broadly that there is now room within the church for any and every cult/group out there. Who could argue that the Branch Dividians loved Jesus? Who can deny that Jehovah's Witnesses love Jesus? Who can deny that Mormons love and follow Jesus? If Evans had her way, they would be in the circle. Or look at it another way. If she wants to draw the circle that broadly, then consider what brought her to that place. The Jesus and Bible of Rob Bell and of the Emergents is so ill-defined that the cults now do have a legitimate place at the table. In opening the door wide enough for her own orthodoxy not to be called into question, she has flung open the doors and is letting the flies and the wolves, in.

Has Bell Been Understood?

The newest viral video that supporters of Rob Bell (and presumably the theology in Love Wins?) have been circulating apparently is from a recent event with Bell speaking. At the end he throws in a jab about not reviewing books before you read them. Interestingly, the internet furor wasn't over the book, it was over the blurb and the video that accompanied the blurb. One supporter of Bell's calls this video "the clearest no nonsense, non-confusing rhetoric I've ever heard Bell speak."



Notice that in this long list of things that Rob Bell affirms, at least half of them are (in his book) redefined so far from the historic Christian definition as to be nearly unrecognizable. "I believe in heaven...hell...the bible is God's word...salvation...a whole new creation right here in our midst..." He certainly does believe in Heaven and Hell, although he doesn't mean what you and I mean when we say it.

Many of the things he says he is in the video are not contested by most of his critics (such as myself). I have never said that he was not a Christian or even denied that he believed in Hell (per se). I understand that there are a lot of sloppy mis-statements of the ideas Bell presents in his new book, and I'm noticing them more and more as the book begins to be read more widely by Calvinists in the blogosphere.

This leads me to Michael Horton. I don't want to take issue with most of what Michael Horton said in his 9-part review of the book, because he did a much more in-depth analysis of the book than I did, and he was quite skillful and could theologically trounce me in a heartbeat. However, one thing that I noticed was that in part two of his review, when he summarized Bell's view of God, he said the following:

God: God’s attributes are reducible to love; Love requires the best outcome for the greatest number of people. Therefore, God’s nature requires universal salvation.

I would feel like I was nitpicking Horton here, except that this particularly unique view of love which Bell has can only be understood in the context of libertarian freedom. And his view of love is central to understanding the whole book. For Bell, it isn't necessarily that love demands "the best outcome for the greatest number." Rather, for Bell the most important thing about love is that it is free and uncoerced. In a sense, for Bell, whether love winning means heaven or hell is inconsequential. What is most important about the success of God's love is that God has to keep his hands off of the beloved.

Now, Horton's not completely off in understanding Bell. After all, Bell does seem to think that God's love implies wanting everyone to be in heaven (or the heaven realm or in the heavenly state of mind or however it is that he sees the postmortem state existing). But if Bell were to read part 2 of Horton's review, I really do think he would not recognize his views in the particular section I quoted from Horton. Bell argues that God always gets what God wants and that He wants all people to be saved, but he also confusingly enough makes the success of love contingent on freedom. As long as humans can will autonomously, then LOVE WINS (hence the title of the book). For Bell, even though God supposedly always gets what God wants, God really wants the human will to operate under its own weight and will hang the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner on the deck of His aircraft carrier, so long as God leaves everyone alone in their perverted wills without coercing them or changing their hearts.

This means that in Bell's universe where God always gets what God wants, this "sort of great" God (his words) may not get what he wants because of human freedom. Hence his repeated claims to not be a universalist. I defend him in this respect. We ought to stop focusing on claims that he is a universalist and deal with the deeper assumption of Bell's that there are repeated (infinite) post-mortem opportunities at salvation. That's the really concrete claim that Bell makes. He can honestly evade claims of universalism by repeatedly pointing to human autonomy. He does exactly that around the halfway point in the video posted above.

If we do not address accurately the views that Bell sets forth, then it will be a perpetual cycle of talking past one another. And anyone who really gets what Bell is saying will have more and more reason to stop listening to us Calvinists in our criticisms of the man's views.

The Unprofessional Book Review: Love Wins by Rob Bell (Part 3 of 3)

PART 3: SCHOLARSHIP?

You may notice, in the past two parts of my review, that I have been constantly and consistently giving page numbers, citations, showing where my quotes come from. I don't know if Rob Bell just thought nobody would be interested in where he got his quotes from or if he was purposely trying to make life harder for guys like me who really want to know where he gets his assertions from, but it is somewhere between annoying and (uh-oh) unconscionable (there's that word again!) that he would say things about the Greek word aion and yet give us no idea from which scholarly literature we might find aion translated as "intensity of experience that transcends time." You certainly won't find this interpretation in BDAG's Greek lexicon. I guess we'll just have to take Bell's word for it?

On top of this, his writing style is horrible. My English teacher from High School would never give writing like this a pass. We've already seen how he breaks up standard prose into lines so that it looks like poetry (which, once again, I chalk up to helping the book limp across the 190 page threshold). The book is full of three-word sentences. Now, I do things similar to that on the blog, but then again, it's a blog. But I understand - it's a popular level of writing. I just can't help but wonder if in ten years our theological discourse might not consist of books that look like they were written on somebody's phone. LRN 2 RITE. CIT UR SRCES ROB.

Also, he only gives chapters when he makes his occasional Scripture references. Instead of saying, "Jeremiah 37:32," he just writes Jeremiah chapter 32 and makes me search through 50 verses so I can find the verse he just cited. Again, after my 30th time searching for a verse, I began to assume that Rob Bell just hates me and wanted to make my life a living hell (literally, Rob Bell's kind of hell!) as I tried to find some context for his atrocious exegesis.

Another example of the awful scholarship involved in this book is the way that he tries to bring Luther to his side of things. Carl Trueman has shown the horror of what Bell does here, but I just wanted to mention in passing that when I originally read page 106, I was upset. But once I read the actual letter as a whole that Bell quotes Luther from, I almost turned over the card table and stormed out of the room (I'm that dramatic). The very idea that Bell could transform Luther from a defender of the absolute necessity of personally receiving Christ for salvation into someone who toys with the possibility of post-mortem salvation is (here comes the word again) unconscionable. What was the big idea not telling us where we could find the letter in Luther's writings? No citation. I guess I was just suppose to know that this quote came from Vol. 43, Page 51 of the English edition of Luther's Works.

There is so much horrible exegesis that is barely even sustained by actual careful argument that I can't possibly think to get into it all. I won't get into it all, mainly because I feel like Kevin DeYoung did a wonderful job overviewing the Scriptural problems in his own (now famous) review of the book. I will turn my attention to probably the most violent perversion of any text, however, which is his treatment of the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man from Luke 16:19-31 (aka Luke 16).

So Bell is especially interested in the rich man's attitude in the afterlife. He finds it noteworthy that the rich man, even in the afterlife, still wants to be served by Lazarus. "The rich man still sees himself as above Lazarus. It's no wonder Abraham says there's a chasm that can't be crossed. The chasm is the rich man's heart! (75)"

What an awful perversion of what Jesus was really saying. In fact, the real point was not that the rich man was keeping himself on the wrong side of the chasm, but that the chasm was objective, fixed, and that it could not be crossed! Even though Bell is right that the rich man is still selfish and thinks himself worthy of Lazarus' services, the truth is still precisely the opposite message which Bell is attempting to squeeze from the text.

Speaking of perversion, listen to why Bell says we take communion:

When we take the Eucharist, or Communion,
we dip bread into a cup,
enacting and remembering Jesus' gift of himself.
His body,
his blood,
for the life of the world.
Our bodies, our lives,
for the life of the world.

These rituals are true for us,
because they're true for everybody.
They unite us, because they unite everybody (157).

In this three-part review, I have tried to deal with the bigger picture of Bell's arguments and not to just offer sound bites or nit-pick. Doing this, of course, forced us to review the book backwards from his views of sin back to his view of heaven and hell that he explores early on in the book. The entire first half of the book as he complained about the "meanie hell" as I'm calling it, I kept wondering, how does he handle God's holiness, his hatred of sin, and his justice? He has all of these assumptions that really ought to be laid out in the beginning instead of at the end. But that wouldn't make for exciting reading, I suppose. I share many of his sentiments in the book (especially his criticisms of the mentality of many in the church who think that the bare minimum goal in life is getting to heaven), but the places where I agree with Bell are so few and far between that all I am left with after reading the book is an overwhelming conviction that the cure shouldn't be in the poison.

I could write more about this troubling book, but I have a feeling that now that Love Wins has been released, I will not be the only one offering criticisms of this book. Unfortunately, I know that the mind of evangelicalism is so wide at this point that many will let anything and everything float in and out, so long as it comes from somebody like Bell whom they feel has earned credibility in the past in their own eyes. It is my hope, for the sake of evangelicalism as a whole, however, that this book is roundly rejected as unbiblical, damaging to missions, damaging to the Gospel, and damaging to the church. If what Rob Bell is saying in this book is really acceptable to evangelicals, then it might be argued that the transformation of evangelicalism into full-fledged liberalism (ala Schliermacher) is truly complete. Now that Liberalism's foot is firmly in the dor, it's just a matter of leaning against the door. Lets hope there's some push-back.

Eternal Life and a Not-So Eternal Punishment

The following quote from Michael Horton's The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way is addressed directly to the question of Annihilationism. However, the comments he shares in this particular quote are quite applicable to several of the arguments which Rob Bell made in his newest book, Love Wins.

Jesus' teaching concerning the final separation of the saved and the lost seems to treat punishment and life as equally eternal: "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Mt. 25:46). If it is generally assumed that "eternal life" means unending, conscious joy, then it would seem that annihilationists bear the burden of proof in treating "eternal punishment" as otherwise in duration. Regardless of how one finally interprets these passages, it cannot be decided on the basis of our fallen moral judgment of God and his ways and our consequent emotional revulsion at the admittedly difficult idea of conscious punishment forever... The only decisive question is whether Scripture teaches it (Page 983-984).

The Unprofessional Book Review: Love Wins by Rob Bell (Part 2 of 3)

PART 2: UNIVERSALISM?

So on to the question of universalism. I'm actually going to step out and say that it's hard to tell if Rob Bell is a universalist in any traditional sense (that is not to say that his views are in any sense traditional or orthodox). He is so dogmatic that God never fails and that he wants to save everyone. He is also clear that there are second, third, and so on chances after death. And yet he is also dogmatic that the human will has the power to resist God forever if it so chooses. I will say that his doctrine of post-mortem salvation ought to be controversial enough in an of itself, questions of universalism being almost beside the point.

Sometimes he talks like a classic universalist. For example, in his chapter titled "Does God Get What God Wants?" he makes this argument (a lot less structured, of course).

1. God wants everyone to be saved (cue the many verses where "all" is always supposed to mean "all.")
2. God always gets what God wants (cue the infinite number of verses that say God's will cannot be thwarted, and no one can stay his hand).
3. Therefore... (he leaves you to fill in the blank.)

It's so strange. One minute, he sounds like Charles Finney or Origen, then literally in the next paragraph, he sounds like John Calvin:

This insistence that God will be united and reconciled with all people is a theme the writers and prophets return to again and again...

In the book of Job the question arises: "Who can oppose God? He does whatever he pleases" (chap. 23). And then later it's affirmed when Job says of God, "I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (chap. 42). (Pg. 100)

He completely mocks the God of Arminian orthodoxy by heckling that their God is a failure if he doesn't save all, calling their God "not totally great. Sort of great. A little great" (98). I have done a little heckling like this, myself. Of course, my solution was that we understand God's power to be absolute, but His purposes to be different than the Arminian understands it. Bell combines the Arminian notion of God's intention with the Calvinistic (I use the word loosely here) notion of God's success in all His endeavors. Bell's Arminian readers will have to make a decision, if they want to deny the charge that their God is a failure. Either God is going to save all, or else he never intended, ultimately, to save all. The third option is that God is in fact, a failure, which most will want to deny; Bell certainly does.

There is an intentionality in Bell's words when he says, "The God that Jesus teaches us about doesn't give up until everything that was lost is found. This God simply doesn't give up. Ever" (101). If Bell is so insistent that "all" always means "all," then I don't think we should underestimate his words, here. Bell really means that God never gives up. God never fails to save, when He wants to save.

In this sense, we ought to see that Bell is teaching universalism. He believes that God will keep pursuing people, post-mortem, through all eternity. But at the same time he says that His God isn't a failure or a loser, he seems to ascribe so much power to the mystical notion of "freedom" that it may thwart God's plan through all eternity. He seems to suggest at times that some human wills may potentially never be reconciled to God.

The Bruce Almighty Doctrine
This is where we introduce what I call the Bruce Almighty doctrine. If you haven't seen the movie, then you won't get the joke.

Although God is powerful and mighty, when it comes to the human heart God has to play by the same rules we do. God has to respect our freedom to choose to the very end, even at the risk of the relationship itself. If at any point, God overrides, co-opts, or hijacks the human heart, robbing us of our freedom to choose, then God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is (103-104).

It reminds me of the scene in Bruce Almighty where he keeps looking at Jennifer Aniston's character and screaming, "LOVE me!" Then Morgan Freeman gives him a lecture on how God can do a lot of things, but he can't change the human heart. Yup, Rob Bell has Hollywood's view of human freedom. And yet this crucial doctrine for Rob Bell is NOWHERE hinted at in Scripture. Not even a little. It is a philosophical assumption that most freedom-loving Americans take as a given. But throughout the book, Bell shows that he doesn't really mind leaving his most central arguments unsubstantiated.

So, because of the Bruce Almighty Doctrine, Bell has it both ways. Love wins precisely because freedom wins. As long as God doesn't control or coerce us, then love wins, regardless of where we all end up. In my mind, this seems to cheapen what we think of when we hear the phrase "love wins." I got the strong impression that the many pieces of Bell's system do not fit together well at all. Which is it? Bruce Almighty, or God gets what God wants? Bell is clearly happy leaving aspects of his system in this sort of tension. If it were me, it would drive me crazy, like a house with a door that's too small for the frame that it's in.

But then again, remember that for Bell, where we end up is just a question of degrees of sadness or happiness. We're not talking about punishment or agony of any sort, because he is clear that those things don't bring glory to God in any sense.

To reject God's grace,
to turn from God's love,
to resist God's telling,
will lead to misery.
It is a punishment, all on its own (176).

I sarcastically commented in the margins, "Oh yeah, it sure sounds truly horrifying."

So I say that he is also not a universalist. Because of the Bruce Almighty Doctrine, who knows what will really happen in the afterlife?

So will those who have said no to God's love in this life continue to say no in the next? Love demands freedom, and freedom provides that possibility. People take that option now, and we can assume it will be taken in the future (114).

Will everybody be saved,
or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?

Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact (115).

The question which I really want to ask Rob Bell is this: is it possible that those who are in heaven after death will pass back into hell? If not, then why? After all, what is preventing their powerful wills from overwhelming the grace of God as they descend back into sorrow and madness? I thought at some point before the end of the book he might address this important and (in my opinion) devastating criticism, but alas, he does not. Did he not see such a possibility at all, when he was writing this book?

I had hoped I might see him discuss Hebrews 9:27 (He would call it Hebrews 9) which reads, "It is appointed unto man once to do, and after that comes judgment." To my mind, this is a very definitive refutation of the "second chance" doctrine that Bell is absolutely dependent on.

Tomorrow in our final installment of this review, we will look at questions of Bell's scholarship and I'll wrap up my review. Part 3

The Unprofessional Book Review: Love Wins by Rob Bell (Part 1 of 3)

PART 1 OF 3: RESCUED? FROM WHAT?

Several years ago, when Josh and I attended Grand Canyon University together, we had a professor who identified himself to us as an open theist. One day, just because we really wanted to learn and understand, we sat down and asked him questions. We didn't grill him, and we didn't berate him. We were listening. The number one question I recall us asking was, "It seems like your whole system makes nonsense out of God's wrath and anger at human sin. How do you understand what Jesus was doing for us at the cross?" His answer was something nebulous to the effect that Jesus loosed the bonds of death so that we can rise up above our present and no longer stand condemned by our sin. See, in our professor's system, it is not God who condemns the guilty - it is our condition of human sickness, which we must be cured of.

I offer that segue because I believe at the core of my own vitriolic disagreements with what Rob Bell is doing in this book is a profoundly different view of the cosmos. In his blurb for the book found on the Love Wins dust jacket, Eugene Peterson (the guy who wrote The Message) says this: "...it isn't easy to develop a thoroughly biblical imagination that takes in the comprehensive and eternal work of Christ...Love Wins accomplishes this without a trace of soft sentimentality and without copromising an inch of evangelical conviction..." If Eugene Peterson is right, if Richard Mouw is right that Bell is square in the center of evangelicalism, then without a shred of dramatis, I just want to say that I will never refer to myself as an evangelical again (I'm Reformed).

If I were to write a book on heaven and hell, I know where I would start. I would start with the holiness of God. I would start with the sinfulness of man. I would speak about divine justice and the fitness and beauty of God and the rightness of his defending his own glory and honor. In other words, I would start with sin. Unfortunately, the first appearance of sin that I could find in this book was on page 72, paragraph 4. (I nearly read this book in one sitting, so when I saw the word "sin" in the book for the first time, I sat up and noted it in the margin.) However, the pages where he does talk about sin, it is always seen as an action that people do to each other... the dictator who commits genocide (70)... the child who was molested (72)... the man who cheats on his wife (73)... the woman who was raped (71)... the man who modified his will to cause the maximum hurt to his family during the funeral (72)... and on and on. Never, not once is sin seen as something which we do in the face of a holy God. Not once. Here's an example: "Same with the word 'anger.' When we hear people saying they can't believe in a God who gets angry - yes, they can. How should God react to a child being forced into prostitution? How should God feel about a country starving while warlords hoard the food supply..." (38) and it goes on. God's anger is about our horizontal treatment of others, not about an affront to His holiness.

To my mind, this is unconscionable (I may use that word a couple of times in this review). It is essential to understanding the thing which separates us from God. Sin is not a substance that is stuck to us and needs to be removed. It is something we do as we slap God in the face and tell him he is mistaken about his importance in the universe. As long as Bell avoids the subject of sin against God, he is able to successfully caricature those who believe in an eternal, unending meanie hell without second chances. And caricature, he does:

• "So when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will 'get into heaven,' that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club" (178).
• "...the toxic notion that God is a slave driver" (180). [He uses the "slave driver" phrase a lot.]

As far as I'm concerned, the heart of the book is actually at the end. Starting on page 182, Bell talks about the theological view that really gets him going.

Many have heard the gospel framed in terms of rescue. God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus paid the price for our sins, and so we can have eternal life...[what this does is] teach people that Jesus rescues us from God (182).

Finally, we're getting to what Bell considers to be a true sin. Here's how Michael Horton puts it, just so you can see that Bell is not playing with cartoons at this point in the book:

Although Jesus freely gave his life up to the Father as a sacrifice that he was not forced to give, it was a death penalty that God executed as the just judge of the universe. Turning his eyes from the mutilated body of his Son, now carrying the sins of us all, the Father abandoned Jesus Christ so that he would never have to abandon us in our deepest trial or most heinous sin. God saved us from himself in order to save us for himself forever.
-Michael Horton, "Saved From God," Modern Reformation, March/April 1996

Want to know what Bell really thinks of a God who hates and punishes sin?

Lets be very clear, then: we do not need to be rescued from God. God is the one who rescues us from death, sin, and destruction...Inquisitions, persecutions, trials, book burnings, blacklistings - when religious people become violent, it is because they have been shaped by their God, who is violent (182-183).

So in Bell's view, the conflict in the universe is not a personal conflict. It is not man vs. God - it is man vs. impersonal forces. Yes, Mr. Bell. I can make caricatures of my own, as well.

But on to the paragraph that I noted in the margin as the worst part of the entire book, for me (and we're not even to the universalism part!):

The violent God creates profound worry in people. Tension. Stress. This God is supposed to bring peace, that's how the pitch goes, but in the end this God can easily produce followers who are paralyzed and catatonic, full of fear. Whatever you do, don't step out of line or give this God any reason to be displeased, because who knows what will be unleashed (184).

Many times, he confuses the Anselmian view of the atonement with legalism. He speaks with such distain for a God whose eyes are too pure to look on sin, and yet he somehow thinks that the result of teaching about God's anger at sin will be legalism.

That God is angry, demanding, a slave drive, and so that God's religion becomes a system of sin management, constantly working and angling to avoid what surely must be the coming wrath that lurks behind every corner, thought, and sin (183).

From that point on in the book, he lectures on the dangers of legalism and how Jesus came so we wouldn't have to live in legalism any more. Talk about straw man! So for the rest of the book (which I grant is only about ten more pages at that point) it's Bell vs. Legalism. Guess who will win in that contest! There is no serious attempt to interact with the Reformed tradition and its view of grace, justification, or salvation in general. It is all cartoons.

From here, we can see that if God is not angry at sin as sin, but rather at sin as wrongs against others, then it is much easier to make sense of his doctrines of heaven and hell. I want to briefly say that his view of heaven is much like N.T. Wright's view as expressed in his book Simply Christian. I have interacted with his (in my opinion) odd view of Heaven elsewhere. I will summarize Bell's view of heaven by quoting him:

There's heaven now, somewhere else.
There's heaven here, sometime else.
And then there's Jesus' invitation to heaven
here
and
now,
in this moment,
in this place.

[At only 190 pages, this book really did need the awkwardly placed line breaks, otherwise it would have been 30 pages total, single spaced. This explains how I was able to finish reading it while scribbling sarcastic, angry notes in the margins, all in a total of four hours or so.]

There's somewhat of a parallel between heaven and hell, for Bell. Just as heaven is about the here and now, just as much as it is about the "age to come," so is hell. At one point, after talking the little boy who lost his arms and legs to a cruel dictator he decides to clear things up for those who think he denies that hell exists:

Do I believe in a literal hell?
Of course.
Those aren't metaphorical arms and legs.

I can't tell if he thinks he's hilarious, or if he believes he has made the greatest point in all mankind. In either case, the quote itself should be enough to show you that he sees hell as something we create - something that happens in us. This is also true of his view of the afterlife hell. I see a tremendous amount of influence on Bell from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce - a book which is as lovely as it is confusing.

From the most subtle rolling of the eyes to the most violent degradation of another human, we are terrifyingly free to do as we please.
God gives us what we want, and if that's hell, we can have it.
We have that kind of freedom, that kind of choice. We are that free (72).

Tomorrow: We'll get to the question of whether Bell is a universalist in Part 2.

Christian Leaders Ought to Speak Plainly

I have been watching Rob Bell make the television rounds this week. Good Morning America used a clip from Justin Taylor's webcam that made him look like he was some guy in his bedroom on a Charlie Sheen-style rant. Intercut with this, of course, was the highest quality HD video of Bell pacing the platform with his dapper dress and fancy headset. Sorry, Justin; you're the Sheen wannabe, and Bell's the superstar!

But on to what I really want to say. In the above video where journalist Martin Bashir (the man who took the world inside Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch) actually asks Bell journalistic and pressing questions, I want to point out a lesson for men like us who have future plans to enter the Ministry. Let us speak with clarity. Let us answer questions without fear of the world's judgment. Let us answer questions in a way that the questioner does not need to ask three or four times the same question until we answer "plainly and without horns."

Bell is an embarrassment, to me, in this video. If he could at least have the temerity to say what he believes, he would get a shred of respect from me, but as it stands, I honestly believe he is embarrassed in the context of his conversation with Bashir that he has a watery view of the afterlife. The fact that he calls discussions of one's eternal destiny and its relationship with our decisions and actions in the here and now "speculative" is a joke. The man wrote a book on the subject, for crying out loud! It is not exactly unreasonable that Martin Bashir should expect the man at the table who wrote a book "on the fate of every person who ever lived" to be able to tell us what, in fact, the fate of every person is.

Instead, all Bashir gets is the same repetitive answer Bell gave to GMA... "I begin with the belief that god, when we shed a tear, god sheds a tear." Cry me a river, God. "Okay; I have been for like, thousands of years, and I'm still crying... When's someone going to hug me!?" When Bashir presses him on God's sovereignty and the suffering in Japan, Bell won't give God credit where God gives Himself credit:

Bashir: Which is true, he’s all but powerful and cares?

Bell: I think it’s a paradox at the heart of the divine, some paradoxes are best left as they are.

Fair enough; the guy's no Jonathan Edwards. Maybe he'll at least explain his own views for Bashir (and the rest of the world). Bashir asks, "Are you a Universalist?" Bell responds by saying, "No, I'm not a universalist... Not that there's anything wrong with that..." (My Seinfeld-inspired paraphrase)

Bell:I would say "are you a universalist?" I would say no. that’s a perspective within the christian stream. there’s been within the christian tradition a number of people who have said given enough time, god will win everybody over.

So it would be okay if he was, but he's not. Okay, fair enough. Then Bashir gets really pointed and specific. This is only a seven minute interview, after all. "So is it irrelevant and is it immaterial about how one responds to Christ in this life in terms of determining one’s eternal destiny? Is that immaterial?"

I count Bashir asking Bell this same question a total of three times. It appears he never receives a satisfactory answer. Watch the video to decide for yourself. It is plain to the average viewer that Bashir wants Bell to get down to brass tacks. "Will we get second chances after death?" Bell will not say yes or no. He simply says in the end, "That's speculation." This is why there are theologians. This is why there are pastors. To answer questions like Bashir is asking. What is the point of going to Seminary and reading 700 books and learning Greek and Hebrew if at the end of the day the answer is, "This is all speculation." Well, Bell, go speculate by yourself. Don't experiment with theology in front of an audience of millions.

The questions Bell is asking are too important for him to treat the pulpit like a test tube. Some may think I'm being too harsh, but consider James when he says that "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1). Terrifying words for a man like Bell with the audience that he commands. These are terrifying words all of us, really, who have Seminary in our sights.