LOVE WINS, -4-

The Gospel Coalition on Love Wins

At the recent Gospel Coalition Conference here in Chicago, a session was dedicated to discussing Rob Bell's Love Wins. There are two links: one is Don Carson's talk on universalism and the other is a round table discussion with Don Carson, Kevin DeYoung, Tim Keller, Stephen Um, and Crawford Loritts.

This at the very least should be very interesting and likely useful stuff. I'm listening to it today. I don't think Love Wins offers a straightforward universalism -- pluralism most definitely, universalism no. It would be correct I think to call the view hopeful universalism; but Love Wins does not claim that Hell will be ultimately evacuated. For the book, Love wins out because God, in his love, allows people to choose Hell and that, primarily for Rob Bell's argument, in this life.

Love Wins 4

I’m continuing to work my way through Rob Bell’s book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Livedand in this post I want to think about chapter two which is titled “Here is the New There”. The topic of the chapter is heaven.

It seems to me that the central issue in this chapter is the misconception that heaven is “somewhere else”. This misguided and unbiblical perspective, according to Rob, is captured graphically in the picture that used to hang in his grandmother’s home. He says the painting tells a story:

It’s a story of movement, from one place to the next, from one realm to another, from death to life, with the cross as the bridge, the way, the hope . . . But the story also tells us something else, something really, really important, something significant about the location. According to the painting, all of this is happening somewhere else . . . I show you this painting because, as surreal as it is, the fundamental story it tells about heaven—that it is somewhere else—is the story that many people know to be the Christian story (23).

Rob believes this story is an unbiblical story. And this unbiblical story has led to two errant consequences. First, because of the story of “heaven somewhere else”, questions related to heaven are generally otherworldly. For example, a question like “what will we do in heaven?” is characteristic of this kind of thinking. Second, the story creates an imbalanced emphasis on the question of who’s in heaven and who isn’t.

So, the dominant question of this chapter is: what is the correct biblical story of heaven? This question then provides a corrective for the two additionally related questions: Where is heaven and what kind of person will get there?

There are a number of points of detail that could be dealt with in this post. As you might expect this is one of the more length chapters in the book. I will make some brief comments about a few things at the end, but am going to focus more attention in this post on Rob’s reading of the story of the “Rich Young Ruler”, which for all intents and purposes, is the center piece of the chapter.

To correct this “mistaken notion” about heaven [I put this phrase in quotes because it’s a quote from Tom Wright’s Simply Christian—Tom’s been asserting for years and it is no doubt where Rob has gotten it--most comprehensively in Surprised by Hope], Rob turns to the gospel’s story of the “Rich Young Ruler” as told in Matthew 19:16-22 (see parallels in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 18:18-23).

In the story, Rob finds the truth about heaven. When the young man asked Jesus the question, “What good thing must he do to have eternal life?”, he wasn’t asking about how he gets into heaven when he dies. According to Rob, neither this man nor Jesus ever thought about the future in terms of “going to heaven” when you die. Jesus did not come to make it possible for people to a heaven somewhere else.

To validate this contention, Rob springboards off the story of the Rich Young Ruler to teach a lesson on eschatological views (ideas of the end times) in first-century Judaism. He paints a unified picture of how Jews of Jesus’ day thought about the “end of the world”. Drawing on the Old Testament, Jesus’ Scriptures, Rob shows that ancient Jews thought of history in terms of two ages: the present (this) age and the age to come. He points out that the Greek word translated as “eternal” in the phrase “eternal life” (Matt 19:16) can mean more than one thing, but more significantly, he denies that the term can mean what we most often think it means: “forever” (see discussion below). Instead, Rob suggests that the first of these meanings is best captured with a term like “age”, which he defines as “a period of time with a beginning and ending” (32).

Rob’s point in all this discussion is to show more correctly what the young man was asking Jesus. He wasn’t asking to “go to heaven”; rather he was asking, “How do I participate in the New Age?” As Rob summarizes:

They did not talk about a future life somewhere else, because they anticipated a coming day when the world would be restored, renewed, and redeemed and there would be peace on earth (40).

For Rob the point is more a question of how the man participates in this new world God will bring about when he turns the eschatological calendar. Jesus’ answers the man in the way one would expect a Jewish rabbi would: “live the commandments”. “God has shown you how to live. Live that way” (40). The man responds that he does keep the Mosaic commands. As an aside, the man was not saying he was perfect, but that he was living a Torah-observant life within the Covenant God had established with Israel on Sinai. But as Jesus had already been teaching that this kind of obedience was not enough. Here I am alluding to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) where Jesus intensifies the Mosaic commandments as the Messianic Teacher of the Torah. The so-called “antithesis” in Matthew 5, where Jesus discussed the commands of the Mosaic Torah with “you’ve heard it said, but I say to you”, could be given the title “Yes and More”. The man then was likely right to ask the “what else must I do” question and it was probably stimulated by Jesus’ own teaching.

Most importantly, however Rob seems to miss the main point of Jesus response which quite rightly is the last word: “follow me” (19:20). It was not a summons simply to sell all he had and give to the poor. Jesus wasn’t primarily going after his “greed” as Rob thinks. Jesus called him ultimately to “follow”. Obedience is ultimate yes, but it’s also Jesus oriented. The man had to follow Jesus and was unwilling to do so, bottom line.

Nevertheless, I think Rob's comment is insightful and profound: “Jesus takes the man’s question about his life then and makes it about the kind of life he’s living now” (41). This is a significant insight. If you don’t follow Jesus now (this presupposes a lifestyle of ultimate obedience), you won’t be with him then. Heaven isn't simply about someday; its a present reality. Jesus does "blur the lines"; he does merge "heaven and earth".

Now very briefly a few more things:

1) The discussion of “eternal”, aionios, has serious problems. Rob wants to deny that the word aionios ever means what we think of “forever”. This is both right and wrong. It is true that ancient Jews would not have had the same notion of forever as we do, but to say that they could not have thought in terms of forever and that they did not use this word to denote that conception is flat out wrong. Also, there is no evidence to support Rob’s idea that aionios means “intense” (see pg 57). No lexicon of the Greek language supports such an understanding.

2) Rob seems to assume in his retelling of the story of the Rich Young Ruler that the man will participate in the eternal life no matter what. The only question is: Of what will his participation consist? As Rob poses the question “How do you make sure you’ll be part of the new thing God is doing? How do you best become the kind of person whom God could entrust with significant responsibility in the age to come?” (40). This is perhaps the assumption behind his erroneous idea that in heaven fire will purify you and make you fit to “handle heaven” (50). Rob wants to argue that Jesus didn't teach about “getting into" heaven or the age to come. Instead Jesus taught about being “transformed, so that we can actually handle heaven”.

I have to say it, this is just nonsense. Jesus, in point of fact, primarily taught on what Rob says he didn’t. Reflecting on the young man’s refusal Jesus even states, “only with difficult will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven . . . it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (19:23-24). They’ll be no flames in heaven making you fit for it. Jesus does not assume that the young man will be there. Jesus makes the distinction between following Jesus in the here and its reward and “inheriting eternal life”, which is simply another way of saying enter, in the here after (19:29). There is a difference between the two. And being in one does not mean you’ll be in the other. But how you live in the one will determine your presence in the other. You'll enter the other by how you live in the present.

3) The discussion of “treasure” and whether treasure is static or dynamic (43-47) is baffling to me. What is ironic is while arguing for a view of heaven rooted in a first-century Jewish mindset, the topic of “treasures in heaven” is untethered from any such rootedness. It seems that Jesus himself promised “static” rewards (19:28).

4) Definition of “heaven”:

Sometimes when Jesus used the word “heaven” he was simply referring to God, using the word as a substitute for the name of God. Second, sometimes when Jesus spoke of heaven, he was referring to the future coming together of heaven and earth in what he and his contemporaries called in the age to come. And then third—and this is where things get really interesting—when Jesus talked about heaven he was talking about our present eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life, this side of death and the age to come (58-59).

Taking these points in turn. First, only Matthew has Jesus do such a thing; in other words in none of the other Gospels does Jesus replace “God” with the term “Heaven”. This may just have been Mathew’s preference and not much can be assumed than from this about Jesus’ usage. It is true that Matthew uses “heaven” this way. Second, while this is somewhat true. Ancient Jews and early Christians still maintained the distinction between heaven and earth. When saints died they went to heaven from where they will return with Jesus at the end of the age. Collapsing the distinction between heaven and earth to the extend Rob does is unbiblical. If Paul is right “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” then there is a heaven somewhere else at least until the time of Jesus second coming. Jesus did pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, but that has yet to occur. Third, this category of heaven is an illusion. Neither Jesus nor any biblical writer defines heaven this way.

*

So what is the final word on Love Wins and heaven? I think it is right to critique the story that the portrait tells with which the chapter opened. I don’t think the picture truthfully represents the biblical story of salvation because the story the picture tells is truncated. I'll say only here that God’s ultimate place for humans is a renewed earth. God is going to make all things new (Rev 21) and the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to earth. As I make this point, I am surprised that Rob didn’t discuss Revelation 21-22 in the chapter. It’s absence startling.

Heaven is a complex biblical idea however. There is a heaven that is distinct from the earth. They are not the same place. Right now God is in heaven and at the time of his choosing he’ll turn the eschatological calendar sending Jesus to finish the work. Yet, in the meantime because of Jesus’ resurrection life and the gift of the Spirit in the church, heaven can be enacted in this time and in this place through the work of the church. Where the church steps, heaven’s footprint is left.

This finally brings us to the question of who is in heaven. First, it needs to be said that Jesus does call people to "enter heaven", although we need to define that term appropriately. The story of the Rich Young Ruler itself shows this. Second, the saints in both the Old and New Testament times are in heaven right now. When we die, if we have entrusted ourselves to Jesus [if we follow Jesus], we’ll be in heaven immediately. This however is not the last word and it might not have been what Jesus the the young man were discussing as Rob points out. Heaven will unite with a renewed earth and it’s this harmony that the Bible foresees as the final state, eternal life. Eternal life is both a quality of life (Rob’s point) and a quantity of life (forever).

Love Wins 5

I continue my interaction with Rob Bell’s book. Today we come to the third chapter and the topic of hell.

The central point of this chapter is to argue that hell is a real place. But, and most importantly, the reality of hell is not only or even primarily a future place. Hell is present in the world today. Hell is the outcome of people’s choices when they reject “the good and true and beautiful life” God has for them.

Here’s a statement of summary:

And that’s what we find in Jesus’ teaching about hell—a volatile mixture of images, pictures, and metaphors that describe the very real experiences and consequences of rejecting our God-given goodness and humanity. Something we are all free to do, anytime, anywhere, with anyone (73).

Before reading my bullet point comments, think about the idea:

Aside from the Bible’s teaching on the subject, do you think this idea of hell is a sufficient answer to humanity’s universal longing for justice?

Now for my quick hits.

1. Hell is not for the victims; what a victim of a hate crime or a rape or genocide has had to endure can be absolutely called “hellish”, but hell is not for them. Hell’s purpose is the final judgment of evil in any form: human and non-human—angels and people.

2. Jewish people at the time of Jesus, and Jesus himself, had no problem believing in eternal punishment. I suspect that most oppressed people don’t.

3. There is plenty of ancient Jewish evidence about hell that would make the most graphic images of hell in the New Testament look like watercolor paintings. I could give references if you want them.

4. Gehenna, to the best of our knowledge, was not a “trash dump”. There’s not one shred of evidence to support this idea that has become self-evident.

5. In the Bible, restorative punishment, punishment whose purpose is to restore, is generally corporate and only for Israel in the OT. What I mean here is that individuals are not the objects of restorative punishment in the OT. Much is made of Ezekiel’s vision of the restoration of Sodom (Ezek 16:44-58) in the chapter. Rob overreaches to make his point. A careful reading of the passage reveals that Ezekiel is speaking of Sodom corporately. The city will be restored with Samaria and with Jerusalem. In the NT, members of the church are chastised in order that they might be restored. There’s no scenario presented that gives even the hint that the unrighteous suffer divine judgment in order to bring them to faith and salvation. See Romans 1:18-32.

6. As the presence of heaven has broken in to the present the present age in the coming of Jesus, so too has the presence of hell. God’s wrath, indeed, is presently being poured out in the present (Rom 1:18-32). But this is not hell.

7. The warnings of judgment on the lips of Jesus transcend the Jewish War of 68-70 and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. I am in no way suggesting that these were not within the scope of the judgment, but they do not exhaust the reality of the judgment Jesus predicted.

8. The interpretation of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus told in Luke 16 is formative for the teaching on hell espoused in the chapter. Rob's reading just doesn't stand up under scrutiny. You can look it over for yourself. In the parable Jesus is teaching that deeds of mercy or lack there of in this life are determinative for the life to come. What one does in this life determines where one will spend the life to come and that final state is unalterable.

In addition, a brief word is required on the interpretation of the phrase “aion kolazo” (“eternal punishment”) in Matthew 25:46. First, the word “kolazo”. The term in Matt 25:46 is the noun not the verb, but both are only used twice in the NT (verb Acts 4:21; 2 Pet 2:9; noun 1 Jn 4:18; Matt 25:46). In none of its uses either in the verb or noun form does it speak of “pruning” or does it refer to a restorative punishment. Second, Rob again, as in the chapter on heaven, insists that Jews didn’t have a category for the idea of forever. This is just wrong. Let me show you a passage where the concept of forever is meant in a context of divine punishment: Revelation 20:10 and 14-15.

Rev. 20:10

And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Rev. 20:14-15

Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 All whose names were not found written in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire.

These two texts are related and express a vision of the final fate of God’s enemies. In the first text were told that the devil, the beast and the false prophet will be “thrown” into the “lake of burning sulfur” to be “tormented day and night. This torment according to John will be “for ever and ever”. This phrase is created by repeating the word aion twice. It means something like “for ages upon ages”. In this way John is expressing the idea behind our term “forever”. While the term aion may mean a distinct period of time with a beginning and an end, it can be and is used by biblical authors to express an unending period or set of periods.

Another observation about these passages is the assumption that the lake of fire is not only for God’s explicit enemies. Anyone whose name is not written in the “book of life” will suffer the same fate with the devil, the beast and the false prophet. A so-called neutral position (even giving someone the benefit of the doubt) for John is implicit support for God’s enemies. As someone said once, “You’re either with us, or with them”.

Finally, it appears that Hades, hell that is, is not the same thing as the “lake of fire”. If we harmonize Jesus’ parable about the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16 with the teaching of Revelation here, we would have to say that the Rich man who died and was in Hades in his first death, will be thrown into the lake of fire in the “second death”.

MORE ON BELL

The firestorm around Rob Bell has grown considerably in the last week.  Now the leadership of his Mars Hill Bible Church is rushing to his defense, and we're learning more about the fight to publish his controversial new book.

Last week, we reported that conservative Christian blogger Justin Taylor suggested Bell's yet-to-be-released book, "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived," was heading towards universalism ─ a dirty word in Christian circles that suggests everyone goes to heaven and there is no hell.

Taylor's claim ─ based on a description of the book released by publisher HarperOne and a promotional video ─ ignited a wave of criticism against, and a counter-wave of support for, Bell. Some critics went so far as to label Bell a heretic. Prominent evangelical pastors on both the right and left rushed to condemn or defend the Michigan pastor.

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called the promotion of the book the "sad equivalent of a theological striptease." Brian McLaren, who has also been branded a heretic in the past, marveled at the fact people would throw around the "h" word "without actually grappling with the issues and questions the books raised."

The controversy even caught the staff at Bell's church off-guard. On Sunday, Brian Mucchi, an assistant pastor, told the church they knew a controversy could come, they just didn't expect it to come so soon, according to a church member who was at the service but did not want to be identified.

Mucchi told congregants at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, the church Bell founded, that the entire leadership team had read the book and was excited about its release. He put up pictures of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga and told the audience that while those two stars were not trending on Twitter last weekend,  Bell was.

Shane Hipps, Mars Hill Bible Church's teaching pastor, addressed the congregation about the book before he preached on Sunday. "On a personal note, when you get to see a very dear friend spend a year of his life working to create, pouring blood, sweat and tears into something that before it even releases become this incredible phenomenon, it's just extremely thrilling," Hipps said, according to audio of the service posted on YouTube.

Hipps pointed out for context that Bell's unreleased book is outselling the latest release by Pope Benedict XVI on Amazon.com.

"This book will irreparably, irrevocably, irreversible change Rob's life and change a lot of the things in the life of this community. These are good things, but he needs prayer.  And not because he's fragile but because he's a leader, and leaders need prayer," Hipps continued. "We are not anxious about this at all. Because I promise you when you get to read the book, you will find that it is fresh and liberating ─ but that it rests firmly in the wide screen of Orthodox Christianity and in the history of Christianity it fits perfectly.  You will be very much at ease," he said.

The church has said it will not comment on the book publicly in an official capacity until it is released and did not respond to repeated requests for interviews with its leadership team.

The book was scheduled to be released March 29, but Harper One pushed the release up to March 15 ─ next Tuesday.

“All retailers won’t get it on the same day, but it will finally give his readers a chance to hear what he’s saying,” Mark Tauber, senior vice president and publisher at HarperOne, told CNN.

He said the controversy swirling is unlike anything else he has seen in this category of books. "I'm not sure I’ve ever seen this amount of anticipation," he said.

"Love Wins" is Bell's first book since his break from Zondervan, the Christian publisher based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that published Bell's first four books and also publishes the New International Version of the Bible, one of the most popular translations of the Bible among evangelicals.

Bell's split from Zondervan came in part over this new book. "The break with Zondervan was amicable," Tauber said. "In the end the president of Zondervan made the decision. The proposal came in and they said, 'This proposal doesn’t fit in with our mission.' "

Zondervan would not discuss its relationship with Bell but released a statement:

Zondervan has published four books by Rob Bell, as well as numerous Nooma videos in which Rob was featured. We published these titles because we believed they were consistent with Zondervan’s mission statement and publishing philosophy. We still believe these titles are impactful with their message and positive contribution and intend to continue to publish them.

Tauber said when he got the call that Bell's new book was up for bid, HarperOne jumped at the chance.

“There were at least four or five major publishers that were involved in bidding for this book," he said. When pressed for financial figures of the deal, he said, "We’re talking a six-figure deal for the advance, but I can’t say more than that."

Tauber said HarperOne had been "keeping an eye on him" since Bell's first book, "Velvet Elvis," came in as a proposal. That book went on to sell 500,000 copies. Bell skyrocketed to prominence with the the Nooma series, which were short teachings by Bell, away from the pulpit and with indie film sensibilities.

The high production values and quick releases of the short films made them a hit in evangelical circles.  In them Bell honed his trademark style of asking tough traditional questions about faith and exploring them from angles other than traditional answers.

Bell will speak publicly for the first time since the controversy erupted on March 14 at a forum sponsored by his publisher and moderated by Lisa Miller, an editor at Newsweek magazine.

Bell once told me he doesn't like to engage in what he called "blog kung fu," the back-and-forth debates that percolate across the web. He may not have a choice this time. With the release of the book right around the corner and a long tour schedule to promote it, Bell just may find himself having to hit back.

JOEL WILLITTS

Love Wins 3

Chapter one of Love Wins is a stream of consciousness. It is a set of ideas in the form of questions that loosely hold together.

Reading the chapter I felt like I often do when talking to my 4-year-old daughter. Mary, my budding conversationalist, beads ideas together whose only relationship is that the one idea caused her to think of another. But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Rob didn’t intend for the chapter to be read like as a geometric proof. Perhaps the issue then is genre. This chapter is more like poetry than an argument to be dissected or carefully analyzed. Perhaps to treat it as such would be to miss the overall poetic affect. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the author, let's go with this more poetic approach.

What then is the poetic affect? What does it all add up to?

At least two stand out to me. One, the chapter leaves you with the impression that the author is a critical thinker. Someone whose thought hard about this stuff and is in a position to offer more convincing alternatives. Two, the chapter leaves you with the undeniable impression that there is something terribly wrong with conventional evangelical thinking.

What particular areas of evangelical thinking? Based on the lines of questioning I came up with twelve topics:

1. Presumptive epistemological confidence

2. Population sizes of heaven and hell

3. Infinite punishment for finite sin

4. The age of accountability and infant mortality

5. Postmortem second chances

6. “Accepting Jesus” / praying the “sinner’s prayer”

7. Heaven somewhere else

8. Perspectives of Jesus

9. Missionary responsibility

10. Monergism/synergism (Is salvation all God or a combination of God and us?)

11. Personal relationship with Jesus

12. Supposed diversity of NT teaching

So what do we make of these two poetic impressions?

The thinking behind the questions at points is critical in the best sense of the word. As examples, I point to the important problems of an infinite punishment for finite sin and the population sizes of heaven and hell. I do think these are important subjects that are at least worthy of reconsideration. How should the Bible’s figurative language of end-time judgment be understood? Does the Bible teach that God will punish eternally sin committed in a finite body? Will more people go to hell than heaven? I think there are solid biblical reasons to believe that both of these questions are to be answered in the affirmative, but there are also biblical counter arguments that should be honestly weighed and not ignored.

Also, to the extent that our evangelical telling of the Gospel is reductionistic to the point of making God look like someone with a polarity disorder, that should be redressed.

But on the whole the chapter appears to me be more a pseudo-intellectualism rather than real. The problem of a supposed diversity of NT teaching on the way to salvation which takes several pages of the chapter is a pseudo-problem for example. While appearing quite insightful, it really amounts to nothing. What’s more, several of the lines of questioning Rob traces are caricatures based on the worst stereotypes of evangelical teaching around.

Penetrating and important questions can be found in this chapter. But they aren't the only kind.

Joel Willitts 

MORE WILLETT ON BELL CLANGERS -2-

This is the second part of a two-part post on Rob Bell’s fifth chapter (“Dying to Live”) in his book Love Wins. The chapter is about the meaning of Jesus death and resurrection. In the first part of the post I discussed the Atonement. In this post I want to address his discussion of the resurrection. In the section, he makes three points: (1) the idea of resurrection is not new; it is the essence of reality, (2) the death and resurrection has a singular cosmic implication and should not be domesticated and excessively individualize, and (3) the death and resurrection are nevertheless to be personalized. What do we make of these arguments?

First of all, the first point is weak. Rob attempts to use horticulture to show that death and resurrection are basic to reality. It is the essence of a flourishing life.

When the writers of the Bible talk about Jesus’s resurrection bringing new life to the world, they aren’t talking about a new concept. They’re talking about something that has always been true. It’s how the world works  . . . it’s a symbol of an elemental reality (131).

The analogy, however convincing on the surface, does not actually deliver. Plants in the winter may appear dead, but if they come back to life in the spring they were never dead. This is certainly not a useful analogy for Jesus’ resurrection. Orthodox Christians believe that Jesus was dead, a corpse—not simply appearing to be dead. Skeptics have of course argued this. The resurrection of a dead person is not something that is analogous to anything in our present reality. It is in fact wholly different.

Also, the truth is the idea of resurrection was even ridiculous to many in Paul’s day. Look at Acts 17 when Paul was in Athens speaking with the philosophers at the Areopagus. When he brought up the resurrection in his speech (Acts 17:32) they stopped listening to him. The resurrection of the dead was not something many people believed even among the Jewish people. Remember the Sadducees rejected the resurrection of the dead.

In the second place, the point about the scope of the consequence for the resurrection is extremely important. In my view, Rob is spot on here. I will quote him at length here:

When people say that Jesus came to die on the cross so that we can have a relationship with God, yes, that is true. But that explanation as the first explanation puts us at the center. For the first Christians, the story was, first and foremost, bigger, grander. More massive. When Jesus is presented only as the answer that saves individuals from their sin and death, we run the risk of shrinking the Gospel down to something just for humans, when God has inaugurated a movement in Jesus’ resurrection to renew, restore, and reconcile everything “on earth or in heaven” (Col. 1), just as God originally intended it. The powers of death and destruction have been defeated on the most epic scale imaginable. Individuals are then invited to see their story in the context of a far larger story, one that includes all of creation (134).

Amen! Rob has stated the truth very clearly. It is the conclusion he draws from this that one must critically assess however. He concludes in light of the biblical teaching that any Gospel that creates an “in” group and an “out” group is not consistent with the cosmic scope of the resurrection (135). Is this true? Is it true that if you affirm what Rob affirms, you must necessarily also accept his conclusion?

Finally, the third point is fundamentally true – the cross and resurrection are indeed personal and must be personally applied by faith. According to Paul, every believer must be united to Jesus in his death and resurrection (Rom 6; Gal 2). It is this mystical union with Jesus that is the basis of our salvation. But this salvific content in Rob’s point is missing and the Jesus’ death and resurrection serves primarily as example. Jesus’ death and resurrection is an example of how to truly live in this world. Now, don’t get me wrong, dying to oneself is the essence of fullness of life. Jesus did teach that losing your life meant finding it; and Paul called husbands to die to themselves in submission to their wives. But Jesus’ death and resurrection are not first and foremost a moral example.

Eminen may have stumbled into the truth that life comes through death at the bottom of his addiction and despair (A story about Eminen bookend the chapter). It maybe the reason he was wearing a cross at the Detroit concert Rob attended. But unless Eminen put his personal trust in Jesus death and resurrection for the forgiveness of own sins no matter how cleaned up he becomes in this life or how well he ends up flourishing because he stopped putting himself first, he will have missed the point of the cross around his neck.

JOEL WILLITTS 

LOVE WINS; A KEY ROB BELL ERROR

Brant Pitre has written a very informative and accessible book on the Jewish roots of the Eucharist and this is the second post in a series engaging Brant’s thought-provoking volume. 

In the first chapter, “The Mystery of the Last Supper”, Brant discusses his primary goal to situate Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist in its historical setting in order to show that, in spite of its seeming incongruity with Jesus’ own Jewish tradition, his teaching on eating his flesh and drinking his blood (John 6) (Brant takes this passage eucharistically – more on that in ch. 4) was meant literally. Of his purpose he writes:

My goal is to explain how a first-century Jew like Jesus, Paul, or any other of the apostles, could go from believing that drinking any blood—much less human blood—was an abomination before God, to believing that drinking the blood of Jesus was actually necessary for Christians” (18).

Brant wants to take his reader on a journey back to the first-century world of Jesus and the first Jewish believers in Jesus to help us “see things” as they saw them. Brant believes when we use an informed imagination “we will discover that there is much more in common between ancient Judaism and early Christianity”. In the end, Brant will attempt to show that a Catholic view of the Eucharist (Transubstantiation) is consistent with Jesus’ teaching in their first-century Jewish setting.

There are two points of reflection that I wish to make. First, I am not Catholic. I have never believed in Transubstantiation and still don’t. My own view of the Eucharist is probably somewhere between Zwingli and Calvin. Nevertheless there is a great deal to be gained from reading Brant’s engagement with ancient Judaism and the Gospels both on the question of the Eucharist, but also a proper approach to reading the canonical Jesus in his context. Brant has given me a newfound appreciation for the Catholic doctrine. Reading his book I’ve come to see a biblical foundation for the view and while I am not convinced—this is a whole other issue related to conversion for to be convinced would mean a need to convert to Catholicism—on exegetical grounds, I now better understand and respect the view.

Second, in light of my previous post about Love Wins and the question Rob Bell raised about Jesus’ purpose and the meaning of the Jesus story, I think Brant’s discussion of Jesus humanity is instructive. He states,

For anyone interested in exploring the humanity of Jesus—especially the original meaning of his words and actions—a focus on his Jewish identity is absolutely necessary. Jesus was a historical figure, living in a particular time and place. Therefore, any attempt to understand his words and deeds must reckon with the fact that Jesus lived in an ancient Jewish context . . . this means that virtually all of his teachings were directed to a Jewish audience in a Jewish setting (12).

If this is the case, then it seems overly reductionistic to narrow the meaning of Jesus’ story to “love of God for every single one of us”. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” is no doubt true, but a childish (I don’t mean this negatively) abbreviation of the Gospel. Jesus did not present his mission or his message in these terms. Brant points to Jesus’ announcement of his mission and message in Luke 4 to show just how Jewish Jesus’ framework was. Here in his hometown as Jesus began to reveal his identity as Messiah he appealed to the Jewish Scriptures, Isaiah 61:1-4 particularly) and announced that the “anointed one” is here. “Jesus proclaimed to his fellow Jews that their long-held hope for the coming of the Messiah had been fulfilled—in him” (12-13)

JOEL WILLITTS 

ROB BELL a UNIVERSALIST? WHO KNOWS...

Then in Part Two Freswick further reinforces this for us as he turns over a few more rocks revealing Bell’s reimagined postliberalism:

Rob Bell repaints the attacks on the Christian faith by German liberal theologians and their subsequent followers. He embraces a liberal world-view that denied the virgin birth because of a faulty view of the relationship between science and scripture. Rudolph Bultmann was the one of the most famous of these men. Bultmann claimed the job of modern (late 19th, early 20thcentury) theologians was to demythologizethe gospels so the Christian faith could be relevant to our culture and learn how to live like Jesus. Living like Christ was important but doctrine was not.

Rob Bell repaints these false teachings of historic liberal theology. He consciously uses liberal theologians’ own words. He declares historic liberal theology to be a part of the Christian tradition he embraces. He is certainly aware of this historic attack on the Christian faith. His response is to accept liberalism as a part of the historic Christian faithrather than expose and condemn its errors. Rob Bell is a part of the historic liberal tradition rather than the historic tradition of the Christian faith.

One key aspect of liberalism embraced by Rob Bell is the false view of the life of Jesus replacing faith in Jesus. For Bell “Christian” describes those devoted “to living the way of the Messiah, who they believed was Jesus. A person who follows Jesus. .. .A way of life centered around a person who lives.” He writes, “I am far more interested in jumping than I am in arguing about whose trampoline is better.” What we do is essential, not what we believe.

Bell continues with the thought that we follow the rabbi Jesus to be like Him. Jesus the rabbi chooses us because He has faith in us. “I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is Jesus believes in me. I have been told that I to have faith in God. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that God has faith in me. The rabbi (Jesus) thinks we can be like him.” This is a postmodern liberal repainting of “modern liberalism”.                                 

So Apprising Ministries has been giving you peeks at its bleak future of division and compromise of God’s Word; and for nearly six years now, in articles like Is Rob Bell Evangelical? and Rob Bell Is Definitely Not Like Jesus, I’ve been warning you that Bell’s doctrine is not at all in line with the historic orthodox Christian faith. Take for example Rob Bell On His Practice Of “Militant Mysticism”.

Mysticism was not taught or practiced by Jesus of And His Apostles, which is why we don’t find it in the Bible. Here I’m going to point you to another review of Bell’s new book; this one by heretical Open Theist Greg Boyd, who not surprisingly is supportive of Bell’s latest work. And this gets me to my serious questions concerning Rob Bell.

Boyd tells us:

I have actually read the book (I received an advanced copy)… Rob is first and foremost a poet/artist/dramatist who has a fantastic gift for communicating… Putting his formidable communicating skills to full use… As I interpret Rob’s work,… I know many readers will want my opinion on whether or not Rob is in fact a Universalist.  I’m tempted to say — and probably should say —” I’m not sure;…

I strongly doubt Rob would describe himself as a “Universalist.”…even if one ends up disagreeing with some of Rob’s conclusions (which, as I said, are at most alluded to rather than dogmatically defended)… I would argue that Rob cannot hold to Universalism as a doctrine: he cannot be, in the classic sense of the word, a Universalist. Then again, I could be wrong… (Online source, emphasis his)

Here’s my first question: If Rob Bell has such “a fantastic gift for communicating, with “formidable communicating skills,” then why is it even people who are friends and supporters of Bell’s like Greg Boyd are “not sure” and “could be wrong” about what he believes, teaches, and confesses? For six years now I’ve talked with thousands of Rob Bell disciples and even they disagree about what Bell believes.

If you really want to see someone with formidable communicating skills pick up e.g. a copy of The Kingdom of the Cults by the actual Bible Answer Man, the late Dr. Walter Martin; I’ll guarantee that you’ll have no trouble figuring out what he believed about what he so often referred to as “the historic orthodox Christian faith.” This is how it should be; the Christian is to declare the Word of God as Jesus did, not raise questions about it.

According to Jesus His pastors are commissioned to:

Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels…preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching… He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (2 Timothy 2:23; 4:2; Titus 1:9) 

Which brings me to my other question: How do the nebulous teachings of Rob Bell fit that instruction?

Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor

COUNTERFEIT CHRISTIANITY

 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Tickle Our Ears With Some Bedtime Stories Rob

Unfortunately the Americian Christian Church has continued turning its back on the all sufficiency of Christ and His Word in the Bible to instead seek her solice in more man-pleasing messages. This ignominious idea is itself the very hallmark of the Church Growth Movement, whether it’s the Purpose Driven pragmatism of PDL pope Rick Warren, or the repainted version of liberalism’s gospel of social reform ala Rob Bell. Or do you think it’s simply an odd coinicidence that both men happen to be graduates of Fuller Theological Cesspool Seminary—the very den from which this Church Growth Movement would slither.

And I say it’s well past time for evangelical leaders and pastors to cease their dead on impression of Rip Van Winkle and wake up to the fact that Bell has far more affinity e.g. with the “Progressive Christianity” of Marcus Borg than he does with the Biblical Christianity of John MacArthur. For more information Apprising Ministries refers the interested reader to “Progressive Christianity” Is Neither Progressive Or Christian. However, with this accelerating apostasy within evangelicalism comes the elevation of false teachers who are submerging proper doctrine on their way into positions of prominence within the visible Church of our Lord.

One of these teaching a counterfeit Christianity, which more and more within the evangelical camp are now openly embracing, is Emergence Christianity pastor Rob Bell. You need to understand that Bell is absolutely HUGE within youth groups right now and is well on his way to becoming an idol among ”Christian Untouchables” such as Ravi Zacharias and Ray Comfort. Right now Bell’s every bit as much an icon with youth pastors and youth ministers as Elvis was to so many adults in this nation. Now lest you think this is simply an old issue I literally received a letter this morning from somone whose evangelical church has started using Bell’s materials; and at this point, let’s keep in mind his book Jesus Wants to Save Christians. And just what do you suppose Bell’s Jesus wants to save Christians from; well, as you can see in Rob Bell In A Nutshell: The Bible, stodgy old Sola Scriptura for one. 

I also point to ”Conversation With Rob Bell, a Different Kind of Evangelist,” which is an interview recently conducted by David Crumm at Read the Spirit. First, to give you an idea of just how far that particular website is from evangelical Christianity (as is Bell) Crumm promotes a book Interfaith Heroes, which he says “is perfect for study groups or personal reading anytime throughout the year”:

Produced for the 1st Annual Interfaith Heroes Month in January 2008, these 31 stories highlight men and women who took the risk of making new spiritual connections in their lives to promote peace…showcasing short biographies of men and women throughout history who have crossed traditional boundaries of religious groups to build stronger communities… Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is included as well as biographical sketches of Mahatma Gandhi and St. Francis, among the more famous names in the book…

Of his recent sit down with Bell, and my theological differences aside, I will say that Crumm is correct when he says, “Rob Bell is one of the hottest voices in American religion today.” Crumm goes on:

He’s a best-selling author. He’s a best-selling direct-to-DVD filmmaker. He has been profiled by Time Magazine. When he announced a worldwide pastors’ conference at his church near Grand Rapids — essentially by word of mouth — thousands showed up to spend several days learning from him…

He’s such a major influence in American religion that he doesn’t need to preach old-fashioned revivalist rallies… His passionate mission in life is to wake up the hundreds of millions of Christians in the United States to the reality that God is far larger than their limited view of religion.

The point being that in this “Conversation” with Rob Bell we notice Crumm is quite excited because with Bell’s quasi-universal message of pseudo-Christianity Crumm is now envisioning him as being another one of these “faith heroes” in the making. And in a sense he is correct; Bell is a hero to the mystical interspiritual set who in their deluded spiritual pride think their neo-Gnostic meditation powwows of Contemplative/Centering Prayer will eventually unite all religions. But this now begs the question: If the so-called crossing of ”traditional boundaries of religious groups to build stronger communities” really was the message of Jesus Christ and His Apostles then why were all of them, save John, murdered? They should have been as revered as Bell is. But you should now be able to understand why we’re experiencing such a diluting of doctrine; you see, if they were to teach in straight Biblical purity it wouldn’t make them very good role models at all for these fickle “faith heroes.”

Enthralling Myths From The Murky Mystery Of Mystical Revelation

And finally, I draw your attention to the post What do You Know About Rob Bell? from year ago by Matt Dabb, “an associate minister at the Northwest Church of Christ in St. Petersburg,” that gives us further illustration concerning the way Bell is still being “discovered” by those outside of the postliberal cult of the Emerging Church. Dabb informs readers that he had just learned about Bell’s first book Velvet Elvis. The comments section there will give you a vivid portrait of just how dangerous Rob Bell will be to the genuine Gospel of Jesus Christ in this coming year. This is because Bell is a bridge into conservative evangelical circles—and with it access to your young—for the more heretical teachers of the anti-Reformation Emergence Christianity such as Bell’s friend Emerging Church Pastor Doug Pagitt, who is the pastor of Tony Jones—another notable in this Emerging neo-liberal rebellion against the final authority of God’s Word in the Bible. 

So with this in mind I’m providing the links to a couple of excellent articles by Rev. Casey Freswick, pastor of Bethany United Reformed Church in Wyoming, Michigan, where he does a fine job of completely deconstructing and totally dismantling Rob Bell’s first book Velvet Elvis. Men and women, as one who is well-versed in the antichristian Cult of Liberal Theology, and who’s also studied Bell’s teachings for years now, I can tell you that Freswick is dead-on-target when he says in Postmodern Liberalism: Repainting A Non-Christian Faith—Part One:

His repainting is not an interpretation of the text of Scripture but an alteration of the text of Scripture. Ultimately, Rob Bell does not repaint the Christian faith. He paints a picture that is not a picture of the Christian faith or the truth of Christianity. But his new picture of error is not really new at all. It is old error. It is old false teaching. It is the same old errors of the past repainted. Rob Bell forsakes truth. He rejects it. He deceives. He is a false teacher. He repaints the errors of the past…. 

Rob Bell’s repainting of false teaching looks like a merger of the dialectic philosophy of Hegel, the liberalism of Rudolph Bultmann and the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth. Rob Bell has embraced these and other errors and merged them into postmodernism, an anti-Christian philosophy teaching the impossibility of absolute truth. Both postmodern 21st century philosophy and 20th century “modern liberalism” have influenced Rob Bell. A more appropriate title for Rob Bell’s painting, his “Velvet Elvis”, is “Postmodern Liberalism”. 

Ken Silva

Ken Silva is pastor of Connecticut River Baptist Church in Claremont, NH. In addition he is president of an Internet discernment work called Apprising Ministries at www.apprising.org He is also a contributor of Ingrid Schulter's blog located at www.sliceorlaodicea.blogspot.com and has made numerous appearances of the Crosstalk Radio Talk Show on the VCY America Radio Network.

The author of many articles pertaining to the seeker sensitive movement, Ken and his wife Donna feel especially led of the Lord to bring attention to the growing danger of contemplative spirituality and mysticism in the Body of Christ. Largely trained through the work of the late Dr. Walter Martin, for the past year Ken has been intensely studying the Emerging Church movement and its increasing threat to the historic orthodox Christian faith.

Euangelion

A Post-Post-Modern Blog On Scripture, Faith and Following Jesus
Liberal Christianity – A Critique

I have been thinking much about “liberal” Christianity in recent weeks. The term “liberal” is an odd description. In some contexts “liberal” can be positive in the sense of being generous or libertarian in something. We like the idea of “liberal” giving or having a “liberal” society where things are free and fair. In Australia our most conservative political party is called the Australian Liberal Party and they are not “liberal” in the sense of hard-left values (though perhaps leftist economically compared to the GOP). However, in terms of theology, “liberal” has negative connotations of compromised and revisionist beliefs. I’ve been called a “liberal” and I’ve been called a “fundamentalist” by different folks. The term “liberal” is used pejoratively but relatively to describe someone left of where someone else sits on a theological spectrum. The “Old Liberalism” that dominated Western/European Protestant thought from Friedrich Schleiermacher to WWI collapsed as its religious vision did not match the European reality of human evil. In its stead, there has risen a plurality of theologies including evangelicalism, neo-orthodoxy, Pentecostalism, and a host of “progressive” Christian theologies. These progressive Christian theologies are the heirs of the Old Liberalism. Their aim is not to destroy the faith, far from it, they see themselves as saving it, by accommodating faith to the spirit of the age, making it more palatable to the masses, translating its idiom into contemporary language, engaging the challenge of religious meaning in a post-Enlightenement world, and even secularizing faith to some degree. Some liberals are just oxygen thieves like Jack Spong, others such as Rowan Williams (who really defies tags like “liberal” I guess), are more humble, learned, and even edifying. Some liberal scholars, both radical and the just less-conservative-than-me types, are good exegetes. They might not believe what they’re reading, but they are often jolly good at explaining what the text says and in what context. I concede also that liberals have a genuine heart for the poor and the oppressed. That said, I don’t think they actually do much for them since it is usually Catholics and Evangelicals who actually do ground zero work in social care. A friend told me about a Theological College Principal who said how constantly amazed he was about all these liberal theologians in North America who offered to come and visit his seminary in Australia to talk about justice and poverty, and yet they always insisted on flying to Australia in Business Class!

But I’m not a liberal. It’s a worldview I simply do not resonate with. I see a world with a God who remains active in it. I can’t treat scripture as something that is negotiable. Sadly, liberalism ends up with the god that Richard Niebuhr warned us of: “A god without wrath, brought men without sin, into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross” . The world looks on with a crooked smile as the liberals acclaim their entire concurrence with all the values of the left-wing intelligentsia. The intelligentsia embarrassingly acknowledge their concord with the theological left, they thanks the theological liberals for affirming all of their values, but bid them adieu as they do not need any religious tokens at this time. Tragically theological liberalism claims to offer patronage to a group of intellectual who no longer want it. By removing a personal and speaking God from the church, they have nothing to say to people that they can’t already hear from Oprah, John Stewart, CNN, or the NYT. Former liberals such as Thomas C. Oden saw the theological and moral bankruptcy of liberalism long ago and he turned his back on it to become a leader in orthodox renewal movements in mainline churches. Another former liberal, Alister McGrath, said that liberalism had a pastoral weakness in that it had little to offer people in the harsh realities of unemployment, illness, and death. I remember reading many years ago Thomas Reeve’s book The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity, and it dawned on me that liberalism had nothing of any value to give to ordinary people. Liberalism does not create it can only validate. Liberalism is an affirmation of the political left, a struggle for acceptance despite being vaguely religious, a denunciation of nearly everything that “mere Christianity” stands for, and a sacralizing of secular values. I’ve been to enough SBL sessions to hear professors whose religious discourse sounds like a cross between Marcion and Marx. Why would you get up early Sunday morning to listen to that?

Perhaps the most negative criticism I could make about contemporary liberal or progressive Christians, is that they are little more than “chaplains for Nero”. Imagine if me and some progressive Christian got in a time machine and went back into Nero’s court around 63 AD. I stand up and in rough Latin I explain to Nero who I am, which religious community I belong to, and read portions of Phil 2:5-11, 1 Thess 4-5, and Rom 10:9-10 as examples of what I believe. I reckon I’d end up food for the lions in the arena faster than you can say “Nero is a Greek drag queen”. As I’m led away, up steps a progressive Christian, who reads out some of the UN millennium goal, gives a manifesto on LGBTQ rights, talks about their acceptance of gay marriage (Nero was involved in two gay marriages!), flaps their gums about being pro-abortion (Nero had no objections here), and discourses on the tolerance of religious pluralism over and against the “orthodox” Christians who recognize Jesus as the only Lord and Savior. For the progressive Christian, when it comes to religion, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, or Isis, it’s pretty much all the same thing if you are a religious pluralist. So calling Nero “Lord” or worshiping him would not be a problem for anyone who is open minded or sincerely “inter-religious” (when in Rome eat spaghetti and offer incense to Nero’s genius!). Nero is not alarmed at anything this progressive Christian says, in fact, he’s even impressed. He asks the progressive Christian to be his own personal chaplain and become his adviser on how to deal with those pesky Roman Christians who go around secretly chanting “Jesus is Lord” and implying that Nero is not!

That’s why I’m not a liberal! Not that evangelicalism doesn’ have its own problems either, it can easily turn into folk religion, descend into little more than a baptizer of right wing values, and becomes a chaplain to conservative politics. But liberalism as a theological position divorces me from the God who saves me and refuses to believe in a God who speaks. I see no attraction. If you wrap up the values of the left in some religious wrapping paper and hand it onto them, they’ll thank you for affirming all of their values, but give you back your religious wrapping paper.

Michael F. Bird


Michael Bird is lecturer in Theology and New Testament at Crossway College in Brisbane, Australia. He is married to Naomi and has four children. He and his family attend Acacia Ridge Presbyterian Church. Apart from biblical studies he enjoys fine red wine, rugby league, tennis, and playing with his kids.

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