Rob Bell: Once More Unto the Breach

I'm not terribly invested in the Rob Bell debates, though as I posted a few weeks ago I do find the reactions to his book a bit troublesome.  Now that his new book Love Wins is out and more than an elect few have had a chance to read it, some interesting posts have hit the blogosphere.  Rather than engage the theological issues directly (I am weary) or commit to reading the book (I am busy), let me point you to some of the reviews from both sides, and other click-worthy items.

Martin Bashir interviews Bell for MSNBC (7-minute video). Bashir is not terribly polite in his phraseology, but he knows how to ask Bell hard questions -- starting with "Hey, man, are you a universalist?"  But Bell makes an important point here that, when we are talking about what happens after death (i.e. - does God introduce us to Christ and give us a chance to repent?) we are wholly in the realm of speculation.

Kevin DeYoung of the Gospel Coalition perhaps hoped to silence Justin Taylor's critics by following up that knee-jerk dismissal of the book by reading it and then writing an exhaustive review that demonstrates Why the Gospel Coalition Was Right All Along.

Steve Holmes provides the very best (in terms of most theologically and historically astute) review of Bell's book so far.  Holmes is Senior Lecturer in Theology at St. Mary's College at the University of St. Andrews.  As of this posting he is up to Chapter 5, around 10 posts, and is still going strong. A recurring theme so far is that, on Holmes' analysis, Bell actually isn't saying much that isn't standard in the tradition (even if he doesn't say it as well).  This series is a must-read. Here's a sample:

I can’t quite decide whether this is simply brilliant debating work from Bell, enticing his opponents to defend a position so extreme that no one in their right mind would touch it, or whether his opponents really, genuinely, don’t realise just how far behind they have left anything resembling historic orthodoxy.

Mark Galli reviews Love Wins for Christianity Today.  From his conclusion:

On his way to making Jesus more attractive to unbelievers, Bell has raised crucial questions that evangelicals have been whispering about for some years. We should thank him for bringing these issues to light, so we can openly examine them afresh today. Is the Bible mostly creative human thinking or the revelation of God's Word? Has blood atonement become too bloody for modern ears? What does the Cross actually accomplish? ... I happen to believe that the center will hold, that orthodoxy will show again that it has the truer and thicker grasp of the Bible and of life. Still, we would be foolish to ignore the questions Bell has raised, because the ensuing conversation will force us to find fresh ways to talk about all this.

David Congdon reviews Galli's review in his typically thorough and deconstructing way.  (Props to David for exceeding his original subject's word count many times over.)  He makes an important point for this discussion over heaven, hell, and salvation -- that Scripture contains both a particularist strand and a universalist strand, something no decent biblical scholar would deny.  Those in the history of the Christian tradition who have sought to explore the latter and its relationship to doctrines like justification and predestination aren't coming out of nowhere.  To me, that's what the conservative reaction (and it has been a reaction, not a cool and measured defense of orthodoxy) has been suggesting -- that there is no room in the Christian tradition to talk as if "every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:10-11) might not mean that God's enemies will be forced to their knees like Superman before Zod and made to acknowledge His victory before they are cast into eternal, conscious torment.

Maybe that's exactly what that verse means.  But let's not pretend that, even in terms of simple exegesis, the matter is cut-and-dry.

Rachel Evans has seven suggestions for those who have read or are reading the book, which will hopefully curb your rush-to-judgment.  Rachel says: "When we reduce this complex and important conversation to two 'sides,' as though it were some kind of college football rivalry, we do such an injustice to the Bible, to Christian history, and to the millions upon millions of real people whose lives and whose futures we are discussing."

Finally, my on-again, off-again friendship with Justin Stratis is on again after his characteristically sardonic analysis of the application of the term "liberal" to Bell and his views.  In short: use it in a generic sense of "not as committed to the Westminster Standards as me," fine.  But to explicitly connect him to the tradition of German Protestant liberalism of the nineteenth century is so off the mark as to be both irresponsible and hilarious.

I have friends on both sides of this issue, and I certainly hope that I have not alienated anyone.  Let me boil down my own concerns to five points:

• The first response to potential heterodoxy -- even that which we consider profoundly important and in danger of influencing many thousands of people -- ought to be charity and thoughtful engagement.  Not tweets and Zopharic laments.  Love may or may not "win" in Bell's sense, but it should season all Christian conversation.
  
  
• Bell may indeed be heterodox in what he says in the book (though, based on reviews from my own trusted sources, I think that's probably a gross over-reaction).  But it's probably more the case that his way of putting the hard questions, and the places in Christian theology where he chooses to place his emphases, simply aren't the same as those who are condemning him.
  
  A corollary: Not doing theology, history, or exegesis especially well ("Hell is where we are now") is not the same as heterodoxy.
  
  A secondary corollary:  It may, however, be bad scholarship.
  
  
• Systematic theology and pastoral theology are not the same discipline.  This does not permit us to excuse bad theology because it is pastorally useful, nor does it excuse systematic theology from lack of pastoral thoughtfulness.  The two are accountable to one another, the former as much to the latter as vice versa.
  
  
• A doctrine of salvation that pits God's justice against God's love and mercy -- what Karl Barth called a theology of "God against God" -- is bad theology.  This posits a rift in God's being and preaches a God that is inauthentic to the "good news" of Holy Scripture.  This is not to deny that wrath and judgment are vital aspects of Christian soteriology.  But we have to make sure that (in Barth's words, again) we are not proclaiming that the No of God is the first word or the last word to men and women.  God's word to sinners is Nevertheless ...


• As I intimated in a previous post, theology in the church of Jesus Christ -- and in the Reformed tradition in particular, by its own self-definition -- is to be always open to reform, always eager to hear anew the Word of God in Scripture. The theological victories of the past should be (critically) defended, yes, and those who oppose the one gospel of Jesus Christ ought to be opposed. But the church and those who defend its ideals must live in a posture of humble receptivity, always ready to subject their own beliefs to that fresh hearing of Scripture, open to the possibility that they and their forebearers may have misstepped a few paces back. The Word of God in Scripture, and not codified doctrine, is the standard for right belief in the gospel. To set aside the former (apart from our well-worn proof texts) in favor of our confidence in the latter is to cease to be Reformed.
  
  The problem with the Bell debate, then, has largely been a failure to recognize in humility that Bell and those who support him are conversation partners and not opponents.