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I'm sure many of you have probably heard about Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins."
Here is an important review of the book that deserves to be read by anyone wanting to here both sides of the story (Bell's side and the opposing side):
God Is Still Holy and What You Learned in Sunday School Is Still True: A Review of ?Love Wins? – Kevin DeYoung
Here are some quotes from Rob Bell himself in the book (qtd. in the article):
Clearly, Rob Bell thinks this is a very important issue. If Rob Bell is right, then the majority of Christians throughout Christian history have taught a message that subverts the gospel. They have taught a message that Rob Bell calls "misguided, toxic" and a "cheap view of God" among other things.
These are very serious charges. They need to be seriously analyzed.
A few highlights from the article itself:
These are all the highlights I'll provide, but the article goes on to critique Rob Bell's book from other angels (it responds to the Scripture verses Rob Bell appeals to and it looks at Rob Bells Christology (view of Jesus)). An important issue, not just because Rob Bell is making serious charges about major doctrines effecting the gospel, but also because he is such a popular pastor over such a large congregation.
Here is an important review of the book that deserves to be read by anyone wanting to here both sides of the story (Bell's side and the opposing side):
God Is Still Holy and What You Learned in Sunday School Is Still True: A Review of ?Love Wins? – Kevin DeYoung
Here are some quotes from Rob Bell himself in the book (qtd. in the article):
"This [traditional understanding] is misguided, toxic, and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear" (Love Wins viii).
"It’s a cheap view of the world because it’s a cheap view of God. It’s a shriveled imagination” (Love Wins 180).
"It’s a cheap view of the world because it’s a cheap view of God. It’s a shriveled imagination” (Love Wins 180).
Clearly, Rob Bell thinks this is a very important issue. If Rob Bell is right, then the majority of Christians throughout Christian history have taught a message that subverts the gospel. They have taught a message that Rob Bell calls "misguided, toxic" and a "cheap view of God" among other things.
These are very serious charges. They need to be seriously analyzed.
A few highlights from the article itself:
Bell asks a lot of questions (350 by one count), we should not write off the provocative theology as mere question-raising. Bell did not write an entire book because he was looking for some good resources on heaven and hell.... As Bell himself writes, “But this isn’t a book of questions. It’s a book of responses to these questions” (19).
[...]
Bad theology usually sneaks in under the guise of familiar language.
[...]
Judgmentalism is not the same as making judgments. The same Jesus who said “do not judge” in Matthew 7:1 calls his opponents dogs and pigs in Matthew 7:6. Paul pronounces an anathema on those who preach a false gospel (Gal. 1:8). Disagreement among professing Christians is not a plague on the church. In fact, it is sometimes necessary.
[...]
This is a book for people like Bell, people who grew up in an evangelical environment and don’t want to leave it completely, but want to change it, grow up out of it, and transcend it. The emerging church is not an evangelistic strategy. It is the last rung for evangelicals falling off the ladder into liberalism or unbelief.
[...]
Over and over, Bell refers to the “staggering number” of people just like him, people who can’t believe the message they used to believe, people who want nothing to do with traditional Christianity, people who don’t want to leave the faith but can’t live in the faith they once embraced. I have no doubt there are many people like this inside and outside our churches. Some will leave the faith altogether. Others—and they are in the worse position—will opt for liberalism, which has always seen itself as a halfway house between conservative orthodoxy and secular disbelief.
[...]
This bold claim [by Rob Bell that he is in the historical orthodox tradition of Christianity] flies in the face of Richard Bauckham’s historical survey:
Until the nineteenth century almost all Christian theologians taught the reality of eternal torment in hell. Here and there, outside the theological mainstream, were some who believed that the wicked would be finally annihilated. . . . Even fewer were the advocates of universal salvation, though these few included some major theologians of the early church. Eternal punishment was firmly asserted in official creeds and confessions of the churches. It must have seemed as indispensable a part of the universal Christian belief as the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. (“Universalism: A Historical Survey,” Themelios 4.2 [September 1978]: 47–54)
Universalism (though in a different form than Bell’s and for different reasons) has been present in the church since Origen, but it was never in the center of the tradition
[...]
Universalism has been around a long time. But so has every other heresy. Arius rejected the full deity of Christ and many people followed him. This hardly makes Arianism part of the wide, diverse stream of Christian orthodoxy. Every point of Christian doctrine has been contested, but some have been deemed heterodox. Universalism, traditionally, was considered one of those points. True, many recent liberal theologians have argued for versions of universalism—and this is where Bell stands, not in the center of the historic Christian tradition.
[...]
Bad theology usually sneaks in under the guise of familiar language.
[...]
Judgmentalism is not the same as making judgments. The same Jesus who said “do not judge” in Matthew 7:1 calls his opponents dogs and pigs in Matthew 7:6. Paul pronounces an anathema on those who preach a false gospel (Gal. 1:8). Disagreement among professing Christians is not a plague on the church. In fact, it is sometimes necessary.
[...]
This is a book for people like Bell, people who grew up in an evangelical environment and don’t want to leave it completely, but want to change it, grow up out of it, and transcend it. The emerging church is not an evangelistic strategy. It is the last rung for evangelicals falling off the ladder into liberalism or unbelief.
[...]
Over and over, Bell refers to the “staggering number” of people just like him, people who can’t believe the message they used to believe, people who want nothing to do with traditional Christianity, people who don’t want to leave the faith but can’t live in the faith they once embraced. I have no doubt there are many people like this inside and outside our churches. Some will leave the faith altogether. Others—and they are in the worse position—will opt for liberalism, which has always seen itself as a halfway house between conservative orthodoxy and secular disbelief.
[...]
This bold claim [by Rob Bell that he is in the historical orthodox tradition of Christianity] flies in the face of Richard Bauckham’s historical survey:
Until the nineteenth century almost all Christian theologians taught the reality of eternal torment in hell. Here and there, outside the theological mainstream, were some who believed that the wicked would be finally annihilated. . . . Even fewer were the advocates of universal salvation, though these few included some major theologians of the early church. Eternal punishment was firmly asserted in official creeds and confessions of the churches. It must have seemed as indispensable a part of the universal Christian belief as the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. (“Universalism: A Historical Survey,” Themelios 4.2 [September 1978]: 47–54)
Universalism (though in a different form than Bell’s and for different reasons) has been present in the church since Origen, but it was never in the center of the tradition
[...]
Universalism has been around a long time. But so has every other heresy. Arius rejected the full deity of Christ and many people followed him. This hardly makes Arianism part of the wide, diverse stream of Christian orthodoxy. Every point of Christian doctrine has been contested, but some have been deemed heterodox. Universalism, traditionally, was considered one of those points. True, many recent liberal theologians have argued for versions of universalism—and this is where Bell stands, not in the center of the historic Christian tradition.
These are all the highlights I'll provide, but the article goes on to critique Rob Bell's book from other angels (it responds to the Scripture verses Rob Bell appeals to and it looks at Rob Bells Christology (view of Jesus)). An important issue, not just because Rob Bell is making serious charges about major doctrines effecting the gospel, but also because he is such a popular pastor over such a large congregation.