Posts tagged Love Wins
Tom Wright speaks up on hell and Rob Bell
This is a very informal interview but he makes some good points and is largely supportive of Rob writing his book Love Wins.
Scot McKnight shares 10 things we can learn from the Rob Bell controversy
Some helpful reflections.
Scot McKnight continues to explore Love Wins by Rob Bell
Scot McKnight:
Of course, there are some theologians and probably loads of Christians who have believed otherwise. But the fact is that if one believes salvation is only in Christ (exclusivism) and and that to be a believer one must consciously believe the gospel, then Rob Bell’s caricatures or exaggerations are not as far fetched as some might be suggesting. And the more one fudges in the direction of inclusivism — that there’s a wideness in God’s mercy, or that there’s a different judgment for those who have not heard (and it’s merciful etc etc), that those who died before they were born, or before the age of accountability, etc — the less one fits the stronger exclusivist category. It’s fair to ask “Why infants who die will be saved but not those who have never heard?” And it’s fair to ask “If infants can be saved, why not others?”
I don’t believe anyone should be after or for Rob Bell’s book until one has grappled with this problem. It won’t do just to poke at Rob’s soteriology, or lack of interest in how the atonement occurs.
I love the tone of Scot’s posts and his willingness to really embrace the questions that are emerging out of Love Wins. And I think he’s spot on. Before we dismiss some of Rob Bell’s ideas, we have to be honest about our own.
Preview of Mark Driscoll's recent sermon on hell
It was inevitable that Mark would have something to say about all the fuss surrounding Rob Bell’s book ‘Love Wins’. I was disappointed with the ‘I know others disagree with me…but I’m right’ line (my paraphrase) as a point of argument. I hope the full sermon will do a better job than that, even if I don’t expect to be fully persuaded by Mark’s position.
Enough with labelling everyone who you disagree with a heretic!
My friend Joseph Thompson has written a challenging piece for those Christians who are so quick to label people who espouse different views from themselves as heretics.
Make no mistake about it; I like Rob Bell and I like much of what he has to say. And while I admit that some of what he has to say makes me squirm, am I ready to consign him to the scrap heap as an irrelevant heretic? Resoundingly, no! Alas, it seems though, that the usual suspects (the self appointed arbiters of Christianity) have quickly labeled him as such yet again. One would think that there’s nothing substantive in the message that he’s trying to communicate.
Indeed, if we labeled Rob a heretic, in order to be impartial and objective, we’d have to apply the same label to just about every pastor who’s ever stood behind a pulpit on any given Sunday. I daresay that at one point or another, every pastor has ‘embraced’ a doctrine or idea that has brought them precipitously close to the all too familiar label of heretic.
He then adds:
The truth is the Rob Bell’s and Alex McManus’ of the world are in many ways the real heroes. They constantly put themselves in front of the sharp blades of the critics, giving voice to the questions that many of us secretly ponder, not with a view to undermining the veracity of our faith, but in an attempt to better understand how it applies to us in our context. After all, it is an ancient text being made applicable in a present context.
Rob Bell says nothing that CS Lewis hasn't said previously
Jeff Cook writes a brilliant piece on the Jesus Creed blog:
There’s not one controversial idea in Love Wins that is not clearly voiced as a real possibility by the most popular evangelical writer of the last century, CS Lewis.
Lewis and Bell hint at a number of theological possibilities in their writings that cut against what we might call the majority opinion, including: the possibility that those in hell might journey toward the grace of God after death, the possibility that those who have not heard the name of Jesus might find salvation in and through the image of Christ in their own pagan stories and myths, the possibility that some will eventually receive God’s grace freely after death, the possibility that hell is about bigger things than God’s wrath, the insistence that the metaphors describing what Jesus’ cross accomplishes and how his work is applied to us are culturally subjective, and that some ancient pictures of the atonement may be too confusing to help us right here, right now. All of these lines of thought were in Lewis’s writings before they were in Love Wins.
Brian McLaren speaks up on behalf of Rob Bell
Brian McClaren:
So after the first inning of responses, I imagine Rob Bell feels a lot like I have on many occasions: it’s not that the critics have accurately understood what I’m trying to say and have explained why they disagree. It’s that they’ve misrepresented what I’m trying to say and have explained why the misrepresentation is audacious and ludicrous.
The whole post is well worth a read.
On a related note, several of you have asked me to write a post with my thoughts on Love Wins. I will be writing one soon, I am just taking some time to do a bit of further reading and reflect some more on what Rob says in the book.
We need a loaded, volatile, adequately violent, dramatic, serious word to describe the very real consequences we expereince when we reject the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us. We need a word that refers to the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from the secrets hidden deep within our hearts all the way to the massive, society-wide collapse and chaos that comes when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way.
And for that, the word “hell” works quite well. Let’s keep it.
First thoughts on starting to read Rob Bell’s new book
I’ve just read the preface and opening chapter to Rob Bell’s controversial new book ‘Love Wins’ that’s available from this coming Tuesday. I won’t say a lot until I’ve read all of it, but there are a few things that are immediately jumping out to me.
First, Rob is putting onto the table for discussion the questions that - like it or not - millions of people are asking. Whether we agree or disagree with whatever conclusions he may or may not reach, we should applaud his courage for not hiding away from what I think is THE question right now - both inside and outside of church.
Second, I can already tell I’m going to really enjoy reading the rest of the book. I don’t expect to agree with everything (I’ve yet to read a book where that’s the case) but I’m looking forward to embracing this conversation, both in my own mind and with the community of people I share life with.
Third, I don’t think there’s much to be afraid of. As Rob himself admits, there’s no new theology that has never been heard before in this book. So if you’re an anti-Rob Bell pastor, don’t waste your time telling people not to read it. Why? One, because you shouldn’t be afraid of people reading different view points from your own. Better to read it with them, than force them to read it in secret surely? And two, because, if you haven’t realised it yet, the more you tell people not to read something, the more they’ll want to. :)
Anyway, that’ll do for now. I’ll share more thoughts along the way.
Rob Bell vs. John Piper: Do We Have to Choose?
I won’t say much more on this Rob Bell saga until the book is actually out, but I thought this by Rev. Jonathan Weyer was worth sharing.
Really, this all comes down to an illustration of a parable that Jesus told about two sons. In the wide world, it’s known as the prodigal son, but the story is really about two brothers. The story tells us that a younger brother gets the inheritance from the father (demonstrating his hate for the father through wishing he were dead), goes and spends it and then is welcomed home by the father. The eldest son sees this, resents it and hates the father by yelling at him for taking the younger son back.
Really, the hero of the story is the Father who loves the sons that hate him. The father is a stand in for God and we are those sons. The elder brother is the side of the evangelical world that presents a smug, arrogant trust in their own self-righteousness. The younger brother is the side that wishes to dismiss any need to be concerned about real biblical doctrine and church tradition. Both of them hate aspects of the Father. One side hates his graciousness and tolerance for younger brothers trying to figure it out. The other side hates his fatherly concern for the truth.
But what both sides need to embrace is the Father, who is both gracious and truthful. We need to embrace the idea that sometimes it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
I will just add that I don’t think that Weyer’s comment about “the younger brother [being on] the side that wishes to dismiss any need to be concerned about real biblical doctrine and church tradition” is a totally fair reflection. I think there are many who would be in the younger brothers camp who would say that feel incredibly strongly about doctrine. That said, I recognise that no analogy works perfectly!
HT: Dave Meldrum
Rob Bell - Giving Us All A Wonderful Opportunity
Brian McLaren speaks up on this whole Rob Bell and hell saga.
What’s quite pathetic, as I see it, is that many critics won’t even begin to get Rob’s real point. (I’ve read the book, so I’m not just going by conjecture….) It’s not that he’s being given a multiple-choice test between a) traditional exclusivism and b) traditional universalism, and he’s choosing b) instead of a). Rather, it’s that Rob has come to see that the biblical story is bigger and better than a narrative about how souls get sorted out into two bins at the end of time.
