Category: Spirituality

I sat uncomfortably on a hard metal folding chair in a musty room at the mountain conference center.  I was fourteen, away from my family for the first time.  The previous night was a blizzard of skits, games, flirting, and practical jokes.  I was exhausted, still a bit shy, but having fun on my first “snow camp” youth group retreat.  Now it was time for the devotional.

The speaker was a middle-aged emergency medical technician from a big city.  I was transfixed as he described the pathos of accident victims who had died despite his best efforts to give aid.  There was the young man who was impaled on the steering column of his car, desperately trying to push his way off as his last breaths escaped.  “I pleaded with him to receive Christ,” the speaker said, “but he just kept fighting for his life with fear in his eyes.”  Then there was the boy who laying dying of his injuries in an emergency room.  The speaker reported the boy’s last cries :  “ ‘oh, the pain, the pain!’”  The speaker was certain that the boy felt the flames of hell licking about him in those last moments.

The speaker paused as the flames of hell seemed to simmer under my chair.  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an EMT, it’s that life is fragile, life is short.  You all think you’re immortal, but you’re not.  Death will come like a thief in the night.”  The room grew warmer.  “What would it feel like to be burned alive for eternity?  Eternity never ends.  No relief.”  My vision was tunneled onto the speaker as he moved towards the close.

“Some of you think you’re safe because of your parents, or because you said a prayer when you were young,” he continued, “but you aren’t living for Christ, and you’re lost.  You need to be sure.  You need to know you’re saved from the horrible fire of hell.”  I listened as he cataloged my sins:  listening to rock music, playing games that involved sorcery like Dungeons and Dragons, lusting in my heart after girls.  He was speaking to me, alone, the only person in the room.  “The question is, do you have the guts to stand up in full view of all these people and proclaim your allegiance to Christ?” 

 I did.  I stood up.  I begged God to save me.  And I felt . . . the same.  I tried to feel relieved, joyous, clean.  But I wondered – did I really repent unto salvation this time?  I’d prayed and expressed faith when I was younger, after all, but that wasn’t good enough to keep me from rock music and other sinful pursuits.  Did I really know now, was I really sure?

When I got home I threw away my expensive collection of Dungeons and Dragons books.  I stacked all my rock albums in a pile and demolished them with a sledgehammer so that no one else could become corrupted by them.  And I paid very careful attention in church.  What I heard was as intoxicating as it was frightening.

I’ve just about finished reading Rob Bell’s controversial new book “Love Wins.”  From my perspective, it is an important, beautiful, and frustrating book.  In some ways, I’m glad that this elephant in the room now must be acknowledged.  Yet in some ways, I wish it had been a different book, with more theological depth, and a more careful account of justice and judgment.

My full “review” will proceed over the course of at least a few posts.  As you will see, it will comprise  more of a “reflection” than a “review.”  I hope to offer some personal experiences that might help explain why some people, including me, appreciate the questions Bell asks.  I hope also that this “narratival” approach to a “review” will model something that I think is important in this conversation:  when we are trying to grasp eternity and God’s judgments, analytical categories ultimately will fail us.  We are dealing with mysteries — things not yet fully known or revealed — which require reverence, confession, and humble faith.

Nevertheless, for those who need some analytical talking points, here are a few of my summary impressions. 

     — Is Rob Bell a “universalist?”  It’s not clear from the book.  He has stated flatly that he is not a “universalist” and we should credit that self-definition charitably.

    — Do I care whether Rob Bell is a “universalist?”  Not really.  Most of the argument about this so far, as far as I can tell, has been about who gets to define or own Evangelicalism.  If I start to care about who defines or owns Evangelicalism, I get very anxious and upset.  I will never define or own Evangelicalism.  That’s not my job.  And, therefore, I don’t care — or at least I choose not to care — about the debate over who defines or owns it.

     — Is Bell’s theology in this book “orthodox?”  I don’t know.  Define “orthodox” — and don’t forget that all of us who self-define as “evangelical protestants” are at best heterodox in our theology of ecclesiology, apostolic succession, the sacraments and salvation as developed in the early Church that birthed what we consider “orthodoxy.”   The Bishops who assembled at Nicea, Constantinople and so on to hammer out their conciliar documents would not have recognized anybody who today self-identifies as “evangelical protestant” as a genuine, orthodox, Christian — not even close.  By our self-definition we “protest” the authority claimed by those Bishops and their putative successors.  Be careful where you point the finger of “heresy”:  from some perspectives (Trent not the least), the anathemas point back to Luther, Calvin, and you and me.

     — As far as I can tell Bell doesn’t stray beyond the basic Creed (Nicene, Apostle’s).  He doesn’t seem to be saying anything that hasn’t been said for decades in the broader Christian community, including by C.S. Lewis and by the relatively conservative Catholic Popes and Orthodox Bishops of recent generations. 

     — Nevertheless, can you find a kind of universalism in Bell’s book that arguably strays beyond orthodoxy defined in a certain way — or at least, beyond a robust Biblical Christian faith situated in the historic Christian tradition including the various streams of the Reformation?  Yes, I think you can, and I wish much more care had been taken in this regard.  In my judgment, many of the questions Bell asks and many of the correctives he offers for some of us are important and helpful.  Yet, the terrible enormity of sin, the gravity of God’s judgment, the reality of the hardness of the human heart, the Biblical picture of a final judgment and the theological and philosophical imperative of a final judgment, the glory of the atonement, the “blessed hope” of the return of Christ the King and Judge who will vindicate his people by permanently excluding and destroying evil in all of its structural and personal embodiment, including evil persons who spurn God’s grace and persecute his people — all of these are indespensible components of the Christian story. 

     — The problem is that Evangelicals too often have told a story that is dark, nihilistic, hopeless, and empty.  A story in which the God on offer does indeed seem monstrous.  A story in which God really doesn’t seem to give a damn about suffering and violence and oppression.  A story in which victims and losers and the impoverished, disabled, infirm, uneducated billions of the world have no real shot at justice and redemption.  A story in which pretty much nobody but us right-thinking Evangelicals is “in.”  A story in which Christian spirituality consists mostly of manipulation, endless striving after unattainable goals, and salesmanship.  Jesus had lots of things to say about stories like that — none of them kindly.  “White-washed tombs” and “brood of vipers” were the sorts of things Jesus said about people who told those kinds of stories.  He in fact sometimes warned those kinds of storytellers that they were destined for Hell.  If Bell points some of this out in ways that sting — let it sting. 

So that is my bullet-point summary.  Now on to some narrative.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been wrestling with what “universalism” really means and what I think about it.  Here are some thoughts.

“Universalism” is the belief that everyone will be saved. 

Though I wish that this were true, I do not believe it for at least four reasons: 

(1) it is not what scripture seems to teach.  Yes, I am aware of the tension in scripture between universal and particularist passages.  But whereas the universal passages can be understood within the context of particularism, in my judgment the converse is not also true.

(2) it seems to contradict the broad Christian tradition.  The Fifth Ecumenical Council’s anathemas against Origen seem to preclude universalism generally.  Yes, I am aware that some particularly in the Eastern Orthodox tradition understand these anathemas as relating primarily to Origen’s particular metaphysics.  Yes, I am aware that Gregory of Nyssa, arguably a universalist with a non-Origenist metaphysic, was called the “Father of the Fathers” by the Seventh Ecumenical Council.  But in addition to this specific Council there are many writings by other Fathers and Doctors of the Church that emphasize a dual outcome eschatology.  A dual outcome eschatology is the basic historic teaching of the Church.

(3) it seems to contradict reason.  A “necessary” universalism would require the limitation of Divine and/or human freedom.  Divine and human freedom are required for reason to be, in fact, “reasonable.”  A “contingent” universalism would require the belief that all human beings will, in fact, eventually choose salvation.  Such a belief contradicts substantial available empirical evidence, as discussed in point (4) below, and such a major contradiction is unreasonable.

(4) it seems to contradict experience.  There is substantial empirical evidence that some (many) people are not “saved” and do not choose “salvation.”  “Salvation,” of course, refers not just to the afterlife, but to the manner and quality of life here and now.  It is not at all difficult to find multitudes of examples of people who clearly and stubbornly choose death over salvation.  For example, in one of my classes last year, a local prosecutor did a guest lecture on the problem of child pornography.  The people that perpetrate these horrific crimes are choosing death.  They have hardened themselves against the good to such a degree that they choose to film themselves committing multiple acts of  rape and sodomy upon small children and even babies.  History suggests some of these monsters will remain monsters to the grave.

It seems clear to me, then, that the four sources of theological authority — scripture (as primary), tradition, reason, and experience — all seem to speak against what I have defined as universalism.

But what about the “hope” that everyone will be saved?  I appreciate the hopefulness expressed in some contemporary theologians such as von Balthasar and Alfayev, as well as in Barth and his evangelical interpreters such as Bloesch, Braaten, Bauckham and Hart.  These theologians suggest that we cannot teach dogmatically that everyone will in fact be saved, but that we can hope and pray that this might be so.

Presently I think this sort of “hopeful universalism” — a label that in my view ends up confusing things — is at the same time persmissible, required, and incorrect. 

I think the hope that everyone will be saved is incorrect because scripture, tradition, reason and experience teach us that not everyone in fact is or will be saved.  The reality of human nature and of God’s love and justice are that some (many) have persisted and will persist in their howling rejection of the good.  It is futile to “hope” for that which cannot be.  Therefore I cannot hope that everyone will be saved in the sense of concluding that the salvation of each last individual person will in fact become actualized.

Yet the hope that everyone can be saved is permissible and required with respect to any individual person or groups of people with whom we might have influence.  We never give up in prayer.  We never give up in proclaiming the good news of freedom in Christ.  We never give up in participating in God’s mission to rebuild shalom.  We never give in to the despairing thought that anyone, anywhere, ever, is outside the scope of God’s love and grace.  We never presume to judge who God saves.

This blend of realism — in the end, not everyone will in fact be saved — and hope — I hope that every last person would be saved and I will not presume against God’s grace and love towards anyone — in my judgment is the proper “evangelical” posture.  It can become an uncomfortable posture, particularly if, like me, ambiguity makes you uncomfortable.  It can also become an uncomfortable posture if, like me, you are painfully aware that you have not participated fully and sacrificially in God’s mission of redemption.

Two basic things are required as a result of this discomfort:  greater trust in God and greater commitment to God. 

Trust:  If I must sadly acknowledge that not everyone will be saved but I am not able to make the judgement about who falls into either category, that means I must leave that judgment to God and trust Him to do what is perfectly and precisely good, loving, just and right.  This means leaving to Him all the hard cases, such as my own disabled son, and not presuming to judge exactly who is “in” or “out.”  It means giving up the illusion that I, or my church, or my theology, controls God’s judgment.  It means that God, and only God, is God.

Commitment:  If I must recognize that an essential and fundamental aspect of God’s redemptive action in this world involves the holistic missional work of the Church, and I am blessed to be part of the Church, then I must rededicate myself to that mission, including the sending and preaching of the Gospel into the uttermost parts of the earth.  Is this mission what my life really is all about?  Or am I really interested in a theology that makes things much easier for me?

This is where I stand — I can do no other.

Richard Mouw clarifies and amplifies his thoughts on Bell on his own blog.  He offers some wise thoughts and helpful references to C.S. Lewis and Billy Graham.  Mark Baker-Wright, who works at Fuller, offers his own very useful comments on why people worry about the labels used by gatekeepers.

Quoted in USA Today (of all places!):

Richard Mouw, president of the world’s largest Protestant seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary based in Pasadena, Calif., calls Love Wins “a great book, well within the bounds of orthodox Christianity and passionate about Jesus.The real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between “generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people.”

Mark Galli’s CT review of Rob Bell’s book, on the whole, seems balanced and decent.  Maybe it’s a bit too balanced and decent. 

I think Galli is right in his basic conclusion that the Gospel is shown to be even more robust and more beautiful when we take account of the full Biblical witness to judgment.  Indeed, a crucial part of the “good news” — even a crucial part of the Cristus Victor model of the atonement — is that Christ’s victory judges and destroys evil.  A primary reason we ought to long for Christ’s return is that evil will be exposed, judged, and defeated forever.  Justice is an essential part of the good news.  Judgment is an essential part of justice.

But it’s this very issue of “justice” that prompts the questions Rob Bell has had the courage to raise.  Galli acknowledges that Bell raises important questions, but Galli himself seems afraid to give them voice.  Instead, he whips out the “L” word (“Liberal”) — the Evangelical equivalent of an F-bomb — which he kinda-sorta applies to Bell, and then mumbles past the questions.

Here are some realities I wish Galli had acknolwedged:

• The hardline restrictivist soteriology that fueled the postwar Evangelical coalition’s missions energies betrays our inward moral sense as well as the Bible’s account of justice.  A soteriology that can’t systematically account for children who die in infancy, or the mentally disabled, or pious Jews exterminated by Hitler, or peasants who died on Cambodian killing fields without hearing of Jesus, and on and on …  it all flies in the face of the Biblical narrative of justice for the oppressed. 
• The “Liberal / Evangelical” divide is a product of a bygone time — and it is good that this time has passed.  The coalition that birthed Christianity Today is dissipated.  Thoughtful “evangelicals” today are post-liberal and post-conservative — maybe post-capital-E-Evangelical. 
• Post- / progressive- evangelicals don’t raise questions  just because we want to make the gospel attractive.  We do it because we have become better educated and we care about truth.  We do it because the system passed down from the first generation of Christianity Today’s editors, at crucial points, simply doesn’t withstand even modest scrutiny.  We do it to improve in our discipleship of the mind and in our doxological proclamation.  A by-product of this is that the gospel becomes more attractive — or, better, the beauty inherent to the gospel becomes clearer.  Truth is beautiful.
• Retreating into the bunkers of a presumed quasi-denominational orthodoxy isn’t an option.  The Fundamentalists and Neo-Evangelicals were able to do this for a while in the 20th Century because information traveled much more slowly.  Today everyone can fact-check instantly.  Today everyone — at least every American middle-class evangelical — can travel the world and actually meet human beings who live and think outside our little bubble.
• Genuine “orthodoxy” is generous, and generous orthodoxy is the only path to unity.  The essential narrative of generous historic orthodoxy includes God’s judgment of sin and the exclusivity of Christ.  It does not, however, presume to explain in detail, for all time, how to harmonize the universalistic and particularistic strands of Biblical eschatology.  Great “evangelical” scholars from C.S. Lewis to Leslie Newbiggin to N.T. Wright to Richard Bauckham to Alister McGrath have recognized this.

I feel like Galli and CT are too keen on preserving an anachronistic coalition at the expense of real progress towards a “moderate” center.  That’s too bad.

Recently I attended an event sponsored by a para-church organization that was aimed at evangelizing children and their parents.  The main attraction was a ventriloquist.  He was a skillful ventriloquist and his schtick was pretty funny.  By the end of thirty minutes, he had most of the audience on his side.

If you’ve ever been to this kind of evangelistic event, you will recognize what happened as his routine began to wind down.  Slowly he became serious.  It was time for the illustration, the connection between ventriloquism and the gospel.

“I speak for my ventroliquist dummies,” he said, “but before God, no one can speak for me or for you.”  He continued with the dilemma: “God is perfect and he can only let perfect things into his heaven.  But if you’ve done even one wrong thing, you aren’t perfect.”  Then, the product / solution:  “Now, God sent Jesus to die for you and so he has done everything necessary for you to get into his heaven.  But he has left one thing up to you — only you can do this one thing.”  And, the pitch:  “You need to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  Only you can do it.  Your parents, your grandparents, your church — they can’t do it for you.”  Finally, the close:  “Let’s bow our heads and close our eyes while we pray.  Maybe you want to pray these words….”

I don’t use the language of sales — dilemma, solution, pitch, close — to demean this man’s character.  He seemed to be, and I think he was, earnest and sincere in his desire to share the gospel.  Yet this language fairly describes, I think, the techniques that were employed.

Maybe “techniques” aren’t so bad.  All communication employs some methods, tropes and techniques.  But what if the drive to simplify the technique distorts the message?

Driving home from the event, I reflected on the message distilled into this exercise of technique.  

“Only perfect things can get in to God’s heaven.”  How distant is the idea of “getting in to God’s heaven” from the Bible’s vision of creation and new creation, of God’s purposes for the “very good” of each person and this world, of the physicality of the Resurrection!  The Gospel is good news precisely because — and only when — it unveils God’s transformation of this created world.

“God left one thing up to you….”  How vastly alien to the Biblical Gospel!  You and I on our own have gotten it all wrong.  We have bound ourselves to the addiction of sin.  The Gospel is good news precisely because — and only when — we realize that God did everything because we could do nothing. 

“Only you can do it — not your parents, your grandparents or your church.”  How utterly foreign to the Biblical ekklesia, the “body of Christ,” the authority given to loose and bind, the great cloud of witnesses of the saints through the ages!  Yes, God calls each of us to respond with  repentance, faith, worship, and good works.  But it is not all about you or me as individuals.  It is all about participation in Christ through participation with the Church.  The Church is the bearer of the Gospel’s good news precisely because — and only when — the individual sinner is enfolded into the community that is engrafted into the vine of Christ.  

This is the Gospel:  new creation!  This is the Gospel:  God did it because you cannot.!  This is the Gospel:  Christ lives in and through the Church because you cannot do this yourself! 

This is the invitation:  you are invited to participate in the Church, joined to Christ by the Grace of God, in the life of the new creation.