{"id":1895,"date":"2011-03-22T09:04:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T16:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=1895"},"modified":"2011-03-22T09:04:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T16:04:02","slug":"reviewing-bells-love-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2011\/03\/22\/reviewing-bells-love-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviewing Bell's "Love Wins""},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just about finished reading Rob Bell’s controversial new book “Love Wins<\/a>.”\u00a0 From my perspective, it is an important, beautiful, and frustrating book.\u00a0 In some ways, I’m glad that this elephant in the room now must be acknowledged.\u00a0 Yet in some ways,\u00a0I wish it had been a different book, with more theological depth, and a more careful account of justice and judgment.<\/p>\n

My full “review” will proceed over the course of at least a few posts.\u00a0 As you will see, it will comprise\u00a0 more of a “reflection” than a “review.”\u00a0 I hope to offer some personal experiences that might help explain why some people, including me, appreciate the questions Bell asks.\u00a0 I hope also that this “narratival” approach to a “review” will model something that I think is important in this conversation:\u00a0 when we are trying to grasp eternity and God’s judgments, analytical categories ultimately will fail us.\u00a0 We are dealing with mysteries — things not yet fully known or revealed — which require reverence, confession, and humble faith.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, for those who need some analytical talking points, here are a few of my summary impressions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — Is Rob Bell a “universalist?”\u00a0 It’s not clear from the book.\u00a0 He has stated flatly that he is not a “universalist” and we should credit that self-definition charitably.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — Do I care whether Rob Bell is a “universalist?”\u00a0 Not really.\u00a0 Most of the argument about this so far, as far as I can tell, has been about who gets to define or own Evangelicalism.\u00a0 If I start to care about who defines or owns Evangelicalism, I get very anxious and upset.\u00a0 I will never define or own Evangelicalism.\u00a0 That’s not my job.\u00a0 And, therefore, I don’t care — or at least I choose not to care — about the debate over who defines or owns it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — Is Bell’s theology in this book “orthodox?”\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 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.” \u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0By our self-definition we “protest” the authority claimed by those Bishops and their putative successors.\u00a0 Be careful where you point the finger of “heresy”:\u00a0 from some perspectives (Trent not the least),\u00a0the anathemas point back to Luther, Calvin, and you and me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — As far as I can tell Bell doesn’t stray beyond the basic Creed (Nicene, Apostle’s).\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — 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?\u00a0 Yes, I think you can, and I wish much more care had been taken in this regard.\u00a0 In my judgment, many of the questions Bell asks and many of the correctives he offers for some of us are important and helpful.\u00a0 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<\/em> 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\u00a0who spurn God’s grace and persecute his people — all of these are indespensible components of the Christian story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — The problem is that Evangelicals too often have told a story that is dark, nihilistic, hopeless, and empty.\u00a0 A story in which the God on offer\u00a0does indeed seem monstrous.\u00a0 A story in which\u00a0God\u00a0really doesn’t seem to give a damn about suffering and violence and oppression.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 A story in which pretty much nobody but us right-thinking Evangelicals is “in.”\u00a0 A story in which Christian spirituality consists mostly of manipulation, endless striving after unattainable goals, and salesmanship.\u00a0 Jesus had lots of things to say about stories like that — none of them kindly.\u00a0 “White-washed tombs” and “brood of vipers” were the sorts of things Jesus said about people who told those kinds of stories.\u00a0 He in fact sometimes\u00a0warned those kinds of storytellers that they were destined for Hell.\u00a0 If Bell points some of this out in ways that sting — let it sting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So that is my bullet-point summary.\u00a0 Now on to some narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just about finished reading Rob Bell’s controversial new book “Love Wins.”\u00a0 From my perspective, it is an important, beautiful, and frustrating book.\u00a0 In some ways, I’m glad that this elephant in the room now must be acknowledged.\u00a0 Yet in some ways,\u00a0I wish it had been a different book, with more theological depth, and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-uz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}