{"id":1945,"date":"2011-03-25T12:29:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T19:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=1945"},"modified":"2011-03-25T12:29:52","modified_gmt":"2011-03-25T19:29:52","slug":"roger-olson-on-love-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2011\/03\/25\/roger-olson-on-love-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Olson on Love Wins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Olson<\/a> of Baylor University’s Truett Seminary weighs in on Love Wins.\u00a0 I don’t agree with everything Olson has ever said, but I respect him as a moderate voice, and like him I identify as a “progressive evangelical.”\u00a0 His comments on this are correct, I think.\u00a0 I reproduce his post in full below.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I finally received my copy [of Love Wins] yesterday.\u00a0 (Sometimes I think mail has to arrive in my city by Pony Express!)\u00a0 I read it last evening and this morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, it is obvious to me that early critics of the book were wrong and they owe Bell an apology.\u00a0 Nowhere in the book does Bell affirm universalism.\u00a0 (Let\u2019s not quibble about what \u201cuniversalism\u201d means; we all know what the critics meant\u2013that Bell was saying everyone will eventually be saved, go to heaven, and leave hell empty. He nowhere says that.)<\/p>\n

Bell does say it is okay to \u201clong for\u201d universal salvation.\u00a0 So did Pope John Paul II!\u00a0 I\u2019m sure some critics who jumped the gun and attacked Bell for promoting universalism without reading the book will come back around and use that to support what they said.\u00a0 But they are not the same.\u00a0 To long for universal salvation is not to affirm it.<\/p>\n

On page 114 Bell says \u201cSo will those who have said no to God\u2019s love in this life continue to say no in the next?\u00a0 Love demands freedom, and freedom provides that possibility.\u00a0 People take that option now, and we can assume it will be taken in the future.\u201d\u00a0 And nowhere else in the book does he say that eventually everyone will say yes to God\u2019s love.\u00a0 His emphasis on freedom as necessary for love requires him not to say that.\u00a0 Can he hope for it?\u00a0 Who is to say he can\u2019t?<\/p>\n

The point is\u2013universalism is the assertion that eventually all will be saved.\u00a0 Nowhere does Bell assert that.<\/p>\n

Bell continues in that chapter to say that hell is getting what we want.\u00a0 This is simply another way of saying \u201cHell\u2019s door is locked on the inside\u201d\u2013something I think C. S. Lewis said.\u00a0 (Or it may be someone\u2019s summary of Lewis\u2019 The Great Divorce.)<\/p>\n

Chapter 6 is about what is usually called inclusivism\u2013that salvation through Jesus Christ is not limited to those who hear his name.\u00a0 (I\u2019ve discussed problems with restrictivism here before.)\u00a0 I find nothing in that chapter that Billy Graham has not said.\u00a0 (Go to youtube.com and look up Graham\u2019s responses to questions from Robert Schuler.)<\/p>\n

While reading Love Wins I kept thinking \u201cThis sounds like C. S. Lewis!\u201d\u00a0 In his Acknowledgments Bell thanks someone for \u201csuggesting when I was in high school that I read C. S. Lewis.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing I disagree with in Love Wins (and I disagreed with it in The Shack) is Bell\u2019s affirmation that God has already forgiven everyone through Jesus Christ.\u00a0 I believe God has provided everything for forgiveness, but forgiveness depends on acceptance of God\u2019s provision.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how to reconcile universal forgiveness with Jesus\u2019 statement that the Father will not forgive those who refuse to forgive.\u00a0 Of course, if \u201cforgive\u201d means \u201cforgive everyone of the guilt of original sin,\u201d then I can accept universal forgiveness (which is how I and most Arminians interpret Romans 5).\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what Bell means.<\/p>\n

Those who accused Bell of teaching universalism based on promotion of Love Wins jumped the gun and owe him an apology.\u00a0 I won\u2019t hold my breath.<\/p>\n

Vilifying anyone based on what you think they are going to say is clear evidence of bad judgment; it breaks all the rules of civil discourse.\u00a0 It is part of what I mean by \u201cevangelicals behaving badly\u201d and illustrates what I call the fundamentalist ethos.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the time has come for moderate and progressive evangelicals to say \u201cFarewell neo-fundamentalists.\u201d\u00a0 There\u2019s no point in prolonging the long kiss goodbye.\u00a0 We are two movements now\u2013fundamentalists and neo-fundamentalists, on the one hand, and moderate to progressive evangelicals on the other hand.\u00a0 This painful parting of the ways happened between the movement fundamentalists and the new evangelicals in the 1940s and 1950s.\u00a0 It is happening again (among people who call themselves \u201cevangelicals\u201d) and the time has come to acknowledge it as, for all practical purposes, done.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a matter now of dividing the property.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Olson of Baylor University’s Truett Seminary weighs in on Love Wins.\u00a0 I don’t agree with everything Olson has ever said, but I respect him as a moderate voice, and like him I identify as a “progressive evangelical.”\u00a0 His comments on this are correct, I think.\u00a0 I reproduce his post in full below.\u00a0 I finally […]<\/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-1945","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-vn","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","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=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}