When I read the less-than-charitable tweet from John Piper, “Farewell, Rob Bell,” the imp in me just had to get the book behind the controversy–Love Wins. Rob Bell is called a universalist from the neo-Calvinist side of the evangelical world, while emergents and less-than-five-pointers still acknowledge him as within the orthodox fold. Fuller President Douglas Mouw blogs in support of Bell. Justin Taylor references a thorough-going critique of Bell’s book. Bill Walker says there is essentially no difference from Tim Keller’s thoughts and Rob Bell’s, that the whole thing is just politics.
Here’s what I found. Bell presents honest questions that evangelicals need to take seriously. Too many of us do not have an outsider’s pulse on what the Gospel we are presenting looks like from the outside. The God we talk about seems like a schizophrenic, or a bigot, or a tyrant, or some combination thereof. His definition of hell less as a geographic location and more as a state of being as the natural consequence of our separation from God entails that in some sense people are experiencing hell already. Thus a Gospel emphasis on hell may be counterproductive, when people need to discover the transforming love of Jesus Christ.
Also, Bell is going to irritate Calvinists. Those people who are more Calvinist than Calvin ever was are bound to find Bell’s deference to choice unnerving, and they’ll toss around words like “Arminian” and “Pelagian” like curses. Yet, he affirms in quite strong terms that “God gets what God wants.” That’s a strong view on God’s sovereignty. But when Bell starts quoting those verses about Christ reconciling the “world” to himself (as opposed to the just the “elect”), the hard-core Calvinist gets slapped on the other cheek. Bell never says point blank that all will be saved. But his pastoral way of tempering certain understandings of heaven, hell, sovereignty, and the ordo salutis (the way salvation works) is bound to ruffle feathers.
Negatively, Bell fails to address adequately questions about the wrath of God in relation to judgment. He strongly confirms that God has no tolerance for injustice that results from human sin, but he is a little squishy on how that gets rectified. He is uneasy with the portrayal of Jesus as someone who keeps an angry God from beating us like an alcoholic father, yet he neither denies nor clarifies how the atonement works, strictly speaking. Now I am steeped in “penal substitutionary” belief, myself, yet I have always understood it in the way portrayed with Abraham and the smoking firepot—even if we can’t keep up our end of the covenant, God will take the punishment on himself. I was literally brought to tears in my Old Testament class over that loving understanding of God. Bell never mentions that the propitiation of God can and should be seen as an entirely loving act.
There are other points I can make. I find Bell’s book challenging and compelling in good ways. While I do not believe he’s a universalist, I can see how his thought can be nudged in that direction. At the same time, I am always aghast at how the intolerance virus from the Modernist/Fundamentalist debates still rears it’s ugly head in self-proclaimed American evangelicals whose original mid-20th Century intention was exactly not to be the bigots their fathers were—actually engaging the culture and not dismissing things out of hand. I guess I too am always relearning the lesson that those who seek to follow Christ are both saints and sinners at the same time. Lord, deliver us from our lack of charity toward others with whom we disagree.
Still an Evangelical in the Episcopal Church 
April 4, 2011 at 11:48 am
Might also note that Bell fails to wrestle with the cross, perhaps his biggest failing.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/04/is-rob-bells-love-wins-a-clanging-gong/
April 4, 2011 at 12:38 pm
I found this review irritating because of all the straw men erected and then smashed. Words like ‘more Calvinist than Calvin…’ (who) toss ‘words like ‘Arminian…’
Rob Bell, is of course, espousing his brand of universalism. He’s not the first or will he be the last.
April 4, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Oops, accidentally just “liked” my own post.
April 5, 2011 at 8:08 am
“not to be the bigots their fathers were— actually engaging the culture and not dismissing things out of hand”.
‘Bigot’ doesn’t describe all that generation, or even most of them. But your point that the mid-20th century generation was determined to engage the culture, whereas the earlier one had avoided it, is on target. And it does seem to me that the rising generation of Evangelicals is going back to the ways of their grandfathers in that respect. I detect a desire to avoid challenging or being challenged. A recent comment on the post ‘Younger Evangelicals’ assumed that the rising generation would have to leave their churches, because ‘the church’ was pressuring them to conform. Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant that John Piper is doing exactly that, he’s still only John Piper, he’s not ‘the church’. There’s always the option of saying ‘Go boil your head, John Piper, you don’t know everything’. Seems like the younger Evangelicals on the blogs not only want to be nice, but only want to speak to others who are being nice too. That rules out any engagement with (and evangelism of) the powers that be either in the church or the culture.
April 5, 2011 at 10:42 am
I have to admit, I personally have a preference for those whose debate tone is more civil. You make a good point that open discourse requires taking the good with the bad.
As far as bigotry is concerned, I don’t detect that Bell’s or other “Younger Evangelicals'” concern is the statistical representation of such an inclination among evangelicals as such, but simply that there are enough to give bad press to the Church or to Jesus.
April 5, 2011 at 10:34 am
Jim, interesting you call my argument a straw man; I suppose it is unfortunate that many of the most rabid anti-Bell folk are in fact representative of the type of person I describe (with hyperbole, an attempt at humor, failed in being received I gather). Of course not every inheritor of Calvin is the kind of person who would be irritated at Bell (or my post, for that matter). I was talking particularly about those who are of a “hardcore” mindset that their interpretation is incontrovertibly correct with no leeway for others. But concerns are not limited to the Reformed side of the evangelical universe; there are those from the Wesleyan/Arminian side who garner similar universalist worries about Bell (eg. the Missionary Church http://publications.mcusa.org/ShowIssue.aspx?I=85&SF=1&A=942&S=27060).
Yet, there is a distinctive difference between Bell’s position (being open to the possibility that grace operates in such a way that every I may not be dotted or T crossed in terms of one’s understanding or official religious affiliation) and the classical universalism of Protestant liberalism–which brings with it Christological deficiencies grounded in an anti-supernatural bias and diminished view of the authority of Scripture.
June 11, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Happiness seems made to be shared….
We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger….