Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Love Wins - Book Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love Wins - Book Reviews. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Why is Neo-Evangelicalism Threatened by "Love Wins"?


Over the past eight months of its inception this blog has re-examined Christianity in its many expressions, both in contemporary culture, as well as in the past eras of church history. It has been a provocative study at times that has shown many popular Christian sentiments to be mis-directional and/or inadequately expressed. Consequently, when Rob Bell's book "Love Wins" was first published there was a heated outcry from Evangelical Christianity's more conservative zealots to seek immediate retribution and retaliation for any perceived doctrinal discrepancies and errors to the(ir) faith.

However, in Roger Olson's latest post, through his student Austin Fischer, we discover (not for the first time) that Evangelicalism's near-and-dear dogmas come under fire again, especially pertaining to Calvinism's doctrinal impasse between the "Sovereignty of God" and the "Election of man in his Depravity" with the more historic positions of "Free Will Theism" and "Prevenient Grace" doctrines more commonly accepted over the past 2000 years of church history.

Consequently, evangelicalism's real reasons for bashing "Love Wins" lies in the fact that it feels threatened in the very heart of its movement's signature interpretations of key biblical doctrines, especially those related to Calvinism. In other words, evangelicalism's whole case for its existence as a modern day Christian movement rises and falls upon its interpretation of whether God needs our help or not to "save" mankind from its sins. Which gets us into the evangelical boundary markers of missions, evangelism, church outreach programs, love, sin, heaven, hell, and so forth, that are near-and-dear dogmas held close to the heart of many Christians. And any restatement of them will be provocative, perhaps contentious, and slowly surrendered, if at all.

And yet, it is the argument of this blog, and from the lips and pens of the many discerning evangelics amongst us, that these very same issues and positional statements MUST be examined, discussed, debated and critiqued lest we miss God altogether in the idols of our man-made religion of dogmas, creeds and systematic statements of confessionalism. And because this task is as much cultural as it is personal, it is not an easy task to undertake. It requires the patient, steady, moderating task of love, prayer and devotion to the people of God who would turn to follow any pretty-voiced "shepherd" calling for alarm, fear, and insurrection (a most curious word to use in light of Peter Rollins latest book of the same name, wouldn't you say?).

Despite all this it is true that we remain critical - but critical both of (i) evangelicalism's more vocal adherents as well as (ii) Rob Bell's looser contentions that he makes in "Love Wins." And yet, give Bell credit for expressing his emotional ire with evangelicalism's modernistic dogmas and more zealot proponents, for the bulk of this web blog has been built to redress those very same issues that Bell has been trying to say to anyone who would listen... something that has taken a newer generation of emergent Christians to finally say and question.... Which is to understand why our brand of Christianity hasn't been more ardently embraced by other religions of the world? Why we have made our version of God as an exclusive, condemning, withdrawn Savior? To ask why postmodernism hasn't been allowed to critique modernism's excesses and pride? And finally, why we have allowed our Christian faith and worship to slip into a wooden experience of religious construction and oversimplified folk religion?

And yet, God is a very patient God with his Church.... For it is this self-same God who raises-up prophetic, discerning, men and women to help lead his people through those difficult times of transition, and out of the dark pathways and dead ends that we have managed to loose ourselves into. Through his Spirit, God continually works to de-construct us - while at the same time re-construct us - into the beings He intends for us to be. How? Partly through the able leadership and guidance of the fellowship of our faith as we examine together the Scriptures with one another. And partly through the hard lessons of life as we turn from our mistakes and errant judgments into His more gracious light of mercy and love.

One of these hard lessons has become the comfortability of our Christian religion as we have fashioned biblical sentiments and statements around our personal beliefs and preferences advocating our preferential cultural views of God. But sometimes it is the contrarian views and seeming anti-biblical statements that we must hear again. That dissettles us. That makes us uncomfortable. That force us to change our beliefs and worship. Because sometimes these contrarian views are true. Are biblical. Are real. Something that we didn't discern earlier in our lives but now require us to significantly modify and adapt to against what we first thought was wrong and unbiblical. This has been the case for Emergent Christianity. It's new. It's unknown. It speaks and acts differently. It seems radical. And it seems unbiblical to our older doctrines of the faith. But when examined more closely, and with less heat and glare, starts to make sense, even helping us over  previous faith-hurdles that had brought us confusion without any decent answers or directions.

For God desires that we look behind the curtain of who we are, and where we once were, and to grow up and re-examine again what our life values are, who we are, what we have become, and can become, as He perfects us into the image of His Son Jesus, the Lover of our Souls. So then my friends, take heed of one another. See each brother and sister whom we meet as heaven-sent and not demon-bound. Rejoice in the strength of our fellowship's diversity, its union, its solidarity with the purposes of God Almighty. For the discerning fellowship of the body of Christ has been given for our protection, our guidance, our help. Learn to listen to all its parts and not to just some its more vocal parts.

RE Slater
November 2011

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More response to Love Wins and the controversy surrounding it
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/10/more-response-to-love-wins-and-the-controversy-surrounding-it/

by Roger Olson
posted October 31, 2011

This is a guest post written by one of my students–Austin Fischer. As you can see, he’s particularly bright (and not just because he agrees with me about most things!) and articulate. I think he makes some very good points about the controversy surrounding Love Wins here. However, just because I post a guest essay here does not mean I agree with everything in it (the standard disclaimer!)

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Love Wins? God Wins?

As has been duly noted at this point, Love Wins has sparked a firestorm in the evangelical world because it has exposed some deep fissures. These fissures have been around as long as evangelicals have but certainly seem to be growing. In a lecture on universalism, Scot McKnight suggested that evangelicals have reacted with such vitriol towards the book because it threatens the very heart of the evangelical ethos, which (according to McKnight) is the belief that people need to be converted. As such, Rob Bell’s flirtation with universalism has threatened the importance of conversion and thus incurred the wrath of evangelicalism.

Yet McKnight’s contention seems to make two questionable assumptions. First, it assumes there is a blanket evangelical rejection of the ideas in Love Wins. Second, it assumes that those evangelicals who are rejecting Love Wins are rejecting it for the same reasons.

Why Can’t We Agree On What Love Wins Is Saying?

The first assumption is problematic on a couple of levels. First off, it seems implausible to say there is a blanket rejection of the ideas in Love Wins because there has been little consensus as to what exactly Love Wins is saying. There is an interesting dynamic at work here, because—to speak candidly—Love WinsLove Wins is saying? How can some people think the book teaches universalism and some think it doesn’t?

The answer is exceedingly simple: we’re not good readers. And the fact that we’re not good readers has nothing to do with inadequate education or IQ. It has everything to do with a growing trend in evangelical (and perhaps wider) culture towards sectarianism and the loss of moderation. Lots could be said here, but suffice [it] to say there are fewer and fewer people trying to be in the center anymore. The center is seen as a weak place, a place lacking conviction, a place where the cowards huddle together and try not to offend anyone.

Not too long ago I was talking with a pastor about being a “moderate” Christian and he rebuked the very existence of such a thing: “When it comes down to it, I don’t think there are any moderates.” Hmm. When I asked him to substantiate the claim, his answer was telling: “Because even moderates are passionate about some things.” Apparently, a moderate is a person who isn’t passionate about anything…except everybody being happy. This moderate caricature is as pervasive as it is inaccurate. And while I don’t care to offer a full-blown definition of what it means to be a Christian moderate, I think it is helpful to say that to be moderate is to be passionately committed to meaningful conversations in pursuit of the truth. To be a moderate means you check the impulse to caricature, distort, talk over, and assume you know what someone else is saying. As such you can be a conservative moderate or a liberal moderate, a Calvinist moderate or an Open Theist moderate. Whatever.

We’re not good readers because we’re not good at being moderate. We don’t really want to listen to opposing ideas and we don’t want a real conversation. We think “we” have the truth and “they” don’t, so why have a conversation? Bluntly, if we find it difficult to have an actual conversation then it’s probably because we’re arrogant and ignorant, [and] not informed.

So why can’t we come to a consensus on what Love Wins is saying? Because we don’t want to hear what it is saying. We just want to use it as a springboard into a monologue about why we’re right.

What Is Love Wins Saying?

This said, what is Love Wins saying? Like I said, it’s simple and really not that much different from what people such as C.S. Lewis, Moltmann, and Hans Urs von Balthasar have said; namely, in the end we can’t say anything too firm about the destiny of human beings other than the fact that God will do what God wants with us. Bell speculates over what God does indeed plan to do with us (i.e. giving us all eternity to allow God to save us…a flirtation with universalism) and that speculation is certainly fair grounds for conversation and criticism. Indeed a moderate would encourage such! But the fact that so few grasp this clear, simple thesis of the book is a sad indictment of the current evangelical climate. Like I said, we’re not good readers.

The second problem with the assumption is that there simply hasn’t been a blanket evangelical rejection of Love Wins. Some evangelicals agree with most, if not all, the book. This leads us to an examination of the second assumption: Are all evangelicals rebuking Love Wins for the same reasons?

Why is Love Wins Rejected?

The second assumption—that all evangelicals are rebuking Love Wins because it questions the need for conversion—is problematic because evangelicals are so diverse. The primary example of this is seen in the variously labeled neo-Puritan/neo-Calvinist branch of evangelicalism, characterized by the theology of Jonathan Edwards (especially as articulated by John Piper), the preaching of Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Francis Chan, Tim Keller, and the influence of Al Mohler and company. To state the obvious, this branch of evangelicalism holds as fundamental numerous beliefs that stand in direct antithesis to any “free-will” branch of evangelicalism. As such, it should come as no surprise that while free-will and Calvinist evangelicals might both rebuke Love Wins, they don’t do it for the same reasons.

My contention is that neo-Calvinist evangelicalism doesn’t rebuke Love Wins because it undermines conversion (I mean what could undermine conversion more than unconditional election!?), but because it doesn’t teach Calvinism. To put it another way, they are not rejecting Love Wins so much as they are rejecting anything that is not Calvinism.

This is blatantly obvious if you’ve read any of the numerous books written in response to Love Wins, many of which are written by neo-Calvinists. Now to be clear, I’m not criticizing them for writing a response. That’s the moderate way! But what they and many others fail to perceive is that most of the ideas they critique in Love Wins are not critiques of universalism but of any sort of free-will theism.

Evangelics are not criticizing universalism
but basic free-will theism.

God Wins: A Case Study

An excerpt from God Wins by Mark Galli[1]...

[1] I should note that I don’t know Galli’s theological presuppositions. Indeed at points he seems to affirm free-will theism (see his response metaphor on 73-74). To me he appears to be either a confused/inconsistent free-will theist or a confused/inconsistent Calvinist.

...is helpful: “What is assumed in…Love Wins is that the human will is free, autonomous, and able to choose between alternatives. [Love Wins] assumes that the will is not fallen, that it needs no salvation, that it doesn’t even need help” (71).

A number of things jump out. First, where does Love Wins assume that the human will is not fallen and does not need help? This is a massive indictment and if it were true then I would assume all free-will theists would join in the indictment. But where is it? Page number? Nope. See the above section on being bad readers.

A second thing that jumps out is the lack of an acknowledgement of a mediating position; namely, that while the human will is naturally “turned in on itself” with a propensity towards evil, the grace (prevenient) of God heals our fallen will so that we can actually choose for God or against God. This idea—that prevenient grace heals our fallen will to the point that we can indeed make a decision for or against God—is not universalism. It is classical free-will theism, the predominant Christian understanding of the relationship between human will and divine grace for two thousand years (see Against Calvinism by Dr. Roger Olson for substantiation of this claim).

Does God Give Us What We Want?

Related to this is Galli’s critique of Bell’s central assertion in Love Wins: in the end, God gives us what we want. In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis suggests that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. That is, those who end up in hell are there because they wanted hell and not because God was keeping them out of heaven. God has forgiven everyone (or made forgiveness possible for everyone) through the cross so that salvation, redemption, and reconciliation are possible for every last person and thing in the cosmos. In my view, all Bell does is pick up this line of thought. It’s not universalism. Lewis was clearly not a Universalist and believed many would indeed choose hell (especially the theologians!). It is, I think, a fair and plausible explanation of what Scripture tells us about God and his purposes for the world.

But according to Galli, the idea that God gives us what we want would be “very bad news” (because he mistakenly dismisses the notion of prevenient grace wherein our wills can be healed so that we can indeed want God), and on top of that it’s "unbiblical." He tries to substantiate his claim by citing all the texts that talk about how we’re slaves to sin, insinuating they prove God doesn’t give us what we want because all we would want is sin. In doing so he makes the glaring mistake of failing to acknowledge the basic free-will explanation of such passages. At the risk of monotony, free-will theism holds that we are indeed enslaved by sin but by God’s grace our will is healed so that we can indeed make a decision for God. In other words, according to free-will theism, God does indeed give us what we want, granting us the grace so that we can make a decision for or against God.

Along these lines, to say that the idea that God gives us what we want is unbiblical is, to a free-will theist, itself unbiblical. I would argue that every single time Scripture admonishes us to repent or perish, to do evil or good, to obey God or disobey, to follow or not to follow Jesus, it is telling us that God gives us what we want. And to put it mildly, there are a lot more verses in the Bible about this than there are about our will being fallen, though both are true and easily reconciled by free-will theism.

Seen in this light, I think God giving us what we want is one of the most foundational and often-revealed truths in the Bible. It doesn’t necessitate some mushy sentimentalism in which God exists to serve our every need and wouldn’t criticize Hitler for beating the Virgin Mary. Nope. It just means that our God’s peculiar way of dealing with his creation is not to give it what it deserves. Rather it is for him to take what we deserve upon himself, up to the cross and down into the grave to ensure that none of us have to get what we deserve. We can get what we deserve if we so choose, but we don’t have to. And God doesn’t do this because he has to. He does it because he wants to, which is the great mystery we call love. Love wins? Yep. God wins? Yep.

Conclusions

So what does Love Wins say? I think it says that in the end the only thing we can be sure of is that God will do whatever he wants with us, and that Jesus and the Bible teach us that what God wants to do with us is let us have what we want. In other words, God lets us choose between heaven and hell. That sounds pretty orthodox to me. Now to be sure, Bell does flirt with universalism, so fire away with criticism at that. But the problem is that lots of the “evangelical” criticism isn’t that Bell teaches universalism: it’s that he doesn’t teach Calvinism.

So if the problem with Love Wins is it teaches that God graciously gives us the chance to choose between heaven and hell, then I think evangelicals should have a problem with those who have a problem with Love Wins. In the end, God does give us what we want. I can’t think of anything more evangelical…or biblical.

- Austin Fischer
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Comments

Scot McKnight says:
First, I’m not sure I said there was a blanket evangelical rejection of Bell’s book, but I’d be close to that. There was, then, a widespread rejection of the book. I don’t know how we can prove such things, but that is my perception. A number of letters came to me by associate pastors who told me they were being told to “declare their colors on Rob Bell.”

And of course part of what you are saying depends on what you mean by “evangelicalism,” and I tend to define it more narrowly than most rather than embracingly. For example, it makes no sense to me to say someone is an “evangelical” Catholic; I don’t think Michael Horton wants to be called “evangelical” in the popular sense; I see no reason to call Brian McLaren an evangelical; and I think Rob Bell is pushing the boundaries. (I’ll avoid discussing where I fit on that question.)

I’m willing to live with this ambiguity: what one person calls evangelical another person might not. That means where I see a widespread evangelical rejection you might not see i as widespread.

But it seems you slide into that we don’t know what Bell was saying. True in some ways, but I don’t think it is all that ambiguous what he is arguing.

Second, I haven’t read Mark Galli’s book yet … I saw some of it earlier. So I want to avoid that discussion, but the one thing I observed in the furor after the book came out — on the part of Calvinists — was the absence of what I would call distinctly Calvinist arguments. Galli does bring in the free will stuff, and the libertarian free theory at work in Bell is obvious and pervasive, but I saw none of this in the furor — and I mentioned that very point in the lectures at Truett.

Third, on your point about all disagreeing on the same point. Well, yes and no. I did lay out some responses but said I didn’t think they explained the furor. (Remember I was after why this book got so much heat.) So I don’t think everyone responded on the same grounds. But I do think [Bell's] combination of flirting with universalism and postmortem opportunity cuts the ground out from under evangelicalism’s specific identity-marker: it’s emphasis on a conversion experience in this life. Bell calls that into question, and it is my suggestion why the book drew the heat it did.

On the very last point, well I think you’re fudging: it’s not just that God gives folks what they want, which is somewhat evangelical (but not Calvinistic [re election - skinhead]), but that God continues to offer that in the postmortem condition. That’s enough to create liminality for the existence of evangelicalism.
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[lim-uh-nal-i-tee] noun Anthropology.
the transitional period or phase of a rite of passage, during which the participant lacks social status or rank, remains anonymous, shows obedience and humility, and follows prescribed forms of conduct, dress, etc.

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Additional Observations

McKnight - "That's enough to create liminality for the existence of evangelicalism"

I should like to ask Scot the further meaning of his expression. Does it support or not support evangelicalism's case... my take is that it doesn't support evangelicalism, giving its movement a limited shelf life in the Christian eras to come, even though the statement of "God giving man what he wants" is both true now and after death.

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Fishcer - "... the great mystery called love."

Peter Rollins speaks to this point in his book Insurrection wherein he describes love as selfless, sacrificial, creative, ordering. Love is like the void before creation. Without love there is nothing just as without creation there is nothing. Love cannot exist on its own but only in service to others... and in this case, through the Creator-God who chooses to love man, to recreate man through his love, and to be in fellowship with man (and all things that would sustain man).
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/peter-rollins-on-insurrection-of.html.

Here is my loose adaptation of what Peter Rollins is saying:

"The Resurrection plays a key role... because after the death of God-as-an-idol (or product) we then discover God is love. While an idol exists, is sublime, and is meaningful on its own, love is none of these things. Love does not exist in itself but brings all things into existence; love is not sublime, but points to others and calls them sublime; love is not meaningful in its own right, but renders the world meaningful."

- RE Slater



Monday, October 31, 2011

Final Review: Rob Bell + Love Wins = Go and Make Disciples

Rob Bell Responds to Charges of Universalism
before the release of his book, Love Wins

March 13, 2011

 
Part 1: Rob addressing Mars Hill about his new book Love Wins before it is released.
[March 13, 2011] [Live Shadow-cast]


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Rob Bell Thanks Mars Hill for helping him write Love Wins
March 13, 2011

Rob Bell Explains 'Love Wins' to Mars Hill | 2011   

Part 2: Rob thanking Mars Hill for inspiring his new book Love Wins before it is released.
[March 13, 2011] [Live Shadow-cast]


**********


Rob Bell "What I Believe" after the release of his book, Love Wins
March 27, 2011

~ both videos are similar but each begin and end differently and together
give a fuller presentation of Rob's Introduction to the Churches of Revelation ~





Rob addressing Mars Hill about his new book 'Love Wins' after it was released.
[March 27, 2011] [Live Audio]

**********


Rob Bell Defends himself and his church Mars Hill, pt.1
April 22, 2011





Rob Bell Defends himself and his church Mars Hill, pt.2
April 22, 2011





Rob Bell Defends himself and his church Mars Hill, pt.3
April 22, 2011

"Go and Make Disciples"






Wednesday, September 7, 2011

"Love Wins" Six Months Later


http://masonslater.com/2011/09/05/love-wins-six-months-later/

by Mason Slater
on September 5, 2011

It’s been over six months since a video trailer for Love Wins sparked countless blog posts, late night debates, and one (in)famous Tweet.

Now, with a little distance between us and the initial fireworks, I thought it might be an appropriate time to offer a few reflections on Love Wins and the reaction to it.



1. The Reaction On Both “Sides” Was Too Often Driven By Emotion And Sensationalism

Because this discussion evolved mostly online, and because everyone involved saw so much at stake in this discussion, tensions were high, grace was a rarity, and rushing to judgment was the norm.

Case in point, thousands of people speaking out against a book they hadn’t read. This of course resulted in people who appreciate Rob feeling like he’d been treated unjustly, and instinctually coming to his defense – often before they had read the book either.

Also, the way the media discussed the book was entirely unhelpful, leading to false impressions of what Rob was saying and stoking passions in a debate that was difficult enough to begin with.

Soon the book became a boundary marker: those who were sympathetic to Love Wins were often deemed liberal at best and universalist heretics at worst (and at times driven from their church), while those who took issue with the book were accused of being unloving or even wanting people to go to hell.

None of this did justice to those involved.


2. There Was Much Worth Saying In Love Wins, Though Little Of That Was New

Ironically, very few of the ideas in Love Wins were new, despite the controversy they caused. Rob says as much early in the book.

In fact most of the book was solidly Evangelical and restated points about the doctrines of heaven and hell that were already being made by authors like Scot McKnight, Mike Wittmer, C.S. Lewis, and N.T. Wright.

Books such as Surprised by Hope or Heaven Is a Place on Earth had already started to refocus Christians on a biblical hope which looks very little like Christian pop-theology or Dante’s fiction. A focus on new creation, resurrection, heaven coming to earth, and how our eschatology influences our ethics – none of that was new to Love Wins, but all of it needed to be said.


3. Some Of The Questions Rob Raised Were Needed, Because The Traditional Answer Is Lacking

After the book was released Rob was often criticized for his questions. At times just because he raises so many of them, but often because he questions the way we hold doctrines that are considered central to the faith.
But it’s naïve to think these questions originated with Love Wins. People have been asking many of the same questions around kitchen tables and over cups of coffee for a while now.

Rob was simply articulating what many of us were already saying.

And there is a reason these questions are being asked with increasing volume – the traditional answers are often intellectually and theologically unsatisfying. The ways we talk about the nature of God, about heaven and hell, about the fate of the unsaved, these are words which matter. And much of the time how we speak of these things seems radically out of place with the rest of the biblical story.

Whether we agree with Rob’s answers, there are many areas in which I think he was right to raise questions and push for us to do better.


4. On A Few Issues Rob Went In An Unhelpful And Unbiblical Direction, Which Made The Rest Easy For People To Dismiss

Many of the books written against Love Wins focus on a handful of problematic sections, and then on the basis of faults found there quickly dismiss the rest of the book.

The thing is, some of the critiques are spot on. There are ideas in Love Wins which are impossible to support from the text, and others that rely on reading the text in ways which are questionable at best.

Ideas like infinite chances to repent after death, for example.

I have no interest in pretending there were not problematic areas to Love Wins, there most definitely were and we should own up to that. But the way some bits of shoddy exegesis and speculation became an excuse to dismiss the rest of the book, and even to ignore the questions Rob raises, seemed to be missing the larger point.

__________________________


So, what do I think of Love Wins after six months? It was a provocative – albeit flawed – book, which raised questions we need to be able to openly discuss, and was often restating solid evangelical thinking with a bit of Rob Bell flare.

In the pages of Love Wins Rob states that he doesn’t intend the book as a final word, but as the start of a conversation. Personally I think it’s a conversation worth having, and I hope Rob continues to be a part of it.






Thursday, August 18, 2011

Evaluating "God Wins" by Mark Galli


The real impasse in the debate over Rob Bell

Posted by David W. Congdon
on Sunday, July 17, 2011

Mark Galli’s book, God Wins—a response, obviously, to Love Wins—was the topic of discussion last week. The book has been available on Kindle for a few weeks, though it doesn’t appear in print until August 1. In it, Galli explains why he thinks “love wins” is an insufficient understanding of the gospel, because it bypasses the question of God’s judgment and wrath. Hence, “God wins.” One almost wants to ask Galli whether he’s forgotten 1 John 4:8. But that’s a cheap shot. Since I haven’t read the book yet—and since I’ve already written a few thousand words on Galli in my series responding to his deeply misguided and misinformed review in Christianity Today—I defer to the recent blog posts by Roger Olson, a man I highly respect and deeply admire.

Olson, a friend of Galli, wrote about God Wins on July 7. There he made a number of ambiguous remarks that were clearly an attempt to praise the qualities of the man while criticizing the claims of the book. He begins by stating that “Mark is a serious evangelical scholar with an irenic approach to controversial material.” He then goes on to say, “I get the sense that Mark felt things that I did not feel and that I felt things Mark (and others) did not feel.” And later: “I think that may be because Mark is a member of a denomination struggling with rampant liberalism in which conservatives (by which here I mean people who value traditional, orthodox, biblical Christianity) feel embattled. I, on the other hand, have been beset by fundamentalists and aggressive neo-fundamentalist heresy-hunters.” The rest of the review is just filler: Mark is a great guy, but he’s approaching this book from a perspective I do not share. Translation: his criticisms of Love Wins are not really about Bell; they are instead about Galli’s own issues within his ecclesial context.

Olson followed up that review of God Wins with another post on “Why I defend Rob Bell’s Love Wins (and other controversial books).” In this fascinating post, Olson puts forward the claim that what is really driving a book like God Wins is the whole Calvinism-Arminianism debate. He then states:

I think SOME evangelical Calvinists are so allergic to both Arminianism and liberalism that they tend to lump them together and not see their differences. There’s something in American evangelical Calvinisms’ DNA that makes it see a trajectory from Arminianism (or anything like it) to liberalism. I deny that trajectory and, in fact, tend to think it is the other way around (if anything): Calvinism leads to liberalism.

Olson compares Love Wins to the books related to the open theism controversy. He observes that the attacks made against both by Calvinists are the very same arguments used by Calvinists against Arminianism. What happens in these debates is that the particularities of open theism and Bell’s “open eschatology” (if I may put it thus) are lost amidst polemics about divine sovereignty and human free will. In Olson’s words, “the crux of the debate has to do with two different interpretations of 1 Timothy 2:4,” and “the deep, inner logic of the attacks on Love Wins” are rooted in “Reformed assumptions about God rather than out of Arminian assumptions about God.” Olson then makes a very interesting comment that warrants further reflection:

Simply to respond that God Wins is to raise some questions from the Arminian side. In what sense does God win? Does God get everything he wanted? Does God want hell–antecedently as well as consequently? If you say no, then why does hell exist? It has to be because of free will and that has to be because of God’s loving self-limitation. If you say yes, then that raises a host of questions about God’s goodness. There don’t seem to be alternatives. Either God wanted hell antecedently, in which case God is a monster, or God only wants hell consequently (to the fall) and that means God doesn’t exactly “win” in every sense, right? But love can still win IN THE SENSE that love wants free response and not coerced or programmed response.

There is much here worth examining in detail, but in the interests of brevity, I will summarize my thoughts with the following points. These are not meant to be exhaustive. They only hit on some of the key issues for the sake of further discussion.
1. The Calvinist-Arminian debate is an old one, but it seems blissfully unaware that there are serious alternatives to this rather stale binary opposition. It might seem a bit obvious, since it’s been suggested many times before, but a really compelling alternative is that of Karl Barth. Why? Well, it all comes down to understanding what we mean by freedom. The problem with both Calvinism and Arminianism is that freedom—whether the freedom of God or the freedom of the human being, respectively—has been defined in the abstract. The Calvinist freedom of God (i.e., the absolute sovereignty to determine the elect and the reprobate) and the Arminian freedom of humanity (i.e., the free will to determine one’s eternal identity in response to the gospel message) are both known prior to and apart from how God has actually exercised freedom in the person of Jesus. In other words, both are metaphysical conceptions of freedom. They are abstract notions not determined by the concrete particularity of God’s self-revelation. Now it may be that both sides simply don’t care; they like their metaphysics and cling to it tightly. That could very well be the case. But it’s important to point out just what is being assumed on both sides. In both cases, Christ is not definitive for what divine and human freedom means theologically.
2. Of course, to lift up Barth as a possible solution to the debate is not new, nor is it very persuasive to hard-core adherents of both positions. I suspect Calvinists and Arminians want their abstract conceptions of freedom, not because they care about the debates over metaphysics but because they are both deeply afraid of what it [may] mean to go a different route. To put it directly, both Calvinists and Arminians are afraid of universalism. Calvinists need an abstract divine freedom (that is, an abstract decision of predestination) because their commitment to irresistible grace and the efficacy of God’s election means that a divine freedom determined by Christ’s reconciling promeity would result in the salvation of all people. Arminians need an abstract human freedom because their commitment to God’s universal desire for all to be saved (see Olson’s reference to 1 Tim. 2:4 above) would mean, again, that all humans would be saved were it not for our ability to thwart God’s will. But maybe—just maybe!—the problem is the presupposition by both sides that the salvation of all people is absolutely prohibited as a possible option in theology. Maybe our abstract commitments to a non-universalist eschatology and to certain notions of what freedom means for God and for human beings are at the root of the problem. Maybe we should let the reconciling mission of Christ determine what we can say about freedom and eschatological consummation.
3. In other words, the following claim by Olson is a false binary: “Either God wanted hell antecedently, in which case God is a monster, or God only wants hell consequently (to the fall) and that means God doesn’t exactly ‘win’ in every sense, right?” The answer is no and no. I agree with Olson that God would be a monster for willing hell in advance. The old doctrine of double predestination is indeed a diabolic position to hold. But the Arminian alternative fares no better. Is a God who sends people to hell really much worse than a God who is impotent in the end to save those who reject the gospel (or never hear it in the first place)? The former is a God who is sovereign but cruel; the latter is a God who is weak but loving. The former is protologically monstrous, while the latter is eschatologically monstrous. But it’s unacceptable either way. If all are not finally saved, then God cannot be said to have “won.” And a God who does not “win”—who does not fully and finally accomplish God’s own perfect will—is simply not the God attested in scripture.
4. We can put the problem another way: for both Calvinists and Arminians, love and justice have been defined in the abstract, i.e., apart from God’s concrete self-communication in Christ. They both pit love and justice in a competitive relationship. Calvinism grounds the competition in God’s eternal predestination—so that God determines where love will “win” and where justice will “win.” Arminianism grounds the competition in the conflict between a loving God and a sinful humanity: God loves everyone, but this loving divine will is overpowered by a human refusal of this love that, according to the rules of the game, forces God to exact justice. If we begin with Christ, however, it turns out that love and justice are non-competitively related, since it is precisely the love of God for all that God’s cruciform justice serves to accomplish. Justice is simply the form that God’s love takes in the event of the cross. The notions of love and justice are not theologically meaningful independent of and prior to the actualization of God’s just love in the concrete reality of Jesus Christ. The attempt to define them in advance and then figure out how they relate theologically results in this intractable debate.
5. This whole debate also seems to take for granted the notion that eschatology refers to something “beyond death,” that is, beyond each person’s individual perishing. Maybe that’s something we need to reconsider as well.
 
 
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