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:

November 1, 2011 at 2:03 am

Austin,

Good points and a good discussion. I’ll avoid rehearsing what I like and zero in on three observations:

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·i·nal·i·ty (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liminality)

/ˌlɪməˈnælɪti/ Show Spelled[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

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]

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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 ~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7JSwVxYxtQ&feature=player_embedded#!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRNudF2emT4

Rob addressing Mars Hill about his new book 'Love Wins' after it was released.

[March 27, 2011] [Live Audio]

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

April 22, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIKkvmSNUCY

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

April 22, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8U9jto2D00&feature=fvwrel

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

April 22, 2011

"Go and Make Disciples"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJLqyWAtpvE

"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.

God Wins: Heaven, Hell and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins

Mark Galli - Response to "Love Wins"

http://www.patheos.com/community/rogereolson/2011/07/07/a-good-new-book-responding-to-bells-love-wins/

By Roger Olson

July 7, 2011

A publisher recently sent me an advance copy of what I take to be the first full book length response to Love Wins by Rob Bell and asked me to review it here. I’m happy to do that.

The book is entitled God Wins: Heaven, Hell and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins. The author is Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today magazine. The book is published by Tyndale House Publishers.

I know Mark Galli and respect him highly. I led a church-based discussion group in reading and discussing his book Jesus Mean and Wild. We found it a bracingly helpful corrective to overly sentimental ideas of Jesus in much contemporary Christianity and folk religion.

Mark is a serious evangelical scholar with an irenic approach to controversial material. While he takes on Love Wins with vigorous criticism, he is careful to give the author, Rob Bell, the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions. In almost every chapter Mark says he thinks Bell does not intend errors he inadvertently promotes.

Before I interact with Mark’s book, let me say that you should read the book for yourself and not take my word for anything–except that it is a serious book deserving thoughtful consideration by both Bell’s critics and admirers. (Here by “Bell’s” I mean Love Wins’.)

God Wins goes to great lengths to express agreement with much of Love Wins. Mark does not sweepingly condemn the book or dismiss it as unworthy of consideration. He has clearly taken the time to read it carefully and try to understand it fairly before expressing disagreement with it. And his criticisms are, for the most part, generous toward the author.

However, God Wins pulls no punches. Mark clearly considers it a dangerous book that will probably lead many readers astray–not from Christianity into atheism or anything like that but from a better focused and truer picture of God to a fuzzier and largely erroneous one.

Chapter 1 is entitled The Really Important Question. There Mark argues that Bell misses the mark by raising too many questions about God that imply an attempt to interrogate God. Mark says “as the Cross demonstrates, God takes us seriously. He takes our sin seriously. But he continues to show relative indifference to our questions. He does not answer them to our intellectual satisfaction; he refuses to submit himself to our interrogations.” (14)

I wonder, however, whether Mark (I am not calling him “Galli” out of disrespect but because I know him personally and it would be awkward to call him by his last name when we are on a first name basis) is confusing interrogation of ideas about God with interrogation of God. When I read Love Wins I did not sense Bell intending to interrogate God. His questions, I thought, were aimed at traditional notions about God.

This first point gives me opportunity to say something about different interpretations of the same book. Sometimes when I am reading Mark’s account of Bell’s book I feel like he read a different book than I did! I get the sense that Mark felt things that I did not feel and that I felt things Mark (and others) did not feel. I’m not trying to reduce interpretation to feelings. I’m just saying that people often get a different sense about a book.

I thought Bell was reacting to what he perceived to be an overly harsh picture of God as a distant judge delighting in sending people to hell and to an all-too-common attitude among some Christians that hell is a good thing–as if we should celebrate every time we think someone goes there because it reinforces our sense of retributive justice. So I filled in some gaps as I read, giving Bell the benefit of the doubt and taking for granted that he was trying to correct those images and was not trying to say everything one could say about the subjects.

I think Mark read the book differently–as Bell being seduced by a liberal approach to life and the world and God that places man at the center and God at the periphery. One reason I didn’t think that is because almost everything Bell says about God and heaven and hell can be found in well-respected evangelical theologians or theologians most evangelicals respect like C. S. Lewis. (Okay, I know Lewis wasn’t technically a theologian, but he wrote theology better than many professional theologians do!)

But my point is that I get it–Mark “sees” a gestalt, a pattern in Bell’s book I didn’t see. We read the same book but saw it “as” different things. 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. So I read Bell as a fellow questioner of that kind of ultra-conservative Christianity whereas Mark read him, I suspect, as an unintentional ally giving aid and comfort to the liberals destroying his denomination. Well, all that is surmise and guess work. I just don’t know how else to make sense of how Mark and I read the same book and came away with such radically different interpretations.

So, where Mark saw Love Wins reveling in unaswered questions that attempt to put God in the dock, so to speak, I saw the book as simply challenging certain cherished but often unreflective assumptions about God among conservative Christians.

Chapter 2 is entitled Who Is This God? The chapter’s thesis is that “Love Wins tends to come across as beautiful and exciting–but ultimately thin and sentimental. It does not communicate the gravity, the thickness, the mystery of God.” There I began to suspect that we are dealing with two different visions of God–one the hidden, mysterious, awesome and transcendent God of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards and Spurgeon (Mark quotes the latter two) and the other the very personal, intimate, loving and profoundly caring (for his creatures) God of the Greek fathers, Wesley and Moltmann.

Of course that’s a simplistic dualism. But so is Mark’s. In this chapter Mark posits two accounts of God–one is “God as agent” (bad, wrong) and the other is “God the Lover” (good, right). The picture of God as agent puts humans at the center and views God primarily as existing to serve us and our needs. The picture of God as lover puts the Trinity at the center and views God primarily as existing in and for himself as inner-trinitarian love that then overflows in grace to creatures. Mark says “…only when we see God as Lover can we understand how God is more than mere Agent. As wonderful as it is to experience the benefits of his grace and mercy, they should never be the focal point. The minute they become the focus, they disappear. It’s like happiness–make it your goal, and you’ll never reach it. The blessings of life in Christ, like happiness, are the result of something else, something that has objectively happened–Christ’s death and resurrection.” (32)

I can’t imagine that Bell would disagree with that! And my reaction to the dualism between “God as Agent” and “God as the Lover” is to ask why these have to be in conflict with each other? I guess Mark is arguing it is a matter of which comes first. Giving Bell the benefit of the doubt, I would say he would also put God as the Lover before God as Agent. Perhaps he could have made that clearer in Love Wins. Mark sees Bell as inadvertently making our experience of God’s blessings THE central feature of the gospel rather than secondary to God’s glorious nature and sacrifice for us in Jesus Christ. In other words, Mark thinks Bell puts the accent on the subjective too much whereas the accent ought to be on the objective content of what God has done for us out of the inner resources of his own being in Jesus Christ.

Is this a case of wanting a book to be and do something it wasn’t designed to be and do? In other words, might it be that Bell ASSUMES things Mark thinks he should STATE explicitly? Every book begins with certain assumptions. As an author I can testify to that. I have often been criticized for not highlighting or underscoring something I THOUGHT I could take for granted and assume as common ground with my readers.

Mark ends chapter 2 with this summary statement of its point: “As great as forgiveness is, it is not our exceeding joy. As wonderful as are the blessings of salvation, they are not our exceeding joy. Our exceeding joy is God, the God who has brought us into his very presence through Jesus Christ.” (33) Would Bell disagree with that? I doubt it. But I can’t be sure. Maybe that’s Mark’s point–one can’t be sure, so Bell should have been more clear and explicit IF that’s what he believes. On the other hand, perhaps Bell would argue (with some right, I think) that these two things should not be prioritized. IF God withheld the blessings of salvation from us, we would have no reason to have exceeding joy in God. We have exceeding joy in God for who he is and what he has done for us in Jesus Christ BECAUSE he has extended the benefits of his grace and mercy to us for our salvation. Is there something wrong with looking at it that way? Well, I suspect Jonathan Edwards and John Piper would think there is. But does Mark? I don’t know. I can only hope not.

Chapter 3 is entitled Becoming One Again and is about God’s highest aim. At least that’s what I think it is about. It’s about several things. But before I interact with the chapter’s content I have to comment on the “hook” at its beginning. (Every chapter begins with a story which authors call a “hook”–something to lure readers further in.) Mark confesses that when he was in college he went to see the movie The Summer of ‘42. I guess we’re about the same age! (I thought so, but this pretty much proves it.) That was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater. I snuck into it just to find out what was so awful and evil about movies in movie theaters. (The church I grew up in wouldn’t even take our youth group to see a Billy Graham film shown in a secular movie theater! We were taught that if Jesus returned while we were in a movie theater it wouldn’t matter what movie we were watching, we’d be left behind!) You have to remember movies back then didn’t have ratings. I remember watching some of the scenes through my fingers and fearing God was going to strike me dead just for seeing parts of them and hearing them! Well, Mark’s story and mine are quite different, but I thought it was interesting that we both went to see The Summer of ‘42 while in college! Shame on him!

Back to the book. In this chapter (Becoming One Again) Mark rakes Love Wins over the coals (gently, of course) for neglecting (not completely denying) the substitutionary atonement model in favor of Christus Victor (which is not false but by itself inadequate) and for implying (not outrightly stating) that the main purpose of the life, death and resurrection of Christ was to maximize our fulfillment as persons through an experience of wholeness. Mark says “…one cannot help but notice how relentlessly human centered these descriptions [of the cross and atonement] are. The Cross becomes about our getting inspired and being sustained. Salvation becomes about something that satisfies our deepest longings.” (52) Then, “It’s not just about what we experience but about what God has done.”

Mark’s point seems to be that Love Wins neglects the objective dimension of the cross in favor of the subjective dimension. Toward the end of the chapter Mark accuses Love Wins of downplaying God’s justice in the cross. “The book is so anxious to show that love wins, it fails to appreciate how important it is that justice also wins.” (57) There may be some truth to that. But, again, I wonder how much of this is due to Bell’s tendency to react to overly harsh, one-sided depictions of God’s wrath in some fundamentalist circles. Nowhere does he deny that the cross displays God’s justice or wrath. I guess Mark wants that highlighted more and perhaps Bell should have done that. I admit that when I read Love Wins I took some things for granted. I took it for granted that Bell believes the cross was God’s judgment on sin as well as the ultimate expression of God’s love. How could the cross BE an expression of God’s love if it isn’t also a display of God’s justice?

Mark’s major point in this chapter is, I think, that Bell’s book simply doesn’t do justice to the fullness of the cross and resurrection event. He reads Love Wins as implicitly if not explicitly playing up the benefits of the cross and resurrection for our human fulfillment and downplaying (not explicitly denying) the propitiatory aspect of the satisfaction of God’s righteousness by the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross. But perhaps one could point to many conservative treatments of the cross event and say that they leave out entirely God’s concern for our well-being because he loves us. Some theologians and pastors have said recently that Christ died “for God” and not for us. Was Bell perhaps reacting to that kind of one-sided treatment of the cross? Could Mark give Bell credit for wanting to balance such popular treatments of the atonement with an emphasis on God’s real care and concern for our fulfillment because he loves us?

Chapter 4 is entitled The Wonder of Faith. Here is where I almost stumbled. By that I mean I almost slapped the book shut and put it down thinking I couldn’t say anything kind about it. But I’m glad I persevered and even read it twice. In the end I still struggle with it, but I think Mark is trying to give a balanced account of God’s sovereignty and human freedom. I’m not sure he succeeds, but few do!

Mark accuses Love Wins of focusing too much on human freedom as free choice. Interpreting [accusing - s.h.] Bell’s book as semi-Pelagian, Mark says “This is precisely the problem with Love Wins and with any belief system that ultimately says that faith is left completely in the hands of sinful and fickle people. That is not good news.” (66-67)

He’s right about that–except that I’m not entirely convinced Love Wins intends that. Where I think Mark may be interpreting Love Wins too harshly is when he writes that “What is assumed in this entire discussion in Love Wins is that the human will is free, autonomous, and able to choose between alternatives. The discussion assumes that the will is not fallen, that it needs no salvation, that it doesn’t even need help. It assumes that human beings are unbiased moral agents who stand above the fray and make independent decisions about the most important matters.” (71)

Wow. If that’s true, then Love Wins is heretical! But I’m not convinced it’s true. Now I’m going to have to go back and re-read Love Wins in this light to find out. This is certainly not how I read the book. But, again, maybe I was giving Bell the benefit of the doubt and reading prevenient grace into his discussions of free will (e.g., where he talks about God giving us what we want–even hell).

I thought Mark was going off on a Calvinist rant against anything that smacks of Arminianism until I came to this paragraph: “And that’s the gospel. Not that we have an innate free will, but that God in his freedom came to us to rescue us from spiritual slavery. Through the work of Jesus on the cross, and through the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, our wills are liberated. Then and only then can we actually recognize Christ, his love, his forgiveness, his grace. Then and only then can we finally respond in faith.” (72)

I can only say “Amen!” to that. And I say amen as an Arminian. That expresses perfectly what Arminians believe. My question is whether Bell would disagree with that paragraph. I hope not and I think not. But clearly Mark, an astute reading with profound acumen, thinks so. I hope he’s wrong.

But here and there throughout this chapter there are hints of something more than classical Arminianism. Mark says on page 65 that God sometimes makes it impossible for people to believe. And he leaves open the question of whether God withholds himself from some people (reprobation?). But if it is Calvinism it’s soft compared to Piper or Sproul. I can agree with at least ninety percent of this chapter, but I wonder if Bell would disagree with any of it?

Again, is this a case of an author taking something for granted, knowing his readers are evangelicals and therefore probably already conditioned to believe that God is sovereign in salvation (at least to the extent that salvation is God’s initiative and not ours)? Clearly Mark thinks Bell shouldn’t take that for granted and maybe that he doesn’t even believe it himself. When I read Love Wins I took for granted that Bell believes our ability to accept God’s gracious offer of salvation in Jesus Christ is grace-enabled. Perhaps I was wrong. But is it wrong to give an author the benefit of the doubt?

Chapter 5 is entitled The Point of Heaven. There Mark repeats his concern that Love Wins’ main emphasis is on human fulfillment and enjoyment rather than on God. He criticizes Bell for neglecting the biblical dimension of worship in heaven in favor of emphasis on humanization. Again, when I read Love Wins I took for granted that Bell believes we will worship God in heaven and was simply trying to open some new possibilities about our continuing spiritual growth in heaven. And that he was trying to overcome the all too common folk religious idea that in heaven we will be something other than human because humanness is intrinsically evil. (As a professor of theology for almost 30 years I can tell you that is a common belief among young evangelicals!)

Chapter 6 is entitled Hell and Judgment. There, among other criticisms, Mark accuses Love Wins of implying, if not outrightly saying, that people in hell may have a chance to leave and go to heaven. I did think Bell was suggesting that in Love Wins. But so was C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce. In fact, I read Love Wins as simply restating much of what is in that book so beloved by many even conservative evangelicals! Mark doesn’t see any biblical warrant for that and neither do I. It is sheer speculation based on the character of God. But Bell would simply ask if God is love and “love” means anything similar to what our highest ideas of love based on Scripture itself (e.g., 1 Cor. 13) how could God ever completely give up on anyone? Mark raises some valid questions and concerns about that speculation. But I’m not with him in his criticism that if people can go from hell to heaven it is necessarily the case that people could go from heaven to hell. That overlooks deification–not just an Eastern Orthodox idea. Wesley believed in it and used it as the reason why the redeemed will not be able to sin in heaven even though they will still have free will.

Chapter 7 is entitled The Bad News: Universalism. That’s an intriguing title and you should get the book and read the chapter for yourself. I’ll just say that I agree that universalism is bad news. But perhaps not for the same reason Mark thinks it is. But my main concern with this chapter is that Mark, like many serious theologians in the Reformed tradition, seems to confuse freedom with free will in non-Reformed theologies. What I mean is, he/they think we non-Reformed evangelicals (Arminians, Anabaptists) identify freedom with free will. We don’t. I don’t know about Bell. Perhaps he does confuse or identify them. I hope not.

Let me explain. As Mark helpfully points out, true freedom is NOT having free choice. True freedom is being what God intends for us to be–his faithful creatures restored in his image and likeness glorifying him. Arminians agree with that. But we don’t have that right now. What we do have right now is free will–a gift of God’s prevenient grace whose purpose is to be used to cooperate with God’s renewing and redeeming grace to arrive at true freedom–something God wants for us but will not impose on us. So free will is not true freedom. But it is real. True freedom is yet to be even though we may, by God’s grace, taste it here and now.

Mark thinks Bell revels too much in free will and confuses it with true freedom. I hope not. I didn’t get that sense from Love Wins.

The final chapter, Chapter 8, is entitled The Victory of a Personal God and this review is getting too long. I would be surprised if anyone read this far (except Mark)! I hope some will, but I’d better close or nobody, maybe not even Mark (!) will read on.

Let me wrap up. I get the feeling that Mark wants Love Wins to be something that wouldn’t have gotten any attention at all–a rehearsal of traditional evangelical theology. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps nobody should offer up anything else. (I’m not saying Mark says that, but I wonder how far one could stray from it without being criticized.)

On the other hand, I think Love Wins does push the envelope of evangelical theology. I don’t think it strays into heresy or even flirts with it, but it does intend to shock people out of their dogmatic slumbers into thinking hard about what they believe and it does intend to present them with some possibilities that are outside the evangelical mainstream. How much Bell himself is committed to those possibilities remains something of a mystery, I think.

The strange thing is this. I find myself agreeing with BOTH BOOKS! How can that be? I don’t mean I agree with everything in both books. That would land me in sheer contradiction.

To explain, let me once again appeal to something Karl Barth said. Two of Barth’s interpreters had an argument about Barth’s belief about God in himself versus God for us. Barth said both were right–vis-a-vis the extremes they were using Barth to fight against (one of which was Bultmann and I forget the other one). Both couldn’t be right. But both could be right vis-a-vis the perspectives they were using Barth to contradict. Could it be that Bell is right (not wholly or completely but overall and in general) as an antidote to traditional “Sinners in the hands of an angry God,” hellfire and damnation, “let’s take delight in all those sinners going to hell” fundamentalist folk religion. Could it be that Mark is right (not wholly or completely but overall and in general) as an antidote to serious lacunae in Bell’s theology brought about by his concern to correct extreme views of God’s wrath and hell?

In other words, would Bell perhaps have Mark’s perspective if he were in Mark’s place–trying to preserve biblical faith in a denomination in serious decline due to rampant liberal theology? And would Mark perhaps have Bell’s perspective if he were in Bell’s place–trying to hold out a vision of God’s love in an evangelical world still fraught with hellfire and damnation preachers of God’s arbitrary sovereignty who sends people to hell for his glory?

Well, maybe not. And I suspect both authors will think I’m belittling them which is not my intention. I take them both seriously. I just wonder if they are both right given their [religious] contexts and perspectives?