The Evangelical Universalist Forum

(Calv) President of Fuller Seminary: charity to Rob Bell

I did read carefully. You are saying that you and the president are of the “same ilk” and then you proceed to say how the president thinks, based, I think, on how you think, since you are of the same ilk. Then you said that the president would think he was going to hell. Then you went on in another post to say explicitly that you do think he is going to hell. So I’m not really sure what your point is here. You DID say so, implicitly. Furthermore, if you give some careful consideration to Jesus’ teaching on judgment (I was thinking of Luke 6, but not exclusively there), he definitely has a lot to say about being a hypocrite, but you will find that he is also speaking about condemnation. There is one teacher. There is one Rabbi. There is one judge. His name is Jesus. HE determines who goes to heaven and hell and not you. Thank God!

On a 1-10 Scale of Belief, how much belief is necessary to be saved? Will 5/10 get me over the line? And how can I measure the quality of my belief? Can someone post a check-list?

I shouldn’t be facetious. I think we’re saved because God believes in us, not because we believe in God.

Um no you didn’t read carefully.

Your quote:
“but to say that you “KNOW” that certain people”

I said, I “believe” big difference. God Bless! :slight_smile:

Well I would say, we are saved because God knows us not because we know Him furthermore scripture tells us what “belief” entails. God Bless! :slight_smile:

OK, I see, since you used the word “believe” instead of “know” your weren’t being condemning. Got it.

I don’t like the attitude that you take with people here that are probably going to surprise you when you see them in heaven. I’m going to end my dialogue with you here and elsewhere. Any open responses I have to you, you are welcome to the last word. Good luck.

I think you are missing the point. My issue is not with Rob but the president. He is a calvinist, he believes Rob Bell is going to hell unless he turns from the path he is on. He knows how he must treat someone like him not only for his slavtion but for the salvation of others present and future. He knows he must defend the faith, he knows he must be clear in the gospel and the list goes on. He did so many things wrong and he knows it. That article he wrote will haunt him the consequences will reverberate.

I understand why he did it. He wanted to reach out in love like we all do cause at times we get tired of fighting but where he went wrong was that it was a worldly gesture not scriptural. God Bless! :slight_smile:

Of course it was condeming but I am not God. I can’t say, who will or won’t go to heaven. I “believe” based on scripture. Jesus many times answered people “Have you not read” “It is written” You are no different. Your whole rebuttal towards me was condemning, basically saying Jesus was talking about me on the sermon on the mount. If you say I am wrong because I am deviating from scripture then I will welcome that criticism but if it is solely on my belief based on scripture that people will go to hell, which by the way, I WAS ASKED then that is your own opinion. What am I supposed to say when I give the gospel? Jesus died for you so you don’t have to go to hell and unless you repent then you are going to hell or maybe not-I can’t say for sure. God Bless! :slight_smile:

Another question.

“The God of the Bible”

Which bible? (maybe even, which translation? Which canon?)

Agreed. We’re saved by God’s grace, not by our belief in God’s grace. Belief is something we do, something we work at. But we’re not saved by works, not even by the work of belief.

God saves that which he knows (is intimate with) ie. the good within us that God loves. God destroys that which he does not know. (the sin within us)

If God hates the sin but loves the sinner, God will save the sinner by destroying the sin, not by destroying the sinner.

Let me just say I also enjoy and appreciate Pratt!!! You always make me laugh because you are so candid! Love that!

Oxymoron, what does it mean to have the Son?

Isn’t a lot of the point of 1st John that whoever loves is born of God and knows God? He that doesn’t love, doesn’t know God because God is love?

I’ve read evangelicals critical of God as love. They pit His justice and holiness against His love. It seems incoherent to do so. Maybe we need to comprehend more how it is that God is love, not less? I’m very appreciative of Rob Bell that he gets this insight.

Well, first, you are in fact then talking about Rob Bell slandering God’s nature. And second, you must not have read the articles because “slander” doesn’t appear anywhere in either of them. (In two comments late after one of the posts, but neither of those are from Dr. M.)

In fact I’m pretty sure you started out with compaining that Dr. M was being too wimpy about going easy on Rob and wondering if he would be so wimpy if Rob was slandering his wife instead. That tends to indicate, again, that Dr. M isn’t treating Rob as if Rob is slandering God.

Again, obviously Dr. M isn’t treating Rob as if Rob is slandering God.

The reason why Dr. M isn’t doing this is pretty easy to figure out: because he sees that Rob (though Dr. M believes him to be certainly wrong about facts) isn’t intentionally lying about God in order to bring God’s character into aspersion. Which is what slander would involve.

Well, slightly less of a problem, if any universalism (or the particular universalism he actually believes) is false. :wink:

The president also apparently knows that love also discerns when someone isn’t slandering other people, even if that person is wrong on facts about those other people.

And you know the president “believes this in his heart”… how?? Obviously not by reading what the president actually wrote, which indicates he thinks Rob Bell, though wrong as to some facts, is still showing plenty of signs of being saved by Christ and not heading to hell.

He is not at all ambiguous about what he believes to be true, where that disagrees with Rob. On the contrary, he writes statement after statement about that.

Nor, relatedly, is Dr. M in the least ambiguous about believing that people with defective theologies can still go to heaven. On which topic he (with equal unambiguousness) quotes in agreement Calv Reformed luminaries no less than Charles Hodge (in hugely detailed criticism vs. Schliermacher) and Cornelius Van Till (in hugely detailed criticism vs. Barth–who, not incidentally, also kind of arrived at universalism though he insisted he hadn’t. :wink: ) Dr. M even quotes the Westminister Confession (a super-important Reformation document) on much the same topic and in even stronger language.

I really really think you should actually read what Dr. Mouw actually writes, instead of making unwarranted guesses, on no presented evidence whatever, about what Dr. M “fully believes in his heart” concerning Rob Bell. If you’re going to disagree with Dr. M (and Hodge and Van Til and the Westminster Confession :wink: ), at least get the facts of your disagreement right.

Maybe you should just declare that Mouw, Hodge, Spurgeon and whoever drafted the WestCon, are not of your “ilk”. Then there wouldn’t be any problem with having to convince us, on no presented grounds, that they believe something fully in their hearts that Dr. M, at least, wrote very clearly, repeatedly and at some length saying he didn’t believe.

Seriously?! :neutral_face: God Bless! :slight_smile:

Thoroughly serious.

Answer the question please?

Actually that is not biblical. Read the book of Psalms. God is love but show me in scripture where God loves us all the time. God loves us when we are looking at porn or about to commit a heinous act? Not even the elect can make that claim. God Bless! :slight_smile:

I don’t know what translation have to do with it but scripture tells us in 1 John that we must have the God of the bible rightly, that means character and nature or else we are not worshiping the God of the bible but a god of your own making which is idolatry. I am not going as far as to say, I and I alone am worshiping the true living God but that I clearly see in scripture that there is a stipulation, so if you claim to worship God of the bible you better be sure it is the God of the bible. God Bless! :slight_smile:

You didn’t answer my question.

My Question:

Honestly I don’t see what the issue is here? I said, I believe. The bible says, all unbelievers will have their place in the lake of fire. Rob Bell has a different gospel, worships a different God than me so either Rob Bell is the Christian and I am the unbeliever or vice versa but we both can’t be Christian. As far as Jesus judging. Jesus was speaking of righteous judgement. Jesus says, remove the beam from your own eye then you can remove the speck from your neighbour’s eye.

For example: If my brother is cheating on his wife and I say to me brother, you need to stop cheating on your wife, it’s wrong. Then my brother turns to me and says, who are you to judge me when you yourself on cheating on your own wife. That is NOT righteouss judgment. God Bless! :slight_smile:

The problem with Rob bell is he tries to fill in the blanks using a humanistic approach and not scripture. Of course it seems incoherent to a point and that is because you yourself are not satisfied with ONE particular paradox of the bible but ignore the others and believe them willingly because they don’t conflict with your presupposition. You say, how can God be love yet send people to an eternal hell? well I agree, It doesn’t make sense but that is not our job to make it make sense. We just preach what see in scripture, THAT’S IT! only then do we know that we are on a safer path as opposed to the Rob Bells of the world.

The incoherent argument really doesn’t wash as unbelievers find the bible incoherent not to mention you yourself have no problem with incoherence in the bible. You say on one end that since it is incoherent then you just don’t buy it therefore it must be wrong or suspect and yet on the other end you willingly accept the other incoherent doctrines? That is not consistent. That’s not logical. How can Jesus be 100% man and 100% God? How can Jesus be the Son but not the Father since He is God and He and and the Father are one? How can Jesus being born of a sinner be sinless? How can one man die for all the sins of everyone? How can one die to self?

There are tons of paradoxes in scripture. There are many things that don’t fully make sense to us and yet we preach it because it is there. If we took your approach then we would be judging God’s word like Rob Bell does on a consistent basis. God Bless! :slight_smile:

Well for one it’s a loaded question and has absolutely nothing to do with my argument and frankly doesn’t make sense. I have 5 different translations at home and I don’t see different God’s in them. Scripture is is clear who the God of the bible is? Presuppositions interpret how that God is revealed. God Bless! :slight_smile:

Answer the question.

Stop beating around the burning bush. Follow the command of the Lord thy God when he said “let your yea be yea or your nay be nay” - gird up thy loins and answer his questioning little child like a man.

It is a very simple question (it should be for you at any rate…if your insistent witness “I believe solely in the God of the Bible” is true), and has everything to do with the argument, in my honest opinion. Your argument which contains as part of it; “Rob Bell is damned” hinges on your ability to answer the question I’ve presented. That is, hinges on your ability to answer it well - in a quality way.