I’d have to say Dr. Beck is missing a subtle but very important difference between LW and what Lewis wrote (such as in TPoP).
Lewis and Rob Bell both insist strongly that God is going to keep after sinners forever. But Lewis turns around and denies this. Rob, in LW at least, never does.
Maybe he does in other things he’s said or written. But as far as Love Wins goes, that’s a major difference. It’s all the difference between a technical universalism (albeit with the possibility of an ongoing stalemate), and Arminianism (where there is no ongoing stalemate because God eventually quits or is finally beaten).
In LW Rob actually avoids the freewill defense of final perdition: he isn’t defending why God finally gives up by appealing to free will (the way Lewis does), because Rob never claims God finally gives up. His appeal to free will explains (or attempts to explain) the possibility of an ongoing stalemate, which is not the same thing.
Still, maybe Richard is thinking of something Rob has written elsewhere (even though he didn’t quote Rob on it).
(Note: tagging [tag]Richard Beck[/tag] to alert him of the discussion; maybe he can clarify that.)
I appreciate and agree with his definition of love being “deeply rooted affection”, and his contrast to the common statement that “Love is a choice”. If there is “enmity” in a relationship, for love to win there must me “reconciliation”. Love respects others, even others’ bad choices. But love does not give up seekinging, searching, reaching out, until the relationship is once again whole! The parables of the faithful father (prodigal son), loving shepherd, and persistant woman are all meant to illustrate God’s love for humanity. He will not give up looking until his son comes home. He will not give up searching until he finds his lost sheep. She will not stop sweeping every corner of the house until she finds her lost inheritance! If love does not fail, and God loves all humanity, all creation, if God is love then universal reconciliation is the only possible outcome that sees God fully as God!
Right, that reminds me I have a bit of a disagreement about love requiring freedom and so forth, too.
It might be true as a matter of recent history that “love is a choice” became a meme from pastors trying to deal with adultery or whatever (as Richard speculates); but if that’s true, it’s true because (to speak bluntly for a moment) pastors are often wildly ignorant of theology and Christian history and they might not know what they’re talking about anyway to begin with.
The idea that love is a choice, or in other words love is primarily an action, and specifically an action toward fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons, didn’t start with pastoral advice against adultery. It started with the idea, and is rooted in the idea, that the ultimate foundational Reality upon which all reality depends for existence is an eternally active mutually supporting interpersonal relationship, i.e. at least binitarian theism is true.
If trinitarian (or at least binitarian) theism isn’t true, then it isn’t and can’t be true that love is primarily a choice. Love might still be a choice, but it couldn’t be the essential primary reality, even if the primary reality is still rationally active (i.e. even if theism instead of atheism is true). God might (or might not!) do love, like we believe God might or might not do wrath, but God wouldn’t be love no more than we believe God is wrath. Whereas if atheism is true, then at best love is an emotional feeling to which we correspond with rational actions perhaps sometimes (if rational action could even exist in an atheistic reality which to me seems flatly impossible.)
So there’s a lot of theology at stake, and a lot of theology relevant to Christian universalism, on whether love is or is not primarily a choice. To put it somewhat over-shortly, if love is primarily a choice, then Christian universalism (and at least binitarian theism) must be true; if love isn’t primarily a choice, then Christian universalism might or might not be true but the Trinity per se must be false.
Now it still might be the case (in a fallen world especially) that our creaturely love is more conditioned by our emotional states than otherwise, and I would fully expect that in an unfallen or completely redeemed and regenerated world our creaturely love is still contingent on conditions exterior to our own reality and still would only operate by actively choosing how to deal with natural reality (including how to deal with our emotions, which ones to foster, which ones to suppress or redirect, etc.)
But if at least binitarian theism is true (moreso trinitarian theism) then I would and do consequentially expect God to have a strong interest in fostering free will so far as feasibly possible even to the point of allowing that will to choose against Him.
That doesn’t mean I think it makes the slightest sense to say God allows derivative free will to destroy itself, much less that God permanently destroys free will Himself: the free will defense of final perdition contradicts itself at the root. Precisely because God does value free will He’s going to work to lead that free will around to fair-togetheness between persons and never give up that, and I don’t think it takes much faith in omnipotence and omnicompetance to believe God will succeed at it (not even counting apparent scriptural revelation of eventual total success.) But I can understand the underlying principle to the theoretical possibility of a never-ending stalemate. And in Love Wins that looks like what Rob Bell is talking about, not about God actually giving up or being defeated in one or another Arminian scenario.
Still I would certainly agree that the Arminian version of “love wins” (following even Lewis’ lead, or that of several recent popes for example) is self-contradictory rubbish. I’m even on record saying that Rob’s position taken in LW falls weakly short of the title and subtitle of his book: he didn’t call it Love-may-or-may-not-Win-but-never-certainly-loses. 
I do find that’s the distinction between his work and anything eschatological by Lewis, though: in Lewis’ Arminian soteriology, Love Finally Loses.
(Whereas to complete the comparison, in Calvinist soteriology Francis Chan’s book should have been called Not Really As Crazy As I Might Make It Seem Like Love. )
Arminianism - God is love but Love Fails, thus God fails.
Conditionalism - God is love but Love Fails, thus God fails.
Calvinism - Love Wins but God does not love all, thus God is not love.
When sharing my belief in UR is often say that “I’ve come to believe that Jesus truly is the savior of the world, as scripture says.” To which most Christians will agree. T
hen I ask them questioningly “Do you really believe that Jesus is the savior of the World?”
Them - “Yes”.
Me - “So you believe that Jesus saves everyone?”
Them - “Well, no?”
Me - “So you don’t believe Jesus is the savior of the world, but only the savior of some?” hmm.
Or I might say that I believe that Jesus does not fail to save anyone.
They reply, “Me too.”
Me - “So you believe that Jesus saves everyone?”
Them - “Well, no. Jesus doesn’t save everyone?”
Me - “So you believe that Jesus fails to save some?”
Them - “Well, no. Jesus doesn’t fail to save anyone. He only came to offer salvation.”
Me - “So you believe that Jesus doesn’t really save anyone; rather, we are ultimately saved by our choice to be saved.”
Well, the person usually gets frustrated at this point and closes the conversation or tries to change it to something else.
Yes, I commented on the article that I think Bell thinks God endlessly continues to pursue people, it’s just He’s unable to melt people’s hearts or woo/attract them to Himself 
I was post-editing this in my head last night and suddenly realized that I didn’t think out my implications far enough, because in effect I have to be including Richard in this criticism.
That wasn’t my intention at all–it never even occurred to me! I was just venting about my perennial annoyance with pastors who are supposed to be defending trinitarian theism but who have so little idea what they’re doing about that, for example, they would deploy “love is a choice” when defending against adultery (entirely proper though that is) but then turn around and also use it to defend a concept that is not only freakishly self-contradictory (true love out of respect for free will allows free will to self-destruct or chooses to destroy free will) but also contradictory to trinitarian theism (God Who is essentially fair-togetherness between persons chooses to ensure permanent and final non-fair-togetherness between persons, and/or is finally defeated despite being supposedly omnicompetent) while destroying people’s hope for salvation of sinners from sin!
In other words I was ticced off at the people Richard was talking about and criticizing, not at Richard. It didn’t occur to me that if he himself had known or remembered how important “love is a choice” is to fundamental and unique (and I would say uniquely and importantly superior) Christian theology, he wouldn’t have theorized “love is a choice” came from relatively modern defenses against adultery.
Anyway, I’m very sorry about that, and I thought I had better explain what I was actually thinking about.
(Having said that, neither am I taking back my criticism, exactly. The concept that “love is a choice” is much more theologically important than a defense against adultery, important though that is too.)
Well, I think he allows the possibility of that being the result, not that he thinks that certainly will be the result for some people. I didn’t gather that from LW.
But as I said, LW is literally the only thing (aside from a few interviews and promotional materials) I’ve read from Rob, so Richard may be aware of other things he’s said elsewhere that nail that down more precisely.
First thing, that was a brilliant article that Richard wrote, even though Jason brings up some good points too.
As far as the Trinity goes, as I’ve said elsewhere here, I’m up in the air on that, and not sure what to think, and intellectual gymnastics on all sides of that debate confuse me, all I know is that I want to have a relationship with God, and with Jesus too, even though I may not understand ‘the mechanics of God’ and how God relates to Jesus and all of that…
But, with that said, I do agree love is a choice, at least on some level, in that we must choose to say or do loving things to show love.
And it is possible to say or do loving things even though we may not ‘feel’ love at the time. We can speak or act out of something that goes deeper than our feelings, or at least our conscious feelings.
Which is why I think Richard brings up an important point.
I remember my friend Nancy once telling me that ‘our wanters are broken’.
God needs to fix our wanters, change our desires, needs to make our hearts right.
This isn’t something we can really do on our own.
We need help.
This is why universalism makes so much more sense to me. For God to say that we are all helpless without Him, but then only help some of us and not all of us is cruelty, like a parent arbitrarily choosing to love one child and not another.
Or for God to say that it’s pretty much on us to figure out, and some of us will and some of us won’t, and if we don’t then there’s nothing He can do about it, and we’re screwed, is just, well, sad, and God is like a do-nothing parent.
Either way, God looks like a bad parent, if you ask me, if He refuses to do for His children what they cannot do for themselves.
The Bible says in different places that the love of God never fails and also that all things are possible with Him, and I take those statements to heart, and believe that they both apply together to salvation, as do most of us here.
It just makes a lot more sense.
I think what Richard is pointing out is that we are empowered to love from within, and our ability to make wise and good choices is found inside of us.
We can’t fix ourselves, we can’t fix our ‘wanters’ on our own or purify our hearts or renew our minds on our own.
We need help.
It is often said that God helps those who help themselves, but I believe that, rather, God helps the helpless.
If God is love, and love is what defines His nature, then He must.
Not sure if I’m making any sense, going on four hours of sleep, but that’s my two cents anyway
Blessings 
Matt
PS Jason, I’ve read all of Bell’s books (all of which I recommend, he’s one of my favorite authors actually), and seen almost all of his videos, and he doesn’t seem to bring up heaven and hell all that much in his other writings. Bell tends to focus more on the here and now as a rule, though when he touches on what comes after, he always paints a hopeful picture.
Aw, this thread died out, looks like. Was a pretty good one. Oh well
It’s only been two days.
Thanks for the PS about the rest of Rob’s books and materials; also I really really like your friend Nancy’s saying. 
Have you been keeping track of Rob’s things since LW?
Jason;
I’m unclear as to how trinitarian theism being true or untrue affects to what degree love is or is not primarily a choice.
If God is Love (Regardless of whether He is trinity or not), then I would tend to think that is a statement referring to the core of His being, reflecting who He is more so than what He does. This is not to say that showing/ acting in love does not involve choice, because it does, and I don’t think Richard would argue that it doesn’t. It seems to me that what he’s saying is that Love is not primarily choice even though demonstrating it involves some level of choice; that is not its root.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re getting at though.
If trintarian theism is true, however, then God is essentially an actively self-existent interpersonal relationship: the self-existence of God depends on eternally active choices by the Persons. The Father and the Son and the Spirit eternally choose to support each other; the Father eternally chooses to give Himself (God self-begetting) and the Spirit and all the not-God things to the Son, the Son eternally chooses to give the Spirit and Himself (God self-begotten) and all the not-God things to the Father, the Spirit eternally and actively agrees to participate in being given from Person to Person.
God might be loving at the core of His being if God isn’t trinitarian, although that would still be an active choice of some sort toward an object of the action (presumably the object would be creation). But in that case God wouldn’t be love in God’s own active self-existence independent of whether God ever created not-God realities or not. For trinitarian theism, the actively rational choice of love is the eternal ground of all existence.
Love couldn’t even conceptually be more primarily a choice than that.
Admittedly, trinitarian theologians have throughout all our history had a bad habit, borrowed from Greek philosophy about a statically existent ultimate deity, of breaking the active unity of the substance of deity by claiming God to just statically instead of actively self-exist. Which has led to subtle but important conceptual problems as a result: it would have been much more difficult to propose a doctrine or interpretation of hopeless punishment where God stops loving or never did love various creatures, had the active self-existence of God in love been kept in the account. I still see the results today when reading and hearing metaphysical attempts at defending some kind of hopeless punishment: inevitably, if the proponents allow that God cannot be defeated and could persist to success in salvation if He chose to do so, the rationale for why He doesn’t persist always in my experience comes down to some form of the idea that God doesn’t necessarily have to love people.
Ok; I think I see where you’re coming from then. I had never heard of the concept of static vs. active self-existence of God.
I’m still not certain that the active self-existence of trinity necessitates a choice-driven nature of love. It seems intuitive to me to see the choice, or active part of love as an outworking of what’s already there: As Beck might put it, God is merely acting out of the deeply rooted affection that is already in place.
When John says that God is Love; I don’t think of him primarily referring to an action, but a core state of being that results in certain congruent actions. But perhaps that’s because my thinking has been more deeply influenced by Greek philosophy than I realize? It’s a possibility I have to consider.
If “love” is “deeply rooted affection”, then “love” is an emotion. Christ asks us to love our enemies. How can someone ask you to have a particular emotion. Emotions come and go. We cannot control them (although by practising particular ACTIONS we may discover a practice which tends to lead to having a particular corresponding emotion, or ridding oneself of a particular emotion).
Jesus said:
… I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you… (Matthew 5:44 NKJV)
Notice all of Christ’s instructions following, “love your enemies” are clearly ACTIONS and not emotions. I am strongly inclined to believe that the instruction to love our enemies is also a command to act. Indeed the ACTIONS which Christ commands immediately afterward, seem to be the very actions which lead to the attainment of love feelings.
No, I don’t deny that there is a feeling of love, that is an emotion that we might call “love”. But we can’t simply turn on love feelings upon command. Christ has asked us to love our enemies. Can we, by effort of will, work up love feelings toward those who hate us, and do evil and painful deeds toward us? I don’t think so!
However, if we love someone in the sense of ACTION, that is, perform loving deeds toward him, then somehow that very action leads toward the feeling of love toward him. I have personally experienced this on many occasions.
Similarly, someone might say to us, “Don’t be angry.” Again, we cannot turn off feelings of anger just because someone tells us to do so. But we may perform an ACTION which will lead to our letting go of our anger.
Yeah I know
No problem Aye, it’s a good saying… too bad she’s a Calvinist (or Calv-Armin) 
Yeah, I actually just finished reading his most recent book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God. Was pretty good, you may want to give it a look.
Blessings
Matt
Well said, Paidion!
Just had a chance to read this. Yes, very good and helpful article by Beck I agree…
I suppose however that I’m taken aback just a bit by Richard’s confidence in placing Bell in the “Love doesn’t really win” category – though I suspect he’s more right than wrong in this. I recall when reading Bell’s LW I found it a bit annoying that he couldn’t quite come out and just say what he thought. He was always dancing and light stepping; all poetic and vague and “let the reader decide for himself” kind of thing. And in the aftermath discussions and analysis with reporters and commentators, he was always a bit too coy and elusive for my taste. I prefer my theology be direct, lucid, clear; not so much vague, ambiguous, fill in all the blanks for yourself.
To be sure, to this day I’m not quite sure how to categorize Bell; is he, or isn’t he? And he himself seemed to cultivate that uncertainty about where he actually stood. In the end though, His God seems to be as active as He could have been in effecting our saving, but there comes a time when He’s done all He could do – so the rest is up to us (implied) and thus He becomes strangely “passive”. (Not Bell’s words; mine.) The very best I could say is that Bell is a “tentative hopeful” Universalist… His voice is still a very important one however because he likely reaches, with his “half way” step here – somewhere between outright ECT Hell and Universalism – many who simply cannot make the jump from ECT to UR all at once. Bell gives these a place which is not ECT, but is also not UR… So I do hold Bell in high esteem.
I confess to feeling a sense of impotence in the “love” espoused by Bell though. God standing around watching, waiting – His arsenal of saving tactics spent – for us to come to a decision. And hoping its the right one. Which at some level seems to boil down to a freedom to give away my freedom kind of dynamic which seems absurd to me in the end…
All that said however, I don’t find any of it necessary (except as common interest starting point) for the importance of the point(s) Richard is making here.
With others here, I’m not quite sure “affections” quite captures what it needs to when we try to define/explain love. Too much of a “feeling” or something. And sentimental. (not that sentimental is bad necessarily, just perhaps not enough to base something so vital…)
Love then needs to reach into that realm of what is best for the person. Calling it “affections” seems to add too much subjectivity; but surely the “best” for us is rooted in the objective reality of God’s creation. When we say that God Loves us, we must mean that God desires, seeks, what is best for us – what is in our best interest. And His actions therefore reflect that goal and emphasis.
There is general agreement, it seems obvious, that one manifestation of sin is that our choices are often not in our own best interest. In fact they can be downright self destructive! Thus to insist that Love and Freedom obligates God to allow this to happen (allow as in permanently; not as instruction or rehabilitation or learning) badly misunderstands not just Love, but misunderstands Freedom as well.
This improper use of the terms Love and Freedom is actually then completely upside down and opposite their true meaning; for that kind of destructive “love” is actually hate, and that kind of “freedom” is actually bondage! To insist that God must treat us this way is to insist that God must treat us with hate and bondage! Which is bizarre indeed! Sin is an encroachment not just on love but on freedom as well.
The failing of the “love is a choice” paradigm then is that it assumes the very thing that it doesn’t have! How can I “choose” my way out of Hell and into Heaven when the very definition of my problem is that my inner condition itself is disordered? The way to be healed is to … be healed? That just weird.
In the end, the fatal flaw (this is one way of thinking of it anyway!) of Arminianism is that it pits love as if it’s against freedom. Much better to say, as Richard has, that love, wanting only and always what is best for it’s object (us) insists on replacing our bondage (to misconception, illusion, inner disorder etc) with freedom by that inner healing of our core that only God can bring. We simply are in no position to rationally refuse what is best for us. That’s neither freedom nor is it love.
Or something like that…
Bobx3
Good thoughts, Bob.
I think you’re right about Bell, and yet you should have heard the uproar that going even as far as he did caused among the ‘guardians of tradition’ in our church. People freak out at the mere hint of universalism.
Loved this Article by Beck.
According to Paul you are either a slave to sin or a slave to Righteousness. There is not a seperate category of Freedom Outside these two. Freedom is actually found on the Righteousness side. Its Freedom from the those things that destroy our lives, our peace and our joy. When the love of God is poured into our hearts when we see him as he is either through faith (which comes through God) or face to face one day, we are then Free. Count me in the group that views love as affections. The Affection drives the action.This is something that God gives and comes when he has over time prepared the soil of the heart. If the affection isn’t present the Love of God is not perfected in you. Ask God to Pour his Love in your heart. Streams of living water will flow out. Jesus said take my yoke upon you and you will find rest for your souls.
I do see God allowing us to go the path of sin in order to know and experience the despair and loneliness found there. Maybe this is considered Freedom to some. I see it as part of the process of developing the soil of the heart so that once the Grace of God appears it is deeply rooted and bears abundant fruit.