The Evangelical Universalist Forum

"The Prodigal Gospel of Rob Bell" (aka JRP's long review)

Featured Writers Jason Pratt
#41

Actually yeah, one afternoon He did! He even said as much to His disciples afterward when they asked Him why He started teaching in parables all of a sudden.

(From a harmonization perspective this happened in His second round of preaching on the lake near the Bethsaida fishing suburb of Capernaum after lunch, having previously been charged with Satanic collaboration by Pharisees in the audience when a demented man He had already healed the night before showed up the worse off than ever. The day made a huge impression on His disciples because I found an equally huge block of material from it plopped piecemeal into the Synoptics. :slight_smile: The sequence starts about halfway through Chapter 17 of The King of Stories and continues through the first part of Chapter 21. I was amazed to discover how much of that material fit together when I started checking time/place cues and thematic/narrative cues.)

Anyway, I should clarify that I don’t think in the book Rob is (intentionally) trying to be obscure, although I do find in his early interview material he seems to be trying to be intentionally obscure or evasive on some points for whatever reasons–possibly from lack of experience (at the time) talking about it, maybe somewhat for marketing reasons, maybe also because he doesn’t want to lose his audience talking about technical issues. (My complaint about that, ever since I watched the first interview, has consistently been: Rob owes the audience or at least his peers strong reasons, not merely emotional suggestions, as to why he has spoken so strongly against non-universalist teachers and preachers.)

I agree, and will be saying more-or-less the same thing myself (more than once if I recall) in my next part. :slight_smile:

(Plus as I go along I have fewer complaints; mainly because he’s talking more about his positive case and so by proportion less about his opposition in various ways–which means he also has fewer opportunities to be fair or unfair to his opposition by proportion. :wink: )

#42

Depends on why warning bells (hells bells? :smiley: ) were going off in his head.

Was it because Rob has a very positive idea of justice as being much more than punishment for evildoing? Rob doesn’t deny the latter, but he positions it within context of the former–and I think he’s Biblically right to do so. Also metaphysically right, though he doesn’t get into that much. But when people have been taught that ‘orthodoxy’ only-or-primarily involves the latter so long, then the former can look like heresy.

Was it because Rob relies on emotionalism a lot in the first chapters? I can sympathize with that, even though I also understand (up to a point) that the emotionalism is a hook for engaging popular interest. But it can be a hook for heresy as effectively as for orthodoxy, too.

Was it because Rob promotes the scope as well as the persistence of God’s salvation?–or the persistence as well as the scope? Calvs per se will (in a way logically) consider the former heretical; Arms (in a way logically) the latter. And will be naturally reluctant about affirming each other’s point on this.

Was it because he found Rob cheating pretty badly several times in the first few chapters? I wouldn’t blame him for flinging the book away on any of those points. :wink: (But I’ll be discussing those later.)

Was it because he thought Rob said a couple of obviously silly things about ‘eonian’? I think Rob does mostly a good job there, and that critics who worry about him undermining a lack of our security of salvation by lack of proper parity of term usage are missing some points. But he does (probably by accident) throw up a couple of headbangers, too. (More on those later. Fixing them wouldn’t hurt his overall argument, broadly or in details, though.)

Was it because he thought Rob was denying hell (and/or heaven!) after death? If so, that’s only a problem with skimming the material, though I can see how someone only skimming could easily worry about the first (or even the second!)

There are plenty of things that could set off alarm bells; a few rightly so, most at least understandably (if wrongly) so.

#43

I’ve been meaning to add: I’ve decided I should start watching the other available Rob interviews (beyond the ones I first watched), and reading any such, too, if they’re available, so that I can keep any improvements in mind as I go along.

I have some archived on my desktop where I can easily get to them; but if any enterprising soul(s) would like to search through the forum (or elsewhere) and create a post linking to as many as possible, not only will I be grateful, but I’ll add a link to the first post in this thread leading to your post for purposes of directing readers to the interview list.

(Also, if multiple people add links, I’ll consolidate them into one post with thanks to the ones providing the links, though to neaten the thread I may also delete your post once I’ve consolidated the links.)

Note: I’m not asking for links to articles and interviews about Rob Bell (pro or con), though interviews featuring Rob and someone else are fine.

#44

Sad to say it wasn’t the right setting to ask him why. I suspect if it’s any of those you mentioned, it’d be either

or

I doubt he’d even be in the ballpark of

But as I said initially, his keywords were “false teachers”, “heresy”, “be on your guard”, that sort of thing.

#45

WHY HAVE YOU STOPPED POSTING JASON, I WANT MORE! :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

I’ve enjoyed reading this thread, thanks Jason for putting in the time. You have cleared up a few question I had.

Awesome to hear the positive stories from David and Gem about Love Wins. It has convinced me to order a few copies, so that I can lend/give some to friends who would find TEU/TILoG too hard.

I didn’t think of that, but I think you’re right. That’s great :slight_smile:

rline, it’s awesome that you’ve moved from hopeful to convinced, I just hope you & dad don’t get fired for being “heretics”! :neutral_face:

#46

Mondays and Thursdays. :mrgreen:

I totally agree, and I wouldn’t mind in the least if people keep adding such anecdotes to kind-of counterbalance other things I’m talking about. :slight_smile:

#47

In the interviews of Bell that I’ve watched, he doesn’t strike me as being *unfairly *negative about his opposition, so why does he do that in the book?? :confused: Does he seriously not see anything good in what they are doing and what they believe? Even though I’m not a Calvinist, I think Calvin did say a few good things about the sovereignty of God, etc. and Calvinists are bringing people closer to God *when *they preach the Gospel (even the version majorly distorted by ECT :frowning: )e.g. that’s probably how half of us here became Christians…

#48

I would like to participate a chapter by chapter dialogue about the book. Looked around online and can’t find anything which appeals. Since this thread is JRP’s review, I’m going to open another thread to look at the book chapter by chapter.

#49

I think that’s a fine idea, Gem!

The link to her thread can be found here.

(…um, I think I recall you being a her. Sorry, it’s late Saturday night here. :slight_smile: I’ll correct if I’ve misremembered.)

Edited to add: I have also included a link to it near the top of my opening post for this thread.

#50

Oh well, if we do, I guess I’ll be living in a caravan on your dad’s property…

Well, from the point of view of someone who used to be 100% staunch calvinist, I find that the whole idea of how the god of calvinism behaves is simply horrific. the god of calvinism is a monster. I now think that calvinism is a hundred times worse than UR. I don’t deny that calvinists per se hold some sound fundamentals, like “God is sovereign” and “God is all-powerful”. I just think the starting point means the whole loaf is corrupt. But that’s just me. I can’t speak for Bell…

#51

Here’s a link to another great story posted up on our forum this weekend involving the sister of Amy (the wife of Gene/Auggy and daughter of Bob Wilson, two of the site originators/owners.)

I wanted to post up something favorable before getting to the next part of the review today. :wink:

#52

Part 4: Tireing Of Suspicious Innuendo And Personal Relationships

Behold!–after an eonian age the review finally begins! :mrgreen:

FINE, GET TO IT THEN! WHAT’S THE PREFACE ABOUT? ANYTHING IMPORTANT?

Yes: the Preface is where Rob disses other Christian teachers the hardest for not teaching Christianity rightly like he’s going to do now. Also this is where Rob first tries (and maybe tries hardest) to make himself part of a silent majority (or anyway a respectably large minority). Thus the title of the preface “Millions of Us”.

THAT SOUNDS VAGUELY THREATENING!

He’s trying to reassure his reader that if she has been having doubts about the standard teaching of hopelessness of salvation after death, then the reader is far from alone, even among people who believe in God and in Christ.

Still, one could be forgiven for thinking this sounds like a warning manifesto in some ways. Jesus’ story has been hijacked! Jesus isn’t interested in telling those other stories that the hijackers have hijacked His story with! It’s time to reclaim the plot from the misguided toxic teaching these teachers have insisted on! And beware, you treacherous teachers of poison, because there are millions of us to reckon with!

He does not say the last part, fortunately.

DOES HE MENTION HERE THAT HE HIMSELF THINKS THOSE SAME TEACHERS MANAGED TO GET A LOT OF THINGS RIGHT THAT HE HIMSELF AGREES WITH?

Hell no. (sigh)

THAT SOUNDS JUST LIKE HOW MANY OF HIS VOCAL OPPONENTS INSIST ON TREATING HIM!

Yeah, insert irony here as appropriate. “The love of God for every single one of us” may “compel us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story”, but apparently that same love of God for every single one of us doesn’t compel us to be fair to our opposition when crucifying them. So to speak.

#53

I also have to say that when I read his next paragraph, which starts with “I’ve written this book because the kind of faith Jesus invites us into doesn’t skirt the big questions about topics like God and Jesus and salvation and judgment and heaven and hell”, I came pretty close to flinging the book away (or the electronic equivalent thereof)–because all I could think of right that moment was how in the interviews I had seen before reading his book he kept skirting the big questions about exactly those topics when challenged on them! (Though from what I’ve heard he may be doing better since then…)

SOUNDS LIKE POST-MODERN DRIVEL ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF QUESTIONS AND QUESTIONS HERE AND QUESTIONS THERE AND HOW IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ARE ETC. ETC.

Wow, sounds like you read the first couple of chapters, too! :mrgreen:

LUCKY GUESS.

Well, to be fair he does later in the book try to provide answers, sort of, to a lot of those questions; and I can even say he has some real success at it.

ALTHOUGH OF COURSE AS A UNIVERSALIST YOU’D BE BOUND TO SAY SO ANYWAY.

I’m also a picky technical guy who doesn’t accept an argument simply because it happens to be convenient to something I otherwise believe. Questioning is as questioning does, after all. :wink:

But yeah, this preface was leaving a bad and suspicious taste in my mouth. It’s a wild oversimplification at best, for example, to justify his “questioning” tendencies by claiming that Jesus responds to almost every question He’s asked with a question.

The question, of course, is whether any questions being asked have well-grounded and valid answers–or even if any answers are being given at all. If not, then all those “responses and discussions and debates and opinions and longings and desires and wisdom and insight… that’s been going on for thousands of years across cultures and continents”?–it’s all for nothing, except maybe for subjective entertainment purposes.

Despite Rob’s rhetorical coloring, though, I do think he mainly wants to try to comfort people who have felt damned for daring not to be satisfied with the answers (much moreso the lack of answers) they’ve been given for their questioning.

#54

He also rather vaguely tries to imply that just because many people before him have taught and celebrated what he’s doing, that this in itself somehow makes what he’s doing “orthodox”.

BUT DIDN’T YOU SAY YOU THINK HE’S ORTHODOX?! OR AT LEAST WHAT HE ENDS UP SAYING EVEN IF HE TRIES TO NOT SAY WHAT HE ENDS UP SAYING? OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT!?

Yes, but not because a bunch of people before him, and long before him, have taught the same thing! People have taught Arianism and modalism of various types, too, for centuries and millennia, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re actually in orthodox Christianity (much less correct) for doing so!

His rhetorical construction is conveniently sloppy here, too. So, Rob, your “teaching” isn’t “any kind of departure from what’s been said an untold number of times” is it? Because I possess this thing called ‘memory’, and it tells me that the whole point of the first part of your preface, a couple of pages ago (pages I also possess by the way), was that you’re departing from what has been said an untold number of times and damned skippy it ought to be departed from! Because that other teaching, taught by the majority to the overwhelming majority an untold number of times, is toxic and a crime against Jesus etc.

So that other stuff you forcibly reject as horrible and false and “I would never be a part of that”–does that fit into your appeal to the “beauty of the historic, orthodox Christian faith” and its “deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences” “in all its vibrant, diverse, messy, multivoiced complexity”?

Or, not?

Just how “thrilled” are you Rob, to be introducing people to the majority beliefs as well as to the minority? Because back two pages ago you didn’t seem thrilled at all.

This type of attitude that “the majority is trash but we should appreciate all views for their contributions especially mine” grates me, because it’s merely a rhetorical convenience. Until he actually puts his precept into practice and starts pointing out the contributions of those other people he is mouthing against, then I have no problem standing on the side of those people and calling ‘shenanigans’.

#55

And thus ends the preface. Had I not thought I had an obligation as a leader and teacher on this site to comment on this work due to its instant popularity, I would have deleted it from my Kindle right there.

Fortunately some shreds of intellectual discipline kept me at it; and as a result, I remind my reader, I did come away from the book with a better opinion of it than this. Eventually.

EVENTUALLY? SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE SAYING IT DOESN’T GET MUCH BETTER IN CHAPTER 1.

It does, but not at first.

He throws a bunch of thought-provoking questions at the reader, none of them bad questions in themselves. But without much reference to typical answers, his design leaves an effect of suggesting ridiculousness or even abhorrence to the implied answers without the bother of considering typical answers.

I don’t like it when sceptics deploy this type of “argument by suspicious innuendo”, and I like it even less when someone I largely agree with does it.

#56

CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF NOT LIKING IT EVEN THOUGH YOU AGREE WITH HIM?

Certainly!

I do my own share of complaining about the non-universalist “gospel of hopelessness” in its various forms; so I can’t say I disagree much (if at all!) with what he’s ultimately aiming at when he complains about the Christian who remarks to the friend of an atheist, at the atheist’s funeral, “So there’s no hope then.”

(I would give page numbers but I have a Kindle copy, and Kindle despises page-numbering as a bourgeois luxury or something. :wink: I mean it’s a technical limitation to their proprietary format–that they haven’t managed to overcome yet after three system generations. {ahem} Anyone who wants to volunteer the numbers in the comments please do so, along with what edition you’re referencing in case the pagination differs between editions.)

The difference is that I try to do so in context with what the non-universalist is actually claiming. And I have never even implied, at any time, that any non-universalist thinks or is trying to say that “the Christian message” is “there is no hope”.

It is simply and utterly straw-manning the opposition to ask, without discussion of the answers mind you (and so implying that this is actually what is happening), “Is this the sacred calling of Christians–to announce that there’s no hope?”

Arminianistic and Calvinistic Christians (Protestant or otherwise) both would bleed out their eyes at being effectively libeled like this, and rightly so. Of course they announce a hope of salvation! They mix that hope with real and final hopelessness, in various ways (because in various ways they think hopelessness truly is as real and final as God’s hope, and they’re trying to be true to the hopelessness they believe to be the truth); but they don’t just announce “no hope”. That’s needlessly insulting at best.

Rob Bell cannot possibly be so ignorant. I know he has to be actually complaining about the acknowledgment and promotion of final victorious hopelessness as well as hope in Arm and Calv theology (whether the final victory of hopelessness is the sinner’s victory or is God’s!)

Consequently, he chose, willfully chose, to paint Arms and Calvs this way, as though all they were doing was announcing “no hope” as the gospel of Jesus Christ.

#57

JESUS CHRIST!–THAT’S… KIND OF EVIL!! AS IN, ‘INTENTIONALLY BEARING FALSE WITNESS AGAINST HIS NEIGHBOR’ KIND-OF-EVIL!

Yeah, I’m willing to grant a lot of leeway to Rob’s opponents if they want to zorch him with flaming hammers concerning this. It is exactly as bad, not remotely less so, as the type of straw-man burning routinely tossed off libelously by non-universalists against seriously dogmatic Christian universalists. Sauce for their goose is sauce for his gander if he does it, too. “But they’re doing it too!” is not a good excuse.

AND YET THERE ARE UNIVERSALISTS WHO THINK THIS BOOK IS THE BEE’S KNEES??

The book does get better later, even a lot better. (I have to keep reminding myself of this as I read back through it again for my review and commentary… :wink: )

IS THERE ANYTHING GOOD AT ALL IN THIS CHAPTER THOUGH??

Quite a lot, I’d say!

#58

I like where he goes immediately after this libel. It’s still the same tactic of asking questions without really going into whether there are good answers for them (which “churns” my own stomach, since he mentioned that effect back in the preface); but it also more-than-a-little skillfully gets across why there is a lot of discussion among Christians on the issues raised by claiming various things: starting from a question about whether there is such a thing as an “age of accountability” and various doctrinal variants that this question leads to in trying to answer it.

This goes on throughout most of the rest of the chapter, and I can say as a compliment that it reaches practically epic levels. I especially like how he develops the point that you might have people rejecting Jesus because of how His followers lived, and how this is connected to the attempt to simply solve the prior questions by saying “all that matters is how you respond to Jesus.”

SO THAT’S ROB’S ANSWER? SEEMS DOCTRINALLY WIMPY!

Oh no no no, the “all that matters” isn’t Rob’s answer, even though he strongly agrees that (from the side of the sinner) it is “about how you respond to Jesus”. On the contrary, he then starts critiquing the doctrinally wimpy way of trying to deploy that answer!–and at the same time illustrates just how totally bleeped-up (sometimes literally “bleeped”, replacing a sexual curse word for the bleep) the “Jesus” can be that people are expected to “respond to”.

Rob emphatically emphasizes that some Jesuses (Jesuii?) should be rejected; and that’s a question of claims rightly or wrongly representing Jesus–thus a claim about ortho-doxy (right representation).

This is worth emphasizing because any opponent who tries to paint Rob as not caring about correct doctrine (especially concerning Jesus) is flatly outright wrong. Rob strongly cares for what is and is not correct claims about Jesus–which after all is one big reason for why he is writing this book!

SO… YOU THINK THIS PART OF THE CHAPTER IS BETTER?

Muchly so, yep! Even though I still don’t like the style; or to be more precise, I don’t like how he uses the style elsewhere (which leads him into temptation occasionally here, too.)

CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF THAT?

Ohhhhh yes, sadly I can.

#59

As I said earlier, the strongest point (of many) in this epic portion of the chapter is that salvation (at all, and much moreso from hopeless damnation) ends up being not nearly as simple a matter as readers may have been led to believe; and one of the simpler attempts at cutting through the knots (in order to save non-universalism from the complexity of the questions) just as simply doesn’t work under scrutiny. (Not without hinting at post-mortem salvation opportunities of some sort at the least!)

On the other hand: a lot of theologians throughout church history have in fact tried to take these complexities into account, and have thus tried to teach their congregations already what to expect and how the complexities are dealt with. Be those attempts right or wrong, the attempts do already exist and ought to be examined as to their theological coherency, and their data coherency (how well they square with scriptural data for example).

But Rob elides past all that (and won’t be going much into details later either), treating the mere questioning process as though it instantly calls into ridiculousness all such attempts at solving the issues in favor of keeping hopeless damnation. That isn’t a fair examination of the issues. Using questions to bring out problematic details is fair enough (as far as it goes); using questions to make an argument from suspicious innuendo is cheating (to put it bluntly).

SOUNDS LIKE A RHETORICAL TRICK TO IMPRESS THE GROUNDLINGS…

That’s putting it rather harshly. But I couldn’t blame an opponent if they put it that harshly.

SOUNDS LIKE BELL IS DOING WHAT HE’S BASICALLY BLAMING HIS OWN OPPONENTS FOR DOING!

Not in so many words. But yep.

SOUNDS LIKE RAMPANT HYPOCRISY!!

Again, I couldn’t blame an opponent if they put it that harshly.

AREN’T YOU GOING TO DEFEND IT AS A NECESSARY SIMPLICITY TO REACH READERS WHO DON’T HAVE THE TASTE OR SKILL OR TALENT OR TIME FOR DEEP EXEGETICS AND WIRE-THIN METAPHYSICAL ANALYSIS?!

If he was being fair to his opponents, I would feel better about defending it as that. But, well…

HE ISN’T.

He isn’t.

#60

COULD THIS PERHAPS BE ONLY AN ACCIDENT OF COMPOSITION?

Up to page whatever (thanks Kindle! :stuck_out_tongue: ) when he starts talking about “personal responsibility”, I might have been willing to allow that the resulting implied argument from suspicious innuendo was an accidental side-effect of his epic hashing-out of various details that the reader may never have bothered to contemplate.

But then he brings up another attempt at over-simply cutting through the knot of those questions (by someone defending non-universalism thereby): “the real issue, the one that can’t be avoided, is whether a person has a ‘personal relationship’ with God through Jesus. …] That’s the bottom line [according to these defenders]: a personal relationship. If you don’t have that, you will die apart from God and spend eternity in torment in hell.”

DOES HE PRETEND THAT SUCH DEFENDERS DON’T RECOGNIZE, AS LEWIS DID, THAT GOD HAS PLENTY OF WAYS OF TRYING TO SET UP A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH PEOPLE ASIDE FROM MERELY HUMAN EVANGELISM?!

No, he acknowledges that such defenders (may) acknowledge this. (And by the way, his representation of their defense of the scope of God’s resources and abilities to reach sinners, sounds quite Lewisian! He might even have Lewis specifically in mind; he’s clearly a fan.)

DOES HE CLAIM THAT A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD ISN’T NECESSARY FOR A PERSON TO BE SAVED!?

Oh no, he’ll spend the rest of the book affirming this in various ways himself.

SO… HE AGREES WITH THIS DEFENSE, THEN?

One might have supposed so. Except that he doesn’t agree with the hopeless eternity in torment part, of course.

SO, DOES HE SAY THE ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT SOMEONE COULD EASILY AND ENTIRELY AGREE WITH THIS WITHOUT HAVING TO ALSO AGREE WITH THE HOPELESS ETERNITY IN TORMENT PART?

Nope. He could have very easily pointed this out. But he tries something else instead.