The Rob Bell Discussion
Over the weekend there was quite the discussion about Rob Bell, about his new book and his increasingly unorthodox theology.
See Justin Taylor’s post, Rob Bell: Universalist? and the 1,000+ comments it generated.
The post I really encourage you to read is by Trevin Wax, Rob Bell and the Judgmentless Gospel. This post provides a mini theological education. Whatever your conclusions about Rob Bell, this post will help you wrestle with why a judgmentless gospel is attractive to Americans, why a judgmentless gospel is empty of good news, and why the gospel articulated in the Bible is so much more beautiful.
Then go read Joe Thorn’s concise post, Saved By God, From God, and For God.
See also my post from three years ago, Rob Bell. The God’s Aren’t Angry Tour: San Francisco (Some Reflections & Concerns).
Some people don’t like posts like this, posts that point out disagreement with other people and their teaching. While I do think it is important to be known more for what you are FOR than what you are AGAINST (and I hope to be such a man), just a cursory reading of the Bible shows that it is a book that calls us to deal with false teaching. Why? Because false teaching is dangerous and destructive, it hurts people.
About ten years ago I heard Ben Patterson, campus pastor of Westmont College, say something that I will never forget. Ben told the story of a retired pastor who began noticing that his former congregation was sliding away from orthodoxy. The pastor saw this as his fault, noting the one thing he thought he did most poorly as a pastor. The pastor stated, in two sentences, his great failure as a pastor:
I always told people what to believe. My great mistake is that I never told my people what NOT to believe.
Amen — that’s good stuff!!
I’m looking forward to the discussion to come. I must say I’m a fairly devoted disciple of Rob Bell – and feel he is taken out of context a lot. That said, I’ve seen this strain of possible “universalism” in his theology and wondered where he’s at. I’m getting a “Great Divorce” vibe from the wording of the questions, but we’ll see!
Justin, I ran across a couple posts by what seems to be the only person who has read the book (other than Rob Bell, I suppose). Thought your audience might be interested: http://j.mp/iiuSZz and http://j.mp/giT7p8
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