My Reflections on Love Wins (feel free to disagree)

EDIT (7/24/2012): This review is not an entirely accurate reflection of my sentiments regarding Bell's book, orthodoxy, and biblical interpretation but I am keeping it on here for the sake of transparency (or something). It may be an accurate reflection of how I felt about Love Wins at the time of its release, but there's no way to know for sure.

The following was imported from a Wordpress blog of which I am a contributor. It was originally posted March 23, 2011. Feel free to comment! Visit the original post here, and check out the Recalibration blog ("Christian perspectives on life, culture, and spirituality").

Rob Bell.

The name on everyone's lips, apparently. So many things have already been written about his latest book Love Wins that one more post just feels like spitting in the ocean. Because of this, I will not even try to assess everything in this book. There are so many reviews out there (both positive and negative). For a very well-written response (with which you may or may not agree), check out Kevin DeYoung's review. And for a defense of Love Wins, I recommend checking out Mars Hill's Love Wins FAQ.

So why add to the pile of blogs out there concerning Love Wins? Well, I pre-ordered the book and received it when it was released (which I'm glad I did considering it

is
was sold out everywhere), and wanted to mull it over before jumping online with my personal opinions. This is not a comprehensive review, as stated above, but rather my reflections on the good, the bad, and the ugly this book contains. I will try to hit the big points, then leave the details for another time.

First, the book is short. The page count (200) is deceiving as Bell (per his style) makes very liberal use of

large fonts.

and wide margins.

and skipping lines after three words.

Stylistic concerns aside (I’m glad I only paid $11 for this book!), there are a lot of bigger things happening in Bell’s writing.

So let’s start with questions, like Rob seemingly loves to do:

Is Rob Bell a heretic? Not really, but he rides the very thin line of heterodoxy.

Is he a Universalist? Not in the traditional sense, but he seems to depart from Scriptural truth far too often to mention.

Is he still a Christian? Absolutely. Nothing expressed in this book hasn't been said by anyone else.
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I really wanted to objectively like this book. Bell may not be my favorite, but it is well written (in the sense that it uses very accessible language) and Eugene H. Peterson endorsed it. On that note, let's get to talking about some theology.

First, the good:

Chapter 2 (called Here is the New There) was my absolute favorite chapter of the book. It is about Heaven, and the fact that Heaven is not only real, it is at hand. Therefore, we ought to live bringing the Kingdom to earth. We know that we cannot make creation new on our own, however we ought to live for that day.  Fans of N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope will find nothing new here, and I wasn't surprised to see Bell cite that work. Not too much to dislike here.

Next, he even emphasizes repentance (something that is surprising to see in the work of a major emergent-church leader). Not too much more to say about this point. And finally, he entire book culminates in an open invitation to follow Christ into a wild, scary, wonderful, beautiful, abundant life.  This is my favorite theme in the book; Bell paints Christ with a big brush as a loving, magnificent God.

Next, the bad:

Rob Bell is an excellent communicator, and as others have expressed, everything he says is to communicate an idea, whether it is a statement or a question. Also, Bell has been through seminary. And so, he cannot be excused for some of the major mishaps with Scripture he has in this book. I'm not going into details, but just as an example, I would point anyone to chapter 1, called What About the Flat Tire?, where Rob asks some questions (all of which he leaves unanswered) about scriptures pertaining to salvation. One huge lapse, which unfortunately feels deceptive considering Bell's background in the Word, is when he quotes 1 Timothy 2 and asks if childbearing really saves women, never explaining what the passage is actually saying. And, again, this is just an example to point out a problem. Mishandling the bible is as big of a concern as any that I have (1) because of my love for the Word of God, and (2) because of the centrality of Scripture to the faith.

Bell's problem, I think, is that he has a way of stretching figurative language in the bible to absurd literalisms, and shrinking things  that are intended to convey very very real ideas down to metaphor. More on the latter in a bit.

The biggest thing on people's minds are his ideas of Hell. Bell believes Hell is real, but he doesn't believe in eternal damnation to Hell. This is where Bell says he is still within traditional orthodoxy, a claim he hardly supports properly. (As soon as I'm done with this post, however, I am going to be writing a new one based on the idea of why I wish Rob Bell was right about Heaven, Hell, and the fate of everyone who ever lived.) There are plenty of strong rebuttals out there concerning this issue, so I'm not even interested in taking it on (again, spitting in the ocean). I would recommend the above link to Kevin DeYoung's response, but I will end this part with a quote from this post (called Rob Bell &... Purgatory?) by John Piippo (pastor of Redeemer Fellowship Church in Monroe), which I recommend reading if you're looking for a good, non-aggressive evaluation of Bell's idea of Hell. "Rob often does a good job of going to the actual biblical texts. I don't think he can strongly support the idea of a kind of purgatorial state in the afterlife. I think he takes the awesome truth of God as Love and works too hard to logically extend this into an orthodoxy that is, textually, way too generous."

At last, the ugly:

I hope you're still with me.

First, "toxic" is not a good word to use to describe other believers. Bell puts this word to use when talking about those he disagrees with. The kind of attacking language Bell uses when talking about other Jesus-followers in Love Wins is often unsettling; Christ died for the Church, so we ought to love the whole church. Bell makes the claim to just be opening up dialogue about God, however this type of language does not ring of somebody who simply wants to learn more about God through dialogue.

Let's be clear: the hateful sentiment behind Westboro Baptist Church's message is indeed toxic. Christians who believe in a place called Hell that contains the souls of all who reject God's offer of salvation (because that's what the Scriptures say) should be labeled misguided at worst by Bell if he truly thinks they're wrong.

Next, Bell tends to make truth claims without properly supporting them throughout the entire book; he defends these claims with premises made up of pure speculative language (uses the word may A LOT).

My biggest concern in Love Wins, though, doesn't even arise out of Rob's view of Hell. This may be due to the fact that I already knew how he felt about Hell, or it may be that this next idea is an even bigger problem. My biggest criticism comes from some writing buried in Chapter 6 (called There are Rocks Everywhere) and deals with the issue of atonement. 1 John 2.2 says "He (Christ) is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Rob Bell makes the case that Christ's death was not really a sacrifice for our sins, but that it was God's sign declaring the end of sacrifice, that he wasn't even angry in the first place. He says the early church calling Christ's death the propitiation for our sins was simply figurative language (a problem I expressed above). Bell, for some reason, leaves out the justice of God, the justification of the saints through Christ's blood, and the fact that God himself said in Leviticus "the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life", and Hebrews (pointing to Leviticus) says "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins".

In the end, Bell sets up orthodoxy to fail by redefining terms to fit his argument, and using questions that are, according to Bell, unanswerable by traditional orthodoxy (which are actually easily answered by theologians, pastors, or even "lay-people" who are interested in really loving and digging into the Word of God). There is absolutely no problem with a person departing from standard orthodoxy if they can properly defend their position.

Expect another post soon, which I'm calling The Best Ideas in Love Wins (or "Why I Wish Rob Bell Was Right").