“Bell” rhymes with “hell”

Posted on March 5, 2011 by me

Everybody probably knows that Rob Bell has a new book coming out. It will probably outsell all of his previous books (and probably sell better than it deserves), because it’s had the best marketing campaign imaginable—controversy. Bell put out a video trailer for the book in which he comments that he doesn’t believe Ghandhi will spend eternity in hell, suggesting that perhaps he’s a universalist (holding the belief that everyone will be saved, whether they are Christians or not).

Everybody seems to care a lot about what Mr. Bell thinks about hell. Justin Taylor (who??) does. (I’m wondering if Mr. Taylor would review my book…)  John Piper apparently does. Many people who should know better have also labelled Bell a universalist—and none of them have read the book. (The only article I’ve read from someone who’s actually read the book says that he’s not a universalist.)

And, everyone and their cat has jumped into the fray with their own opinions of Mr. Bell’s beliefs, all without reading the book.

My opinion of Rob Bell’s theology

I don’t care.

Seriously—I don’t care. I read a blog post this morning that explained why we should care, and how “countless lives” are at stake (seriously?), and I still don’t care.

On a certain level, of course, I do care whether or not he’s a heretic, for the sake of those people in his church and the dozens of youth groups who watch his videos without any supplemental teaching by their own pastors. But, whether or not he believes non-Christians will spend eternity in hell is perhaps not as important as his view of grace, which, by the way, I know nothing about. I’ve never read his books or listened to his videos. By the way, throughout the history of the Church there have been—and still are—many views of hell, and so far the gates of hell haven’t prevailed against the church.

Rob Bell is a trend, and possibly a short-term trend, just like Brian McLaren (who’s probably a heretic) and the whole “emergent ” thing. Yes, it’s dead—though they may not know it yet.  A few decades from now, I doubt many people will remember Bell or McLaren, but they’ll still read CS Lewis, and probably folks like NT Wright, JI Packer, and John Stott.

What does concern me

What does concern me are the people who jump to judgment about what people may or may not believe about things that don’t really change anything.

I do get concerned about people teaching other gospels, and I’ve always thought that hell was a terrible motivator for evangelism.

All I know

All I know about Rob Bell is that Bell rhymes with hell. And, that’s good enough for me.

 

 

Posted in Theological Musings | 2 Comments

Alister McGrath—Faith and the Prison of Mere Rationality

Posted on March 2, 2011 by me

The New Atheism makes rationality one of its core defining characteristics, and emphatically and aggressively asserts the irrationality of belief in God. For Richard Dawkins, faith in God counts as some kind of mental illness. Atheism is the only option for rational people.

…

But why should reason be able to tell us anything about God? Or anything else of significance, for that matter – such as what is good, or what is right?

From Faith and the Prison of Mere Rationality by Alister McGrath. He goes on to say:

The problem here is that this defence of the authority of human reason is ultimately circular and parasitical. It assumes and depends upon its conclusion. This philosophical defence of the validity of reason by reason is thus intrinsically self-referential. It cannot be sustained.

The rational defence of reason itself may amount to a demonstration of its internal consistency and coherence – but not of its truth. There is no reason why a flawed rationality will show up its own flaws. We are using a tool to judge its own reliability. We have convened a court, in which the accused and the judge are one and the same.

McGrath is right on in this article. Read the whole article here.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt | 3 Comments

Book review: Unconditional?

Posted on February 23, 2011 by me

I just finished reading Brian Zahnd’s new book, Unconditional?: The call of Jesus to radical forgiveness. Overall, it’s pretty awesome. If I were to come up with a “Top Ten” list of Christian books, this would definitely be included.

The topic of forgiveness is one that I’ve thought about a lot over the last 30 or so years; my fascination, if you will, with forgiveness began when I realized that “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” actually puts our forgiving others first. It’s not, “because we’ve been forgiven, we’ll try to forgive others.” Shocking, I know. So, when I heard this book was coming out, I was quite excited (as I was when I saw it on the New Releases shelf at the local Borders; yes, I actually bought it from a brick-and-mortar store, although I did have a coupon…).

Zahnd lays out his thesis on page 2:

If we enter the Christian life to find forgiveness, we must continue in the faith to become forgiving people, because to be an authentic follower of Christ we must embrace the centrality of forgiveness.

Grace?

There are those who may question how this mandate to forgive correlates to grace; Zahnd does a pretty good job of doing that. Within a few pages he hits this question head-on, explaining that (in my words) forgiveness is grace in action. The work of Christ on the cross was one of grace and forgiveness, and we are called to take up our cross daily and do the same thing:

But Christians are not just recipients of forgiving grace; we are also called to be those who extend the grace of forgiveness to others.

Overall, I thought he kept his discussion within the realm of grace, although I know some will feel that he steps over into works. But, if we accuse Zahnd of crossing over into works, I think we’d have to accuse Paul of the same thing. Essentially, Zahnd is saying, “Have the same mindset of Jesus…” (Phil 2:5). Living a life of grace is living a life of forgiveness; if we fail to extend grace to others, it shows we simply don’t believe in grace.

Zahnd explains quite well how unforgiveness is a trap which keeps people in bondage, and prevents them from experiencing grace and their own forgiveness. If we want to truly be free, we must decide to forgive those who have wronged us.

Ken Blue and I deal with this topic ourselves in The Gospel Uncensored:

Unforgiveness places us in a prison of our own making. When we fail to forgive, we do not just withhold forgiveness from others; we prevent ourselves from experiencing forgiveness ourselves.

Prose and cons

(No, I didn’t misspell “pros.”)

Unconditional? is a fairly short (220 pages), very easy to read book. In it, Zahnd discusses the concept of forgiveness in several different contexts, such as how forgiveness impacts justice and the way of forgiveness being the way through the Narrow Gate. He will perhaps shock some with his idea that true forgiveness does not necessarily forget. Overall, he brings out many good points and challenges many American attitudes, not that they are necessarily limited to Americans.

Throughout the book I saw many hints of NT Wright, which is not a bad thing. But, I often thought I was reading a rewrite of some of Wright’s thoughts from works like Evil and the Justice of God and Simply Christian (again, not a bad thing, I just noticed it). For those who haven’t read Wright, Unconditional? will present some new thoughts.

I was impressed that while he addresses politics and world affairs, he doesn’t go off topic with discussions of pacifism and the like, which seem to be in vogue these days. Some, of course, will wish that he had gone further in these directions—but I think he does well to raise issues while staying on course.

I had a few complaints about the book, though not with the message. For one, in my opinion he tended to beat his examples to death and seemed to repeat himself unnecessarily. Just when you thought he had moved on, he’d resurrect an analogy.  In a sermon context, repetition is good and necessary; in a book, it’s not. However, I realize that some will love this about the book.

And, I thought the last couple of chapters were tangential at best, perhaps an attempt to extend the book past 200 pages. What he had to say wasn’t bad, I just thought he drifted too far off topic. Again, others will, no doubt, disagree with me.

My main disappointment with the book was that he didn’t deal more in depth with the issue I mentioned earlier, that our own forgiveness seems tied to our choice to forgive others. While he touches on the topic, he doesn’t really give it the attention I would have liked to have seen.

I highly recommend this book

In spite of the few issues I had, I would still list this in my current Top Ten list of books. Many, many people are held captive by their own unforgiveness of others, and I think this is one of the major barriers keeping people from experiencing their own grace and forgiveness. I hope this book does well, and finds its way into the hands of those who need it.

Forgiveness is healing; as Zahnd says, it changes everything.

Posted in Good News, Reviews | 1 Comment

Bradley Monton on the goals of science

Posted on February 21, 2011 by me

Food for thought:

“If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism – the philosophical position that restricts all explanations in science to naturalistic explanations –  it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. More and more evidence could come in suggesting that a supernatural being exists, but scientific theories wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge that possibility.”

– Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design

As the title to his book indicates, Monton is an atheist (some may call him an agnostic). But, he’s one of the few atheist writers who seems to be a true skeptic, open to himself being wrong.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments