A Thorough Response to "Love Wins"

Michael Wittmer is a guy I trust. His book Don't Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus Is Not Enough is well worth reading. He also posted a series of effective responses to Brian MacLaren's tragic book A New Kind of Christianity.

Now Wittmer has released a full response to Rob Bell's Love Wins. It is entitled Christ Alone.

Check out the review by Trevin Wax HERE.

Submitting both our hopes and imaginations to Scripture

Obviously, universalism has been getting quite a lot of attention lately. This is largely a good thing. It is why some orthodox theologians speak about our "debt to heresy." Heresy tends to rally the orthodox. It prompts the faithful to reexamine their doctrine and recover neglected points of truth. Rob Bell has unintentionally spurred on a wealth of fresh material on the doctrines of Hell, Heaven, the final judgment, and the eternal state.

In a recent article, James K. A. Smith responds to the new universalists. In particular Dr. Smith challenges those who dismiss the doctrine of Hell because they "can't imagine it" and those who "hope" it isn't true.

1) The "I-can't-imagine" strategy is fundamentally Feuerbachian: it is a hermeneutic of projection which begins from what I can conceive and then projects "upwards," as it were, to a conception of God. While this "imagining" might have absorbed some biblical themes of love and mercy, this absorption seems selective. More importantly, the "I-can't-imagine" argument seems inattentive to how much my imagination is shaped and limited by all kinds of cultural factors and sensibilities--including how I "imagine" the nature of love, etc. The "I-can't-imagine" argument makes man the measure of God, or at least seems to let the limits and constraints of "my" imagination trump the authority of Scripture and interpretation. I take it that discipleship means submitting even my imagination to the discipline of Scripture. (Indeed, could anything be more countercultural right now than Jonathan Edwards' radical theocentrism, with all its attendant scandals for our modern sensibilities?)

2) The "at-least-I-hope" strategy might seem less problematic. Doesn't it just name what all of us secretly desire? Indeed, wouldn't we be quite inhuman if we didn't hope in this way? (Then you get Winner's obnoxious suggestion that any of those who continue to affirm divine judgment are really trying to "guard heaven's gate," taking a certain delight in exclusion, as if they saw heaven as a country club. I won't dignify that with a response.)

But whence this hope? Can our hopes ever be wrong? Let's try an analogous example: I love my wife dearly. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, and our marriage has been an incredible means of grace in my life. I can't imagine life without her; indeed, I don't want to imagine life without her. And I want to hope that we will share this intimacy as a husband and wife forever.

But then I run into this claim from Jesus: "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven" (Matt. 22:30). Should I nonetheless hope that marriage endures in eternity? Should I profess that I can't know this (since Scripture seems to suggest otherwise), but nonetheless claim that somehow hoping it might be true is still faithful? Or should I submit even my hopes to discipline by the authority of Scripture?

Read the entire article HERE.

The Kindness and Severity of God

This week the Gospel Coaltion's national conference featured a message from Don Carson entitled "God: Abounding in Love: Punishing the Guilty." You can download the audio HERE.

Dr. Carson's message was followed by a panel discussion on the love of God and the reality of Hell. Take time to listen HERE.

Rob Bell in Time

So now Time Magazine gives Rob Bell a cover story. Jon Meacham writes the story concerning Bell's new book Love Wins. Intense controversy has followed the release of Love Wins. Since then Bell has been on the defensive. He has been busily denying that he is a universalist which seems to contradict that which he proclaims in his new book. Even those who are supportive of Bell's project know that he is advancing what can only be understood as a kind of universalism. Meacham writes:

The standard Christian view of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is summed up in the Gospel of John, which promises "eternal life" to "whosoever believeth in Him." Traditionally, the key is the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Son of God, who, in the words of the ancient creed, "for us and for our salvation came down from heaven ... and was made man." In the Evangelical ethos, one either accepts this and goes to heaven or refuses and goes to hell. Bell, a tall, 40-year-old son of a Michigan federal judge, begs to differ. He suggests that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal — meaning that, as his book's subtitle puts it, "every person who ever lived" could have a place in heaven, whatever that turns out to be.

But Bell has reassured his church in a recent congregational meeting that he is thoroughly within the tent of historic Christian orthodoxy. But this seems to be at odds with what Bell writes in Love Wins. And Meacham knows this. Bell even stated in an interview by Meacham, "I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian" [emphasis mine]. The vision of Christianity held forth by Rob Bell is clearly not in keeping with what was proclaimed and passed on by Jesus and the apostles. He is indeed advancing a new vision of "what it means to be a Christian." I just wish he would be honest about it.

Commenting on the Time cover story Denny Burk makes an observation that I hope will give Rob Bell (or at least his congregation and readers) a reason to pause:

Every year during Easter season, the news weekly’s like to feature stories that tweak traditional Christian belief (for example, The Gospel of Judas, the tomb of Jesus, etc.). For these publications, Holy Week has become heresy week. I think it says something that Bell’s book has now taken a place next to these kinds of stories.

Concerning the fate of those who do not believe...

From Sam Storms:

In a recent interview with Sally Quinn of The Washington Post, Rob Bell again muddied the waters over the question of the fate of those who’ve never heard about Jesus. In doing so he also greatly misrepresented the evangelical answer to this question. Here are his words:

“If, billions and billions and billions of people, God is going to torture them in hell forever – people who never heard about Jesus are going to suffer in eternal agony because they didn’t believe in the Jesus they never heard of – then at that point we will have far bigger problems than a book from a pastor from Grand Rapids.”

Bell is responding to evangelicals who purportedly believe that people “are going to suffer in eternal agony because they didn’t believe in the Jesus they never heard of.” Let me say this as clearly as I can: No one will ever suffer for any length of time in hell or anywhere else for not believing in the Jesus they never heard of. Should I say that again or is it enough to ask that you go back and read it again?

Bell and others who make this sort of outrageous claim have evidently failed to look closely at Romans 1:18ff. Here we read that the wrath of God revealed from heaven is grounded in the persistent repudiation by mankind of the revelation God has made of himself in the created order. In other words, there is a reason for God’s wrath. It is not capricious. God’s wrath has been deliberately and persistently provoked by man’s willful rejection of God as he has revealed himself...

Paul’s point here in Romans 1 is that this revelation is sufficiently clear and inescapable that it renders all without excuse (see Rom. 1:20). Consequently, there is no such thing as “an innocent native in Africa” any more than there is “an innocent pagan in America.”

What does Paul mean when he says that all humanity is without excuse? “The excuse that is banished,” notes R. C. Sproul, “the excuse every pagan hopes in vain to use, the excuse that is exploded by God’s self-revelation in nature is the pretended, vacuous, dishonest appeal to ignorance. No one will be able to approach the judgment seat of God justly pleading, ‘If only I had known you existed, I would surely have served you.’ That excuse is annihilated. No one can lightly claim ‘insufficient’ evidence for not believing in God” (Classical Apologetics, 46).

The problem is not a lack of evidence. The problem is the innate, natural, moral antipathy of mankind to God. The problem is not that the evidence is not open to mankind. The problem is that mankind is not open to the evidence.

Read the entire article HERE.

Helpful lessons from the "Love Wins" debate...

Tony Reinke suggests 16 lessons learned from the broo-ha-ha over Love Wins.

The Devil's in the Details

At the risk of picking on Rob Bell I am going to post another critique of "Love Wins." It is by Greg Gilbert. Greg's focus is on just a few details that Bell gets terribly wrong. This matters because Rob Bell is a bit of a rock star and is selling gazillions of books and dvd's. Therefore when he rests his arguments against the historic orthodox consensus on Hell on fautly or outright false assertions then it is important to offer correction. Otherwise, these falsehoods will become just a part of the evangelical landscape ("You know the Bible doesn't have a concept of forever"). I have already posted on Bell's very sloppy or dishonest quoting of Martin Luther.

Gilbert focuses primarily on Bell's exegesis of Scripture which, at best, is sloppy. He also challenges Bell's strange (ignorant? dishonest?) assertion that the biblical writers had no "category" for the concept of "forever."

Check it out HERE.

"Amending the Gospel"

Rob Bell has been making the rounds. He's been on Good Morning and America and on MSNBC with Martin Bashir. What is fascinating is the clarity that Mr. Bashir seems to possess concerning Rob Bell's project.

Reviews of "Love Wins"

Kevin DeYoung and Denny Burk have posted their reviews of Rob Bell's Love Wins. I strongly encourage you to read both reviews. They are models of thoughtful engagement and sound theology.

Kevin's Review HERE.

Denny's Review HERE.

Denny Burk also references Richard Mouw's review of Love Wins. Dr. Mouw is the president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Bell is a graduate of Fuller and friend of Mouw.

USA Today reports on Mouw's favorable review:

Richard Mouw, president of the world’s largest Protestant seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary based in Pasadena, Calif., calls Love Wins “a great book, well within the bounds of orthodox Christianity and passionate about Jesus.

The real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between “generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people.”

Dr. Mouw repeats a tired and irresponsible accusation against those who uphold the biblical teachings on hell and the judgment of God: that they "take delight in the idea" of hell. Richard Mouw and Fuller Seminary are coming to represent what "big tent evangelicalism" has become. Surely Dr. Mouw would not make this accusation against Jesus who himself said that the way to life is narrow and few find it while the way to destruction is wide and many find it. Does this make Jesus "stingy"? Does this means Jesus "takes delight in" hell? As far the Rob Bell allowing "for a lot of mystery," of that there is little doubt. They only thing Rob Bell seems to make clear is that Jesus cannot possibly mean what he said.

God's Punitive and Retributive Silence

There is a sense in which the church owes a debt to heresy. Don't misunderstand. We should never be thankful for false teaching which leads God's people astray. False teachers are clearly condemned in Scripture. But we also know just how easily sound doctrine devolves into a kind of dead orthodoxy. It seems to have pleased God throughout the generations of the church to use heresy and various false teachers to prompt the church to renew her love for God and His truth.

The latest attacks on God's truth come once again from within the big tent of evangelicalism. Specifically, a certain highly influential pastor in Grand Rapids is now denying the doctrine of hell as a just expression of the judgment of God upon unrepentant sinners. Of course this is no surprise given the fact that this same man has denied the substitutionary atonement of Jesus' death and the necessity of His virgin birth and resurrection. But this same man has unwittingly called the church to arms in a way. There has been a flood of excellent material flowing through the blogosphere reminding God's people of the truth declared in Scripture.

Martin Downes has been helpful in recent postings on the Bible's doctrine of hell: HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Thanks to Kevin DeYoung for posting the following words from Carl Henry's majestic work God, Revelation, and Authority:

God’s most awesome silence in eternity will be his silence toward the lost, a punitive and retributive silence reserved for the wicked who are not on speaking terms with him. There are scholars who consider the eternal punishment of the wicked to be inconsistent with the nature of God. These critics tend to subordinate to divine love all the biblical passages about God’s wrath, and ignore the fact that Jesus said even more about the pangs of hell than about the bliss of heaven, and moreover makes their duration coextensive and unending.

Millar Burrows is right in the verdict that “no basis” exists in Jesus’ recorded sayings for the universalist notion that all humans will finally be saved: “So far as the evidence indicates, he thought of the punishment of the wicked as eternal” (An Outline of Biblical Theology, p. 211). Hell involves not only the continuance of the sinner’s present condition of unhappiness, but also grievous punishment and irreversible exclusion from God’s presence. Jesus did not hesitate to quote Isaiah 66:24, which implies eternal punishment in the flesh, and to use such characterizations as “out darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Hell resounds with weeping and wailing: there it is not the sinner but rather God who is silent.

The New Testament has no doctrine of a “second chance”; its emphasis is rather that “everyone must die once, and after that be judged by God” (Heb. 9:27, TEV) or, as Phillips words the text, “it is appointed for all men to die once, and after that pass to their judgment.” Nor does the New Testament anywhere condone the notion that the wicked will not survive this life into an afterlife. Such an end would mercifully terminate their existence, would spare them conscious separation from God and the punishment of the ungodly of which the Bible insistently speaks.

A fundamental Christian doctrine is that all departed souls will at the second coming of Christ be restored to bodily life; the redeemed will enter upon the life of heaven, the unredeemed will be excluded from it. The punishment of the wicked who in this life rejected the divine invitation to redemption will include conscious awareness of having spurned Christ’s agony and death in their behalf. (Volume IV, 596-97)

On Monday, Rob Bell will be unveiling his new book in what is being billed as "a live global event." DeYoung will be posting on that day a review of Love Wins. Be sure to check it out.

Tim and Carl on "Love Wins"

Tim Challies has written a helpful review of Rob Bell's new book Love Wins.

A God who would allow people to go to hell is not a great God, according to Bell, and the traditional belief that He would is “devastating … psychologically crushing … terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable” (pp. 136-7).

God is at best sort of great, a little great—great for saving some, but evil for allowing others to perish. Dangerous words, those. It is a fearful thing to ascribe evil to God.

So what of the gospel? Where is the gospel and what is the gospel? Ultimately, what Bell offers in this book is a gospel with no purpose. In his understanding of the Bible, people are essentially good, although we certainly do sin, and are completely free to choose or not choose to love God on our own terms. Even then he seems to believe that most people, given enough time and opportunity, will turn to God...

Christians do not need more confusion. They need clarity. They need teachers who are willing to deal honestly with what the Bible says, no matter how hard that truth is. And let’s be honest—many truths are very, very hard to swallow.

Love does win, but not the kind of love that Bell talks about in this book. The love he describes is one that is founded solely on the idea that the primary object of God’s love is man; indeed, the whole story, he writes, can be summed up in these words: “For God so loved the world.” But this doesn’t hold a candle to the altogether amazing love of God as actually shown in the Bible. The God who “shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8), who acts on our behalf not so much because His love for us is great, but because He is great (Isaiah 48:9, Ezekiel 20:9,14,22,44, 36:22; John 17:1-5).

That’s the kind of love that wins. That’s the kind of love that motivates us to love our neighbors enough to compel them to flee from the wrath to come. And our love for people means nothing if we do not first and foremost love God enough to be honest about Him.

Read Tim's entire review HERE.

Carl Trueman, a professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary has written a helpful critique of Rob Bell's use of historical sources. In Love Wins Bell offers a quote from Martin Luther proving that the Reformer asserted that God would give men and women an opportunity to turn to Christ after they die. The problem, as Dr. Trueman points out, is that Luther wrote nothing of the sort.

On page 108 of Love Wins Bell writes:

“And then there are others who can live with two destinations, two realities after death, but insist that there must be some kind of "second chance" for those who don't believe in Jesus in this lifetime. In a letter Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, wrote to Hans von Rechenberg in 1522 he considered the possibility that people could turn to God after death, asking: "Who would doubt God's ability to do that?"”

“Again, a good question.”

“And so space is created in this "who would doubt God's ability to do that?" perspective for all kinds of people--fifteen-year-old atheists, people from other religions, and people who rejected Jesus because the only Jesus they ever saw was an oppressive figure who did anything but show God's love.”

But, as Trueman points out, context is king. It is amazing how just a little context changes the entire meaning of what Bell claims that Luther wrote. The quote used by Bell is found within these two paragraphs from Luther. The portion Bell uses in Love Wins is highlighted in green:

“If God were to save anyone without faith, he would be acting contrary to his own words and would give himself the lie; yes, he would deny himself. And that is impossible for, as St. Paul declares, God cannot deny himself [“II Tim. 2:13”]. It is as impossible for God to save without faith as it is impossible for divine truth to lie. That is clear, obvious, and easily understood, no matter how reluctant the old wineskin is to hold this wine--yes, is unable to hold and contain it.”

“It would be quite a different question whether God can impart faith to some in the hour of death or after death so that these people could be saved through faith. Who would doubt God's ability to do that? No one, however, can prove that he does do this. For all that we read is that he has already raised people from the dead and thus granted them faith. But whether he gives faith or not, it is impossible for anyone to be saved without faith. Otherwise every sermon, the gospel, and faith would be vain, false, and deceptive, since the entire gospel makes faith necessary. (Works, 43, ed. and trans. G. Wienke and H. T. Lehmann [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968], 53-54; WA 10.ii, 324.25-325.11)”

So it is clear that Luther is affirming the exact opposite of what Bell attributes to him. Of course, the average reader, assuming Bell has done his homework, will not question the assertion. Does this make Bell dishonest or just sloppy?

Trueman concludes:

Building arguments on theological soundbites, especially from the works of prolific and sophisticated theologians such as Luther, is surely very tempting in today's instant internet age. We all want our fifteen minutes of fame but none of us want to spend any more than fifteen seconds doing the grunt work necessary to achieve it. Yet, like a lady of easy virtue, such an approach may have immediately seductive charms but ultimately proves a rather cruel mistress for the would-be historian. It also says much (and none of it flattering) about the competence of the editors at Harper, that they did not seize on this elementary error and correct it. Checking sources, especially when they seem to say something unexpected, is surely the most basic task of both author and editor.

The book will, of course, sell many copies, far more than anything I will ever write, I am sure. But then so did Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code; and that was a book with which, from the safely controversial content to the sloppy historiography, Rob Bell's latest offering would appear to have much in common.

Read Carl's entire article HERE.

"Ashamed of hell"

“Many in the church today have universalism simply as a hope. Though they may not preach it dogmatically, they don’t eliminate the possibility that all will be saved in the end. We may call them the ‘wishful universalists.’

I have been told numerous times that there are many ‘closet universalists’ in evangelical churches today. These are people who believe that all will be saved, but are afraid of being public about this belief as it is considered a heresy in orthodox Christian circles, and also because the idea that all will be saved could add to the spiritual apathy of this generation.

Related to the above question is that of evangelicals who are ashamed of hell. They are bound to believe everything the Bible explicitly teaches, so they believe in an eternal hell. But they wish that they did not have to believe it. If they speak about the topic, which is not very often, they do so with a sense of shame, as if it were something very unjust, and they keep saying that they wish it were not true.”

Ajith Fernando from Crucial Questions About Hell

More on Rob Bell's new book...

Some other thoughtful guys have weighed in on Rob Bell's forthcoming book Love Wins:

Denny Burk

Justin Taylor

Kevin Deyoung

Joshua Harris

Trevin Wax