USA Today on the Rob Bell controversy

In case you missed it, USA Today ran a nice article yesterday on the controversy that has erupted in the Christian blogosphere regarding "rock-star pastor" Rob Bell's upcoming book Love Wins and the video used to promote it online. The video (you can watch in the page linked above) has Bell describing a version (an over-simplified caricature, it seems to me) of traditional evangelicalism and asks a number of probing questions that strongly suggest that Bell teaches Christian Universalism, which is generally viewed as heretical, or at least very questionable.

Yet is Bell really a Universalist? The article says that, according to Bell, "Heaven and hell are choices we make and live with right now. 'God gives us what we want,' including the freedom to live apart from God (hell) or turn God's way (heaven)."
If you take that same logic and extend it into the age to come, you have something very close to what I believe (which I hope and believe is basically orthodox). Whether Bell does believe that this spiritual state of affairs between us and God extends into eternity or rather only exists "right now" in this age is something I couldn't say without reading the book.

And of course reading the book is precisely what many of his critics have not done (though some have, as the article above indicates). Yet the video has certainly been available for viewing and is fair game for criticism, but there is only so much that can be said about it, since, far from making theological assertions, it mostly asks provocative questions that will (presumably) be addressed in detail in the book. The article also says that Bell believes in the possibility of repentence after death, suggesting a scenario similar to that in C.S. Lewis' fictional work, The Great Divorce (which Lewis clearly says was not intended to depict what actually happens after death). I don't know where in Scripture Bell will find any support at all for this position, though that might be worth exploring further.

It may be that Bell is, as Richard Mouw (professor at the well-respected evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary), well within the bounds of orthodox evangelical Christian faith. It may be that Bell is being provocative (and perhaps a bit 'fast and loose' with the Bible) to generate sales for his new book. It may be that Bell really believes his approach is a more Biblical alternative to traditional evangelicalism. And it may be that Bell (like so many others) has fallen into error, allowing what he wishes to be true of God and of the age to come to overshadow what the Bible actually reveals, when faithfully interpreted by the church across the ages.

My ministry has greatly benefited from Rob Bell's Nooma series and I certainly hope (and pray) that we will have plenty of thought-provoking and orthodox resources available from his ministry in the future. If nothing else, perhaps this whole episode presents us with an opportunity to think long and hard not only about the relative merits and problems of the doctrine of universal salvation (not to be confused with the Wesley-approved and Biblical doctrine of universal or unlimited atonement) but also about how we, as Christians online, dialogue and debate; and how we can conduct ourselves in a manner "worthy of the calling with which we have been called."