If you haven’t already heard, Rob Bell is being judged. Or so say his defenders in the wake of a post by Justin Taylor that concluded that Bell “is moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity.” Perhaps there is something to question in saying something like this before reading the book. However, are both Taylor and John Piper really being patently unreasonable in coming to this conclusion? I mean here’s how the defense goes: Bell is just being provocative. He’s asking these questions to get people to really think about what they believe and why they believe it. Look at his endorsements. He couldn’t be advocating universalism. Asking questions doesn’t make one a heretic. This is just a marketing ploy, and it worked brilliantly. That’s why Bell is a great communicator. Reformed people don’t get it.
Okay. Here’s the deal.
If Bell’s book is not an argument for universalism, and that Bell’s rhetorical questions are not meant to ridicule the traditional beliefs of eternal conscious suffering, penal substitutionary atonement, and salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, then the marketing mechanism is a paradigm example of what Harry Frankfurt has defined as “bull****.” This is a good reason not to think Bell is a good communicator. This strategy of communication is pretentious, deliberately vague, and falls just short of lying. The “he’s being provocative” defense doesn’t help much in that provocation is not necessarily a virtue. It becomes vicious when you misrepresent yourself, acting like a phony, just so you can make a point and sell some books. Being forthcoming, clear, and presenting a persuasive argument, while considering contrary views in their best possible form, is always intellectually virtuous. Why not go that route? Because it doesn’t sell? Sounds like a good reason not to read the the book!
To be clear, I am not saying this because I am a Young, Restless, Reformed fanboy. The good Lord knows that I have been critical of things Piper and Taylor have said for years (after all, I am an Arminian egalitarian!). I think its fair to point out the wisdom of judging an author after reading their book, but to be surprised at their response to Bell’s promotional material, I think, shows a staggering lack of empathy for how they might hear what Bell is saying. I take their clear, serious-minded positions over the equivocation and obfuscation of a marketing ploy any day.
March 2nd, 2011 | 1:00 am | #1
Let me ask a naive question. Why not interpret this as simply an attempt to get more of his fellow Bible-believing evangelicals to struggle with what is obviously a very difficult church doctrine?
Surely that wouldn’t be a bad thing to do. And surely it wouldn’t count as bull**** or as a bad communicative strategy to effectively advertise and craft questions to this end.
Am I missing something? (I’m familiar neither with the man nor his book.)
March 2nd, 2011 | 8:22 am | #2
Adam, I am 100% in agreement with you. This is something I was discussing with a friend of mine yesterday. If, in fact, Rob Bell is this master communicator, this afficionado of the spoken word, then why can’t we tell the difference between a rhetorical question and a SERIOUS question (as many claim he is asking)? The thing that everyone keeps saying is, “Rob Bell is asking honest questions! Lets wait for his answers.” The struggle I have is that if the questions he is asking in the “Love Wins” video are honest questions and not rhetorical question, then I would honestly declare that either he is completely dishonest, or else he is probably the worst communicator I’ve ever seen. I’m not the smartest man on the planet, but I can tell the difference between a question and a rhetorical question.
So which is it? Is he (1) a universalist of some breed (2) asking honest questions – and therefore a horrible communicator, or (3) being purposely misleading? None of these are happy possibilities, but I’m not sure that there’s a fourth option.
As an important Christian leader, he could quell all of the stirring and speculating and release a simple short statement such as: “No, I am not a universalist.” But I think the press is much more interesting and profitable for him.
But also, the more time that goes by, the less convinced I am that his book is going to have any clear answers, once it does come out.
March 2nd, 2011 | 8:25 am | #3
Everything Bell has said thus far in the build up to the book release can fit easily within an orthodox framework.
The problem is that DeYoung seems to equate Reformed with orthodox. If you read DeYoung’s most recent post on the matter carefully, you will see that his real concern comes down to a rejection of penal substitution.
Taylor, I’m afraid, jumped the gun in the rush to be the first to spot a new “heresy”–an unfortunate side effect of the evangelical blogosphere.
What I want to know is when did penal substitution become orthodoxy? I know it is orthodoxy for many Reformed folks, but it certainly isn’t when you examine the entire Christian tradition.
Everything Bell has said strikes me as akin to Wesleyan and Pentecostal moves that have been made before; of course, for TRs (Truly Reformed) any move toward Wesley or Pentecostalism is of necessity a move toward heresy, and there’s the rub isn’t it.
In any case, I’ve said all this elsewhere so I’ll stop.
March 2nd, 2011 | 8:56 am | #4
Dale,
What is the definition you hold of ‘penal substitution’ that you wish to know when it became orthodoxy? Was this a position the Church held before the Reformation?
March 2nd, 2011 | 8:59 am | #5
Well said. Bell is marketing a book, and his views.
From the video I would clearly say that Bell thinks Gandhi is not in hell. The way he says it surely indicates that. He may say I didn’t say that, but he knows what he’s doing.
There are teachings in the church like Bell who are way too mysterious.
Say what you mean, AND mean what you say, for heaven’s sake.
March 2nd, 2011 | 9:07 am | #6
@Steve
I’m not sure I understand your questions, but I’ll take a shot.
1) penal substitution is an intensification of the satisfaction ideas of the atonement by certain Reformation thinkers
2) Thus penal substitution as a fully articulated theory was not even around prior to the Reformation (certain folks think they find it in various patristic statements, but that’s a matter of interpretation). The two dominant theories were various forms of Christus victor and Anselm’s understanding of satisfaction (which is not the same as penal substitution).
3) The question was more rhetorical. There has never been a single theory of the atonement that has been endorsed as being THE orthodox position in terms of ecumenical councils, or even among evangelicals as a whole. I know that some evangelical writers, e.g., Wayne Grudem, have explicitly said that penal substitution is THE orthodox evangelical position. Other evangelical writers like Roger Nicole and Leon Morris have spilled a lot of ink defending it. The folks who feel the need to defend penal substitution the most are usually Reformed. You can certainly find it in Reformed confessional statements, but then you can find a lot in Reformed confessional statements that Wesleyans would not hold.
March 2nd, 2011 | 9:18 am | #7
Dale,
Gotcha, thanks. I guess this might be related to a different question or set of questions in how God decided to satisfy our sin problem. Why was death necessary, or to be specific, the death of Christ necessary? Why did God require the death of Christ on our behalf to satisfy our sin problem when He could have done it a myriad of other ways?
March 2nd, 2011 | 9:29 am | #8
@Steve
To answer those questions would take this discussion far afield from Adam’s post. My only point is that one can answer them within the bounds of orthodoxy without penal substitution. That’s all.
Penal substitution privileges legal metaphors that stem from Levitical legislation and the role of sacrifice whereas Christus victor privileges slavery metaphors that stem from the Exodus tradition and focus on liberation.
The theological debate is in part how to reconcile these two trajectories from the Hebrew Bible.
You should note that Greg Boyd, who clearly holds Christus victor, endorses the book–a sign of where Bell is going? Maybe, but who knows unless they’ve read the book.
March 2nd, 2011 | 12:26 pm | #9
Dale, while the publisher of the book may have mischaracterized the book, if it is accurate I’m not so sure this statement from the publisher can fit easily within an orthodox framework:
Maybe it’s not fruitful to talk about the publisher’s characterization, but I’m not sure your take on the evangelical response is justified. I think concern is warranted to a greater extent than you imply. Anyway, I guess we’ll see by next month.
March 2nd, 2011 | 12:55 pm | #10
@Albert
This may be overly simplistic, but I could easily see that description as merely a twist on God does not send anyone to hell because God never made hell for humans, but for the fallen angels who rebelled against him. Humans get to hell because they send themselves there. Or, we might borrow a page from Anselm and say that God has designed the universe to work in a certain way, and this means that a life of given over to sinful and self-destructive behavior will beget death.
In this sense, if hell is less a physical location and more a state of being, then people create hell for themselves and others by the destructive characters they make through their choices. Even Jean Paul Sartre suggested that hell was other people in his play “No Exit.”
Recall C.S. Lewis’s sermon “The Weight of Glory,” in which he suggests that all humans are either becoming beings so beautiful that we would be strongly tempted to worship them upon sight or beings so distorted that we would not want to meet them even in our worst nightmares.
In other words, God does not directly will that any human being perish, but God has set up the universe with a moral framework so that one could say God indirectly wills it.
Of course, I may very well be wrong. Who knows? But my point is that these statements can still be read in an orthodox way: provocative yes, heretical no, not yet anyway.
March 2nd, 2011 | 1:24 pm | #11
Mark Galli at CT has a nice article on Bell. I note that Galli says,
(To be fair, in my reading of an advance copy of Bell’s book, I didn’t see unabashed universalism, though there are statements that lean in that direction. He clearly says that God’s love can be “resisted and rejected and denied and avoided,” and that doing so “is a form of punishment of its own” and “an increasingly unloving hellish reality.”
This “sounds” like the explanation I was giving about people creating their own hell; and it could explain the provocative claim of Harper.
March 2nd, 2011 | 3:01 pm | #12
First:
We can’t make absolute judgments about a book until, gee, we’ve actually read it.
Second:
Humans have no business declaring who is or who isn’t in hell. That is reserved solely for the Most High. You don’t have to be a universalist, Arminian, or Calvinist to believe that.
March 2nd, 2011 | 3:49 pm | #13
BTW — there is another position that says there will be no humans in hell without being universalist. It’s known as “annihilationism”. I had a seminary professor (an OT scholar) who introduced us to the view. Evangelicals who have at least entertained the idea have included Clark Pinnock, John Stott, Philip E. Hughes, and William Fudge. Peter Toon and BB Warfield also holds/held to a form of it.
Here’s a nice survey of the question (and a critique of it) written in 1997 by the eminent Reformed (and evangelical) scholar J.I. Packer: http://www.the-highway.com/annihilationism_Packer.html
Though he finds it deficient, Packer is respectful and irenic in tone. Some of the things that he wrote in the introduction have some bearing on this discussion about Rob Bell in my view: Evangelicalism (he writes) tends to “idealize scholars and leaders as ‘gurus’ [from]whence a sense of betrayal and outrage surfaces if any of these are felt to be stepping out of line….” uh huh.
And he talks about the some of the other weaknesses that were present (and still are?) in evangelicalism as an intellectual movement 15 years ago: “Within the distinctive corporate identity of evangelicalism an awareness of privilege and vocation, a siege mentality, a low flashpoint in debate, a certain verbal violence, and a tendency to shoot our own wounded — all obtrude.”
Wise words.
March 3rd, 2011 | 11:01 pm | #14
Steve–you asked “Why did God require the death of Christ on our behalf to satisfy our sin problem when He could have done it a myriad of other ways?”–I have the same question. I’m confused as to why death was necessary.
I assume there are books out there that answer this? Any suggestions?
March 4th, 2011 | 9:14 am | #15
Nshapland,
I’m glad someone is at least thinking about this question, thank you. I think it goes mainly back to the way God initiated atonement for sin in the Old Testament. When our first parents sinned, what did God do (Gen.3:21)? The making of garments of skin to clothe both Adam and Eve hints at the blood sacrifice that was required for atonement. I think we can see this as well when God accepted Abel’s offering and had regard for Abel’s offering of the firstlings of his flock (Gen. 4:4), but did not have regard for Cain’s offering of the fruit of the ground (Gen.4:3). We see it in God’s instructions to Noah to take ‘of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female (Gen. 7:2) aboard the Ark. We see it when Noah came off the Ark and built an altar to the Lord, ‘and took of every clean animal and every clean bird as burnt offerings’ (Gen. 8:20), and that God ‘smelled the soothing aroma, and said, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done (Gen. 8:21). “‘
We see it in the account of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22: 1-14), when God told Abraham to go to the land of Moriah and offer Isaac there as a burnt offering, God’s provision of a ram caught in the thicket, and in God’s response to Abraham’s faithfulness (Gen. 22: 16-17). What does God say here, ‘By myself I have sworn declares the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son…’, a sure hint of what was to come in God the Father, sending God the Son to die as atonement for the sins of you and I.
We also see a hint of it when Jacob settled in Shechem, in the land of Canaan, and erected an altar and named it El-Elohe-Israel (God, the God of Israel) (Gen. 33: 18-20).
And of course we see it in the OT sacrificial system of blood sacrifice and the death of an animal (not just any animal mind you) in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
So why did Christ have to die? The writer of Hebrews, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin (Heb.9:22).
Christ was the unblemished Lamb prefigured in the OT that was slain as atonement for sin. Man initiated death through his sin (Gen. 2:17)(1 Cor. 15:21), God confirmed it through His curse (Gen. 3:19), God then required death as payment for sin (Heb. 9: 22), Christ conquered sin through his death, conquered death through His resurrection (1 Cor. 15: 22), and He will end death once and for all at the end of the age (Rev. 21:4).
March 4th, 2011 | 2:17 pm | #16
[...] Adam Omelianchuk told Bell’s defenders to lay off, saying that whether he really believes this heresy or he is simply being provocative, either way criticism is fair game. [...]
March 11th, 2011 | 12:59 pm | #17
Christus Victor assumes some other theory of the atonement. No penal substitution will advocate denying it. They just insist that it makes no sense unless there’s something for Christ to triumph over, such as, perhaps. sin. (Unless they want to say that it’s all about God showing his glory by triumphing over Satan, but types who deny penal substitution often don’t like to base everything in God’s glory either.)
I say this without insisting that orthodoxy requires penal substitution. I don’t think it does. But I do think it’s heresy to deny any penal element to the atonement. Penal union is orthodox (the atonement unites us with Christ in his death, and we die with him and are raised with him, our sin thus being punished and removed in his death and his righteousness becoming ours in the process). Penal union advocates insist that sin needs to be punished but don’t like to think of it as substitution if we in some sense die on the cross with Christ (since it’s not substituted if it’s not in our place). I disagree with that argument, so I continue to hold to penal substitution, but I think the view is orthodox, because it doesn’t deny the biblical emphasis on penal atonement. It just doesn’t like thinking of it in terms of substitutionary relations but puts it in terms of identification with Christ.
But try Christus Victor without any need for punishment for sin. The victory then isn’t over anything that happened as a result of the human fall, in which case there’s no significance to what happened after Satan got humanity to fall. It’s all about victory over him because of what happened before the human fall, and the human fall isn’t an issue in the atonement.
March 11th, 2011 | 1:40 pm | #18
It’s a bit odd to be so concerned with whether a view is orthodox or heretical. Such distinctions tend to emphasize the question of whether or not a view aligns with the traditions. And such an emphasis tends to neglect the more straightforward inquiries into whether or not the view is true, justified, or reasonable.
March 12th, 2011 | 7:57 am | #19
‘And such an emphasis tends to neglect the more straightforward inquiries into whether or not the view is true, justified, or reasonable.’
Such clarity from such a skeptic as yourself, Mr. Ehrlich. As if by ourselves, we can determine what is ‘reasonable, true, or justified’. How do ‘you’ determine what is reasonable? Why is your ‘truth’ better than the Christian’s? What standard of measurement do you declare that something is ‘justified’?
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