There's some buzz on the neoReformed blogosphere (Justin Taylor, Kevin DeYoung) today that megachurch emerging celebrity pastor Rob Bell is finally coming out as a universalist based on the above video and the publisher's description of his forthcoming book:
Now, in Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Bell addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—the afterlife—arguing that a loving God would never sentence human souls to eternal suffering. With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly optimistic—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins.
My thoughts:
Bell's video is excellently produced and asks legitimate questions that every Christian and non-Christian wrestles with, or at least should. Justin Taylor and Kevin DeYoung may choose to bury their heads in the sand all they want and ignore any such questions, including when believers and non-believers ask them. That's real missional and pastoral.
Neither the video nor in the publishers' blurb affirm universalism, the belief that everyone goes to heaven or that there is no hell. In fact, the publishers description merely affirms with Bell that God's love wins out over his wrath (which is the orthodox Christian position. See: Jesus Christ.) and at most, the Arminian evangelical position (which was Christian and not heretical, last I checked, unless you want to posthumously go after C.S. Lewis as a heretic, too) that God does not willfully condemn anyone to hell -- he merely gives humans the ability to choose freely. Even such theological softies as R.C. Sproul (please note irony - he's one of my theological heroes and should be for any Calvinist) loudlyreject the notion that God willfully and wrathfully condemns anyone to sin and hell positively in the same manner that he saves and elects.
If people like Justin Taylor and Kevin DeYoung devoted even a fraction of the energy to sharing the Gospel that they currently devote to speculatively policing it, perhaps the Church would truly rise up in ways unimaginable.
Bell could still come out as a univeralist and I'll sound like an idiot, and I am slightly uncomfortable with some of his positions, missiology, and disdain for propositional truth... but I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say that he's not a heretic, that he's a partner in the Gospel, and that accusations of heresy are thrown around far too lightly among neoReformed blogosphere prima donnas.
Justin Taylor and Kevin DeYoung going after Rob Bell for his supposed heretical doctrine is as if Britney Spears and Justin Bieber went after Sara Bareilles for lack of musicianship. Whatever happened to theological discourse in this country... or music, for that matter. I need to stop making such a fuss about pseudo-celebrity fundamentalist wannabe-theologian bloggers and megachurch celebrity pastors. But so do American Christians.
At our regional staff conference today, Una presented a seminar on integrating evangelism and concern for social justice. She cited the division between liberal and fundamentalist Christians and the politics and overreactions that result as the primary reason many American Christians today are unable to integrate concern for both. Liberal Christians tend to care about social justice to the exclusion of evangelism and fundamentalists tend to care about evangelism to the exclusion of concern for justice. Christians can debate their relationship and prioritization but we clearly need both; much weight of Scripture points toward concern for justice and any Christian who is against evangelism is both anti-biblical and selfish.
I believe a significant presupposition behind both factions' disagreements is their definition of sin. Fundamentalists see sin merely as that which causes guilt, condemnation, and damnation. Liberals see sin as personal, relational, and societal brokenness or that which causes it. This difference leads to different meanings of Christ's atonement (his work on the cross). Fundamentalists see Christ's saving work as acquitting while liberals see it as healing and empowering. The end goal for fundamentalists is eternal life and the end goal for liberals is harmony and justice. Both limited views are based on infantile and incomplete views of God's Law. His Law is good and good for its followers; that's why he gave it to us. It also condemns, but the purpose of condemnation from the Law is to point toward Christ, his perfection, and his mercy.
The tunnel vision of both factions should be obvious to anyone who has spent time among the very broken or oppressed. Sin leads to guilt, condemnation, damnation, and personal, relational, and societal brokenness. Poverty, promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies, crime, drug abuse, prostitution, alcoholism, violence, discrimination, disease, early death, oppression, and greed are all interrelated and mutually perpetuating; these are either forms of sin or its results. In the forms of conscience and Scripture, the Law is a tool to restrain all of these and remind us of how far we fall short of Christ's perfection. The result of receiving Christ's completed work is full acquittal of guilt and death as we receive and participate in healing from personal, relational, and societal brokenness. We also anticipate the eventual full completion of that healing. That's good news worth sharing!
As someone who straddles the worlds of conservative and progressive evangelicalism, the divide often feels wider to me than it actually is. A few encouraging recent bytes:
Mark Driscoll gave a pretty good sermon recently on the emerging church and the importance of contextualization via Acts 17. He specifically identifies "emerging evangelicals" who may have women pastors and a few more minor disagreements with him as friends in a movement for Jesus and people he has "no reason to run off the road." Best quote from the talk: churches ask questions like "'what do emerging churches to reach lost people?' My [Driscoll's] answer is 'generally, nothing: Emerging churches are taking the disgruntled children of evangelical megachurches and re-orienting them into cool, hip services where they complain about their parents' church. That's not the point! The point is to get people who don't know Jesus and introduce them to Jesus!"
Another pastor-theologian refuting Glenn Beck:
"Faithful Christians can debate the proper and most effective means of organizing the political structure and the economic markets. Bringing all these things into submission to Christ is no easy task, and the Gospel must not be tied to any political system, regime, or platform. Justice is our concern because it is God's concern, but it is no easy task to know how best to seek justice in this fallen world."
Quote from none other than decidedly conservative Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler.
Side note: I'm actually really impressed with a lot of Southern Baptists and their takes on social justice lately. Rick Warren, Russell Moore, Mark Dever, Erwin McManus, Trevin Wax, Greg Gilbert, Mike Huckabee, and now Al Mohler are all well-known Southern Baptists I've heard publicly commit to some form of advocacy for social justice. Perhaps it was the recent process of repenting from its segregationist, pro-slavery past that has given it an orientation to speak on these issues with credibility. Perhaps the "conservative takeover" truly had a lot more to do with the authority of Scripture and proper doctrine (both certainly good things) than simply getting rid of anything that smelled like "liberalism" whether political or theological. Or maybe Christianity really is just a decade behind the secular world...
I'm leading a Christian doctrine cohort next semester for some AAIV and possibly some Greek IV leaders. The core book we'll probably use is Roger Olson's Mosaic of Christian Belief (Olson is a Baptist Arminian evangelical systematic theologian at Baylor/Truett).
One of the cohort's goals is to give the students a pretty good idea of the theological spectrum within present-day Protestantism to help them intelligently choose a church after college first on the basis of doctrine rather than more superficial criteria like worship style, demographics, charisma of leadership, quality of venue, etc., (not that pursuing excellence or compatibility/diversity in any of those areas is a bad thing). I couldn't find a decent 'map' of the Protestant theological spectrum along fundamentalist-evangelical-modernist lines so I decided to make my own. I'd really appreciate some feedback and I know I'm putting myself in a very risky position by making and posting this (one of the reasons why I didn't put InterVarsity on this). Yes I realize that there are many more theological spectra... many of them important.. and many other ways to choose a church.... I just wanted to map out this one as linear as possible... because I do think it continues to be the most important and defining spectrum within Protestantism.
I'm wondering whether it's fair to place 'young earth creationism' and 'King James only' on the spectrum... but I also know that a lot of AAIV students have a hard time placing the fundamentalist sign-holding King James only types who agitate on our campus ("are they really that different from us besides the fact that they use the King James and enjoy telling everyone they're going to hell?"). I also think it's helpful to point out how at some point, orthodoxy is at stake.
I had a hard time putting charismatic and pentecostal denominations on here -- you get a lot of Assemblies of God churches that are passionately in favor of women's ordination but adamantly defensive of young earth creationism and a very literal reading of apocalyptic literature.
I also realize that we're dealing with a different kind of conservatism with the Lutheran denominations... but still think having them on the spectrum is helpful, especially since I'm in historically German-Lutheran Wisconsin.
I couldn't fit the Baptist General Conference (BGC) on there because inerrantist open theism is just... very difficult to place on a spectrum.
Another question is where and how to fit the emergent movement or emerging church on here... and whether they fit somewhere on this spectrum and how important it is for an InterVarsity graduating senior to know about them...
Finally I'm not sure if dispensationalism belongs somewhere along the spectrum, as well... but it really depends on how you compare the conservatism of Westminster Seminary vs. the conservatism of Dallas... you can't compare an apple to an orange but if they're both chilled you can compare their temperature...
Feedback please!
EDIT: Methodology -- a few things I based the spectrum on:
Report from the early 2000s by the Association for Church Renewal that roughly 25% of members of the UCC, 30% of the United Methodist Church, and nearly half of the PCUSA could be identified as evangelical in their beliefs. I'm willing to project that this percentage has decreased in the UCC but remained fairly stable in the UMC and PCUSA.
Knowledge that the UCC and Episcopal Church have ordained multiple atheists and unitarians... and that these two denominations and more recently the ELCA practice denomination-wide gay ordination.
Statements of faith and public stances on infallibility, inerrancy, women in ministry, and creationism. The Evangelical Covenant Church is generally supportive of women at the pulpit and uses "perfect" instead of infallibility or inerrancy, which leans toward a slightly relaxed but present adherence to inerrancy. The Wesleyan Church takes a hard inerrantist stance but also takes a very affirming stance toward women's ordination. The Evangelical Free Church is explicitly inerrantist but is a conservative "tweener" on women's ordination because its churches can do it but the denomination won't. Dallas, Westminster, the PCA, and the SBC all take explicitly inerrantist and complementarian stances. The SBC takes an explicitly young earth creationist view and the PCA and CMA explicitly affirm a diversity of views.
Historically related denominations are grouped together: Reformed/Presbyterianism, Anglicans next to Methodists, CMA next to Presbyterianism, ECC and E-Free next to the Lutherans. I'm currently indecisive as to whether I'd like to group the forms of polity together... or group the Calvinist and Calvinist-ish denominations together... or just stick with the information I'm presenting and not try to overreach...
I wrote a list of suggested Do's and Don'ts for non-Asian (mostly white) speakers at AAIV large group meetings so that they can speak more appropriately to our context. Any thoughts, comments, or suggested additions?
Do define all biblical, theological, and technical terms (e.g., kingdom, covenant, justification, remnant, postmodern, eschatological) and don’t assume that the audience knows them.
Do feel free to “preach” with authority more than you would to a mostly white audience.Many Asian listeners respond well to being “called out” by a speaker.
Don’t be overly time-conscious (speak anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes!).
Do relate with plenty of anecdotal or personal stories and illustrations.
Don’t ask for short-response answers directly from the audience (you won’t get any and it will be awkward) but do feel free to provide group process or response time (e.g., “turn to the person next to you and discuss ____” or “get in groups of 3-4 and share ______” then, if desired or appropriate, ask for a few volunteers to share with the whole room).
Do spend more time on prayer and/or reflection at the end of your talk.Anywhere from 3-10 minutes is appropriate.Feel free to provide guidance or work with the worship leader during this time.
Don’t assume that lack of visual or verbal response means lack of attention or connection – many of us are quiet, passive listeners!
