Joseph Scibbe
Puritan Board Junior
(This review may be hard to understand and seems skip in trains of thought but that is how the book is written and that makes it incredibly hard to write a straight forward review, so please try to hang on and ask any questions you want)
I have finally finished reading Rob Bells newest book "Love Wins". In it Rob Bell does what he does best: ask questions and offer vague non-answers to them. The problem with reading Rob Bell is that he can be very confusing and often seems contradictory to himself. If you have anything on your reading list and you have not been asked for your opinion on this book, please don't spend your time reading it. As much as Rob Bell writes for "laymen" he is just too confusing in this book for the average Christian to try to make sense of his points (I apologize if this seems conceited and I have no desire to be so). There seems to be little continuity between the chapters and not much centrality to the book. It is heavy with anecdotes and emotional language.
Rob has quite a few good things to say in this book. He highlights the beauty of the grand story line of the Bible in a creation-fall-redemption-new creation manner. He confronts the idea of heaven as "somewhere else" that we go to and get to leave the world behind for eternity. He is even correct with the fact that "gehenna" referred to the town dump of Israel.
Unfortunately there is little else good to be found in Bells writing. One could say that this book confirms what everyone thinks of Bell, no matter what they think of him. If you want to label him a heretic, solid Bible teacher, or something in between there are plenty of quotes to support what you would want. That, however, is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes there is room for ambiguity and being open handed but this is not the time to be as openhanded as Bell is in this book. Being totally non-committal is not as good here as it could be with a side issue such as sign gifts. Bell's basic premise seems to be that since Jesus confronted the corrupt religious system of the day for being arrogant and assuming they were "in" that the Gospel is not about "getting in". While I agree that the Gospel has a rather large story line to it, we must also affirm that there is a personal element to it that requires belief and repentance, which is something Bell often likes to knock.
In the introductory chapter Bell says that it is a toxic idea to believe that some people will go to heaven while others go to hell. He makes it his point to say that this is a "hijacking" of the Gospel. Unfortunately it is Bell here who is misguided and hijacking the story of the Bible. Early on in the book Bell tells a story about an atheist teenager who dies. He tells of overhearing someone say that there is now no hope for that person, which apparently offended Rob. He asks if the Christian story is one of "no hope". In this case: yes. Unfortunately the consistent witness of Scripture is that "it is appointed to man once to die and then to judgment". This is not an easy thing to believe and it is not a fun doctrine to hold but it is what the Bible says and therefore must be believed.
When he finally gets around to defining "hell" (which is what most people want from this book) is is correct in showing the greek word gehenna which refers to the Valley of Hinnom. An actual place in the first century. He then goes on to define hell as being primarily a present, physical reality in our lives. He mentions a trip too Africa where he saw children with missing limbs, asks whether you have listened to a woman describe her rape, and wonders how to break the news of a fathers suicide to his young child. For Bell, hell is when people reject God. On earth and in this life. To reject the perfect, peaceful, loving union with God is hell. Hell is on earth and the Gospel is social justice. Please don't misunderstand me when I talk about this, I am a big advocate for social justice but it is a mistake to assume that social justice is the Gospel. He does mention that there is "hell now and hell later". In his definition of "hell later" he says that it is to teach people a lesson and refine them. His view seems very close to a purgatory type view. He quotes many passages from the OT that seem to support his view but infact are speaking to Israels return from exile. Rob Bell, again, misses the point.
In one of the most un-orthodox chapters (Does God Get What God Wants?) Bell, in his very unclear way, seems to lay his universalist cards on the table with his questioning and selective Bible quoting. Bell clearly defend his idea that there is a second chance to come to Christ after death and suggests that all people from all of time will eventually do this. Around 3/4 of the way through Bell makes a bold claim "Jesus is bigger than any one religion". Captivated to keep reading I find Bell quoting "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me" and expect to find him affirming the Biblical doctrine that Jesus is the only way to the Father and instead we find this "He doesn't even say that those coming to the Fahter through him will know that they are coming exclusively through him". What? People that come to the God through Jesus don't know they are coming through Jesus? Bell explains that this means that what God is doing in redemption is being done through Jesus and not necessarily in Jesus name. He goes on, just a few paragraphs down to declare that Jesus is the only way to heaven but that the Love of God is bigger than anything we could imagine.
From there on Bell becomes even more confusing for me to explain or even fully understand. In the end I think it is easiest to see Bells view as a mixture of universalism and purgatory with a dash of historic hellish theology. Very confusing and nearly impossible to pin down. What I find very concerning is that Bell has taken Gods attribute of love and lifted it far above any other attribute. There was only one mention of Gods justice (that I can recall). All in all this book asks more questions than it answers but the pattern laid out is pretty telling even though it is very slippery to hold on to.
Very good.
