Rob Bell on the resurrection

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjXYlwvS5LY] [ht my good friend Robin Parry] A glance at my blogging over the last few weeks will reveal that I am far from an uncritical supporter, but I maintain that any preacher who does not stand in awe of his gifts in communicating demonstrates so little understanding of her calling that she should give up right now. The video above? Let me put it like this: if someone donated a 4 min advertising slot to the churches during the Superbowl, we could not do better than to play it.

Read More

Rob Bell (insert stupidly large number here)

In chapter 5, ‘Dying to live,’ Bell turns to give an account of the atonement. He begins with a reflection on the ubiquity of the symbol of the cross, and the slogan, ‘Jesus died on the cross for your sins.’ (122) But what does that mean? Bell explores a ‘multiple metaphors’ view of the atonement, where different stories are told, which each hint at a part of the truth. It’s no secret that I think this is just the right way to approach atonement theology (see any of several publications on the theme); having tried to write a popular-level book on this theme it is humbling and irritating in equal parts to see someone who can really communicate have a go: Which perspective is the right one? Which metaphor is correct? Which explanation is true? The answer, of course, is yes. So why all the different explanations? For these first Christians, something massive and universe-changing had happened through the cross, and they set out to communicate the significance and power of it to their audiences in language their audiences would understand. And so they looked at the world around them, identifying examples, pictures, experiences, and metaphors that their listeners and readers would have already been familiar with, and then they essentially said: What happened on the cross is like… a defendant going free, a relationship being reconciled, something lost being redeemed, a battle being won, a final sacrifice being offered, so that no one ever has to offer another one again, an enemy being loved. (127-8) Yeah, what he said… (And notice that penal substitution stands first in Bell’s list. He really is an old fashioned evangelical if you just scratch a little below the surface!) There are problems. When Bell turns to sacrifice, his account repeats where he was in The Gods Aren’t Angry DVD (you’ve not seen The Gods Aren’t Angry? Go and buy it. Now. Watch it, repeatedly. Not for the theology, which is old-fashioned Religionsgeschichte stuff, long discredited, but because this is an utterly stunning lesson in public speaking. Seriously, if Steve Jobs could communicate like this, we’d have been spared Windows completely. If Obama could communicate like this, we’d never have heard of Sarah Palin). Sacrifice, on this account, is something natural to humanity, a way of appeasing divine forces; Jesus offers the final, perfect, sacrifice, and so brings an end to every human attempt to appease an angry deity. I confess I don’t like attempts to force the endlessly diverse religious traditions of humanity into an interpretative scheme; it smacks too much of a totalising ‘I know what your religion is really about’ approach, which should have died with colonialism. Unfortunately, it seems strangely resilient in most traditions of liberal theology. Evangelicalism has generally been less arrogant, and with due respect to Bell, I would rather we continued in that. There are problems. Bell repeats Aulen’s old canard about Christus Victor being the ‘central, dominant understanding of the cross’ for ‘the first thousand years or so of church history’ (128). Sorry, but it just wasn’t. Aulen was wrong, and eighty years on, we ought to have got hold of that. In the (theologically sophisticated) East, sacrifice, eucharist-as-medicine, and Platonic physicalism were roughly equally dominant on my reading, with sacrifice receding and physicalism advancing as we move from the third century to the seventh. I struggle to find any dominant metaphor in the West – they just aren’t asking that question. The narrative moves from cross to resurrection. Bell opens with the line ‘it’s important to remember that resurrection after death was not a new idea’ (130). This is true, but not in the way Bell means it. The resurrection of the dead was a burning expectation in (some strands of) the Judaism of Jesus’ day, built on profound reflection on the justice of God in the face of endless experiences of persecution, and the gospel accounts need to read in the light of those discussions. Bell, however, offers a strange nature-mysticism instead. ‘[T]he leaves drop from the trees and the plants die … And then spring comes, and they burst into life again.’ (130) ‘The cells in our bodies are dying at the rate of millions a second, only to be replaced…’ (131) Sorry, but this isn’t the right context to talk about resurrection in the Biblical view. Easter is not an example of a general pattern of death-and-rebirth, it is a shocking and decisive intervention into the created order which changes everything. Bell gets the universality of the change, and is good on it (‘A gospel that leaves out its cosmic scope will always feel small’ (135)),...

Read More

Rob Bell 8

Bell’s next chapter is entitled ‘Does God get what God wants?’ The title begs the question, of course: what does God want? As I said before, I take it that the real subject of the book is theology proper. Who is God? What does God want? We begin with statements of faith from church websites, and the apparent disjunction between the claims about who God is – almighty, loving, and full of grace and mercy – with the assertions about the eschatological fate of the lost. Says Bell: I point out these parallel claims: that God is might, powerful, and ‘in control’ and that billions of people will spend forever apart from this God who is their creator, even though it is written in the Bible that ‘God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2). So does God get what God wants? (97) Bell rehearses many universalist texts from the Bible. Not all of them can be taken as teaching universal salvation, certainly, but that is not his point, I think: all point to a basic purpose on the part of God to extend his welcome wide, a divine desire to see salvation reach as far out as possible. Bell asserts a repeated Biblical teaching that God desires universal salvation, coupled with a confidence on the part of the Biblical writers that – in this very purpose – God will not fail. Every knee will bow. The ends of the earth will confess. God is not impotent. The parables of Lk 15 suggest that ‘[t]he God that Jesus teaches us about doesn’t give up until everything that was lost is found. This God simply doesn’t give up. Ever.’ (101) What about, then, confessions of faith that assert that many, many people will be lost? In stirring prose, Bell pushes his question to a point of urgency: does God’s salvific will succeed, or fail? Does God get what He wants? He explores four answers on pp. 103-9. First, an Arminian exclusivism: God gives us the freedom to say no to His love. God’s purposes are frustrated by His gift of freedom to His creatures. Second, the same perspective, but with annihilation as the ultimate end of those who choose to reject. Third, a post-mortem offer of salvation, one final chance for those who never heard, or who heard the wrong gospel that was no gospel at all, or… Fourth, an endless series of post-mortem offers of salvation, with God not giving up until everything that was lost is found – a species of universalism, based on the offer to find forgiveness in a conscious embracing of Jesus Christ remaining endlessly open post-mortem. Bell points to the history of Christian universalism and, whilst his patristic knowledge is occasionally hazy, it is there to be pointed to. Bell spends a long time exploring and defending the possibility of universalism (pp. 106-9); one gets the sense that he feels that it will be hard to convince his readers that this is a live option. I wonder who his intended readers, who find this so difficult to believe in, are? He does not, at this point, embrace universalism, however. He leaves it as one of four options, all of which he proposes to reflect on with ‘two observations and then a picture from the end of the Bible.’ (109) The first observation is simply that there is a variety of possible answers to the eschatological question in the Christian tradition. If, Bell comments, ‘you’ don’t find Arminian exclusivism convincing [guess what? I don’t], then ‘you don’t have to believe it to be a Christian.’ (110). The second observation is that some stories are ‘better’ than others. In context, the criteria for ‘better’ are parsed as ‘bigger, more loving, more expansive, more extraordinary, beautiful, and inspiring’ (111) – not, notice (and Bell is upfront about this), ‘more accurate’ or ‘truer’. We are in the aesthetic realm of the fairytale ending – Sachin Tendulkar scoring a century on his home ground in his last match to win the World Cup; Paula Radcliffe finally getting marathon gold in London in 2012; Ryan Giggs ending his career with a treble-winning hat-trick (OK, that one’s a nightmare, not a fairytale). We are in ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful if…’ territory – and that’s an OK place to be, so long as we know that it is where we are. Bell’s fairytale ending reads like this: ‘everybody enjoying God’s good world together with no disgrace or shame, justice being served, and all the wrongs being made right’ (111). Bell acknowledges it as a wish, a...

Read More

Rob Bell, Love Wins 7: hell

Chapter 3 of Bell’s book turns to hell. I have read this chapter several times, and I confess that I am struggling to see how it fits together. I think Bell is aiming at two, widely separated, targets, and so is in danger of missing both. On the one hand, he wants to take on (what he regards as) a traditional doctrine of hell by suggesting that it is not there in the Scriptures; on the other hand he wants to construct an apologetic aimed at those who have already dismissed any account of hell as unpleasantly medieval. The problem is, those who are wedded to their traditionalism might have gone with him on the Biblical exploration, but will find his apologetic to be far too tentative and allusive, whereas those who are in need of hearing the apologetic are unlikely to be excited by wading through an extended Bible study on images of hell in the Scriptures before they get to anything they regard as interesting or relevant. (It may be that the logic runs something like this: ‘you’ve rejected an account of hell that is all about fiery caves inhabited by men in red tights shoving pitchforks into our behinds; that’s OK – I can show you that that was never there in the Bible anyway. Now, let’s think about our experience and see if we can come up with a doctrine of hell that makes some sort of sense…’ If so, there needed to be more signposting of this logic, for this reader at least.) Bell starts with Biblical references to hell. Nothing in the OT except Sheol, the shadowy realm of the dead. OK, we knew that. In the NT we have ‘Gehenna,’ identified with the Valley of Hinnom, which Bell identifies with the Jerusalem garbage dump. That’s true, but rather incomplete, as I assume Bell knows. Intertestamental Jewish apocalyptic, picking up the hint from Jer. 7:32 & 19:6, began to use Gehenna as a name for the final fiery judgement that would come. 1 Enoch (Ethiopian Enoch) is full of it; it’s there in 2 Esdras, the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch – and even in the Christian interpolations to the Sibylline oracles (see 1:127-9). The rabbis of Jesus’ day probably saw Gehenna (and Hades, which was taken to be a synonym) as a place of fiery purgation where evil souls resided until the final judgement (this idea was certainly common by the second century AD. (There may be a hint of this in Rev. 20, where ‘Hades’ is thrown into the lake of fire.) So to read ‘Gehenna’ in the NT as nothing more than a reference to the town rubbish dump is either to be remarkably ill-informed, or to be rather disingenuous. Bell moves on to ‘Hades,’ which he equates with Sheol, a shadowy post-mortem existence. This was certainly the classical Greek usage, and in the LXX αδης is used to translate ‘Sheol’. Again, however, to read the NT usage in the light of only this evidence is to ignore the extensive testimony to the development of ideas in the intertestamental period, where Hades became first the place – the shared place – of reward and punishment after death (so 1 Enoch and 2 Maccabees; Josephus claims that this is the position of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day – Ant. 18:14), and then the place of punishment alone, with reward delivered in heaven (this position is obvious in the Psalms of Solomon, for instance). This development probably makes less difference to understanding the NT usage of ‘Hades,’ but it probably deserves a mention… Having surveyed Gehenna and Hades, Bell claims ‘And that’s it. Anything you have ever heard people say about the actual word “hell” in the Bible they got from those verses you just read.’ (69). Well, maybe. There’s a lake of fire kicking around the back end of the book of Revelation which might have some relevance, and some other bits and pieces. Pictures of hell in popular Christian imagination do tend to be rather mythological, and even comical, owing far more to literally interpreted half-memories of Dante’s brilliant symbolism than anything Biblical, and if Bell is attempting a deconstruction of such pictures, I’m with him in intention. For personal preference, I’d rather do it without selectively ignoring the evidence, however; honest arguments just work better in my experience. The next section of the chapter is another quite brilliant piece of apologetic. How do you sell the idea of hell to (post)modern Western liberals? You tell them about seeing the after-effects of genocide in Rwanda (pp. 70-1); you talk about other stories of ‘what happens when...

Read More

Rob Bell: Loves Wins 6: Heaven

Chapter 2 of the book discusses heaven. As various people have pointed out, the approach is very reminiscent of that of my colleague Tom Wright. I think Tom is just right on most of these questions (I’d say that even if I wasn’t with him and Maggie for dinner this evening…), but let’s hear Bell out. He begins by criticising wrong understandings of heaven. Heaven is not ‘somewhere else’ (23-5); we deal with the subject badly if our core question is ‘who gets to go?’ (25-6). ‘Eternal life,’ Bell wants to insist, is not about endless duration, but about a new ‘era,’ a new age to come. He explores this by reference to the prophets, ending with the comment ‘if this sounds like heaven on earth, that’s because it is. Literally.’ (33) The age to come is universalistic (in the OT sense of being for all nations…) and physical and earthy. And it excludes all injustice. This leads Bell to a brilliant apologetic move: ‘people say they can’t believe in a “God of judgement.” Yes they can.’ (37). And Bell points to the endless inchoate demand that this ought to be different, that someone ought to do something about that. ‘We crave judgment, we long for it, we thirst for it … as the prophet Amos says, “Let justice roll on like a river”.’ (38). He makes the same move with divine anger. Yes, that’s right. Rob Bell defends the notion of divine wrath. Clearly, carefully, and convincingly. It is true that he focuses here on injustice, sexual exploitation, and environmental destruction rather than on, say, idolatry, but that is because the point is apologetic: how do you convince someone that divine justice and wrath might be realities? You point them the places where they get angry and demand justice, and say ‘and God feels the same’. Then, having established the possibility, you can perhaps move on to a broader Biblical picture and hope to be heard. Bell’s next move however is not to broaden his apologetic concerning sin, but to focus it. He points to our personal failure, in the terms used, ‘our role in corrupting the world,’ (39), and to the prophetic promise of mercy and grace. The reality of the world to come, on Bell’s telling? ‘Justice and mercy hold hands, they kiss, they belong together in … an age that is complex, earthy, participatory, and free from all death, destruction, and despair.’ (39). From all of this Bell comes up with an ethic: ‘taking heaven seriously, then, means taking suffering seriously, now … because we have great confidence that God has not abandoned human history and is … taking it somewhere.’ (45) Says Bell: It often appears that those who talk the most about going to heaven when you die talk least about bringing heaven to earth right now, as Jesus taught us to pray … At the same time, it often appears that those who talk the most about relieving suffering now talk the least about heaven when we die. Jesus teaches us to pursue the life of heaven now and also then, anticipating the day when earth and heaven are one. (45-6). Then Bell turns again to judgement. ‘…heaven also confronts. Heaven, we learn, has teeth, flames, edges, and sharp points.’ (49). Judgement, for Bell, points to the need for transformation. We need to become people now who are able to cope with heaven; if we do not, heaven itself will burn us up. ‘Paul makes it very clear that we will have our true selves revealed and that once the sins and habits and bigotry and pride and petty jealousies are prohibited and removed, for some there simply won’t be much left,’ (50) Finally, Bell suggests that there is a regular Biblical theme concerning the surprise of heaven. The sheep in Mt 25 are astonished to discover they have served Jesus; the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector is about reversal; the parable of the great banquet about a remarkable guest list. From this, Bell deduces, we might be astonished when we discover who is in heaven. He offers speculation about the sort of people who look right to him; I suppose that he will be as surprised as the rest of us… Finally, heaven as present reality, ‘a realm beyond the one we currently inhabit and yet near and connected with it. [Paul] writes of getting glimpses of it, being a citizen of it, and being there the moment he dies.’ (55-6). The summary of the chapter is this: There’s heaven now, somewhere else. There’s heaven here, sometime else. And then there’s Jesus’s invitation...

Read More
get facebook like button