Rob Bell's "Love Wins" Review--Full Length
Thank you for reading this review! First, I’d like to mention that I do not know Rob Bell personally and I am not familiar with much of his work. The review will include this current book, Love Wins, and the interviews related to it. This review will be divided into 3 parts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. If you don’t like all the big words and theological terms, you can read the “Sweetened, Condensed Review” below this one. This way, we won’t be wasting each other’s time.
For those of you brave enough to move on, let’s start with
THE GOOD
Rob Bell makes much of the love of God. This is good. One of God’s greatest attributes is His love for us. It is His most popular attribute, to be sure. Without it, we would have been doomed following Adam’s initial sinfulness in Genesis 3. He could have just crumbled up the whole of the human race at that point (when you’ve seen two, you’ve seen them all, you know) and started over. He could have given up on us and done what He pleased in His anger and/or disappointment. He could have directed His love toward another race or another part of creation that would actually listen to Him and obey Him. But He didn’t.
Another good thing is that Bell tries to identify with and reach out to people who have become disillusioned with church and religion in general. That’s good, because there have been some horrendous things done and said in the name of God and Christianity that have really maligned the name and cause of Christ. God has been blamed for things He had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with. I will say, however, that some of the things Bell calls into question were not the problem, but the WAY they were presented. I may come back to that later.
Another good thing (to a point) is Bell’s desire to reach out to the needs of people, in a physical way, (ie; poor, starving, homeless, thirsty) and in taking care of the earth and the like. These are good things, but you have to get things in the right order before they work the desired result. Bell fails to do that. We may get back to that, too.
In the course of the book, Bell makes a number of statements and asks a number of questions that call on the carpet some issues that need some examination.
I like some of these entries:
“There is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous.”
“…the phrase ‘personal relationship’ is found nowhere in the Bible.”
“What you believe about the future shapes, informs and determines how you live now.”
“Eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts now.”
“First, one about our choices. We are free to accept or reject the invitation to new life that God extends to us. Our choice.”
Unfortunately, that about covers it for the good in this book.
THE BAD
Next, is the bad. Most of this is personal opinion and deals with stylistic issues. The WAY the book is written is off-putting to me. His style is quite different than others who tackle huge issues like this one. His book includes over 300 questions in 198 pages of text. Many of them are exploratory. Many others call into question things we take for granted in the Christian world that need to be called into question. Others are just really weird and made me scratch my head and wonder; “What in the world is this guy thinking????” He takes you to places of thought you’ve probably never ventured before. But, instead of starting from a place of Truth, taking you out to investigate these places, explaining as he goes, then bringing you back to that place of Truth to finish up; he goes waaaay out there, stops the proverbial car, then kicks you out, leaving you to find your way back to…well, somewhere. We’re not sure where one will end up and I don’t believe Bell really cares either. In his opinion, you can fend for yourself. This is intellectually irresponsible, to me. This is a tactic that could have been used 2 or 3 generations ago, when the general public had a much better grasp of the Scriptures…maybe. But we live in a generation that has a huge illiteracy when it comes to the things of God. When he takes people out to these wild places of thought, most are not equipped enough in the Word to find their way back to solid Truth. I know what he’s trying to do, but picks the wrong time in history to do this.
This is symptomatic of the Emergent Church movement. Bell and some others, like Brian McLaren, are masters of deconstruction. They are masters of putting their finger on some of the problems of the church, but are LOUSY at answering those questions with truth from God’s Word. Or as Oz Guiness said during program 1004 of the White Horse Inn; “so clear about everything that’s WRONG…but so UNclear about what is RIGHT.” Many of the questions in this book are never answered or resolved. They are meant to leave you hanging, calling you to question things that have survived hundreds of years in Christian thought, surviving the scrutiny of some of the greatest scholars in and out of Christendom. But Bell knows better and calls these things into question.
If you’ve seen the interviews with Bell on the talk show circuit, many of the hosts have tried to get straight answers out of him, only to fail and have to ask 3 or 4 times to get him to answer. Even then, his answers are circuitous and unclear, almost by design. The interview with Martin Bashir on MSNBC was cringe-worthy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-qgmJ7nzA I don’t know the guy’s spiritual condition, but he has a grasp on the very basic truths of the gospel. So much so, that he pins Bell to the mat and makes him squirm in his chair. I found it interesting that Bashir uses Bell’s very tactics from the book when questioning Bell himself. It’s just unfortunate that many won’t catch the irony of that. It’s almost as cringe-worthy as Joel Osteen and his interview with Larry King from 2005. Very sad.
Another thing that is bad is the scholarship of this book. During an interview, (http://www.christianpost.com/news/rob-bell-denies-being-a-universalist-49417/) Bell admits that he is not a theologian. That is no surprise. Nor is he a scholar, a good student of original biblical languages or history. Bell quotes scripture profusely, (he uses the TNIV--good grief!), but rarely gives notation of it’s origin and more often than not, takes things out of context. He also makes general historical claims, but again no footnotes or notations of origin. Time and space do not permit me to enumerate the whole of them, but let’s say, if his university English prof got a hold of this, and it were an assignment, he would fail. It would be marked up in lots of red ink.
THE UGLY
This part of the task is the hardest and will be the longest. It is akin to being a mosquito in a nudist colony…the question is; “Where does one start?” There is so much material. This will not cover every problem in the book, otherwise, this would be the length of his own book and I won’t do that to you.
I guess I’ll start with one of the biggest problems I encounter in this book. This would be Bell’s imbalance, raising God’s attribute of love above every other attribute that God has in his nature. There is a balance in God’s nature that exists in no one else’s character and nature. Man cannot elevate one part of God’s character above all the others. Similarly, we do the same when seeking after the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5. We really look for the love, joy and peace thing, but turn away a bit when Paul gets to patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We like the first three, so we elevate them over the other six. God calls those nine components the FRUIT (singular) of the Spirit. It’s different petals of the same flower. If you have three big, manly petals and six scrawny ones, the flower looks terribly weird. Bell conveniently leaves out God’s holiness, righteousness, justice and a bunch of others, only to create a terribly weird God who has no balance. But Bell spins this God wildly, so you only see the parts he wants you to see, which, to Bell, is a win.
Again, Bell makes much of God’s love, but to the exclusion of His holiness, righteousness and justice. Bell’s good news is wishy washy because he doesn’t understand what the bad news is. Nowhere in the book does he bring up the holiness of God or His justice, except to mock the teaching of these things in the past. From the beginning, page viii, he starts with the mocking;
“This love compels us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story. A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love peace forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.”
And for God to be holy enough to punish sin, Bell goes off on God; calling HIM imbalanced. Go figure.
“Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the gospel does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God would have no choice but to punish them forever in a conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in the moment of death, a different being to them forever. A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony…If God can switch gears like that, switch entire modes of being that quickly, that raises a thousand questions about whether a being like this could ever be trusted, let alone be good.” (p 174-175)
He has to water down, (change is actually more accurate) the good news, as he basically throws out the bad news and calls it toxic teaching. Then takes away the holiness of God, so he can be sure that no one will accuse God of being a schizophrenic. Here’s the problem, you can’t have good news without the bad. The bad news is really bad. God is holy and righteous and cannot tolerate sin. Man is created in Genesis (which Bell calls the “Genesis poem” for some reason) perfect. By chapter 3, we’re informed of his failure, his fall, his sin against God. This sets man against God. God promised that if man disobeyed, man would die. Yes, physically, but also spiritually. Hundreds of years later, his body dies (oh, to live to be 930…), but he died immediately the day he ate the fruit. This sin problem has been passed down to every generation through history and is a problem for us all before we even start. Paul wrote; “for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.” (1 Cor 15:22 NAS) This all boils down to imputation. Imputation is a big word that means “credited to one’s account.” Adam’s sin is imputed to us, that is, credited to our account, even though we haven’t done anything to deserve it. No, it’s not fair, but there is more to imputation later, but we’ll leave it here for now.
We have to understand, this is NOT the American system of justice. You are NOT innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty until you are pronounced innocent by the Judge of All Life. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” Eph 2:1-2 NAS. “and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” (v3) Guilty. Dead. “Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Eph 2:12-13 NAS
Rob Bell NEVER mentions anything like this in his book. How about some familiar verses, like John 3:16-17?
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. NIV
Why? Keep reading…
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
Romans 1:18-21 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Dead before you start. Condemned before you live. This is the bad news. “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.” Isa 64:6 NAS. “Rab. Mosheh ben Maimon interpretatur 'idiym, vestes quibus mulier se abstergit post congressum cum marito suo. Alii pannus menstruatus. Alii panni mulieris parientis.-"And we ben made as unclene alle we: and as the cloth of the woman rooten blode flowing, all our rigtwisnesses."-Old Manuscript Bible. (from Adam Clarke's Commentary). Our righteous deeds are compared to a used, menstrual cloth. That’s the best we have to offer. He is holy and we offend His perfection by our very being. None of us shall stand with any merit before Him and live. It’s bad news and it belongs to all of us. We ALL deserve wrath and punishment (Rom 3:10-18). This is not popular these days and Bell doesn’t like it, either, so he skips it. Bell doesn’t like the prospect of a biblical Hell, so he changes that so it means whatever you want it to mean (p 70-71), though he never really comes out and says that. Hell is more what goes wrong and is bad here, not where spiritually dead people, when physically dead, will be separated from God and spend a conscious eternity suffering. Not fair? Nope, but a perfect, holy, righteous God calls the shots.
But this is what makes the good news so good!
Rob Bell’s message is that God loves them. That’s great. If there is no bad news, then the fact that God loves them is no big deal. I suppose it’s there just in case you have a bad hair day or something (or like me, when both of my hairs get out of place, it’s horrible!). But if it is like Paul wrote, again, in Romans 3; “But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He? (I am speaking in human terms.) 6 May it never be! For otherwise how will God judge the world? 7 But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner? 8 And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say), "Let us do evil that good may come"? Their condemnation is just, (NAS) then we have a problem, don’t we? You won’t find those verses in Rob’s book.
Bell spends a lot of time quoting Jesus in his discussion of heaven and hell in their respective chapters. On pages 26-27, Bell writes of Jesus’ encounter with the rich guy who asks Him “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” Bell writes, rightly, of the fact that this is the most important question for many of us in the Christian world. So he continues;
“The rich man’s question, then, is the perfect opportunity for Jesus to give a clear, straightforward answer to the only question that ultimately matters for many.
First, we can only assume, he’ll correct the man’s flawed understanding of how salvation works. He’ll show the man how eternal life isn’t something he has to earn or work for; it’s a free gift of grace.
Then, he’ll invite the man to confess, repent, trust, accept, and believe that Jesus has made a way for him to have a relationship with God.
Like any good Christian would.
Jesus, however doesn’t do any of that.”
That is correct, he doesn’t tell him the way, in this particular case, but He DOES let him know what is NOT the way. Bell’s dealing here is the wrong approach to heaven and hell. Jesus is leading the transition from the Jewish law to the gospel. He is stirring up the establishment, but in reality, the law has not yet been fulfilled by his completely righteous life, the wrath of God has not been propitiated, or completely satisfied, by his death, and the victory over death, hell and the grave has not yet been established by His resurrection. Quoting Jesus on heaven and hell can be a bit premature. Once the gospel is completed (after the resurrection), THEN we are able to clearly distinguish God’s prerequisites for entry into His presence. To borrow a frequent Rob Bell phrase; “this raises another important question.” What is the gospel? This is a question Bells avoids like the plague. Since he leaves out the bad news, there is no gospel, or “good news,” which is what the term means.
The gospel is explained by Paul this way: “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” 1 Cor 15:1-4 NAS
What is the good news? God institutes this massive system of law and sacrifices to teach man that he can’t keep the law and he can’t make God happy by himself. How can God be made happy? God will be satisfied when man gets his act together and lives a perfect life, as required in Mt 5:48; “Be perfect, like your heavenly father is perfect. Boy, we’re really toast now. But God sends Jesus, born of a woman (Gal 4:4, fully a person, but not inheriting Adam’s sin nature), conceived by the Holy Spirit (fully God, as His origin is a perfect Father), to live that sinless life for us.
Again, we go back to imputation. The problem arises as Adam & Eve had their sin credited to our account, even though we didn’t do anything to deserve it. When Jesus dies on the cross, He has lived a perfect and sinless life. In addition, takes on Himself the sins of the world, bearing them in His own physical body. Did the perfect Jesus do anything to deserve to die for my sin and your sin?? Not fair? Totally not! But God the Father takes all of our sin and imputes them to Jesus, credits them to Jesus’ account and they are eliminated. “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Cor 5:21 NAS. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” I John 4:10) This satisfies the wrath of a perfect and holy God. This undeserved gift (Eph 2:8-9) is given on our behalf, but as with any other gift, it is not efficacious unless it is received and acted upon. Like a couple of years ago when my dad sent me a homemade birthday card. He prints them from his computer and folds them a couple times and puts them in a small envelope. Several weeks after receiving it, he calls and says;
“When are you going to cash the check I sent you?”
“What check?”
“The check that was in the card.”
“There was no check in the card.”
“Yes there was…”
Turns out that it wasn’t put in the second fold, where the printing was on the card (and where I would have seen it), it was stuck in the first fold, before it actually became a card. Weeks later, it was gone, as was the check and I didn’t get that birthday gift. Why? Because I never received it, it was never credited to my account. He did write a new check, it did arrive. I then acted upon it by cashing this check and receiving the full value of that gift.
Rob Bell is right when he says that God did the work and we don’t have to DO anything to secure our salvation. But his idea of people benefiting from the gift of God is more by osmosis than by receiving. To borrow from Kevin DeYoung’s review; “According to Bell, salvation is realizing you’re already saved. We are all forgiven. We are all
loved, equally and fully by God who has made peace with everyone. That work is done. Now we are invited to believe that story and live in it (172–73).” Funny, John wrote in John 1:12-13 “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” NAS Faith is the element that pleases God (Heb 11:6) and that faith has to be put toward the proper object of faith, the Gospel; accomplished outside of us, in our stead, for our benefit, through the Lord Jesus Christ.
This smacks of exclusivity, which Bell clearly doesn’t agree with (154-55). He loves inclusivity and on 155 he says; “what Jesus does is declare that he and he alone is saving everybody.” Christianity is an exclusive way, narrow with grass grown up on it. Jesus said I am THE way, THE truth and THE life and nobody gets to the father but by me (Jn 14:6). Period. Martin Bashir nails it when he says; “You’re creating a Christian message that’s warm, kind and popular for a contemporary culture…basically, you’re amending the gospel, the Christian message so that it’s palatable to contemporary people who find, for example, the idea of hell and heaven very difficult to stomach. So here comes Rob Bell and he’s made a Christian gospel for you! It’s perfectly palatable. It’s much easier to swallow.”
The truth of the matter is, Rob Bell has a different gospel than the one in the Bible. His gospel, along with other Emergent church leaders, make the gospel more about doing rather than believing. His criticism is accurate of those who believe but their belief results in no one’s physical benefit (ala James 2:15-17). But he and the other EC leaders replace belief with getting busy and taking care of people’s needs. Here we have the cart before the horse. Notice Eph 2:8-9
“8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” Gotta get that squared away first. Then, in light of what has happened to us, Paul continues with v. 10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. NAS After our eternity is confirmed by believing the gospel and receiving eternal life, then, out of gratitiude to God for granting us His grace and mercy, we then serve Him by serving others. NOT the other way around. The change comes in our positional (heavenly, judicial) standing, then it is to be shown in our practical. Much like the book of Ephesians does. Chapters 1-3 talk primarily about the positional, then, in light of that 4-6 talk about how do we walk that out in everyday life?
Rob Bell also has a chapter on “Does God Get What God wants?” And assumes that the answer is yes. He asks; “Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?” Talk about loaded questions. Will everybody be saved? No. Why does God waste time and ink to say “whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son?” If God gets what God wants, then He could leave out the condemnation part and whistle a happy tune while writing the happy parts. Paul wrote; “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” NAS
And Peter chimes in; “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” NAS 2 Peter 3:9 But does everyone get saved? That’s what God wants. Bell says yes, but the scripture is clear, it’s not happening. Not now, not ever.
Secondly, “will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?” NO. As we’ve already seen, we all have a sin problem before we commit our first volitional act of sin. Before we make our first choice in life, right or wrong, we’re condemned already. But he loads up the questions so the ingrained fairness in us answers the way he wants and leans you to his position and against the biblical position. He asks in a way that you pick one or the other, with neither being right or fair questions. This is his MO throughout the book.
I guess we could begin wrapping this up with the question about the Rob Bell/Universalist idea. When asked, he denies it and says “No, I’m not.” But it’s strange to see the bedfellows who have jumped on the bandwagon of Rob Bell. Many universalists out there are rejoicing that Rob is swinging to their side. Some are a bit cautious about proclaiming victory, but others are all over it, glad that there’s an “evangelical” saying the same thing they are. One example is here: http://www.evangelicaluniversalist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=1624 I had another great link I copied, from another universalist who was a classmate of Bell’s at Wheaton, but I lost the place I copied and pasted it. Grr. Anyway, do I think he’s a universalist? Yes. When the gospel is replaced with something else, when nobody is in trouble with God, when it is not necessary to respond, in this life, to God’s incredible offer of salvation to rescue us from ourselves and the sin nature we inherited, but God’s love will ultimately win no matter what, yeah, that about covers it.
CONCLUSION:
Rob Bell is not qualified to write a book on these kind of deep and essential subjects. When you’re not a theologian or a scholar and you play fast and loose with context and terminology, stay away from any form of academia and spare us the drama and embarrassment, please. We like to see Christian ministers represent God well when on the talk show circuit. We don’t like to cringe when watching and hope none of our skeptic friends saw it, either.
Rob Bell has no business being a pastor. He has degrees and diplomas from bible colleges and seminaries, but is not doing God’s business as a leader in his church, which is ultimately God’s church. Though he is a rock star with phenomenal popularity, he is intellectually dishonest, spiritually shallow and part of a movement that is out to redefine Christianity and break it away from it’s historic and biblical roots. Early in the book, he tips his hand about what it’s all about. Not the eternal state of people who are dead in their sins and the sin nature inherited from Adam, but it’s about what happens here. He writes;
“For some Christians, this is the question, the one that matters most. Compassion for the poor, racial justice, care for the environment, worship, teaching and art are important, but in the end, for some followers of Jesus, they’re not ultimately what it’s all about.(p.26)”
Implication: for some followers of Jesus, like me, it is, but for him it’s not about eternal destiny, it’s about advancing a social agenda. This is why I say Rob Bell has no business being the pastor of a church. He should be the leader of a civic or social organization, like one of the ones he lists in the back of his book on p 202. THAT is where his heart is, not leading people to Jesus and the cross. He is not a minister of the gospel, since he has no gospel to preach. Go serve people in that way, but leave the spiritual for someone who has a clue about the eternal ramifications of your ambiguity about sin, the real God, holiness and the remedy for spiritual death and separation from God..
This book is poison to someone who has just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but without the tools to evaluate Bell’s claims according to the Truth of Scripture. Without being able to read the map, Bell leaves you out there…somewhere…and there you are. Dangerous stuff.
I think I’ll stop here. There are other great reviews (maybe even better than mine) that can shed additional light on this murky subject.
The definitive review is Kevin DeYoung’s at the Gospel Coalition;
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/files/2011/03/LoveWinsReview.pdf His work is extensive, tho he struggles as I did with what to cover and how to cover it, as there was so much to address.
Thanks so much for reading. Congratulations on making it this far! I hope it gives you food for thought and the scriptures will give life to your soul. May Jesus be our all in all for all of eternity.
posted by Mailman @ 9:10 PM
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