Mangum's thoughts on Bell

Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins

Some impressions offered by R. Todd Mangum, PhD
Dean of the Faculty, Professor of Theology
Biblical Seminary
Hatfield, PA
Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins, has become a sensation, seemingly overnight. Already a wellknown
pastor, of one of the few churches that people debate whether it should be called an
emergent church or a mega-church (it’s kind of both), Bell’s entire career has been built on his
astute ability to find the heartbeat of the average person’s deepest questions and concerns about
God, religion and theological truth. He also has been blessed with shrewd media-savyiness;
churches of all denominations, shapes and sizes have used his “NOOMA” videos in some
capacity, often to stimulate conversations in small groups or serve as audio-visual illustrations
for Sunday morning sermons.
Incredibly, Love Wins has managed already to dwarf the publicity that all Bell’s work has
garnered before now. Not all the publicity has been positive – a week before the book was even
published, John Piper tweeted, “Farewell, Rob Bell,” sounding the alarm against Bell’s crossing
the line into heresy; Brian McLaren lamented that Bell, like himself, was being pilloried by
witch-hunters merely for raising legitimate questions (http://brianmclaren.net/archives/blog
/some-surprises.html); Scot McKnight and Mark Galli cite some points of concern, but both urge
everyone to take a deep breath and calm down a bit (http://www.relevantmagazine.com/
god/church/features/24878-universalism-and-the-doctrine-of-rob-bell; http://www.
christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/april/lovewins.html?start=6). Such proclamations by Christian
“celebrities” on all sides have served only to heighten the attention given to the book. The result?
Last week, Bell and his book made the cover story of TIME.
There is no question that the questions Bell raises are crucial ones. What is the nature of God?
Are the criteria for salvation such that the mass of humanity (including Gandhi, no less) will be
tortured (by God, no less) in hell forever? Is “the gospel” as commonly understood and portrayed
by evangelicals flawed at its core? And, is God commonly understood and portrayed by
evangelicals as overly mean, miserly, and vindictive – thus serving unnecessarily to turn people
off to God and the gospel as actually revealed in the Bible? For anyone who takes their Christian
faith seriously, few questions are more central, more fundamental, more challenging than these.
One can hardly teach theology as one’s vocation and avoid comment. Here, then, are a few
thoughts of mine on the book.
Bell gets some things right, and they needed to be said by someone. For instance:
1. It is true that, where there is ambiguity in scriptural teaching, it is a mistake to insist on
the most harsh, most off-putting view possible on the spectrum of plausible options.
2. Traditional evangelicalism has emphasized too much the role of correct doctrinal
cognition as the basis of justification before God.
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3. The Bible permits some legitimate questions about the last judgment, and what exactly
will determine who gets in, and who will be barred from glory; among them: “Is it
possible for some people to be followers of Christ without knowing it is Jesus they are
following? Is it possible for some people to be children of the Kingdom without
explicitly knowing that it is Jesus that is the King?” The “sheep and goats” judgment of
Matthew 25:31-46, for instance, is an example of a passage that lends itself to such
questions.
4. God is capable of surprises; and some of the surprises that Bell muses about as what
could be in store for human beings on judgment day are consistent with the kinds of
surprises Jesus talks about, too. Jesus warned religious leaders of His day that they were
going to weep and gnash their teeth when they see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the
Kingdom they have so longed for, but they themselves cast out (Matt. 8:12; Luke 13:28).
Might Jesus also say to some in our day that they will weep and gnash their teeth when
they see Augustine and Aquinas, or Luther and Calvin in the Kingdom, but they
themselves cast out?
5. Bell is also right to point out that the majority of Bible-believing theologians through
history have not embraced an all-or-nothing judgment that results in a zero-sum verdict
consisting of only two choices: 1) all-bliss or 2) all-agony – for all eternity. There are
some “difference-in-severity-of-judgment” passages (e.g., Luke 12:47-48’s “many
lashes” vs. “few lashes”) as well as “difference-in-degree-of-reward” passages (e.g.,
Matt. 25:14-30) by which traditional Protestant accounts of judgment allotment, in either
direction, could rightly stand to be challenged.
However, Bell also includes some unnecessary distractions in his handling of already serious and
controversial issues. For instance:
1. He frequently engages in reductio ad absurdum concerning some points that traditional
evangelicals have commonly embraced or cherished. Here’s a paragraph from my class
notes on logic and proper reasoning, written without Bell’s book in mind (in fact,
composed a good 15 years before Bell’s book was written!):
reductio ad absurdum (Lat. “to reduce to the absurd”) – The fallacy of this
technique lies in how much one has to “reduce” the view to make it seem absurd.
The rhetorical technique can be employed non-fallaciously (if the view itself is
absurd, or has previously unrecognized absurd ramifications). Even then,
though, it's awfully hard to pull off without sounding cocky or belittling.
Note: Don't be fooled into dismissing reductio ad absurdum arguments
as “just jokes” or “just humor.” Reductio ad absurdum is often used for comic
value, but it is humor that encourages one to dismiss a position so thoroughly as
to laugh at it. . . . And, that's pretty serious.
I suspect part of the reason Bell’s critics have responded with such fury may be because
they sense that views they hold firmly and dearly have not only been challenged, but
ridiculed by Bell’s work. Bell is at least partly to blame for this impression, both
unfortunate and unnecessary.
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2. Is Bell’s book really to be regarded as poetry? He frequently formats the words on the
page as to convey that impression. The problem is, other than the formatting, the
composition bears precious little resemblance to actual poetry; little attention has been
paid to meter, parallelisms of words, phrases or imagery. It’s not really poetry . . . so,
what is it?
And, herein lies one of the other points of distraction: it is quasi-sermonic material, quasilecture
material pretending to be poetry. . . . Count that assessment as overstatement for
sake of the point. Even so, Bell’s treatise feels too often like it’s a piece wanting to say
some dramatic things about some serious, controversial matters, but rather than doing the
hard work of engaging plausible alternative stances or opposing views with
thoughtfulness and care, it takes short-cuts to the drama and seeks to cloak it in the
profundity of poetry. For those who are not thereby enamored, it comes off as just
pretentious.
3. What he did not say. This is the most distracting point of all. Bell focuses on texts that are
the most “reader-friendly” and “coddle-the-wayfaring sinner” oriented; along the way, he
rebukes harsher, more traditional portrayals of God, without ever engaging the biblical
evidence that prompted such traditional views in the first place. This gives the impression
that those harsher, traditional understandings of God’s character and ways are simply
conjured from the air, apparently by inexplicably mean-spirited people.
Bell refers obliquely to the fact that Jesus “tells stories” designed to challenge the sinner
and abuser of his ways, and comfort the abused and oppressed that God is watching and
working. That hardly says it, though, given that Jesus talked more about judgment,
Hades, and “Gehenna” (i.e., “hell”) than He did heaven. In his entire treatise (including
an entire chapter on “hell”), Bell never even mentions the “fires of torment,” in which
those put there “get no rest day or night, but the smoke of their torment goes up forever”
of Revelation 14 and Revelation 20.
Bell mentions that the word translated “hell” in Jesus’ teaching refers originally to
imagery based on the “land-fill” in the Valley of Gehinnom (“Gehenna”). That’s fair
enough, but that imagery does not necessarily suggest that the whole concept is mere
imagery; nor is that terminology the only way Jesus talks about the judgment on the
wicked. Jesus also mentions the weeping and gnashing of teeth of those cast into “outer
darkness” and the “furnace of fire.” At one point, Jesus mentions that this place of fiery
doom to which the judged are sent was a place originally “prepared for the devil and his
angels” (Matt. 25:41). (Note that it is prepared for the devil and his angels, not by same,
nor by the judged themselves. It is also worth asking – if we really need to ask –
“prepared by whom”? . . . )
The best that one could say about such omissions is that Bell has ducked the hard
questions, and evaded the hard passages that would most significantly challenge his
thesis. Given that he also pokes fun at viewpoints built on taking these imageries more
seriously, it’s not hard to see why some have regarded Bell’s book as a snide puff piece
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that misleads people, rather than a thought piece to help people engage the hard questions
seriously.
Finally, there are a few points – some of them repeated or which serve as central points to his
thesis – that Bell overstates or just gets wrong. Here are the major examples on my list:
1. It’s just not true that the only people who go to final judgment are those who insist on it,
who deliberately choose it for themselves. Bell – like C.S. Lewis before him – is trying to
accentuate the biblical teaching that “God desires everyone to be saved and that all
should come to repentance” (1 Tim. 2:3-4; 2 Pet. 3:9); and that God “takes no pleasure in
the death of the wicked,” but desires “rather that he should turn from his ways and live”
(Ezek. 18:23). And, that’s a good note to sound.
However, that is not the only chord Scripture strikes, nor is that quite the same as saying
that the only way one can end up in judgment is by persisting in the insistence on it.
Likewise, God’s being slow to anger is not the same as saying God is absent any anger at
all. The wrath of God is demonstrated towards the inhabitants of earth, as well as His
love (Rom. 1:18). As Jesus Himself observes and warns, some people are sent to
judgment kicking and screaming, arguing all the way that they are not deserving of the
punishment meted out to them – see Matthew 7:21-23; Matthew 8:11-12; Luke 13:23-28;
and Matthew 25:41-46.
2. In a similar vein, Bell – like McLaren before him – dismisses the idea that Jesus “saves
us from God” (from God’s wrath?). The problem is, the wrath of God really is a major
theme of the Bible – not just God’s love, mercy, and grace. “The wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” is where
Romans starts its explanation of what “salvation” is about. Jesus, too, warns of the
judgment of God coming on people unawares, like it did in the days of Noah or in the
days of Lot.
Bell may be right to suggest that “Jesus saves us from God” is a sloppy way of phrasing
it. On the other hand, shutting down consideration of our need for “rescue from
God/God’s wrath” introduces (further) distortion, rather than clarification, of biblical
teaching overall. One does not have to diminish God’s vigorous intent to judge sinfulness
to accentuate also His missional character, His desire to redeem human beings and thus
restore harmony and justice. God judges those who resist and refuse, even beyond
allowing them to live in the hell of their own creation.
3. At least three times in so many pages (from pp. 182-184), Bell asserts, “We shape our
God and then our God shapes us.” Even with due acknowledgement to social
construction theory about how we understand religious truth and how that understanding
“shapes” who we are, Bell’s thrice-repeated assertion fares poorly as a theological
statement. The emphasis of it, which forms the basis of Bell’s theological point, is just
the reverse of Psalm 135. In this classic psalm that sets Yahweh apart from other gods,
Yahweh is above all other gods because He does as He pleases, judges rightly, even
while having compassion on His people, whereas “the gods of the nations are idols,”
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having eyes but do not see, having ears but do not hear, and so on – noting, finally, that
“those who make them will be like them.”
In biblical teaching, then, the difference between a Yahweh-worshiper and an idolworshiper
is that those who worship Yahweh worship someone who is real, and who
transforms His people into godliness. The “we shape our God” stuff is the stuff of
idolatry at its heart.
The best that could be said of Bell’s point here is that he has a point, but he’s framed it
poorly, become overly enamored with it, and thus repeated it and made it central to a
point of supposed poetic emphasis.
That last point of assessment could pretty much summarize my assessment of the book. He does
have some points worth raising and contemplating. It’s a shame there is so much distraction to
those points worthy of the conversation he’s sparked with the book. In the end, I find myself
agreeing with Mark Galli (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/april/lovewins.
html?start=6), that Love Wins broaches some worthwhile questions and makes some insightful
points along the way, but in the end goes a bridge too far.