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Category: Christian Doctrine
Some Thoughts On Rob Bell’s “Love Wins”
I was curious, so I checked. It’s number one in Amazon’s “Religion and Spirituality” section and number three in Amazon’s overall list of the top 100 books. To say Rob Bell’s newest opus, Love Wins, has made a splash is like saying our recent recession was an economic hiccup. Both are understated. Because of its meteoric rise to the top of national book sales, the pastors at Concordia feel it is important to address what Rob teaches in this book. Here is what you need to know upfront: Concordia’s pastors do not believe that Love Wins presents true biblical or Christ-centered doctrine. In fact, we believe it presents false doctrine that is dangerous and confusing, leading people away from Christ rather than toward Him. If this is all you want or need to know, there is no need to read the balance of this blog. If you want to know why we believe this book presents false doctrine, read on.
The blogs and reviews of Rob’s new book are legion, and so my goal in this blog is not to try to break through the cacophony of clamor surrounding the book’s release. That’s a far too ambitious – and, I might add, unrealistic – goal. But neither do I intend my review to simply be another voice added to the many shouts either celebrating or decrying Rob’s book. Instead, my review is more of a personal sort. I am a pastor. And already, I am receiving questions from people I know and love about Rob’s book. And I am concerned. I am concerned about Rob. I remember him in his earlier years. To this day, I have never heard a finer sermon on Leviticus 16 than the one he preached. And the picture he painted of Ephesus, the Roman emperor Domitian, and John’s Revelation still grips me – and gives me hope – every time I think about it. In fact, I still have a copy of that sermon…on cassette tape! I’m having a hard time understanding what happened to Rob theologically. I am concerned about him. But I am also concerned about the people with whom I am talking. The people who are questioning. The people who are confused. The people who are wondering, “Is this book true?” If this is you, then I mean this blog for you. And though my words may be pointed, they are not meant to be vicious. Rather, they are written in love and a concern for the truth, for “love rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). And I believe that, finally, the truth will carry the day. For I, like Rob Bell, believe that love wins.
Deconstructing theology is dangerous business. And yet, it’s something people – especially so-called “postmodern” thinkers – love to do. After all, it’s fun to pile on top of certain theological presuppositions and assertions and expose the discontinuities in them, especially if these presuppositions and assertions are widely regarded as traditional and orthodox. And it is this is this deconstructionist method that Rob employs in Love Wins. Consider this quote:
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 conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that 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 there was an earthly father who was like that, we would call the authorities. If there was an actual human dad who was that volatile, we could contact child protective services immediately.
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. (pages 173-174)
The logic seems, well, logical enough. If God loves us and wants salvation for us, how could He abandon his pursuit of us upon our deaths and consign us to eternal torment? That’s not a loving God! Therefore, goes Rob’s argument, God must allow people the opportunity to repent (though he never uses the word) even, perhaps, after death. Or at least that’s what he tantalizingly infers!
But let’s apply Rob’s same deconstructionist enterprise to his own argument. Rob solves the difficulty of the God who pursues us in the life and judges us in the next by appealing to God’s generous love – a love generous enough to allow for our free will, now on earth and then in eternity:
To reject God’s grace, to turn from God’s love, to resist God’s telling, will lead to misery. It is a form of punishment, all on its own.
This is an important distinction, because in talking about what God is like, we cannot avoid the realities of God’s very essence, which is love. It can be resisted and rejected and denied and avoided, and that will bring another reality. Now and then.
We are that free. (page 176)
So, Rob says I am free – free to “trust God’s retelling of my story” (page 173), as he puts it, and free to reject it. And not only am I free to trust and reject now on earth, but “now and then,” even into eternity. On the one hand, this is quite an enticing prospect because it allows me to trust in God’s retelling of my story even after I die. So if I mess it up here, I need not worry. I get another shot at trusting God on the flipside. It is important to note that Rob’s concern here is fundamentally a therapeutic utilitarianism. The kind of God who would do something as psychologically stressful as consigning people to an eternal hell simply won’t work! Indeed, Rob states this explicitly: “This is the problem with some Gods – you don’t know if they’re good, so why tell others a story that isn’t working for you” (page 181)? The problem is that Rob’s version of God and the gospel doesn’t work either! After all, what happens if I mess up on the flipside? What happens if I trust God’s retelling of my story in this age, but then use the generous freedom that Rob claims love requires to reject God’s retelling of my story in the age to come? Do I slip the surly bonds of heaven and wind up in a hell of my own making? And what if I trust in God’s retelling again? Is it back to heavenly bliss? And then what if I reject it…again? And then trust it…again? Am I stuck in a vicious volley between heaven and hell for all eternity? That certainly doesn’t sound very “heavenly.” In fact, that sounds like what I struggle with right now! That sounds like Paul’s exposition on every Christian’s age old struggle: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). Where’s the hope in that?
The freedom that love brings is only good if it is exercised with the sovereign prerogative that God has. In other words, love without God’s sovereign prerogative is impotent. It cannot do what it desires. It cannot, to use Rob’s book title, “win.” And indeed, love that allows this kind of freedom isn’t even really love. For it simply allows us to do what we please. Who actually loves like this – even here, even now? Love demands that when you see a child chasing his ball onto the interstate, you curb his freedom and tug him back. Love demands that heaven is an age when we are not only free to live with God, but have also been tugged, or, more biblically, “chosen” by God (cf. Ephesians 1:3-14). Love and freedom are not synonymous nor are they inextricable concomitants of each other. That is why God does away with people who persistently demand their freedom. For they cannot demand their freedom to God without demanding their freedom from God. These are the people who go to hell.
To allow me the eternal freedom to trust or reject God’s retelling of my story is only to allow me the eternal opportunity to make myself unspeakably miserable. And I’m not sure that’s a good opportunity. Because I already know what I’d choose…again and again and again. For I’m not truly free. I’m a slave to sin. And so I will always choose wrongly. As the Reformers put it, “We are unable to stop sinning.” I will always fall for the illusion that freedom from God presents rather than the joy that freedom in Christ brings. This is why God coopted my slavery to sin and set me free, only to make me a slave again, this time to righteousness – not out of some sort of sinister divinely wrought determinism, but for the sake of Christ: “Having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:18). This is the good news – that God does not leave things up to us. No, He loves us far too much to do that. And so He conquers sin, death, and the devil, and gives us His righteousness, apart from and in spite of our terrible choices.
Whatever so-called “problems” and questions Rob Bell may try to solve and answer in his book, he only succeeds in creating more problems and begging more questions. Not only that, but he finally replaces the good news with something that is neither good, for it leaves us in an eternal state of struggling against our own wills, nor is it news, for this struggle is much older than any twenty-four news cycle. So, whatever supposed “problems” my “traditional” story of the gospel may have (which I am not convinced there are problems, just paradoxes), this I know: When it comes to a love that is broad enough to allow me my own, dangerous freedom, “the good news is better than that” (page 191).
ABC Extra – On The Multiverse
This past weekend in worship and ABC, we continued our series ”Credo!” with a look at the doctrine of creation. As part of our study, talked about how the how the modern, broad consensus among scientists concerning the universe’s origins is often antagonistic and dismissive toward the biblical account of creation. Thus, many scientists and theologians alike have sought to reconcile these two seemingly conflicting accounts using different theories, two of which I briefly mentioned in ABC: the “Day-Age Theory” and the “Theistic Evolution Theory.”
In order for the theory of evolution to be correct, two things are needed: lots and lots of time and lots and lots of death. You need lots and lots of time because one species does not evolve into another overnight. Rather, billions of years are needed for one species to adapt in such a way that it actually becomes another species. You needs lots and lots of death because the mechanism by which evolution functions is natural selection, a.k.a., the survival of the fittest. In other words, for evolution to happen, species with less desirable traits must die out and give rise to species with more desirable traits. The “Day-Age Theory” of creation, which asserts that each of the days in Genesis 1 are equal to thousands, and probably millions, of years, accounts for the lots and lots of time that evolution requires, while the theory of Theistic Evolution, which states that God got the ball rolling on creation, but then it pretty much evolved the way scientists say it did, accounts for the lots and lots of death demanded by natural selection.
And yet, there is something else needed. Scientists have long noted that the earth and, indeed, even our solar system and universe, seems “fine-tuned” to support our life. In other words, there is a constellation of factors, each of which, if they were even the slightest bit different, would not have allowed evolution to happen at all because the environment would not have supported any life at all, no matter how strong or desirable an organism’s traits might have been! Scientists describe this as the “anthropic principle.” In a recent article for the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Hawking, professor at the University of Cambridge, explains:
The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned. What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It raises the natural question of why it is that way. (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, “Why God Did Not Create the Universe,” Wall Street Journal, 9/3/10)
It is Hawking’s final question, posed as a statement, “It raises the natural question of why it is that way,” that he spends the balance of his article seeking to address. And he seeks to address it apart from God:
Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws…Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist.
Stephen Hawking adds another need to the arsenal of requirements for our existence. Not only does our existence require lots and lots of time and lots and lots of death according to the theory of evolution, it also needs lots and lots of space according to the theory of the origins of the universe. For evolution, as it stands, can account only for the existence of life on this planet, not the existence of this planet itself. Something else must account for that. If this something else is not accounted for, then evolution becomes somewhat of a “red herring” theory, for how can evolution account for one form of life giving rise to another form of life, and even a form of non-life giving rise to the first form of life, if it cannot account for that non-life material itself? Enter Stephen Hawking’s theory. Hawking postulates that there are an infinite number of universes, each with their own laws, which have spontaneously arisen out of nothing. Thus, if there are “multiverses” which, taken in toto, exhaust every possible combination of astrophysical laws, it is not surprising at all that our universe and our solar system and our planet with our life should exist. It is merely the inevitable consequence of a countless number of universes doing a countless number of different things.
How does Hawking know these multiple universes exist? Has he observed them? Has he tested them? No! Instead, the multiverse theory “is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology.” In other words, it is a theory predicated on other theories. Is it just me, or does that sound a little speculative for science? Thus, according to Hawking, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” It is here that we find Hawking’s real motive for postulating the multiverse: it makes the need for God’s creative hand even more obsolete than does evolution. It puts God out of business, so to speak.
It is important to note that Hawking’s theory is nothing new. He, along with other scientists, have promoted the multiverse theory before. And there are many who are scrambling to explain why God is still needed even if there are indeed many universes. But we need not join them in their scramble. For rather than adopting a “God-in-the-gaps” strategy, where we seek to shoehorn God into the spots that science cannot answer by means of its speculative, naturalistic mechanisms, I would suggest that it’s better to take the creation account as it stands, believing in the best intentions of its human author and the divine inspiration of its giver. For the doctrine of creation does not exist merely to explain how God set into motion all the stuff for which science cannot account. Rather, it assures that we have a God who not only created the heavens and the earth a long time ago, but also:
Has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason, and all my senses, and still preserves them…He provides me richly and daily with all that I need to support this body and life, protects me from all danger, and guards me and preserves me from all evil; and all this out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me…This is most certainly true! (Martin Luther, Small Catechism, First Article of the Creed)
And this is most certainly the proper doctrine of creation!
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For Women Only (But Men Can – And Probably Should – Read Too)
I have recently taken note of a trend which troubles me. In many a conversation, I have met with a husband and a wife in crisis. Their marriage is usually on the rocks, barely hanging by a thread, and steadily heading – if not speeding – down the road to divorce. Although marriage trouble is almost always the product of both parties sinning against one another, I have noticed that, in these situations, the husband often lacks the fortitude to faithfully lead his marriage and his family according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. His interest in the things of God is weak if not non-existent. Indeed, it is often the woman who seeks biblical answers to important questions while the man is interested only in satisfying his own fleeting desires and infatuations.
To be fair, there are many men out there who are faithful, Godly leaders of their homes. I praise God for these men. But I want to speak for a moment to the women, for I know there are many, who are in relationships where the man does not dependably steward his mantle as the head of the household.
Through probably apocryphal, St. Francis of Assisi is quoted as saying, “Preach the gospel always, if necessary, use words.” Certainly this maxim cannot be used to excuse us from clearly and cogently proclaiming the gospel, for Holy Scripture mandates just such a proclamation, but sometimes, a quiet witness to the gospel is a faithful one. Indeed, this is precisely Peter’s argument to wives when he writes: “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives” (1 Peter 3:1-2). As the apostle pens these words, he is addressing a group of women whose beliefs do not match those of their husbands, probably because they have converted to Christianity while their husbands have not. Peter recommends holy living as a way to witness to these men who refuse to be the spiritual leaders of their households.
It is important to note that Peter’s direction radically contradicts the standard thinking of the first century. For a woman to defy her husband’s sensibilities was considered an affront to his masculinity. If the husband lived as a pagan, the wife was to live as a pagan too. The first century Roman historian Plutarch explains:
A wife ought not to make friends on her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Therefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and know only the gods that her husband believes in, and to shut the front door tight upon all peculiar rituals and outlandish superstitions [such as Christianity]. (Moralia 140D)
According to Plutarch, a wife is to believe only what her husband believes. Thus, if a husband worships at the altar of football or lust or alcohol or crassness, the wife is to worship there as well. Put Peter directs ladies differently. A wife’s first and foremost responsibility is to the Lord, even when her husband refuses to honor and worship the true God.
Ladies, I know it is hard witnesses to men who do not know or care for the Lord. And yet, there is hope! For Peter’s guidance concerning a quiet witness to unfaithful husbands actually works! Perhaps most famously, it worked with the father of St. Augustine. Augustine writes of his mother:
When she had arrived at a marriageable age, she was given to a husband whom she served as her lord. And she busied herself to gain him to God, preaching God unto him by her behavior…For she waited for God’s mercy upon him, that by believing in Him, he might become chaste…Finally, her own husband, now towards the end of his earthly existence, did she gain over unto the Lord. (Augustine, Confessions, IX:19,22)
This woman’s dear faith proved persuasive to her husband…and to her son as well. Indeed, her faith proved so persuasive that she raised one of the greatest theologians ever to serve the Christian Church.
Ladies, even in difficult circumstances, continue to serve your Lord faithfully. Lead by your behavior if your husband will not lead according to his responsibility. Know that I am praying for you. Gentlemen, if you have fallen short in spiritually leading your household, repent and ask forgiveness from your family. Then teach and live the faith. Know that I am praying for you as well. For there is nothing more important, heavy, and joyous than to teach and live out than the gospel of Jesus Christ!
What’s Worship?
Worship is fundamental to the church’s life. The other day, I came across a paragraph from Ben Witherington III in his book The Indellible Image, where he comments on 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Witherington’s comments on this passage iare helpful in illuminating what is of first importance in worship:
There is no basis in the New Testament for the idea that Christian[s] offer vicarious sacrifices for others or for the world, nor is there any reoffering of Christ to God…One has to import all sorts of Old Testament ideas into the New Testament practice to come up with what some have in “high church” practice. This is a questionable hermeneutical leap at best. Nor is the Lord’s Supper seen as a sacrifice; rather, it is like Passover. It is a celebration of redemption, once for all accomplished by God in the past, whose benefit is appropriated in the present. The main sacrifice that believers offer to God in worship or in particular in the Lord’s Supper is what Paul suggests in Romans 12:1: themselves. However, we must remember that even this offering in itself is not acceptable; as 1 Peter 2:5b suggests, it is acceptable only through Christ, who offered the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice. (356)
There are several aspects of Witherington’s statement worth noting. First and foremost, biblical worship is primarily about God meeting His people with His gifts rather than people meeting God with their gifts. The primary direction of worship is from God to man, not from man to God. This important point is lost in many theologies of worship. Indeed, Witherington’s opening statement about “reoffering Christ to God” is a reference to Roman Catholic theology, where the worship service, and especially the Eucharist, is conceived of as an event during which the priest reoffers Christ to God in an “unbloody sacrifice.” The Council of Trent explains:
Forasmuch as, in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner, who once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross; the holy Synod teaches, that this sacrifice is truly propitiatory and that by means thereof this is effected, that we obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid, if we draw nigh unto God, contrite and penitent, with a sincere heart and upright faith, with fear and reverence. For the Lord, appeased by the oblation thereof, and granting the grace and gift of penitence, forgives even heinous crimes and sins. For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different. (Council of Trent, Twenty-Second Session, Ch. 2)
The Council of Trent could not be clearer. Worship in Catholicism is believed to be a re-sacrifice of Christ by a priest, albeit in an “unbloody” manner, for the forgiveness of the worshipers’ sins. This is a patently false view of worship.
Second, it is important to take to heart Withernington’s statement concerning the Lord’s Supper: “It is a celebration of redemption, once for all accomplished by God in the past, whose benefit is appropriated in the present.” In more traditional parlance, we would say that the Lord’s Supper is a “means of grace.” The great Lutheran dogmatician Francis Pieper explains thusly: “[The means of grace are] the divine transmission of the grace which Christ has gained for all men [when] it joins immediately to the objective reconciliation or justification of sinful mankind” (Lutheran Dogmatics, vol. 3, 105). In other words, the means of grace are the ways in which God’s grace gets “delivered” to His people. The Lord’s Supper is certainly one of these ways as Christ comes to us with His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Thus, rather than re-sacrificing Christ to God as Roman Catholic theology teaches, the Lutheran Church confesses that Christ is giving His already sacrificed and risen body to us! Thus, once again, we see that worship is primarily about God meeting us and not about us meeting God.
Finally, it is important to note, along with Witherington, that worship does indeed involve our gifts to God. But these gifts in no way merit our salvation or gain God’s favor. Instead, they are only in grateful response to what God has already given us in worship: His forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Indeed, our gift of ourselves to God would be despicably sinful in His sight were it not for “Christ, who offered the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice.” Christ’s sacrifice of salvation sanctifies our sacrifices to God in worship.
So, the next time you join us for worship, remember, you may have hopped in the car and driven a few miles to come to church, but God has crossed heaven to earth to meet you. In worship, God is the One coming to you. God is the One who desires to meet with you. And God is the one who has His good gifts of grace for you. And who wouldn’t want to receive those?