Transforming Apologetics
A Critical Apologetic Appraisal of Rob Bell’s Love Wins
Jon Rogers
Copyright: This work by Jon Rogers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Dedicated to Jane and Nathaniel
May you know,
deep in your
bones,
that love wins.
And there will come a time,
you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your
heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what
you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your
hair.
- Mumford and Sons, After the Storm
Contents
1.1 Online Responses to Love Wins
1.2 Published Responses to Love Wins
2.2 The Danger of a Category Mistake
3. Scripture, Church and World
4. Engagement with the Scriptures
4.3 Treatment of Individual Scriptures
4.4 Case study: Comparison with Erasing Hell
4.5 Case Study: Lazarus and the Rich Man
4.6 Case study: The Rock was Christ
5.2 Bell in a Wider Church Context
5.2.3 Bell and the Emergent Missional Church
5.2.4 Bell and the Reformed Church
6.4 Christianity and Postmodernity
6.4.4 Philosophers and Christianity
6.4.5 Postmodern Attitudes to Religion
6.7 The World as it might be – a Transformation taking place
Abstract
Love Wins was released to a great deal of hype, criticism and support in March 2011. This paper suggests that the most appropriate way to read the book is as an apologetic work in the postmodern context. Doing this takes note of the style of Bell’s writing as well as the content and the way he builds his argument. A triangulation of scripture, church and world has been selected from the writing of Vanhoozer as a grid to examine the apologetic value of Love Wins. His position as an academic, specialising in theology in the postmodern context and his reformed and evangelical background make his thinking ideal to draw on.
First, this paper sets the scene, telling the story of how Love Wins came to notoriety, then we expand on how best to read the book and why it matters.
Using Vanhoozer, we then examine Bell’s use of scripture in Love Wins, assessing the impact his approach makes to the apologetic value of the book.
Then we look at how Bell relates to the church in Love Wins; the authors he draws upon, the wider church conversations he takes part in, the criticisms he has for the church and how he wants the church to respond. For each of these, we look at the effect on the apologetic value of the book.
Finally, we look at how Bell has engaged with the world, exploring the postmodern context and how well Bell fits into it.
In conclusion, we are able to assess Bell’s contribution to postmodern apologetics and make some suggestions for how future postmodern apologetic work might be done. Love Wins makes a significant contribution to transforming postmodern apologetics, but a stronger apologetic would prefer scripture over experience more strongly and be more careful in its interaction with the church.
.1A Twitter Phenomenon
There was a lot happening over the last weekend of February 2011. At the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, the Oscars were presented in L.A. with great pomp. In Libya, a revolution was beginning with the aim of removing the Gaddafi regime while protests continued across the Arab world from Bahrain to Tunisia. While New Zealand mourned victims of the Christchurch earthquake, Ireland counted votes in their general election.
A friend sent me a message on twitter saying ‘Rob Bell is trending. I think I'll need you to explain why.’1 In the midst of all that was happening in the world, a pastor from Michigan whose book we had read and videos we had watched together was trending as one of the top ten things that everyone in the world was talking about on Twitter.2 It stayed on the list throughout the weekend – thousands of technology-savvy Christians commenting and linking to information about Bell’s new book, Love Wins.
What made the situation even more incredible was that I knew the book hadn’t yet been released. I know enough about publishing to realise that there are preview copies sent to reviewers, but a little bit of reading showed that the news article at the centre of the storm was written by someone who had not fully read the book.3 As big name Christian ‘celebrity’ authors and pastors commented, the conversation seemed to spiral out of control.
.1.1Online Responses to Love Wins
When Love Wins was actually released and in the hands of reviewers, it continued to elicit a huge response. Google now displays over three million hits for ‘Love Wins review’,4 though many of these are certainly commenting on the reviews of others. The comments made range widely, from full support to total condemnation.
Parts of the conservative church have attacked Bell, calling him unorthodox, focussing especially on his treatment of hell. DeYoung’s summary gives a few positive points followed by:
… there are dozens of problems with Love Wins. The theology is heterodox. The history is inaccurate. The impact on souls is devastating. And the use of Scripture is indefensible. Worst of all, Love Wins demeans the cross and misrepresents God’s character.
Some of the ‘young restless Reformed’ recognise that Love Wins is not just one rogue pastor writing a book, but that Bell represents a real problem in evangelicalism, though they disagree that he has anything to do with a solution.5
Other reviewers seek to defend Bell from the condemnation that he had received for his perceived universalism. Richard Mouw, a former teacher of Bell, relates how he has been criticised for what he wrote in a book that defended the basics of a Calvinist perspective.
… I told about an elderly rabbi friend who struck me as a very godly person. He would often write to tell me that he was praying for me and my family. When he died, I said, I held out the hope that when he saw Jesus he would acknowledge that it was Him all along, and that Jesus would welcome him into the heavenly realm.6
Holmes describes Bell’s rejection of ‘a “gospel” that asserts that few will be saved’ as ‘in line with the most impeccable Reformed orthodoxy’,7 demonstrating how many of the great Reformed theologians sought to say a similar thing.
.1.2Published Responses to Love Wins
Responses to Love Wins have not been restricted to blogs and magazines. Several books have been published with the explicit reason of refuting Bell, or highlighting errors and dangers of Love Wins, while others have done this more implicitly. When Francis Chan released a teaser trailer for Erasing Hell, it was clear that not only did the video look like Bell’s videos but the cover of his book drew on the design features of Bell’s book Jesus Wants to Save Christians.8 It is not until you are well into reading the book that the ‘elephant in the room’ of Love Wins is named and criticised.
Many of the criticisms in these books are similar to the criticisms posted online, but in a longer form. The authors write in what can be described as methodical, modern apologetic techniques, putting Bell into categories they can understand and refute. Wittmer, for example, describes Bell as a liberal,9 a ‘functional universalist’10, a pluralist11 and even identifies him with a heretic.12 These books, as with the reviews of the Reformed opponents to Bell might support the belief systems of Christians with a modern way of thinking, but they do not speak to the postmodern who wonders if they can (still) be a Christian.
.2A Postmodern Apologetic
.2.1How to read Love Wins
This paper will suggest that the most appropriate way to read Love Wins is as an apologetic text and that to understand the way Bell writes requires acknowledgement of the postmodern context in which he operates. We will examine the apologetic value of the book and explore why the postmodern context is the best place to put it in. If Love Wins is an effective apologetic to postmoderns, it can give us guidance as to how other postmodern apologetics might be created and insight into problems that must be avoided.
However, Love Wins is not marketed as a book on apologetics. It certainly is not a ‘how to guide’ for postmodern apologists. Right from the frontispiece, however, the hints that this book is apologetic in nature start to appear. The subtitle ‘At the heart of life’s big questions’ suggests that the book will engage with some of the issues that people have. In the preface, Bell says ‘I’ve written this book for all those, everywhere, who have heard some version of the Jesus story that caused their pulse rate to rise, their stomach to turn, and their heart to utter those resolute words “I would never be a part of that.”’ He goes on to say ‘You are not alone’, with empathy and says that he is prepared to be part of the discussions and questioning that some people do not allow.13 This an apologetic that critiques from within the culture, questioning, using stories and yet connected to tradition.
Some postmoderns like Lyotard suggest that the phenomenon of the postmodern is not unique to the past few decades. Rather, it is something that occurs whenever there is a dissatisfaction with the present and a dreaming of the future.14 The postmodern philosophers have ‘constructed genealogies’ for postmodern thought, seeking to give it a place among the history of western thought from the ancients onwards.15 Derrida and others refer to philosophers from Plato through the centuries up to their own time.16 Bell seeks to place Love Wins in a long context right from the preface, acknowledging that none of what he writes has not been thought and written about long before him. We shall look at how effectively he uses this tradition of thought later in this paper.
While some Reformed critics have said that this book is not ‘evangelistic’, they recognise its apologetic aim at ‘disaffected evangelicals’, though they see it in the context of emerging church as ‘the last rung for evangelicals falling off the ladder into liberalism or unbelief.’17 Bell addresses this book to the ‘meta-grumblers’18 who have problems with the story the church is telling, both within and outside of the church. The writing style and accessible language Bell uses backs up the suggestion that Love Wins is aimed at the widest possible audience to include the ‘all those, everywhere...’.
Bell often builds his argument by aesthetic means, a key trait of postmodernity. The overarching thesis of the book is that there are versions of Christianity that have been told that are not only unrecognisable from what Jesus taught but actually toxic and dangerous.19 The way this is demonstrated by Bell is by telling different stories and suggesting that ‘some stories are better than others.’20 As we will later explore, there are many postmodern themes that Bell uses and builds on, but never in a way that requires the reader to have studied the writers and thinkers they come from. This is the kind of postmodernity that celebrates eclecticism; tracking down every single source is less important than the picture painted by the whole.
.2.2The Danger of a Category Mistake
If we accept the suggestion that Love Wins should best be read as a postmodern apologetic, we might still ask ourselves why this classification might matter. In modern thinking, making a category mistake can be very costly in understanding the purpose of a text and can hence mean we miss the intention of the author in writing the content. While postmoderns might not be as confident at discerning the intention of the author, they still recognise the importance of categories and genres in interpreting and comparing a text with others. We will struggle to identify the neighbouring texts and understand the references that Bell makes if we misidentify the type and purpose of Bell’s writing.
Love Wins could potentially be mistaken for a formal work of academic theology. It is easy, however, to identify textual clues that this is not the best description for the book. Firstly, we have all the references in the preface to its apologetic purpose. Secondly, looking at the way the book is written and printed, the common markers of an academic work are missing. Long, complex sentences are not Bell’s style. He uses no footnotes at all in Love Wins (though he has in previous books).21 He uses short paragraphs, sometimes only a word on each line. It is a very personal style; if you have heard Bell preach, you will recognise his voice coming through the text very clearly.
Reading Love Wins as a modern work of theology will lead to overlooking its poetic style and the holistic way that the argument is built. Taking a reductionistic approach to criticise individual sentences or paragraphs misses the big picture Bell is painting and down-playing the aesthetic arguments he makes will make the argument much less coherent.
.3Scripture, Church and World
To examine the scope of an apologetic we need a guideline for our exploration. In this paper we will use a schema created by Vanhoozer, looking at it in terms of Scripture, Church and World. As he describes the ‘theodrama’22 of Christian life, he writes that it ‘triangulates the Spirit’s speaking in Scripture, the belief-practices of the church, and the world made new in Jesus Christ.’23 We will examine why Vanhoozer and this triangulation are an appropriate way of looking at Love Wins in its postmodern context. We must also take care to explore what he intends to say with ‘Scripture’, ‘church’ and ‘world’, as we could overlook the subtlety of his model if we put a simplistic meaning to these commonly used words.
Vanhoozer is a ‘highly regarded theologian in the reformed family’24 who takes both scripture and culture seriously in the formation of theology. He has specialised in understanding postmodern thought and how it might affect theology. Vanhoozer’s theology has been developed in the context of postmodernity but is in ongoing academic conversation with those who are not postmodern. It has been carefully thought through to engage with both non-Christian postmodern philosophy and non-postmodern Christian theology.
In writing ‘The Very Idea of a Theological System’, Vanhoozer’s aim is to defend the concept of systematic theology in the postmodern context - a difficult task, given the suspicion of ‘great stories’ in this era. He places the Bible at the heart of theology25 but seeks a new way of doing theology that does not reduce it to just data collection of propositional facts as some modern systematicians have.
While the essay has theology in general in view, and systematics in particular, what he says can also be applied to apologetics. Apologetics is the part of theology which aims to express the Christian faith in rational ways that will support Christian belief and evangelisation. It is easy to see the three points of Vanhoozer’s triangulation in apologetics. In order to be effective, an apologetic must interact with both the Spirit speaking in Scripture, the current church context of both belief and practice and just as importantly, with the world in its state of transformation through Jesus’ action – and do all three consciously and faithfully.
One criticism of ‘The Very Idea of a Theological System’ is that it dismisses the contribution to systematic theology of Charles Hodge.26 Hodge forms just one small part of the background Vanhoozer builds to why a new approach to systematic theology is needed.27 The argument in the paper still stands, but it does highlight that even those who build a systematic, clearly argued case for a postmodern approach to theology will face opposition from other theologians who are comfortable thinking with a modern mindset.
Davidson sets out ‘triangulation’ as a way of transcending the subject-object model, saying that two separate observers are necessary and irreducible in having an objective view of some other thing.28 The two observers in this model are the church and the world, and they must interact with each other, being transformed through that interaction and viewing of the Scripture. This intersubjectivity allows us to chart a position and path with objectivity.
The Spirit speaking in Scripture is, according to Vanhoozer, best explained with another, previous triangulation - it was formed by ‘the human authors’ communicative interaction with the mighty acts of God and the Spirit’s leading them to understand these acts truly.’29 The Scripture is not to be seen in static terms, as just a plain text that might mean anything. It is to be taken as a record of the interaction with the divine, written under His influence. Within the triangulation, Scripture is the ‘norming norm’, the primary source for theology.30 The bare words on the page are not elevated, it is ‘the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures’, as Vanhoozer finds in the Westminster Confession of Faith.31 In his theodramatic scheme, we are to become ‘apprentice[s] to the script’,32 learning to live in rhythms and thought patterns that are properly Biblical.
These rhythms are also to be found in the belief-practices of the church, those who are committed to living as part of the theodrama. Again, in harmony with the multivocal scriptures, there are many groups of ‘players’33 each with different responses to the Biblical script. The use of imagination and even (rightly understood) improvisation is central to Vanhoozer’s conception of this theodrama. The conversation between individual players and their communities helps to develop the doctrines that are both a ‘fruit and catalyst’ of ‘faith seeking theodramatic understanding’.34 Doctrines are seen as directors notes, a guide and help to those taking their role in the theodrama,35 helping the church to take its place in the triangulation.
The third party in this triangulation is ‘the world made new in Jesus Christ’ - another dynamic, active description. While some Christians hold a very negative view of the world, Vanhoozer speaks of the transformation that God is working there. But it is equally not unrealistically idealistic about the world already being all good. The world is both in flux and diverse. It is important for Christians to understand the local context they inhabit to effectively engage with it, and this engagement must come with an acknowledgement that the world is an active part in the dialogue and triangulation of theodrama.
Complicating the matter, the three overlap and are difficult to distinguish. Our reading of Scripture to hear the Spirit’s speaking is with a hermeneutic that we have learned from our experience as part of the practising church. Our church beliefs and practices are both formed by the culture we play in, and both church and Word play their part in the transformation God is bringing in the world. Because we aim to triangulate all three in our theology, they must be brought close together, for our aim is not to investigate each in separately, but to live a life transformed by our interaction with all three.
As we use the model of ‘Scripture, Church and World’ to examine the apologetic of Love Wins, there will necessarily be some overlaps. Bell does not separate the viewpoints as subjects or objects but moves between them. However, it is a useful set of coordinates to try to explore the dimensions of the apologetic Bell communicates, despite the fact it cannot contain the entirety of Bell’s thought. The triangulation of ‘Scripture, church and world’ is a helpful grid to examine the value of any apologetic, especially as it resonates well with the non-dual thinking of the postmodern.
.4Engagement with the Scriptures
We begin our investigation of the apologetic value of Love Wins with the way Bell reads and uses Scripture in the book. Which scriptures he uses and which he does not mention will be important. It may significantly affect the triangulation Bell has done if he ignores significant passages of scripture, and weaken the apologetic value of Love Wins.
The way he uses those scriptures, too, is important. The act of triangulation is a hermeneutic exercise, interpreting scripture while simultaneously interpreting the church and world. The type of hermeneutic and consistency of its application in Love Wins will be important if we are to see it as a credible apologetic work. This chapter will present not only an overview of the way Bell treats scriptures, but look at some of the sections where he deals with a passage of scripture in an extended way as case studies of his method.
.4.1Aesthetic Methodology
Bell is not writing an analytic or systematic work of theology. Love Wins is not peppered with footnotes and references to commentaries, though it is clear from Bell’s writing that he is familiar with many of the theological conversations he draws on and contributes to. Love Wins seems to be best described with terms like poetry, art, creativity – much like in his first book, he says ‘Welcome to my Velvet Elvis.’36 He aims to make something beautiful, something that is for today, yet includes ‘what was great about the previous paintings’.37 Bell’s approach to using scripture, is not to exhaustively exegete every last detail from each individual word but to paint images with them. It is pastiche, mash-up, eclecticism, just like the art of the postmodern world it shared, nothing like the measured, modern theology books it might be compared with.
This creates a mis-match with some readers, especially those of an academic, modern viewpoint. Bell might be accused of ‘sort of flit[ting] from one text to the next like a butterfly hoping to drain the tiny bit of nectar in each flower.’38 It can be read as rather superficial and it certainly resists the rigorous analysis that academics usually employ.
Bell often uses scriptures to provoke, upset, challenge and even disorient. In the first chapter (in which Bell asks 94 questions) he seems to set one scripture against another to show that simplistic, surface reading of the Bible is not enough. To set up the trajectory of the rest of the book, Bell uses the questions and the scripture references to ‘destabilise’39 and unmask the image of God that he describes as ‘toxic’.40 At least at this stage, his concern is not explaining the profound meaning of the verses, but to create a mind that is open to listen as he paints his apologetic. This is an important apologetic approach in setting a stage for explaining the Christian message to those who have misunderstood previous presentations of Jesus. However, Holmes is right to say that it can be unhelpful when directed towards Christians who have never had these questions before, especially as some of them are still unanswered at the end of the book.41
.4.2Selection of Scriptures
Bell uses a lot of scriptural references but not many extended quotations. He manages to refer to 10 different passages on one page,42 well over thirty in several chapters. How and why he has selected these passages is not spelled out to us, but it may inform our understanding of Love Wins as an apologetic.
Bell makes a big point of handling all the scriptures that use the word hell;43 gehenna in the original Greek of the New Testament, as well as tartarus the related words of sheol in the Hebrew Old Testament and hades in the New.44 It is true that he has covered every use of these words45 and it is a claim that he uses to bolster the strength of his apologetic and undermine other understandings of hell that he criticises.
Bell says:
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.
There are, however, many other uses of ‘firey’ imagery that do not by name refer to hell, both in Jesus’ teaching and in the rest of the New Testament. Bell seems to have over-simplified, as much of what is taught about hell comes from other passages that emphasise judgement.46 One of the most notable examples is the ‘lake of fire’ in Revelation 20. It is not hard to argue that this passage has been central to the formulation of images of hell throughout church history and is just as important today.47 To not discuss it suggests that Bell is in fact avoiding some passages where the plain reading of them might undermine his argument.
By the time Bell comes to talk about other passages that do not speak of hell by name, his case has been built and he is just backing it up. Bell’s argument in the chapter is that hell is not just in some other place, at some future time, but here and now as well as then. He has built a case that there is punishment from God, that hell is not about abstract beliefs but actions and attitudes and then argues that punishment is part of God’s redemption process.
Another example of overlooked verses is in chapter 1, where Bell questions how someone might be saved. He does not refer to some of the ‘classic gospel texts’, like Acts 16:30-31, Romans 10:9 or John 3:16-18 which give straightforward answers to the question.48 Such an oversight is either deliberate or shows a remarkable unfamiliarity with the Bible. Since we can be sure from the rest of the book that it is not the latter, we must ask why Bell might not use these verses. Critics have said that Bell is trying to mislead or muddy the issues that are in fact as simple as the plain meaning we might take from those verses. It can be argued that Christians are overly familiar with the words and take them as shorthand for what they already believe, rather than looking at the range of possible meaning they include. Bell’s aim of disorienting and encouraging a questioning attitude would be shut down by giving answers that the readers think they understand, or have been told meanings of already.
.4.3Treatment of Individual Scriptures
Bell uses several different techniques with different scriptures. First is his habit of quoting a text without a detailed commentary. This is often as part of a string of quotations,49 designed to show a breadth of support across the Bible for the position he describes. Other passages are quoted with a short summary or comment immediately before or after, before moving on.50 This is an effective apologetic technique, especially for those who do not know the scriptures well, though it have been criticised.51
In other places, Bell uses longer quotations or references and re-tellings of Bible passages to act as extended metaphors. Examples of this include the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the discussion of the rock in Exodus 17 and 1 Corinthians 10, and the parable of the Father with two sons (one of which is known as the Prodigal).52 In these parts of the book, Bell takes time to dig further into the Bible, skilfully weaving an interpretation that draws on what has been written before but often goes in directions that might be unexpected to the reader.
It can be argued that some of Bell’s use of scripture, especially passages that are just quoted briefly or those that are dealt with in a few lines, does not take the context into full consideration. An example of this is the series of Old Testament quotations where Bell draws out the theme of restoration.53 Witherington criticises this ‘soundbiting’ as not taking into account ‘that many of these OT texts are about God’s covenant faithfulness to his own chosen people, not to the world in general.’54 Yet Bell deals with this accusation on the next page, using a text about Egypt to point out that God’s intent was always to bless even Israel’s enemies.55 It seems that some of these criticisms stem from the fact that the theological and methodological assumptions that Bell makes are not on the surface, as they might be in an academic book, but hidden, as is appropriate in a work of apologetics aimed at a non-academic audience.56