Rob Bell & HarperCollins are Winning. Is Christianity?

Timothy Dalrymple | Patheos.com | Updated: Mar 28, 2011

Rob Bell & HarperCollins are Winning. Is Christianity?

(WNS) -- A marketing coup: Get a small book on eternal destiny to the top of best-seller lists by sending out heretical-sounding promotional materials that garner condemnation. The winners: Rob Bell, the famously hip 40-year-old founder of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan, and his publisher, the Rupert Murdoch-owned HarperCollins, that dubs Bell “the most vibrant, central religious leader of the millennial generation.”

Bell’s book, Love Wins, argues that a good and loving God could not condemn people permanently to hell—and that, because of the orthodox conception of hell, many see the Christian message as “an endless list of absurdities and inconsistencies.” The truly good news, he says, is that “love wins.” This message, coming from a pastor dubbed by Time “a singular rock star in the church world,” provoked critiques from Christian leaders including John Piper. One prominent blogger, Justin Taylor, argued that Bell “is moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity.”

After Piper sent a message on Twitter that linked to Taylor’s post and said, “Farewell, Rob Bell,” Taylor’s critique received 250,000 viewings over the next 48 hours. The central theological criticism was that Bell promotes “universalism”—the view that all humankind will ultimately be redeemed—or so dilutes Christian teachings on salvation and the afterlife that what remains is no longer Christian at all. Many secular publications, including The New York Times and CNN, gave Bell’s book favorable publicity.

HarperCollins, which had won the rights to Love Wins with a six-figure advance, flew Bell to New York, where Bell told an interviewer that he was not a universalist, “if by universalist we mean there’s a giant cosmic arm that swoops everybody in at some point, whether you want to be there or not.” Christ alone is the means of redemption, he said, but people of all faiths and those who reject Christ in this life will have abundant postmortem opportunity to receive forgiveness and to enjoy the new heaven and the new earth. Bell strongly suggests that everyone, or nearly everyone, will eventually succumb to God’s endless pursuit.

Those statements escalated the criticism, with Reformed pastor and blogger Kevin DeYoung’s 20-page dismantling of Bell’s argument attaining large circulation. Those whose names appeared in endorsements on the back of the book found themselves on the defensive. Endorser Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary (where Bell was trained), contended that Bell was well within the bounds of a “generous orthodoxy.”

How to make sense of all this? Pastors and writers sometimes take unorthodox positions. Bell is not a theologian or biblical scholar, and no one would mistake him for one, but Love Wins is particularly questionable for its caricature and condemnation of historical orthodoxy. As many critics have noted, Bell never offers a thorough or sympathetic explanation of traditional Christian views of salvation and the afterlife—yet he condemns them as “misguided and toxic,” “tragic,” even “terrifying and traumatizing and unbearable.”

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, argues that Bell sees the Bible as a collection of stories and “believes it is his right and duty to determine which story is better than another.” Mohler contended that it is “audacity of breathtaking proportions” to replace with a different story the hard Christian teachings about sin, the cross, and atonement through sacrifice: Mohler notes that Bell “alienates love from justice and holiness. . . . There is no genuine Gospel here. This is just a reissue of the powerless message of theological liberalism.”

The Chicago Sun Times asked about Bell, “Is he the next Billy Graham?” Some publications may anoint him as such. But if evangelicals let the secular media choose their leaders, there never would have been a Billy Graham in the first place. 

Publication date: March 25, 2011

Rob Bell & HarperCollins are Winning. Is Christianity?