I thought I was done with the Rob Bell posts. But when I heard that he appeared this morning on my favorite talking-head program “Morning Joe,” I knew I had one more. The video of Bell’s appearance is above. There’s nothing new here and certainly nothing hard-hitting. The only thing new that I got from this is that apparently Mika likes what he’s selling. The others sounded like they weren’t very interested in the interview. FWIW.
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Mohler Leads Panel Discussion of “Love Wins”
Earlier today Albert Mohler moderated a discussion of Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins. I was grateful to participate in the conversation along with Russell Moore and Justin Taylor. Watch above, listen below, or download audio here. [audio:http://www.sbts.edu/media/audio/Panels/20110317-bellpanel.mp3]
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Review of DeYoung Book
Tim Kimberley of Credo House Ministries has written a short, favorable review of Kevin DeYoung’s Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day (Crossway, 2011). I appreciated his advice about how to use this book. He writes: “If I were to start doing a study with someone. Maybe a mentor-type situation with a person in their teens, twenties or thirties this is one of possibly 3 books right now I’d consider reading with them.Â
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Martin Bashir Takes on Rob Bell
I don’t know what else to say. This interview is devastating. It exposes the inconsistency of Bell’s argument. Bell wants to be a universalist without taking the name, and Bashir won’t let him off by a facile appeal to “paradox.” Watch above or read the transcript below.
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Lisa Miller Interviews Rob Bell
Earlier this evening Lisa Miller of Newseek interviewed Rob Bell about his new book Love Wins. If you want to see where the rubber meets the road with the theology in Rob Bell’s book, then you’ll want to watch this. Miller actually does a good job of pressing Bell on some key points. I think she understands the affront of the cross, and even Rob Bell’s inclusivism is offensive to her because it still relies on Jesus as the savior of the world. Unfortunately, Bell fails to state a clear gospel message. Instead, he gives short pat answers and tells lots of stories. Interestingly, Miller calls him a universalist inspite…
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Richard Mouw on “Love Wins”
From Cathy Lynn Grossman at USA Today: Richard Mouw, president of the world’s largest Protestant seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary based in Pasadena, Calif., calls Love Wins “a great book, well within the bounds of orthodox Christianity and passionate about Jesus. The real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between “generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people.” I think this quote from Mouw portends the shape of the…
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Revising Hell into the Heterodox Mainstream
Much has been made of Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Before the book was even released, promotional materials seemed to suggest that Rob Bell would be heading in an unorthodox direction in this book. Now having read the book, I am convinced that the promotional materials were correct. Bell has launched out into a heterodox, unbiblical accounting of sin and judgment, the cross and salvation, heaven and hell. He pictures a God without wrath who would never create a place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked. No one needs salvation from God’s wrath; they…
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DeYoung’s Review is Must-Read
Kevin DeYoung’s review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins is a theological and pastoral tour de force. If you have limited time to read book reviews, skip mine. Kevin’s is much better.
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John Piper on the Tsunami
It will be a while before we know how many people lost their lives in yesterday’s disaster. The 2004 tsunami that devastated Indonesia killed over 230,000 people in 14 countries. Hopefully the death toll in Japan and elsewhere will not be as high. Nevertheless, the scope of the yesterday’s loss will no doubt be of disastrous proportions. The questions of theodicy that people had in 2004 will surface again as more news unfolds. In light of that, my mind has been on a discussion that John Piper had with an NPR reporter after the 2004 tsunami. This interview was tremendously helpful to me then. My hope and prayer is that…
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“Sin No More” Not in Scripture?
Perhaps you have noticed in your translation of the Bible that John 7:53-8:11 is set off in brackets with a footnote saying something like, “the earliest and best manuscripts do not include verses 7:53-8:11.” It is a bit jarring to see such a note attached to one of the most beloved stories in our English Bibles (“let he who is without sin cast the first stone”). Nevertheless, the note is correct. This text was most assuredly not a part of the original text of John but was added centuries later. Every semester in the hermeneutics courses that I teach at Boyce College, I do a brief section on textual criticism—the…