True Discernment

from CultureWatch:

You can always tell when someone is losing the plot biblically speaking. Whenever the mainstream media starts lapping up what you have to say, then you need to worry about whether you can still maintain your Christian credentials. Rob Bell is a perfect case in point.

He seems to now be the darling of the secular media, and is getting plenty of attention from it. So much so, that he is now on the cover of Time magazine. His new book questioning the biblical doctrine of hell is now splashed all over Time and other MSM outlets.

When secular media outfits are happy to run with your stuff, then one has to start asking hard questions. Would Time have featured a cover story about his book if it were a defence of the orthodox Christian teaching on this topic? Somehow I just don’t think so.

Would any of the MSM be talking so much about this book if it argued for what Jesus and the disciples taught? That there is eternal punishment reserved for those who reject the gift of God’s grace in Christ? I sort of doubt it. But throw out a bit of heresy, and disguise it in evangelical packaging, and you become an instant sensation with unbelievers.

What was that warning that Jesus gave? Didn’t he say to watch out when all manner of men start to speak well of you? That is usually a good indication that your friendship with God has been replaced with a friendship with the world. That seems to pretty well fit the description of Bell and his book.

For several reasons there is no pressing need for me to review this book. Plenty of other good critiques of this book have already appeared. Also, I have reviewed his earlier works and found them to be far from satisfactory. And one of the key concerns about this book has already been nicely addressed elsewhere.

I refer to the implicit universalism that runs throughout this volume, and the trenchant critique which C.S. Lewis offered some 60 years ago. This is how he put it in The Problem of Pain:

“There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture, and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of the creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it?’ If I say ‘Without their will’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies “How if they will not give in?’”

That is as good a reply as any to the theological heterodoxy which Bell is pushing in this volume. But Bell seems to think he is more compassionate than God, and has a better idea than God on how to deal with these sorts of issues. As such, his work is not really a work of theology, but anthropology.

More specifically, his book is not so much biblical Christianity as humanism. It is all man-centred and man-orientated. Now given that we are all humans, all theology of course must deal with us. But theology, as the terms suggest, is first and foremost about God. It is not primarily about us. . . .

read the full article here.