Once more evangelicals are fighting among each other. And Rob Bell’s Love Wins is the source of this new controversy. Is Bell a universalist – heaven forbid! – or one for whom the fires of hell and the warmth of heaven are really the same reality, depending on whether or not we trust the love of God? In fact, the way the controversy is going, a lot of evangelicals are already in Rob Bell’s hell, hung up – like the older brother in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son – by their need to have a hell in the first place! Naysayers and killjoys at the divine banquet!
I must admit that when I was growing up, the doctrine of hell was the lynchpin of Christian faith. In one way or another, many of the Baptists of my childhood religion affirmed that one clear sign you were going to hell was your belief in God’s universal salvation. I must also confess that as a teenager when I realized that the doctrine of hell was incompatible with my emerging vision of God’s love I worried, at first, about my own salvation! Was my turn from conservative “orthodoxy” the first step on a slippery slope to damnation?
I can understand why conservative evangelicals are worried. They once considered Bell one of them, assuming that Bell knew the boundaries and limits of God’s love for the lost. Bell’s focus on God’s love unmasks the inherent contradiction in most conservative theology. Conservative evangelicals claim a message of God’s love, but they also believe that God’s love is limited, always conditional on accepting Jesus as savior, admitting your sin and throwing yourself into the arms of unmerited grace. God loves us, according to this vision, but if we don’t come around to God’s way, we are lost – irrevocably and forever. God has no choice but to abandon us.
Bell asks whether “love wins” or “love can be defeated” by human recalcitrance. Conservative Christians are clear about one thing: even though humanity experiences life after death, somehow death is barrier that God shapes God’s attitude toward human beings. At the moment of death, God’s wrath kicks in and if you haven’t recited the right words, participated in the right rituals, or believed the right things, God either can’t or won’t love you. Bell asserts that God’s love for the lost, which terminates at the hour of our deaths, is subordinated to God’s justice; but ultimately God’s justice is not just, but is, in fact, violent and wrathful – eternal punishment for finite failures and sins.
Bell is on the hot seat among many conservative evangelicals because he unmasks the God they believe in as the narcissistic, tyrannical operator of a cosmic “bait and switch” scheme in which Jesus’ love hides vengeance and alienation.
The question Bell poses to conservative evangelicals is whether God is ultimately loving or punitive. Now, Bell struggles with the term “universalism” – he doesn’t like the image of God saving everyone automatically. In fact, he suggests that human responses, presumably in either this life or after we die, are the source of hells of our creation. The party is going on, the celebration is in process, but we can be aloof, alienated, and absent, choosing hell over heaven. God continues to love us, but we can continue to turn away, thus, limiting God’s ability to show us the beauty God has planned for us. Conservative naysayers for all their “orthodoxy” may be guilty of the “older brother” syndrome and in need of coming home to God’s party!
Now, I agree with Bell’s thesis, but believe that he doesn’t go far enough. Or at least doesn’t want to admit how far he’s gone. As I read the book, two thoughts came to mind – “it’s about time, you came to this conclusion; we’ve been waiting for you” and “you should go a bit further.” The “we” are progressive Christians, especially process theologians, for whom a dynamic, moment by moment divine lure is at the heart of the God-world “call and response.”
Like some progressive and process theologians, Bell nuances his universalism by his affirmation of human freedom to say “no” to God. This “no” can thwart God’s vision for our life. God wants all to be saved, but the nature of that salvation is contingent on our use of freedom. In making this statement, Bell comes close to process theology, although his view is more lyrical and less worked out than the process theologians. According to process theologians, God’s aim or vision of possibilities is the “best for the impasse.” The intensity and scope of divine possibility is related to the interdependence of choice, environment, and personal history. Life is a dynamic call and response in which God calls and we respond, and our response leads to new embodiments of God’s call in our lives. When we open to God’s presence, God can be more active in our lives, providing a greater range of possibilities and the energy to achieve them.
Still, God is always present in our lives, seeking wholeness even in our waywardness.
Like progressive and process theologians, Bell asserts that God never gives up. Our saying “no” is always met with a divine “yes.” The question is whether all humankind will eventually turn to God’s love. When we make the first step toward God, we become part of God’s ongoing process of sanctification, our spiritual evolution in this lifetime and beyond the grave.
Bell’s work is landmark in nature, and I encourage seekers as well as church goers to read it. Like emerging Christian leaders Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt, Bell has come forward to articulate a new vision of evangelical theology, one that takes the good news of God’s grace seriously. The hallmark of evangelical theology has always been grace – God’s personal, persistent, and amazing grace. Bell is asking evangelicals to be consistent – theologically and pastorally. In the spirit of his theological predecessors, progressive and process theologians and the open and relational theists such as Clark Pinnock and Thomas Oord, Bell places love at heart of Christian theology, thus opening the door for seekers, previously alienated by visions of a wrathful God, to embrace Jesus’ message of love, justice, and transformation.
For more perspectives on Love Wins, as well as interviews with the author, visit the Love Wins Book Club at Patheos here.
Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. His most recent book Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed will be released in May 2011.
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