My response is: Hold the fire! What does Bell say in that video that justifies accusations of heresy? All I hear him doing is raising questions. He doesn’t make any declarative statement that commits him to universalism or any other heresy.
The problem I have been pointing out here is NOT legitimate criticism; it is the tendency to jump the gun and assume what someone else believes or means based on very skimpy or non-existent evidence.
In my opinion, anyone who reacts to that video negatively–with the intention of saying or implying that Rob Bell (based on the video) is teaching heresy–is theologically paranoid. OR they just want to score points with their crowd by being the first to denounce Bell as a universalist. Nothing in the video justifies the claim (whether explicit or implicit) that he is a universalist.
I await the book. I hope others will do the same. But I doubt all will. My own experience of being in Bell’s shoes leads me to doubt it. (As I explained in an earlier post I have been publicly accused of being an open theist and of denying the historicity of the Bible neither of which is true.)
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