Review of Rob Bell's Love Wins: Chapter 5-6

Review of Rob Bell's Love Wins: Chapter 5
By: Justin Ahlgrim

Jesus was the spiritual rock for the Israelites (1 Cor 10:4).
You might be surprised how far Bell takes that truth. 

CHAPTER 5


*Bell talks about how the message of the cross, the most powerful image in Christianity, really has more than one message, even in the Bible. It is a legal message (justified), it is a economical message (redeemed), it is a temple religiosity message (sacrifice). The question is, in our modern context, its common to hear about things like "the blood of Christ" in a sermon ... but what does that really mean for us? We don't have a sacrificial system to please "the gods" anymore. We don't sprinkle goat's blood on a fancy altar. It was a useful image to help people understand what Christ's sacrifice meant back then, but right now, could it be more confusing than helpful?, to talk about the blood of Christ without a societal context of animal sacrifice? I think so. I think that if we talk about the "blood of Christ," we need to inform our listeners what that meant in the context in which it was written. Otherwise, we just come across as weirdos. Kind of like Jesus saying "Eat of me, I am the bread of life" without a context. It just confused His disciples, and no wonder it did!


CHAPTER 6 - THERE ARE ROCKS EVERYWHERE


*It's hard to sometimes know where Bell is going. This is one of those chapters. Bell points out that in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul sees Christ as providing water for the Israelites in Exodus 17 as the rock. Bell surmises then, that "Paul sees Christ everywhere." I think Bell is way overgeneralizing again. The most basic look at 1 Corinthians 10 shows that Christ isn't just any thing or object, He is seen as the spiritual rock that provided for His people, showing that God was providing for His people in the Exodus (by leading them with a cloud (1 Cor 10:2) by splitting the sea (v. 2) by providing manna (v. 3) and water from the rock (v. 4), and its because of this that the people of 1 Corinthians are told to not to be idolaters in finding their greatest satisfaction in other things other than Christ (v. 7). Paul doesn't see Christ everywhere, Paul sees Christ where God was providing for His people. Bell takes Paul's statement on Christ being a spiritual rock and overgeneralizes it to a dangerous point where you can see Christ in all things in all places, even of different religions! I kid you not. Bell says these quotes in chapter 6 along these exact lines ...
"Jesus is bigger than one religion"
"He [Jesus] and He alone is saving everybody. and then He opens the door leaving all sorts of possibilities"
"Sometimes people use His name. Other times they don't."
Drives me crazy! Bell is walking on a dangerous line here. He tiptoed to the line in his illuminating dvd, Everything Is Spiritual, but in Love Wins its clear he has just plain crossed over. And there's no going back. It's ironic, because in Love Wins Bell emphasizes how he is very concerned with cultural context, but from reading Love Wins it is clear that Bell has very little concern for literary context. Each Bible verse means what Bell wants it to mean. This is in contrast to one of my favorite quotes from RC Sproul which states, "You are required to believe, to preach, and to teach what the Bible says is true, not what you want the Bible to say is true."


*To support his own Christological Universalism theology in this chapter, Bell quickly threw some verses out there (often out of context) like when Jesus says "whoever is not against you is for you." But just 2 chapters later, Jesus also says, "Whoever is not with me is against me" (Lk 11:23)!
Bell will say Jesus' quote in John 12:47, "I have not come to judge the world but to save the world" yet the very next verse says, "The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day" (John 12:48)! At face value, Bell's arguments seem very strong, but with the tiniest scrape against the surface, you can see what he's hiding underneath. And if Bell feels the need to hide biblical truth in order to support his theology, how biblically founded can it be?