This is the third prong in the series of posts on Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins. We have discussed various historic positions on hell, the eschatology often surrounding the positions, and now have moved to how we use the bible.
So clearly the bible isn’t simple (see the last post.) The word containers from different eras, cultures, languages, geographies and worldviews make understanding literature from any other era very challenging. But there is one other thing that makes the bible really really not simple in my opinion. And I think this complexity potentially may help us with the ideas of heaven and hell in very big ways.
The shortest correspondence in history took place in 1862. Victor Hugo, the famous author of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, took off for holiday after the publication of Les Miserables. You can imagine, like all authors, it was killing Hugo to know how the book was faring.
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Rob Bell, in his new book Love Wins, has made a plea for a CI position that is informed by a view of last things (eschatology) that is very much “already” but still has “not yet” components to it. (see the last 5-6 posts for the back story on these key ideas and conclusions) This leads to a very proactive presence in the earth of brokering shalom in all its forms and takes seriously Jesus’ teaching the disciples to pray, “your kingdom come your will be done.” This is full, broad, deep and rich understanding of “gospel.”
There are other ways to think of last things though. The position of most, though not all, Christian Exclusivists is an understanding of last things that has a massive emphasis on “last.” From our last couple posts we found out that Jesus basically said “the beginning of the end” was dawning in his ministry. Of course the question is “how much of the end” is being dragged into the present.
For the typical CE (if “typical” can be applied to anyone or anything) “last things”/eschatology is a pretty cataclysmic apocalyptic unfolding, a la’ Tim LaHaye and what we see in his best selling Left Behind series of books. In other words the end times are out there in the future somewhere and we need to prepare and we need to prepare the world.
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We said that Love Win’s Rob Bell’s new book raises several issues we wanted to address here.
1. The who is “in” who is “out” question. In the last several posts we have looked at the broad
brush strokes of the three positions that have been discussed within Christianity for centuries.
2. We then said we would look at eschatology, which we just introduced last post.
3. We will then move to HOW we use the bible to build these doctrines. What we will discuss here
will be controversial and paradigm breaking for some.
So what is eschatology? I believe it was the late Fuller Professor George Eldon Ladd that said, “the church lives in the parenthesis between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’” Eschatology is the study of “last things.” Ladd was essentially saying there are certain parts of the “end” of “last things” that are “already” happening, but they are initial, they are foretastes, they are glimpses of kingdom but they are “not yet” fully the kingdom, which awaits full expression and experience in the future. Where does this come from.
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Universalism, Christian Exclusivism (CE) and Christian Inclusivism (CI) are the labels usually used surrounding the issue of who is “in” and who is “out.” The last three posts are background to this one dealing with the issues raised by Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins.
We have explored the basic positions you can find within historic Christianity of the CI, CE and Universalist. Many, of course will claim that the position of their tribe is the only sound and correct position thereby calling into question whether or not these positions are really within the pale of what they would call “Christian.” Be that as it may historically speaking we have lots of people in the history of Christianity that have held these various positions.
A couple notes on Rob Bell before plunging into the second issue we said we would review, eschatology. If I read Rob rightly, he is arguing for what is classically termed the Christian Inclusivist position.
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There are a couple things I think would be helpful in the next couple of posts to clarify when it comes to the issues that are raised by Rob’s new book Love Wins.
While the book and the conversation circles around hell, it’s nature and it’s inhabitants, obviously the flip side of that is, who is going to heaven, what is heaven and how is it decided who gets in?
Second, Rob has a fairly strong heaven/hell “now” orientation. In theological circles this is called realized eschatology. Obviously these two topics, who is in and who is out, coupled with a conversation on eschatology (the study of “last things”) is a volatile cocktail with polarizations coming quite naturally. We can and will discuss this.
Third, and the thing I think it actually most fruitful, has to do with the burden we place on the biblical text that was written during a totally different stage of cultural development from ours. This is an enormous and largely unexplored issue that really deserves some thought and conversation because it provides a possible way forward on all sorts of issues the church seems stuck on.
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