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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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 two posts are background to this one dealing with the issues raised by Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins.
If the CI can see all sorts of people making it into eternity with God based upon their response to the light they received even though that might be thousands of years prior to Christ, there is yet another move to make by analogy.
Abraham believed in a lot of things that we clearly wouldn’t hold to be “biblical Christianity.” Of course Abraham could believe in a biblical Christianity because neither the bible nor Christianity existed. Abraham believed in animal sacrifice and torch walking ceremonies, he believed in the value of child sacrifice show devotion to God, and he thought there was nothing wrong with concubines. These are all things part of his historical and cultural location that can’t be judged per se because they simply were part of the fabric of his existence.
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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 post is background to this one dealing with the issues raised by Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins (as of this post #2 in Amazon)
In starting into a slightly deeper look at a couple of these positions mentioned in the last post, I want to be clear that like all positions, theologically, politically, or something else, positions are nuanced. Within the CE and CI positions there are nuances, variations, differences, brands, stripes, or voices. These clarifications of the broad contours are to help people who have not been a part of the theological conversation and are coming into debate with little background related to the terms, categories and what is potentially at stake.
Since the position of the CE (Christian Exclusivists) is relatively clear and straight forward — consciously make and name Jesus your personal Lord and Savior and that qualifies you for heaven — let’s look a little closer at the Christian Inclusivist position.
Christian Inclusivism argues from the biblical text to analogies parallel to the text. Here is the CI’s rationale.
Let’s look at Abraham for instance, the Old Testament guy used as a premier example of faith in books like Romans and Galatians in the New Testament.
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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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If you haven’t gotten an opportunity to see the one hour presentation this week that happened in NYC the video is below. Having watched the video and read the full book Love Wins, not just the pre-release chapters, I think it might be helpful to highlight a couple things I think are being overlooked in the exchanges so far and the ones that are sure to go on for some time.
First, per Rob’s book preface and the video, this book really suggests nothing new, novel, innovative or dramatic. This has actually been a conversation going on since Jesus came on the scene.
Second, this conversation/debate has gone on within the broad framework of Christian orthodoxy for centuries; both groups claiming their position is the biblical, more faithful, Jesus position. In other words this is an in-house conversation
Third, the issue of orthodoxy is in itself a hot topic of conversation these days. You can’t help but read the works of people like Bart Ehrman (think Lost Christianities or Lost Scriptures) and his debates with the likes of Scot McKnight or William Lane Craig and not realize the very issue of Christianity being a monolith of beliefs is simply modernist wishful thinking.
Before we go calling people heretics, unorthodox or even worse, wouldn’t it be a good idea to know exactly what standard we are using when we are doing the comparisons and making the charges? When we say the orthodox position, what orthodox position do we refer to? And is there such a thing as THE orthodox position? And if we think there is just who said so? It will not be good enough to say, “the sweep of Christian history purports this or that.” Christian history is broad, diffuse, incorrigible, conversational and patient of a large circumference.
I think there is a much more productive way forward however and it has to do with how we handle the very text we claim holds the answers. More of that to come.
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