Rob Bell

I’m not sure how accurate this article is, seeing as how it concerns a book which has not yet been published, but Universalism for Rob Bell would not be a surprise. In fact, it would very nearly be a relief to see him come at last to his destination. Universalism is neither new nor untenable, but only unreasonable. It was the logical conclusion to 19^th century Liberalism and the surprising conclusion to 18^th century Puritanism. In both instances it was the most humane resolution to a quandary arising from magnification of one Christian doctrine over and at the expense of the others. Liberalism gorged upon the kindness of God (which they would call Love) until they no longer understood the justice of God, and were compelled to cut out the passages of the Bible which didn’t sound as pleasant as the Sermon on the Mount. The Puritans gorged upon the Bible alone, until they’d forgotten than any other Christians had ever read it. When they discovered that scriptures about the Trinity were scarce, they (perhaps more humanely than other alternatives) became liberals and never bothered to reading the Bible again.

Rob Bell is the best thinker in modern liberal Christendom, and now preaches a religion which in all essential qualities no longer resembles Christianity. For if there is no great risk, no great battle, no great problem upon which the whole plot is staked, “all is meaningless.” The original sin in the garden means nothing if there be no penalty for it, whether than sin be historical or symbolic. And what of the Incarnation? Cur Deus homo si poenam non esset? Why the God-man if there be no penalty? And even if he were just a moral teacher, what would it matter if a moral life shares the same end as a wicked one? The Universalism of Rob Bell, old as it is, consists of several entirely modern errors; First, it consists of a conception of the Deity as primarily kindness, when in fact every other age has only approached him with fear and trembling. (See Otto’s Idea of the Holy, or Mr. Beaver’s keen observation that “only a fool would approach Aslan without his knees knocking.”) Second, it consists of a skepticism regarding miracles, which is also unique to our age. This is, I believe what he gets after in Velvet Elvis when he questions the possible doctrinal trouble of the Virgin Birth. It is not so much a problem to Mr. Bell that Christianity might have inflexible dogmas as that these dogmas (most uncomfortably) credit the supernatural. C.S. Lewis’ study on the propriety and probability of miracles is too brilliant to imitate or summarize, but I would add that the modern skepticism about them is an unnatural state of affairs. It is a learned behavior to disbelieve in Elfland; we all were frightened of monsters in our closets at some point, and we were closer to the truth then. Third, it believes the foolishness that we might somehow all be “one,” as if that were possible in any desirable or meaningful way. It is the love of simplicity, of the simple answer, that the Universalist and the madman love. Rob Bell is an intelligent man, caring, sincere, and damnably wrong. He understands correctly that American Evangelical Christianity is backwards, provincial, and petty. But he has expanded himself the wrong way. He has tried to make himself broad minded, and has only broadened into modernism. What he ought to do is to make himself taller; for a tall man is now what is needed, a man tall enough to see the ages behind us while keeping his own feet under him.

Currently reading Il 3, Is 49, Matt 2, and Cicero. Finished How to Watch TV News and Aen 6 over the weekend.