Here is simply my review, the remainder of the paper, or portions of it, are likely to surface later because, let's face it, I spent a month of my life devoted to this piece and I heartily affirm its contents. Also, it should have footnotes, but blogger and I aren't particularly friends when it comes to formatting, so if you care for the references and witty side comments, e-mail me and I'll gladly send them on to you.
If Love Wins, Then God Loses
Rob Bell, the noted rockstar preacher of young, hip evangelicalism, recently questioned the wrath of God in his book, Love Wins. In this controversial best-seller, Bell repeatedly reminds his readers that his views on hell and God’s anger are a part of historic, orthodox Christianity. Yet, he veers quite far from this orthodoxy as he suggests that God’s love conquers his wrath, resulting in the salvation of all people, since God wills that none should perish. According to Bell, for the wrath of God to remain on a person eternally denies God’s grace, sovereignty, mercy, and most importantly, his love. Ascribing to a hierarchy of divine attributes, Bell sees God’s very essence as love, thus love must ultimately trump any other characteristic of God.
Yet, it is hard to say that Bell leaves any room for divine wrath at all. Without explicitly denying the wrath of God, Bell seems to reduce wrath to earthly social evils. God is love — to such an extent that he can do nothing unloving. Bell sees wrath as so far removed from God’s nature that God’s whole personality must become cruel and vicious in order for God to respond in wrath. Thus, while Bell certainly denies that God’s wrath is eternal, he leaves little room for God’s wrath in the here and now. Bell’s questions lead a reader to believe that God is so loving that wrath simply cannot be a part of his nature.
As an evangelical, Rob Bell cloaks his denial in the affirmation of Christian truths. At the surface, his argument against God’s wrath is compelling. For Bell, God’s wrath must not exist because God is love. Certainly, one must have sympathy with such positions because God’s love is vital to one’s understanding of God. Anything which contradicts God’s love should be denied. The problem, however, is that Bell sees contradiction where no contradiction exists. He sees love to the exclusion of all else. As Kevin DeYoung declares, “In Bell’s theology, God is love, a love that never burns hot with anger and a love that cannot distinguish or discriminate.” Because Bell’s love is isolated, it fails to be the love described in Scripture. Love in abstract is not love at all, for love requires many complementary doctrines which Bell eschews.
Instead, Bell’s god is loving, forgiving and gracious above all else. Such attributes make this god easy to digest and accept. Tertullian’s words seem fitting, “a better God has been discovered, one who is neither offended nor angry nor inflicts punishment, who has no fire warming up in hell, and no outer darkness wherein there is shuddering and gnashing of teeth: he is merely kind. Of course he forbids you to sin -- but only in writing.” When absolute and unconditional love is the supreme attribute of God, it requires all other characteristics of God to be diminished. Thus, God cannot be wrathful, and with his wrath goes his justice and holiness. Additionally, his mercy must be abandoned for God cannot be merciful if he is not angry in the first place. While Bell desperately wishes for people to feel the love of God, his theology so reduces this love that it becomes meaningless. By denying wrath, Bell’s cross becomes a mere demonstration of good feelings and misses out on the gospel’s central message of the Father’s loving sacrifice of his son. Bell states in his book, “ We shape our God, and then our God shapes us. A distorted understanding of God...can leave a person... without the thriving life Jesus insists is right here, all around us, all the time.” Bell’s words ring alarmingly true. He has shaped his god and his god has left him without the thriving life that comes through the propitiatory act of Jesus on the cross.
Bell’s god, in final analysis, looks no different than the flattened idols of liberalism and neo-orthodoxy. While many describe Bell as an evangelical, his beliefs about God’s wrath tell a far less orthodox story. DeYoung suggests that there is no room for Bell’s god within the “deep, wide, diverse stream” of Christianity for Bell’s view of God is irreconcilable with historic, orthodox faith. Bell’s god is a cheap knock-off of the vibrant deity who so loved the world that he wished to cleanse it of its sin. With wrath removed, Bell’s god looks like an idol of heterodox faith.
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