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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
This may have been worth three stars, except his style of writing was really starting to annoy me by midway through the book. Can't a paragraph have more than one sentence at a time?
And if I
have to read
one more
sentence
in this
format I
will go
absolutely crazy.
And if I
have to read
one more
sentence
in this
format I
will go
absolutely crazy.
I think Greg Boyd might have described this book best when he said, “Many will disagree with Rob’s perspectives, but no one who seriously engages with this book will put it down unchanged.” Bell is certainly not afraid to call out modern Christians, especially Evangelicals, on how issues he thinks we have gotten wrong or should reconsider. Like N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope and Ken Wystma in The Grand Paradox, he discusses how popular views of salvation, heaven, and end things (specifically that the sole point of Christianity is to “get people somewhere else”) has done great damage to how we live today and his description of a world in which that statement was assumed to be true is like a sucker punch to the gut, because it is far too close to our reality. So too his points that when Jesus talked about hell, it was not to the “heathens” but to the religious leaders, the ones who “considered themselves ‘in,’” are points that we should wrestle with and consider just who Jesus would be delivering his messages to today. Contrary to what might be reported, Bell does not say there is no hell; he simply walks through church history and presents all the options that have ever been considered, and, while his own view is definitely hinted at, he leaves it to his reader to wrestle with the evidence he’s presented. Some will (and have) argued with his evidence, but if all this book does is start a discussion about how Christians’ views of eschatology affect how they live and see the mission of the church, as well as how these views have changed through church history, then I’d say that’s not a bad thing.
Rating and review to come. Need to sit with this one for a little while.
Great content, but a 3rd grade reading level. I’d love to read something much more academic on the topic of Christian Universalism
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
I decided to listen to the audiobook of this since Rob Bell is notorious for writing the way he speaks (choppy). This wasn't an easy read for me as someone who is admittedly jaded by Christian culture, and Christian nonfiction in particular. I think the most interesting concept I took from this book is this: maybe Jesus' coming to redeem the entire world is completely independent of my belief in that fact. In other words, his blood covers all, regardless of what you believe or think. That was an interesting idea to me—universal redemption separated from individual belief. It makes a lot of sense to me. I'm not sure that I've adopted this as my official position, but it was a new (and welcomed) idea.
like every rob bell book it makes one think for themselves.
Though I enjoy listening to Rob Bell in his Mars Hill podcasts, I find his writing style most irksome (the short choppy, premature placed carriage returns. I understood, however, that a less than literary loving video biased populace do find this manner much more digestible than the likes of N.T. Wright or C.S. Lewis or anything written more than 20 years ago. Did not even plan on reading this, as there is much more worthwhile works on my to-read list, but Mrs. Naum purchased a copy and it was sitting on the coffee table. And in a sitting, one breezy reading session is all it took to consume the contents therein. Even with all the hoopla and wrangling about (which propelled the book into best-seller status).
My pronouncement? I agree. Love never fails. And I am puzzled over all the controversy and fanfare about the title. Yeah, there's some space for nitpicking about some details -- but most of that strikes me in the same vein as fruitless debates over angels dancing on heads of pins.
For a little illumination, here are some Bell quips -- first on heaven:
And on hell…
I tried hard to separate from all the hullabaloo and consider the book on its own merits. I liked it, though it's hard to give a great score to a book with no index (and no scripture cross reference either). Though there are some excellent recommendations in the "Further reading" section -- Surprised by Hope (N.T. Wright), The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis), The Naked Now (Richard Rohr), Everything Belongs (Richard Rohr), The Prodigal God (Timothy Keller), etc.…
My pronouncement? I agree. Love never fails. And I am puzzled over all the controversy and fanfare about the title. Yeah, there's some space for nitpicking about some details -- but most of that strikes me in the same vein as fruitless debates over angels dancing on heads of pins.
For a little illumination, here are some Bell quips -- first on heaven:
There's heaven now, somewhere else.
There's heaven here, somewhere else.
And then there's Jesus's invitation to heaven
here
and
now,
in this moment,
in this place.
And on hell…
…we need a loaded, volatile, adequately violent, dramatic, serious word to describe the very real consequences we experience when we reject the good and true and beautiful life that God has for us. We need a word that refers to the big, side, terrible evil that comes from the secrets hidden deep within our hearts all the way to the massive, society-wide collapse and chaos that comes when we fail to live in God's world God's way.
And for that,
the word "hell" works quite well.
Let's keep it.
I tried hard to separate from all the hullabaloo and consider the book on its own merits. I liked it, though it's hard to give a great score to a book with no index (and no scripture cross reference either). Though there are some excellent recommendations in the "Further reading" section -- Surprised by Hope (N.T. Wright), The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis), The Naked Now (Richard Rohr), Everything Belongs (Richard Rohr), The Prodigal God (Timothy Keller), etc.…
From the department of misleading titles comes Rob Bell’s latest passive-aggressive assault on American cultural Christianity. Bell, like many of his “emergent” peers loves a little anti-evangelical shot across the bow as much as the next guy, but also like his peers doesn’t want to be hundred percent ostracized for the cannon fodder he makes of the American fundamentalist sacred cows. Wins is neither as controversial as everyone expects it to be nor is it as revolutionary as Bell would like it to be. In the end, it is an interesting and somewhat thoughtful gloss on the Biblical references to heaven and hell with a dash of quantum physics for flavor.
As with most things Rob Bell, it is easier to nail down what Love Wins isn’t than to frame up what it is. Love Wins is not a scholarly work. It borrows from reasonable scholarship and like most Bell it grabs from N.T. Wright-ian first century Judaic reference, but Bell’s attempt at scholarship is not scholarly. If you are looking for a thoughtful, Biblically relevant exegesis on the now/not yet of heaven, Wright’s Surprised by Hope is a much better read.
Love Wins is also not a logical book. Rob does not begin with the premises of an argument in order to effectively draw the reader to a conclusion. Instead, Rob stands up the somewhat accurate straw man of fundamentalist event-based conversion. He induces us all to look in the face of that ugly-as-sin gunny sack of chaff while he from a safe distance points fingers whispering, “Isn’t that ugly?” Let’s be honest, we all—to some degree—know that there are substantial cracks in the façade of pray-the-prayer conversions. Any self-respecting evangelical has wondered about kids who die “too young” (whenever that is) or people who have “prayed the prayer” and turn away later in life. But the weak logic of transactional get-out-of-hell prayers is not a foundation for universalist theology. We do not come to a logical and Biblically inspired vision of the Trinitarian God by starting from the premise that somebody else’s vision doesn’t feel good. The flaws in fundamentalist evangelicalism do not a logical premise make.
Finally, Love Wins is not a thorough book. Weighing in at about 107 pages of content, it makes for about an hour long read, depending on your reading speed. If Rob intends to woo the uncertain throngs of post-foundationalist evangelicals to his brand of pseudo-universalism, it will take more than 100 pages of loosely tied together anecdotes and Biblical references. I can only assume that Rob did not intend to change anyone’s mind about anything but rather to appease the minds of any evangelical who doesn’t like how their current brand of evangelicalism feels. To anyone who has ever squirmed in an evangelism training class, to anyone who has walked down the aisle to Just As I Am a few too many times, Bell’s rhetorical sigh relief is for you.
So what does Bell give us, if not a thorough scholarly logic of Christian universalism? In many ways this is a feeling book occasionally populated by thorough ideas. At its best moments, Love Wins taunts us with thoughtful reminders that the simplest and most mundane versions of Western Christianity probably lack Biblical defensibility. He borrows from writers more robust and less popular than him to hint at an intensely superior Christian vision of God and humanity than most American churches have never even wondered at. A vision where God by His Spirit is actively at work in every human moment, refining us by the redemptive fire of his loving judgment, training us to be more uncomfortable with the saccharine of sin and more enamored with the flavorful balanced meal of Trinitarian Love. Such a vision is not only Biblical it is also historically more consistent with the great thinkers and God-lovers who came before us. Christ-followers who preceded the revivalist distortions the American “awekenings” and the theological distortions that followed would recognize some of the better thoughts in Love Wins as resonant of transformative faith, and we would be wise to do the same.
But these ancestors of the faith would not recognize the great jump that follows. They would not and did not come to the firm conclusion that an actively redeeming God who is reforming every human life requires the absence of post-humous punishment. Moreso, they would not recognize Rob’s basic formula:
Evangelical Formulas for going to Heaven Feel Bad
+
Lots of long-dead Christians thought other more interesting things about being saved
+
The Thought of God Letting Everyone into Eternal Paradise Feels Good
=
Eternal Conscious Punishment Cannot Exist.
In the end, Bell's intimations of robust soteriology degrade into a needless line in the sand. Apparently, we cannot say that “Love Wins,” as Rob has in sermons and bumper stickers for more than a decade, unless God’s Love eventually convinces everyone to love God back. If one person succeeds in walking away from God’s love with eyes wide open, then God fails in His Eternal Creative Endeavor and Love Loses or at best Love Ties or goes into extra innings.
As I have seen in spades with the rising tide of Christian Universalists, they stand under the banner of “love” and challenge anyone to defy them. For the rest of us who are not yet convinced that that Trinitarian Love requires that there are not eternal consequences for human choice, we (as implied by Bell, Peter Hiett of Denver and so many others) only believe in some not-so-nice, not-so-pretty version of love, and one of these days we’ll come around to the side of the Winners, to the side where Love Wins as long as we all wholesale agree with the Christian Universalists who know said love so much better than the rest of us.
As with most things Rob Bell, it is easier to nail down what Love Wins isn’t than to frame up what it is. Love Wins is not a scholarly work. It borrows from reasonable scholarship and like most Bell it grabs from N.T. Wright-ian first century Judaic reference, but Bell’s attempt at scholarship is not scholarly. If you are looking for a thoughtful, Biblically relevant exegesis on the now/not yet of heaven, Wright’s Surprised by Hope is a much better read.
Love Wins is also not a logical book. Rob does not begin with the premises of an argument in order to effectively draw the reader to a conclusion. Instead, Rob stands up the somewhat accurate straw man of fundamentalist event-based conversion. He induces us all to look in the face of that ugly-as-sin gunny sack of chaff while he from a safe distance points fingers whispering, “Isn’t that ugly?” Let’s be honest, we all—to some degree—know that there are substantial cracks in the façade of pray-the-prayer conversions. Any self-respecting evangelical has wondered about kids who die “too young” (whenever that is) or people who have “prayed the prayer” and turn away later in life. But the weak logic of transactional get-out-of-hell prayers is not a foundation for universalist theology. We do not come to a logical and Biblically inspired vision of the Trinitarian God by starting from the premise that somebody else’s vision doesn’t feel good. The flaws in fundamentalist evangelicalism do not a logical premise make.
Finally, Love Wins is not a thorough book. Weighing in at about 107 pages of content, it makes for about an hour long read, depending on your reading speed. If Rob intends to woo the uncertain throngs of post-foundationalist evangelicals to his brand of pseudo-universalism, it will take more than 100 pages of loosely tied together anecdotes and Biblical references. I can only assume that Rob did not intend to change anyone’s mind about anything but rather to appease the minds of any evangelical who doesn’t like how their current brand of evangelicalism feels. To anyone who has ever squirmed in an evangelism training class, to anyone who has walked down the aisle to Just As I Am a few too many times, Bell’s rhetorical sigh relief is for you.
So what does Bell give us, if not a thorough scholarly logic of Christian universalism? In many ways this is a feeling book occasionally populated by thorough ideas. At its best moments, Love Wins taunts us with thoughtful reminders that the simplest and most mundane versions of Western Christianity probably lack Biblical defensibility. He borrows from writers more robust and less popular than him to hint at an intensely superior Christian vision of God and humanity than most American churches have never even wondered at. A vision where God by His Spirit is actively at work in every human moment, refining us by the redemptive fire of his loving judgment, training us to be more uncomfortable with the saccharine of sin and more enamored with the flavorful balanced meal of Trinitarian Love. Such a vision is not only Biblical it is also historically more consistent with the great thinkers and God-lovers who came before us. Christ-followers who preceded the revivalist distortions the American “awekenings” and the theological distortions that followed would recognize some of the better thoughts in Love Wins as resonant of transformative faith, and we would be wise to do the same.
But these ancestors of the faith would not recognize the great jump that follows. They would not and did not come to the firm conclusion that an actively redeeming God who is reforming every human life requires the absence of post-humous punishment. Moreso, they would not recognize Rob’s basic formula:
Evangelical Formulas for going to Heaven Feel Bad
+
Lots of long-dead Christians thought other more interesting things about being saved
+
The Thought of God Letting Everyone into Eternal Paradise Feels Good
=
Eternal Conscious Punishment Cannot Exist.
In the end, Bell's intimations of robust soteriology degrade into a needless line in the sand. Apparently, we cannot say that “Love Wins,” as Rob has in sermons and bumper stickers for more than a decade, unless God’s Love eventually convinces everyone to love God back. If one person succeeds in walking away from God’s love with eyes wide open, then God fails in His Eternal Creative Endeavor and Love Loses or at best Love Ties or goes into extra innings.
As I have seen in spades with the rising tide of Christian Universalists, they stand under the banner of “love” and challenge anyone to defy them. For the rest of us who are not yet convinced that that Trinitarian Love requires that there are not eternal consequences for human choice, we (as implied by Bell, Peter Hiett of Denver and so many others) only believe in some not-so-nice, not-so-pretty version of love, and one of these days we’ll come around to the side of the Winners, to the side where Love Wins as long as we all wholesale agree with the Christian Universalists who know said love so much better than the rest of us.
Much-maligned for its supposed heresies, basically an unfair accusation. Bell makes a concerted effort to ask what we actually know from the Bible, instead of just what we think we know. He wonders whether the "traditional" view of death in the Christian system reflects the theology presented by its founders and walks away saying "maybe." His honesty about what we don't know is paired with his central question, "Is God big enough to save non-Christians?" He says that he is, and that the means by which God controls his eternity is his, not ours, to understand. A worthwhile read, if only because it helps one to relax about the things that we don't know and focus on what we do.