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Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 7

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Rob’s Gospel
Chapter 7
The Good News Is Better Than That

In chapter 7 of Love Wins Rob begins with a well known, often read and universally endearing story, The Prodigal Son (Luke 15).

Everyone loves this story but interpretations are diverse. Rob’s interpretation fills the entire chapter.

The characters and themes are:

  • One father and two sons.
  • The father was respected, sort of, but misunderstood by both sons.
  • One son, the younger, was impulsive, wasteful and self-indulgent. The other son, the older, was slavishly dutiful, arrogantly reliable but self-satisfied.
  • The father is the God figure and the two sons represent different types of sinners.

Those are the obvious details. Rob makes the following observation.

There is only one story being told but each character in the story sees it differently. Rob calls these different perspectives, not sub plots, but different interpretations on the main plot. Each person puts a different emotional and spiritual spin on what was happening and it clearly reveals what’s in the hearts. [Read more…] about Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 7

Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 6

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Is Rob too literal

Rob’s Saviour
Chapter 6
There Are Rocks Everywhere

This chapter of Love Wins is classic Rob.

He takes an event that Christians accept and refer to occasionally – but are afraid to really think about – and expands on it, bringing it into greater focus. Not fearing what the Bible implies – in spite of being conditioned to jump no higher than the rim of the jar – Rob ventures into the no-go zone, following the obvious to its logical end.

In this case he is talking about a rock. One that figured briefly but significantly in the life of Israel during the Exodus.

Wandering through the desert, Israel became thirty and had no water to drink. Under God’s instruction Moses took his staff and, with all the people looking on, hit a rock. And out came water. Enough water to quench the thirst of an entire nation.

It was a miracle in more ways than one and it involved a rock.

We know about Moses’ staff. It became a snake, ate other snakes – that were previously staffs – and caused all kinds of pestilence when pointed in the right direction. It was the emblem of Moses authority and was prominent in the Exodus story…

But the Rock?

The Rock, about which little was said in the Old Testament, stands out because Paul makes reference to it in the New and gives it a very special place in theology. He never mentions the staff but the no-name, nondescript rock, he says, was Christ! And Rob, taking his cue from Paul’s remark, goes on to suggest these rocks are everywhere. [Read more…] about Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 6

Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 5

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Rob's Gospel is expansive and endless but resistable.

Rob’s Salvation
Chapter 5
“Dying To Live”

If Love Wins was a play this chapter would follow the intermission.

In the first half Rob offers a new way to think about heaven and hell, other than the popular…

Once you die it’s over, there’s no turning back.

And his ideas go much further than just questioning the finality of death. He says the offer of salvation may never end. The first four chapters are important for developing his thought:

  • Chapter 1 – the quandary. Rob, through a series of questions, shows that conventional ideas about salvation are not always consistent or logical. Wouldn’t terminating a life before the age of accountability be wise if it would surely save a soul from endless torment? That would be the logical thing to do if destiny is sealed at the point of death.
  • Chapter 2 – heaven. Rob demonstrates that heaven is with us now and religious ritual is neither needed to prepare for it nor necessary to engage it now.
  • Chapter 3 – hell. Rob’s hell is painful and he never minimizes the sins that put us there but for him it isn’t final and it’s purpose isn’t torment. It is corrective not punitive. The grace of hell is in the option to repent. Rob’s hell has an exit plan.
  • Chapter 4 – God. Because God is loving, it isn’t illogical to suggest He can and will offer salvation to everyone for as long as it takes for them to repent and return to God.

That is his proposal.

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In the final chapters, with these ideas fully out in the open, Rob takes a different tack. He focuses on four accepted concepts and uses them to reinforce his proposal. The concepts are: [Read more…] about Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 5

Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 4

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Attitudes Limit Discussion

Rob’s God
Chapter 4
“Does God Get What God Wants?”

In chapter 3 Rob argued that hell is not final, meaning those in hell will still have the chance to repent. It’s still hell and it may last forever but it’s not final.

In chapter 4, building on that idea, Rob suggests that the option to repent never ends and that all things and every person will eventually be restored. He appeals to common sense, human decency and what we know about God to make his point. God, he says, is too loving to withdraw the offer of salvation and he adds several other arguments along the way, both biblical and philosophical:

The Contradiction

Rob begins this chapter by taking quotes directly from church web sites. The quotes represent the beliefs of the people in each church and Rob points out the contradictions in these statements.

For example, on the one hand God is represented as:

Mighty, powerful, loving, unchanging, full of grace and mercy and all-knowing. This God is the one who created the world and everything in it. This is the God for whom all things are possible, pp.96-97.

But, in spite of these remarkable attributes the same sites suggest:

The unsaved dead will be committed to an eternal conscious punishment (p. 96)…billions of people will spend forever apart from this God, who is their creator, even though it’s written in the Bible that ‘God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (p. 97).

And Rob punctuates the apparent contradiction by asking several searching questions: [Read more…] about Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 4

Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 3

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Rob’s Hell
Chapter 3

In Chapter 3 of Love Wins Rob attacks conventional ideas about hell and that gets him a lot of flack. Hell is one area of theology which is clearly stamped “no discussion allowed” at the top of the page.

But not to worry, Rob doesn’t deny hell or suggest it is less intense than people say and he speaks of it as a reality no further away than heaven.

There is hell now, there is hell later and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously, p.79

Where Rob differs with convention is he says a person’s time in hell may only last for a temporary period during which they are trimmed and pruned, making them more ready for heaven. In other words, hell may exist forever but it isn’t final. The option to get saved after death, even from hell is possible, according to Rob’s interpretation of Scripture.

Again, he doesn’t lighten hell’s intensity or the sin that puts anyone there. Hell, he says, is the outcome of your choices in this life and it starts in this life. If you want it, you get it now and later. Which means, the roots of the hell you get in the next life are laid down in this one.

To make his argument Rob begins by pointing out that our ideas about hell may not be as well founded as we think. He says… [Read more…] about Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” – Review Chapter 3