Rob Bell: Public Teaching Should Be Open to Public Critique

Rob Bell is all the talk these days, partially because of his most recent publication Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived and partially because he keeps making things worse every time he talks about it — and it seems that he talks about it all the time. I and my fellow pastors here in Brownstown will be reading and discussing that book over the next couple of weeks and I’ll journal about it here. After all, that’s all this blog is: my journal. I’m not trying to convince people of anything, just working through my thoughts, trying to structure them, and remember details about issues I’ve wrestled with.

I am, however, writing this on a blog. It’s open to the public. I understand the rules of the game. I know I’m opening myself to public comment. And that’s okay.

That being said, Pastor Bell disdains blogs that question his teaching. He refuses to read any of them, he says, yet he attributes all kinds of negative motives to those who write about their questions and concerns. He says he just doesn’t have time to deal with that kind of stuff because he’s too busy loving people, and with his own church, and doing what his study of Scripture tells him he’s supposed to be doing. I would agree with him — if he was doing his writing and speaking for his church’s consumption alone. Were we to comment on that, we would be intruding. But he’s not, so I take issue with him on that. Yes, he’s a busy pastor, but he’s writing books for mass consumption and he’s doing nationwide speaking tours (and don't think he isn't being compensated well for them). He wants to teach in the public forum, but he doesn’t want to hear the critiques of that public. If he doesn’t want to be criticized by the public, then he shouldn’t teach in the public square. The end.

Moderate/Liberal "Logic"

In 2005, an entire region of American Baptist churches, some associations of American Baptist churches, and some local American Baptist congregations prepared to leave their denomination due to the denomination's abandonment of some clear biblical truths. The General Secretary of ABC/USA scolded them, saying that doing so would "give them small souls," that is, make them "pusillanimous." That's from the 16th century Latin ecclesistical term pusillanimis used to translate the Greek oligopsychos [oligos (small); psyche (soul); Latin pusillus (very small); animus (soul/spirit)]. A "small soul" is the equivalent of a "weak spirit." Dictionary definitions for pusillanimous include: lacking courage; cowardly. To modern moderate and liberal Baptists, conservatives with strong biblical convictions are weak spirited and cowardly: pusillanimous. Rather twisted logic, isn't it?

On the Lord's Supper

Reading Bishop J.C. Ryle during Lent was a fruitful enterprise. His thoughts on John's presentation of the events in the "upper room" (John 13) are especially interesting in light of the fact that he was the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool:

Concerning the omission of the Lord's Supper [by St. John in his Gospel], I venture the following conjecture. I think it was especially intended to be a witness forever against the growing tendency of Christians to make an idol of the sacraments. Even from the beginning there seems to have been a disposition in the Church to make Christianity a religion of forms and ceremonies rather than of the heart, and to exalt outward ordinances to a place which God never meant them to fill. Against this teaching St. John was raised up to testify. The mere fact that in his Gospel he leaves out the Lord's Supper altogether, and does not even name it, is strong proof that the Lord's Supper cannot be, as many tell us, the first, foremost, chief, and principal thing in Christianity. Its perfect silence about it can never be reconciled with this favourite theory. It is a most conspicuous silence, which the modern advocates of the so-called sacramental system, can never get over or explain away. If the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper really is the first and chief thing in Christianity, why does St. John tell us nothing about it? To that question I can only see one answer: it is because it is not a primary, but a secondary thing in Christ's religion. The reason assigned for the omission by many commentators, viz., that St. John thought it needless to repeat the account of the institution after it had been recorded by three evangelists and St. Paul, appears to me entirely insufficient.

Something to think about this week as we prepare to share Communion.

A Monstrous Obtuseness

Jesus said, "Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name." Then a voice came out of heaven: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, "An angel has spoken to Him." (John 12:27-29 NAU)

It was a monstrous thing that the multitude was obtuse to so plain a miracle. Some were deaf, and caught what God had pronounced distinctly only as a confused sound. Others were less dull, but yet detracted greatly from the majesty of the divine voice by pretending that its author was an angel. But the same thing is common today. God speaks plainly enough in the Gospel, in which there is also displayed a power and energy of the Spirit which should shake heaven and earth. But many are as cold toward the teaching as if it came only from a mortal man, and others think God's Word to be a barbarous stammering as if it were nothing but thunder. -- Jean Calvin, The Gospel of St John 11-12

The Desperate Hardness of the Human Heart

In preparation for Maundy (Mandate) Thursday, I was reading from J.C. Ryle's Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. John. Regarding John 12:34-43, Ryle observed:

We err if we suppose that seeing wonderful things will ever convert souls. Thousands live and die this delusion. They fancy if they saw some miraculous sight, or witnessed some supernatural exercise of Divine grace, they would lay aside their doubts, and at once become decided Christians. It is a total mistake. Nothing short of a new heart and a new nature implanted in us by the Holy Ghost, will ever make us real disciples of Christ. Without this, a miracle might raise within us a little temporary excitement; but, the novelty once gone, we should find ourselves just as cold and unbelieving...

Man's Obstinate Unbelief

What right have we to wonder if the hearers of modern sermons in countless instances remain unbelieving? "The disciple is not greater than his Master." If even the hearers of Christ did not believe, how much more should we expect to find unbelief among the hearers of His ministers. Let the truth be spoken and confessed. Man's obstinate unbelief is one among many indirect proofs that the Bible is true. -- J.C. Ryle, DD