The Great Divorce II or For Whom Bell Tolls

What could wake me from my blog fog? The Twitter-rebellion in Egypt? No. Devastation in Christchurch  New Zeeland? No. Protests in Wisconsin? No. Cruise missle-ing Libya?  Almost, but not quite. It had to be something as big as Rob Bell and his new book Love Wins to reinvigorate my keyboard.

I've been asked a lot on the subject, so here I go into the Rob Bell controversy. I am all a quiver writing about something so relevant. I might have to don some skinny jeans by the end. Here goes.

Plate from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

William Blake, the late 18th and early 19th century poet/painter is most famous for his poem and corresponding prints entitled, "The  Marriage of Heaven and Hell". The poem has a lot to it that I won't cover here. One major theme, however, is the oppressive nature of morality and religion. Blake wants us to rethink evil, virtue, and Heaven and Hell. He takes traditional ideas of evil and hell and gives them virtuous properties. A few examples follow:

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

"The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."

"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."

Today there is still much debate as to whether he was being direct, symbolic, or satirical. Certainly, however, he considered himself an enemy of the Church of his day.

Years later C.S. Lewis wrote a response to Blake's work called The Great Divorce. What Blake "married" Lewis was "divorcing". Lewis' book takes place in a dream sequence and imagines a place on the outskirts of Heaven where people from the outskirts of Hell travel. Each person has a chance to stay. Each chapter follows different people and spells out what consumed their life on earth to send them to Hell. As they experience the fringe of Heaven, each one decides to return to Hell rather than give up their self-centered passions.

Ironically, some have compared Bell's book to Lewis' because each contemplates a decision point beyond our earthly deaths to choose Christ. There is some similarity....but not much. Lewis' book is a dream and not a theological examination of Heaven and Hell. Lewis' goal is showing how those who reject Christ in life would still reject Christ if given a second chance in the afterlife. Bell "imagines" an afterlife where even the most reprobate are eventually redeemed because Love Wins. In The Great Divorce Lewis is refuting Blake and depicting a literal Hell full of people who won't accept Christ rather than a Hell that is empty because of the overwhelming power of God's love.  One can defend Bell's book, but one cannot equate it to Lewis'.

I am not insinuating that Bell and the poet, Blake , are totally alike. Blake was diabolical and an enemy of the church. Bell is not. They are similar, however, in that both Bell and Blake used their imaginations to contemplate things beyond Scripture and beyond historically understood interpretations of Scripture. And where Blake's "marriage" needed annulment, Bell's "win" needs to be reviewed by the officials.

Many theologians have done excellent work analyzing Bell's use and interpretation of Scripture. I have nothing to add to that process. The little I add below is more from a biblical worldview perspective.

I think the essence of the controversy surrounding Rob's book is how we decide what is true and what is not.

We discern truth in one of four ways: reason, our five senses, feelings, or revelation. Every culture in every age has a dominant way of determining truth (this is called epistemology for the budding philosophers out there). The ancient Greeks began by favoring physical evidence (the pre-Socratics), but then turned to reason (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle). The early church had revelation in Christ and the Bible which then mixed with Greek reason (Augustine). Medieval Europe continued with a mix of revelation and reason (Aquinas). The renaissance and enlightenment began to reject revelation in favor of the five senses and reason (Kant and many more). Today our way of knowing truth is often called post-modern.

The post-modern way of knowing truth is feelings or intuition. Feelings can be a legitimate way of knowing truth. However, truth found through feelings must stay within the parameters of God's revelation.  This is where the Bell controversy brings in an important post-modern question. What do I do when my feelings begin to pull in a different direction than God's revealed truth?

What post-moderns tend to do is re-interpret revelation to fit their feelings or reject revelation altogether. Topics that pull our feelings in directions different than revelation are red-hot right now. Homosexuality, Hell and judgement, divorce, women in ministry, exclusivity of Christ, are some feelings-led controversies. History shows us topics that have been controversial in other eras but don't cause a stir today: The dual nature of Christ, the Trinity, Christ’s relationship with the Father, and what to do with those who denied their faith under persecution and wanted back into the church. These controversies were settled by agreed upon interpretation of Scripture, not the feelings of the day.

In his book, Bell is much more  a product of the age of feelings than he is an objective interpreter of Scripture. None of us are ever fully objective. That is why we join our thoughts with the Spirit-led stream of interpretation from the 1^st century to today. The interpreter must lead with humility not presumption. Just because I feel Ghandi was a good enough guy to go to heaven, doesn't mean he does.  What the bible says and how other Godly thinkers through time interpreted what the bible says is a more reliable indicator of truth than my feelings.

The popular question, Would a loving God send a person to Hell? is a great example of our presumption. The question assumes we have the capacity to evaluate the full meaning of love and also how the sovereign creator of the universe should behave. No human is up to that task. Yet the question is asked as if it is the litmus test for interpreting Scripture. Would a loving God flood the world and destroy all but one family, level Sodom and Gomorah, kill the Canaanite inhabitants of the promised land - men, women, and children?  Apparently so.

God is Love, but He is also Truth. These must both be held fully by the Christ-follower whether our emotions take us there or not. Abraham went dutifully to the mountain to kill his son Isaac. He did not question the Love of God because he understood the Truth of God.

The Post-modern often forgets that Satan is active and loves to use our God-given emotions to lead us to oppose God-given truth.

Emotional knowledge can also be a short-cut to spending time getting to know truth and changing our actions. The Christ-follower must hold firmly to both Truth and Love.

Remember, the balance of truth and love wins.

Well, my skinny jeans have cut off my circulation, so I'd better quit.