A Biblical Response To Rob Bell’s Love Wins

“In this letter, Luther is answering the question, raised by von Rechenberg, as to whether any can be saved without faith. Luther’s answer is a clear ’no.’ In fact, the letter is specifically aimed at refuting any notion that anyone can be saved by anything other than faith as Luther defines it… Any medieval theologian worth his salt knows that the key to understanding how things actually are, how God actually works in relation to the created world, is his ordained power, those things which he has actually determined to do. What Luther is focusing on here is not the possibility of postmortem evangelism but the absolute necessity of faith in the ordained order. Indeed, he goes out of his way to say that we have no basis for thinking that postmortem evangelism does occur, only that God could have established it that way had he so wished. Bell’s mistake is that he draws a patently wrong conclusion about Luther’s argument here because he either did not allow the wider context of the quotation to inform his understanding of its meaning or did not understand the medieval theology and rhetorical argumentation underlying Luther’s point.”

However, even if Martin Luther – or any other Bible teacher or preacher for that matter – makes a statement, it doesn’t automatically make it true! When we go back to the Scriptures, we will find no such teaching that says that after a person dies, they have a second chance to believe in Jesus and be saved. Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” Bell’s updated and modified idea of purgatory that says people can have a second chance after they die has no basis in the Bible.

Although Bell has denied numerous times that he is a Universalist, he clearly teaches: “At the heart of this perspective is the belief that, given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most “depraved sinners” will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God.” (107). A Universalist is defined in the World English Dictionary as: “a system of religious beliefs maintaining that all men are predestined for salvation.” As Tim Challies notes, “(Rob Bell) would deny the (Universalist) label as he tends to deny any label. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well, you know how it goes.”

In this chapter, we see another example of Bell making bold faced claims about support for his Universalist beliefs, without any documentation supporting the claim: “And so, beginning with the early church, there is a long tradition of Christians who believe that God will ultimately restore everything and everybody…” (107). On the following page, he writes, “To be clear, again, an untold number of serious disciples of Jesus across hundreds of years have assumed affirmed, and trusted that no one can resist God’s pursuit forever, because God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest of hearts.” (108). Once again, my challenge to Bell is – can you share with us who these Christians are? I have read literally thousands of books by Christian authors of varied denominational backgrounds from the first century right through to the 21st Century, and to date, Rob Bell is the first ‘Christian’ author I have read who claims to believe in this Universalist heresy. Who are the others? I have read the writings of the early church fathers including Augustine; I have read the great reformers of the 1500’s including Martin Luther and John Calvin; I have read the puritans, Baptists and Pentecostals, charismatics and cessationists, Protestants and Catholics, Calvinists and Ariminians, and not one mention of the idea of Universalism. Until now. Until Bell. One of the things I taught my Hermeneutics students when I was a professor at PLBC was this: Unique interpretations are usually wrong! When Bell comes along and puts forth a doctrine that the historic, orthodox Christian church has not believed for two thousand years, then this is a good indication that it isn’t true!