Rich,
You nailed it!!!! This is analogous to the 19th century liberal reaction to dead orthodoxy and pietism redux.
Al Mohler quoted H. Richard Niebuhr who famously once distilled liberal theology into this sentence: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
Sadly, the emergent movement has rediscovered the theological cul de sac that failed so miserably in the 20th century, thinking that if you add a little more art, a dash more mystery, and hide behind the shield of paradox, people might like it more in the 21st century. Remember that it was evangelicalism that replaced liberalism for the simple reason that liberalism was so open minded that its corporate brain leaked out.
From what I can discern, the cool guys with the funny glasses and haircuts (do we really need one more faux mo?) have come to a fork in the road. Yogi Berra once observed that when you come to a fork in the road . . . take it. Rob Bell and his congregation have done just that. Dan Kimball and Mark Driscoll (both with really funny haircuts) have gone in the other direction.
Bell cherry picks his history, arguing that any fool idea associated with anyone claiming to be Christian in the last two millennia, represents a legitimate path for the Christian pilgrim. But, if 2,000 years of church history has taught us anything, it is that the church has turned its back on any number of damnable lies, ruling them illegitimate and dangerous departures from the "narrow way" of the Gospel.
For guys so interested in paradox, antinomy, and tension . . . I'm shocked. Didn't anyone ever tell them that the love of God, a love that DOES win, shines brightest when held in tension with the correlative truth of eternally rejected love?
The only thing "new" about Bell is that he has a newly "ready made" audience to appeal to with this stuff. Last night I decided to watch an evening of network television. Watching the comedies on NBC (most of them for the first time; hey, I'm a 24-7 news junkie and almost never watch "entertainment" tv). It was shocking to see how mainstream homosexuality has become. No wonder a generation of young people taught that it is "bigoted" to oppose gayness ("not that there is anything wrong with that" Seinfeld used to say!) rejects traditional evangelical teaching. And, with the indoctrination into multi-culturalism, there goes the pluralism card too. Our mass media is reinforcing messages sent by our public schools making John 14:6, Romans 1, and 1 Tim 2 look about as attractive as a KKK hood and a "good" lynching. No wonder Bell can build a mega church by saying what this generation is programmed to want to hear.
