Rob Bell Not Faring Well

[scottmaciver]

A brief podcast I came across from RC Sproul Jr Here and an article on the same by Christianity Today Here.

In claiming that Christianity amounts to irrelevant letters from 2,000 years ago, it's hard to believe that Bell would have the ear of evangelicals of any description. Why would that be the case, if indeed it is the case?

 

[DMcFadden]

Bell was trained in a school that prizes "edgy," "cutting edge," "out of the box," "third way" thinking that avoids the tired routines of left OR right.

His latest venture into Oprahdom is pretty much a straight line extrapolation from the premises he began with in school.

Here is a piece Robert Gagnon wrote about a prof at Bell's alma mater.

J. R. Daniel Kirk, professor of New Testament at evangelical Fuller Seminary has a chapter on “Homosexuality under the Reign of Christ” in his book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? (Baker Academic Press, 2011), 175-92. It is a work that causes me some concern and to which I invite his response. In it Dr. Kirk presents himself as someone who (1) does not yet believe that homosexual practice is right but (2) could still be persuaded that committed homosexual unions are right. In the meantime, he already endorses state-sanctioned marriage or “something like marriage” for homosexual unions and thinks the church should keep listening to the very “stories” of “gay Christians” that erode the church’s resistance to such unions. My own experience in the past with self-professed evangelicals who say things like this is that it is only a matter of time before they switch views to an outright acceptance of homosexual unions or make public a switch previously made in private. Let us hope that it is otherwise here.

When I was in Bell's school in an earlier decade, my ethics prof argued that while God's "perfect" intention may not have been for gay marriage, it is certainly better than bath houses and one night stands. That was in the mid 1970s, almost two decades before Bell was there and more than three decades prior to the professor cited by Gagnon.

The evangelical intelligentsia vanguard was making tentative moves in this direction decades ago. I'm not surprised that someone of Bell's stature and celebrity has finally been noticed for it.

 

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

It is almost like folks were warning about Rob Bell a decade ago.

D.A. CARSON ON ROB BELL : Apprising Ministries