The evangelical blogosphere is packed with comments about pastor Rob Bell and his new book, Love Wins. Bell is a gifted communicator — I have often used his sermons as examples of creative ways to connect with emerging generations. But with his latest book, it appears Bell has completed his long theological slide into the kind of liberalism that has characterized and devastated mainline churches for a century.
R. Albert Mohler has written a significant posting on this issue. He writes:
Missing from his Gospel is any clear reference to Christ, any adequate understanding of our sin, any affirmation of the holiness of God and his pledge to punish sin, any reference to the shed blood of Christ, his death on the cross, his substitutionary atonement, and his resurrection, and, so tellingly, any reference to faith as the sinners response to the Good News of the Gospel. There is no genuine Gospel here. This is just a reissue of the powerless message of theological liberalism.
H. Richard Niebuhr 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.”
Yes, we have read this book before. With Love Wins, Rob Bell moves solidly within the world of Protestant Liberalism. His message is a liberalism arriving late on the scene. Tragically, his message will confuse many believers as well as countless unbelievers.
You can read Mohler’s full article on this issue at: http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/03/16/we-have-seen-all-this-before-rob-bell-and-the-reemergence-of-liberal-theology/