Monday, April 11, 2011

Question for Rob Bell

Mr. Bell:

From a careful reading of Love Wins, it seems to me that you affirm three logical inconsistent propositions:

1. God saves everyone, because God wants all to be saved, and God get what he wants. No one goes to hell.
2. Everyone is not saved, because God gives us freedom to rebel against him. Some go to hell.
3. We don't know whether or not everyone will be saved. We don't know if anyone goes to hell.

Since statements (1) and (2) are contradictory, only one of them can be true. If statement (3) is true, we cannot know whether statement (1) is true or statement (2) is true.

So, what do you, in fact, believe?

Douglas Groothuis

8 comments:

Danny said...

Brilliant! I love it

Matt Viney said...

What a breath of fresh air. Putting it like that really highlights his unwillingness to nail his colors to the mast.

It seems that it's easier to ask question after question and explore shades of meaning instead of committing to a position.

A great post.

jdawg said...

Thanks for this. Sending some your way to give it a read.

Michael Baldwin said...

Nice to finally have some clear logic penetrating the discussion!
Unsurprisingly it didn't come from Mr Bell himself :)

Does he really imply statement (i)?
The articles and statements I have released have confirmed that he doesn't think that everyone will be saved and he does believe hell exists in the afterlife.
However I have seen (ii) and (iii) in his writings, which are obviously contradictory.

Fran Szarejko said...

Very well done. Gets right to the heart of his book with only a few words.

Robert Kunda said...

"So, what do you, in fact, believe?"

Prediction: He won't say. Answers are sooo unfashionable, don't you know.

Unknown said...

I am just finishing this book and I cannot pin down what it says. The writer's thoughts and feelings bounce around like an MTV video, which is what a mind formed on MTV does, as opposed to a mind formed on print.

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. said...

David:

You are exactly right.

DG