Bell Blurbs: Boyd, Peterson, Mouw

There is a Patheos website with some rebuttals and endorsements relating to Rob Bell's controversial new book, Love Wins. For all the criticisms, having endorsements by Greg Boyd, Richard Mouw, and Eugene Peterson is pretty impressive. Here are a few positive blurbs from them.

“In the current religious climate in America, it isn’t easy to develop an imagination, a thoroughly biblical imagination, that takes in the comprehensive and eternal work of Christ in all people and all circumstances in love and for salvation. Rob Bell goes a long way in helping us acquire just such an imagination. Love Wins accomplishes this without a trace of soft sentimentality and without compromising an inch of evangelical conviction in its proclamation of the good news that is most truly for all."

– Eugene H. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, and author of The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language

“Love Wins is a bold, prophetic and poetic masterpiece. I don’t know any contemporary writer who expresses the inexpressible love of God as beautifully and as powerfully as Rob Bell! Many will disagree with some of Rob’s perspectives, but no one who seriously engages this book will put it down unchanged. By my reckoning, this makes Love Wins a ‘must read’ book!”

– Greg Boyd, Senior Pastor of Woodland Hills Community Church, and author of many books, including Letters to a Skeptic.

“[Love Wins is] a great book, well within the bounds of orthodox Christianity and passionate about Jesus. The real hellacious fight, says Mouw, a friend of Bell, a Fuller graduate, is between “generous orthodoxy and stingy orthodoxy. There are stingy people who just want to consign many others to hell and only a few to heaven and take delight in the idea. But Rob Bell allows for a lot of mystery in how Jesus reaches people.”

– Richard Mouw, president of the world’s largest Protestant seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, as quoted in USA TODAY

Peterson Says a Bit More in an Interview

The same website has an interview with Eugene Peterson clarifying his endorsement of Bell's book. He doesn't hold back, and he's not too hopeful about Bell's very vocal and uncharitable critics.

What are your thoughts regarding Rob Bell’s book and the controversy it ignited? What inspired you to endorse the book?

Rob Bell and anyone else who is baptized is my brother or my sister. We have different ways of looking at things, but we are all a part of the kingdom of God. And I don’t think that brothers and sisters in the kingdom of God should fight. I think that’s bad family manners.

I don’t agree with everything Rob Bell says. But I think they’re worth saying. I think he puts a voice into the whole evangelical world which, if people will listen to it, will put you on your guard against judging people too quickly, making rapid dogmatic judgments on people. I don’t like it when people use hell and the wrath of God as weaponry against one another.

I knew that people would jump on me for writing the endorsement. I wrote the endorsement because I would like people to listen to him. He may not be right. But he’s doing something worth doing. There’s so much polarization in the evangelical church that it’s a true scandal. We’ve got to learn how to talk to each other and listen to each other in a civil way.

Do evangelicals need to reexamine our doctrines of hell and damnation?

Yes, I guess I do think they ought to reexamine. They ought to be a good bit more biblical, not taking things out of context.

But the people who are against Rob Bell are not going to reexamine anything. They have a litmus test for who is a Christian and who is not. But that’s not what it means to live in community.

Luther said that we should read the entire Bible in terms of what drives toward Christ. Everything has to be interpreted through Christ. Well, if you do that, you’re going to end up with this religion of grace and forgiveness. The only people Jesus threatens are the Pharisees. But everybody else gets pretty generous treatment. There’s very little Christ, very little Jesus, in these people who are fighting Rob Bell.