Rob Bell is a very articulate spokesman for the
postmodern theology characterizing the Emergent Church.
... His book Velvet Elvis
is creative and imaginative both in content and layout. But
there are serious problems with his theology. I will begin
with a description of the basic premise that lies beneath
the title of Bell’s book. Then I will discuss several of
Bell’s theological claims.
In Search of the Real “Elvis”
The literal “Velvet Elvis” is a particular portrayal of velvet-crafted
Elvis Presley that Bell owns. The artwork serves Bell’s book
as an analogy to the Christian faith. Bell claims that all
versions of Christianity are paintings or portrayals, just
as his velvet Elvis is a portrayal of Elvis. Since that
version of Elvis is not the only one ever created, it would
be just as absurd to expect there to be only one “painting”
of Christianity—it can be viewed and captured from many
angles. Bell’s book fashions one for his readers.
The problem with the analogy is that an actual Elvis
lived and still can be seen in photos and on videos and thus
can serve as an objective standard by which to judge
artistic portrayals of Elvis. Someone could use abstract art
that employed a collage of images that bear no resemblance
to a human being and call it “Elvis” but everyone would know
it was not Elvis.
In historical Christian theology, the inerrant Bible
interpreted according to a valid hermeneutic that sought to
know the Biblical author’s meaning was the standard
“picture” of the real thing. That meaning gave “artists”
(it’s a bad analogy but I will interact with it because it
is Bell’s) the standard by which they made their
“portrayal.” Various systematic theologies with creeds and
definitions can and should be judged as to how well they
portray the truth of Scripture. The postmodern approach of
Bell and others claims that objectivity is impossible,
therefore to judge a theology to be “biblical” or not is
impossible and futile.
Unfortunately Bell has created a piece of abstract art
and called it “Christianity.” He lets us know early on that
his masterpiece is abstract by explaining his view of the
object: “Jesus took part in this process [of constant
change] by calling people to rethink faith and the Bible and
hope and love and everything else, and by inviting them into
the endless process of working out how to live as God
created us to live.”1
This idea of a Christian faith that is “morphing” (Bell’s
term on the same page just cited) is a recurrent theme in
Emergent/postmodern theology. But Jesus in a process that is
still happening rules out the “once for all” statements in
the Bible.
The Bible says the faith was “once for all delivered”
(Jude 3) where “the faith” means the content of God’s
verbal, inerrant revelation. The Bible describes Jesus in
terms precisely opposite to what Bell uses: “God, after
He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many
portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to
us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through
whom also He made the world” (Hebrews 1:1, 2).
The God of the Scriptures spoke authoritatively and with
finality.
Bell claims that people in church history (he gives
Luther as an example2
) were involved in “rethinking.” I don’t deny that. But when
he says that we have no objective means to determine whether
Luther’s teachings or those of the Council of Trent are in
closer agreement with the teachings revealed once for all in
the Bible—there I strongly disagree. In fact Bell rejects
“Scripture alone” on principle:
This [that the canon was not settled until the 4th
century] is part of the problem with continually
insisting that one of the absolutes of the Christian
faith must be a belief that “Scripture alone” is our
guide. It sounds nice, but it is not true. In reaction
to abuses by the church, a group of believers during a
time called the Reformation claimed that we only need
the authority of the Bible. But the problem is that we
got the Bible from the church voting on what the Bible
even is.
3
He thereby takes the same position that the Roman Catholic Church took
against the Reformers: That since the Church (guided by the
Holy Spirit) gave us the Bible, the Church (guided by the
Holy Spirit) is authoritative over the Bible. Bell’s version
simply expands that idea beyond Rome to any Christian group
anywhere struggling with the meaning of the Bible. Rather
than to rely on a grammatical/historical approach to
determine the author’s meaning, he trusts that in some
manner the Holy Spirit is “enlightening us.”
4
I believe that inspired, authoritative revelation was
given once for all and is contained in the Scriptures. The
Holy Spirit gave us the Bible by inspiring the Biblical
authors, not by inspiring 4th century clerics. They merely
recognized the evidence that pointed to the true apostolic
source of writings Christians had cited as authoritative
since the death of the apostles.5
Therefore revelation is not an ongoing process.
Bell, on the other hand, likens his view to the fluidity
of jumping on a trampoline and calls the views of
theologians like me, “brickianity.” This [brickianity] he
claims is not good news but bad news about walls that keep
people out.6
Incidentally, this brick wall metaphor is Bell’s way of
repudiating systematic theology—a practice he shares with
every Emergent/postmodern writer I have studied (which are
many).
In place of the doctrines of systematic theology7
that needed to be justified biblically, Bell’s “Elvis” is
based on a mysterious original: “The Christian faith is
mysterious to the core.”
8
His misuse of the term “mysterious” results in a semantic
sleight of hand that confuses readers through a major
category error. “Mystery” in the Bible means that which
could not be known had God not chosen to reveal it. For
example, Paul claims God revealed to him the “mystery” that
God was saving Jews and Gentiles through the gospel and
making them co-heirs in Christ. Once this is revealed, it is
no longer mysterious or unknowable. But Bell means something
entirely different. Bell writes “The mystery is the truth.”9
This comes in a section where he poses what he considers
unanswerable questions. Rather than using the term as Paul
did to mean, “what would not be known had God not revealed
it to His apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 3:3-6),
Bell uses it to mean “that which cannot be fully known or
answered, the ‘mysterious.’” That is equivocation, and it is
not acceptable.
The Leap of Faith
Rather than to search the Scriptures to find a valid doctrine that God
has revealed through the Biblical authors (systematically
taking into account ALL God has spoken on a given topic),
Bell jumps on a theological trampoline and invites others to
join in the experience. His “jump” turns out to be the very
“leap of faith” that was proposed by 20th century
existential theologians who had, like Bell, given up on the
belief that truth about God that comes from God can be
validly known. Bell says, “It’s not so much that the
Christian faith has a lot of paradoxes. It’s that it is a
lot of paradoxes. And we cannot resolve a paradox.”10
So the “jump in the air” turns out to be a leap into the
dark—the unknown and unknowable. Paradoxes are like square
circles: you can talk about them but such talk reveals
precisely nothing.
Having established that we cannot validly know enough to
build a wall or foundation with theological bricks, Bell
invites us on a journey. But how do we know that a Christian
journey is a better one than a Muslim one? For Bell, we
don’t. We know that Christian ethics and social action are
very good things, and if we engage in these practices our
Muslim neighbors will be better off—even if they stay
Muslim. Says Bell, “Another truth [remember this means
“mystery” for Bell] about the church we’re embracing is that
the gospel is good news, especially for those who don’t
believe it.”11
This is the very problem that all versions of neo-orthodoxy
run into. If faith cannot be grounded in inerrant Scripture
properly interpreted (and they assume it cannot), then we
have no reason to assume a Christian “leap” is better than a
Hindu “leap.”
Since Christianity is mystery and paradox (according to
Bell’s thinking) we cannot build a foundation with any
theological bricks because they are too inflexible. That is
where he brings in his trampoline analogy:
A trampoline only works if you take your feet off the
firm, stable ground and jump into the air and let the
trampoline propel you upward. Talking about trampolines
isn’t jumping; it’s talking. Two vastly different
things. [sic] And so we jump and we invite others to
jump with us, to live the way of Jesus and see what
happens. You don’t have to know anything about the
springs to pursue living “the way.”12
How do we know that a Christian jump (in the absence of any a priori
knowledge of truth) is better than jumping on a trampoline
and living the way of Ghandi or the Dali Lama? The answer is
we do not, other than possibly by pragmatic means which
always fail as tests for truth.
Francis Schaeffer warned against what Bell and other
postmodern writers are now doing back in 1968. What he says
is directly applicable to Bell’s “jump”:
If we think that we are escaping some of the pressures
of the modern debate by playing down propositional
Scripture and simply putting the word ‘Jesus’ or
‘experience’ upstairs, [where nothing can be verified]
we must face this question: What difference is there
between doing this and doing what the secular world has
done in its semantic mysticism, or what the New Theology
[neo-orthodoxy] has done? . . . If what is placed
upstairs is separated from rationality, if the
Scriptures are not discussed as open to verification
where they touch the cosmos and history, why should one
then accept the evangelical upstairs any more than the
upstairs of modern radical theology? . . . Why should it
not just be an encounter under the name Vishnu?13
Schaeffer asks a good question: why not Vishnu? There is no answer once
we reject the Reformation affirmations about the Scripture,
such as its authority and clarity.
That is precisely where Schaeffer directed his readers
from an earlier generation: “The Reformation and the
Scriptures say that man cannot do anything to save himself,
but he can, with his reason, search the Scriptures which
touch not only ‘religious truth’ but also history and the
cosmos. He not only is able to search the Scriptures as the
whole man, including his reason, but he has the
responsibility to.”14
This, Schaeffer wrote to rebut religious existentialism with
its religious leap with “no point of verification.” Rob Bell
is taking thousands of people who were not yet born when
Schaeffer issued his warnings right back into the
neo-orthodoxy that destroyed so many churches during the
20th century.
Bell never uses the term “neo-orthodoxy,” but his
position on Scripture echoes it. Like those who call the
U.S. Constitution a “living document” to escape its meaning,
neo-orthodox theology uses similar terminology to do the
same with the Bible. So does Bell: “When you embrace the
text as living and active, when you enter its story, when
you keep turning the gem, you never come to the end.”15
You also never arrive at a binding meaning. Bell uses the
typical postmodern argument that because documents (like the
Bible) must be interpreted, that therefore they can have no
fixed meaning (the author’s). Says Bell, “The Bible has to
be interpreted. Decisions have to be made about what it
means now, today.”
16
If, however, meaning is determined by the author, the
meaning will never change and is not different today. There
may be new applications, but not new meaning. Claiming the
sort of fluidity, mysterious nature, and ambiguity that Bell
does creates the scenario where the readers of the Bible
determine its meaning. This implication is not escaped by
claiming, as Bell does, that the Holy Spirit is involved in
the process. The Bible claims that the Holy Spirit inspired
the Biblical authors. By so doing, the meaning was fixed,
“once for all” and delivered to the saints. But Bell takes
the neo-orthodox position: “The authority is God who is
acting in and through those people [1st century Christians]
at that time and now these people at this time.”17
This solves no problems and makes it impossible to make
exclusive truth claims. The Mormon Church could just as well
say that God was working through Joseph Smith and now he is
working through their apostles. (In fact they do claim
that.) So is Bell willing to say that his Mars Hill Church
is valid and the Mormon Church down the street is not? I
cannot see what grounds he would have to do so.
18
When the readers (however pious and well meaning they may
be and however committed to some community) determine the
meaning, there is no valid binding and loosing. They are
only bound to the ideas of their own minds. That is not how
Bell sees it: “This is why binding and loosing is so
exhilarating. You can only do it if you believe and see God
at work now, here in this place.”19
No! We are bound by the teachings of Christ and His
authoritative apostles, not an existential experience we
interpret as “God at work now.” Without a priori clear,
binding revelation from God about God we cannot know what is
or what is not “God at work”. Otherwise we might interpret
anything that strikes our fancy as “God at work.”
The Ultimate Role Reversal: Man is the Object of God’s Faith
The most egregious error in Velvet Elvis is found in the section
where Bell offers many details about the nature of
rabbinical instruction and discipleship in Jesus’ day. Much
of his information about Jewish practices is interesting and
accurate. But his application of the material is shockingly
unbiblical. His error is to assume that since Jesus was
Jewish and was a rabbi, that therefore almost everything
that was descriptive about Jewish rabbis of His day is true
about Him. This is a de facto denial of the
uniqueness of Christ.
For example, in a section where Bell describes Jewish
education and educational techniques, Bell misquotes a
Scripture: “Jesus later says to his disciples, ‘Remember,
everything I learned I passed on to you’” (emphasis
his; he footnotes John 15:15).20
He then asks, “Did Jesus go to school and learn like the
other Jewish kids his age?”21
That is not the point of John 15:15! Here is what the
passage says: “No longer do I call you slaves, for the
slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have
called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My
Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).
The Greek said “heard” not “learned.” Furthermore, his
learning was from the Father with whom John claimed Jesus
pre-existed (John 1:1). Jesus was no typical Rabbi.
Furthermore, Bell assumes that Jesus’ relationship to His
disciples must be also of the same sort that was typical
between rabbis and disciples of that day. But that assumes
too much and fails to account for what the Bible teaches.
For example, in the narrative where Jesus tells them to
“drop their nets,” Bell assumes that therefore Jesus sees
some sort of ability in them: “Of course you would drop your
net. The rabbi believes you can do what he does. He thinks
you can be like him.”
22
That is a very man-centered interpretation that assumes that
Jesus believes in innate human ability rather than His
sovereign power to transform. Because ordinary rabbis took
the best students based on certain criteria does not mean
that Jesus did the same. For example, the commission to be
made “fishers of men” in Luke 5 came after a miraculous
catch of fish caused Peter to say, “Depart from me for I am
a sinful man.” This is likely an allusion to Isaiah’s call
in Isaiah 6. Isaiah saw God’s glory and was convicted of his
sinfulness. Peter followed suit. This was no ordinary rabbi
that Peter encountered.
One of the videos I saw of Bell preaching was about this
topic of rabbis and disciples. After a very well articulated
discussion of rabbinic practices, Bell came to the
conclusion that the main point is that we must have faith in
ourselves because Jesus believes in us. WHAT? Man is the
object of God’s faith? Bell makes the same point in his
book, discussing the incident of Jesus walking on the water
and Peter starting to do the same. Here is Bell’s
interpretation: “And Jesus says, ‘You of little faith, why
did you doubt?’ Who does Peter lose faith in? Not Jesus;
Jesus is doing fine. Peter loses faith in himself.”23
That is very bad exegesis. Furthermore, Peter did have faith
in himself later on and it was a bad thing: “Peter said
to Him, ‘Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You’”
(Matthew 26:35a). We all know what happened.
Throughout the gospels, “great faith” or “little faith”
had to do with people’s belief about Christ. For example,
the centurion who did not consider himself “worthy” for
Christ to come to him had a very high estimation of Jesus’
authority (Luke 7:2 – 10). He had “great faith” according to
Jesus. His faith was in Christ, not himself.
According to Bell, what frustrates Jesus is “When his
disciples lose faith in themselves.”24
Bell makes a serious error when he assumes that when an
ordinary rabbi chooses disciples based in his perception of
their own abilities and potential to be like the rabbi
himself that, therefore, Jesus must have had faith in the
abilities and capabilities of His disciples. But this is not
the case. No one will ever be conformed to the image of
Christ because of his own innate human abilities. Bell’s
humanistic teachings disregard the Biblical doctrine of
human sinfulness and inability.
Bell makes it clear that we are not misunderstanding his
point:
God has an incredibly high view of people. God believes
that people are capable of amazing things. I have been
told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good
thing. [sic] But what I am learning is that Jesus
believes in me. I have been told that I need to have
faith in God. Which is a good thing. [sic] But what I am
learning is that God has faith in me.
25
Is man the object of God’s faith? Here is God’s testimony about man:
What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for
we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are
all under sin; as it is written, "There is none
righteous, not even one; There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside,
together they have become useless; There is none who
does good, There is not even one. (Romans 3:9 –
12)
In John 2:24, 25 it says this: “But Jesus, on His part, was
not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and
because He did not need anyone to bear witness concerning
man for He Himself knew what was in man.” The word
“entrusting” is pisteuo_ in the Greek, the word “to
believe.” John 2:23 shows that this lack of faith that Jesus
had in man is applied to believers. The reason for not
trusting or believing in men was Jesus’ knowledge of the
inner nature of man (anthro_pos, humanity). So most
decidedly Jesus does not have faith in man.
We have to conclude that Bell is leading people away from
the faith once for all delivered to the saints and toward a
man-centered faith that believes in self as the appropriate
object of faith and not to God Himself as the ONLY object of
faith.
Bell’s “Heaven” and “Hell” Come to Earth
In Velvet Elvis, Bell asserts that all people are already
forgiven, reconciled, without having to respond to the
Gospel in the manner Jesus said in the Great Commission: “and
that repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed
in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem”
(Luke 24:47). Here is Bell’s claim: “So this reality,
this reconciliation, is true for everybody.”26
His proof text is Colossians 1:20 which he assumes teaches
universalism. But the passage includes humans, spirits and
the material world. Wicked spirits will never be reconciled
to God, and Christ has triumphed over them and disarmed them
(Colossians 2:15). Elsewhere Paul “begs” people to be
reconciled to God (2Corinthians 5:20). People who are not
reconciled to God are ultimately consigned to the lake of
fire (Revelation 20:15). But, having eschewed systematic
theology, Bell’s trampoline jump does not require
consideration of those passages that call into question his
use of a favorite proof text.
Bell sees that forgiveness and reconciliation are already
true for all people, and the problem is that some have not
accepted that particular telling of their story. He says,
“The fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in
spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be
true. Our choice becomes this: We can trust his retelling of
the story, or we can trust our telling of our story.”
27This
obscures the demands of the law and the promise of the
gospel. Believing a story where we are reconciled to God
even if we are not Christians is not the Biblical message.
We are wicked rebels who abide under God’s wrath unless we
repent and believe the gospel. Never in the Book of Acts did
any of the apostolic preachers proclaim, “Believe you are
loved and accepted” as the terms of the gospel. They
preached repentance as Christ told them to.
Bell writes, “When we choose God’s vision of who we are,
we are living as God made us to live.”28But
God’s vision of who we are is that unless we have repented,
we are hopeless, wretched, without God in this world, dead
in sin, and storing up wrath: “But because of your
stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath
for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:5). Bell’s
version is much more attractive: “And as we live in this
life, in harmony with God’s intentions for us, the life of
heaven becomes more and more present in our lives. Heaven
comes to earth.”
29
Bell makes it clear that he is more concerned with “hell
on earth” than with what happens after this life: “What’s
disturbing then is when people talk more about hell after
this life than they do about hell here and now.”30But
in the Bible the term for “hell” is Gehenna. Hades is where
the ungodly go when they die to await the final judgment
after the resurrection of the wicked. Here is what the
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) says:
This distinction [between Gehenna and Hades] is a). that
Hades receives the ungodly only for the intervening
period between death and resurrection, whereas Gehenna
is their place of punishment in the last judgment; the
judgment of the former is thus provisional but the
torment of the latter eternal (Mk. 9:43 and par. 9:48).
It is then b). that the souls of the ungodly are outside
the body in Hades, whereas in Gehenna both body and
soul, reunited at the resurrection, are destroyed by
eternal fire (Mk. 9:43 and par., 45, 47 and par., 48;
Mt. 10:28 and par.).
31
Bell’s teaching that heaven and hell come to earth depending on how we
live now simply is not biblical. He says, “As a Christian, I
want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.
Poverty, injustice, suffering – they are all hells on earth,
and as Christians we oppose them with all our energies.”
32But
the term for hell, Gehenna, is used 12 times in the New
Testament, 11 of them by Jesus. Not once did He use the term
to describe something that is now on earth or now coming to
earth. He used it in this manner: “And if your right hand
makes you stumble, cut it off, and throw it from you; for it
is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish,
than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew
5:30). In Bell’s usage, losing body parts would be hell
on earth. But Jesus’ point was that it would be better to go
through this life (which is temporary) maimed than to have a
perfect body that is cast into hell (which is permanent).
But Bell says, “For Jesus, this new kind of life in him is
not about escaping this world but about making it a better
place, here and now. The goal for Jesus isn’t to get into
heaven. The goal is to get heaven here.”
33
Really? But Jesus said, “And do not fear those who kill
the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear
Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew
10:28).
The gospels simply do not teach Bell’s ideas about heaven
and hell coming to earth now depending on certain actions.
They teach the importance of eternity and the relative
unimportance of our status now other than in how it affects
us in eternity. But Bell continues to explain his
“repainting” of “Elvis”:
True spirituality then is not about escaping this world
to some other place where we will be forever. A
Christian is not someone who expects to spend forever in
heaven there. A Christian is someone who anticipates
spending forever here, in a new heaven that comes to
earth. The goal isn’t escaping this world but making the
world the kind of place God can come to.
34
To do this, according to Velvet Elvis, we need to become our
“true selves”: “And Jesus calls us to return to our true
selves. The pure, whole people God originally intended us to
be, before we veered off course. Somewhere in you is the you
whom you were made to be.”
35
This embracing of our identity and trusting we are loved
supposedly brings heaven to earth: “That is what brings
heaven to earth.”36
These types of statements, issued universally to all people,
are not the universal call of the gospel. Bell’s message,
unlike the gospel found in the New Testament, is not how God
has chosen to make dead sinners alive. A dead sinner is not
going to bring heaven to earth by believing such things
about himself or returning to his “true self.” The fact is
that our “true selves” are wicked rebels who deserve hell.
Conclusion
In the world of art, there is nothing wrong with being abstract. People
are free to paint as they wish. But the gospel claims to
reveal truth that is necessary for salvation. Where we spend
eternity rests on understanding and believing the gospel.
Abstractions cannot declare God’s unchanging revelation. As
we have seen, Bell’s painting bears no resemblance to the
Biblical original.
It turns out that “Elvis” painted in abstract art could
serve just as well to be JFK, Ronald Reagan, Marilyn Monroe
or Janice Joplin. Since paradoxes cannot express meaning, a
theology of paradox can mean anything the reader’s mind
wants it to mean. Bell’s “Christian” painting, done as it is
in abstract art, serves merely to tickle the mind and the
imagination, not to reveal anything in particular. So we
must ask ourselves, should we consult the original that
God’s authoritative spokespersons gave us or should we
embrace the abstract version of “Elvis” and hope that God is
pleased with it? For anyone wishing to know the truth, the
answer is obvious. We should trust God’s authoritative
spokespersons.
Read the addendum, Rob Bell Undefines Holiness
here.
Issue 104 - January / February 2008
End Notes
- Rob Bell Velvet Elvis – Rethinking the
Christian Faith, (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2005) 11.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 67, 68.
- Ibid. 68.
- See Norman L. Geisler and William E Nix,
A General Introduction to the Bible, (Moody Press:
Chicago, 1986) for an excellent description on how
canonicity was determined.
- Bell, Elvis, 28.
- Systematic theology is an attempt to set
forth the great doctrines of the Christian faith in a
manner in which all pertinent Biblical and historical
material is carefully considered. Being systematic means
that important doctrines cannot be purposely left aside
nor can important Biblical considerations be ignored.
- Bell, Elvis, 32.
- Ibid. 33.
- Ibid. 34 emphasis his.
- Ibid. 166.
- Ibid. 34.
- Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from
Reason, (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, 1968)
77.
- Ibid. 51
- Bell, Elvis, 60.
- Ibid. 55.
- Ibid. 65./li>
- I asked Doug Pagitt, another Emergent
pastor, this question during a debate we had: “If
someone wanted to start a Mormon Emergent Church, would
that be valid?". He refused to answer.
- Bell, Elvis, 66.
- Ibid. 128.
- Ibid. Bell leaves this question
unanswered for his readers to ponder.
- Ibid. 131.
- Ibid. 133.
- Ibid. 134.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 146.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 147.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 148.
- Theological dictionary of the New
Testament. 1964-c1976. Vols. 5-9 edited by Gerhard
Friedrich. Vol. 10 compiled by Ronald Pitkin. (G. Kittel,
G. W. Bromiley & G. Friedrich, Ed.) (electronic ed.)
(1:658). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
- Bell, Elvis 148
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 150.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 151.
