Asbury Seminary President responds to Bell Controversy

I was very happy to read the response of Timothy Tennant, president of the seminary I spent two years at, to the Bell controversy. In case someone is unaware, Rob Bell is a pastor, very popular among "emerging church" types, who recently wrote a book, Love Wins, endorsing the heresy of Universalism. Below are my favorite paragraphs from Dr. Tennant's response but you can read the whole thing at his blog: timothytennant.com. Here's the quote:

First, Rob profoundly misunderstands the Biblical notion of God’s “love.” The entire premise of the book is to declare that God’s essence is “love” (which Bell states repeatedly). However, Bell never actually describes the biblical and theological relationship between God’s joyful engagement with the human race and God’s justice upon which the very gospel he celebrates is declared. Bell sentimentalizes God’s love throughout his book, making it almost equivalent to God being nice and reasonable to modern sensibilities. I suspect that Bell has underestimated how shockingly tepid and sentimental our understanding of biblical love has become. If he had inserted the phrase “God’s holy-love” for every place he has used “God’s love” he would have gained more biblical traction, but, in the process, much of his own argumentation would have become unraveled. Bell’s argument actually requires a logical separation between God’s love and God’s justice which is quite untenable in biblical theology.

Second, Bell has an inadequate understanding of Sin – not the little ‘s’ kind, but the big “S” kind. In other words, Bell understands that we all sin, but he doesn’t seem to comprehend that we, as a race, are part of a vast rebellion against God’s holiness. Without Christ we, as a race, stand under condemnation and desperately need a divine rescue. Sin doesn’t just impede our progress and slow down our autonomous capacity to receive God’s love. We are spiritually dead apart from God’s prior action. Both Reformed and Arminian Christians affirm the cosmic consequences of the Fall of man. We are not Pelagian. Bell’s solution takes humanity out of the dock and puts God in the dock. After reading Bell’s book one gets the feeling that Bell has put God on trial. It is God who now has to justify why he would be so cruel as to sentence a sinner to eternal separation from his presence, especially given the “few short years” we have had to commit sins. An eternal punishment for temporal sins is just too much for Bell to bear and so God had better provide an explanation – a good one. The unfathomable love of the Triune God which resulted in a sending Father, a crucified and risen Son and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit who ushers in the glorious realities of the New Creation into the present age is lost in Bell’s description of a “Son” who protects us from an angry “God.”

- Dr. Timothy C. Tennant, president of Asbury Theological Seminary

Delight in Assertions!

Luther's The Bondage of the Will has turned out to be a captivating read. One aspect of it which I find somewhat amazing is that it seems Luther speaks to the situation in the Church today no less than he did 500 years ago. In the section below Luther reprimands Erasmus for minimizing the importance of assertions or belief in objective statements of truth from God's Word. Erasmus' goal in downplaying the importance of these assertions seems to have been, to some degree, a desire for unity among Christians - a desire for unity between Luther and the pope. But ostensibly good ends (unity among Christians) do not justify evil means (compromising on truth). I found this reminder from Luther very timely as this lack of respect for right assertions, that is, right doctrine (orthodoxy), seems rampant within Evangelicalism today. As in Luther's day, minimizing the importance of right doctrine today is often done in the name of unity.

To take no pleasure in assertions is not the mark of a Christian heart; indeed, one must delight in assertions to be a Christian at all. (Now, lest we be misled by words, let me say here that by 'assertion' I mean staunchly holding your ground, stating your position, confessing it, defending it and persevering in it unvanquished. I do not think that the term has any other meaning, either in classical authors or in present-day usage. And I am talking about the assertion of what has been delivered to us from above in the Sacred Scriptures.) . . .

. . . Away, now, with Skeptics and Academics from the company of us Christians; let us have men who will assert, men twice as inflexible as very Stoics! Take the Apostle Paul - how often does he call for that 'full assurance' (Col. 2:2, 1 Thess. 1:5; Heb. 6:11, 10:22) which is, simply, an assertion of conscience, of the highest degree of certainty and conviction. In Rom. 10 he calls it 'confession' - 'with the mouth confession is made unto salvation' (v. 10). Christ says, 'Whosoever confesseth me before men, him will I confess before my Father' (Matt. 10:32). Peter commands us to give a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15). And what need is there of a multitude of proofs? Nothing is more familiar or characteristic among Christians than assertion. Take away assertions, and you take away Christianity. . .

. . . The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, and the things He has written in our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions - surer and more certain than sense and life itself.

-Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will

Emergent, no; Global South, yes.

Archbishop Peter Akinola

This semester I have been blessed to have a roommate who is in many ways sympathetic with the "emerging church" movement. You can read his blog as it is linked from my page in my "friend's blogs" section under Dan Bellinger.

Dan has helped me to moderate my views a bit of the emerging movement. My opinion is not as negative as it once was as I see that many of the critiques that the emerging movement offers are well-founded and helpful. Among these helpful critiques I would include the admonition to be open to what other strains of Christianity might have to teach us, a more chastened view of how far we can get with rationality or with apologetics and a questioning of many of the ways protestantism has done things in the modern era such as evangelism or worship.

But I still think that there are some serious problems with the emerging church. I think this is quite clearly seen in the lack of clarity by such emerging leaders as Brian McLaren on certain controversial subjects. I think that McLaren's strain of the emerging church, one of the more popular strains, is simply modern liberal christianity disguised as something else. I would go so far as to say that certain strains of the emerging movement are just a Trojan Horse of modern liberalism positioned smack in the middle of evangelicalism. Another problem in the emerging church is the strong, over-arching commitment to "dialogue." The problem is that this "dialogue" often seems to include questioning doctrines and moral stances which have been accepted by the huge majority of the Church for the huge majority of its existence. I'm thinking specifically of such doctrines as the Virgin Birth and such moral stances as traditional sexual morality.

I was on the Emergent website today and saw that they want to be at the forefront of what they think God is doing in the world today. That sounds great but from some of the things I've read from emerging leaders I have a hard time believing that that is the "new thing" God is doing. I was momentarily disappointed but then I realized that there is another candidate for the "new thing" God is doing. That "other candidate" is Global South Christianity - biblically conservative, charismatic, self-sacrificial and highly evangelistic. I thought - maybe this is what God is really doing in the world. That's not to say that God's will is not being done in certain circles of the emerging church but I will gladly take Global South Christianity over much of what I see in the "emerging" church.

Disclaimer: I would love to be proved wrong about many of my negative feelings toward the emerging church and I am very thankful for the faith and the contributions of many who would define themselves as emerging church people here at the seminary.