In light of what’s going on in Japan, the theological controversies dominating the headlines these days can seem fairly trivial (to put it mildly), but I did want to post an intriguing quote from William Willimon’s Why Jesus? I’m not terribly interested in the question of whether or not Rob Bell believes in a hot (or long) enough hell to satisfy the demands of this or that understanding of orthodoxy, but I am, and have always been, very interested in (and dependent upon) the “relentless divine reach” of Jesus:
There is, thus, in Jesus a kind of relentless divine reach. I guess that’s why the church, which believes that Jesus saves, has been reluctant to say for sure whether or not Jesus saves people who are not in the church. The church’s reluctance about this matter is not due to the church’s mushy inclusiveness but rather to the church’s disinclination to set limits on just what the love of Jesus can and can’t do. Just when I settle in and try to reduce Jesus’ love to me and my friends huddled in church, I hear him say to (us) the faithful, “The tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you!”
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Re: “I’m not terribly interested in the question of whether or not Rob Bell believes in a hot (or long) enough hell to satisfy the demands of this or that understanding of orthodoxy”
Nevertheless, the controversy related to Bell’s book, raises a vital question. What is the reach of Jesus? According to polls, most people today, including evangelicals, actually believe what Bell professes openly, suspecting that it is not what they learned in church or read in the Bible (if they ever read the Bible.) For more than two hundred years, theologians more competent than Bell have tried to make a convincing case that theology can reworked to fit modernity. I am one who admires their efforts, and one who tries to do the same. So far, no one has succeeded. The divine reach appears to have limits. It is bound, not by morality, but by myth.
So, what are the limits of the divine reach, in your view?
(“Theologians more competent than Bell?!” Surely you jest! :))
Not morality, as Bell imagines. But myth, as Schweitzer imagined. Attempts to demythologize have failed. Some have been beautiful – Bultmann, for example. Elegant. But not as much so as the myth itself.
How does “myth” answer the question of the limits of the divine reach in the context of Rob Bell and the universalism debate?
Rob Bell limits divine reach by a modern idea of morality. I am saying only that it is myth, meaning the Bible and all the rest of the body of Christian language, rather than morality, that has set the limits.
Rob Bell arrives at his version of universalism, of divine reach, by constraining what he will believe by a moral vision. Universalism does not depend on that moral vision. Other versions can be sustained by the Bible and the stream of Christian theology over the centuries. For example, I think the Bible and the stream of Christian theology will sustain the belief that God is being that lets be, as in Heidegger and his offspring, and that in turns sustains a belief in universalism. At the same time, an assertion or belief that God is being that lets be is not sufficient to sustain faith without the myth.
When I wrote, “the divine reach appears to have limits,” I was not referring to limits on grace or salvation, but to limits on what can be said about God while sustaining faith. It is these limits that liberal theology has encountered.
And, I did not mean to make fun of Bell’s competence. He does not consider himself a theologian, even while he practices constructive theology. He appears to have a common evangelical belief that faith is a simple thing, that learned theologians are superfluous and that constructive theology is easy. The theologians that I used the word competence to describe in relation to Bell, are those who are learned and realize the challenge constructive theology presents. I think of Bultmann as a unique relatively contemporary figure in this respect. He was a theologian and a Bible scholar. Few people combine those two. It is studying his great effort, as well as that of Tillich and other learned contemporary masters of theology that leads me to conclude that the reach of God, faith, is limited by myth.
Thanks for the clarification. I assumed that, given the nature of the Willimon quote, the potential limits of salvation was what we were talking about, but I can see that you were thinking about the “limits of the divine reach” from a different angle.
I’m certainly no expert on Rob Bell, but I’ve not read anything from him that would lead me to the conclusion that he considers learned theologians “superfluous” or that constructive theology is easy. The concerns I see in his writing seem obviously to be very much pastoral in nature (he speaks often about the many people with frightful views of God he encounters in his work), but I’ve never seen anything to indicate he has anything but appreciation for the theologian’s task.
I was referring to remarks Bell made about himself in an interview about his book.
I must have missed those remarks.
Ken, I thought you were going to give up using the term: myth for Lent 🙂
Ryan: while I sympathize with the Willimon quote it seems to me that while I find aspects of universalism attractive it fails when I consider victims of evil who scream or moan for some justice. (BTW I don’t consider the force of nature evil). That doesn’t mean I want everlasting conscious torment because forever is a very long time.
[Short post on a break – more could be said]
Yes, I have similar concerns about universalism, Larry. I haven’t read Bell’s book, but from the reviews I have read, he doesn’t seem to be advocating a full-blown universalism—more of a standard inclusivist position, by most accounts. I think we have to leave room for some kind of an ultimate rejection of God and for a judgment of evil that is final. But, as I’ve said before, I’m open to the possibility that God is more of a universalist than I am :).
(Incidentally, Richard Beck has recently posted a series of reflections on the merits of universalism that are worth checking out. The most recent one can be accessed here—you can snoop around to find posts 1-5 if you’re so inclined.)
Ryan, Larry,
Do you mean punishment? Lake of fire?
I agree with much of what Larry writes below. I don’t interpret passages talking about flames and lakes of fire as describing the literal cartography of the afterlife or anything like that, but I do think that in some sense genuine evil—that which resists God and his purposes for creation, whether on the cosmic or the personal level—will be judged. It’s difficult to read the gospels and avoid that conclusion, in my view.
Re: It’s difficult to read the gospels and avoid that conclusion, in my view.
A way it can be read without that conclusion would be this: The judgment has already occurred. The guilty have been set free.
What are the benefits of reading it this way, in your view?
I don’t know in terms of benefits. Nor of harm.
If God is being that let’s be, maybe setting free goes with letting be.
I do think it works to read judgment, or the cross, this way – the judging has already occurred and the guilty have been set free. God is being that lets be.
Or, perhaps, the judging has already occurred but the effects of this judgment have yet to be worked out in full.
I’m not sure what to make of the “being that lets be” language. Heidegger’s God seems to bear little resemblance to the God of Scripture—the God who, in many ways, refuses to let us be. And, as Larry has already alluded to, there are some evils that a good God cannot (or at least ought not) let be.
Yes, there are differences between Heidegger’s being that lets be and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Somehow I find the liberal theologies like Heidegger’s and his offspring reassuring, even while I do enjoy and spend more time reading the Bible.. They seem sufficiently compatible to me, the resemblance close enough.
Heidegger and other classical liberal theologies are clearly different in approach and language from evangelical theologies.
Just as some say that we can embrace more than one theory of atonement, I think it is also possible to embrace more than one theological approach. For me, it is like enjoying the music of more than one composer. Luther is Bach to me. Tillich is Copland.
The Bible is of a different order from theology to me. It is a record of dreams and visions mostly, and commentary on those dreams and visions. It affords nearly limitless theologies.
Re: “there are some evils that a good God cannot (or at least ought not) let be.”
I don’t think God is bound by morality, even while God is good.
Makes sense. I certainly enjoy more than one composer as well :).
I don’t think God is bound by morality either, if “morality” is understood to be some ethical principle or system external to God.
God isn’t “bound” by anything. He does act in a manner consistent with his character. And the notion of God’s character is why my more conservative brethren wax eloquent about eternal love/eternal punishment/judgement. And exactly why I shy away from speculating about eternal conscious torment (Ken, if you haven’t figured this out yet, the term eternal conscious torment or some such construct are buzz words within evangicalism/fundamentalism meant to signal adherence to orthodox belief. forgive me if I am explaining the bleeding obvious)
Re: the term eternal conscious torment or some such construct are buzz words within evangicalism/fundamentalism meant to signal adherence to orthodox belief.
Thanks, Larry, I did not know this.
The evangelical theologian that I have read the most is Donald Bloesch. He does not mention this. What I find particularly interesting in his work is his analyses of other evangelical theologies as well as liberal theologies.
Re: God isn’t “bound” by anything. He does act in a manner consistent with his character.
I agree. My impression from scripture is clearly that God is unbound. My impression is that the Bible claims that God is unwavering in his promises, even if people provoke his anger from time to time.
Ken,
It occurs to me that I’ve assumed or taken upon myself the role of becoming your ‘tour guide’ into the murky substratum of the evangelical/fundy world. Caveat: I may not be the best guide. I tend to have a bit of a cynical streetish type perspective.
Further, I finished my academic education in the 1980’s, did ministry till the late 1990’s. It’s just been in the last few years I chose to ‘stay on the reservation’ further to that, I’ve chosen a kind of butterfly way of updating my theological education (via NT Wright and some chosen others).
I have a pretty decent knowledge of the street and all things pertaining to the evil we do to one another. You appear to be more widely read in theological works than I.
Having said all this, I’d push you on the notion that the Bible “affords nearly limitless theologies.” Didn’t some famous dude (theologian) write that theologizing can be like looking down a well and seeing our own reflection? Me thinks that happens quite a lot.
And I love metaphor!
A guide from the streets is the best guide one can have.
In street terms, I understand universalism to mean something like: everybody gets to heaven because God is ‘nice.’ Contra to that view, I understand that at some point God will judge both human and demonic evil. I have no idea where the metaphors and apocalyptic images on the lips of Jesus and in other biblical texts begin and end.
I tend towards some form of annihilation view and see this as judgment. The ending of existence is no small thing if you think of yourself for a moment. NT Wright in Surprised by Hope speculates about some form of ongoing subhuman existence. The evil person’s humanity is lost. That is an attractive view.
I’m not sure where the current ‘fire-storm’ will take us (pun intended). I do find it distasteful when my more conservative brothers/sisters seem to parade their belief in eternal conscious punishment as a badge of their correct beliefs.
If I can disclose a bit of my history+thinking: I was raised believing in the immortality of the soul. We were asked, “Where will your soul go when you die, Heaven or Hell?” My thinking ran something like this: The soul has a kind of immortality all of its’ own. If I thought a bit, I’d have said something like; God created it and gave the soul some form of eternal existence. But in my mind, the soul seemed to have an independent ability to exist apart from God. Upon reflection this reasoning seems to be more influenced by a Greek worldview than biblical. When I now think of an eternal lake of fire where resurrected embodied souls face everlasting torment – I have to believe that God will KEEP THEM ALIVE in order to torture/punish them. I pull back when I ponder the notion of God keeping someone alive in agony (I once watched a cat toy with a mouse and it was an ugly scene but eventually even the cat ended the mouse’s misery and ate it). We may not like saying God keeps those in hell alive IN ORDER TO TORTUE THEM but that is the net effect. Remember the scene from Saving Private Ryan? When the American soldier used flame throwers on Germans in bunkers. German soldiers jumped out of the bunkers burning and screaming. An American soldier shouts to his comrades: “Don’t shoot” and they watch the burning Germans roll around in agony. They don’t offer their enemies sweet relief. We dress all this up by saying that God can separate judgment from vengeance/anger and talk about the limitless nature of both God’s love/wrath. I think my point still stands and bears some thinking about. God keeps the captives alive in their agony.
Thanks, Larry for explaining what you meant above.
I did revert to that word, myth. I guess I just can’t escape my secular tendencies. Anyway, it still means revelation to me.
Re: “God keeps the captives alive in their agony.” Many in the West has grown squeamish about this.