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> Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith - Review by Dale Van Dyke |
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(The original text of this article was copied from here on June 7, 2007)
By all accounts, Rob Bell, the founding
pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in
Grandville, Michigan, is a very “hip” guy.
As Andy Crouch, a writer for Christianity
Today remarked, “You could say he puts the
‘hip’ in discipleship.”[1] Bell’s recent
book, Velvet Elvis, is a hip attempt to help
Christians “re-paint” the Christian faith in
a way that helps people connect with Jesus
today. The title of the book is inspired by
a decidedly out-dated painting of Elvis in
Bell’s basement. The painting becomes a
metaphor for old, out-dated ways of thinking
about Christianity and the goal of the book
is to “repaint” the Christian message in a
way that is culturally relevant and
meaningful today. The content of the book is
inspired, in large part, by Brian McLaren,
widely considered the leading figure of the
amorphous emergent movement. As stated by
Crouch, Bell and other emergent pastors are
“looking for a faith colorful enough for
their culturally savvy friends, deep enough
for mystery, big enough for their own
doubts.”[2] Velvet Elvis is a bold venture
in that quest. On the back cover of his
book, Bell invites the reader to “test
everything.” This review is an attempt to do
just that; to examine Bell’s rendering of
the Christian faith and life in light of the
Word of God.
I believe that Rob Bell is well intentioned.
He is passionate about helping Christians
break out of the drudgery of a tired,
traditional religion into a vibrant,
culture-transforming relationship with
Christ. He earnestly desires to help people
live out the commands of Christ. This is
commendable and explains in large part his
appeal to the largely churched Grand Rapids
community. We should learn from Bell here.
It would be easy to take pot shots at Mars
Hill Bible Church and Velvet Elvis without
acknowledging that “Christianity as usual,”
in this country, and even in our own West
Michigan community, has fallen short of a
vibrant, biblical faith.
Bell’s prescription, however, for the ills
of the contemporary evangelical church, is
not a healthy one. The emergent church soil
from which Bell’s ideas spring is not
healthy soil. Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and
other leaders of the emergent church
desperately want to “redefine” Christianity.
However, as D.A. Carson points out with
great clarity,[iii] these men seem to have
confused the unhealthy fundamentalist and/or
mega-church circles they have come out of
with historic Christianity. Consequently,
instead of a careful, biblical, critique of
contemporary evangelicalism and a pursuit of
a biblically sound, full-orbed Christianity,
they have uncritically adopted an
intentionally postmodern model of
Christianity, a model which, being married
to the spirit of the age, is doomed for
quick widowhood. [iv]
Interestingly, though emergent church
leaders disagree with the seeker-sensitive,
church-growth model of the church, they
share the same underlying principle of
pragmatism. The reason we need to “re-paint”
and “rediscover” Christianity is because the
old model doesn’t work anymore. It may have
worked for the old world, with its
modernistic assumptions regarding
epistemological certainty and objectivity.
But, authors like Leonard Sweet argue, we
need a new kind of Christianity, a
post-modern Christianity, if we have any
hope of reaching a post-modern world. [v]
Behind the subtle arrogance of such a
proposition lies the soul of pragmatism. The
driving question is “what will work?” rather
than “what has God said?” In the pursuit of
“relevance” and “authenticity” – the very
same goals of the seeker-sensitive movement
and the liberal church before that – this
movement also is taking departure from
Biblical Christianity.
It seems the emergent church is stumbling
down precisely the same path the liberal
movement traveled over one hundred years ago
with only a slight twist. The liberals were
saying that the key to understanding real
Christianity and the “real” and “relevant”
Jesus was through a higher-critical,
scientific analysis of the Bible. This
pursuit was seen as essential for reaching
out to a more enlightened age. The emergent
movement seems to have replaced higher
criticism with Jewish studies and
post-modern epistemology. Now the key to
understanding the true Jesus is by analyzing
first-century Jewish thought and practices,
which supposedly embraced mystery and doubt
and preferred questions to answers. Both
movements, however, end up undermining the
Bible as the authoritative word of God, both
undermine the gospel, and both, in the name
of “enlightenment”, end up devastating the
church.
Specific Concerns
1. Bell’s View of the Bible as Metaphor
Bell seems to view the Bible not primarily
as the revelation of God’s historical words
and acts but as the “expression of the
spiritual experience of God’s people through
the ages.”
“We have to embrace the Bible as the wild,
uncensored, passionate account it is of
people experiencing the living God. Doubting
the one true God.” [vi]
The Bible is a “human product....rather than
the product of divine fiat”.[vii]
Consequently, the Bible is helpful not
primarily as the factual revelation of God’s
real acts in history but as a metaphor to
help us understand our own experiences:
“Is the greatest truth about Adam and Eve
that it happened or that it happens? This
story...is true for us because it is our
story. We have all taken the fruit. We have
all crossed boundaries....This is why the
Bible loses its power for so many
communities. They fall into the trap of
thinking that the Bible is just about things
that happened a long time ago.”[viii]
Bell is appealing here in his desire to make
the Bible alive and dynamic. But he doesn’t
square with how the Bible represents itself.
The Biblical writers do not use the Bible
primarily or even secondarily as a metaphor
to interpret one’s own personal experience.
The Bible is the account of God’s acts of
redemption. These actions matter, first and
foremost, because they are historically true
– they really happened! Luke and Paul, for
example, emphasized the historical detail
and accuracy of the gospel events.
“Many have undertaken to draw up an account
of the things that have been fulfilled among
us, just as they were handed down to us by
those who from the first were eyewitnesses
and servants of the word. Therefore, since I
myself have carefully investigated
everything from the beginning, it seemed
good also to me to write an orderly account
for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that
you may know the certainty of the things you
have been taught.” Luke 1:1-4
“For what I received I passed on to you as
of first importance: that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures, that
he was buried, that he was raised on the
third day according to the Scriptures, and
that he appeared to Peter, and then to the
Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than
five hundred of the brothers at the same
time, most of whom are still living, though
some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to
James, then to all the apostles, and last of
all he appeared to me also, as to one
abnormally born.” 1 Corinthians 15:3
The Biblical writers obviously believed that
the purpose of Scripture is to tell us what
God has actually done for us, not to provide
stories to be used as metaphors of our own
experience. Contrary to Bell, the primary
importance of the fall is not that it
“happens to all of us” but that it
“happened” – it is the historical and
theological reality behind all the rest of
the Bible, including Christ’s coming. We are
not asked to experience these stories
metaphorically but to believe in the
redemption to which they point. The
experiential link between the reader and the
text is not metaphor but faith!
“But these are written that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that by believing you may have life in
his name.” John 20:21
In other words, the key to experiencing and
engaging the Scripture is not trying to
discover a comparable experience in one’s
own life but in believing, and trusting, and
learning from the experiences of Jesus’
life. The Bible is, after all, a book about
Him.
2. Bell’s Understanding of the Christian
Faith
Rob Bell, as a postmodern believer,
emphasizes mystery and doubt as the keys to
genuine Christian experience. Objective
truth and concrete doctrinal propositions
concerning the nature of God, the Bible, and
even Jesus Christ are seen as secondary
issues at best, and at worst “bricks” that
hinder a lively faith. In speaking with
Christianity Today writer Andy Crouch,
Bell’s wife Kristen confesses, “I grew up
thinking that we’ve figured out the Bible,
that we knew what it means. Now I have no
idea what it means. And yet I feel like life
is big again – like life used to be black
and white and now it’s in color.”[ix] The
core elements of post-modern Christian faith
are not “knowledge, assent and trust,” but
mystery, doubt, and doing. This, of course,
shifts the focus of faith from its objective
content, Christ Jesus and his crucifixion,
towards the individual’s experience of
faith.
Faith, according to Bell, is a trampoline
with doctrine functioning as the springs.
Springs are helpful but not the focal point.
The problem with many Christians is that
they are so wrapped up in the nature of the
springs they can’t enjoy the real “point” of
Christianity: the experience of jumping.
Bell compares these doctrinally minded
people to masons who build their faith as a
wall of bricks, each brick of doctrine
carefully laid on top of the other. The
problem with this view of faith, Bell
believes, is that if you pull out one of the
bricks, the whole wall collapses.
Someone recently gave me a video of a
lecture given by a man who travels
around....saying that if you deny that God
created the world in six literal
twenty-four-hour days, then you are denying
that Jesus ever died on the cross. It hit me
while I was watching him that for him faith
isn’t a trampoline, it’s a wall of bricks.
Each of the core doctrines for him is like a
individual brick that stacks on top of the
others. If you pull one out, the whole wall
starts to crumble. It appears quite strong,
but if you begin to rethink or discuss even
one brick, the whole thing is in
danger....Remove one and the whole wall
wobbles.” [x]
Now, obviously, on many matters of faith
Christians need to allow for differences of
interpretation. And Bell is correct to point
out that being theologically correct is not
the same as being a Christians. But then he
takes a disastrous turn by arguing that
orthodoxy simply doesn’t matter!
“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive
proof that Jesus had a real, earthly,
biological father named Larry, and
archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA
samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
that the virgin birth was really just a bit
of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in
to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and
Dionysian religious cults that were hugely
popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had
virgin births? But what if, as you study the
origin of the word ‘virgin’ you discover
that the word ‘virgin’ in the gospel of
Matthew actually comes from the book of
Isaiah, and then you find out that in the
Hebrew language at that time, the word
‘virgin’ could mean several things. And what
if you discover that in the first century
being ‘born of a virgin’ also referred to a
child whose mother became pregnant the first
time she had intercourse? What if that
spring were seriously questioned? Could a
person keep on jumping? Could a person still
love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is
the way of Jesus still the best possible way
to live? Or does the whole thing fall
apart?”[xi]
Bell’s answer?
“If the whole faith falls apart when we
reexamine and rethink one spring, then it
wasn’t that strong in the first place, was
it?”[xii]
In other words, Bell advocates a faith that
can embrace heterodoxy. This faith can “go
on jumping” even if it were shown that Jesus
was born of Larry and the gospel writers
knowingly “threw in” myth.
There are two points I would like to make in
response to this. First, it is important to
realize that Bell himself believes in a
literal virgin birth.
“I affirm the historic Christian faith,
which includes the virgin birth and the
Trinity and the inspiration of the Bible and
much more.” [xiii]
The issue of orthodoxy, however, is not
simply what one personally chooses to
believe concerning Christ, but what he
considers is necessary to believe concerning
Christ. The church has historically
understood the creeds to be a summary of
what is necessary to believe in order to be
an orthodox Christian. The Apostles and
Nicene creeds both clearly profess that
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit as a
necessary component of true faith. A
literal, virgin birth, as a necessary
doctrine, is not simply a hang-up of
modernistic evangelicalism. It has been a
part of the universal church’s profession
throughout the ages. By failing to insist on
a literal virgin birth as part of what it is
necessary to believe, Bell has taken the
well-traveled road of liberalism. Many of
the 1,293 Presbyterian ministers who signed
the Auburn Affirmation of 1923 personally
affirmed the literal truth of the 5
fundamentals,[xiv] though they did not
believe a literal interpretation should be
deemed as necessary in order to be a
minister in good standing in the
Presbyterian Church! As they wrote:
“Some of us regard the particular (literal[xv])
theories contained in the deliverances of
the General Assembly of 1923 as satisfactory
explanations of these facts and doctrines.
But we are united in believing that these
are not the only theories allowed by the
Scriptures and our standards as explanations
of these facts and doctrines of our
religion, and that all who hold to these
facts and doctrines, whatever theories they
may employ to explain them, are worthy of
all confidence and fellowship.”[xvi]
The line that divides heresy from orthodoxy
is not fixed on what one personally believes
concerning Christ, but on what one
understands as necessary to be believed.
Bell, here, is simply on the wrong side of
orthodoxy.
Second, Bell is not only adopting the
liberal’s methodology, but is doing so for
the very same reasons. He wants to
strengthen faith by resting it on the
Christian’s experience of Christ rather than
upon certain historical facts. A faith that
needs a literal virgin birth was “not that
strong to begin with”[xvii]. In the
onslaught of the Scientific Revolution,
well-intentioned but misguided liberal
theologians tried to protect faith from nosy
archeologists and persistent scientists by
suggesting new “theories” to explain things
like the resurrection in a more palatable
way. In their minds, the meaning of the
resurrection of Christ should not be bound
to a literal resurrected body. After all,
what if archeologist actually discovered his
body? What then? And was a literal
resurrected body that important to the
Christian faith? Wasn’t a subjective
experience of the life of Christ really the
only resurrection that ultimately mattered?
That was the liberal argument.
Unfortunately, Bell seems to agree with it.
“We live in metaphors......The tomb is empty
because we have met the risen Christ - we
have experienced Jesus in a way that
transcends space and time. And this gives us
hope.”[xviii]
So, according to Bell, what gives us hope? A
historically, literally, resurrected body of
Christ? No. Rather, the foundation of our
hope is a personal, subjective, “experience
of Christ that transcends place and time.”
First of all - what does that mean? As with
all subjective basis for assurance, the
questions that immediately arise are: what
exactly is the experience Bell is positing
as the foundation for our hope and how do I
know if I’ve had the correct experience, or
not, so that I may have hope?
Secondly, what does the Bible really say
about all this? Does the resurrection matter
as a metaphor or as a historical reality? In
1 Corinthians 15, Paul responds to those who
wanted to take out just that one pesky
“spring” concerning a literal resurrection
from the dead. With no appeal to metaphor,
he says:
“If there is no resurrection of the dead,
then not even Christ has been raised. And if
Christ has not been raised, our preaching is
useless and so is your faith....you are
still in your sins.” I Corinthians 15:13-14
Is a literal virgin birth any less essential
to a true Biblical faith? Would not Paul say
the same thing to Rob Bell as he says to the
confused Corinthian believers? A faith that
does not need a literal virgin birth is not
a biblical faith, it is not a faith that
saves because, in the end, it doesn’t need
an historical Jesus at all. It is just about
jumping.[xix]
3. Bell’s View the Nature of Sin
Bell speaks of a time in his life when he
was getting burned out trying to be a
“super-pastor.” He reveals the advice of his
counselor that helped him come to grips with
the essence of his sin.
“He said, in what has become a pivotal
moment in my journey, ‘Your job is the
relentless pursuit of who God has made you
to be. Anything else you do is sin and you
need to repent of it’.”[xx]
Once again this sounds appealing and may
have good motives. Bell hopes to help people
rid themselves of an idealized version of
what they are supposed to be, accept who
they are, and realize that this is an
important part of accepting God’s grace.
Yet, the Bible speaks of sin and grace in so
much more profound and accurate terms. Where
does the Bible ever suggest that our primary
calling is “the relentless pursuit of who
God has made us to be”? Bell makes it sound
as if the essence of godliness is
self-realization. His “sin” was that he was
trying to be a “super-pastor,” something
that went contrary to his personal make-up.
Apparently, he was too creative and
spontaneous to fit that mold. His
“repentance” was a matter of deciding to
“kill super-pastor” and be true to himself.
Bell is simply baptizing our cultural
morality; in which the greatest “sin” is the
failure to be true to ourselves. But this is
NOT how the Bible speaks of sin. When did
Paul ever suggest that his primary calling
was to discover himself or be true to his
own personality traits? He refused to be one
of the “super-apostles,” not because it
wasn’t true to his personality, but because
it was untrue to the gospel! They, the
super-apostles, relied on their speaking
gifts; Paul relied on the power of the Holy
Spirit. In fact, Paul boasted of his
weaknesses, not of his unique abilities, so
that the power of Christ would be evident in
and through him. [xxi] When Paul tells the
church to live according to what they are,
“children of the light,” [xxii] he is not
calling them to be true to their unique self
but to imitate God their Father and His Son,
Jesus. [xxiii] The critical issue isn’t
whether one is being true to his personality
traits or interests, but whether he is being
true to his calling in Christ! What
separates and distinguishes Christian
morality from all other morality is
precisely the person of Christ.
Why doesn’t Bell talk about sin the way the
Bible does? The Bible speaks of sin and
godliness with an intentional, consistent,
God-ward reference. Sin is anything and
everything that falls short of the glory of
God. Holiness is speaking and thinking and
being motivated by a pure love for and fear
of God. Isn’t this the message a
self-saturated culture like ours needs to
hear?
4. Bell’s View of God’s Faith in Man
The self-ward bent of Bell’s teaching
continues when he speaks of God’s faith in
man. Bell adopts the teaching that Jesus
chose his disciples just like every other
rabbi of his day – because he believed in
their innate abilities. In one of the most
shocking parts of the book, Bell reminds us
of the story found in Matthew 14:22ff where
Peter rushed out of the boat to meet Jesus
walking on the water. Peter began to sink
and Jesus rebuked him for his lack of faith.
“Who does Peter lose faith in? Not Jesus; he
is doing fine. Peter loses faith in himself.
Peter loses faith that he can do what his
rabbi is doing. If the rabbi calls you to be
his disciple, then he believes that you can
actually be like him. As we read the stories
of Jesus’ life with his talmidim, his
disciples, what do we find frustrates him to
no end? When his disciples lose faith in
themselves..... Notice how many places in
the accounts of Jesus’ life he gets
frustrated with his disciples. Because they
are incapable? No, because of how capable
they are. He sees what they could be and
could do, and when they fall short it
provokes him to no end. It isn’t their
failure that’s the problem, it’s their
greatness. They don’t realize what they are
capable of....God has an amazingly high view
of people. God believes that people are
capable of amazing things. I’ve been told I
need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good
thing. But what I’m learning is that Jesus
believes in me....God has faith in me.”[xxiv]
In fact, according to Bell, Jesus had such
great faith in the native abilities of his
disciples that he
“¼left the future of the movement (the
church) in their hands. And he doesn’t stick
around to make sure they don’t screw it up.
He’s gone. He trusts that they can actually
do it.”[xxv]
This is a profound and poisonous
reinterpretation of the relationship between
God and man. When the gospel becomes the
message of God coming to earth and dying on
a cross to help men realize how great they
really are – something is horribly amiss. A
teaching that claims that God trusts his
glory and sovereign purposes to the
abilities of sinful man has the stench of
blasphemy.
Even a cursory review of what the Bible
actually teaches shows the utter fallacy of
Bell’s view. What does Jesus mean when he
rebukes Peter? “O you of little faith - why
did you doubt?” There are two pointers in
the story to help us. The first clue is what
Jesus did as he said these words. “He
reached out his hand and caught Peter.” My
sense is that Jesus lifted Peter back up on
top of the waves and lead him back to the
boat. What is evident at this point? Is it
not the fact that Jesus power alone was
keeping the two of them afloat? It was
Jesus’ power which had allowed Peter to walk
on the water in the first place, and it was
Jesus’ power leading them back to the boat.
Don’t you suppose that point is crystal
clear in Peter’s mind? Do you think he was
remotely tempted to let Jesus go and give it
another try on his own? I imagine him
clinging to Jesus hand with a death-grip as
they moved back to the boat. The saving hand
of Jesus, as he rescued Peter from drowning,
is the first clue here as to who Jesus
thought Peter should have faith in.
The second clue is Peter’s response. When
Peter heard Jesus’ rebuke and was rescued by
him, what did he do? Did he apologize for
failing to realize his full potential? Did
he confess his self-doubt and promise to be
more confident the next time? No. He
worshiped Christ saying, “Truly you are the
Son of God. This is the same Jesus who told
his disciples, “Apart from me you can do
nothing!” [xxvi] This “new teaching” simply
fails the Berean Scripture test.[xxvii]
Whenever the Bible speaks of why God chooses
people to follow him, it never suggests that
it’s because God believes in us. It always
reminds us that it is God’s power that
assures the success of God’s purposes. What
did God tell Joshua when the people were
ready to move into Canaan? “Be strong and
very courageous because I know you can do
this? I chose you because I believe you are
capable of amazing things?” No. What does
the text actually say?
“Be strong and courageous ....... for the
LORD your God will be with you wherever you
go." Joshua 1:9
The whole story of the Exodus from Egypt and
the conquest of Canaan is intended to
highlight God’s amazing abilities, not
man’s. In fact, whenever the Bible speaks of
why God chooses people, it always highlights
the inabilities of man so that GOD receives
all the glory!
Deuteronomy 7:7 “ The LORD did not set his
affection on you and choose you because you
were more numerous than other peoples, for
you were the fewest of all peoples.”
Deuteronomy 9:5-6 “It is not because of your
righteousness or your integrity that you are
going in to take possession of their land;
but on account of the wickedness of these
nations, the LORD your God will drive them
out before you, to accomplish what he swore
to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not
because of your righteousness that the LORD
your God is giving you this good land to
possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
John 15:5 “If a man remains in me and I in
him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me
you can do nothing.”
1 Cor 1:26-31 “Brothers, think of what you
were when you were called. Not many of you
were wise by human standards; not many were
influential; not many were of noble birth.
But God chose the foolish things of the
world to shame the wise; God chose the weak
things of the world to shame the strong. He
chose the lowly things of this world and the
despised things and the things that are not
to nullify the things that are, so that no
one may boast before him. It is because of
him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has
become for us wisdom from God that is, our
righteousness, holiness and redemption.
Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who
boasts boast in the Lord."
Bell has erred in taking a practice of the
rabbis and ascribing it to God, who says,
“My ways are not your ways.” He directly
contradicts what God himself actually says.
This teaching robs God of the glory of his
condescending grace in salvation and
actually ascribes glory to the sinner. It is
a tragic misstep, for the Living God takes
his glory very seriously. [xxviii]
5. Bells View of the Nature of the Atonement
Bell teaches that Jesus died for everyone,
in turn reconciling everyone to God.
Everyone is already loved by God the Father
as a reconciled, forgiven sinner in Christ.
Each person must simply choose whether or
not to live in that reality.
“So this reality, this forgiveness, this
reconciliation, is true for everybody. Paul
insisted that when Jesus died on the cross
he was reconciling ‘all things, in heaven
and on earth, to God. This reality then
isn’t something we make true about ourselves
by doing something (like repenting and
believing - my comment). It is already true.
Our choice is to live in this new reality or
cling to a reality of our own making.[xxix]
According to Bell, Jesus’ death actually and
really accomplished the forgiveness of
everyone’s sins and the reconciliation of
everyone to the Father. In other words,
God’s wrath has been propitiated for
everyone. He now loves all people in the
same way and sees everyone as robed in the
righteousness of Christ. All that is left is
for people to “live in this new reality”.
But, again, how does that match up with what
the Bible actually says? Jesus says:
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal
life, but whoever rejects the Son will not
see life, for God's wrath remains on
him."[xxx]
Peter shared Jesus’ belief that apart from
faith and repentance, people are not yet
forgiven by God nor reconciled to God. When
the crowd at Pentecost asked Peter, “What
must we do to be saved?”, he did not assure
them that they were already forgiven and
reconciled. Rather, he called them to
“repent and be baptized” in order to receive
the forgiveness of their sins. He pleaded
with sinners “to be reconciled to God”.
[xxxi] Peter clearly believed that God’s
wrath was a remaining reality and present
danger for all those who had not yet
confessed Christ. In fact, he told the Jews
that:
“because of your stubbornness and your
unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath
against yourself for the day of God's wrath,
when his righteous judgment will be
revealed.” Romans 2:5
These are hardly the words of a man who
believed “everybody” was already reconciled.
Rather, Peter called people to “save
themselves from the wrath that is to come”
by repenting and believing.
How can you square Bell’s reading of Paul’s
ministry with Paul’s own description offered
in Acts 26:19-20? Paul, defending his
ministry before King Agrippa says:
“First to those in Damascus, then to those
in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the
Gentiles also, I preached that they should
repent and turn to God and prove their
repentance by their deeds.”
Once again, Rob Bell is teaching something
directly contrary to the Word of God. This
doctrine is not only erroneous, but it has
disastrous results. It robs the church of
any real reason for gospel missions. After
all, if the nations are already reconciled
to God because of Christ, why bother them
with pesky, fundamentalist missionaries who
demean them by telling them they still need
to be saved from the wrath that is to come?
If Bell’s teaching is true, think of all
martyrs of the faith (such as Stephen) who
needlessly died because they insisted that
people needed to repent in order to be
saved? How many missionaries could have
escaped martyrdom if they had only invited
people to “live in a new reality?” Where is
the offense in Bell’s gospel? And if it
isn’t there, how can it possibly be the
gospel of Christ?
Conclusion
If nothing else, Velvet Elvis serves as a
terrific wake-up call to the Reformed
community. The enthusiastic support Bell
receives in the “Reformed bastion” of Grand
Rapids needs to stir us to action.
Well-meaning people are being influenced by
Bell’s ministry simply because they are
looking for a vibrant faith. The spiritual
lethargy and too-common spiritual dryness of
confessional Christianity has left great
numbers of believers open to the enthusiasm
of Bell’s ministry. While we need to stand
against the errors of Bell’s theology, we
also need, with equal vigor, to pursue
vibrant, Spirit-filled, Biblically sound
ministries of our own. The best argument we
can make for the truth that the gospel is
good news about Christ Jesus, and that
Christ sovereignly saves sinners and builds
his church is to be vibrant examples of that
fact. As is so often the case, false
teaching is the heritage of lethargic
orthodoxy. May God forgive our failures and
make us faithful; faithful to proclaim the
glorious sovereignty of God and the
supremacy of his grace as alone sufficient
for the salvation of the lost and the
edification of those who belong to Christ.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Dale Van Dyke
Pastor, Harvest OPC
[1] Christianity Today, November 2004, page
38.
[2] Ibid. page 38
[iii] Becoming Conversant with the Emerging
Church, Zondervan, 2005. This is an
outstanding reflection on the Emergent
Movement. A must read!
[iv] Oz Guinness has a terrific discussion
of this in his book “Dining with the Devil”
(Baker Book House). While emergent church
leaders would almost certainly agree with
Guinness as he challenges the mega-church’s
unwitting adoption of Modernism, it seems
they have committed the same errors in
relation to Post-Modernism. The core problem
of cultural compromise remains.
[v] The subtitle of his recent book, “Soul
Tsunami”, is telling ... “Sink or Swim in
the New Millenium Culture”. (Zondervan,
1999) In Sweet’s view, the church has two
choices; either become emergent or disappear
into cultural irrelevance. As Sweet
explains, “The Dick-and Jane world of my
‘50's childhood is over, washed away by a
tsunami of change....While the world is
rethinking its entire cultural formation, it
is time to find new ways of being the church
that are true to our postmodern context. It
is time for a Postmodern Reformation.” (pg
17)
[vi] Velvet Elvis, 062-063
[vii] Christianity Today, November 2004, 38
[viii] Velvet Elvis, 058-059
[ix] Christianity Today, November 2004, page
38
[x] Velvet Elvis, 011
[xi] Velvet Elvis, 026
[xii] Ibid, 027
[xiii] Velvet Elvis, 027
14 The Auburn Affirmation was a protest
against the perceived “Fundamentalism” in
the Presbyterian Church in the USA. The
document claims that while a “literal”
understanding of the virgin birth, miracles,
inspiration of Scripture, substitutionary
atonement and Jesus’ resurrection is
acceptable, it should not be the only
accepted “theory” of interpretation allowed
in the church. A literal interpretation of
these things was not necessary for true
faith.
[xv] Edit mine
[xvi] Quoted from an article by Gordon Clark
entitled “The Auburn Heresy”. Available
online at http://opc.org/cce/clark.html.
[xvii] Velvet Elvis, 027
[xviii] Ibid, 061
[xix] It is astonishing that Bell, a product
of evangelical bastions such as Wheaton
College and Fuller Seminary, cannot discern
the rank liberalism flowing off the tip of
his own pen. His evangelical fore-fathers
fought those who had adopted his current
position. The liberals insisted that
emphasizing a literal virgin birth, real
miracles, an inspired inerrant Scripture,
substitutionary atonement, and the physical
resurrection of Jesus, would leave the faith
vulnerable to the attacks of science. But in
their attempts to “strengthen” the faith,
they gutted it. Now, as the evidence of that
failed experiment in heterodoxy are more
prevalent than ever, why would Bell want to
head down this same path?
[xx] Velvet Elvis, 114
[xxi] 2 Cor 11-12
[xxii] Eph 4:17 and following.
[xxiii] Eph 5:1-2
[xxiv] Velvet Elvis, 133-134
[xxv] Ibid, 134
[xxvi] John 15:5
[xxvii] Acts 17:11
[xxviii]For my own sake, for my own sake, I
do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I
will not yield my glory to another. (Isaiah
48:11)
[xxix] Velvet Elvis 146
[xxx] John 3:36
[xxxi] 2 Cor 5:20
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