Rob Bell and the Emergents: A Satire

Rob Bell and the Question of Universalism

Rob Bell is one of those slippery sorts of authors (I absolutely refuse to call him a "theologian." I'm hesitant to call him a pastor.) By that I mean he generally comes across as having one foot on each side of the doctrinal fence, straddling the line between outright heresy and sound orthodoxy. He tends to assent to just enough orthodox doctrine to make it really hard to say he's an outright false teacher, yet not enough to convince me he really belongs in the orthodox camp. It makes it very hard to discern where he actually stands on anything.

Yet, given his popularity, I'm not permitted to have no opinion of him. And given his fence-straddling, just one misstep could throw off his entire theology. Think about it, in Velvet Elvis he said we wouldn't lose much if there were no virgin birth, or if the resurrection were a myth copied from pagans (clearly he never heard of Ronald Nash's The Gospel and The Greeks, which was formerly titled Christianity and the Hellenistic World.) Yet even though he said that, he at the same time said "But I still believe in those things." What the heck, Bell? You don't think those doctrines are too important, but you're just going to believe them for good measure, or what?