My initial guess was that the Bell/Piper controversy was simply one in a series of skirmishes between the older academics who labored to pull evangelicalism up from the fever swamps of fundamentalism versus the emerging church celebrities who believe they are saving us from extinction. That has pretty much borne out by what I have inadvertently picked up in content while absorbing the clothing and namedropping these two and indeed, the many sides have put forward.
My initial notes say that First Things will generally side with Piper but have some stern warnings; Sojourners will want to side with Bell but will have something doctrinal they can't swallow, and be reduced to complaining about Bell's critics instead. Rather like my tweet on the Gandhi dilemma. I haven't checked, but I still think that's exactly how it will play out.
This will play out again, on different topics. I am a touch surprised that universalism should be prominent just now. But missionaries we have supported for years have gradually come to something like that position, and the sister of a friend, also once a missionary, now has a website touting her universalist beliefs. So this may be one of the common heresies of our age. It's a common enough secularist belief, but it's been rare in the church until the 18-19th C, and had only a few efflorescences since then.
Other representatives of the two tribes may be more prominent in other disputes, but it will play like this again:
E(merging)C(hurch): We're just raising questions.
R(eformed) S(talwarts): No, those are accusations disguised as questions.
EC: This generation thinks it's crucial to question and dialogue.
RS: We think your questions have no merit. Ask different ones.
EC: You're rejecting these ideas without considering them.
RS: Am not.
EC Are too.
And both are right, of course. Piper tweets "farewell." Even if Bell's book is strongly universalist and thus heretical, does Piper dismissively say "farewell" to the Lutherans over homosexuality, or the Seventh-Day Adventists over their anti-Catholic teaching? Why is Bell's heresy more worthy of quick dismissal? And as for Bell, 90 seconds of that video was more than revealing. What an arrogant prick.
But I know too much now, and other cultural pieces come in. When I saw "Mars Hill" alongside Bell's name it contaminated my objectivity. I have been generally positive to the Mars Hill side of the EC, but worried that this need for relevance would become need for hipness. Similarly, I saw that Piper was that guy who wrote books for IVP in the 80's about reclaiming traditional sexual roles. Again, an idea I have some general approval of, but one that bid fair to value appearances of tradition enough to often overlook their shallowness. And absolutely, one prone to disregard whatever negative impressions he might create, so long as he got you to hear what the truth is.
Next up: All the EC and EC-sympathetic people will express their outrage that Piper could treat Rob Bell - Rob Bell, an important figure in our tribe because he's hip and his church is big - so dismissively. And frankly, almost no heresy would be too much for them to back down from that insistence that he be treated specially. Meanwhile, all the Reformed Stalwarts and going to keep pounding the same doctrinal issues, in greater and greater detail, with less and less overall perspective, to prove to those EC folks that they are just wrong, just like they always predicted they would be. All of 'em. They're all the same.
I could write reams about this subject.
ReplyDeleteI am more like Rob Bell than John Piper in my theology....kind of.
Pieper says "Farewell" for several reasons.
1. This is the long awaited proof that he's wanted that Rob Bell and those like him aren't "saved" or "regenerated" and are false teachers and always have been..and their eternal destiny will be far removed from Piper's. So Farewell is Farewell From Heaven.
2. Farewell also means that Piper anticipates the widespread rejection of Bell from accepted evangelical Christianity. That may or may not happen depending on how exactly Bell's universalism takes shape.
There may be cultural components to this, but largely this rift is caused by deep theological differences.
Piper takes aim at just about everyone. He is a Hyper-Calvinist and he has criticized lutherans...even going so far as to say that God had purposely caused a tornado to knock down the cross at the 2009 ELCA convention which dealt with the issue of homosexuality.
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/the-tornado-the-lutherans-and-homosexuality
The problem that Rob Bell will have is that he is trying to stay within what is considered the bounds of "evangelical Christianity". It seems from the video clip that his defense of universalism is going to be one that is based on a certain interpretation of Scripture....because that's how evangelicals do theology. If it can be found in The Book then it can be formulated into a theological position of some sort. If there are contradictions, then those will be worked out through some form of super-cessionism of ideas, or authoritative interpretation of Scripture from someone in church history.
Ultimately they are bickering over the same book and who is reading it better...but The Book still rules in an authoritative way.
This is the problem that I have had with the emerging church. They are playing at the fringes, but but still trying to inhabit the same circle. They either need to step outside of the circle, of their own free will, or watch in frustration as they are forcefully pushed out of the circle by a community that has chosen to disown them for their differing trajectory.
(continued because my initial comment was too long)
ReplyDeleteMy beliefs have changed greatly, as anyone who has tortured themselves through the reading of my blog knows very well. ;-)
One thing I have learned. When you dismantle the negative beliefs...there will always be some unforeseen good ones that will be disintegrated along with them.
A fully positive theology doesn't exist. I gave up belief in Hell a while ago, choosing instead annihilationism...yet not long after, I realized that I have no secure sense that I will be in Heaven either. By that I mean to say that my hope is for some future, eternal life, or remembrance of me by God, or absorption into Him..."our breath returns to God" resurrection....whatever you want to call it.
But...losing certainty in one domain made me lose certainty in the other domain. I have no fear of hell-fire(most days)...but I also don't have that deep assurance of Heaven that I used to. That isn't because I think that God hates me or is displeased with me, but because my whole concept human nature and God's nature has changed.
I didn't give up that belief in Hell just because I wanted to. It was a complicated process that started with me actually trying to be faithful to what Scripture actually stated. I started out with the concept of inerrancy, that I could trust everything I read in the Bible as infallible and without error, and it cannibalized itself.
My presuppositions were their own undoing.
There are those who will automatically side with either Bell or Piper...many without really deciding for themselves what they believe and why. They will simply take their marching orders and join in the fun of denigrating the other side...the conservative ones with smarmy, mocking tones about Bell and threats for his future after life...and the more liberal with outraged sensitivity that Piper is being so "mean"
The selling of many books, for and against, awaits us all.
You are tempting me to talk theology, but I have...a will...of iron..
ReplyDeleteRandom fact instead. The Puritans thought feelings of "assurance of salvation" were extremely dangerous. So they would be with terri more than standard evangelicals on that one.
hehehe...I am not trying to break your iron will against theological discussion. That's just where I naturally drift.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I skimmed this and didn't catch it in the beginning of your post:
My initial guess was that the Bell/Piper controversy was simply one in a series of skirmishes between the older academics who labored to pull evangelicalism up from the fever swamps of fundamentalism versus the emerging church celebrities who believe they are saving us from extinction.
I am assuming that in this characterization that you are thinking of Piper as an academic...and Bell as the celebrity.
I would classify neither as an "academic" and both as celebrities.
Neither are academics because they are not practicing scholars. Their studies have been tied to promoting specific beliefs and engaging in apologetics of one sort or another....not in engaging in a particular field of study. They function primarily as pastors and the books they write are in that vein, pastoral and persuasive, not detailed academic work.
Both are celebrities. They both have large mega-churches. They both have large fan bases and followings...though I believe that Piper's is far larger and much more fervent in their admiration. They both have books, conferences, videos, and speaking engagements.
Interestingly, they both attended Wheaton and Fuller Theological Seminary...which could work with your "cultural" description...though I think they are coming from the same culture and diverging....and Piper is not happy with a young upstart from his own alma mater questioning his firmly held doctrinal beliefs.
It seems to me, culturally speaking, they are more alike than they are different.
Theologically different...culturally the same....evangelicals "fighting" over ideological turf.
Is that more in the vein of what you were looking for?
;-)
terri: Interestingly, they both attended Wheaton and Fuller Theological Seminary...which could work with your "cultural" description...though I think they are coming from the same culture and diverging....and Piper is not happy with a young upstart from his own alma mater questioning his firmly held doctrinal beliefs.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't known that, but it fits.
I don't know if you care any more about this topic, but I found this article, linked by John Piper himself on his Twitter account as an affirmation of what he meant by "farewell".
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty much the #2 reason I listed in my first comment....though I secretly suspect that Piper also affirms #1.