Hope: Bell

I just finished Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell, on the suggestion by Chris. This is the first book by Bell I've read and I've seen one or two Nooma videos. Many I have heard suggest that he is way off base and many I have heard suggest he's right on track (or at least heading in the right direction). I don't see where a lot of the critique comes from...from what I have read, people seem to misunderstand his presuppositions and even his suggestions. For instance, he raises a question about the virgin birth. His point is not to say it's wrong or faulty to believe in it (for he affirms it on the very next page!), but is asking a different question: if it were found with 100% scientific accuracy that Jesus had a biological human father, "Could you still be a Christian?...Or does the whole thing fall apart?" (26-27). Bell is suggesting that some questions/issues are more closely connected to the centrality of Christian faith than others. As an example, he began with the reference to a preacher who once said 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." With Bell I would say, "That's a bizarre leap of logic to make." It's a failure to take genre into account. The battle for the age of the earth and interpretation of Genesis 1 is a relatively new one (in the wake of Darwinian evolutionary theory), not because the earth was always believed to be young or that Genesis 1 was always interpreted as six literal 24-hour periods (many orthodox Christians in history prior to the advent of evolutionary theory believed that Genesis 1 was to be taken more poetic, thematic, or metaphorical instead of a literal, journalistic, scientific account), but because it wasn't relevant...I could go on and on. Denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus (as does say, Bultmann...which strangely, some critics say Bell's presentation doesn't necessitate the actual, physical, bodily resurrection of Christ as central to Christian faith...where are they seeing this???), on the other hand, would be destructive; or to borrow Bell's analogy, would turn the trampoline upside-down.

While Bell's epistemology and tone is post-foundationalist (he critiques the use of building as an epistemological framework), his presentation of the 'faith' is often 'pre-modern,' whether he cites the earlier sources or not. This is probably not true for the whole book, but there were several occasions where I was seeing explicitly a theology in tune with that of Irenaeus.

Sorry, I've gotten off course...I meant this to be about hope...hope...well, wait isn't there something about hope and the resurrection? Yes...1 Cor. 15. (Paul says if the bodily resurrection is false, so is the whole of our faith...might as well, 'eat, drink, and be merry.' He doesn't say the same of any interpretation of Genesis 1......stop it, Jeff, get off this soapbox.) I meant this to be about how Bell defines hope: "Ultimately our gift to the world around us is hope. Not blind hope that pretends everything is fine and refuses to acknowledge how things are. But the kind of hope that comes from staring pain and suffering right in the eyes and refusing to believe that this is all there is" (170). Or as Maximus quotes his mentor and caesar, "Death smiles at us all, all that we can do is smile back."