Agenda ::
10:00am-10:30am Rob Bell will address the audience.
10:30am-1:00am Dr. Scott Wenig will ask Rob Bell previously submitted (and moderated) questions from the DenSem community.
11:00am-11:30am Rob Bell will field questions from the audience (submitted via the web or text message).
Notables from section 1 ::
- HERE WE GO!!
- Dr. Wenig is reminding us of the doctrinal statement of the school (in particular section 11: “Last Things”)
- Dr. Wenig just explained that we
are not trying to be toxic.” Do you think he chose that word because Bell specifically uses it in the first chapter of Love Wins? - Bell: “God loves everybody everywhere”
- Bell: “If you have an addiction you’re never told anyone about…God loves you”
- Bell: “…we achieve, we accomplish, sometimes just to achieve that which we have had the whole time.”
- Have a question for Bell? Submit it here
- Bell quotes Eugene Peterson: “God took on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood”
- Bell: “How many of you were once the Prodigal Son? How many of you were once the Elder Brother?”
- Bell: “[God] is doing open-heart surgery on peoples’ psyches”
- Comments so far on what Bell is saying?
- Bell: “God is love and love demands freedom”
- Bell: “The story tells is not about evacuation and it’s not about escape”
- Bell: “We should be ready to answer for the hope that is within us”
Notables from section 2 ::
- Wenig is asking Bell if he’s a modern day Schleiermacher
- Bell: “I live in a world where we need “the umph”
- Bell quotes Plntiga: “Sin is the culpable disturbance of shalom”
- Bell answers Wenig’s question: “Yes, no, sort of”
- Wenig is pushing Bell to tease out what “love wins” really means (especially in out understanding of judgement)
- Bell: We long for some kind of judgement where pedophiles, for instance, are told they can’t do that anymore. Period.
- Bell: Justice and mercy dance
- Bell: “We should talk about judgement. We should hold onto it.”
- Bell: “When we do God’s job, we don’t do it very well.”
- Wenig: Talking about the Greek word aion
- Many scholars (including our own Craig Blomberg) translates this word as “forever” as in never ending.
- Bell: “God is fundamentally outside of time.”
- Bell olam and aion are ages (not in terms of calendar years) and a level of intensity.
- Wenig is asking Bell to talk about the urgency of salvation for the individual.
- Bell is talking about God being divided if he allows someone who hasn’t repented to go to be damned and yet someone who has repented is eternally glorified.
- What do you think? Is God inconsistent to all for both damnation and glorification?
Notables from section 3 ::
- First question from the audience: “Why no footnotes of resources in the book?”
- Bell: “I had a bunch of endnotes going and then I thought I should just put this in the body of the book.”
- Do you think this is a “reformed theology” issue?
- Have a question for Bell? Submit it here
- Bell is talking about the influence of Judaism in his theology
- “Who is your target audience?”
- Bell: “I’m interested in what’s true and where the life is”
- “Do you believe that Jesus is found in a saving way outside of Christianity? If so, how?”
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