Rob Bell's Love Wins

I don't know if I'll get around to reviewing Rob Bell's controversial book Love Wins. As most of you probably know, he's accused of universalism (the view that everyone goes to heaven/will be in the kingdom of God).  He has provided a target for those who have had a gnawing feeling that younger Christians have no real sense of hell.  In a video, Bell has explicitly acknowledged belief in hell.

They're calling it neo-universalism and I believe it is a clear cultural trend especially among younger Christians.  Bell is simply capturing the trend and giving opposition a target.  If there proves to be demand, I can still read through the book later, but since Scot McKnight has already done it, I thought I would pass on his review for now:

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

One word to Wesleyans.  Because we are a heart-oriented tradition, we often let others do the thinking for us.  In good frontier spirit, we even make fun of scholars and are suspicious of education. We are thus very prone to the influence of those outside our tradition who tend to share our social values.  Because so many of us are social conservatives, many have a tendency to jump on evangelical Calvinist trains without even realizing what we're doing.

So let's be very clear here.  Bell is far less extreme for a Wesleyan-Arminian than he is for an evangelical Calvinist.  Since McKnight is Arminian, his review is much more balanced than a lot of the stuff we're hearing out there from evangelical Calvinists.  I've never viewed Bell as a serious authority on anything, but his spirit comes much closer to the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition than John Piper or Mark Driscoll's does.