Rob Bell’s latest book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived continues to be the source of great controversy amongst the evangelical world and even in the national media. Many evangelicals have labeled Bell a heretic due to his inescapably universalist understanding of God’s redeeming love.

I would expect such charges from the evangelical community, but I was strangely shocked and delighted to see the same sort of accusations coming from the mainstream media. Martin Bashir, in a live interview with Rob Bell on MSNBC, devastatingly exposes the overall inconsistency in Bell’s thinking.  Bashir does not allow Bell to dance around his questions, though Bell certainly tries his best. Bashir does not let Bell off the hook, but he repeatedly brings Bell back from his “dancing” to address the matter at hand: Bell’s teachings on universalism.

In a fine piece of journalism, Bashir charges Bell’s work with being historically inaccurate and scripturally indefensible. Bell excuses himself by admitting that he is just a pastor. Apparently, pastors have no responsibility to know, teach, and defend truth? I beg to differ. Bashir continues his bringing-to-light of Bell’s errors by accusing him of creating a new, popular, and inoffensive gospel: “You’re amending the gospel so that it’s palatable to contemporary people who find, for example the idea of hell and heaven very difficult to stomach. So here comes Rob Bell; he’s made a Christian gospel for you and it’s perfectly palatable; it’s easy to swallow.”

Take a look at the Bashir-Bell interview below. Also, check out Bashir’s post-interview analysis of his discussion with Bell HERE.

Not surprisingly, you’ll discover that Bashir is a devoted follower of Jesus who worships as a member of Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

In Velvet Elvis Rob Bell argues for universalism in salvation.  In “Movement Six: New” he writes, “when Jesus died on the cross, he died for everybody” (145).  Bell explains precisely what he means by “everybody” by following with “Everybody…Everywhere…Every tribe, every nation, every people group” (145).  He cites part of Colossians 1:20 in support of his position: “Paul insisted that when Jesus died on the cross, he was reconciling ‘all things, in heaven and on earth, to God.’  All things, everywhere” (146).  Bell delineates his universalism fully, “This reality then isn’t something we make true about ourselves by doing something.  It is already true.  Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making” (emphasis mine, 146).  So for Bell, when Jesus died on the cross, he died for every single human being in history; this is what he means by “Everybody…Everywhere.”  This accomplishment was done in such a way that “it is already true” for everybody.

The problem with this view is that Bell derives this understanding from someone other than Paul.  Paul wrote in Colossians 1:19-20 (NASB) as follows:

For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. [...]