Brick Walls and Trampolines

I’ve re-opened a book I thought I had long closed, Rob Bell’s Vel­vet Elvis. Back in 2005 it caused some­thing of a craze and a con­tro­versy, espe­cially at the (appar­ent) sug­ges­tion that the vir­gin birth — among other doc­trines — was effec­tively unnec­es­sary (but don’t worry, I’m not going to dis­cuss the vir­gin birth). The rea­son I’ve re-opened this book is because my post yes­ter­day night was, in fact, “inspired” by Rob Bell. What I want to do with this post is dis­cuss in detail Bell’s illus­tra­tions, and then dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions of what he is teach­ing. There would appear to be mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tions of this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of Bell’s writ­ing, so I’ll keep  those in con­sid­er­a­tion, espe­cially those which, I think, miss the point (I’ll prob­a­bly end up dis­cussing two such interpretations).

Intro­duc­tion

Bell paints an illus­tra­tion using the exam­ples of tram­po­line springs, and a brick wall. The object of each illus­tra­tion is doc­trine, with the springs of a tram­po­line rep­re­sent­ing doc­trine, and the bricks of a brick wall rep­re­sent­ing doc­trine. In the for­mer exam­ple, doc­trine is flex­i­ble, engag­ing, alive, and active. In the lat­ter exam­ple, doc­trine is inflex­i­ble, cer­tain, stag­nant, and unchang­ing. On a super­fi­cial (and I believe, incor­rect) read­ing of Bell’s teach­ing, we’re being asked if our faith is an exam­ined and thought-out faith. The ques­tions which accom­pany these illus­tra­tions are meant to be the ques­tions of a “dev­ils advo­cate,” meant to get us think­ing. On a deeper (and I believe, cor­rect) read­ing of Bell’s teach­ing, we’re see­ing a chal­lenge (and refu­ta­tion?) of foun­da­tion­al­ism, and the epis­temic cer­tainty  which has accom­pa­nied clas­si­cal the­ol­ogy. The accom­pa­ny­ing ques­tions are not the ques­tions of a devil’s advo­cate, but the ques­tions of a teacher uti­liz­ing rhetoric, “this type of ques­tion­ing frees us. Frees us from hav­ing to have it all fig­ured out. Frees us from hav­ing answers to every­thing. Frees us from always hav­ing to be right“¹. The prob­lem with clas­si­cal the­ol­ogy, accord­ing to Bell, is it’s belief that it can know — for cer­tain — truth. A rejec­tion of foun­da­tion­al­ism is a rejec­tion of our abil­ity to know truth. Sud­denly, we’re star­ing post­mod­ernism straight in the face.

With that intro­duc­tion, lets get started.

Springs — they aren’t the point

For Bell, the springs of a tram­po­line are com­pa­ra­ble to the doc­trines of the Chris­t­ian faith². Bell is quick to make clear that these springs aren’t the point (the point, though not quite explic­itly stated, is Jesus), “they help us under­stand the point, but they are a means and not an end. We take them seri­ously, and at the same time we keep them in proper per­spec­tive“³. The stretch and flex of a tram­po­line spring is what makes his exam­ple so deci­sive. It’s implied (though I can­not be sure) that if the springs of a tram­po­line are Chris­t­ian doc­trine, then the frame and mat of a tram­po­line is in some way an anal­ogy for God — “In fact, its stretch and flex are what make it so effec­tive. It is firmly attached to the frame and the mat, yet it has room to move“⁴. A doc­trine may change, but it does so within the con­text and “lim­i­ta­tions” and mys­tery of God. To illus­trate his point, Bell refers to the Trin­ity, a doc­trine which has evolved over cen­turies of church his­tory. The exam­ple is a good one, and Bell’s basic point is a good one: God is infi­nite, we are finite–it is impos­si­ble for us to have every­thing fig­ured out, espe­cially God. We should pause and ask the ques­tion, is any­one even try­ing to have every­thing fig­ured out? I don’t think so. (I sus­pect Bell is com­ment­ing on what’s become known as “Carte­sian anx­i­ety,” an appar­ent result of foun­da­tion­al­ism, but more on this later).

Bell con­tin­ues:

One again, the springs aren’t God. They have emerged over time as peo­ple have dis­cussed and stud­ied and expe­ri­enced and reflected on their grow­ing under­stand­ing of who God is. Our words aren’t absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no inten­tion of shar­ing this absolute­ness with any­thing, espe­cially words peo­ple have come up with to talk about him. This is some­thing peo­ple have strug­gled with since the begin­ning: how to talk about God when God is big­ger than our words, our brains, our world­views, and our imag­i­na­tions“⁵.

This is the ideal per­spec­tive to main­tain when study­ing, dis­cussing the faith and figuring-out doc­trine: as finite con­cepts, in finite human minds, which attempt to describe an infi­nite God. Bell notes,  “this truth about God is why study and dis­cus­sion and doc­trines are so nec­es­sary. They help us put words to real­i­ties beyond words. They give us insight and under­stand­ing into the expe­ri­ence of God we’re hav­ing” ⁶. The dan­ger in mak­ing doc­trine the point, is to try to fig­ure out God, with “nice neat lines and def­i­n­i­tions”. And, as Bell observes, “we are no longer deal­ing with God. We are deal­ing with some­body we made up, then we are in con­trol”. A fur­ther worry is that as a result of this, we cre­ate “in” and “out” groups ⁷, which focuses our atten­tion on prov­ing that we are “right” and oth­ers are “wrong” ⁸.

Jesus, it is said, invites every­one to jump⁹.

Bricks — not con­ducive to jumping

(This is the sec­tion con­tain­ing Bell’s most con­tro­ver­sial pas­sage, so I will be quot­ing it, and a few oth­ers, at length.)

In oppo­si­tion to the springs of a tram­po­line, are the bricks of a wall. Bricks are what Chris­t­ian doc­trine should not be:  “each of the core doc­trines… is like an indi­vid­ual brick that stacks on top of the oth­ers. If you pull one out, the whole wall starts to crum­ble. It appears quite strong and rigid, but if you begin to rethink or dis­cuss even one brick, the whole thing is in dan­ger¹⁰. As men­tioned above, if doc­trine is a brick, then it quickly becomes the point (it becomes the point because the wall needs to be held up), rather than Jesus, . Bell says fur­ther into the chap­ter, “in brick­world, the focus often becomes get­ting peo­ple to believe the right things so they can be “in”. There is often a list of how­ever many doc­trines and the goal is to get peo­ple to intel­lec­tu­ally assent to these things being true. Once we believe the right things, then we’re in. And once we’re in, the goal often becomes learn­ing how to get oth­ers in with us“¹¹. Brick­world is Bell’s pejo­ra­tive term for what is, by all accounts, clas­si­cal theology.

Bell believes that this sort of atti­tude, which leads to the notions of “defend­ing the faith,” actu­ally shows that these peo­ple might not love what it is they are defend­ing. In men­tion­ing a let­ter he had read by the pres­i­dent of a “large sem­i­nary,” Bell writes, “it struck me read­ing the let­ter that you rarely defend a tram­po­line. You invite peo­ple to jump on it with you… You rarely defend the things you love. You enjoy them and tell oth­ers about them and invite oth­ers to enjoy them with you…Have you ever seen some­one pull a photo out of their wal­let and argue about the supremacy of this par­tic­u­lar love? Of course not.” ¹². This imme­di­ately seems dis­hon­est to me, because I know that I would defend the peo­ple that I love, if I was on the verge of los­ing them. How­ever, I’ll save my com­ments for below.

Quot­ing Bell’s most famous (or infa­mous) pas­sage in full:

What if tomor­row some­one digs up defin­i­tive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, bio­log­i­cal father named Larry, and archae­ol­o­gists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA sam­ples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the vir­gin birth was really just a bit of mythol­o­giz­ing the Gospel writ­ers threw in to appeal to the fol­low­ers of the Mithra and Dionysian reli­gious cults that were hugely pop­u­lar at the time of Jesus, whose gods had vir­gin births? But what if as you study the ori­gin of the word vir­gin, you dis­cover that the word vir­gin in the Gospel of Matthew actu­ally comes from the book of Isa­iah, and then you found out that there in the Hebrew lan­guage at the time, the word vir­gin could mean sev­eral things. And what if you dis­cover that in the first cen­tury being “born of a vir­gin” also referred to a child whose mother became preg­nant the first time she had intercourse?

What if that spring was seri­ously questioned?

Could a per­son keep jump­ing? Could a per­son still love God? Could you still be a Christian?

Is the way of Jesus still the best pos­si­ble way to live?

Or does the whole thing fall apart?

I affirm the his­toric Chris­t­ian faith, which includes the vir­gin birth and the Trin­ity and the inspi­ra­tion of the Bible and much more. I’m a art of it, and I want to pass it on to the next gen­er­a­tion. I believe that God cre­ate every­thing and that Jesus is Lord and God has plans to restor­ing everything.

Bell’s sum­ma­rizes his point as fol­lows, “but if the whole faith falls apart when we reex­am­ine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it? ¹³″. Unlike a spring, a brick is of a fixed size, if it changes, then it ceases to fit in a wall. What then hap­pens, accord­ing to Bell, is that “the wall becomes the sum total of the beliefs, and God becomes as big as the wall” ¹⁴. How­ever, the real­ity, con­tin­ues Bell, is that “God is big­ger than any wall. God is big­ger than any reli­gion. God is big­ger than any world­view. God is big­ger than the Chris­t­ian faith” ¹⁵.

The final and most impor­tant impli­ca­tion of such a belief sys­tem is that it (accord­ing to Bell) allows no room for ques­tions, or for doubts. If faith is a brick, then we want cer­tainty of belief. Com­pare this with the tram­po­line, and the invi­ta­tion to jump, “so the invi­ta­tion to jump is an invi­ta­tion to fol­low Jesus with all of our doubts and ques­tions right there with us“¹⁶. If faith is a brick, then it is a quest for cer­tainty, and the cre­ation of “in” and “out” groups. It goes against the per­son of Jesus.

Ques­tions — they are nec­es­sary; mys­tery, it is the truth!

Bell con­cludes this por­tion of his book by exam­in­ing the role of ques­tions and doubts in the Chris­t­ian faith. He notes, rightly, that “a Chris­t­ian doesn’t avoid the ques­tions; a Chris­t­ian embraces them, in fact, to truly pur­sue the liv­ing God, we have to see the need for ques­tions” ¹⁷. As noted above, it’s ques­tion­ing that frees us, “frees us from hav­ing to have it all fig­ured out. Frees us from hav­ing answers to every­thing. Frees us from always hav­ing to be right” ¹⁸ (frees us from a “Carte­sian anx­i­ety”). Ques­tions are mys­te­ri­ous, and what­ever truth they uncover is itself mys­te­ri­ous, because God is mys­tery. Accord­ing to Bell, “truth always lead to more … truth. Because truth is insight into God and God is infi­nite and God has no bound­aries or edges. So truth always has lay­ers and depth and tex­ture… The mys­tery is the truth” ¹⁹. This again shows an aver­sion to hav­ing things fig­ured out, “One of the great ‘the­olo­gians’ of our time, Sean Penn, put it this way: ‘When every­thing gets answered, it’s fake’”²⁰.

Bell gives some exam­ples of ques­tions, “Why does God let peo­ple die … so young?” and “Why does the killer go free and the hon­est man die of can­cer?“²¹. But these ques­tions are of a dif­fer­ent type (for believ­ers) than the ones he was pre­vi­ously ask­ing: “what if Jesus wasn’t born of a vir­gin?” “What if Jesus wasn’t God?” “What if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead?” I can’t help but won­der if Bell is mak­ing these (lat­ter) ques­tions seem to be some­thing they are not (i.e., ques­tions which if answered the wrong way, are poten­tially issues of salvation).

I’ll con­clude by quot­ing Bell at length, partly because I’m not quite sure how to sum­ma­rize this (though you’ll ben­e­fit from the full text):

A tram­po­line only works if you take your feet off the firm, sta­ble ground and jump into the air and let the tram­po­line pro­pel you upward. Talk­ing about tram­po­lines isn’t jump­ing; it’s talk­ing. Two vastly dif­fer­ent things. And so we jump and we invite oth­ers to jump with us, to live the way of Jesus and see what hap­pens. You don’t have to know any­thing about the springs to pur­sue liv­ing “the way”.

In brick­world, the focus often becomes get­ting peo­ple to believe the right things so they can be “in”. There is often a list of how­ever many doc­trines and the goal is to get peo­ple to intel­lec­tu­ally assent to these things being true. Once we believe the right things, then we’re in. And once we’re in, the goal often becomes learn­ing how to get oth­ers in with us. I know this is harsh, but in many set­tings it is true. It is pos­si­ble in these set­tings to be in, and to believe all of the cor­rect things, and even to be effec­tive at get­ting oth­ers in, and yet our hearts can remain unaf­fected. It’s pos­si­ble to believe all the right things and be mis­er­able. It’s pos­si­ble to believe all the right doc­trines and not live as Jesus teaches us to live. This is why I am so pas­sion­ate about the tram­po­line. I want to invite peo­ple to actu­ally live this way so the life Jesus offers grad­u­ally becomes their life. It becomes less and less about talk­ing, and more and more about the expe­ri­ence we are actu­ally hav­ing²².

I have to be entirely hon­est, this whole busi­ness of jump­ing strikes me as silly. When you jump on a tram­po­line, when you come off the “firm, sta­ble ground,” do you not return to this same firm, sta­ble ground? Even if with a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of it? This reminds me of  G.K. Chesterton’s com­ments toward open minds: “The object of open­ing the mind, as of open­ing the mouth, is to shut it again on some­thing solid” and “An open mind is really a mark of fool­ish­ness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.” Jump­ing off a tram­po­line, with­out the real­iza­tion that one will even­tu­ally come down, may just be a “mark of foolishness”.

The Bell Curve — false dichotomies, mis­con­cep­tions and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions

There is a fun­da­men­tal error under­min­ing Bell’s “springs and bricks” illus­tra­tion. In and of itself, Bell’s illus­tra­tion doesn’t seem too objec­tion­able, who would argue with the notion that we should keep doc­trine open, because of the infi­nite nature of God, and the finite nature of man? Who would argue that we don’t know every­thing? No one, and I believe rightly so. But here is the prob­lem: Bell has pre­sented a false dichotomy, and he’s mis­rep­re­sented the­ol­ogy. It sim­ply is not the case — though it’s always been a dan­ger — that the­ol­ogy has been unchang­ing, or lacks the abil­ity to change, even as it pur­sues “cer­tain” knowl­edge of God (it would be an error to infer that some­thing is unchang­ing because it is in pur­suit of cer­tain knowl­edge). What Bell has done, is taken the­ol­ogy as it’s prop­erly stud­ied, and con­trasted it with how it is improp­erly stud­ied. Nor­mally this isn’t a prob­lem, but he has gone one step fur­ther; he has made it seem as if this improper study of the­ol­ogy is the clas­si­cal study of the­ol­ogy, and that this “new” the­ol­ogy, which allows for the reex­am­i­na­tion and rethink­ing of doc­trine, is some sort of mod­ern invention–it just isn’t.

If we were to imag­ine a more pre­cise anal­ogy of the­ol­ogy, we might imag­ine it as some­thing like a sci­en­tific hypoth­e­sis; that is, very much a deduc­tive sort of thing. The­ol­ogy, actu­ally, is very much akin to phi­los­o­phy, and oper­ates much in the same way (even historically!)–just imag­ine Socrates, con­stantly ask­ing ques­tions. What this means is that as time goes on — and per­haps as God reveals more to us — our under­stand­ing Him  and our doc­trine and the­ol­ogy, as a result, changes and becomes fuller, and, dare I say it, more “cer­tain”.  The Trin­ity is indeed the per­fect exam­ple of this. If this is the spring of Bell’s anal­ogy, then in large part this is what the­ol­ogy has always been. However…

There is another prob­lem with Bell’s illus­tra­tion, it’s that as a whole it’s sim­ply wrong. If we return to Bell’s “famous (or infa­mous)” pas­sage, then we must real­ize that it is patently false that “if the whole faith falls apart when we reex­am­ine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?” Bell uses the exam­ple of the vir­gin birth, and hon­estly, while it makes for good mate­r­ial (and would gen­er­ate a con­sid­er­able amount of con­tro­versy, as it has), I think it’s very lit­tle more than a dis­trac­tion from what I believe to be the real issue–the res­ur­rec­tion. This was cen­tral to the early church, and it’s lam­en­ta­ble that this doesn’t seem to be the case today. “Lib­eral” the­ol­ogy has no prob­lem with deny­ing the res­ur­rec­tion, as  Rudolf Bult­mann once com­mented, “If the bones of the dead Jesus were dis­cov­ered tomor­row in a Pales­tin­ian tomb, all the essen­tials of Chris­tian­ity would remain unchanged.” The real­ity, how­ever, is quite dif­fer­ent. Paul writes, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preach­ing is in vain and your faith is in vain… If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have per­ished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied“²³. What we have in the res­ur­rec­tion is a doc­trine which, if denied — if “reex­am­ined” and “rethought” — removes the foun­da­tion for Christianity.

The ques­tion itself, how­ever, seems almost non­sen­si­cal. Imag­ine with me the “prop­er­ties” of God, and that one of the prop­er­ties of God is the “prop­erty of exis­tence”. Now, let’s take Bell’s words and apply it to God, “If God’s exis­tence is undone when we reex­am­ine and rethink one prop­erty, then His exis­tence wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?” It seems silly, doesn’t it? If God lacks the prop­erty of exis­tence, then His exis­tence wasn’t that strong in the first place (that would be some­thing of a, per­haps poor, reduc­tio ad absur­dum). What needs to hap­pen is a coa­les­cence of this idea of “springs” and “bricks,” and what we’ll end up with is clas­si­cal the­ol­ogy, which is com­prised of some doc­trines which are ever-changing, and some doc­trines, such as the res­ur­rec­tion, which can­not change.

Inter­est­ingly, if we answer Bell’s ques­tions — “Could a per­son keep jump­ing? Could a per­son still love God? Could you still be a Chris­t­ian? Is the way of Jesus still the best pos­si­ble way to live?” — with the res­ur­rec­tion in mind, then his intended rhetoric (as I under­stand him) falls apart. I sup­pose it’s true that a per­son could “keep jump­ing,” and that this same per­son could still “be a Chris­t­ian,” but it’s not true that this per­son could still love God, or that Jesus would still be the best pos­si­ble way to live. Why? The answer is sim­ple. Those who fol­low Jesus, if he has not been raised, are idol­aters to the God who does exist, whichever God exists, if God exists. That should cause you to pause and won­der, and recon­sider if you find your­self agree­ing with Bell.

There are, in addi­tion to the above (which is the focus of most argu­ments, in my read­ing), “clues” which I believe illu­mi­nate the posi­tion from which Bell is argu­ing, namely, post­mod­ernism (a sig­nif­i­cantly bad thing in its strong forms).

Rob Bell — Our words aren’t absolutes
Jeremy — Are you certain?

This is where we first begin to see hints of a post­mod­ernism lean­ing from Bell: “our words aren’t absolutes”. J.P. More­land comments:

On a post­mod­ernist view, there is no such thing as objec­tive real­ity, truth, value, rea­son, and so forth. All these are social con­struc­tions, cre­ations of lin­guis­tic prac­tices, and as such are rel­a­tive not to indi­vid­u­als, but to social groups that share a nar­ra­tive. Post­mod­ernism denies the cor­re­spon­dence the­ory, claim­ing that truth is sim­ply a con­tin­gent cre­ation of lan­guage that expresses cus­toms, emo­tions, and val­ues embed­ded in a community’s lin­guis­tic prac­tices. For the post­mod­ernist, if one claims to have the truth in the cor­re­spon­dence sense, this asser­tion is a power move that vic­tim­izes those judged not to have the truth²⁴.

There are a few inter­est­ing com­ments by More­land, the first is that things such as “objec­tive real­ity, truth, value, rea­son, and so forth” are viewed by post­mod­ernists as “cre­ations of lin­guis­tic prac­tices”. What would be the log­i­cal con­clu­sion of hold­ing such a view? Well, it seems to me that such a per­son will believe that words aren’t absolutes, we would also see an aver­sion to any­thing which might cre­ate “in” and “out” groups (how could there be such things on this view?), and an aver­sion to any­thing which might result in one per­son being called “right” and another, “wrong”. It’s inter­est­ing that we see such an aver­sion pre­sented in the writ­ing of Bell.

More­land also men­tions a denial of the cor­re­spon­dence the­ory of truth, because such a the­ory is viewed as a power move which “vic­tim­izes those judged not to have the truth”. This is related to the post­mod­ern denial of foun­da­tion­al­ism (which is the result of a con­fu­sion between clas­si­cal foun­da­tion­al­ism, and foun­da­tion­al­ism per se). The cor­re­spon­dence the­ory of truth “says that a propo­si­tion is true just in case it cor­re­sponds to real­ity, when what it asserts to be the case is the case“²⁵. The post­mod­ern denial of the cor­re­spon­dence the­ory of truth seems to stem from a con­fu­sion between words (which are con­structs) and terms (which are some things in real­ity). For exam­ple, the words “God exists” and “Jumala on olle­massa” (clos­est com­pa­ra­ble Finnish phrase) both express a set of terms, namely, that there is a God who exists.  A rejec­tion of the cor­re­spon­dence the­ory of truth is ulti­mately a self-contradiction, the rea­sons are sim­ple. Firstly, it’s a con­tra­dic­tion to state in an absolute way that words aren’t absolute. Sec­ondly, such a state­ment implies some sort of cor­re­spon­dence the­ory of truth, as this state­ment is a propo­si­tion which hopes to be true, and to be true, would need to cor­re­spond to real­ity (i.e., it is a case that is asserted that is, in fact, the case).

All of this is related to (and per­haps wrapped up in) a rejec­tion of foun­da­tion­al­ism, which “frees us from hav­ing to have it all fig­ured out. Frees us from hav­ing answers to every­thing. Frees us from always hav­ing to be right”. Foun­da­tion­al­ism, sim­ply defined, is the idea that there are basic beliefs (or prin­ci­ples) foun­da­tional to cer­tain thoughts. An exam­ple of this would be the law of non-contradiction (a thing can­not be both A and non-A) and the law of excluded mid­dle (a thing is either A or non-A). This rejec­tion defines itself heav­ily on the idea that foun­da­tion­al­ists (espe­cially clas­si­cal foun­da­tion­al­ists), suf­fer from a Carte­sian anx­i­ety, an (impos­si­ble, they assert) quest for cer­tain knowl­edge. But this seems strange, as More­land points out, “the great cor­re­spon­dence advo­cate Aris­to­tle was hardily in a Carte­sian quandary when he wisely pointed out that in the search for truth, one ought not expect a greater degree of epis­temic strength than is appro­pri­ate to the sub­ject mat­ter, a degree of strength that varies from topic to topic“²⁶. Almost all those who believe in the cor­re­spon­dence the­ory of truth, hold to what Aris­to­tle says to be true. As can be gleaned by now, post­mod­ernist notions are them­selves heav­ily dis­il­lu­sioned and incor­rect where their ideas can be objec­tively exam­ined (but I sup­pose that is what hap­pens when you make rel­a­tive truth, and objectivity?).

Other issues… (Con­clu­sion)

There are other things that con­cern me. For instance, I’m not entirely sure what Bell means when he talks about “our expe­ri­ence of God,” does this mean that a Hindu, or a Mus­lim may have a dif­fer­ent “expe­ri­ence” of the same God, or that this is fine given the con­text of their lin­guis­tic con­fines? I’m like­wise con­cerned at Bell’s rais­ing ques­tions, but not answer­ing them (when he should be, for the posi­tion that he is in). I’m con­cerned at the his­tor­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cies present in Bell’s writ­ing, such as the vir­gin birth being an appeal to the Mithras and Dionysian cults (no seri­ous his­to­rian of reli­gion believes that the vir­gin birth of the gospels is com­pa­ra­ble to the “vir­gin” births pre­sented in the Mithras and Dionysian myths. N.T. Wright’s multi-volume series Chris­t­ian Ori­gins and the Ques­tion of God is a good place to start with respect to this ques­tion). I’m con­cerned about the way in which Bell presents the “con­tro­versy” sur­round­ing the word vir­gin. Per­haps, in this lat­ter instance, this really is just Bell being “con­tro­ver­sial,” but as the inten­tion seems other than to raise the ques­tion, “is your faith exam­ined, and secure?” I’m not cer­tain I’m entirely com­fort­able with that. Most impor­tantly, I’m con­cerned over the dis­hon­esty with which Bell presents his views, either inten­tion­ally or not (but I will give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt).

This type of ques­tion­ing (i.e. leav­ing room for the res­ur­rec­tion to be denied, and the faith to be unaf­fected) does not seem appro­pri­ate for some­one in Bell’s posi­tion, espe­cially as his ques­tions go unan­swered. There is a lot to what Bell is say­ing, a lot more than peo­ple real­ize (as I’ve encoun­tered them) and it has the abil­ity to seri­ously sway and influ­ence the unsus­pect­ing reader. This is (or was?) a pop­u­lar book, and a lot of the con­tro­versy over it focused on the vir­gin birth–I think this is wrong. Bell is a gifted com­mu­ni­ca­tor and speaker (I’m far less impressed with his writ­ing style), and the almost unques­tion­ing accep­tance of this book (and the views therein) makes me seri­ously uneasy.