Ben Witherington on Rob Bell

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington has excellent reviews of Velvet Elvis, Sex God and the first ten Nooma DVDs.  His main criticism of Bell is some sloppy exegesis and some misunderstandings of the New Testament context. Witherington is very convincing! Overall, he is extremely positive about Bell. Witherington’s comments on Bell on homosexuality attracted 75 [...]

Nooma DVD 012 – Matthew : a short review

This Nooma sees Rob Bell in sombre mode; he doesn’t reach those heights of joyful intensity I saw in the previous Nooma I watched – Breathe – instead, he talks about grief and loss.
He tells the story of a friend of his who died – Matthew – and then he goes on to talk about [...]

Interpreting the Bible in Velvet Elvis: binding and loosing

From an Anabaptist perspective, what excites me most about Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis is the way in “Movement two: Yoke” it talks about using ‘binding and loosing’ to interpret the Bible together.
In Jesus’ world, it was assumed you had as much to learn from the discussion of the text as you did from the text itself. [...]

Eschatology in Velvet Elvis

One of the things that Rob Bell touches on in Velvet Elvis is eschatology. He does a great job of explaining the ‘new heavens, new earth’ idea, countering the popular misconception that the afterlife involves being sucked off to a disembodied heaven.
One of the most tragic things to ever happen to the gospel was the [...]

Velvet Elvis: repainting the Christian faith by Rob Bell

What is it?
It’s difficult to categorise. The subtitle says it best, probably – an attempt to repaint what Christian faith means for believers in the 21st century. Bell’s perspective is an exciting neo-evangelicalism. He has an orthodox faith, but he’s not hung up on doctrine.  He re-reads the Bible and the Christian faith and finds a [...]

Devouring theology

Earlier this year I fell back into my old trap of devouring theology, and I can sense it happening again. I was hungry for books on house church, mission and emerging church. I read about six books on these topics in six weeks. I had this sense that if I could cram some more into [...]

Tom Wright’s Living Faith – a disappointment

http://orders.koorong.com/search/details.jhtml?code=0801065623 
We bought these DVD talks introducing Christianity thinking it would be a great evangelism tool – an Alpha Course with better theology!
 The problem is in the presentation. With an eye on the US evangelical market, the producers have put in an intro with an American voiceover worthy of a televangelist. It’s awful! So American.  I [...]