January 17, 2007, Matthew Cochrane, Book Review: Velvet Elvis
It may well be true that there are still a number of people in church today who have never heard of the Emerging Church Movement (ECM). It is clear, however, that these same church members are being increasingly exposed to the philosophies of the ECM, often without even knowing it.
While there are some redeeming qualities to this movement, I fear the influence it is wielding, as a whole, has been overwhelmingly negative. Just how deep the impression it has already made on the church struck me when a Southern Baptist friend and I recently engaged in a conversation about how sure and certain we can be of the Biblical doctrine we hold. He made some statement about how big and mysterious God was and how we lowly earthlings can never hold our theology and Scriptural interpretations as absolutely true. This surprised me when I heard this from him, so I asked him what had made him feel this way. He replied that he had just finished reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and felt it was one of the best books he had ever read.
Being the calm, cool and collected guy I am, I smoothly replied that Rob Bell was a heretical tool used by Satan to confuse dim-witted Christians like him. Just kidding! But I did whole-heartedly denounce Bell’s quasi-mystical fluid theology so popular within the ECM. After I criticized Bell, my friend looked like I had just slapped his mother. So we started talking about the ECM. I thought it attacked the perspicuity and clarity of the gospel by essentially stating that, though there was absolute truth, it could never be known by us. He was not too familiar with the overall movement, but most of its proponents would counter by saying it spoke to the relevance of the church to our culture.
He was still getting over the fact that I wasn’t on the Rob Bell bandwagon when I mentioned that I had not read Velvet Elvis and had no desire to. Basically, I was criticizing it because I had read and heard some things that greatly concerned me and because of Bell’s association with the ECM. At this point my friend, and others listening in on our conversation, was incredulous. How could I criticize the book without having read it? Why was I so eager to criticize Bell’s ideas based on second-hand reports? To make a long story short, I agreed to read the book and hold off any further judgment until I finished it.
I share this with you, because I normally exercise a great deal of discernment concerning the books I read. I figure that I only have a finite time to pursue leisurely activities like reading, so why not get the most bang for my buck with the time I can afford? Because of this, I usually give glowing reviews, praising the authors and material I view. I usually learn a great deal from the works I read and enjoy the intellectual and spiritual challenges they bring me.
This is not one of those times. Don’t get me wrong, I tried to give Velvet Elvis a fair shake, but I just cannot recommend this book. In fact, I found it to be even worse than I thought it would be to the point where I’m not even sure if I can call it Christian. While there are some worthy truths found in this work, overall I found it to be mostly theological fluff, with some borderline blasphemies thrown in for good measure.
In Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell repeatedly calls into question a person’s capability to accurately interpret Scriptures, saying God’s Word is much too deep and mysterious for us to even comprehend, much less formulate dogmatic creeds around. His book and his ideas, he claims, are merely his contribution to the Christian theological discussion that has been going on for centuries. (Conversation is one of the favorite words of the ECM. They don’t want to be labeled as a movement or church; they just want to be a conversation). They might be right, they might be wrong, but who’s to say? The best we can hope for is to acknowledge our theological beliefs as nothing more than our personal interpretation of Scripture.
While this might be true in a sense, Bell’s notion that we can’t be sure about any of our doctrines is nonsense. While the Bible is vague on certain points (i.e. eschatology) it is crystal clear on others (i.e. substitutionary atonement). To not acknowledge that fact is to surrender the clarity of God’s Word and makes God out to be one very poor communicator!
In Bell’s world, that’s all right, though. He makes it clear that he doesn’t view doctrine as essential to the Christian faith. In fact, he famously equates his faith to jumping on a trampoline. He says that doctrines are like the
springs of the trampoline. The more springs in the right place, the higher one can jump but, if some springs are missing, one can still keep jumping. So what are some of the springs he believes to be optional to the Christian faith? The first example Bell gives is the concept of the Trinity. You know, the Triune God we worship – just a spring for our faith. I guess that’s the borderline blasphemy I alluded to earlier. Another example he gives is
the virgin birth. Just another spring for Bell. So, following Bell’s logic, you can throw out the Trinity and inerrancy of Scripture and we can still all be jumping on the same trampoline. Sorry, but if you’re not worshiping the three-in-one God, then we’re not worshiping the same God.
He compares the faith of those of us with fixed beliefs to a brick wall. He says the bricks are a definite shape and size and cannot bend. Bell then goes on to state that once one of these bricks is compromised then the whole wall can come crumbling down. Well, yeah. Take away substitutionary atonement, the inerrancy of Scripture or the deity of Christ and I would say there would be nothing left of the Christian faith. The resulting picture Bell leaves his reader with is his distinct version of the Christian faith, where everybody’s jumping on a trampoline having fun. He compares this to the orthodox version where the believer is left manning a brick wall on the verge of collapse.
Two things about that view:
1) Bell’s right about the wall. The Christian faith does require defense and it can be work. There are several doctrines essential to the Gospel that cannot be compromised without the Christian faith unraveling at the seams. These must be defended with vigor and, in extreme cases, to the point of death. But there are several Biblical examples of defining the Christian walk as a struggle, competition or war, but not one that comes close to describing it as a big trampoline party.
2) When you come under attack, would you rather be jumping on a trampoline or using a brick wall as cover? That’s what I thought.
Bell is also not too concerned about the historical accuracy of Scripture. He constantly bombards his readers with long series of questions like whether it’s important that the story of Adam and Eve actually happened. He provides no answers to these questions and leaves readers with the impression they are unanswerable or, at least, unanswered up to now.
What to like: Now that I’ve sufficiently and frankly given my view of the book, I am not afraid to say that Bell does make some good points. First, no matter your opinion of his views and ideologies, he is brutally honest about his own shortcomings and struggles. He goes into detail describing an experience he had after he started pastoring where he was emotionally and mentally burnt out and felt like quitting right in the middle of Sunday worship services.
At another point in the book, I believe, he accurately reasons why Christian college students so often turn from their faith while attending a secular school. Bell states they are presented with the false dichotomy of intellectual honestly or Jesus. Due to an insufficient Christian worldview, they do not understand that all truth comes from God and, faced with this choice, choose intellectual honesty.
At other places in Velvet Elvis, Bell weighs in with some interesting and fresh reflections about the connection between ancient Jewish and Middle Eastern culture and the life and teachings of Jesus.
What not to like: Where to begin? As I’ve already stated, Rob Bell, and the ECM as a whole, constantly undermine the clarity of the Bible. By stating that we are not capable of properly understanding soteriological doctrine is not commenting on our own finite mental capacities but on God’s capability to communicate with us. Why would God bother giving us His word if we were incapable of understanding it? Beyond this, however, Bell erodes the importance of theological doctrine by saying it is dispensable. Again, it’s not like he’s saying the paedobaptist view is not essential or that the different millennial views are interchangeable, but he strikes to the heart of the Christian faith with the doctrines he lists as optional (i.e. the Trinity).
I also find it frustrating that throughout the book he throws out rhetorical questions to prove a point, and then acts like theologians have never answered them. The vast majority of the questions he uses for this purpose have been answered satisfactorily by scholars and church leaders numerous times. Either Bell is ignorant of this (unlikely) or refuses to acknowledge this fact.
Memorable Quote (the spacing, italics, and ellipses are the author’s own): “But the Bible has an entirely different understanding of mystery. True mystery, the kind of mystery rooted in the infinite nature of God, gives us answers that actually plunge us into even more…questions.
Take this example from John 3:16. The first part of the verse reads: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.’
So why did God give his son?
‘Because God loves the world.’
But what does it mean for God to love the world?
Does God love evil people? Mean people? People who don’t think that God exists? People who think that God loves only them? If you do enough evil, can you exhaust God’s love?
Because God loves the world is an answer to the question, why did God give his son? It’s a real answer; it’s an answer you can trust; it’s an answer you can base your life on. It’s an answer you can know. But it also raises a new set of questions.
Why does God love the world?
What motivates God to love like this? What does God get out of it?
The writers of the Bible, especially one named John, would answer this way: ‘Because God is love.’
Which is an answer, of course, but as you probably have figured out by now, it raises even deeper questions: How can God be love? Is every experience of love an experience of God? Is every experience of God an experience of love?
So God is love is an answer to the question, why does God love the world? But as an answer, it raises even more questions. And we could go on and on and on.
Truth always leads 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.
It’s like a pool that you dive into, and you start swimming toward the bottom, and soon you discover that no matter how hard and fast you swim downward, the pool keeps getting…deeper. The bottom will always be out of reach.
One of the great ‘theologians’ of our time, Sean Penn, put it this way: ‘When everything gets answered, it’s fake. The mystery is the truth.’”
Conclusion: Besides being the first book I’ve ever read that quoted Sean Penn to make a theological point, Velvet Elvis was thoroughly frustrating on many different levels. I constantly had to suppress the urge to yell at the book. The fact that this theology has infiltrated the ranks of conservative Christian denominations (it is making small but real headway into the Southern Baptist Convention) is completely baffling. The only conclusion one can draw is that the universal church is doing a woefully inadequate job of educating its members on proper Christian instruction and the importance of Scriptural truth and doctrine.
If you’ve read this book and feel like it’s one of the best you’ve ever read on the Christian faith, I encourage you to read more - a lot more. Start with books by Sproul or Piper or Schaeffer or Packer and work your way back to the great works of the Puritans.
I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they really wanted to get a better handle on the ECM and the driving philosophy behind it. It does make for a great exercise in discernment. But do what I did: Borrow the book, don’t spend money on it. Chances are someone in your local congregation has it - and loves it.
