Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His Law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1-2)

Rob Bell’s Anti-Reformed Doctrine Is Being Taught At Lutheran CUW

Unfortunately this issue with CUW is not yet over here at Apprising Ministries. From others I have heard about some sort of “statement” concerning the “Virgilicious” video produced by Pre-Seminary students there. But as far as I can tell CUW has said nothing about the warped and toxic–decidedly anti-Reformation–and semi-pelagian teachings of Rob Bell of the Emergent Church being used within. This highly schismatic and very dangerous group has subjective experience-over-Scripture contemplative spirituality as a core doctrine. In truth the ecumenical Emergent Church is actually the new cult of liberal theology, complete with its repainted version of the social gospel.

I have talked some about this in Concordia University Wisconsin: A Lutheran Home for Rob Bell of the Emergent Church and Still So “Virgilicious”? But what the public needs to know here is that the person who handled the Bible study led by students last year at CUW was someone who was heavily influenced by Rob Bell. In fact according to my student sources inside CUW there truly are a sizable number of students who are being tainted by the man-centered and neo-orthodox new evangelicalism of Rob Bell and his book Velvet Elvis.

In addition, for those new to all of this, Rob Bell has also done a series of videos called Nooma, and currently the CUW library itself contains videos 1-13. I am also informed that for a while this semester the leaders at The Haven, a Sunday night youth program, were using a specific Nooma title as the theme of each week’s meeting. This past year as well, in the “Life of Christ” theology class itself, Nooma videos were being shown in a positive light, particularly “Dust.” And even Rob Bell was himself being spoken of as if he is an orthodox Christian teacher. But in point of fact Bell’s message is literally polar opposite to that of Martin Luther.

Where Luther correctly taught the Biblical doctrine of human depravity and the bondage of the human will to sin, Rob Bell flatly contradicts Luther and the Bible when he teaches in Velvet Elvis:

God has an incredibly high view of people. God believes that people are capable of amazing things. I have been told that I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me. I have been told that I need to have faith in God. Which is a good thing. But what I am learning is that God has faith in me (134).

Since I also cover this subject in The Worldly Wisdom of Rob Bell let me just say that God does not have faith in anything for the simple fact that He is omniscient and knows everything that will happen. The LORD God Almighty–Creator of the universe–doesn’t need to have faith, indeed He can’t, because God already knows all things and is in complete and absolute control of everything that ever happens in His universe. So once you understand this fact you will be able to see right through the shallow and child-ish man-pleasing reasoning of Rob Bell. Indeed, alarmingly superficial when you consider that Bell is himself the teaching pastor of a megachurch.

In his seemingly sincere desire to make human beings feel good Bell instead actually ends up demeaning God by suggesting that the Lord Himself has faith in degenerate rebels who, in our basic evil human nature, literally hate Him. You see, God most certainly does not have “faith” in mankind because He already knows that there is absolutely nothing we could ever do in our sinful flesh that can please Him. As it is written – Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God (Romans 8:8) And in stark contrast to Bell’s semi-pelagian man-love in Bondage of the Will Martin Luther said:

In a word, if we be under the god of this world, without the operation and Spirit of God, we are led captives by him at his will, as Paul saith. (2 Tim. ii. 26.) So that, we cannot will any thing but that which he wills… Thus the human will is, as it were, a beast between the two. If God sit thereon, it wills and goes where God will: as the Psalm saith, “I am become as it were a beast before thee, and I am continually with thee.” (Ps. lxxiii. 22-23.) If Satan sit thereon, it wills and goes as Satan will. Nor is it in the power of its own will to choose, to which rider it will run, nor which it will seek; but the riders themselves contend, which shall have and hold it. (Online source)

So I would say that the leadership of Concordia University Wisconsin have some serious explaining to do for allowing the use of the teachings of a man like Rob Bell who has said of the Bible:

This is part of the problem with continually insisting that one of the absolutes of the Christian faith must be a belief that “Scripture alone” is our guide. It sounds nice but it is not true… When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true (VE, 067,068, emphasis mine)

And this is written that churches, institutions and people who are currently funding CUW will begin asking the following question: Why exactly is Rob Bell of the extremely ecumenical Emergent Church being used to teach evangelical Protestant students at CUW, an institution of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which itself supposedly descends from the Biblical Reformed faith of the great Church Reformer Martin Luther?