I know one former devotee who was sickened by the various media interviews. He had been defending Bell against the vitriol of the critics. Now, he sees that Bell is dabbling with some pretty dangerous things.
Again, I cannot help but see Bell in terms of his (and my) common alma mater. When your seminary does a better job at asking the edgy, awkward, quasi-heretical questions than answering them and rewards professors for trying out radically new ideas and locutions, you end up with your more brilliant students producing this kind of stuff. And, as Bell freely admits in the interview, much of his position is a reaction formation to the perceived constraints of his upbringing.
After interviewing several HUNDRED grads of this seminary during denominational ordination exams over the past 30 years, I can tell you that there is a sadly observable line from the theology common to the generation of Pipers to that of Bell's "more questions than answers" shtick today. No school graduates mere clones. But, whereas Piper is more characteristic of the theology and piety of his c 1970 Pasadena classmates (Grudem was in Piper's class for one year before he transferred out to Westminster), Bell is sadly all too typical of more recent grads. They are generally sincere, even passionate, and attempt to reconcile personal piety with their new trendy intellectual ideas. The sponsorship of edgy emergent stuff today is seen in the steady drumbeat of alum events and campus lectures promoting Bell, Jones, McLaren and gang.
However, many people go to seminary in order to prepare for pastoral ministry, not in order to become professional scholars. The habit of asking more questions than answering them in my opinion results in confused and ineffective parish pastors. In my day, we saw ourselves as intentionally opposite to places like Talbot where we were told they merely indoctrinate, not educate. But surely seminary is supposed to "train" as well as "educate." In my limited experience with ordinands, the emphasis upon exhaustive study of every side of every issue (with a hint of a somewhat snarky bias against the "traditional" or mainstream evangelical answer), has resulted in a shockingly ignorant and uncertain group of ministers. I cannot speak to the adequacy of this type of training for professional scholars since several of the grads have gone on to distinguish themselves in LOTS of schools. However, it does not provide the kind of training I deem neccessary for effective clergy outside the mainlines.
As one of my college and seminary profs used to say (actually he said a lot, including teaching that we should admit non-Christians to communion since it would be wrong to let a merely "intellectual" problem like disbelief in God trump existential involvement in the "body of Christ") . . .
"Choose your ruts carefully. As the old farmers in South Dakota would say, you will be in them for a very long time."
The seminary you select WILL leave an indelible imprint on you. Whether you buy the teaching wholesale (and end up like Bell), or whether you react to it and reject much of it (e.g., me!), the mark will stay for a very long time. My rejection of so much of my seminary experience is no more healthy than Bell's practical extrapolations of it into pastoral ministry.
Choose wisely, gentlemen. Choose wisely.
