Now that the blog-responses to Bell’s Love Wins seems to be on the decline, the rush of book-responses is on the way. I’ve listed them below, but there were a few interesting observations as I searched through all the Bell responses that I think are worth noting.
First, these books are being published very quickly after the Bell’s book began mailing and hitting shelves. The obvious reason for this was how much the blogs dominated this discussion. Most of the notable reviews occurred within a few days of the book’s publication date. Subsequent reviews seemed dated and almost had to interact with others reviews as much as the book itself. So the speed of these publications says something of the speed of how quickly a discussion heightens and then passes.
Second, I was amazed by the number of self-published books. I only included one below, but there were a handful of other authors who had been published elsewhere. Perhaps some publishers believe this discussion has already peaked, so the golden publishing opportunity has passed. Another possible reason could be that some authors probably wanted to publish their thoughts faster than what a normal publication schedule demands for printing and marketing.
I’m sure there are more books that are still to come, but here are some notable ones that are available or will be soon:
Christ Alone: An Evangelical Response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins by Michael Wittmer—This was the first published response to Bell’s book. You can read TGC’s review.
Is Hell for Real or Does Everyone Go To Heaven? edited by Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson. From what I can tell, this book addresses the greater issues of universalism and the doctrine of hell in evangelicalism, not simply Rob Bell.
God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News Is Better than Love Wins, by Mark Galli. Not too many people have written more on Bell’s book than Galli, the senior managing editor at Christianity Today. Now his book shares his greater concerns.
Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity, and the Things We Made Up by Francis Chan. This may be the most anticipated response of all. Like Bell did, Chan has released a promotional video.
Is it possible that book length responses to blog posts masquerading as books (i.e. Love Wins) make the original book seem more interesting to most people and actually serve as free advertising for it?
I know the authors of the above books have the best motives in writing to respond to Bell, but I was kind of hoping now that the blog posts trailed off that would be the end of it.
@Nate – I don’t expect, or even *hope* for an end to the discussion. Honestly, I think that when leaders assume that truth is widely understood, and that error can be ignored, is precisely when error gets a foothold. There will always be a need for authors/teachers/pastors/leaders to speak out boldly against false gospels.
Oh I’m not questioning that at all, that’s part of why I spent the last four years getting a masters in theology. I don’t think that the truth is widely understood, but I think that the type of people who are likely to misunderstand the truth about these issues are more likely to read a book by Rob Bell than they are to read any of these responses.
By saying I was hoping the trailing off would be the end of it, I meant the end of people spotlighting Bell, not necessarily neglecting to talk about important theological issues.
I’ve read Wittmer’s book – and it is tremendously helpful; also looking forward to Chan and Galli’s books. In looking at “Is Hell for Real or Does Everyone Go To Heaven,” it looks like a repackaging of “Hell Under Fire,” which came out a few years ago – is that the case?
Yes, I believe that is correct, Aaron.
Excellent; I’ve got that one on my bookshelves. Didn’t want to end up doubling up should I have chosen to purchase it.
[...] John Starke has a helpful round-up of book-length responses to Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. He notes that the one by Francis Chan is probably the highly anticipated of the bunch. He also observes the following: [...]
I as well read Wittmer’s book and plan to read Chan & Galli’s book. Aaron I thought the same thing about “Is Heaven for Real or Does Everyone go to Heaven?”. I was about to pre order it and then I saw the contributors and said to myself, “Hey those list of names together look familiar.”
“Is Hell for Real…” that is.
[...] Coming Books in Response to Rob Bell – TGC Reviews [...]
[...] Starke wrote about several upcoming books on the subject over at the TGC Reviews blog. I am looking forward to reading Francis Chan’s response, Erasing Hell: What God said about [...]
Is it possible that this whole Rob Bell controversy wasn’t about heaven, hell, theology, or anything like that at all, but the coordinated conspiring of various publishing houses and pastor/authors who were looking for a big topic to get the public’s attention.
Controversy sells… and maybe in the midst of a worldwide recession with national book sales on the decline, this would be the right prescription.
[...] Starke of The Gospel Coalition has a short post here listing the upcoming books that respond to Love [...]
[...] week John Starke blogged at The Gospel Coalition about four new books that respond to Rob Bell’s Love Wins. (Since that post, I see that two more are coming: Bobby [...]
[...] that are either published or will be published later this summer (see John Starke’s list). While I’ve not read any of the other books, I have read a pre-publication copy of Francis Chan [...]
[...] John Starke: [...]