This is Part 1 of If Love Wins, What is Lost?, Paul Coulter's response to Rob Bell's book Love Wins.

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Introduction – why all the fuss and why this response?

Love Wins is the latest book by Rob Bell, author of Velvet Elvis (Zondervan, 2005), Sex God (Zondervan, 2007) and Drops Like Stars (Zondervan, 2009), presenter of the Nooma videos and founding pastor of megachurch Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The American edition of Love Wins (although not the British edition) is subtitled A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, and indeed the central concern of the book is with the nature of Heaven and Hell and who ends up in either place. The book has been at the centre of significant controversy since even before its launch, with accusations being made that Bell is a Universalist and a heretic and counter-criticisms of those who are prepared to reach such dramatic conclusions without even having read the book. The debate around the book’s message has centred on questions about the existence and nature of hell and who, if anyone, will end up there, although the book is more generally about the nature of salvation.

Social networking allows bloggers and tweeters to respond to news stories and book releases with much greater rapidity than was previously the case. The Christian world is no exception and in the case of Love Wins several high profile Christian leaders in the USA have responded to the book by denouncing Bell. On 26th February 2011 Justin Taylor, Vice President of Editorial at publishing house Crossway, commented on his Gospel Coalition blog that Bell, "seems to be moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity"; and that:[1]

It is unspeakably sad when those called to be ministers of the Word distort the gospel and deceive the people of God with false doctrine.
But it is better for those teaching false doctrine to put their cards on the table (a la Brian McLaren) rather than remaining studiously ambiguous in terminology.
So on that level, I’m glad that Rob Bell has the integrity to be unambiguous about his Universalism. It seems that this is not just optimism about the fate of those who haven’t heard the Good News, but (as it seems from below) full-blown hell-is-empty-everyone-gets-saved Universalism.

Although the post has since been modified by Taylor, it originally ended with a reference to 2 Corinthians 11:14-15, which speaks of Satan’s servants disguising themselves as servants of righteousness. When Taylor says "as it seems from below"; he is referring to the publisher’s description of the book,[2] which he proceeds to quote. Although he admits that the author of a book often does not write such descriptions, Taylor also refers to a promotional video that Bell posted to video sharing website Vimeo on 22nd February 2011.[3]

Also on 26th February 2011, author and pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Joshua Harris tweeted "There's nothing loving about preaching a false gospel. This breaks my heart. Praying for Rob Bell";,[4] while well known pastor and author John Piper tweeted simply the poetic statement, “Farewell Rob Bell.”[5] Both men included links to Taylor’s blog post in their tweets. On 28th February 2011, Kevin DeYoung, author and senior pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan, wrote on his Gospel Coalition blog in defence of Taylor’s decision to comment before the book was released claiming that the promotional video by Bell was sufficient grounds to conclude that, “We don’t have to guess if Bell will say something dreadfully, horribly, disgracefully wrong. He already has.”[6] DeYoung has since placed a review of Love Wins online.[7]

The difficulty that Bell’s supporters have with these responses is two-fold. Firstly, these comments were made before the book was released on 15th March 2011, resulting in the criticism that they were poorly informed. Although Bell’s promotional video contains an outline of the questions he raises in the book, it would indeed appear to be premature to criticise a book without actually having read it. Secondly, the comments, at least some of which appear to pronounce a final judgement on Bell that places him outside the camps of evangelicalism and perhaps of Christian orthodoxy, were criticised for being too hasty and symptomatic of a tendency to be closed to any reconsideration of cherished traditional theological formulations. Such comments raise important questions about the way in which Christians debate their differences and what exactly it means to speak about a “false gospel”. In defence of Bell it is claimed that he is only asking questions with the intention of engaging in discussion and that there is nothing in his book that has not been part of Christian thought for many centuries.

In the United Kingdom, responses to Love Wins appear to have been more measured. The UK Evangelical Alliance responded to the book two weeks after its release (on 29th March 2011) in two ways.[8] Firstly, they issued a statement calling for "debate about the book"; to be “characterised by respect, humility and grace, particularly where Christians disagree with one another” and directing readers to the Alliance’s own work on the doctrine of Hell which resulted in the 2000 document The Nature of Hell. The statement also quoted the Alliance’s general director, Steve Clifford, calling Bell “a valued brother in Christ”. Secondly, the Alliance posted a brief review by author Derek Tidball. Tidball applauds Bell’s “well-established communication skills” and “passion to make God's love known” but describes Love Wins as “full of confusing half-truths”. Although Tidball accepts that Love Wins contains truth, including in some of its attacks on popular evangelical understandings of the gospel, his main criticisms of the book are that it deals with only some of the biblical evidence while ignoring other passages that do not suit Bell’s argument and that the language is confusing, full of questions with few answers, leaving the reader unclear about what Bell actually believes. In particular, Tidball asserts (in contradiction to Taylor’s confident expectation that Bell would be unambiguous) that the book does not show clearly that Bell is a Universalist.

I must say something about my reasons for taking the time to write this response and my general attitude to books like Love Wins. I undertook this task because I was approached by some individuals who were interested in Love Wins and who wanted help in thinking through the message of the book. I am grateful to Rob Bell for stimulating this kind of discussion about issues of major importance in our understanding of God and the message of Jesus Christ. Given the controversy about Love Wins, the confusion about its message and the undoubted popularity and influence of Rob Bell it is my intention in this review to consider the book thoughtfully and in the spirit that the Evangelical Alliance UK commends, of “respect, humility and grace”. I am not concerned with attacking Rob Bell personally but with engaging seriously with what he has written. As I engage in a critique of the book, then, I will do my utmost to ensure that I reflect what he has said fairly and do not misrepresent him, but if I fail to do so it is accidental and I would appreciate clarification or correction from Bell himself or from any other reader of this review. I will attempt to distinguish between those things Bell says clearly and those views that I believe to be implicit in his writing but that he does not state unambiguously. It is my conviction that such discussion should never be off limits and that Christians should always engage in thoughtful reflection on what they believe. I am convinced, however, that the correct way to approach such questions is with reference to what God has revealed about Himself. This article is an attempt to consider the book’s teaching in light of Scripture.

As I have written this response I have felt myself torn between a desire to be generous and gracious and a realisation that the New Testament has much to say about false teachers and that the church in every generation must be alert to teachings that are contrary to the gospel. Bell maintainsthat, “the historic, orthodox Christian faith [is] a deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences” (pp.x-xi) and harks back to this metaphor later in the book when he says that, “It is, after all, a wide stream we’re swimming in” (p.110). Underlying this metaphor is, undoubtedly, a concern to say that he remains within orthodox Christianity and a hope that readers will not be too quick to judge him as falling outside it. The metaphor, of course, raises questions. Does the orthodox faith have any limits and how do we decide whether someone is in the stream or not? At the risk of pushing the stream metaphor too far, if we imagine heresy as a branch that diverges from the main stream, eventually petering out into a stagnant, crocodile-infested swamp, it becomes vital to know how we can identify that we have taken a wrong turning so that we can get back into the main stream. My concern here will not be so much to consider whether Bell’s suggestions are ‘orthodox’, since the definition of ‘orthodoxy’ is open to dispute, but whether they are a possible understanding of God’s revealed truth in Scripture. I will not attempt to show whether or not there have, as Bell claims, been people in the history of Christianity who have thought as Bell does (we have no reason to doubt that there have) or even whether or not they were accepted by the church in their time as ‘orthodox’, although I do take issue with his claim that those who “insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God” have been “at the center of the Christian tradition since the first church” (p.109). I accept that these views have been present in the Christian tradition repeatedly throughout history but reject the claim that they form an unbroken chain or that they can be said to be “at the center” as opposed to minority views. Still, my focus will not be on historical theology but simply on attempting to understand what Bell is saying and to comment upon it in light of Scripture. I do not consider myself to possess a definitive map of the stream of Christian orthodoxy, still less to be its gate-keeper, but I appeal to Bell as a fellow swimmer to join me in looking to Scripture as the final arbiter.

I proceed on the basis that Scripture is God-breathed, that it is, therefore, completely true and trustworthy, and that it is therefore the ultimate authority for all that we believe. I am convinced of the divine origin and authority of Scripture because it has been the testimony of the church throughout the centuries and because the Bible claims it to be true. To paraphrase Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:14-16, I trust those from whom I have received the Scriptures and the gospel to which they testify and I accept that all Scripture is God-breathed and is therefore able to make people wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Bell makes extensive reference to Scripture in Love Wins, but he does so in a way that has been all too common within the evangelical tradition from which he has emerged, which he critiques and within which I would locate myself. Sadly, although evangelicals have been known as people who take a particularly strong view of the active authority of Scripture, we have not always been exemplary in our use of Scripture in theology. We have too often mined the Bible for proof texts that suit our conviction and ignored other passages that don’t suit it so well. More importantly, we have ripped apart the grand story of the Bible in our pursuit of systematic statements of faith and coherent theologies. I believe that the Bible, taken as a whole and read as the unfolding story of redemption, forms a coherent whole and that through it God reveals Himself, His heart and His purposes to us. That is not to say that the Bible answers every question we might ask or provides us with an iron cast theology of everything – too often we have approached it with that expectation and our theological systems have ended up constraining our interpretation of Scripture – but that it is sufficiently clear on those matters that are most central to our faith. Hence my primary concern in this response will be to understand Scripture faithfully and to test Rob Bell’s ideas against its truth.

After making some general comments about the nature of the book including Bell’s style of writing and his motivation, I will consider what Bell says about five key Christian doctrines: the nature of God, the eternal destiny of human beings, who will be saved, on what basis people will be saved, and what response is necessary on the part of a person for them to be saved. I will then turn to what this I consider to be a significant underlying issue, Bell’s view of and use of the Bible. Lastly I will attempt to reach some conclusions about the book.

General Reflections – Bell’s style and his reasons for writing

Before considering the book’s message in detail it is necessary to say something more general about the kind of book it is. It is not an academic text and has clearly been written for a popular audience. It is relatively brief, extending to around 200 pages of generously spaced text in a large font size and with mutiple paragraph breaks. Bell is especially fond of short snappy sentences and he alternates between longer prose paragraphs and shorter paragraphs, often consisting of one sentence of a few words, which are structured almost like poetry. As with most poetry these sections are often emotive and lack precision or clarity. They often impact the reader through an overall impression as much as through the logical imperatives they contain. Bell is also a fan of elaboration and has a strong tendency to build lists and use multiple verbs, adjectives or adverbs in one sentence with apparently synonymous meanings. Although this style of writing can be provocative, creating a sense of the dynamic, at times it can become laborious. More significantly, it contributes to the general lack of precision in language that is evident within the book. The style of the language together with Bell’s fondness for questions rather than answers makes it difficult to pin down exactly what Bell is saying about some issues. Despite the fact that he claims that “this isn’t just a book of questions. It’s a book of responses to these questions” (p.19), it is impossible to decide conclusively from the book exactly what answer Bell would give to many of the questions he raises. Having said this, the book is clearly, as we shall see, about theology and it does contain some clear statements of belief. It is not intended as devotional material or simply to provoke thought but to present a case for rethinking the way many Christians have thought about key Christian doctrines. In some cases he argues that it is impossible to conclude upon a single answer but at the same time he is abundantly clear, often using forceful propositions, about what answers he believes to be inadmissible. He does not attempt to consider all alternative perspectives on these questions within the broader sweep of Christian tradition and it is normally fairly obvious which answer he finds the most appealing.

These aspects of Bell’s style of writing are thoroughly postmodern. His communication style is undoubtedly suited to a postmodern audience, making him a highly attractive communicator to the younger generations in modern middle class America. Bell says explicitly in his preface that, “I believe the discussion itself is divine” (p.ix). Much as I agree that discussion is to be commended, I do not find the same degree of confidence in Bell’s writing that discussion can ever lead to a conclusion or a settled place of conviction. The difficulty with his approach is that it implies not only that questions are good and some things are uncertain but also that there are no ultimate answers and everything is uncertain. The rejection of absolute truth is, of course, a fundamental aspect of full blown philosophical postmodernism, but it is hardly consistent with Christianity, which is based on the revelation of a personal God who is Himself the ultimate truth who makes sense of all that exists. I am not suggesting that Bell denies the concept of absolute truth and, in fact, he clearly defends certain truth claims such as the existence of God, the historicity of Christ and the love of God for all people as well as defending a concept of meta-narrative[9] that is foreign to postmodernism. His style of writing, however, may appear to be supportive of the postmodern rejection of absolute truth and certainly does little to challenge it.

One challenge in analysing the book is that Bell does not provide any footnotes or references. He includes very few quotations in the book and although he acknowledges in the preface that “nothing in this book hasn’t been taught, suggested, or celebrated by many before me” (p.x), he doesn’t provide us with many leads as to who these predecessors are or where their writings can be found, with the exception of a brief list of names on page 107. He does quote Martin Luther in support of the idea that people may be given a second chance to accept God after death (p.106), but this quotation, which is in any case merely saying that God would be capable of doing this rather than that he does do it, is not referenced. Likewise, although the book makes numerous criticisms of certain expressions of Christianity there are no indications of who exactly is being attacked. These omissions would not be serious if the book was a work of fiction, but in a book intended to challenge theological concepts and to provoke thought it makes it difficult to pick up the threads of thought and take them further. Bell does list seven books in a “Further Reading” section at the end of the book (p.201) but, although the influence of these bookscan be detected in at least some of what he has written, he does not indicate the degree to which the books or their authors support his views. The lack of referencing is particularly frustrating when it comes to dogmatic pronouncements about the meaning of certain Hebrew and Greek words and claims about historical details and persons as we are unable to ascertain whether Bell’s view has any substantiating support from experts in these fields. It is possible that Bell chose to avoid footnotes and referencing to make the book an easier read, but I mention it at this point to highlight a challenge for the more inquisitive reader. I believe that it is a fundamental principle of discussion that the views of partners in the discussion are listened to and represented fairly, on their own terms wherever possible. Bell fails to do this in his caricatures of those he disagrees with and his failure to quote them. In a similar vein it is interesting that when Bell quotes from the Bible he includes only the chapter reference in brackets, without specifying which verse he is quoting from. Although I am not sure of his reasons for doing this, I personally found it helpful since it forced me to consider again the context of the verses quoted (although, as I will show later, I frequently found that the context militated against his interpretation), but for the reader who has less time to cross-reference the Scriptures I wonder if the lack of verse numbers might not actually act as a deterrent from directly consulting the biblical text.

A major feature of this book is the degree to which it is a reaction to forms of Christianity that Bell judges to be unsavoury and unhelpful. In chapter 1, What about the flat tire?, Bell engages in a critique of popular evangelicalism, or at least certain expressions of it, much of which I sympathise with. He exposes some of the careless language and extra-biblical conventions surrounding conversion that are commonplace amongst some evangelicals, for example, the idea that a specific prayer is necessary for salvation (p.5). I was deeply grieved by the examples he quotes of a person pronouncing an anonymous judgement on Gandhi in a public manner (p.1), a Christian who told a grieving girl that there was no hope for her dead brother because he had professed to be an atheist (p.3), and a lady called Renee Altson who suffered horrific abuse by her father who professed some kind of Christian faith (p.7). These examples are shocking and inexcusable in their arrogance, insensitivity and hypocrisy, but are they typical of Christians generally and of evangelicals? Bell seems so intent on challenging this kind of travesty that he fails to acknowledge the many examples of humility, compassion and integrity among people who hold the views he attacks. As the book progresses it is clear that his concern is not simply with the language and practices of evangelicals but with aspects of their theology, including beliefs about heaven, hell, the exclusivity of the Christian message, the significance of the cross of Christ and what is required for a person to be saved.

The second chapter, Here is the New There, is a challenge to common perceptions of Heaven, and does much to correct the wrong view that is commonplace amongst Christians that Heaven is a disembodied reality and that God has no future plan for the universe we inhabit. Bell writes that, “The day when earth and heaven will be the same place. This is the story of the Bible. This is the story Jesus lived and told” (p.43). He emphasises the fact that God’s purpose is to renew and restore the created world and that we are called now to be agents of God’s Kingdom in the present. Later in the book he says that, “there is no place in this new world for murder and destruction and deceit. There can’t be because this new world is free from those evils, which means that it is free from those who would insist on continuing to perpetuate those evils” (p.113). Bell’s vision of ‘Heaven’ as the “new world” is, in my view, both thoroughly biblical and positively exciting. This vision flows from an understanding of the gospel that is much more than just the message of individual salvation that evangelical preaching has sometimes made it. As Bell writes (p.134):

When Jesus is presented only as the answer that saves individuals from their sin and death, we run the risk of shrinking the Gospel down to something just for humans, when God has inaugurated a movement in Jesus’s resurrection to renew, restore, and reconcile everything ‘on earth or in heaven’ (Col. 1), just as God originally intended it. The powers of death and destruction have been defeated on the most epic scale imaginable. Individuals are then invited to see their story in the context of a far larger story, one that includes all of creation.

This understanding of the gospel as a story is a necessary corrective to the postmodern tendency to reject any sense of a meta-narrative, a grand story that embraces all the smaller stories and explains the ultimate significance of life in the world. So far we can agree with Rob Bell. Modern evangelicalism has often made the gospel too narrow, adopting too individualistic a perspective and neglecting the grand sweep of God’s story. We must, however, ask what that story is, how individuals become part of it and where the story ends. Importantly we must also ask how we know this story – how has God revealed it to us, and is the Bible a faithful record of it? Before turning to Bell’s perspective on these questions, however, we must say something more about the way in which he attacks contemporary Christianity.

Whilst I have already acknowledged that Bell makes some valid points in his criticism of the contemporary evangelical world, I do have concerns about some of what he says and the language he chooses to express his concerns. He creates something of a ‘straw man’ to attack by painting a caricature of evangelicals. He is excessively focused on terminology rather than engaging with the ideas that underlie the words used. For example, he correctly says that “the phrase ‘personal relationship’ is found nowhere in the Bible” (p.10), but he neglects to consider whether this common evangelical phrase may be a useful short-hand for a truth that is described in the Bible. Personally, I do not particularly like the term ‘personal relationship’, since it is non-biblical and suggests a very individualistic faith, but I understand that those who use it are referring to a kind of experience of God that Scripture bears testimony to and which is surely a desirable thing. If Bell wants to critique the usefulness of such phrases he must expend more ink in explaining what he doesn’t like about them and what alternative he would propose. Another problem with Bell’s critique of evangelicalism is that he implies that different ways of describing the conversion experience, which is generally recognised as a hallmark of evangelicalism, are contradictory where they are not necessarily so. This extends to highlighting throughout chapter 1 different scriptural passages as if they are in contradiction to one another. He writes:

Is it what you say, or who you are, or what you do, or what you say you’re going to do, or who your friends are, or who you’re married to, or whether you give birth to children? Or is it what questions you’re asked? Or is it what questions you ask in return? Or is it whether you do what you’re told and go into the city? (pp.16-17)

Each of these questions is based on a passage that says something about ‘salvation’ or that describes the conversion experience of an individual but Bell does not consider what kind of ‘salvation’ is meant in each passage (the word often means salvation from the consequences of sin but it may be used to describe salvation from other threats) or whether the passage itself suggests that what happened to that individual was intended to be seen as normative for all people. It is one thing to say that every individual has a different story of how they came to saving faith in Christ, but it is quite another to imply, as Bell appears to, that such saving faith may not be necessary. Furthermore, Bell makes no attempt to synthesise the teaching of these passages and does not acknowledge that many biblical scholars have seen no contradiction in these passages and have understood them to be complementary in building a picture of salvation. I find it difficult to believe that this is because he is unfamiliar with the body of scholarship and it seems that he is intent upon disorienting the reader, leaving them unclear about what, if anything, is necessary for a person to receive salvation. A secondary effect is to leave the reader unsure about whether Scripture can actually be synthesised or whether it is intrinsically contradictory. We will return to the questions of Bell’s view and use of Scripture and whether he believes faith to be necessary for salvation later in this review, but for now our concern is with his purpose for writing in this way. Why is he so intent on deconstructing evangelical ideas?

It is always dangerous to attempt to infer what an author’s motives are in writing a book, but Bell does give us some insights in Love Wins into what caused him to write. Chapter 2 reveals that Bell’s reaction against popular evangelical thinking stems at least in part from his own childhood experience. He refers to a painting that hung in his grandmother’s house (p.20) which apparently scarred the young Bell to such a degree that he links it to Jesus’ warning in Matthew 18:6 about the consequences of causing people to stumble. The fact that Bell is motivated at least partly by a reaction to personal childhood experiences does not, of course, negate his message, but he ought to be careful to ensure that he does not write excessively subjectively and that his reaction does not drive him to opposing extremes. Bell does not, however, acknowledge these dangers in the book, nor does he express a desire to be moderate in his criticisms. In fact, he says nothing positive about his background or evangelicalism generally. Another motivating factor behind Love Wins is a concern that the “traditional view” of Hell “ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace and joy that our world desperately needs to hear” (p.viii). Bell is convinced that a:

story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn’t do or say or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn’t a very good story. [...] Many people find Jesus compelling, but don’t follow him, because of the parts about ‘hell and torment and all that’ (p.110).

Furthermore, he is concerned that these ideas about Hell are a significant reason for people dropping out from the Christian faith. He writes of “people who were Christians, but can’t do it anymore because of questions about these very topics” (p.ix). Bell appears to be concerned to make the Christian message more acceptable to a generation of Americans who reject notions of Hell that have held sway throughout most of Christian history. I am not suggesting that this leads him to deliberately distort the gospel message, as he seemingly believes that he is helping to restore the true message of Jesus which is about “love, peace and joy”, but it is worth noticing that it is at least part of the motivation behind the book. It does, however, raise two important questions. Firstly, is Bell’s accusation that the “traditional view” of Hell is responsible for the failure of the spread of the message of Jesus fair? Is this demonstrable? He does not provide any corroborating evidence and, even if studies were to show that people report that this view of Hell is a reason why they do not embrace Christianity, this would not necessarily be a basis for rejecting it if it is in fact true. We might also note that Bell’s problem is a particularly Western one. Christianity, including the “traditional view” of Hell, is spreading rapidly in other regions of the world including Africa, parts of Asia and South America. Is Hell the real reason why many people in the Western world reject the gospel? In fairness to Bell he does not proceed to make his case for a rethinking of ideas about Hell on the basis of market research or what might be popular, but by considering numerous Bible passages, and that leads to our second concern. How are we to decide whether or not the offense that is caused is because of a distorted message or an unavoidable part of a message that is unchanging? Our answer must be to return to what God has revealed to us in Scripture, and so once again we find ourselves driven back to the question of Bell’s view of the Bible. Is it possible that Bell’s concern to see the message of Jesus spread might have influenced him towards a approach to the Bible that could distort the message? Could his engagement with culture have led him to develop a version of the Christian message that suits the culture but that is no longer faithful to what God has revealed in Scripture? In fact, does Bell actually accept that Scripture is God’s revelation and that there is an unchanging gospel that must be translated into all cultures but cannot be adapted to suit them?

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© 2011 Paul Coulter
This article is published on bethinking.org by the kind permission of the author.

References:

[1] http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2011/02/26/rob-bell-Universalist/ (accessed 27.6.11)
[2] Available at: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Love-Wins-Rob-Bell/?isbn=9780062049636 (accessed 27.6.11)
[3] http://vimeo.com/20272585 (accessed 27.6.11)
[4] http://twitter.com/#!/HarrisJosh/statuses/41560790603407360 (accessed 27.6.11)
[5] http://twitter.com/#!/JohnPiper/statuses/41590656421863424 (accessed 27.6.11)
[6] http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2011/02/28/bell-brouhaha/ (accessed 27.6.11)
[7] DeYoung, Kevin. 2011. God Is Still Holy and What You Learned in Sunday School Is Still True: A Review of Love Wins by Rob Bell. Available: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/files/2011/03/LoveWinsReview.pdf (accessed 27.6.11)
[8] http://www.eauk.org/articles/love-wins-response.cfm (accessed 27.6.11)
[9] A meta-narrative is a grand story that lies behind existence of which all individual stories are part. Hard postmodernism denies the possibility of a meta-narrative.

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© 2011 Paul Coulter
This article is published on bethinking.org by the kind permission of the author.