Soteriological Near-Universalism: Rob Bell Case preceded by Neal Punt Case in Christian Reformed Church

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The blog-entry that follows comes out of my reflections and research on the Rob Bell Case, and my encouragement upon taking notice that reformational scholar Dr Richard Mouw has supported pastor Bell.  To understand Mouw's position better I had to go back to the Neal Punt Case which prepared me to take on Jan Bonda's work as well.  

By way of intro, please note that Dr Mouw tawt philosophy at Calvin College for manuy years. After taking admin positions as well, Mouw was appointed President of Fuller Theological Seminary and continued to write many good books.  Eventually, I hope to get to his book responding to John Piper's book, Desiring God.  The reply is Mouw's God Who Commands, becawz Piper wants to treat the imperatives regarding Joy in the Bible , especially the New Testament, as deontologicals floated up out of their Biblical contexts (Northrup Frye) . In that book, Mouw references "The idea of divine generosity, see Neal Punt, What's Good About the Good News, the Plan of Salvation in a New Light (Northland Books, pp. 87-92)." Mouw says further that his own book Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport (Zondervan Books, 2004, p. 130) also advances this idea of divine  generosity. I have these for-me-new sources on the problem being addressed here. As I said in a draft for an email to some friends:<blockquote>Earlier in 1985, while Mouw was teaching philosophy at Calvin College (I believe), the Christian Reformed Church actually put a pastor on trial for heresy.  The Neal Punt case.  The charge of heresy was made by the Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada CRC -- very distant from where Punt was pastoring in the Chicago region CRC (this can be done in the CRC).  Here's the link from a website Neal Punt still maintains today in his retirement. He was exonerated by the Chicago classis (as presbyteries are known in the CRC).  Now, I disagree with Punt becawz I come to this question from the standpoint of the Interim State as the missiological foundation of a soteriological near-universalism (a stance close to but not necessarily identical to Punts own carefully-honed position which he calls "Evangelical Inclusivism."  Punt has used the phrase "biblical universalism" in at least a URL address; but I had had the impression that there was yet another website expressing a related stance on the problem at hand but different from Punt's and my own, a third option for a solution to ruffly the same problem.   

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