It was bound to happen again. Peter Enns points out Rob Bell is making rounds through the blogosphere again! Yep, Bell has a new book coming out, What We Talk About When We Talk About God. The operative words are “coming out”…as in not yet released. Here we are, a month out from the book being released and some people have already started to comment on a book they haven’t read yet. Even worse, some of these people are professors and scholars.

Denny Burk, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College doesn’t think Rob Bell is relevant anymore. While he might not think Bell is relevant, he should still read the book before offering any comment on it (and that includes posting comments from other like minded Evangelicals).

Carl Trueman, Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary calls the trailer a “bullsgeschichtlich Abfall, to use the technical German theological phrase, is its own refutation and should be called out for what it is: laughable, self-important gibberish.”

These professors and scholars should be ashamed of themselves! There is no “Christian charity” in commenting on a book before reading it. This is nothing short of poor academics and even poorer scholarship.

How would Burk or Trueman like it if I reviewed one of their books without reading it? I have one of Trueman’s books on my night stand waiting to be read so I can review it. I could just skip reading it and give it a bad review! (I won’t do that because then I’m not engaging the work. I would be engaging what I thought was written.)

Congratulations, you’ve just lost some credibility and respectability in my book.

Seriously, read the damn book first, then comment on it. It’s not that bloody hard! If you don’t like it after you’ve read it, fine. Write what ever you want, just read the book first. (See Derek Rishmawy’s post as well!)