Keller’s Formation: Bill Edgar on Francis Schaeffer and L’Abri

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Collin Hansen
Bill Edgar began his career as professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1989, and retired last year in 2022. But his Westminster roots run even deeper than his 33 year tenure. Edgar’s great, great grandfather and elder at First Presbyterian Church in New York City, helped endow Princeton Seminary in 1811 and 1929, Westminster was founded in response to Princeton’s liberal drift. By 2017 Princeton seminary had drifted so far that the school revoked Tim Keller’s Kuyper prize over his view on women’s ordination and homosexuality. For more than two centuries, the head your family has been wrapped up in the drama of doctrine in Presbyterian seminary education. Well, in this special season of gospel bound, we’re exploring several key influences that appear in my book, Timothy Keller his spiritual and intellectual formation. Tim Keller taught at Westminster from 1984 to 1989 and earlier earned his Doctor of Ministry through the school. Edgar’s career has intersected with Keller’s at numerous points from Francis Schaeffer to Ed Clowney to Cornelius Van til, and the work of cultural apologetics. And I’m eager to ask him now about these trends and figures on gospel bound bill. Thank you for joining me.

Bill Edgar
It’s a pleasure.

Collin Hansen
Let’s just write let’s get some of your more of your story out there. It’s so fascinating you were converted through the by the Lord through the ministry of Francis Schaeffer, tell us that story?

Bill Edgar
Yeah. Well, the short version is that, you know, I was a seeker, as we call them today, grew up in with a wonderful family that had no answers to the deeper questions of life after the war, though they had high values. And so I was a seeker and I went to Harvard University. And there I took a course. That was a distribution course. And the section instructor was a believer, named Harold O. J. Brown. He was doing his doctoral work in the history department at the time. And he actually boldly proclaimed his faith in our class. He didn’t, he did it in a very appropriate manner. It didn’t preach at us, but he, you know, we did the Greeks. He said, By the way, here’s a contrast with the Christian worldview. When we did Shakespeare say, Well, this man lived in a Christian universe. Anyway, it was really intriguing. I never heard anything like it. We became friends, and make a long story short, I was going to Switzerland that summer. This was I think, in 64. And he said, rather nonchalantly, oh, you must look up my good friend, Francis shaper. He and I have a lot in common. I think you enjoy him. That’s all he said. Well, he gave me a phone number. And so we’re halfway through the summer. I decided, you know, try this place out. And I phoned up and Edith got on the phone said, Oh, you must stay for a few days. And I said, Wow, what is this and it was the 60s, I was full of adventure. I thought, well, let’s let’s try this out. So my bicycle bought a train ticket, I got up on the very circuitous route to Labrie in those days, and was met by some Dear Dear people, many of them not believers. And that evening, we had what they called a discussion group, which was somebody would ask a 32nd question, and shaper would answer with a 30 minute answer that was discussion. Anyway, I was enthralled. I was like, in another universe. The subject that night was prayer. I’d never thought about prayer. I went to a boarding school where we prayed the liturgy, but I didn’t really participate. And after the talk, discussion, he came up to me and said, Do you have a minute tomorrow? Let’s have a conversation. So I said, Sure. So after this wonderful church service, where we sang Bach chorales so I was, you know, they had me at hello He, we went, I went up to the little counseling room. And we spent a couple of hours talking. And it was a long conversation, but at the end of which I knew it was true. And he made me pray, which was very strange. But I did and I, you know, tears flowing down my eyes, I thanked God for all he’d done. And then I stayed the rest of the summer there and studied all of his materials. And I came back to Harvard and on fire Christian, made the usual mistakes that new believers made, but was very, very persuaded and decided instead of going into Musicology, which was my chosen profession, I would, I would postpone that and go to seminary for a few years to find out what it was I had stumbled on. And so for various reasons, a bunch of us went to Westminster seminary. And that’s where I encountered these remarkable stalwarts, Edmund Clowney, John Murray, EJ young, and Cornelius Van til and others. And it was really life changing to use a worn expression. And I emerged from it thinking, what we really need in this world is somebody to communicate the gospel in a credible way. And so I abandoned my ambitions as a musicologist. Although I kept in touch with that world and went into teaching. At first, I was a school teacher, we had an evangelistic outreach to high school kids. And then I took a job in Exxon Provence, at a at a seminary there, which is really where I cut my teeth. And then in 1989, we for various reasons, we decided to come to the States. And I had a position and apologetics at Westminster. And as you said, just a few months ago, I retired, which is a bittersweet experience bitter because I really miss the atmosphere and the students and my colleagues. Sweet because I’ve been able to do more reading and writing. So that’s my story.

Collin Hansen
That’s great. Well, you came to Westminster professionally as Tim Keller was leaving. It gave us a taste for how the two of you have collaborated over the years.

Bill Edgar
Yeah, curiously, I first met him in West hopefully, well, Virginia.

Collin Hansen
Oh, wow. He didn’t tell me this. Yeah. Well,

Bill Edgar
to be a professor at Exxon Havas required having a church provide your salary because they had no budget, no money. And so, at first very reluctantly, and then, with some enthusiasm, we did what they call it generation, which means to go around to different charities to be called deputation. Go run into different churches and tell them you didn’t have to solicit they said the office will do that you just tell him about the ministry. So I told him about the great need, but the gospel in Southern France. And Tim was the pastor of that church. And we really hit it off.

Collin Hansen
Was that how do you get connected Kennedy Smart Connect, you get

Bill Edgar
exactly right. Okay. Mission to the world department of the PCA sent us to different places that wanted to support missionaries. And those are the early days of this denomination. So they were looking for people to support. And we went to many churches and West hopefully that well was a special one. It was small, but vibrant. And you know, I met Tim and we stayed in touch ever since.

Collin Hansen
Now, tell us a little bit more about Westminster when you arrived? And was there still evidence of of clowns influence?

Bill Edgar
Oh, big time. In fact, it was because of clowny that I decided to take this job. And you know, I’ve said no to a lot of people in my life, but never to him. So, and it was a bit odd because his son was just leaving a position in apologetics at Westminster to teach philosophy they David Wright, David Wright. He’s still a very close friend. We we played in a jazz band together and you know, he’s one of my dearest friends. But anyway, so I took up the position. And he wrote me a long letter saying here’s what to expect. And it was very helpful. So Ed Carney’s imprint was all over the seminary. First of all, he had emphasized biblical theology. And almost all of the professors, particularly in the Bible department, espouse this, this view. And second of all, he had wanted to the resistance of some board members in the 60s, to expand the seminary. So they would have a global outreach. And he went and spoke at, you know, Urbana, and he went and recruited in these universities. And this may sound strange, but not all the professor’s wanted Westminster to become, you know, world known, they thought, a small seminary with a few graduates, that’s what we want to do. But he persuaded them otherwise. And so his, you know, his his impact was all over the place. And so I stayed very close to him. helped to, to do his funeral when he went to be with God. And I kept in touch with Jean and, and then, as I mentioned, with David and the other kids as well. So his, his influence at Westminster is incalculable.

Collin Hansen
You know, I did interview you, of course, he graciously helped me with the book on Tim Keller. And I can’t recall where I was in the process, when I talked with you, but I had, I just sat there, and I didn’t, I didn’t, I was facing a long day of writing, but I didn’t know how it was going to come together. And somehow, it seems like the Spirit led me to land on 1969, which would have been what did like the 14th commencement, I think, something like that. And that’s when I graduated. Yeah, there you go. So, so Lloyd Jones, is there and he’s there for like, he stayed for six weeks, something like that to teach.

And I looked in and it was, it was very arresting, that clown needs message, as President was, the seminary has been known for the closed fist is time to be known for the bowed head. Wow. And then he went through and he explained the new vision for Westminster. He said it’d be marked by piety. Just be again, the bowed head, a place of prayer, a place of revival. And then he said, it’s going to be better. Second, it’s going to be a place of biblical theology. Right. And then what you’ve already described there. And then the third thing he said was, and it’s getting to a place of, basically cultural apologetics. And that’s what he was talking about the the courses that they were doing this would have been trying to think of who all Claire Davis Jack Miller,

Bill Edgar
Jack Miller was there. John frame had just come on board. So these were people who had the same burden.

Collin Hansen
Right. So and I in and that was, of course, I didn’t know that history with Westminster. But not only that, I hadn’t gone back and realized. I’ve worked for two that since 2010, for the gospel coalition, founded by Tim Keller. And what did he do to set out a place to be devoted to piety to biblical theology to cultural apologetics, but he was just perpetuating the cloudy vision?

Bill Edgar
Absolutely. And they gave seminars together, which were electrifying. Yeah. And I love that work. By the way. You don’t have to record that. But I just think it’s unique. And there’s a very important place for it in in the world. So I’m so glad you’re involved in it.

Collin Hansen
Well, let’s let’s talk about van til and if you could explain to us what made Cornelius Van til a groundbreaking apologist? And, and, you know, the related question here is, what’s his influence on Tim’s preaching and teaching and writing? Because I, I didn’t I didn’t dwell on that Tim does not often publicly credit they until he doesn’t cite him as his one of his top sources. So let’s just start with the who, what, what developments did he help to contribute to the work of apologetics? Yeah. Wow.

Bill Edgar
That’s a wonderful question. And it would take weeks to answer

Collin Hansen
I know.

Bill Edgar
My mentor and first boss, Pierre culturelle, said he was the most original apologist in the 20th century. And when he said original, he meant he had broken ground. Now, that until would have said I’m in the tradition of Augustine and Calvin and Kuyper And the only ground I’m breaking is to challenge some of the reigning apologetic methods which at the time were I hate the word but are many. And they were, they started from below and reached up to above. And then till said, No, we really got to start from above and reach down below. So he sort of reordered theology based on Revelation and the self attesting God, Self attesting scripture is self attesting Christ. Now, this may sound like it should have issued in a shouting match. And there are sadly, some wouldn’t be there until he gets there until he and Xu who do just shout. But he was he didn’t have that view. He believed that there was persuasion. And his view, which influenced Francis Schaeffer a lot was that you need to get over onto the ground of an unbelievers worldview in order to show him or her how untenable it is on its own marriage.

Collin Hansen
And then Keller to the core, right, their colors are,

Bill Edgar
yeah, yeah. And then he said, the next step is to invite him to the Christian world view and taste and see. Now, you know, I think Keller had this through Schaefer and others, though you’re ready, he doesn’t credit vento a lot. There are people, me included, I think, who hesitate to use his name too much, because of the bad connotations that he has with some people. In his great book. The reason for God, he uses what I consider to be essentially the Antillean insights. But he does he goes places Ventile never when, until was an academic he was in the classroom. Tim was in a busy city, Tim, talks about the challenges facing believers. How can Christianity be the only truth? What about the Crusades and all these questions, and until had answers for those but we talked mostly about a piston ology and his classes, and how Kant was behind so many of our of our problems. So Keller, in the more Shakespearean tradition, which is dependent on that until was about persuasion, getting out of the ground of unbelief and showing how it can’t work on its own terms. And that book is a masterpiece of doing that. So, you know, if he, if you peel the onion, he would probably say that some of my thinking goes back to them till below, a lot of it was filtered through Schaefer through clowny. Jack Miller, and he were very close. So there’s some mystery there. I don’t understand all of it, because they until it was so groundbreaking and original, but he managed to alienate some people. He had a, if you’ve read his stuff, some of it’s a bit aggressive. And not everybody likes that. But for reasons that I don’t completely understand, he doesn’t get the credit that it was due to him. Now, we try to perpetuate his tradition here at Westminster today. And my colleague, Scott Oliphant, who is a professional philosopher, and I do, who does cultural apologetics, consider ourselves Antillean. But we, you know, we don’t use the name a lot because of what people imply by it. So his influence is, is very strongly at the seminary. One thing, let me just say this. When I got to Westminster as a student, these great stalwarts, EJ young, and John Murray, and, and stone house and so forth. They were all hankering after what they call the old Princeton. And it was grew a little tiresome to some of us younger kids who thought, Well, I’m sure it was a great place, but we’re now at Westminster. But what they did was they then added a very creative dimension that wasn’t altogether there in old Princeton. So for example, many of the Bible teachers saw a literary dimension just scripture and an aesthetic dimension that that not all of old person had seen. And so there were there were some artistry there some some very creative and original thinking. John Murray’s systematic theology is all based on exegesis, which is based on biblical theology. Even Warfield at his greatest, didn’t do quite that. So I think I was there at a turning point. Still touting old prints and, but then moving in a direction of create creative application. And by the end of the 80s, or the beginning of the 90s, they didn’t talk about old prints and mud. And it was all about what we’re doing now and reaching the world.

Collin Hansen
You know? Well, let’s stay on that theme. A couple more points here. And I want to I want to talk to music. Maybe we’ll come back to that at the end. But let’s, let’s go further here on Tim. Is there anything that Tim himself has uniquely contributed to apologetics, as you’ve observed him for almost his entire career?

Bill Edgar
There’s lots. I think, Tim, because he’s a pastor, and loves people and loves the city is very strong on the application of the gospel to contemporary issues. I’ve just finished his wonderful book on forgiveness. I mean, Tim has a, he’s a doctor of the soul. And you can’t say that about, you know, the van, Till’s and others, even at clowny, who, who was on that same wavelength. He wasn’t quite at the doctor of the soul that Tim was, is shouldn’t put them in the past. He’s still very much with us. Then second, he, I think you and I have talked about this. He’s frighteningly a voracious reader. And on top of everything, He’s unstoppable. And so, you know, you talk to him about? I don’t know Richard Reiter, somebody, he says, oh, yeah, well, the last two books that he did, and he was saying this, and it’s scary. And what’s good about it, he wears it with a light hand, he’s doesn’t he’s not kind of one of these heavy handed, I know all the answers. But you have confidence that he has taken the best of what’s around us, and worked with it either to disagree gently, or to agree and support and take further what they’re saying. So I think that’s, that’s a I don’t know if it’s unique, but it’s one of the Giller contributions that Tim has made. And then thirdly, he’s he has started institutions. So that his thinking and the thinking of the, you know, the greats that he believes in, especially Jonathan Edwards, CS Lewis, and others, can be perpetuated, when he’s not around. I remember, you know, when I used to interact with him a lot in New York, he was already talking about succession. And, you know, some of the great leaders don’t do that. I can think of one or two that probably didn’t imagine that they would be, they would die. So, and they did, and the place went into shambles. Actually, debris is one example of that they recovered nicely, but D, James Kennedy, others, only one. They just didn’t imagine that they, their presence would be gone. Tim was just the opposite. He poured himself into into institutions like bathe and work, and especially city to city, right. And he wisely gave the leadership of those two other people that he considered more talented as administrators. What one of the great one examples of this is Terry Geiger. Yeah. Terry, who was completely on board with Tim’s emphases, also had extraordinary administrative skills. So when he headed up what became city to city he was able to not only maintain but help to flourish the that institution so that today It, it’s absolutely vital, and has contributed to the planning of churches literally, all over the world without trying to make these churches into a carbon copy of the Manhattan church. So that I think is one of the great gifts that Tim has brought. And I hope he lasts for years and years and years. Amen. But if he doesn’t, his contributions will still be alive.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. Well, and you, and you mentioned the, the difference that he’s made in terms of applying the gospel to contemporary issues. That aspect would certainly be the gospel coalition, and would be a lot of the work that that I’ve done with him over those years. That’s just one little small aspect of all these other things that he’s that he spawned. And like you said, given institutional form to them, you know, it was interesting bill, as I was reading that same forgiveness book, hadn’t read anything from well, I’d read a ton from Tim, because working on the book, but I had read something new from Tim, that I hadn’t read already. And it just popped into my head, I said, this book is different from all the other things that I read. Yeah, here’s why it’s try perspectival. Almost nobody gets the existential, the normative and the situational in the same books. And that’s exactly describe what the doctor the soul, he gets at the normative is the theologian, the exegete. Of course, the situational is the cultural analysis, right? The existential of the doctor, doctor, the soul. And an author who and preacher who can hit all three is exceedingly

Bill Edgar
rare. Yeah. Well said very well said it

Collin Hansen
just does not does not happen. So that’s, that’s why just do you can find lots of people that Tim has learned from that you and I have learned from, and we learn from them, because they are so intelligent, and so insightful, or because they are so gentle, or because they are such great theologians. But not usually that they can combine them

Bill Edgar
now. Amen to that. And one, I mean, I just, I love the guy, as a friend, I’m sure you do, too. You know, we spend a lot of time together. One of the places for that is something called the gathering of friends, meets every year in October, in Atlanta, and the history of it is kind of fun, but it’s these guys who just enjoy being together. And Tim is one of the guys yeah, he pipes up. Sometimes he says this, he says that, but he’s not sort of the guru of the group. And so I’ve so enjoyed just being his friend. And, you know, he asks questions, which seem to be genuine, even though you would think he knows the answer to them. And it’s just fun to be with a guy who has such an inquisitive mind, and he’s such a genuine spirit. So yeah, I wish I saw more of him. And we do correspond to, you know, and bribe, but he corresponds with hundreds of people.

Collin Hansen
Well, and that’s, I think that’s a dimension bill that people are going to enjoy and learn from the book. And they’re going to understand, I think there’s most you and I are blessed people to know that about Tim, but there’s a there’s something for for ministry, to see here and just for life, because when you go back, how did Tim come to faith in the community of university? Yeah, at Bucknell, then how did he grow just by leaps? Well, I don’t know how anybody squeezed as much out of three years of seminary as he did, because of his close friends. Yes, the lifestyle that they that they lived, and then how do you learn how to be a pastor at that West Hopewell congregation in that extremely close knit community? So Tim, and that is, and that is also his evangelistic enterprise, is that we come to faith through community

Bill Edgar
as the guy. Yes, various models. One of them sort of surprised me. It’s, you mentioned him earlier, it’s Kennedy smart. Yes. He said, This guy taught me how to love people and reach out to them and not be afraid to speak out with them. And that’s true. If you know, Ken, that’s exactly what he does. And he’s

Collin Hansen
still around, right? Very much.

Bill Edgar
So. He’s pressing 100 Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so Tim, that’s very well put what you said he, he’s modeled himself after extraordinary people and has taken the best of them and has, you know, put it into his own mixture?

Collin Hansen
Yeah. Well, let me ask about one of your emphases related to cultural apologetics. And though Tim was an accomplished trumpet player, as a young man, he did not continue that for most of his life. But you have been as a jazz musician, you’ve, you’ve continued to that theme for so much of your life. How have you seen jazz opened doors to the gospel?

Bill Edgar
Oh, my goodness, okay. First of all, jazz emerged out of the African American experience, and particularly the experience of slavery and suffering. And it did so indirectly, through spirituals and blues, and Ragtime and marching bands. But all of those converged to give us what we now call jazz, something of a miracle, I think like Renaissance art or Impressionism. It sort of popped up out of all these sources. And in jazz, there is this combination that I like to talk about, of deep, deep misery, and indistinguishable joy. And, you know, a lot of music can be miserable. But there’s not a whole lot of hope and joy. And then there’s music. Now, I won’t take any cheap shots, which emphasizes the happy, but doesn’t seem to have roots in the valley of the shadow of death. Jazz has all that the best. And though there’s many different musicians, and many episodes, the best of them all exhibit this narrative, I guess you’d call it, of deep misery to indistinguishable joy. And even in some of the more hardcore bebop jazz that some people don’t like very much Miles Davis and dizzy, and those elements are there. And so, to me, it’s a it’s not just a vehicle for the gospel. It’s exhibit a of what God does in one genre. And that can be shared with with the rest of the world. So you know, some people don’t know jazz, some people claim they don’t like it, most of them haven’t heard it. And so in our little band, we’ve gone all over the world, particularly in Europe, and brought the music and then a narrative to explain where this music comes from. And people absolutely love it. We know if I’ve told you this, when we played in Eastern Europe, a number of times, and we got to spirituals in the blues. People tear it up. Because they’ve been under communism. And they understood slavery, they understood having a hope through misery. And so it’s just a it’s a universal message in that way out of the black experience, but now shared by all kinds of people, white people like me, Japanese love jazz. There’s all kinds of jazz lovers around the world, but it began with the African American experience.

Collin Hansen
Well, I think for what jazz is, for you to a, to a lesser extent, with my lesser abilities, realist fiction is for me, and as well as some aspects of, of historical fiction that borrow from the realist the realist techniques there, and, and I think it’s in specifically Russian. And I think it’s a lot for the same reasons you just identified, right there. It’s because it touches both the joys as well as the deepest sorrows and the significance of life and ultimately, the hope that with a wonderful,

Bill Edgar
wonderful parallel. I have a course on theodicy justifying God in the face of evil. And we use Russian novelists like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin and so forth. And they all know what it is to be oppressed. Yeah. And most of them have have a great hope at the end of the tunnel.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, you just you get some not I mean, he was in a different category in terms of the work he was doing, but you get a different experience or a different insight on life from a soldier Neeson than you do from from most others because of what he’s experienced, and how he’s survived.

Bill Edgar
Yeah, absolutely he. He’s one of my heroes, his famous 78 speech at Harvard. Exactly. Which was disliked by many people thinking but prophetic. But but so prophetic. And the thing that emerged in there for me that was stronger than almost everything was the need for courage. Yeah. And he’s shown it and he’s terribly Russian. He doesn’t. I mean, if, if you read his biography, which I’m sure you have, you know, he just he loves his motherland. And not all Americans understand that. But it’s deeply part of who he is. And so yeah, he’s, I think he’s one of the great heroes of our time.

Collin Hansen
I think Dostoyevsky was as well to a more dangerous aspect and social needs than was because he’d seen different things. But that’s, yeah, a love of the very thing that they’re criticizing. Yeah, it’s something that the Russians have done better, I think, than a lot of

Bill Edgar
deep sense of psychology. Oh, my. Yeah. I mean, does he have his characters? Yeah. All of them flawed. Nevertheless, he loves and teaches us to love them. And that’s what I get out of these, you know, much more than I’m sure. Most people and not as much as you but that’s what I get out of these court incredible novels.

Collin Hansen
While we’re Raskolnikov is a is a work of absolute artistic genius. Well, artistic genius, by which I also mean, psychological genius. By which then I also mean spiritual God. Understand the human heart and psyche.

I mean, we’re talking about novels, we’re talking about literature. We’re talking about jazz. Are there other art forms that you found especially conducive for connecting unbelievers to Christ?

Unknown Speaker
Oh, well, the visual arts.

Collin Hansen
Big time was Shaffers. When Schaefers emphases

Bill Edgar
Yeah. Schaefer emphasized that they were more illustrations than anything else for him, right. And his best friend, Hans rook mocker, was a better art historian, but also use the arts as an illustration. That’s there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’ve moved in a slightly different direction. And taking an interest in aesthetics, been guided by people like Calvin Cyril bells, and Jeremy Begbie, and others into the dynamics of how art works, and what it expresses about us. And so I regularly when I was teaching took students to the Philadelphia Art Museum, and ask them to stand in front of a painting for 10 minutes before saying anything. And then we’d look at, well, how does how does Saison exude a Christian worldview? When he didn’t preach like a Christian? Or how does Monet bespeak of God’s creation without often mentioning God, and eventually students get it. And even in a lot of modern art, which is fashionable to despise. There are lots of great examples of the insights. For example, I don’t know there’s so many examples. But I guess Giacometti who was a great sculptor, he specialized in sculptures of thin, almost emaciated people, but they’re reaching up to the heavens. And he’s deeply transcendental in his in his outlook. And so it would be such a mistake to say, Oh, well, he’s thinning things out all on Nietzsche. Another one of my favorite artists, although you don’t think of him this way, is Mark Rothko and the whole expressionist movement. He talked about his faith. It was very vague. Sort of quasi Jewish, quasi pantheistic. But he wanted viewers to look at his paintings, and have their eyes move upward towards something higher than this world. And that’s deeply applicable Hold to the gospel even though you wouldn’t think of him as as an evangelical.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. Well, I think jazz and visual arts are pretty similar in the sense that when you are working with somebody who understands and can explain, and can share that joy, it’s amazing. I don’t recommend to most people to sit and just grab, you know, grab off the shelf, a Russian novel, from the 19th century. But I say, but if you get to take a class with Saul Morson, like I did in college, and change your life,

Bill Edgar
that’s right. Well, I completely agree. It otherwise it’s unless you’re introduced to it by somebody who knows. Yeah. It’s just foreign, you know? Yeah.

Collin Hansen
Well, we’re, we’re doing this series, as not only in conjunction with the launch of Timothy Keller his spiritual intellectual formation, but also the introduction and rollout and launch of the new Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. And that’s why we’ve been focusing on these themes of where we’ve come from. But the next question, last question I have for you, Bill is where are we? Where are we going? Is there something that’s next for apologetics? What would you encourage those of us who have learned so much from you, we’re only doing this because of the work that you and Tim and others have done? What should we be looking for? What should we be focusing on?

Bill Edgar
Yeah, wonderful, wonderful question. without throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I think the direction I would like to see apologetics take is for example, Alan noble. Yeah, you are not your own or the strange and wonderful. Francis suffered, apologetic Rebecca McLachlan others who express the gospel. Not in traditional terms, but in ways that get beneath the skin. You know, I think in the 80s the concept of truth was very important. And you got all these books, like Doug grote heist, truth decay, and yeah, Josh McDowell shapers true truth. And, yeah, absolutely right. But there was a danger of knocking people over the head, because they they didn’t have absolutes. I think the direction we want to have objects moving is one that did Kai’s and others pioneered, which is to how would I put this keep people off balance in order to subvert them with God’s love? A mouthful. I mean, Jesus parables did that. He was unpredictable in the best way. But in the end, he always roped you in to something that you needed to think about. And something you need to challenge yourself about. I mean, Tim’s book on forgiveness does this especially well throughout, especially at the end, where he says, here’s why you’re resisting forgiveness, and the 10 reasons for it. And it’s wonderfully subversive. And so, although it’s unsettling, I think that’s where apologetics needs to be moving. But without throwing away the love of truth and transcendence. All the things we learned from Ventile and others. I don’t know who’s doing this best. But I think the younger generation will respond to that kind of apologetics. In a way they wouldn’t to just hounding them with truth. i One of I told you this before. Our daughter worked for InterVarsity fellowship at Harvard for years. And we used to talk compare notes. And she wants told me, Dad, if you put a notice on Phil’s Brooks house door, saying, Francis Schaeffer will address the problem of evil, nobody will come. I said, Well, what do you do is she said, well, people need to talk about brokenness, disappointments, abuse, in order to gain the trust in the speaker, which will allow him or then to address the more theological issues of evil and I think that’s Right, I think that’s where it needs to go.

Collin Hansen
Well, that’s a good word bill. We’re thankful for your example. We’re grateful that Allen and Rebecca are both fellows with the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. And so we’ll continue to encourage their work and trust the Lord’s provision to be able to help resource them to do this work as we gather and, and equip and, and deploy that work throughout the church around the world. And again, Bill, couldn’t do it without your example. And without your inspiration, and this conversation is a good example why? Thanks, Bill.

Bill Edgar
Thank you, Collin.