Tim Keller’s Legacy and Vision for Cultural Engagement

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Collin Hansen
Welcome to the gospel coalition 2023 national conference. We are thrilled that you’re here. So that you’re here in person that you’re watching here on the livestream around the world, believe it or not, the planning for this event began in 2019. I remember that very vividly it was, feels like a world ago, before a global pandemic. Last time we had a national conference here, we only had about 1000 people. It was one of the first events after the reopening of everything with with COVID. But it was also before Tim Keller was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And so this is the first event that we’ve ever done. I have attended every single one of them as the editorial director and our Vice President of content at the gospel coalition going all the way back to 2007. So it’s special that we’re gathered, we’re a little bit sober, because we missed him so much. But it’s appropriate that in this first session of our 2023 national conference that we we honor him and the ongoing mission of the gospel coalition around the world by talking about Tim Keller’s legacy and thought process. I want to start off in thank a couple of our sponsors for this micro event to kick off the event. We are very grateful for Zondervan reflective for their support of the gospel coalition and of the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. Again, my name is Colin Hanson we’re here with I’m gonna be talking largely based on things in this book published was not even reflective this year, Timothy Keller, his spiritual and intellectual formation, by the way, you’re gonna get a chance. I mean, I’m grateful for all of you who have come to listen to me, but I know that you’re here to Chris here, Chris Walken. If I were you, I would be here to hear Chris watkyn as well. So he’ll be following me and other book published last year was not even reflective, biblical critical theory, eager to hear from him and then we’re going to be moderated another book with Zondervan reflective, the great D churching. by Jim Davis and Michael Graham. Michael Graham is the program director. For the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. I have the privilege as executive director to be able to work with him. This is a wonderful and I believe important book, and Mike will be moderating our session of questions following following our talks. The Keller Center for Cultural apologetics launched earlier this year, was one of the most exciting projects that I got a chance to work with Tim on being able to launch and our our mission is very simple. Our mission is be able to help you as Christians around the world, especially though, in the increasingly post Christian west to be able to share the truth of the goodness and the beauty of the gospel with your neighbors. We know that that’s increasingly kind of difficult or scary. But it’s also a wonderful time to be able to do that because we’re entering into a phase that we’ve never seen before. We’ve seen the pre Christian world that the scriptures reference we’ve seen the Christendom world but we’re now entering into this post Christian world in many ways across the west. It poses new challenges, but with the same spirit with every reason for confidence in the Gospel, which does not change. So through the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, you can find a simply at the Keller center.org. You’ll find books we produce a number of books, these three are good examples of the kind of work that we do at the Keller center. You can also sign up for online learning cohorts. In fact, we’ve got one coming up soon one with our fellow at the Center, Daniel strange talking about how to build a culture of evangelism and your church. We also have one with Mike Graham and Jim Davis on the great the church and that you can register for Chris watt Ken just wrapped up his second online virtual or virtual learning cohort. So that’s an opportunity as well, we have never a podcast that we do my own gospel bound podcast the as in Heaven, season three focusing on D churching. And here at this event, we’re announcing our next one, which is post Christianity question mark featuring Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener, you can go ahead and subscribe to that even now, on Apple podcasts. So again, the website there is the Keller center.org. But I’ll talk to you now about Tim Keller’s legacy. But to do that, just as he had asked me to do in this book, I need to go back in time, it to go back in time before Tim Keller was even a Christian I need to go to Westminster Theological Seminary, and to the work of Ed Clowney from a clenched fist to a bowed head. That is how Ed clowny described the shift at Westminster Theological Seminary in May of 1969. It was the school’s 40th commencement ceremony. And Martyn Lloyd Jones actually marked that milestone by delivering the commencement address. He stayed there at Westminster for six weeks to lecture on preaching. And those lectures became his famous book, which I highly recommend Preaching and Preachers. Count he became president of Westminster in 1966. But when he talked about this unnecessary shift at the school from a clenched fist to a bowed head, he wasn’t conceding any change in the school’s theological convictions from its founder, J. Gresham, Meishan. But he did capture the spirit of 1969. In his address, as he exhorted students to preach a gospel that challenged both the old reactionaries as much as the young revolutionaries, and clowning said this, Westminster in years to come must be increasingly molded by the gospel of Christ. No other course is wise or safe. That means active renewed subjection to the gospel. Westminster must avoid the calcifying effects of the traditions of men that do not express the gospel. There is an ever present danger that we will take ourselves seriously. Instead of taking the gospel seriously, an academic community is particularly vulnerable to traditionalism, and pride. So as president than clowny, implemented three changes, the first he made was to prioritize biblical theology in the training of ministers by which he meant this biblical theology takes its form as well as its content from the structure of the Bible. biblical theology is shaped by the periods of the history of redemption, as they center upon Christ. This approach provides a richer biblical background for both systematic theology and preaching. In doing so, clowny traced biblical theology back to Princeton seminary, and good hardest vos who had taught many of Westminster’s founding faculty back at Princeton. Second, after biblical theology clowny sought spiritual renewal, by linking piety with learning by linking together piety with learning what the seminary needed most was revival from the Holy Spirit. And this is what he meant then by the bowed head, quote, deeper penitence, more urgent trust, more faithful obedience to Christ’s commands. These marked the path of power in service to our age. After linking piety to learning then third, he called for what you might describe as cultural apologetics. Fresh and immediate application of the gospel to our times, he said, he explained this, our task is to present the message of the gospel to prepare the messenger of the gospel, and to do so in the contemporary world. So among his faculty, Harvey Kahn taught contextualization, and Jack Miller taught evening classes on American and English literature to help evangelists engage with the modern mind. In 1969, that fateful year mankind took a giant leap on the moon, while Charles Manson terrorized men and women on earth. But clowny saw the future without betraying the past. He said this, Westminster has stood for the infallible Word. And as we look to the future, we seek a much stronger curriculum in the Word. Westminster has stood for the Reformed faith, the precious doctrines of grace. As we look to the future, we seek to be formed more completely by the gospel of sovereign grace, manifesting that piety that is the fruit of the Spirit of God. Westminster has stood for the kingdom of Christ against the tyranny of ecclesiastical modernism, and demonic secularism. As we look to the future, we seek to make ever clearer the truth of Christ as over against the delusions of our time. So clowny wanted those fists that had been clenched for fighting against theological liberals to be joined in praying for revival. He served as president of Westminster Theological Seminary until 1984. And when he retired his course load and his influence was so significant that they split his teaching between two professors. Harvey Kahn took over clonise course on the church, but the courses on ministry, leadership and preaching fell to a new part time professor fresh from ministry in Hopewell, Virginia. And that was Tim Keller

when Cloney gave this address in 1969 Keller was not even yet a Christian. He was finishing his first year at Bucknell, but Keller inherited this vision from Clowney, Keller met clowny at Bucknell in his second undergraduate year account he had come from Philadelphia to Bucknell in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania to do cultural apologetics. He led an evangelistic outreach in response to what was then very current, the existentialism of writers such as Albert Camus, and he’d studied Connie have studied existentialism Soren Kierkegaard at Yale, but clowning is example of being bringing the Gospel to bear on the pressing issues of contemporary life, stuck with Tim Keller for His entire ministry. And then Keller imprinted it on every ministry that he started, including the gospel coalition. Everywhere look in Keller’s ministry, you’re going to find three distinct emphases. The first in biblical theology, we find the gospel in all of Scripture. Second, in cultural apologetics, we apply the gospel to all of life. And third in spiritual renewal, we love the Lord our God and His gospel with all of our heart. And that’s what it means to be gospel centered. This recent interest in the last couple of decades of in Gospel centered ministry owes much to Tim Keller co founding the gospel coalition with Don Carson in 2005. And Carson explained to me we were talking recently, their goal behind TGC says we wanted to build a community of churches and pastors in which the gospel was the central thing. The exciting thing what we got out of bed four in the morning, Carson said they wanted to center their ministries on the gospel so that Jesus would never be assumed or ignored in favor of other agendas. Carson said, there are hermeneutical and Christological implications to this understanding of gospel centeredness, implications that affect how we preach how we put the Bible together, the ways in which say the concerns for social justice are properly tied to the cross and to the resurrection. Carson has often been cited, I would imagine a lot of you have heard this from him that the first generation rediscovers the gospel. The second generation assumes the gospel and the third generation loses the gospel. TGC was founded to help evangelicalism remember to always keep the gospel of first importance. Working across denominations, then it came naturally to Keller within the broadly reformed tradition because he’d been doing it for decades by the time he founded TGC, from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, to his work at Westminster. And by 2005, this collaboration between different reformed communities took on increasing urgency as Keller envisioned the challenges of mission in a post Christian western context. He argued that Christians should never disagree ignore their disagreements within the gospel coalition, we have vigorous disagreements on any number of very important things such as communion, church membership and baptism. So we should never ignore those disagreements. But in a post Christian context, we are called to as much as we can emphasize the unity we share in the Gospel with other Christians. Tim Keller wrote this in his book Center Church in Christendom. When everyone was a Christian, it was perhaps useful for a church to define itself primarily in contrast with other churches. Today, however, it is much more illuminating and helpful for a church to define itself in relationship to the values of secular culture. If we spend our time bashing and criticizing other kinds of churches, we simply play into the common defeater that all Christians are intolerant. Well, it is right to align ourselves with denominations that share many of our distinctives at the local level we should cooperate with reach out to and support other congregations and ministries in our local area. You can see then why networks regionally and internationally would become so important that the gospel call to the gospel coalition started by Carson and Keller bringing together pastors and many of you represented here and watching online from Baptist and Anglican and press. To materion and independent traditions, and these networks have since multiplied other countries, other regions around the world to promote gospel centered ministry to the next generation. And Keller’s burden for TGC also owed Much to his elders. Those he had learned from so many of us, grew up with Tim Keller in ministry, but in my book, I talk about all of his heroes, the people that he grew up reading, and listening to and learning from. Keller taught in the first gospel coalition council meeting, we’re approaching our 20th anniversary in two years at this national event. But Tim Keller taught in that first TGC meeting in May 17 2005. And he observed how many Evan Jellicle churches he had seen had already drifted away from the gospel. And he asked what had become of the Ministries of John Stott, or a Francis Schaeffer. And he brought together again, what made their ministries distinct what made them special and lasting. He came back they engage the world in biblical theology, in cultural apologetics, and in spiritual renewal. They cooperated across denominations in their mission and color as to why don’t we have a body of leaders, teachers, preachers, who weave these things together into one whole cloth? Why don’t we have a body of people doing this today? He asked in 2005. He had another example not just those who were contemporary in his lifetime, but he went all the way back to the 18th century to Jonathan Edwards, the pastor and revivalist and joined from the work of the historian Mark Noll, Keller explained how Edwards had been, again, theologically Orthodox, pious, and culturally engaged at the same time, those three things there again, after the death of Edwards, however, Keller noted that the these different followers of Edwards had broken into three groups, the Princeton theologians and their Westminster successors. They emphasize the closed fist of theological orthodoxy, Jonathan Edwards, Jr. And Samuel Hopkins lead in cultural apologetics. And Charles Finney appropriated these new measures to try to pursue spiritual renewal. But he saw that when these groups separate from one another, they lose their way. So through TGC, again, Keller proposed to bring the group’s back centered around the gospel. He argued, as I said, earlier than in biblical theology, we find the gospel in all of Scripture, and cultural apologetics we apply the gospel to all of life and in spiritual renewal. We love God and His gospel with all of our heart. In my 2015, book, blind spots, I developed these three categories that roughly correspond in different ways to our ultimate model who is Jesus Christ, Himself. Now we as finite beings, and the churches we lead, we tend to lean in one direction or another, we tend to lean some of us in a more courageous directions, some of us in a more compassionate direction, some of us more in a commissioned evangelistic direction. And sometimes that’s just how we’re differently gifted in the body of Christ. Sometimes it’s because we surround ourselves with people who share not only our strengths, but also our weaknesses. But when we don’t keep these things together, we become unbalanced. And ultimately, we become unbiblical. We lose our way. And Jesus embodied them all. Not I’m some sort of a little bit of this and a little bit of that in some sort of careful balance, but all of them all the time. And this is then our calling to follow Jesus, and how he brings these things together.

When I wrote the book, blind spots in 2015, I was trying to help explain why certain pastors and other ministry leaders are able to speak so effectively. In our modern age. I was thinking back to Jonathan Edwards, and I was thinking about Tim Keller. You also notice how church leaders like this will appeal across different traditions and different denominations. So if you think about Keller’s legacy, you can see these three aspects standout. First, on the courage side, Keller preached the gospel and upheld historic confessional Reformed theology by planting Redeemer Presbyterian Church in one of the most gospel resistant cities around the world. And you can also find in my book about Tim, I found Tim’s first publication, the first thing he ever wrote and published it She criticized two of his professors for their low view of Scripture. I have a feeling that would surprise a few people knowing Tim Keller’s personality that this is how he started his ministry by publicly criticizing his professors. This was the origins of what became Table Talk magazine published by Ligonier. But you also see the courage in Tim. When he was in Hopewell, he read all sorts of Puritan paperbacks including the sermons of George Whitfield. He said he never would have gone to New York City and become an evangelist without being confronted by Whitfield’s bold, direct evangelism. So that’s the courage. The compassion side comes in as well. Not many people know this, but Tim Keller has written what was alleged to be the longest Doctor of Ministry dissertation in the history of Westminster Theological Seminary. He did so by studying the Mercy ministry and the Deac and him have Reformed churches in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Scotland, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Geneva, Switzerland. That work then informed his first book publication ministries of mercy. And one of the jobs that he had while he was at Westminster seminary teaching counties old courses, was through was was implementing this vision of Mercy ministry through the DIAC in it through ministry to North America of the PCA. He then started this through the ministry HOPE for New York at Redeemer which continues to this day. The third aspect, then is the commission. Redeemer city to city continues to plant churches around the world, especially in urban areas that lack of angelical witness in proportion to their global population. And, of course, one aspect of this as well as that Tim, shortly before he died, worked with us to start the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics so that church leaders, whether pastors, professors, or parents, all of the above, would be equipped for evangelism in a rapidly changing world, and especially in our secular West. Now, other than clowning, it was pretty common in these categories that Keller would find his inspiration in British evangelicals instead of the United States. In America, he found that the fundamentalist modernist controversy of the early 20th century with somehow which in some ways distort and even distract from the need for bringing together biblical theology, cultural apologetics and spiritual renewal, at the same time with the gospel at the center. It’s not enough to simply fight the liberals and secular culture. You’ve got to bring all of these together and so Keller found models in British evangelicalism, I Howard Marshall, John Stott, J. I, packer, Martyn Lloyd Jones, and of course, CS Lewis. Keller put these views together in writing the gospel coalition’s theological vision of ministry, which was adopted by our council in 2007. And he added there, this concept of theological vision, and this is one of the most helpful things that I’ve ever seen in my ministry, and it still compels me in the same ways today, he learned this concept from a Gordon Conwell professor named Richard Lenz who now works for city to city. And you’ll hear resemblance also in theological vision to Richard Loveless, wrote about this recently at the gospel coalition about loveless his influence as a Gordon Conwell professor on Tim Keller. They talk specifically on the concept of distant culturation of being able to see yourself situated in a culture but be able to transcend it in teaching a timeless gospel. And he talks about this and dynamics of spiritual life, which is a fascinating read. You also see this is Tim’s professor at Westminster, Harvey Kahn, his colleague. But here’s what Tim Keller said about theological vision, an absolutely transformative concept, no matter what kind of ministry you serve in. He said, This is critical that the people of God come to an awareness of their historical, cultural and rational filters, so that they do not they will not be ruled by them. The simple way to put it as as we preach the gospel, or you teach it in a small group, or you parent your children, or you’re talking about this in a Sunday school classroom, we need to understand ourselves, as we understand our audience, as we try to teach the things of God. In so many ways, this is not any different from what John Calvin himself said, about starting with an understanding of who God is, and who we are, which of course we get from God. Keller then explained in Center Church, that confessional statements are not in and of themselves. So sufficient because they don’t analyze our culture. And they don’t dictate our approach to history and to human reason, even though our position on these topics will often determine the shape of our ministry. So one of the things that Tim Keller often said was that sometimes Christians will identify as doctrinal downgrade, what is instead a different theological vision. And so when churches adopt a theological vision, they can do more than simply react to culture. They can challenge and communicate the gospel in transformative ways. They can work together with one another across many differences. They can even form then a gospel coalition. theological vision helps us to understand what clowny was doing as the leader of Westminster and what Keller learned from him and became part of his legacy. clowny and Keller were both eager to work with other evangelicalism not because they always saw eye to eye, but in part because I think they often believed that they could convince them of Reformed convictions, and even to become Presbyterians as well didn’t work with me. But you know, as part of the arguments of keeping those, keeping those before us not to ignore them, as I said earlier, but to recognize them in our moment, and how important it is to stay focused on the Gospel across those differences. clowny was a graduate of Wheaton College and he would often speak at Urbana missions conference in front of 10s of 1000s of Evan Jellicle students, and Cloney and Keller appreciated how Evan Jellicle is share the gospel in accessible ways for the masses. This was part of their training and all the way back studying the first and second grade awakenings and they saw that Evan Jellicle did this effectively across education and ethnicity. But as reformed theologians, they also recognized a critical weakness. They recognized about how this same adaptability adaptability makes Evan Jellicle susceptible to doctrinal downgrade. A greatest strength of evangelicalism is often our greatest weakness. And so they in this balance, they recognize that sometimes evangelicalism do need that clenched fist of theological orthodoxy. At the same time, clowny could also push back on his critics, some of whom wanted a reformed ministry that prioritize doctrinal precision with cultural forms that were unchanged across the decades, or even centuries. And it’s not like these reformed ministries would necessarily turn someone away, who showed interest in the gospel, but they also wouldn’t go out of their way to accommodate them, unless it was obvious that the Holy Spirit was already opening their eyes to the truth of Jesus. And so you had this interesting dynamic where the growing enrollment of Westminster seminary and the subsequent success of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, it scared some Reformed Church leaders, and thus clowny and Keller both were criticized for compromising their convictions, even though they did not do so. And many of you will know that Tim Keller came under significant criticism, especially in the last years of his life. And many, many young leaders have commented that they have moved on from Tim Keller. They’ve said that the times once again demand that clenched fist instead of the bowed head.

The Keller never gave up hope that a movement of churches would emerge and combine innovative evangelism with doctrinal preaching, personal holiness, with artistic excellence, radical sharing of resources, with robust integration of faith, and business. Keller wrote this and TGC theological vision of ministry in 2007. What could lead to a growing movement of gospel centered churches? The ultimate answer is that God must for His own glory, send revival in response to the fervent, extraordinary, prevailing prayer of his people. And so I think one of the clearest ways that we can honor Tim Keller’s legacy today is to bow our heads together. We lead us now in prayer. God we remember your servant Tim Keller, and we miss him. We thank You God that in remembering Tim. We remember you, above all. And remember, Lord that you are With us doing a work that we can hardly see, and barely fathom. I pray God that in years to come, you would give us discernment to know the time and to continue to pursue revival by your Holy Spirit through humility, recognizing that for all of our education, all of our teaching all of our conferences, all of our wisdom, it is nothing. It is nothing but a clanging Gong. It is empty, without your spirit. And so I pray God at the outset of this conference, that this event would be marked by a movement of your spirit, in our heads bowed, seeking, revival, seeking personal renewal, church renewal, and even God, the transformation of our our cities, our states, and our nations, for Your glory. In Jesus name we pray, amen. It is now my privilege for the next part of this session on Tim Keller’s legacy and thought process to welcome to welcome my my friend, my colleague at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, and the author of biblical critical theory, Christopher watkyn, welcome message.

Christopher Watkin
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. And the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. It’s a great joy. It’s a great privilege for me to be able to share a few words today about someone whose thought process has been so influential for me over the years, and it is the greatest of privileges, is it not to be doing so in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself? And in a meeting that is gathered for His glory? I wonder if I could begin by asking you all a question to answer in your own mind. The question is this. How do you think not what do you think about? But how do you go about doing the thinking that you do? What are the tools if you like in your intellectual toolbox? Because not everybody thinks in the same way, do they? For some people, it seems as though, you know, thinking is some sort of combat sport, and it’s always about winning and coming out on top. For other people thinking seems to be always about finding the common ground and making sure that everybody goes away happy. How do you think what are the tools in your intellectual toolbox? I’d like to talk about five of the key elements of how Tim Keller thinks that their fathers are the most precious to me, I’m sure there are other things we could say about Tim Keller’s thought process. But these are four that I’ve just found incredibly helpful over the years, and then I’m really excited to be able to share and to think about together with you today. And in preparation for this talk, I started listening back to old Tim Keller sermons from the gospel in Life website, starting with the very first one in 1989. And then just moving forward, chronologically. And you know, what’s really stuck out to me, as I’ve been listening back, is that it’s all there right from the beginning, that the Tim Keller of 1989, is perhaps slightly less polished than later on. But all the fundamental ways of thinking that he’s known far are out there all the way from the beginning of the ministry and Redeemer. And in fact, the first point that I want to make, I’m going to make from the first nine words of the first recorded sermon that I found on their website. I’m going to start this sentence if you can finish it off. I keep reading books and articles about I wonder how you think it’s going to finish New York. That was the first nine words of the first sermon that I listened to. And I think it gets us right to the heart of something that is really fundamental about the way that that Tim Keller thought and about the way he did ministry And it’s what the British evangelical writer John Stott characterizes as double listening. I think it sums up Keller’s approach really well, I just wanted to read you a quote from John Stott This is how he describes double listening. He says, I’m not suggesting that we should listen to God, and to our fellow human beings in the same way, or with the same degree of deference. We listen to the word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolved to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand it to and resolved, not necessarily to believe or obey it, but to sympathize with it, and to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it. And so, in line with this principle of double listening, we’ll often sort of hear Keller speak in a sermon or, or read a chapter of one of his books and feel as though he’s got the Bible in one hand, and The New Yorker, The New York Times in the other, and he’s seeking to account for both of those in the way that he’s engaging with his listeners. But I don’t, I don’t think he is a generic example of double listening. I think he does both of these things in a really particular way. And I want to just try and draw that out quickly. So first of all, listening to God’s word. There’s a series of lectures that Tim Keller did with Ed Clowney called preaching Christ in a postmodern world, I think they were available online, they may not be available, they may be available in the future, do look out for them. They were paradigm shifting for me. I think they’re real gold dust in terms of giving us an insight into how to engage with culture today. And in the course of one of those lectures, Keller says something to the effect of I can’t remember the exact words, don’t forget the meat in the middle of the sandwich of Bible study. So we read the word in our devotions, and we pray, we’ve got a list of things that we pray for. But Keller says the key to moving from the Bible to prayer is meditation, meditating on God’s word and letting that feed our prayers. And I think this is the key one of the keys to how Keller in particular listened to God’s word. So in Collins book, there’s the story told, isn’t there of how he and a bunch of other students were made to study a Bible passage for half an hour, just a very short passage, just a few words, and write down all their insights. And then they were asked, When did your best insights come was in the first five minutes or the last five minutes and almost everybody in the class said towards the end, is that dwelling upon God’s word, letting it soak into us thinking deeply and in a prolonged way about it that I think is distinctive, of Keller’s way of listening to the Word, and it comes out in his sermons, you can see the way that he handles God’s Word in the sermons is often the fruit of this sort of meditation. So there’s a distinctive way of listening to the Word. But I think there’s also a distinctive way of listening to the world. Because I wouldn’t want to leave us with the impression that all Tim Keller did was just read lots of books and articles about New York, one thing that’s really struck me listening back to these old sermons is just how often he’ll say something like this. Now, in regard to last week’s sermon, I was speaking with some of you during the week, and you raise these really important points. And so I want to address them now. Or I want to try and push further and clarify something I said last week, because it’s clear that that I didn’t get it over well enough. And what’s really clear is that week after week after week, he’s listening, not to New York Times op ed columnists alone, but to people in his congregation. He wants to know how they’re understanding the Word of God, he wants to know, their worlds. And that I think, is a really precious element in the way that he listens to the world, not just on this, this sort of stratospheric level of the magazines and news outlets, but what the people in his congregation was saying, and thinking about God and about their own lives, week after week. So that’s the first element, this double listening that I think is characteristic of Keller. The second thing that really struck me listening back to the sermons and that I’ve just found incredibly helpful over the years, is the way in which for Keller the gospel, both conference and completes what he calls the narrative storylines of our culture. And one of the reasons that this was so terribly precious to me is that as an undergraduate in the arts faculty of Allah Hodge secular university, I was having to try and work out on the fly almost how the gospel related to culture. And there were two sorts of books that I read back then two sorts of Christian books. The first sort of book was very condemnatory of the culture, it was almost as if the only thing that it could find to say, about modern secular culture was negative. We must distance ourselves from these things. These are the dangerous ideas and it stopped there. And the other sort of book that I came across back then, last millennium now is the sort of book that almost made the give us the impression that we ought to reinvent Christianity. In the image of the latest philosophy, you know, we need a new reformation and it’s got to be a Nietzschean either for coldy and Derridean reformation. And neither of those ways of trying to engage culture just rang true to me that neither seemed to respect the Bible, nor actually to respect what these philosophers were saying. And so it was music to my ears, when Tim Keller came along, and opened up one Corinthians one in a way that I’ve never gone over, ever since. I first learned it from that series of lectures he did with with Ed clowny. But I want to read you a passage where he does the same sort of thing in Center Church. So this is Tim Keller writing and he says, as we have seen, in one Corinthians 118, to 16, Paul’s approach to his listeners, was not simply to denounce their culture.

He doesn’t merely critique the Greek passion for intellect, and the Jewish desire for practical power. Instead, he shows them that the ways they are pursuing these good things are ultimately self defeating, and then urges them to find ultimate fulfillment of their cultural aspirations in Jesus Christ. And so he ends on a positive note, a note of invitation and consolation, though it always comes with a call to Repent, and believe. So what kill us shows us from one Corinthians one, I think, is that there is very much a note of confrontation in the way that Paul engages with the cultures around him. So Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom. And Paul says, I come to you with the word of the cross the Lagace of the cross, that is foolishness, and weak. This is not what you are looking for. You won’t find contentment in the cross, if you keep searching for wisdom and power in the way that you’re searching for them at the moment, you’re on a collision course with the gospel. This is not simply the cherry on a cake that you’ve already baked. And if that was all that Paul said, in that passage, then the books that I’d read that was simply condemning modern culture, what if you like be cheering him on from the stand, sing, pause our guy, you suck it to them, Paul, you condemn the culture. The cost that isn’t everything that he says is it because a few short verses later, he’s saying, the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. And the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. And so there is a wisdom, that is to be striven for, there is a power that is good. But you’ll find them in the weakness and in the foolishness of the cross. And so it’s as if Paul is issuing an invitation via the Corinthian church to his Greek and Jewish readers at this point. It’s as if he’s saying, Are you serious, really serious about your search for wisdom and power? Because if you are, let me challenge you, to look for them in the place where you would least ever think of finding them. Let me challenge you to search for wisdom in the foolishness of a criminal who never mind being able to give a philosophical speech can hardly speak on the cross, the pain is so great. And let me challenge you, if you’re looking for real power, to go to the weakness of a man who can’t even move his hands by himself, because they’re nailed to a cross. Let me take you to a criminal of dying and shame and agony. Because if you are willing to search for wisdom, and for power there, you will find a wisdom and a power, the depth, the riches, the beauty and the robustness of which you haven’t even imagined. It will not only be everything you think wisdom and power can be it will Below your categories of what wisdom and power can be. And at that point, all the books that I’d read, saying that the culture finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ, and everything that it’s searching for is brought to completion in Christ, the author that the authors of those books will be cheering on Paul from the Stan St. Paul’s are guy you show them, you show them how the culture finds its fulfillment in the gospel. But it cost the brilliance of Paul’s approach. And Keller was masterful in bringing this out, is that Paul is doing both of those in the same passage, he’s both confronting the culture and showing how the culture is completed in the Gospel, and they’re not in tension with each other. It’s not as if he’s half confronting, and then he suddenly sort of changes. And he’s now completing, there’s an organic unity to what Paul is doing in one Corinthians one. And this marks Keller’s engagements with culture. He can confront. And he can also show how the gospel completes the narratives and the cultural storylines around us. It’s a paradigm of thinking that has been immensely useful for men. It’s one that I commend to all of us as a robust, deeply, biblically work, biblical way of engaging with culture. So we’ve had double listening, we’ve had the gospel, both confronting and completing the culture. But the next aspect of Tim Keller’s thought process that I’ve found incredibly helpful, is what I’m going to call non partisanship. Now, I don’t think that’s the best word for it. Because it gives the impression of sort of political neutrality, doesn’t it, of not preaching Christ from the pulpit of not telling people who he voted for now, all that is true, but I mean, something a lot deeper by non partisanship, and I want to try and tease that out. Kalam is very clear, gloriously clear, that as Christians, we don’t get our message, our measure of what is true and false, or our measure of what is good and evil, from within the created order. We don’t look to anything in creation to tell us what’s good and evil. Because Jesus Christ him said it himself said, there’s no one good, but God alone. And God is not part of creation. It’s the character of God that calibrates what is good and evil. And that puts the Christian in an incredibly powerful position to do cultural critique, because it means that the Christian really quite peculiarly can be open to all different cultures, to discriminate and critically engage with them. Because we’re predisposed as Christians, to think that there’s going to be some echo of God’s good creation. In all cultures, in our manifestations of culture in all cultural artifacts, there’s none so depraved that there’s no echo at all of God’s goodness, whatsoever, however hard we search for it. But we’re also predisposed as Christians to think that there’s no culture, our cultural artifact that is so good and pure, that there’s no trace in it of human sinfulness as well. And so we always come to any culture as Christians discriminating really, critically, with our mind switched on. But if we find our measure of what is good and evil within the created order, then there has to be something at least that we’re closed to, that we can’t critique on pain of losing our measure of what’s good and evil. So for example, if we think that free markets are an unmitigated good, then we can’t critique the idea of free markets for themselves without unmooring ourselves my sense of what is good. And if we think that a working class revolution is the epitome of good for society, then we can’t critique that idea itself or we think that enlightenment getting past superstition is the unmitigated good, we can’t critique reason itself and so on, and so on, and so on. So every way of thinking that finds its measure of good and evil within the created order has to close its mind to something over there within creation, has to be blinkered has to be closed minded at some point, but not the Christian wonderfully. And in a sermon from 1994, Tim Keller draws out some moral implications of this wonderful truth that we find our measure of good and evil outside of the crowd. And he shows how it leads both to a radical independence of thinking for Christians. And also to a radically humble thinking, I just want to read you two short extracts from that sermon, the way he brings it out. He says, The Christian is not intimidated by experts. If you’re not built on the foundation of the word, if you’re not a Christian, you have to say, well, this man is an expert. This woman is the leading thinker in the philosophy of law, who am I to question them? But if you’re built on the foundation, you can say, How does this square with the Word of God? Don’t you see he goes on? It makes you extremely independent? Because no longer are you a slave to tradition? You don’t have to do things simply because that’s the way they’ve always been done any more. Because that’s not the basis for your authority. No longer are you counseled by experts. No longer are you cowed by preachers, or we might add this week by any conference speaker, you’re gonna hear. No longer are you cowed by anybody by any tradition. And then he finishes. It’s the end of gullibility, friends.

So do you see how being founded on the Word of God gives you a radical and aggressive independence of thoughts, you’re not in the pocket of any expert, you’re not in the pocket of any agenda, you’re not in the pockets of any political party, because you are grounded on the Word of God. But, and this is the wonderful thing, the same principle that gives you that radical independence also gives you a radical humility. And this is color again from the same sermon. This should make us more humble to even as it makes you so independent, and so much more open minded than you’ve ever been before. To have this view of God and His Word, to be a biblical thinker makes you humble, too. Because you see, if you don’t trust experts, if you don’t trust your own expertise, either. If you’re not going to listen to anything I say, unless you make sure that you believe it’s biblical. On the other hand, you’ve also got to say, Hey, why should I even believed myself? My own prejudices, my own views? Let me check out whether I’m right on the foundation. You see, there’s a humility that this view points out because your expertise, your feelings, your opinions, your prejudices, are no longer authoritative. Isn’t it glorious? That the same biblical principle that makes us ferocious ly independent, in our thinking, also makes us ferociously humble, in our thinking, because there are ferociously independent thinkers out there out there. And many of them lack that humility. And they’re ferociously humble thinkers. But many of them like that independence of thought and calories, showing us how the gospel grounds both of these together to be radically independent in our thinking not to be in anyone’s pocket. But by the same token, and with the same motivation to be radically humble, in our thinking, questioning our own motives, in the way that we question the motives and the assumptions of those around us. So double listening, both confronting and completing the culture storylines, and non partisanship. And finally, what’s been called the third way. And I couldn’t find an example of this in the first ever recorded sermon from Redeemer, but I did find one in the second sermon. So I will give you the example from the second sermon from 1989 that I listened to. In that sermon. Keller is trying to put his finger on the different attitudes to truth that exist out there in the world. And he identifies two of them. The first one he calls the scientific approach to truth. And he sets it up like this. He says, For science, there’s no huge overarching meaning to human life, not truth in that sense. But there are facts. And we can come to know these facts through measurement, through what we encounter with our five senses and what I’m measuring instruments can can yield for us. And then there’s a second attitude to truth he says back in 1989, which is the truth of the new ages. And the New Age people think that there is a truth in the universe. disagree with the Scientists in that sense, and they say the way to find this truth is to look inside yourself. You will find the truth deep inside yourself, and you need to bring it out and express it. So what does he do with those two views? Well, he says, they look like chalk and cheese, don’t they, they look radically opposed to each other. But actually, he says in this sermon, they vanishingly close, in the one way that really, really matters. They’re just variations on a theme. Because for both of these views, at the end of the day, you are the one who decides what’s good and evil, you and the language he uses in the sermon, you are your own prophet. Because for the scientist, there is no grand measure out there of what is good and evil, there are only facts, no truth. So you got to work it out for yourself. And similarly, for the new age, yes, there is truth. And it’s in here and you decide what it is. So you need to be it out, you decide what is good and evil. So they might look black and white, but they’re very close to each other. And then what happens when the Bible comes along? Well, the Bible resonate resonates with the scientists idea that you’ve got to look outside yourself. And the Bible would agree with the new agent, that there is truth. But he doesn’t meet them in the middle. The Bible is not well, you know that let’s do half science and half New Age, whatever that would even look like. Now the Bible says, There is truth outside yourself in the God who has spoken. And he has sent prophets. And it’s through engaging with his word, that we know what is right and wrong, what is true and false, in our universe. And so, is this half science half your age? No, of course not. What would that even look like? That’s ridiculous. What we find is that the scientific view and the New Age view, are both themselves taking part of God’s wonderful truth, the idea that you’ve got to look outside yourself and the idea that truth exists, and that they’re dismembering it, cutting it off from the rest of God’s truth, and erecting it as the whole ballgame, the whole reality. So the scientists have caught something and twisted it and dismembered it. And the new agers have caught something of God’s reality and similarly dismembered it and twisted it. So what you need to do, you need to point them both beyond themselves to the beautiful, harmonious biblical reality that they’re both twisting. Now, is that a third way, sort of, I suppose. But I wonder if that language does trip us up somewhat. Because Third Way suggests that the scientist and the new age are there to begin with, they come first. And then the Bible comes along and tries to sort things out, and sort of make them meet in the middle, which, of course, is the absolute opposite of the way that it really is, the Bible comes first, God’s truth comes first. And all our cultural manifestations of truth that are grasping at and missing and dismembering, and twisting and misunderstanding aspects of this trip. So in that sense, it will be perhaps more helpful to call it the first way, God’s way is the first way. And then culture, you know, like the blind men, and the elephant in the poem captures something of God’s beautiful truth, and goodness, and rips it out of the hole, and sets it up as the whole thing. So those are the four elements of Tim Keller’s thought process that have I guess, most impacted me over the years. But I’m sure that many of us could come and stand here and share other ways that he’s helped us to think that have been equally transformative and equally helpful for us. And I guess from my point of view, as someone who works in philosophy, this is also the part of his legacy that is most precious to me. And the way he’s helped me and many of us, many of us in the room, no doubt, to think in ways that are deeply rooted in the Bible. And that can both confront and complete the narratives of our culture. I might finish if I may, with a word of prayer. Let’s pray together.

Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you very much indeed for the inexpressible plea, deep and rich word that you’ve given us. We thank You for Your Spirit, who lives in us. We thank you for Your servants in color and the way that you worked through him to bless many people, including many, many of us here in the room. And we pray, that he might spur us on, along with all the other great cloud of witnesses, to dig deeper into your Word, to glory more in the wonderful richness of your truth, and to commend it with all our hearts, and with all our minds, to a culture desperately in need of you. Whose storylines will be both subverted and fulfilled in the glorious gospel?

Colin is back. And we’re going to think through in a more conversational way, some of the themes that that Colin and I have raised during this session so far.

Collin Hansen
Chris, we decided that the your pants matched this chair better.

Christopher Watkin
I don’t think they match anything. We didn’t think about that. We’re playing in the chair. They match my Bible. There we go.

Mike Graham
Well, it is so good to be here with both of you, gentlemen, and esteem you both highly, both in terms of your writing your speaking, as well as probably most importantly, the friendship that we have. So starting, I think that’s a good place to start. Tim, was friends with both of you. And I don’t know if people you know, I assume people would know that about Colin, but they might not know know that from you from Chris, from your story. So I want to just start here. Could each of you tell us a story that either nobody, or almost nobody would know about Tim, that highlights how the gospel was at work in his life?

Christopher Watkin
Yes, I certainly can’t. And it is a delight to do so. I had been listening to Tim Keller’s sermons for many years, and as I said, deriving huge benefit from them. And then one day, I get this email in my inbox from I think it was T J. K. 47. At Redeemer sittercity.com. Hi, Chris. I’ve really enjoyed reading your book, Thinking through creation. Basically, how can I help you? Tim? Who is this man?

Collin Hansen
Was that a best selling book? Chris?

Christopher Watkin
Certainly. No. I mean, I really enjoyed writing it. But it wasn’t, you know, nobody knew that I written it almost sort of went under the radar. And here is this, this man with unfathomably many responsibilities, you know that I can’t even begin to imagine who takes time to write to this unknown author to say, How can I help you? And I talked with Alice and my wife about it, it just floored us like that he would be so servant hearted, and have the time that make the time in the middle of everything else that he’s doing to do that. And then later on as biblical critical theory, sort of before that was was written. It might, it might, perhaps, be hard to believe, but there were times when we thought we’d never listened. No, we’d never get it out. The publishers who didn’t like it, I said, it was too long and, you know, big long story. But there were two occasions. And by God’s providence, they were the two occasions where we were thinking, we probably just need to shelve this and go on to something else, because nobody, nobody’s going to publish this. We’re out of the blue again, you know, not in response to an email for me, but I get another email from Tim Keller saying something to the effect of how are you doing, really looking forward to that book coming out? You know, how, how’s it getting up? And I don’t, I don’t think it’s over stressing things to say that without those emails, it is highly unlikely that we’d have pressed on to write the book. So, so just on the level of basic human encouragement, it was just wonderful, humanly speaking, to receive those emails. And also, in terms of the book coming to fruition. I think in God’s providence, it was incredibly strategic, as well.

Collin Hansen
Sadly, Mike, I think most of the answers that I can think of here are ones that I can’t share publicly. But I think with the consistency that without a specific moment that I can think of the consistency is simply how he and I went through a lot of different things together over the years. I mean, I started working at the gospel coalition. 2010 we were editing books together before that, and we can probably all think of a few controversial things that have happened in the world or through the gospel coalition during that time. And at every moment, there were opportunities where he could have acted selfishly, and blamed other people he could have, he could have escaped goaded me or someone else, he could have been harshly critical, just sort of venting his feelings of unfairness in those moments. And it’s not too much for me to say that he never did any of those things with me, he, he was very supportive. He was very encouraging. I don’t think many people know how many people that he carried on correspondence with who were known for being critical of him, or the things that he stood for the things that the gospel coalition stood for. You know, I remember, maybe this is the one that should have come to mind first. And remember, he said, I was like, Tim, I don’t think you should be wasting your time on Twitter. I don’t think it’s going very well. And he said, No, I’m going to show that there’s a way to do it. And I’m not sure that he did, but that was his heart. You know, he was like, I think in some ways, he was a little too nice or sweet for that. For that little too good hearted for that for that venue. But just not a cynical person, a very hopeful person. And, and just an encourager. There were moments when he was when he was discouraged the outset of COVID, before he got cancer, or knew that he had cancer that stands out to me as a time when he was especially discouraged because his view of ministry was so interpersonal and connected to community, especially evangelism. And he thought, if we can’t gather together in person, how are we going to do evangelism that was very discouraging to him. But what was amazing was, when the cancer came, how his perspective flipped, and all of a sudden, there was that spiritual renewal that I was talking about, in my talk that that was evident in his life, and he became more generous, more kind, more giving to other people less anxious, about, about things. You know, just, I don’t know how I would respond if I got that diagnosis of terminal cancer. But he responded by seeking spiritual renewal, which is pretty special. That’s evidence of the Gospels work in your life.

Mike Graham
Thank you for those stories. Thinking to your book, Colin, with respect to one of the things that came kind of came across crystal clear, and it was the extent to which British evangelicals played a central role in Keller’s thinking his missiology and so I’d love to hear from you Chris. First. If you don’t know Chris is British by heritage and but resides in Australia. And and then Colin, what do you think that killer found in British evangelicalism that was maybe missing in its American counterpart?

Christopher Watkin
I’m glad you refer to my British heritage. I come from the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. Proud Brits living in Australia. So my, my spotting. allegiances are pretty confused at the moment. I think, because I’ve heard him on recorded messages say this, that there are two ways I think, in which British evangelicalism was incredibly helpful in helping Tim Keller to think through how to do ministry in in New York City. And again, I’m getting this from the preaching Christ in a postmodern World lecture calls, that the first thing he says is that British preachers, especially in metropolitan areas, were ministering to congregations that were much more post Christian than was the case in most parts of the US but but not really in New York at that time. And he particularly leans on Dec. Lucas, who’s a former minister from St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in London, John Stott was another example that he uses. He mentioned David Jackman, on that course, and I would throw in another couple of names. Perhaps there’s a preacher called Mark Ashton, who was preaching in Cambridge, who is doing the same thing and a guy called Stephen mutually, and there will be many more in addition, but what he found In these preachers was an articulation of the gospel that didn’t assume a Christian culture. And that showed how the gospel is not only true, but actually very, very attractive to people who are living in in a modern secular world, if only they would have eyes to see it. And so he says in that lecture course, that he would regularly listen to tapes, as they were back then from a range of these preachers as he was preparing sermon courses. And I think another thing that he he seems to really value in their approach is their expository way of preaching the way that they start, you know, Mark chapter one, and they preach to every position, so they got to the end of Mark, and so far, and I think that, and I think I remember him saying this in one of the Redeemer sermons, that the wonderful thing about that is that the Bible gets to set the agenda. Like we don’t pick what we want to preach about, if it’s in the next chapter. For next week, we’re going to preach about it however uncomfortable or peculiar. It is, and therefore, you know, over time, if you keep doing that through all the different genres of the Bible, that you’re going to be preaching the whole counsel of God, and not just what you are filtering through your particular idea of what people need to hear.

Collin Hansen
should mention so the you mentioned those preaching Christ in the postmodern world. So our intention is to bring those back online at the gospel coalition with the partnership with reformed Theological Seminary where they were first delivered. And one of the major projects that we have at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics now is to basically do something similar for this era. So it kind of reminds me of how I often talk about the connection between Tim’s books, the reason for God and making sense of God, and say that the one making sense of God is more updated for today. But reason for God is still really good. It’s still good, even if it’s not what he wrote in his more developed later years. But similarly, the preaching Christ, the postmodern world is still an amazing lecture series, he could really see things coming. But he also sensed a lot of his limitations going forward. That’s something that we got to talk with him about, at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. So those are a couple of things that we’re working on now. But when it came to British of angelical, is it’s similar, I think, Mike to one thing I do in my class, when I teach cultural apologetics, at least in Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama, I make everybody start with a personal statement of dis inculturation. And the students don’t have any concept of what this is. But it’s, we’ve published on a number of times with the gospel coalition about, you hear a lot about deconstruction, people leaving their faith, but really what most of them are experiencing is a dis inculturation. They’re trying to separate what is essential about my faith that translates across cultures. And essentially, you know, this, because of all your years in Italy, you have to do this as a missionary Tim’s point, and I think our point at the Keller center would also be, you need to do this now, where you live today. Now you have to do it because you’re British, and you’re in Australia. And I have to do it at some level, because I’m a Midwestern or living in the deep south. But and you had to do it in Italy. But that’s what the British did for Tim, they gave him an opportunity to compare and contrast his own narratives, his own experiences with theirs. And I mentioned in my talk, particularly, it was the way in which the British of angelical is did not demonstrate some of the same tribal characteristics. Now we know that he could learn from Les Jones and start even though Lloyd Johnson Stott had, they’re falling out, but they’re falling out was over strategy decisions about the Church of England. It wasn’t really relevant to the American context. But so he’s but he’s still finding them exactly what Chris is saying in here of, of teaching in a very different context that in many ways was down the line from from the United States. And, and so I at a certain level, also, Tim was simply anglophile. I mean, he inherited that from from Kathy and the very beginning with with CS Lewis and, and ultimately was talking there as well. So that’s, that’s definitely what it did. But you know, so wouldn’t it doesn’t have to be British Evans, vocals or whatever it is, whatever opportunity you have to be able to see yourself the way somebody else would see you and expose some of those blind spots, but also show you the possibility of what could be so I think, the influence of British British you have angelical on what also became the gospel coalition with some of that difficult duration with him.

Mike Graham
Thinking of that, I think of Lesley newbiggin Yeah, another one in talking about. Obviously, newbiggin was was very influential for Keller and I, one of the best pieces of I think content that I’ve interacted from Keller was his 2017 Princeton lecture series of which he, he talked about seven different areas, it would be critical for the post Christian west to have a missionary encounter. Well,

Collin Hansen
we should say newbiggin. Also, that was his exact experience. It was his work as a missionary in India, that allowed him to see the West in a different way and come back. So it was exactly that missiology dynamic that we’re talking about.

Mike Graham
So for those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to listen to all the Princeton lectures, here are the seven elements that that Keller kind of unpacked in that lecture series. He called for cultural apologetics in the vein of Augustine city of God. That’s why he was so excited about your biblical critical theory with exactly

Collin Hansen
that was Tim often said it like biblical critical theory was an important way of we’ve got to get underneath what we’re dealing with things that too superficial of a level, we’ve got to do what Augustine did in his day, we’ve got to go a lot deeper. Yeah. The

Mike Graham
second thing was, you know, finding a third way between the mainline concern for social problems and the evangelical concern for spiritual problems. In other words, justification must lead to justice book, generous justice, good example of that, you know, and then third, he challenged Christians to critique secularism from within its own framework, the integration of faith and work, the learning from the global church, and then highlighting the difference between grace and religion. And Keller also finally kind of left American evangelicals with a vision for Christian community that disrupted the social and kind of scrambled the social categories of our current culture diagonalize them? Yes. So with respect to those kind of seven things, what do you think it looks like for us? If we’re to take those those items seriously, let’s say you’re a teaching pastor, let’s say you’re on staff at a ministry or a local church? Or let’s say you’re a lay leader? What does it look like to take some of those, you know, some of those bullets from from Tim seriously and apply them in real life?

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I’m gonna have a couple of answers on that one, one of them what they final I mentioned the first project that I do on my course on cultural apologetics at BC. And the last one that I do is I have everybody preach a sermon, or write a sermon. In that case, we don’t preach them in class, but write a sermon that incorporates the hardest objection to Christianity that, you know, first of all, it’s just a good exercise for anybody to try to work through just name, that thing that might keep you up at night, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. And try to work through that biblically, theologically, that could work for anybody out here. But one of the things I noticed the first time I taught that class, I realized that I hadn’t done a very good job. Because everybody came back apologetically, with the with the same basic problem, which was, the world says this, the Bible says this, obviously, the world is wrong. Now, at one level, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s true. But it’s not very compelling to people who don’t already share your presuppositions about scripture, and about God. That’s why our friend Daniel Strange was so influential with what he talked about with this subversive fulfillment in there. So one of the things that I think when you’re teaching, whether at a, you know, an undergrad and postgrad, just a regular preaching opportunity there is to, to enter into the arguments against your viewpoint, to articulate them, as Tim often said better than they could even articulate them themselves, honor and respect them, show on their own merits, why they fall short, you know, before you bring in the Bible, and everything else to critique, like show on their own merits, why that doesn’t work, and then show how the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only possible solution. You’ve talked about this course in your talk. That I think that is a good methodology to be able to use, you can incorporate in your regular teaching. But what I like about a couple of the other points in there is that Tim believed that it would be the scattered church, we talked about this at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics about how we were trying to open you know, kind of close the back door of people leaving the church, that’s your book, open the front door of, you know, helping people to engage the gospel in new ways. It’s a lot of what you’re doing, Chris. And then we want to send out, you know, send out the people scattered. It’s really in many ways. It’s the scattered church, in your vocations where you’re going to have the most opportunity, I think more than the gathered church in some ways to be able to demonstrate the effects of the gospel, and then ultimately, to preach the gospel directly to people as well. So I think anybody can do that here. You don’t have to be in vocational ministry to do that. And then finally, I think that the point on community that’s for every single one of us I keep, we keep coming back to this pastors, parents, professors, that’s just about getting to know your neighbors. It’s about just refusing to be be subsumed into these categories that Chris’s, his work is trying to break up. But he’s refusing to fall prey to other people’s desire to get you to fear and to loathe your neighbors, but to love them. And that includes the people in your church that you don’t necessarily get along with, that you might disagree with. So I think there’s a lot of applications across the way. But it goes all the way up to the deep intellectual engagement that Chris offers all the way down to the very practical for all of us of simply living out that faith in public, in our work in our vocations in our communities, and just loving our neighbors in very tangible ways.

Mike Graham
Chris, similar question for you. You know, in your talk, you kind of outlined four different areas of Keller slot and unpacked on how they were instructive for us. So just, you know, to recap those things that was the double listening, the subversive fulfillment, that you just spoke of the non partisanship, and the third way. So in the similar vein of you know, how I framed it here for Colin, what, what is it? What do you think it looks like to apply those four principles? You know, if you’re, if you’re someone here, you’re a teaching pastor, or you’re on staff with a church, or you’re just a lay leader in your church?

Christopher Watkin
Yeah. Look, I think all of them are just wonderfully practical principles out there. So you know, with double listening, You’ve almost got a blueprint for self evaluation, right there, you know, how are you? Dear Pastor, dear leader, whoever, you know, do Christian, listening to God’s word. And I think a real encouragement for all of us is this pattern of meditation that Keller used so effectively, in his own ministry? Are we letting the Word of God? Well, in his richly, when was the last time we spent half an hour thinking about two verses? And just writing down everything that we thought about them? And trying to dig into God’s word in that way? How are we listening to God’s word? And then similarly, how are we listening to the world around us? You know, if we’re a youth group leader, are we listening to the people in our youth group and hearing their their concerns, their struggles, their joys in the same way that it’s so evident that that’s in color, week after week was listening to the people in his congregation, in terms of subversive fulfillment, or this idea of both confronting and consoling and completing the cultures narratives? I guess a really practical point for us all to think is, you know, where do you fall along that spectrum? Because I think some of us are natural conferences, aren’t we, you know, we like to pick the theological fights and to roll up our sleeves and to get stuck in on Facebook or on Twitter, or wherever it is, and you know, really stand for the truth. And some of us are much more sort of gentle, consolas and completers. And we want to listen well, and we want to try and help people to see how what they’re searching for can really be found in Christ, if they look for it in the right way. And I guess the message for all of us will be whatever our own proclivity and predisposition is, whatever we’re most naturally doing. Are we working hard on the other one, so I’m probably more of a consoler. So the message to me here is, am I willing to confront because that’s what Paul does. God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. The world in its foolishness, did not know God. Can I say that? As well as the encouraging things and then if we mark Ignatius in our character, it’ll be the other way around. So it’s, again, a very practical self evaluation, that in terms of non partisanship, I guess for for people either in church leadership or leading a home Bible study group or something like that. One of the really practical ways the rubber hits the road here is, is I guess, in not putting stumbling blocks in people’s ways. It’s really disheartening, isn’t it? Sometimes how one word or one sentence on a political issue can suck all the oxygen out of a sermon or a gospel presentation. Sometimes I do the prayers at my church. And whenever I have to pray about a political issue, My heart always sinks because it’s it’s so hard not to do it without giving the impression to people that you’re pushing a particular lights. I did it once recently, and someone around me afterwards and said, You’re pushing us towards this position. I said, I’m not I’m not I don’t want to do that. I just I literally prayed the Bible like I prayed a Bible passage about that, about that particular issue. But But I think it’s instructive isn’t it that these things if we hitch the gospel to them, a have the potential to suck all the oxygen away? For the gospel and B have the potential to shipwreck people’s faith because they think that in order to be a Christian, I have to be this sort of political person or that sort, I need to hold this particular view. And I can’t do that. Therefore, Jesus is not for me. So I think this nonpartisanship has really practical implications for anyone, just just in a one to one level speaking to other people about Christ, let’s make sure that our measure of good and evil doesn’t come from anywhere in the world, because then we’re putting a stumbling block in people’s way, as we do that. And then just finally, in terms of this, this third way, I think there’s a glorious freedom about that, that if we’re a lay leader, or a youth group leader, or a home group, leader, whatever it is, just just encouraging people to revel in the wonderful freedom that rooting ourselves in the gospel gives us, you know, how miserable it is, to be in the pocket of a particular agenda, whether it’s a cultural agenda or political agenda, because all such worldly things are run by people like me and you. And, you know, I hope I’m not speaking out of two, when I suggest that you, you are very, very sinful people, and so am I. And we get things wrong. And we, you know, in our own way, we lead people astray. So you don’t want to follow me, you don’t want to follow you. You can only securely follow and freely follow Christ. And this is what the Bible says, Isn’t that, you know, slavery to Christ is perfect freedom in this paradoxical way that people are not Christians fight so hard to understand. But it’s true. And so freeing people, if I’m leading a Bible study, I’m leading a youth group by saying Don’t, don’t lock yourself into any of these agendas. It’s not that you’ve got to be utterly neutral, it’s not that you’ve always got to sit 50% One way and 50% the other that that’s a caricature of this position. But it’s don’t let your whole horizon be filled by any earthly agenda always have God and His gospel in His Word is your horizon. And that is incredibly liberating, as a way to be in the world.

Mike Graham
It’s so good. Thank you. All right, final question for you both. If each of you had a magic wand, and could have three more years with Tim. And during those three years, you and him just collaborated on a single project? How would you spend those three years?

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I think the book that I don’t know if Did you ever talk with him, but his identity book, okay, I mean, at that, that’s the best book that he didn’t get to write that I really wish he had been able to write. I have a feeling. This goes all the way back to 2016. So at the one of the Oxford missions, or 2015, Oxford mission, I remember asking him about his famous Anglo Saxon warrior illustration, about how community we imagine that our identities come from within. But even in this era of expressive individualism, our identities are usually communal, and tribal. It talks about that I don’t have time to go through the whole thing. You can check it out in my book on on Tim. But he came up with that on the spot, because he recognized that we can’t answer most of the social questions today are political questions without talking about identity. Because it’s a it’s a massive issue that is totally assumed. But without proper investigation or recognition of its controlling power in our lives, you hear about identity politics, but somehow, so much of it is simply the fact that we don’t live very much now with the inherited identities of religion, authority, tradition, community, all of that. But identity is something that each one of us have to pursue, but it’s impossible. And actually, the internet in a lot of ways makes an identity more uniform, among other people, they imagine they’re doing their own thing, but they’re doing that as a group. And I really think that from what I understand from Tim, that he thought that we might be able to talk about identity in a way that shows the hopelessness of the world compared with the hopefulness of Christ around that issue of identity in a similar way to what he did, as you point out Chris and his preaching Christ in the postmodern World lecture, which is on idolatry. And he saw that in the 1980s, with all of these people in Wall Street and artists who came to New York to make something of themselves and they were crushed. Because that work and that success were idols, whether it would be art or making a lot of money or whatever. He came to New York to make it. But New York breaks a lot of people. So he was able to teach the old Augustinian, you know, Pauline, you know, teaching Jesus himself about idolatry, but in ways that were very current and fresh. So I wish Tim had had been able to write that book. I know he really wanted to. I wish I could collaborate with him on that. But it is one of the primary aspects that we’re trying to work on together with our 24 fellows for the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics, especially for teaching and preaching. But I think it’s safe to say that has implications for for all of life. So that’s what I would. That’s what I would love to work with him on.

Christopher Watkin
I, I thought quite a bit about this question. Previous to this meeting, and this is what I think I do. I would spend the first year just trying to learn how to pray, and how to lift people from Tim Keller, because I think those he did those, by God’s grace into his equipping exceptionally well.

Collin Hansen
Wasn’t it interesting? You pointed this out? This was such a surprise to me. I thought I’d find all these books that he read, getting ready for New York. And that’s exactly what he did not do you read Psalm, but it was just talking to people, just exactly what you’re finding in the sermons. Absolutely.

Christopher Watkin
And then that will be the whole first year just teach me how to pray, teach me how to love people. And then I’ll be hopefully the sort of person who can work on a project like this, in a more Christ exalting might not count at the moment. And then for the second, and third year, I guess, I’d want to explore Yeah, it may be that in the first year through lots of prayer, this, this idea goes out of the window and some outcomes instead. But as it as we stand at the moment, it would be how to communicate the unchanging, you know, the old old story, the one true gospel in ways that remain rigorously and deeply faithful to God’s word, and can be heard, again, by God’s grace alone, by people in late modern cultures. And in a sense, that’s merely a continuation of what he did so very well, for many years. But you know, as Colin was saying, earlier, culture moves on, you know, things change and what worked 10 years ago, and language that worked 10 years ago, seems for heavy, threadbare, and almost embarrassing nowadays. And so although the gospel never changes, the way that we seek to commend and contend for, it always needs to be in flux. And so I’d want to work with him and learn from him primarily, about how to do that for now, rather than for a little while again.

Collin Hansen
And that was where the reading came in talking to people and then reading I mean, that was through the end of his life. Still reading, still pushing, still asking those questions. That was an inspiration, but it’s also what gives you hope going forward, because I just look, he learned a lot from you, Chris. It was amazing. Like, we got to learn from him. But he learned a lot from you. He learned a lot from our colleagues, James Eglinton. I mean, he learned a lot and Grace Aton, too, he learned a lot from them. And that’s another thing just for older leaders in here is like we can we learn from historic writers we learned from contemporary writers we learned from younger people who feel like they don’t have much to offer in there. And so that’s just part of the many things that we’re we’re special in that we that we miss, but there’s no reason why we can’t carry them on.

Mike Graham
Well, we all miss him. We’re grateful for him for his life, legacy, and most importantly, how he pointed all of us to Jesus. When do you want to just close us in a word of prayer?

Collin Hansen
Let’s pray again? Yes. Your Father, we thank You for this for this day that you have made. We thank you for the opening of this conference. We pray, Lord, that our words that we that are spoken, heard and sung are honoring to you. We pray, Lord, that you would build relationships and connections including among those who are here, just sitting next to each other traveling together that they would that plans and visions and an encouragement would would be spawned there just as it was decades ago between Don Carson and Tim Keller. Lord, we know that, that your presence among us today brings us that comfort your unchanging gospel. We are not daunted by an unchanging world because we have a changing world because we have an unchanging word. And so help us to move forward God with that confidence throughout the rest of this conference. As we go home and our labors and our various callings around the world. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.