Tim Keller
Sunday 28th May 2023
“Do you not realise that a commander and a great man has fallen in Israel this day?”
2 Samuel 3:38 (NIV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Tim Keller
On Friday 19th May, Tim Keller passed away and went to be with the Lord, aged 72, after a struggle with pancreatic cancer. Having founded Redeemer Church in Manhattan, New York City in 1989 – a church that swelled to around 5000 under his leadership – he had been its pastor for almost thirty years before retiring. Most of us in the UK will know him from his books, sermons, podcasts and occasional visits to these shores.
He had an impact beyond the evangelical Christian world, so much so that The Washington Post featured a lengthy obituary by Emily Langer. In an interview for that obituary, Molly Worthen, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that Tim Keller “had a gift, as [CS Lewis] did, for … homing in on the core ideas of the Gospel and understanding the perspective of a skeptical reader, an atheist or a person who has been bruised by Christianity.”
Perhaps the finest, and best known, example of that gift can be found in his book, “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism“(2008). Indeed, if you want to know how to relate the truths of the gospel to our unbelieving and skeptical culture, there are few finer examples of how to do that in an intelligent and winsome way.
Reading that obituary, three features of Keller’s approach impress me. The first is his orthodox Christianity. When you read his books, you discover that Keller believes, for example, that the Bible is the word of God, the resurrection of Jesus was an historical event, Jesus is both fully God and fully man, hell is real, and sex is for marriage between one man and one woman. In other words, despite ministering in one of the most liberal and progressive cities in the world, he remained confident that the historical gospel is still the power of God to save men and women today.
At the same time, secondly, he managed to hold to this faith while relating it intelligently, warmly and persuasively to a modern generation. His writing and preaching are peppered with quotations from modern writers and thinkers, demonstrating that he had engaged with them, understood what they were saying, and was able to commend what was good while offering something better in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Here, Paul’s engagement with the philosophers of Athens in Acts 17 comes to mind.
And he did all this, thirdly, while refusing to be badged politically, which in the United States is no easy thing. So, “he regarded homosexuality as contrary to Scripture” and at the same “insisted that Christians commit themselves to racial equality,” making him an awkward fit in contemporary American politics, and to the frustration of both ‘red evangelicals’ and ‘blue evangelicals.’ He was culturally engaged, yet without becoming politically captive.
There is much more to learn from Tim Keller, and much more will be said about him in the days and years to come, but I feel that at least I want to learn from this combination of orthodox Christian faith, cultural engagement and political independence.
Finally, if I could recommend just one more of his books, I think it would be “The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith” (also 2008), an extended study of the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, in which he shows how the elder son is just as lost in his ‘religion’ as the younger son is lost in his ‘irreligion,’ and that what both of them need is the ‘prodigal’ love of the Father.
Lord, thank you for raising up Tim Keller, for giving him to us, and for taking him to yourself; grant that we may learn from him and that there may be others to follow in his steps. Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ,
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)