Living Wittily

Review: Timothy Keller. His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation

This isn't your usual biography. It is neither a straightforward life narrative, nor a 360 degree study of all that helps the reader fully understand Tim Keller the man. It is an uncritical narrative of an intellectual and spiritual journey, and I think it leaves important questions unasked. Instead it is a study of the influences that shaped the thought, theology and practice of Keller, from early education right through to the last years of his life. In that sense it is an odd but enlightening combination of intellectual biography and evolving spirituality. 

I enjoyed reading this book, and over the years have come to respect Keller, despite disagreeing with some of the positions he has championed. And that's as it should be in the arena of theologically contested views about doctrine, ethics and ecclesial practices. But what becomes clear in progressing through the book is that Keller was a man of quite intentional intellectual integrity. In his ministry and public speaking he combined his theological convictions with a ministry of preaching and apologetic conversations engaging the surrounding culture - first in a small church in Rothwell, a post-industrial town in Virginia, then later in New York as a church planter of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

Keller adopted a Reformed theological position from early days at Seminary and never departed from those 'doctrines of grace' as exemplified in such figures as Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, C H Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd Jones, John Stott and R C Sproul. At the same time he was a voracious student of social and cultural studies, seeking insights and a way of both understanding and communicating with postmodern culture still tied to many of the assumptions of modernity.

That makes this book a fascinating study of how one Christian pastor went about evangelism, apologetics and mission. He did so by listening to and learning from the best cultural critics (Robert Bellah, Terry Eagleton, Charles Taylor, James Hunter), and then addressing the issues and questions they posed from the standpoint of a Reformed theology with a strong and high view of Scripture, a conversionist theology, a covenant understanding of the church as a community of redeemed but still grace-dependent sinners, and each of these convictions intersecting at the living hub and centre which for Keller was Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

The book is in four parts. Part 1 covers the first 22 years from 1950-72, in which Hansen describes Keller's high school and University education, his involvement with Inter varsity Christian fellowship, and meeting Kathy who would become his wife. The impact of C S Lewis and R C Sproul are described in some detail, as complementary influences which shaped Keller's approach as evangelist, apologist, preacher and later Christian public intellectual.

Part 2 goes deeper into the spiritual evolution given impetus by his time at the Conservative Evangelical seminary, Gordon-Conwell. There his teachers exemplified rigorous thinking, and in Roger Nicole one who personified the importance of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

Keller's well-known opposition to women in church leadership positions is grounded in the influence of Elizabeth Elliot; a full paragraph quotation from an Elliot class lecture is as uncompromisingly complementarian as any other passage I know. (p.77) Just as significantly, the influence of Roger Nicole schooled Keller in Reformed theology and neo-Calvinism (Kuyper and Bavinck) and Richard Lovelace opened up the rich seams of spirituality under the odd but freighted word "Pneumodynamics; by which is meant the Christian life energised and fuelled by the work of the Holy Spirit in the formation and vitalising of the Christian soul.

Part 3 gives an often moving account of Keller's first pastorate, his feelings of inadequacy, the search for his own preaching and pastoral voice. He encountered Edmund P Clowney, who became mentor, exemplar and a source of some of Keller's missional strategies and ecclesial vision. When Keller went to Westminster Seminary to teach he was pushed deeper into study of Reformed theology, and forced to find ways to communicate that faith effectively and persuasively. Increasingly Keller believed the Church and the individual Christian are called to be moulded by the Gospel of Christ, to embody and communicate the love of God without ever ignoring the sin that tested that love to Calvary. 

Part 4 covers 1989-2017. In these years all the tributaries of his education, pastoral experience, reading and study, the formative relationships with mentors and teachers, all began to flow together into a work that planted a church which grew from 5 to 5000, and which became one of the most effective centres of Christian witness in Manhattan and wider New York culture. By preaching the Gospel, explaining to skeptics and 'urban professionals', conversing with those who had questions, listening to the concerns and questions and hurts of contemporary life, Keller sought to create a church which would demonstrate, share and live joyfully and obediently the wonders of grace in creative and faithful ways. This section in particular I think is an impressive account of how one particular pastor worked out the best ways of sharing the Gospel in the city God had called him to love. 

I enjoyed this book, and have learned from it. The writer weaves Keller's life experience, education, pastoral and preaching life, study and reading, into a narrative that is less about Tim Keller and more a case study of how God takes the specific identity and particular gifts of one man, and asks for an obedience just as specific and particular. Keller never felt that what he was doing was a template for others, though the underlying principles of 'pneumodynamics', Christ centred church, covenant community committed to (acts of) mercy and the trusted grace of God in Christ ,mediated by the Holy Spirit.

The wider world of Christians from many traditions shared the sadness felt when news broke of Tim Keller's death a few weeks ago. It is good that this book has been written, and he was content to have it published with his blessing. Reading it is to our blessing. You don't have to agree with all that someone says to recognise authentic faith seeking understanding, and that same faith seeking words and gestures of redemption for others. Holidays are coming - this would be a stimulating, at times provocative, read for pastors wondering what on earth they are about!  

Going to the Edge...

 

 

 

Walking to the edge of the wood,

 

looking across the shire,

 

standing beneath the low hum of the wires,

 

aware of our dependence on energy that comes from beyond us,

 

above us a sky getting ready for the coming thunder promised in the forecast,

 

it's hard to ignore our smallness,

 

our relative importance,

 

and harder still

 

to hope our human ingenuity can match the scale of the challenge

New Testament Theology: Reading As a Way of Life, and As a Way to Life

Philip Toynbee once commented that books were his royal way to God. This was late in life, in End of a Journey, the second volume of his Journal. The first volume, Part of a Journey, covers 1977-79, and is as honest and moving an account of spiritual search as I have read. In End of a Journey Toynbee knows he has a terminal illness and his spiritual search intensifies with deep reading in Julian of Norwich and other mystics. There is courage, openness and vulnerability 'in the face of life's great mysteries', as Toynbee reflects backwards on his life, and tries to understand its meaning, his own significance, and how best to face and navigate what is to come. I underlined that line of his, "Books are my royal road to God."

I am a kindred spirit, and recognised from quite early on in my own life, that books are an essential ingredient of my intellectual, emotional and imaginative health. By the time I had made a commitment to Christian faith, and soon after to a vocation as a Baptist minister, I too was finding that books are "a royal road to God." The right books at the right time open up avenues to theological understanding, identify and school our religious affections, and form and foster an all but sacramental relationship with words written to affirm, question, persuade, rebuke, or inspire, on this human journey from here to wherever. 

But this post is about one book bought yesterday in the Oxfam shop, and the train of thought it kicked off. As evident in the picture, the book is a nearly new copy on a subject that has been of constant interest to me since College days in the mid 1970's; New Testament Theology (NTT). Oh, first there was Bultmann's unsettling two volumes, which I was first compelled to read with a gulp of humility - Bultmann was usually dismissed by Evangelicals terrified by his unrelenting scepticism about the historicity of the Gospel documents, and hostile to Bultmann's infamour bogey word 'demythologising' - whether or not they had read him, or understood what Bultmann meant by it. But he was, and remains, unignorable.

Then came Hans Conzelmann's Outline of New Testament Theology, another tough read, though with scintillating passages that required re-reading and pointed to deeper realities, suggesting newer perspectives. Then, just as I was graduating out came W G Kummel's Theology of the New Testament. According to Its Major Witnesses. Jesus, Paul, and John. By then I was hooked and ever since have followed developments in NTT as a sub discipline in biblical studies. 

So when George Eldon Ladd published A Theology of the New Testament in 1975, with many other evangelicals I welcomed it and lapped it up. In revised form it remains in print and is still a standard in a field that in danger of being overpopulated, at times with volumes that are derivative, repetitive, and nothing like as exciting as some of those earlier books. 

Then came the major publication event when Paternoster started to issue the three volumes of The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (1975-78). These were sumptuously produced, edited by Colin Brown, widely and positively reviewed, and by many seen as a major alternative to Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. TDNT had come under serious critique from James Barr who questioned the basic methodology of 'word studies' which use semantic and lexical data to form (often erroneous) theological conclusions. NIDNTT was the first major reference theological dictionary to take on board Barr's critique, avoiding false equivalences between lexical data, linguistic usage and assumed theological concepts and conclusions. I still have those three volumes, monuments to past scholarship, much of the material still holding its own, but yes, now dated. The recent revision and expansion provides an improved resource for this generation - but I'm happy to hold on to these old friends.

I remember several conversations with Howard Marshall when he was writing his own New Testament Theology over 20 years ago. He too wrestled with how to deal with the unity of the New Testament message and the diversity of the writers and contexts out of which the New Testament documents came. By then we had Donald Guthrie's huge volume which worked on a synthesis of the NT writers and used a thematic structure akin to a systematic theology with slight adjustments.

The weakness of Guthrie's approach had already been exposed in another ground-breaking volume. J D G Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament had established beyond argument that such a synthesis flattened and muted the variations of context, content and occasion that gave each document its unique voice, emphasis and message. Indeed, out of Dunn's overarching thesis of unity in diversity, he edited a widely respected series of volumes covering the entire New Testament, titled Theology of the New Testament; but each volume had its own title, as for example, The Theology of Matthew, or Romans, or again, Revelation. This series too is being entirely replaced by a new series as scholarship takes new turns, and new approaches and disciplines require new wineskins.  

In the intervening 30 and more years, several other major contributions have been made, including that of Udo Schnelle, yes, he whose book I gladly brought home yesterday. Schnelle fully acknowledges the challenge of listening to the diversity of New Testament voices, while also listening carefully for the cantus firmus which holds them together in a single canonical composition. The result is a brilliant contribution to our understanding of the New Testament as symphony, or better a choral symphony, a complete work made up of different pieces, which is different from all the pieces, and performed by a diversity of voices. I read some of Schnelle a while ago (using a library copy) - I look forward to diving in again, and enjoying some time at the deeper end of NT scholarship.   

What does blessing look like?

 

 

 

"...like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither—

whatever they do prospers."

(Psalm 1.3)

 

This verse gently beeps in the background when I turn the corner, across the bridge and on to this path. Psalm 1 is a Beatitude, both a promise of blessing and a description of what blessing looks like. It looks like this!

 

"When through the woods and forest glades I wander..."

Looking down at a chorus of wood anemones, looking forward and seeing the wood and the trees, listening to any amount of small birds warning each other about unwelcome wandering humans.

 

"When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,

and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees..."  

 

I've always thought that word "sweetly" tastes like saccharine! In any case, it shows little understanding of why birds sing, call, chirp, warble, and tweet.

 

Quite often they are signalling our intrusion.

 

But I guess it doesn't work so well if the line is, "And hear the birds complaining in the trees."

 

They're often hard to see, harder to photograph, but yes, their presence is one of life's delights. In this wood we know there are tree creepers, long tailed tits, blue and great tits, gold crests, and the occasional raucous robin. One or two of these we glimpsed while gently trespassing without the residents' permission.

 

Going back to that hymn, "How Great Thou Art", the verse in question plays an important part by including in Christian experience the enjoyment of the creation. At a time when our planet, the natural world around us, is being devastated and ruined by human economic activity, a theological understanding of what is going on is part of the Church's call to be faithful to God in this, our time.

 

Forests with birds, mountains with fauna and flora, seas capable of sustaining life, land and soil being preserved fertile without exhaustion - these too are part of the Christian liturgy, either as cause for thanksgiving, or as cause for repe tance for the waste and destruction of an irreplaceable treasure, our home.

 

The verse about wandering in forest glades and lofty mountain grandeur is natural theology as doxology: 

"Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee,

  How great Thou Art..." 

 

Even more interesting, the hymn has become one of the two or three most popular hymns at Christian funerals. In the face of death, amongst the comforting words that matter, so many of us choose to sing these that celebrate forest birds singing and mountains soaring. Sometimes natural theology, a theology of nature, provides the life-saving sense that life is gift and always precious.