Tim Keller on the Culture Wars and Salvation

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. I wanted to say before we get to the main topic that the semester is ending and you have an opportunity now if you want to get a good theology education to start the new year right, hit the ground running with a theology education from Russell Fuller's Theology Classroom.

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I mean, that may not be something I'll do forever. So check that out at worldviewconversation .com

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forward slash shop. Now to get into the topic today, I want to follow up on yesterday's video.

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Yesterday's video was interesting because it got a lot of views very quickly. I was not expecting that.

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Also, interestingly, YouTube flagged it, which I thought was,

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I was trying to think why would, and I think it has something to do with me talking about the probably the term sin and then using that term and coupling that term with a sexual indiscretion, shall we say, and a certain type of indiscretion that goes on very commonly today and is promoted specifically in the

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Obergefell decision. And I'm wondering if that's what it has to do with. I don't know. It's weird. YouTube is cracking down a lot more.

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And I've noticed, by the way, Facebook also shadow banning stuff. American Monument, Last Stand Studios, American Monument.

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I put it out there. When did we put it out there? That was, I don't know, a month and a half ago.

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And if you post something about it on Facebook, you'll get traction.

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If you post the link, you don't get traction. People don't see it. And I actually got an interesting phone call from one of the people interviewed, a senator from Idaho or a congressman.

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It was actually in the state house. It's a representative. It was in the state representative in Idaho. And he said,

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I actually edited a clip where I was in that documentary and I posted it on my page.

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And if you Google my name, it's the number one thing that comes up, except when you click on it, it says video not available.

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And he's like, is that doing it for you? And I said, yeah, it is. And he just, he was like, well, what do we do about this? Is there something maybe, how do we crack down on big tech or can we, or what do we do?

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And so this is an open question that a lot of people are trying to grapple with right now. And there's a changing landscape online that we're trying to figure out.

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I was just actually at a deacon's meeting last night at my church. And that was brought up. Do we stream on YouTube still?

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Where, where do we go? YouTube's already taken down videos of just the pastor preaching.

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And so this is a problem. And this is something that I'm well aware of. Many of you are watching on YouTube, but I know that those days may be numbered, which is why

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I posted on rumble, which is why I posted on Facebook as well. I prefer if people are going to watch it. I kind of prefer they watch it on YouTube if they can, just because for many of the videos

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I'm able to monetize it, but, but that, that may be coming to a, an end real quick.

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And I am not, I have no delusion about that. I really think that we are on borrowed time at this point.

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Now on that sad note, I wasn't expecting to say that. Let's, let's talk about yesterday though.

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Yesterday I put out a video on Tim Keller and called what have Tim Keller rot. And I just talked about a paragraph, a few paragraphs, like three paragraphs from a book of his called the prodigal

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God from 2008. And I said, look in this book, when no one that I know of was accusing Keller of being a social justice advocate, which

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I think he already was, but people, he wasn't as overt about it. Look, the seeds of that were already kind of here.

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And I thought so many of the errors, even not just that one, but others that Tim Keller advocates, you can see what seems to be the motivation in these three paragraphs.

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And so people commented on it. A lot of people watched it. I was surprised how many did, but some expressed some hope that Tim Keller, since he has a terminal disease, for those who don't know, it's very sad.

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We need to pray for him. But some expressed a hope that he would repent before he perished and that he died and that he would not go to a place of torment, that he wouldn't go to hell.

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He would go to heaven. And this shocked some people. Other people were shocked by this comment that a few people made.

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And so I want to talk about that a little bit, why someone might make that comment. And I'll give you a little insight into how

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I navigate something like this. I want to be careful.

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I want to give the benefit of the doubt as much as I possibly can. That's been hopefully my mode of operation.

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Some people don't think I do that. I'm a slanderer, liar, or whatever. Usually people that are on the other end of something that I've, or their friends are on the other end of maybe a video

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I've made exposing something. But my intention is really to be as much as I possibly can, scholarly, generous, but I don't, this is one thing

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I don't do. I don't read charitably. I know I've even heard a lot of conservatives say you got to read charitably.

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I don't read charitably. I try to read accurately. So I do want to give the benefit of the doubt, but oftentimes there's no benefit of the doubt to be given where our responsibility is to try to read something grammatical, historical, hermeneutic when it comes to scripture.

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I apply the same thing for all communication. I don't think we just bend rules because of someone's position or because it might make them look bad or even look good.

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I think we really just need to try to as accurately as we possibly can understand what someone's saying.

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And if we get it wrong, then, and which has happened, there was a time even this year that I had made a video and someone reached out to me and said,

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Hey, you've got something wrong. And I made it to retraction. I even edited the video. I took the, it was a, it was a very small thing.

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In my mind, it was a little bit inconsequential, but for integrity, I said, no, I'm gonna take that out because I don't want to put inaccurate things out there or things

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I can't stand behind. Now, if you talk as much as I do, that's, you're going to eventually, you're going to say something you probably you regret.

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That's just the nature of it. But I try to be as careful as I possibly can. So when

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I approach something like this, and I'm looking at the full canon of Keller, you know, everything

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Tim Keller has written, and he's written some good things, and he's written some bad things. I, I want to have as much grace as I can, but I want to read it as accurately as I can.

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And there are some very troubling things Tim Keller has said. In fact, I would put Keller in the category.

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Not everyone's going to agree with me on this, but I would put Tim Keller in the category of false teacher, I think. And the reason

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I would, isn't because, I don't think he's necessarily a Joel Osteen. In fact, he's even more subversive in some ways.

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Joel Osteen's so overt. I think what, with Tim Keller, it's that he has promoted false teaching, certain ones, for such a long period of time.

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And there has been corrections made, like in the book, Engaging Keller, that he has to be aware of in some ways.

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I mean, he's even interacted with me when I used to be on Twitter. He's aware of the critiques that have been made in general about his theology, but he has, he's never retracted any of that.

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And if I'm wrong on that, please send his retractions. I try to keep abreast of everything that's happening.

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I've never seen retractions to some of his views on really what amounts to subjectivity, his social justice views, his, even

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I would say, and I'll show you some of these today, but the way that he's obscured the gospel sometimes, soft peddling, downplaying of hell and of sin.

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I'm trying to think what else? I know there's more stuff there, but some of these things, he's just, there doesn't seem to be a conviction there.

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And so if someone's promoting something that's false teaching, and by false teaching, I mean, if it's something that is actually related to the core teachings of Christianity, it affects them directly in some way.

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And they don't repent of that. That's something that they continue to do. Then there's a word for that.

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And that would be false teacher. And I don't think that every false teacher is the same.

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I don't even think we see that in scripture that every single, they're the same in a certain sense, they're promoting false teaching, but it's not like every false teaching is the same or that they're all given over to the same degree.

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I don't, I'm going to say perfectly honest with you. I don't know where Tim Keller is going to go. And I don't,

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I don't think that's something for me to speculate on.

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And it's not even really something that I think is an interesting or important or beneficial thing to talk about from our limited view.

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What would be, I think, more appropriate to talk about is his teaching, whether he's promoted false things, and then to pray for God's mercy.

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My prayer is that he is going to heaven, that he's made some grave errors, but I also pray that of the things he said that had been wrong, that he realizes and he repents and he retracts before before he leaves this earth, that will certainly have a very beneficial effect on those he's influenced.

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I would think some of them, at least. So I know for some that's too harsh. I know for others, that's not harsh enough.

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That's, that's where I'm, that's where I see this though. Okay. And, and so I, I didn't,

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I'm not creating this podcast just to get that across, but I did, because people were discussing this, I did want to weigh in on, on how

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I, I navigate that. And I'll show you the, why some people are saying they, they don't think he's going to heaven, that kind of thing.

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I'll, I'll, I'll show you a little bit of that in this podcast today. Also want to follow up with some other comments that were made to, to defend

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Keller from, I think some very well -meaning and well, well -reasoned people, to be honest with you. And I think it merits a bit of a response.

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And so we're going to get into that today a little bit. We're going to get into Tim Keller and his teaching and some of it, at least.

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Again, if you want to know more about Tim Keller biographically, get Social Justice Goes to Church, the

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New Left and Modern American Evangelicalism. I wrote that and included a whole section on Tim Keller at the end, which

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I think will help many understand him, especially his political leanings and why he is the way he is.

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But let us start here. So these are some of the comments on yesterday's video.

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What hath Tim Keller wrought? So someone said, I'm not a Tim Keller apologist, and I don't agree with everything he says, but there is a way to read the quote in which it is absolutely true and consistent with the gospel.

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And he sorely needed correction to the church. So for those who don't know, there was a quote from Tim Keller, where he essentially says, we got to attract, we

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I'm summarizing, we need to attract the worldly people, people from the world and the religious people, the

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Bible, believing people who fight the culture wars, they, they should not be attracted, they should be repelled, basically, from our churches.

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And if we don't do that, that we're, you know, if that's not happening, then we're doing something wrong. So he says, Hey, there's a good way to read this quote, if that quote is read with moralistic churches in mind, which are devoid of the gospel of grace, and every sermon is all law without the gospel, with motives that and produce.

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Let's see with mo motivates, I think it's which motivates, I think is what meant to say, which motivates and produces obedience, who draw moralistic, self -righteous people, and repel those who see their sin, but are crushed by the weight of the law, because they have not heard the proclamation of the gospel, then that is a spot on application of the story of the prodigal son churches are so often like the self -righteous older brother who does not embrace or extend the gospel.

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This calls us to be like the father and points us to proclaim the gospel is the only thing that will truly draw people to Christ. I do not sense here any idea that it's bad to affirm biblical morality or to be a seeker sensitive at the expense of biblical morality.

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The point seems to be that morality is not the meritorious ground for our standing with God. Justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, is the only ground for our standing before God.

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That's what I hear here. Also, as a side note, so -called is not a comment on the truthfulness of a term, but just a way of saying that it is what is it is called, probably no need to bristle at it.

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So let me, for those who don't know, Keller refers to the culture wars as the so -called culture wars, and I kind of made a deal about that.

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I'm like, he's delegitimizing the culture wars. He doesn't agree that that's even maybe a legitimate term or a way of thinking about what's happening in the culture, and it's a kind of a minimization.

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It's kind of like trivializing it to some extent, and he's like, you can't bristle over that.

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So I want to explain myself a little more because I think this is actually a very well -reasoned comment, and what he's saying is true as far as there are what we would consider to be more politically conservative churches, traditional churches that are totally legalistic.

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I know that. Believe me, I know that more than maybe some realize, and that they are people who, when they hear the true gospel of grace, that's not something that they're interested in.

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They're interested in legalism. They're interested in the law, and that this is because prodigal gods have brought the prodigal son, that this is an application of the prodigal son.

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So he has this whole thing. Older brothers are like this. Younger brothers are like this. Tim Keller just creates these kind of archetypes out of the story of the prodigal son, the younger and the older, and then he assigns modern categories to them.

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So the younger son is the son that leaves home and goes to the city and hangs out with friends and doesn't see his identity in the family as much anymore, and kind of the rabble rouser, right?

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And then the older one's the responsible one who stays near mom and dad and fights for morality, fights the culture wars,

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Bible believing, right? Religious person. And of course, in the story of the prodigal son, those would be the

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Pharisees. So he's saying these are the Pharisees. But he does this, and so I'll just read my response to this comment.

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Appreciate the comment, brother. I think I have said something similar not all that long ago.

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Unfortunately, we have the benefit of seeing how Keller has repeatedly gone after Christians who attempt to apply their

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Christian principles in the public realm as somehow lacking the right priority and attempting to control society.

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I did a video on this when Keller came out against Christian nationalism by accusing the religious right of trying to make money by attacking homosexuals and therefore ruining their witness.

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What Keller has consistently done and what he does in this particular section of Prodigal God is assign the role of Pharisee to political conservatives without any nuance or qualification.

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Keller believes the culture wars are wrongheaded and strategically not how Christians should be engaging. The immediate context of the quote is

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Keller describing how older brothers are the Bible believing people who fight the culture wars against secularization.

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Perhaps I'll do an episode on the introduction he wrote for In Search of the Common Good, which by the way is this episode

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I'm doing that today, where he goes after the religious right for their incomplete way of handling secularization by, in his mind, arbitrarily targeting certain issues to the exclusion of stuff like racial justice.

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He sees culture wars as a bad term because he doesn't agree with either side and does not want to put the politically conservative

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Christians in the position of representing Christianity or the Christian faith. So that's my response to that.

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I think if you study Keller over time, which is, I said that I think in the video,

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I said, look, this is something that at the time I only think we would have picked up on it, but now realizing kind of where Keller's ended up and all the other things he's written,

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I think now we're looking at this and we're thinking, oh my goodness, this explains so much of what's happened.

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And so, yeah, hindsight's 20 -20. And I think, you know,

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I'm not saying that you couldn't come up with the interpretation that I have of Keller's quotes with, you know, if you didn't know that stuff, you could still figure it out,

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I think, but you wouldn't have noticed it. We wouldn't have been looking for it. And I think that's part of the thing that made me, when

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I saw the quote from Keller, basically saying that churches need to appeal to the world, and I'm summarizing here, but the younger brothers, right?

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And not to the older brothers, the so -called Pharisees who are fighting the culture wars and against secularization.

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I think it just really just, it struck a nerve with me. It clicked. I was like, this is it.

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This is what makes him want to soft pedal so many of the things the world loves and then broaden

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Christian categories to include things the world loves, to try to just make it more palatable. So we are going to,

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I'm going to extend out on this. I'm going to show you more information that I think will be beneficial if you are trying to understand

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Tim Keller, which I know some people are. Tim Keller on the culture wars in salvation.

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We're going to go just over a few quotes here. Let's start with this one. This is a fairly recent quote.

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I've talked about this on the podcast, but it's been a while. Tim Keller said on March 3rd, at least that's when it was aired 2021.

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So this year for the last 20 years, the Christian right though, I usually would agree with their positions.

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I'm pro -life. I still don't think that same -sex marriage is a good idea for the country or people. So I would technically be agreeing with them, but you know how they raise their money for 20 years, they sent out letters talking about how you've got to send us money because the gay people are going to try to come and take your children away because they're evil.

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And because the Democrats and the left are going to destroy your religious liberty. They just said awful things and vilified people.

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Now I've said before, look, what does the Bible say about homosexuality? You want to talk about vilifying?

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I mean, this is a broad brush statement and there's some accuracy to this.

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I mean, I think it was after he said this, that whole video came from that San Francisco choir where they said, we're coming for your children, right?

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There is a sense in which they want to corrupt kids and it's not all of them, but it's, there's an agenda though. And that's the point.

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And that's how the flyer she's talking about. That's how they were usually phrased. It was the same or the homosexual agenda.

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It's one of the reasons why so many gay activists now just don't want to forgive evangelicals because when they had a little more money in the eighties and nineties, that's how they raised their money.

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That's how they got people out. And weirdly enough, that's not the Christian way at all. So Keller is slandering in my opinion. And I'm not saying none of that happened because maybe you can whip out an example somewhere, but that's not fundamentally what characterized the religious right.

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They didn't attack people individually as that person, because they are actively engaged in this lifestyle is coming for your children.

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It was a broader thing. It was an agenda that was coming for your children. And that's been proven true. It was, it was not in my opinion, from what

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I've seen at least, and I would have, I would think that my parents were in some ways part of some of this.

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It was to some extent, I mean, we weren't like in the center of the eye, but we were at least, you know, we wanted to be involved with the state government and with trying to be salt and light.

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I just remember that as a kid going up to the state Capitol and you know, rallying for some of these things that did happen on like maybe two or three occasions.

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So, but we did get publications. We did get stuff in the mail, just my dad was a pastor. So we got a lot of stuff that even unsolicited stuff.

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And so I, I saw a lot of this kind of material and it didn't go past anything. The Bible said it wasn't as you could say absolute is what the

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Bible said. But Tim Keller's going after it. And he said, that's not the Christian way at all. So what is the

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Christian way? He says, well, the Christian way is the way up is down. The way to rule is to serve. This is how Jesus did it. The way to get happy is to not think about your own happiness, but the happiness of others, the way to get any influence is to empty yourself and be a servant.

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That's the way Jesus did it. And they're not doing that. They're actually using the

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Nietzschean way, which is funny to me. I doubt any of these people would be very familiar with Nietzsche, but that's what they're doing.

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And I, he says, and I think what, and I'm not saying that Nietzsche couldn't have an effect, you know, cause you know, a lot of people who are following Marx haven't read

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Marx, but what I'm saying is like, you know, Nietzsche is a little more obscure here and a little bit, this is a philosophical thing that most of these people are just, they're reading their

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Bible and they're like, Hey, it says it's bad. I see what's happening to my kids and I want to stop it. And Tim Keller's like, well, they're, they're taking the

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Nietzsche way. And I think what that did was by, uh, by for a long time, just keeping evangelicals frothing at the mouth about how everything is going so bad and making everybody so angry, by the way, things are getting bad for evangelicals.

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It's very possible. I am not in denial about the fact that 10 years from now, if you have evangelical convictions about sex and gender, you may not be able to work for a major university or for the government or for a big corporation.

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And it's not that Christians haven't faced that other places in the past. We shouldn't be cry babies.

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Nevertheless, having said all that, yeah, we nurtured this and Christian nationalists use that. And therefore we brought it on ourselves.

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So yeah, you know, if you're getting fired, persecuted for your faith, it's your fault because you were part of a movement that apparently vilified people unjustifiably and didn't do it the

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Christian way. You did it the Nietzschean way, which I, I'd be really curious to see that flow chart from Nietzsche, like Nietzsche, Nietzsche affected who, who affected whom, who affected whom, who affected you.

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I mean, we can do that with marks easily, you know, cause they, okay. Mark's affected Gramsci who affected, you know,

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Frankfurt school, who affected critical theorists of critical or critical race theorists of today.

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Who's affected Jamar Tisby who's, I mean, we can create all these flow charts. I don't know how he does that with Nietzsche, but this is a smear.

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And Keller did this this year, the made this accusation. This is the same thing though.

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He did. This is my point. This is 2021. Go back to 2008. All right.

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And Keller saying the same kind of thing. He's categorizing politically conservative

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Christians who want to get involved in the culture war to fight for morality in the public square.

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As these people are a Pharisees, they're the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

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They're the Pharisees. And, and so that's, that's, it's things like this that Keller has said that made me like a light bulb go on when

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I thought about 2008 and I thought it's been there the whole time. Oh my goodness. So let me see if I can get to the next slide here.

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I want to show you this. Tim Keller, a few tweets for you from the last 2019, 2020.

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So fairly recently Keller said, when you come to the Bible, you need to shake your mind free from human political categories of liberal conservative.

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The Bible does not fit them. And you should not be trying to read the Bible through those kinds of glasses. This is the thing he does all the time.

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Right. And this is, I think he's the one that's really made this popular in evangelicalism.

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Now, beforehand, there were people doing it. You had your Jim Wallaces and your Ron Siders and all the people I write about in social justice goes to church, but you're

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Richard Mouse. Some of these people very much affected Tim Keller and Tim Keller, I think made their thinking way more popular that the

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Bible is just kind of where Christianity is this. It transcends these political categories.

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It's a different thing. And that, you know, you're not really participating in those political categories or it's some kind of third way between them that Christianity is so that you're not really either side.

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And he takes pride in this in places where he's very proud of the fact that he's attacked by both sides or something like that.

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Looking for a way, he says, through this current culture wars debate, I wrote the forward to Jake's new book that came out two days ago, and I see it as one of the best new books on the subject.

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So the book is In Search of the Common Good, Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World. So one of the comments on YouTube I just read was saying, you know,

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John, I don't, when he talks about the culture wars, he talks about these, these older brothers, these

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Pharisees, you know, that they want to fight the culture wars. That's, you know, you're reading it possibly in a way that's more, less than charitable.

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You know, it doesn't have to mean the negative thing you're making it mean. And I want to point out what I think, what

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Tim Keller actually believes about the culture war. So we're going to get to this. One little point though.

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He said this in 2020, Christians should look at the energized and emboldened white nationalism movement and its fascist slogans and condemn it, full stop.

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So I find this interesting. Now think about this with me for a moment. Bible doesn't have the human political categories.

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You got to shake your mind free from human political categories, right? Bible doesn't fit them.

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You shouldn't be trying to read the Bible through glasses of liberal conservative, but Christians should also be emboldened and energized against white nationalism and its fascist slogans and condemn it full stop.

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There are political categorizations that Keller uses and thinks Christians should have absolutely no part in, right?

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So there, there is, there are exceptions here. There are what Keller, Keller would say there, there is a, something to be said for a

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Christian political position. It does exist. And it is completely diametrically opposed to some things like white nationalism, right?

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That's evil in Keller's mind. So the question

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I have is why can't you say that about the democratic party platform? Let's, you want to compare the death, the amount of deaths in the

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United States, the last hundred years, Democrat party versus white nationalists, or what, how do you mean, what party would that be?

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Neo -Nazi party? I mean, run the numbers. No contest. Democratic party believes in killing babies.

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It's in their party platform. Why in the world would Tim Keller not be able to say Christians should look at the energized and emboldened democratic party and its communist at this point influence and condemn it full stop or its murderous tendency and condemn it full stop.

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Why not? You have stealing, you have murder, you have lying now, you have a whole host of problems in their, their party platform and the way that their party members operate.

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And he can't say that about them. That's an interesting thing to me. And why, what would motivate, this is the question you have to ask yourself.

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What would motivate someone to be able to condemn the one thing that doesn't cost you anything? Because there's like three people who probably fit this.

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I mean, there's not many in the United States. Why would he be able to condemn that with such, you know, bravery, but when it comes to the

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Democrat party, which he would have more influence in, he doesn't condemn it. Now, one thing that has been proven is

29:32

Tim Keller. And he's, he's even commented on this on Twitter. He is a member of the Democrat party. So he's pro -life, but he's a member of the

29:38

Democrat party. So I'm just saying, I'm just saying. So let's look at this in search of the common good intro, which are the four word that Tim Keller wrote.

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And I don't know if I want to read this whole thing because we do have a lot of stuff to get to here, but we'll start here.

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I have been an ordained minister for nearly 45 years. When I entered the ministry, most of the divisions in the church seem to be doctrinal.

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There were controversies about the charismatic gifts and Pentecostalism, about the end times and the second coming, about predestination and free will, about the meaning of baptism in the

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Lord's supper. I entered a Presbyterian denomination in which there was a high degree of consensus on those issues.

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Yet today, my church, like so many others, is sharply divided, despite the fact that its ministers can agree on a very long and detailed doctrinal statement, the

30:25

Westminster standards. So why all the conflict? It is not as much over doctrine as over what our relationship to the culture should be, which by the way, that's going to flow from doctrine.

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But anyway, and as I look around, I see the same division rolling, roiling Christian denominations and organizations everywhere.

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Keller says, when my adult lifetime began, our society was one where most people felt some social pressure to attend church.

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It was also one in which much historic Christian morality was assumed, respected, or at least understood. All that has changed.

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Today, as younger Christian adults live out their lives at work, in college classrooms, in dorm rooms, in diversity training sessions, at the office, online, or simply consuming the latest television series, they realize that they are considered to be extremists.

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Not only is mainstream culture moving farther away from Christian beliefs, but it also seems to be weakening and fragmenting.

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So what he's talking about right now is secularization. Secularization is having an impact. And this is the thing he talked about in 2008, that, you know, the people trying to oppose it in the culture wars, those were the

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Pharisees. Those were, those were kind of the villains of the story. But now he's, he's saying that, okay, the secularization is happening.

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People are willing to vote for candidates, both right and left, that even 10 years ago would have been considered too extreme.

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We have resurgent socialism. And let me ask you this. Come on. Really? On the right? I mean,

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I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't get hung up on that. But the Overton window is pushed so far left. I mean, Donald Trump could have probably run for the

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Democratic Party in the early 90s. I really think he probably could have. Late 80s, early 90s.

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Anyway, we have resurgent socialism, as well as blood and soil populism. U .S. life expectancy has dropped three years in a row, an unprecedented phenomenon outside of wartime.

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There is agreement that loneliness and isolation, suicide and addiction are growing alarmingly as community and communities break down.

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In this new situation, many of the older Christian models of cultural engagement or political theology seem obsolete.

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One was pietism. So he knocks pietism, says he can't do pietism. And let's see.

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Okay, so let me skip ahead. He says, what if your culture comes to define your soul winning as a politically?

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Let's see. Am I getting this right? Your soul winning as a politically illegitimate act.

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Here we go. I put these in the wrong order. Okay, so they see your soul winning as a politically illegitimate act. How do you avoid politics then?

32:50

Another Christian approach was that of the religious right. And this is where I think we get further insight into what

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Tim Keller thinks about the culture wars. It focused on a number of policy issues tied to traditional

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Christian doctrines about how people should live, though it singled out only some matters of abortion, marriage and religious freedom.

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It never spent time thinking out the implications of Christian teaching on matters of race, economics or justice.

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Now this isn't really true, I don't think. He's accusing the religious right of, hey, these people, basically they should have been sages,

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I guess, sitting under a lotus tree thinking about these other matters and getting their theology right about race, economics and justice.

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The reality is that the religious right was a populist movement. It was a groundswell populist movement that arose in reaction to some things that took place that were very detrimental in society.

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That was really the purpose of it more than anything else. And that's not a wrong thing.

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Some people say that's so wrong, so wrong to be known for what you're against.

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No, actually there are four certain things. There are four babies living, right? There are four marriage. There are four things, which is why they're against those who are trying to tinker with those things.

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And so there's a tendency in Keller and a lot of neo -Cyperian kind of people

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I've noticed, there's just a tendency that you have to have this fully fleshed out kind of worldview that answers all the questions in order to be able to, quote unquote, engage culture.

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And that's not really the case. We live in circumstances, we live in certain times and certain times call for certain things.

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And these were the pressing issues of the last couple decades that motivated the religious right.

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These were the issues that really just came to the forefront. I mean, look, the civil rights movement had pretty much ended by the time the religious right got going.

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You know, so it's, this is one thing that you need to sort of notice when you're examining social justice teachers is they do have this tendency to want, this is ideology, they want the key to everything.

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All the questions need to be answered by the key. You need to have a fully fleshed out understanding of all to be able to engage at all.

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And I just don't, see, this is where populists are like, nah, no, not everyone's going to have that.

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And circumstance is going to very much dictate kind of where the priorities lie at a certain point in time.

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If they're murdering babies, you're going to be spending probably your time trying to save babies, right?

35:39

Okay. Then it sought through electoral politics to put people into power and who promoted those chosen policies. There was great optimism and hope for this approach beginning in the mid 1970s and last almost 30 years, but both in the arena of law and of public opinion, we have seen an overwhelmingly wave of indifference or antipathy to historic

35:56

Christian understanding of sex. I just lost it. Here we go. Sex, gender, and marriage. This tied to the now steep drop in religious affiliation and church attendance.

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At least 66 % of all Christian churches are now in decline. Spells a shrinking voter base for the religious right.

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So he's saying it failed. Now you, we can say that in some ways, you know, yeah, it's fizzled out.

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I wouldn't say failed, it fizzled out. It did accomplish some of the things it was supposed to. Yeah. Abortion wasn't

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I know, but it certainly did undermine it in many states. And we're actually right now, a lot of the victories or the pressure that has been brought to bear currently on the

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Supreme Court is a result of all those years of activism from people in the religious right in many ways.

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So younger Christians have turned away from these approaches led by those of my generation and are looking elsewhere. One option has been a kind of new monasticism that rightly promotes a much stronger and thicker

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Christian community, but also largely gives up any hope of influencing the civic order. Other approaches, however, run the risk of getting caught up in the broader political polarization and becoming mere tools of it.

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Just one part of a left or right political coalition. So I'm going to get into this more.

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I just had a thought though. I just, for those who are very ardently pro -life,

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I do agree that the religious right as a movement could have done a waste.

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But it certainly, I think if they would have focused more on things like nullification, interposition, really taking it on the state level, fighting very hard to say, we will not have abortion in this state.

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I think there could have been more gains. I think because it was so focused often on a national level, that was a big, big problem.

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So I just wanted to just mention that, but that's not really Keller's critique. Keller's critique is, hey, they're not worried about racism and people that can't pay for their health care and that kind of thing, police violence.

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Okay. For example, we may see the development of both blue evangelicalism and red evangelicalism online.

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So this is the looming threat that Keller's talking about, blue evangelicalism, red evangelicalism. The former talks about racial and economic justice, but is quiet about the biblical teaching on subjects as abortion, sexuality, and gender.

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The latter condemned sexual immorality and secularism in the strongest terms, but grows silent when its political allies fan the flames of racial resentment toward immigrants.

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Okay. So this is the left -right dichotomy Tim Keller promotes constantly, that both sides are incomplete.

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They're both lacking. They're both not biblical. They only have a part of it. But, you know, if you're really going to be a true consistent

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Christian, you'll be like Tim Keller, and you'll care about all those things. And this is why I think he says the so -called culture wars, that, you know, there's so -called culture wars, because there's, it's not like there's two sides and one's good, one's evil, or one's, it's just not that simple in Keller's mind.

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You have some good on the left. You have some good on the right. You have some bad on the left. You have some bad on the right. And so it's, it's like the culture,

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I do believe, that's why I said when he says the so -called culture wars, there's a reason he put so -called there.

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He, he doesn't see it that way, that these are the way that the religious right would have seen it.

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People in that. He doesn't see that there's good guys and bad guys, right?

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He sees that there's, there's so much to learn from everyone. When the church in the name of political power,

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I should say everyone except white nationalists, right? They have to be utterly condemned full stop, according to Keller. When the church in the name of political power allies and aligns too much with the current secular left or right, it is sapped of both spiritual power and credibility with non -believers.

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So he's accusing Christians then on the, because remember the context, we just went from the religious right to,

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Hey, now we're talking about the blue evangelicalism and red evangelicalism.

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And these are secular distinctions, apparently categories. These are secular categories and churches.

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Now Christians line up with them. And that's, that's the wrong part is it's the secularism.

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It's that's preventing them from seeing the full picture. If they just believe the Bible, they could be on the BLM train and at the same time promote biblical sexuality.

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Theologically, both political polls are suspect because one makes an idol out of individual freedom and the other makes an idol out of race and nation.

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Now this is just, this is the TGC thing. This is what gospel coalition does all the time. You're making an idol out of marriage.

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You're making an idol out of the family. You're making an idol out of this and that and the other thing. And it's how they are able to broaden things that God doesn't say are sin and that they can call them sin or say they're attached to sin and make a moral equivalency.

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Right. Because the stuff the left promotes like 90 % of the time, it's just sin. It's just like they want to steal. They want to lie.

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They want to murder and they want a profane marriage. And it's like, how do you justify that?

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Well, the best thing to do if you want to feel a sense of moderation is you got to go to the right and say, well, they're making an idol out of race and nation.

41:08

Now who's doing that? Really? Who's doing that on the right? Making an idol. They worship it.

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They just worship race and nation. I mean, what some group that hardly anyone's heard of out there somewhere.

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I mean, idol's a very strong term and this is the kind of thing they just throw this around there.

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Keller throws it out there just as if like, oh, everyone knows that's what's going on. Doesn't really argue for it.

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In both something created and earthly is deified. Extreme progressivism.

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So I guess that was like the normal. Was that normal like conservatism normal right wing is to make an idol out of race and nation.

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That's just the normal status quo, I guess. But extreme progressivism detaches individuals from community and history and any concept of truth, but the nationalism and racism that might replace it are no answer to it.

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So this is someone who's reading probably a lot of New York times. If you are looking for a way forward,

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I can think of no better starting point than this book. And so he just goes on and compliments the book.

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This is why I just want to show you this. This is why when I saw that quote from Keller in the prodigal

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God in 2008, and he's talking about the so -called culture wars and getting down on the older brother saying he's the

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Pharisee. He's the one fighting culture wars. He's the Bible believing person. He's against secularism.

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This is why, because I've read this stuff that I can go back and I'm like, this is what he's talking about. He was talking about it back then.

42:40

It's just no one, hardly anyone caught it. But now it's so clear. Some people caught it.

42:47

Now I want to switch gears here because I think we've beaten that dead horse. Tim Keller is on the progressive side in the way he frames things.

42:57

Tim Keller tends to soft pedal things that are evil or at least he creates a moral equivalency between evil things and then things that aren't necessarily evil, but he creates this category of idolatry to make them evil.

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And it's been a tactic that's worked. It's worked so well, unbelievably well, this tactic.

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And he's been doing it for a long time. It's been decades, I guess, at least of doing this and it's become popular.

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Other preachers have said the same thing. And it's been, honestly, it's been a catastrophe in the church. The church, there is hardly any conscience left in the

43:38

United States. It used to be the region of the United States that had somewhat of a conscience would have been the

43:44

Christians, specifically the evangelicals had somewhat of a conscience. And I'm not saying they were perfect or they got everything right.

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I'm just saying that there was a moral standard there of some kind. They did go to the ballot box and try to vote for moral things.

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And I think those days, if Keller gets his way, and fortunately the working class people don't listen to Keller as much, but Keller has had an extreme influence on the elites and the seminaries and the institutions, which means that it just give it a little time.

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And that streams right down to the working class people. It already has. And we lose our conscience at that point.

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They're Christians. It just, at a certain point, you just can't make any decision because no matter what you do, well,

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I mean, this side has a point, that side has a point. It immobilizes you. You can't be morally clear.

44:44

It's very hard to be at least. So let's talk about something else.

44:49

So let's switch gears here. I want to talk about why some people I think are saying things like they hope

44:54

Keller repents because they aren't confident that he's going to be going to heaven in his current state.

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Now, some people have thought that's crazy. Why would anyone say that? And I just want to show you some of these quotes, because this,

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I think this should motivate us to pray for Tim Keller at the very least. If there's even a slight question about where Keller is on the gospel, we need to pray for him.

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So I'm not one to just throw my opinion out there and I'll tell you when

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I'm doing that, but to have a serious conversation about this, I need to show you some things

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Keller's actually said and why some people who know about this are saying what they're saying. Keller said this, and I've listened to the whole speech.

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This was in 2006 at the entrepreneurship forum in Times Square. So he's talking to businessmen and he said this, the whole purpose of everything

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God is doing in redemption. Okay. And redemption is to create a material world.

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That's clean. That's right. That's pure, a material world in which there's no disease.

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There's no death. There's no unraveling. There's no decay. The whole purpose of salvation is to cleanse and purify this material world.

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That's the whole purpose of salvation. And I've listened to the whole thing. Context doesn't make it better guys.

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The whole purpose of salvation is to cleanse and purify this material world. The purpose of everything

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God is doing in redemption is to create a material world that's clean. That's right. That's pure. He's telling

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Christian businessmen this. What's God's purpose in salvation? Let me read for you

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Romans 8, 18 through 30. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

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For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

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For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers and pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but we also, we are also, we ourselves having the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our body.

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For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he already sees.

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But if we hope for what we do not see with perseverance, we wait eagerly for it.

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In the same way, the spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

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And he who searches the heart knows what the mind of the spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

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And we know, this is the part I want to emphasize the most here, I read all that for a reason, I'll tell you why in a minute, we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love

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God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.

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And these whom he predestined, he also called. These whom he called, he also justified. These whom he justified, he also glorified.

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So what do we see in this? Do we see that there's an aspect or a section that is concerned with creation?

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Yeah, we do. Creation is waiting, subjected to futility, groans, whole creation groans and suffers.

48:43

And then he's saying, this is creation, creation's under a curse because of sin.

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But he says, we ourselves having the firstfruits groan and suffers, let's see, we having the firstfruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption of sons, the redemption of our body.

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When he turns to talk about man, that's when he starts talking about, we have a redemption of our body, saying that there's a golden chain of redemption here.

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And what is it that God causes all things to work together for good? To who? For those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

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What's the end goal of it? To be conformed to the image of his son so that he, meaning

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God, Jesus, would be the firstborn among many brethren. This is the work

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God is doing in us. This is the state of affairs he is bringing into being in which he is the firstborn among many brethren, which we are conformed to his image.

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God's whole purpose in salvation is not to cleanse and purify this material world.

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No, no, far from it. If there's any emphasis in God's purpose for salvation, it's to redeem a people for himself, and it's for the world to come.

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It's for the, not temporal world, the eternal realm. You can see

50:14

Tim Keller's focus here is in the temporal realm, which is really very much the hallmark, in my mind, of neo -evangelicalism.

50:24

That's wrong. Now, can we call that false teaching? I think, yeah. Now, one quote

50:29

I would want to know, did you mess up that day? Maybe that's what happened, right? You want to be careful when you just have one quote, but it's not like this is the only thing.

50:40

I want to read for you, this is a section from the book,

50:47

Christianity and Social, or sorry, Social Justice Goes to Church, New Left and Modern American Evangelicalism. And I've read all this.

50:54

In 1970, Keller heard a message which revolutionized his approach to political issues.

51:02

Some of his friends attended InterVarsity's Missions Conference, called Urbana 70, where the Harlem evangelist Tom Skinner spoke about a revolutionary

51:09

Jesus who was incompatible with Americanism. Skinner taught that the evangelical church had upheld slavery in the nation's political, economic, and religious systems, while greedy landlords paid off corrupt building inspectors, police forces maintained the interests of white society, and the top 1 % controlled the entire economy.

51:25

Evangelicals were silent and even supported the industrial complex. The 20 -year -old Keller already resonated with the

51:31

New Left critique, but Skinner's way of incorporating it into Christianity was new for him. His friends gave him a tape recording of Skinner's talk, and Keller could not listen to this sermon enough.

51:40

Now, by the way, the source of this, is Keller, I don't remember when

51:46

I have the source in the book, it's from either the 90s or the 2000s, Keller is talking about this to his church, and he's saying, look,

51:54

I couldn't listen, when this happened, man, I could not listen to this sermon enough.

51:59

Skinner claimed that the gospel though, and it is in Skinner's speech, that the gospel that did not speak to the issue of enslavement and justice and inequality was not the gospel.

52:09

Instead, he fused the incomplete gospels of both fundamentalists and liberals into a salvation which delivered from both personal and systemic evil.

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It's a social gospel, social justice, that's what it is. Jesus had come to change the system, and Christians were to preach liberation to oppress people, and it's sprinkled in with some liberation theology.

52:28

The sermon, though, astounded Keller. It was just the kind of reconciliation he was waiting for, and it left him unable to think about politics the same way again after hearing it.

52:37

This is the sermon that changed Keller's whole outlook. He talks about this much later, he talks about this when he's at Redeemer Presbyterian, I believe that's where I got this one from.

52:47

It's certainly modern. It's either from one of his books or one of his sermons within the last 25 years. He's talking about this and complimenting this sermon.

52:56

The sermon is false teaching. It's a false gospel. It's adding to the gospel.

53:04

Now, another thing from a Tim Keller presentation at his church, not in ancient history.

53:15

He was an adult. He was at Redeemer Presbyterian. He agreed with liberation theologian

53:20

James Cone that slaves, because of their experience of oppression, were able to see things in the bible like a god who comes down from heaven and becomes a poor human being, which many of their masters were blind to.

53:31

This difference in experience was so great it nurtured a real Christianity as opposed to the oppressive master's religion.

53:37

Now again, James Cone, false gospel. In this section specifically, what

53:43

Cone taught was that there was an authentic Christianity the slaves had because of their social location.

53:51

Their oppression made them able to read the bible better. It gave them a true gospel and the masters did not have a full gospel.

53:59

Walter Strickland believes this. Tim Keller believes this to some extent. At least he believes that there was a more authentic Christianity, a real

54:07

Christianity. What does that mean? The real deal. You have the gospel with the slaves, but not with the masters.

54:17

Honestly, it's terrible because just because someone happened to hold slaves does not mean that they don't have the gospel.

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I don't know what we would do with some of the patriarchs or with even some of the members of the early church, like Philemon.

54:35

I don't know what we do with them, if this is the case. That's saying, well, because they did something ethically we disagree with, they must not have had the gospel.

54:43

So what is your, is it based on works then? Is that what's going on? That's your salvation? See, law and gospel, you have to create, they are separate categories.

54:54

And Keller has more than once, and there's probably a number of other situations like this.

54:59

I'm just giving you some of the ones I knew about off the top of my head. He has more than one time obscured things.

55:07

And it leaves you an option. It leaves you, you could say, this is just like, say it's just like Peter or something.

55:15

And you know, he's just being unclear, been unclear for an awfully long time. Or you could, and you could look, he articulated it right over here.

55:25

So he's Peter. Could do that. Or you could be afraid, and you could say, because it has been so long, maybe he's like the

55:33

Judaizers. This doesn't even touch on some of the other things that he's promoted that have just been plain compromising and wrong and false teaching.

55:43

This is the why I think some people are concerned for him to the extent that they don't know whether he's going to be in heaven or not.

55:50

And I don't know where he's going to be. But I would say that this should at least cause us to have some fear, some holy fear.

55:57

And we can at least say that there's false teaching going on. So this is just me giving a follow up to yesterday's video, since there were some questions that I thought merited an answer.

56:13

And I hope this answers that. Again, not to get down on Keller unnecessarily, but Keller has influenced a lot of people.

56:20

And a lot of people are fighting battles even at their churches over teaching from Keller that's been promoted.

56:27

And so I want to help them out a little bit here too. Slideshow I'll put in the info section, a link to where you can find books that I'm putting out there in the info section.

56:37

And of course, check out Russell Fuller's Theology Classroom, RussellTFuller .com. And hope that was helpful.