My Dad (Tim Keller) Listened to History to Speak the Gospel

Between his medical procedures last year, I asked my father, Tim Keller, about how he’d presented the gospel in the 1980s to 2000s. Specifically, I wanted to know the effects the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, and Dutch neo-Calvinism had on him. Dad (hereafter, Keller) said that during his early formation, he found neo-Calvinist translations that emphasized Christianity’s effects on all of life, not so much inward piety. (I don’t mean to suggest Kuyper and Bavinck didn’t have works on experiential piety—he just didn’t have access to them.)

So he looked to English authors for works about inward piety. He read Edwards, John Owen, and the Puritans, all of whom molded Reformed theology into personal, experiential models.

Keller gleaned that we must have heart knowledge, not just head knowledge—intellectual belief in God isn’t the same as a heart-changed relationship with Jesus. Then, from his neo-Calvinist sources, Keller encountered a Reformed answer for living out an experiential faith in an increasingly post-Christian space. He uniquely fused his “pietist” leanings from Owen and Edwards to his “culturalist” leanings from neo-Calvinism, Kuyper, Van Til, and, later, Bavinck. (While beyond the scope of this article, it’s worth noting that few have ever merged the power of these two Reformed traditions, but Keller did so to present the gospel to a rising secular culture in the 1980s to 2020s.)

Much could be said about his neo-Calvinist/culturist formation, but let’s consider Keller’s pietist sensibilities. First, I’ll briefly sketch his context. Second, I’ll look at the pietist values he used to clearly present the gospel in his historical moment. Finally, I’ll make a few applications for the church today.

Historical Context

To think critically and strategically about our own contexts, it’ll be helpful to understand the context Keller’s life and ministry sought to address. He was born in 1950, when public Christianity in America was waning as an assumed moral authority. The Enlightenment individualism that Jonathan Edwards confronted in the 1700s had only grown as the central story of the West.

When Keller arrived in New York in the late 1980s, the most unreached group he met were struggling professionals overwhelmed with career pressure. They were politically liberal, highly educated, upwardly mobile, and sexually active, as well as private, lonely, busy, and distrustful of organized religion—particularly Christianity. They tended to think in psychological terms about the self and they hated commitment. They didn’t have answers to the larger questions of life: Who am I? What’s the point of anything? Why am I here? Why should I do what I do? In addition, he met Christians struggling to integrate their faith with their careers, dealing with the ethical pressures the city placed on their personal lives.

How did Keller present the gospel in this context?

Two Pietistic Adaptations in Keller’s Ministry

Keller used two innovations from Jonathan Edwards to meet his context.

1. Rediscovering justification by faith leads to repentant, prayerful obedience.

During the Great Awakening, Edwards met many who claimed, as proof of their faith, various signs and wonders. But afterward, there wasn’t any evident fruit; in fact, he often saw the opposite—an increase of envy, spite, bitterness, and general meanness. Without nullifying the idea that one could have a real experience of God (contra Charles Chauncy, who dismissed the revivals as mere emotionalism), Edwards insisted proof of faith can’t be rooted in outward manifestations (1 Cor. 13:1–3) or even in acts of obedience. Other revivalists critiqued him, but Edwards insisted one can only be assured of eternal acceptance based on the finished work of Christ.

Edwards insisted one can only be assured of eternal acceptance based on the finished work of Christ.

Similarly, Keller looked around his church in the 1980s and saw both Christians and non-Christians believing that if you obeyed, you’d be accepted by God. As Keller’s professor Richard Lovelace pointed out, many Christians tend to base their justification on their sanctification, as it were, rather than basing their sanctification on their justification.

Bringing this spiritual-renewal dynamic into practice awakened nominal Christians while converting secular nonbelievers. As Keller often put it, “You aren’t accepted because you obey; you obey because you’re accepted.” This simple idiom summarized Lovelace’s channeling of Edwards. All obedience must flow from the grateful heart of faith—or it’s not real obedience.

How was this innovative? To many American Christians in the 1980s, who often separated discipleship from evangelism, it was radical to suggest the core problem of non-Christians (unbelief) is the same problem that plagues Christians. In the moment of sin, both don’t trust that they’re loved and justified by the Creator of the universe. Christians were unsettled to realize that if they only look to their sanctification as their justification, they perhaps never had saving faith. At the same time, non-Christians were helped to realize the gospel isn’t “Try hard and be good and then God will love you.” Instead, God’s love is written into Scripture’s story as he pursues wayward people by living and dying for them in Jesus.

But how do you simply articulate Edwards’s stress on justification? How do you say it so unchurched or underchurched people can understand the gospel without needing to know theological jargon?

Keller provided us with this principle: “I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe while, at the same time, more accepted and loved than I ever dared hope.” This succinct phrase encapsulates the essence of the gospel. By articulating the tension between our inherent brokenness and the boundless love and acceptance offered through Christ, Keller distilled complex theological concepts into an accessible message for all.

The statement serves as a bridge, enabling the unchurched and underchurched to grasp the heart of the gospel, inviting them into a profound awareness of their need for grace and of the immeasurable love awaiting them in the arms of a merciful God. It’s also a guiding light, directing believers toward a deeper understanding of their identity in Christ and fostering a transformative, redemptive, and restorative encounter with grace.

2. The mere intellectual comprehension of doctrine is insufficient.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as Keller saw Christians retreating from the public sphere and individuals raised in Christian homes disassociating from faith, a perennial pastoral concern arose: “I believe in God, but I don’t feel his presence. How can I experience his presence?” Edwards’s insight provides the answer—a resounding affirmation that the affective (heart) must intertwine with the cognitive (head). True understanding transcends the intellectual to encompass the experiential.

Edwards eloquently articulated this concept in his sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” highlighting the dual nature of knowledge:

There is a twofold knowledge of good of which God has made the mind of man capable. The first, that which is merely notional . . . and the other is, that which consists in the sense of the heart, as when the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of it. . . . Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness.

This idea had a significant effect on Keller’s preaching. For him, the sermon wasn’t merely a platform to convey information, nor merely a conduit for eliciting an emotional response. The sermon served a purpose beyond making the truths of Scripture intellectually accessible—it was crafted to render those truths tangible and experiential.

The sermon served a purpose beyond making the truths of Scripture intellectually accessible—it was crafted to render those truths tangible and experiential.

Embracing Edwards’s conviction that spiritual realities can be found in earthly experiences, Keller recognized the sermon’s potential to bridge this gap through the imaginative power of vivid images and poignant illustrations. Edwards wouldn’t have endorsed the simplistic adage “Just preach the Scriptures,” because he saw the preacher’s task goes beyond mere explanation all the way to realization.

“Edwards would say,” Keller reflected, “that if a truth about Jesus Christ does not thrill, move, melt, electrify, and change you—then you haven’t really understood it.” This is the transformative aim of preaching: to move beyond intellectual understanding and guide listeners into life-altering encounters with living truths.

Keller once wrote a personal note about Edwards’s influence on him:

Edwards showed me how inadequate much 20th-century expository preaching really was. It was highly cognitive, highly abstract. But the solution was NOT to simply go after . . . sentimental stories that moved the feelings. The solution was to learn to embody the truth in concrete ways—images, illustrations, and narratives. During my seminary years I learned about “Christocentric” preaching from Ed Clowney . . . and about Edwards’s revivalism from Richard Lovelace . . . but none of this really affected my preaching as long as I was locked into an evangelical subculture. There I was rewarded for traditional exposition that often lacked all these things. . . . I would have certainly professed to be doing “Christo-centric” preaching but really, I was lifting Jesus up as an example and urging people to live like him. It took an intense experience of preaching in New York City to wake me up. . . . As I began to confront the changes I had to make, I began to realize I had all the theological and historical resources necessary.

This should make us pause and ask, What untapped resources could enhance our approach if we were willing to employ them differently? If we allow the needs of our current context to affect how we present the gospel, how might we shape our presentation differently? Possessing the concepts, truths, categories, and content, Keller still needed to encounter the pressing needs of a new context. This transformative shift didn’t alter the truth of Scripture or the nature of the gospel, but it did reshape the communication of these eternal truths. He ensured they resonated with a diverse audience—an integral process for effective contextualization.

Good News for Every Age

What can we learn from this?

First, analyzing Keller’s pietistic values shows us that the good news of the gospel doesn’t need reinvention. Once, as a new minister, I moaned that I didn’t bring anything new to the table. Keller, wearing his “dad” hat, replied, “I don’t have an original bone in my body. Everything I’ve ever said came from somewhere else.” This is important: reinvention should not be the goal of any minister or Christian. If the good news of the gospel is objectively true, it doesn’t need to be changed. Let’s take solace in that, remembering our task isn’t to do something new.

The good news of the gospel doesn’t need reinvention.

Second, Keller illuminated a critical principle: while the gospel doesn’t change, culture does. Our changing contexts necessitate ongoing evaluation of how we explain the gospel. Protestant gospel presentations in the 19th and early 20th centuries assumed a biblically literate populace that would immediately understand a term like “sin.” But Keller encountered individuals post-1980s who questioned such fundamental concepts and terms. Rather than reinvent the gospel, though, he adjusted his approach.

Keller employed Augustine’s formulation, which portrays the human heart not as deficient in love but as harboring disordered loves. Good things become ultimate things, disrupting life’s balance. For those resistant to the term “sinful,” he turned to the language of idolatry: placing undue importance on something, to the point of worship, with detrimental consequences. Rather than faulting individuals for lacking certain categories, Keller translated the gospel into accessible terms for his audience—thereby demonstrating profound understanding of his context.

To echo this approach, we must continually contextualize (not change) the good news, ensuring it resonates with the evolving understandings of our people. How are we presenting the gospel in fresh ways to those we’re seeking to reach?

Third, amid cultural shifts, it’s crucial to recognize enduring parallels across historical contexts. Exploring lessons from gospel presentations of the past isn’t just a historical exercise—it’s a valuable resource for contemporary communication. Our challenge is to translate truths about sin, acceptance, and love for a generation that may not readily understand them.

It’s still crucial to convey that the struggle with unbelief is universal, afflicting both Christians and non-Christians. Emphasizing intellectual knowledge alone falls short; the gospel demands experiential engagement and transformative change. Nor is the gospel just a concept; it must move and change us too. Are we diligently discerning points of continuity and discontinuity in our historical contexts, ensuring our gospel presentations effectively bridge the gap between past and present realities?

Our challenge is to translate truths about sin, acceptance, and love for a generation that may not readily understand them.

Finally, we must constantly translate the transformative power of the gospel for both Christians and non-Christians. Many Christians might theoretically believe, Jesus accepts me; therefore I live a good life, but in practice, they think, I live a good life; therefore Jesus accepts me. This incongruence manifests as pervasive anxiety, insecurity, and undue criticism of others.

The root issue lies in a failure to experientially grasp God’s presence and love. The gospel in these instances becomes a theoretical concept rather than a lived reality, failing to take root in the depths of their hearts. To bridge this gap, we must persist in translating the truth of the gospel. We must ensure its transformative power isn’t just doctrinally understood but (through the Holy Spirit) deeply felt and lived out in our day-to-day lives.

Only when Christians truly rediscover the good news do they realize they thought they understood, but they hadn’t. Yet now they do—at least more than before—as anxiety, anger, envy, and fragility fade away and new contentment, gratitude, and peace settle in. This becomes attractive to non-Christians too. Only when they realize Christianity isn’t just another performance model of “Obey and then you’re accepted”—but a new way of seeing everything through unconditional acceptance, leading to radical change—will their lives be transformed.