The following video came from the YouTube site: Conversations That Matter
There it is titled: “What Happened To Tim Keller”
The video looks at the spiritual formation of Pastor Tim Keller: the religion of his childhood and the ideologies that shaped him during his college years and as an ordained minister in the PCA:
Highlight points are given for the initial 10 minutes or so, as that portion supports my conclusions drawn in part 2-A. However, the balance of the video is certainly worth hearing, especially for those who did not know how greatly Keller had been influenced by Marxist leftist progressive thinking.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- “Perhaps no one has done more to narrow the gap between ‘progressive evangelicalism’ and mainstream evangelicalism, than Tim Keller”
- [Below these points is a 3 minute, 48 second video by Dr. Michael Kruger explaining how Progressive Christianity is unbiblical]
- Keller grew up in a mainline Lutheran church
- There, he was introduced to a version of ‘Christian Liberation’ theology, grounded in a spirit of love
- The Keller family later began attending a more conservative Lutheran church, providing Keller with conceptions of God and the reality of hell
- What he could not harmonize as a teenager, the ethics of the new left, and orthodox Christianity, he began to reconcile at Bucknell University
- He was thereat exposed to the Neo-Marxist Critical Theory of the Frankfort School and more
- He was attracted to activism and became affiliated with other students that ‘wanted to change the world’ by opposing: the military industrial complex; and a society of inequities and materialism…
- They instead, promoted peace and understanding; attended peace and civil rights marches and shut down the college to debate the morality of the Cambodian invasion in 1970
- Segregation, systemic violence against Blacks became an occasion for Keller to doubt Christianity
- He was emotionally drawn to Social Justice, but was troubled that these people were moral relativists who could not ground their convictions in a moral standard
- He was disenchanted with orthodox Christianity because he believed it supported apartheid…
- Keller found that the evangelical left offered a version of the faith which married the ethics of the new left with the metaphysical foundation that Christianity provided
- Things began to improve for Keller after he became part of Intervarsity fellowship, a band of brothers who grounded their concern for justice in the character of God
- This new fellowship kept its ministry non-traditional, spontaneous and anti-institutional
- In 1970, Keller attended, Urbana 70, where he heard a message which revolutionized his approach to political issues
- There, evangelist, Tom Skinner, spoke about a revolutionary Jesus who was incompatible with Americanism [American orthodox Christianity and their missions]
- Skinner stated that a gospel that does not ALSO speak to the issues of enslavement, inequality and injustice; that doesn’t go to people that are hungry and poverty stricken and set them free… is not the gospel
- [Such ideas describe the ‘social gospel’ and the ‘progressive gospel.’ The biblical gospel focuses on the soul; historically, those who have been saved show their gratitude to God via works that love others: hospitals; missions…]
- Skinner called his followers to preach ‘liberation’ to their hearers
- Skinner had combined the gospels of the fundamentalists and the liberals to formulate his new gospel
- After graduating from Bucknell, Keller worked for Intervarsity in Boston, while he attended Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary
- There, he came into contact with Elward Ellis, who called Blacks to preach the gospel “the way it should be preached instead of the ‘honkified’ gospel”
- He believed that the current style of missions amounted to Christian racism
- Skinner and Ellis were Keller’s role models because of how they synthesized new left thinking with the gospel [the apostle Paul addressed the Galatians for such syncretism, see Galatians 1]
- Ellis introduced Keller to ‘systematic racism’ and ‘white privilege’
- [Those are key components of Critical Race Theory; these derive from Cultural Marxism. One cannot be a Marxist and a Christian simultaneously: Marxists are atheists and worship the god of the socialist state…. That is, Marxism and Christianity are mutually exclusive]
- 1975, Keller married and thereafter was ordained into the PCA
- He was called to a church in Virginia in a blue-collar town; he served as regional director of church planting for the PCA [that is very troubling to me]
- He attended Westminster Theological Seminary, earning doctorate in 1981
- A few years later, Keller began to teach at WTS [undoubtedly also teaching his syncretic ideology]
- At WTS, he met Harvey Conn, a professor of missions, that helped Keller more fully merge his social justice concerns with his Christian faith
- Conn exposed Keller to a new hermeneutic for interpreting the Bible which took into consideration the biblical context and the contemporary readers [explained at the 9 minute, 50 second mark of the video]
[The above points indicate that Keller had incorporated woke ideology into his ministry; I am stopping with the highlights at this point, as these are all that are needed to support my critique of Keller. I recommend that readers hear the entire video and also check the link below for many other videos at the YouTube site, Conversations that Matter. There are videos from other sites as well, that call out Keller for his Social Justice gospel]
The following 3 minute, 48 second video, by Dr. Michael Kruger, explains how progressive Christianity is unbiblical:
Highlights from Kruger video:
- He mentioned the book by Machen, Christianity and Liberalism: an indication that “progressive Christians” are not really Christians; as Machen stated in his book regarding ‘liberals’
- Progressive Christians (PC) have a low view of Jesus
- PC are about moralism: ‘be a good person;’ ‘be kind to your neighbors…’
- To think you can be a ‘good person’ is to have a low view of sin
- PC’s are not Christians at all
- To PC’s, the cross is NOT Good News [they can be good on their own and don’t need Jesus]
Link to another post in this blog that features 5 evangelical pastors who are pro-LGBTQ; Keller is one of them:
https://sheeplywolves.com/evangelical-pastors-who-affirm-homosexuality/
Link to Kruger video: https://rts.edu/resources/what-is-progressive-christianity/
MUCH MORE ON TIM KELLER FROM THE YOUTUBE SITE, CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER:
https://www.youtube.com/@ConversationsThatMatterpodcast/search?query=tim%20keller
Narrative and links that accompanied video on Tim Keller, from Conversations That Matter:
91,867 views Jan 25, 2021 Conversations That Matter
Original Article (With Citations) https://web.archive.org/web/202110281…
For a full list of pictures and videos used in this production go to: https://rumble.com/vd8dip-what-happen…
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