Does Tim Keller Have an Intellectual Successor?

Thoughts on the Current State of the Protestant Church in the US

Discourse has once again arisen surrounding Tim Keller and his legacy. This current iteration of the conversation is (thankfully) not another battle about whether Keller was a faithful Confessional Presbyterian minister or a compromised capitulator to leftist ideals, but instead surrounds the question of whether Keller has any clear intellectual successor. This topic arose from a tweet from Bari Weiss who asked, “Who is the intellectual successor to the beloved, late Rev. Timothy Keller?” A plethora of answers appeared that I think are worth some exploration about the state of the evangelical church and the changing cultural landscape in the last twenty years. 

Should We Even Have Another Keller?

First, I want to address the idea that all of our great thinkers and figureheads are expected to have clear successors who continue their work. I recall quite a bit of discussion about this after R.C. Sproul passed away, as no one has arisen since who has the same mix of clarity, intellect, and rhetorical flourish that made him unique. There is no second Sproul, and probably won’t ever be. This is no unique case, as one could name a large number of important figureheads who died and left no clear successor. Though Martin Luther had a companion in Philip Melanchthon, the latter was unequipped to carry out the work of the former after his passing. John Calvin’s less influential student Theodor Beza was a far less careful thinker than his teacher, and failed to be successor in the truest sense. Outside of the world of theology, one could name political thinkers who left a significant void after their passing, not yet filled by anyone, such as William F. Buckley and Roger Scruton.

Often when someone does try to fill the shoes of some hugely influential leader, they fail to do it well. Great thinkers and leaders are a rare thing. Further, they tend to arise out of specific needs within particular historical and cultural circumstances. These circumstances generally change from generation to generation, such that new kinds of leaders are often needed to face new challenges, rather than recapitulations of older ones.

Another issue which arises out of this question of succession is whether having powerful figureheads is a good thing in the first place. As the church has seen scandal after scandal within the last decade of men who were leaders of various movements and theologies (Lawson, Zacharias, Tchividjian, Driscoll, MacDonald, etc.), it has become apparent that the celebrity pastor phenomenon is fraught with problems. While there are examples of men like Keller who have had no serious scandals throughout a life of ministry (I’m not speaking about disagreements about theology or culture here), it is apparent that the granting of power and influence to a select few personalities has led both to abuses of power, and to disillusionment of Christians who have built much of their faith and piety on the words of one particular man.

Maybe the True Successors aren’t Individuals

In my initial response to the post in discussion, I said the following regarding Keller’s successor: 

Recent years have seen the rise of a variety of theological institutes (and publications) which are not schools (at least not exclusively). While often spearheaded by a single individual, these organizations are not named after a specific leader, and do not center their work on a singular person. These institutes provide various mediums through which a wide range of thinkers are able to engage in discourse about theological, philosophical, and cultural topics, without these deep ties to one charismatic personality. Among such groups are my own Just & Sinner, the Davenant Institute, Theopolis, Credo and the Center for Classical Theology, Mere Orthodoxy, the Greystone Institute, London Lyceum, and Keller’s own Keller Center for Apologetics (among others). This move away from celebrities toward institutions which have a structure that is built to outlast any single individual associated with those institutions is a much healthier way forward. In this way, the kind of popular level intellectual engagement that Keller was known for is continuing today, but it is happening through organizations, rather than any singular figure or group of celebrity figures. This shift mirrors the broader trend in American culture away from celebrity in general. Younger generations no longer pine after movie stars in the way that was so common in the twentieth century. As people pay more attention to their favorite influencers than they do A-list celebrities, so do younger Christians spend more time on YouTube, and other online mediums to engage with Christian thought, rather than with megachurch pastors who befriend celebrities and produce best-selling books.

Thoughts on the Changing Cultural Landscape

Another element to this, which is apparent in the comments to this post, is that culture has changed significantly since 2016. Tim Keller rose to prominence in a world before Trump became a politician, before transgender issues came to the forefront of culture, and before the divide between urban and rural America became an almost unbridgeable one. The fact is that today, a Keller figure would be considered a compromising coastal elite by a significant portion of the church, while if a similar intellectual figure arose from middle America who supported Donald Trump, another significant portion of the church would dismiss him as a clout-chasing culture warrior. The cultural divides currently at work in the church (and everywhere else in society) create a situation where it is simply impossible for a Keller figure to exist today who would have the same kind of broad influence that he did. This is not just an issue of there not being the right person. There is no person who could bridge these divides in the church at the current moment.

Related to the divides that have developed, I want to bring attention to a response to this question from Robert George, where he sets forth some names as possible successors to Keller:

Micah Watson and Jesse Covington are two professors (whose work I don’t know as well as I probably should), rather than the kind of public intellectuals that Keller was. The other three figures here are more publicly known, but don’t quite fit the bill either. Mohler has been around in the public Christian sphere as long as Keller, so I don’t know that one could speak of him as a successor in any way. Further, his audience, culture, and intellectual projects diverge quite significantly from Keller. The other two names mentioned, Andrew Walker and Carl Trueman, are figures who are often perceived as being on the “other side” of the political/cultural divide that has emerged within evangelicalism from Keller. For example, I know of some college students who were deeply influenced by Keller’s preaching who also got rather upset when they heard that Trueman was speaking to their campus group. Keller was conceived of as graciously orthodox, and Trueman a culture warrior. It is something of an odd divide to make, as both Trueman and Keller are/were committed Presbyterians who hold to the same general standards of Biblical orthodoxy and traditional sexual ethics, though they differed on some issues of application. Nonetheless, regardless of however fair it is to divide those two from one another, the fact is that many people do.

Another series of answers point out that Keller was able to connect with some of the “elite” people and institutions in society, whereas such connections would be impossible to make in the negative world in which we currently live. There is definitely truth to this, in that it is far more difficult today than it was twenty years ago for someone who holds to a traditional view of sexual ethics to make connections in elite spheres, and consequently to have an effective ministry in such circles. A couple things can be said about this. First, Keller did receive backlash for his traditional views to the point that he was cut off from certain spaces. Most well-known is the public backlash that Princeton Theological Seminary received when they were about to award Keller the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Witness in 2017. Keller’s theology was declared toxic and bigoted by some students, and this eventually led the seminary to retract the award. Second, despite how hostile many spaces have become, some “elite” connections can still be made in those places, and there are still some opportunities for Christians to speak in them so long as the small group of loud, public, and angry activists has not yet discovered them. I know, because I have done it. In other words, ministry in those contexts is certainly still possible, though in a post-Trump world, it has admittedly become more difficult.

The Breakdown of Evangelicalism Today

The splintering of evangelicalism and the difficulty of finding a figure who is listened to among divergent groups has been pointed out in many responders to the post in question. This comment, for example, got a bit of interaction:

This taxonomy is pretty similar to some others I’ve seen. The first category (Winsome 2.0), I assume, refers to people like David French, Russell Moore, Kristen DuMez, and the Holy Post types. These individuals often use their platform to critique Trump and the contemporary MAGA movement, but either don’t critique the left at all, or only do so on very select occasions. I’ve seen many people who would probably be identified with this group move away from strong pro-life stances, adopt a pro-female ordination view, move away from Biblical inerrancy, and sometimes affirm homosexual marriage. As much as Keller is critiqued by many conservatives in the church, I don’t foresee him having moved on any of these issues.

The second group here is one that I think has lost a significant amount of influence in recent years. As a regular Dividing Line listener back in college, I hardly ever hear James White’s name mentioned anymore by younger Christians. When he is brought up, it is either in reference to a debate he’s done with a Roman Catholic (usually from someone who is RC), or a comment about how he’s a confused boomer who doesn’t understand the world anymore. I’m not saying that’s a fair characterization, but I’m not convinced that he has the same audience among zoomers that he once did among millennials. The CREC is still growing, and Wilson continues to have an impact, but it’s apparent that there is also a lot of splintering there too between the Moscow types and the Ogden ones. That’s not even to mention those who are Theopolitan Peter Leithart readers who tend to be more academic and less populist.

This third group identified as “populist orthodoxy” doesn’t seem, to me, to be much different than the prior group. The critiques of “Big Eva” and “coastal elites” tend to come from those who are sympathetic to the CREC, though I suppose that this would also include some Southern Baptist leaders.

What sticks out most to me (and it is by no means unique with this specific post) is that there is a huge omission in this threefold division: classical Protestants. The institutes mentioned earlier, for example, do not generally fit into these categories neatly at all. Is Matthew Barrett a populist who opposes evangelical institutions, or is he someone who harps on the problems of “red” evangelicalism and waffles on sexual issues? Which of those categories is applicable to Ryan Hurd? Or Jordan Steffaniak? Or Scott Swain? Or Fred Sanders? Or Alistair Roberts? Or me?

The fact is that there are a significant number of Christians today who are engaging with intellectual work while also speaking on a popular level who are not really even in these perceived battles between someone like Doug Wilson on one hand and a Kristen DuMez on the other. The idea that one must pick between anti-institutional populism and progressivism is simply a false one, and is often the result of low church evangelicals being completely unwilling to see Christendom through any lens other than their own.

Tim Keller, though evangelical in a broad sense, was not the product of non-denominationalism or the SBC. Keller was raised in a Lutheran congregation, received his D.Min. at Westminster Seminary, and pastored Presbyterian churches throughout his entire ministry. His ecclesiastical life from beginning to end was almost entirely in Confessional Protestant contexts. With this being the case, perhaps his legacy only makes sense if it is viewed through that lens of Confessional Protestantism, rather than the kind of self-made celebrity culture that someone like Mark Driscoll arose from. If this is the case, then maybe the way his entire ministry is being viewed in these discussions is wrong, and it is those historic Protestant institutes and organizations that are the true heirs to Keller’s legacy.