Did Paul invent Christianity?

I'm not sure who the warnings against ‘household idolatry’ are targeted at (‘Woman to woman: Answering the call of Titus 2’), but for us younger women in our 20s, it is the idolatry of materialism that hinders us from the wholehearted application of Titus 2:3-5. We are under great pressure to establish fulfilling careers, earn lots of money, travel the world and live in luxury—and all this at the expense of staying at home to raise godly offspring.

Therefore, it would be great if older women could encourage us younger wives and mothers to find value in being busy at home and loving our children. It's not glorious, the pay is dismal and overtime is a given, but what could be more important than training children to know and love the Lord? Rather than avoiding children until the last possible moment, we should seek to welcome as many as we can into our lives.

Motherhood may be tedious, exhausting and demeaning, but, as Titus 2:3-5 shows, it is also eternally worthwhile.

Loretta Liew of Castle Hill, NSW, AUS (29/03/2010)

I must admit that I have been quite troubled by Scott Newling's review of The Reason for God. While at some points, I was able to understand where he was coming from, at other points, I was led to wonder whether we were actually reading the same book.

While initially praising many aspects of the book, some of the negative assertions that Newling makes later on in his review are strong enough to render this praise rather empty. If Newling's final verdict is that he is reluctant to recommend the book—a book that ends up muting both sin and justice, that portrays a God who is “in no sense … retributively just”, that has “replaced penal substitution with a substitution of another kind”, one wonders what role his initial praise has to play other than to soften the later blows. Such barbed tribute runs the risk of appearing insincere. Whether it was Newling's intention or not, he ends up portraying Keller as just a few steps behind Steve Chalke and Brian McClaren. What difference is there really between ‘replacing’ penal substitution and ‘denying’ it?

The question, of course, is whether Newling is correct in his assessment. While he has raised some legitimate points about the emphases and limitations of the book, I believe that ultimately he has misrepresented Keller's presentation and largely overstated his point. Some examples from the review follow.

Newling claims that Keller undermines the doctrine of sin so that “serving God is still about me finding my identity”. This, he claims, mutes the “offence of sin to God, and God's retributive justice because of that sin”. Yet the context of Keller's argument (and indeed, Kierkegaard's) is entirely rooted in a rejection of the first commandment. In fact, I would argue that compared with Two Ways to Live, for instance, Keller's presentation of sin as a “self-glorification” (p. 163) that all people need does a much better job of highlighting sin as a personal offence to God. It is far more offensive to God that people seek to usurp his glory (through deifying other things—p. 163) versus the slightly less explicit image of Romans 3:10-12 of people turning away. Both are correct images of sin of course, but Newling is mistaken if he thinks that Keller's depiction mutes the offence.

Newling accuses Keller of changing the definition of sin so that it is “primarily not my refusal to serve God, but my failure to find my identity in God”. Please note then, page 170: “We are told that as soon as we determined to serve ourselves instead of God … the entire created world became broken”. He also claims that Keller has replaced penal substitution and has presented a picture of the cross that is “neither penal, nor atoning”. Yet we read on page193, “There was a debt to be paid—God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be borne—God himself bore it.” It really escapes me, in light of statements such as this, how Keller has replaced penal substitutionary atonement with another kind. This is an issue that all evangelicals should take very personally—and I commend Newling for being sensitive to this key current debate. But the only conclusion that I can come to is that he has made an unnecessary attack on a man whose only intention is to uphold penal substitution, not replace it with another kind.

Keller's view of the death and resurrection of Christ is similarly slighted: “Keller makes—quite overtly—death and resurrection a general metaphor of our emotional pain in forgiveness and resolution out of that pain, and, in turn, re-reads that back into the gospel event”. The implication is that Keller's Christ on the cross is not able to solve our sin problem; he is addressing our emotional and psychological needs, but that is as far as it goes. Yet how can this characterization of The Reason for God possibly stand when we read on page 193,

We have seen how human forgiveness and its costliness sheds light on divine forgiveness. However, it is divine forgiveness that is the ultimate ground and resource for the human. Bonhoeffer repeatedly attested to this, claiming that it was Jesus' forgiveness of him on the Cross that gave him such a security in God's love that he could live a life of sacrificial service to others.

This is not about a mere difference of opinion. As already noted, Newling makes some very strong assertions, which must either stand or fall. Above are just a few examples showing why these assertions amount to straightforward inaccuracies. In light of this, instead of attacking Newling, I feel inclined to question, rather, the decision of the editors to publish such a review—and to publish it also right in the middle of A Passion for Life mission (March 2010). Anyone familiar with the ministry of Dr Keller knows that he cherishes the forensic presentation of the cross, and this is clearly both present and central in The Reason for God, even if not expounded to the extent that some would have hoped. This may be to do with the nature of the book, the context into which it is speaking and what it is trying to achieve, but it hardly justifies the tone of this review. Newling's failure to grasp Keller's nuance is not irresponsible; he has simply read the book through a certain lens. The editing and publication of this review, however, was the responsibility of the editorial team. Their move, in the end, to publish it has been, at best, unhelpful.

Tim Coomar of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, UK (29/03/2010)

Thanks for your letter, Tim. I can't answer all your objections, but I will make two comments to help you understand why I think you've misunderstood my review, and a further comment about why I think you've misunderstood The Reason for God itself.

Firstly, I'm a little disappointed that you don't allow me to have valid mixed reactions to The Reason for God, charging me instead with insincerity—of empty praise and barbed tribute. Subsequently, you read the second section of my review without the genuine warmth and positivity towards the book that was established in the first part of my review.

Surely, this side of glory, and especially amongst Christian friends, we can acknowledge that even our best deeds can be marred by imperfection. There is no need to resort to stark black/white dichotomies. It is possible (and often very desirable) to affirm the good in something, while at the same time calling elements into question.

A reluctance to recommend the book is not a refusal. (I explicitly asked people to weigh if and when to use the book.) Granted, if you divorce the second half of the review from the first, the tone there might appear too strong. But I am at a loss to see why you have chosen—uniquely, among all the other feedback I've received—to read my review with such a polarizing attitude (that I am ‘attacking’ Keller), and therefore to read me inaccurately as putting a ‘black hat’ on Keller (that he is tantamount to being a gospel-denier: these are your words and very deliberately not mine). Rather than reading my initial (and concluding) tone as insincere, I invite you to read that tone of warm admiration, as all other readers of the review I've talked to have done, as the context for my reservations.

Secondly, you have seemingly missed the crucial paragraph in my review (Briefing #378, p. 25, col 1). My contention is not with the presence of these doctrines in The Reason for God, and most definitely not with the author's belief in these doctrines. (On the basis of his writing and preaching, I know very well that Dr Keller is a firm upholder of penal substitutionary atonement.) My point has to do with how these ideas are actually presented in The Reason for God, and their place in contrast with the mainline of the argument in those chapters. My question in the end is about how these chapters stand on their own merits—and particularly how non-Christians (the target audience), if they were asked to summarize or explain those chapters, would come to define hell, sin and substitution.

The examples you provide actually prove my point. I think you are misreading these chapters because you are supplying information that is latent in the text, which someone with little contact with Christianity would not be able to do. Someone equipped only with the text in front of them would not come to conclusions you do.

For instance, in the chapter on sin, you and I know from Scripture that self-glorification and the worship of objects is deeply offensive to God, provoking his wrath and indignation. But this consequence or problem created by sin is not articulated in the relevant chapter (entitled ‘The Problem of Sin’). The consequences are spelt out in entirely ‘horizontal’ terms. I come to the end of the chapter feeling the badness of sin because it hurts me, others and the world (true things!). But I don't come away thinking that sin is bad because it provokes the righteous wrath of the one who made me.

Another case in point is your quote from the book about God paying the debt to be paid (p. 193). You are right in suggesting that this sounds like penal substitutionary atonement. But consider the immediately preceding context. Keller writes: “forgiveness means absorbing the debt of the sin yourself” (p. 192). But what is it that Jesus absorbs? “God … on the Cross absorbed the pain, violence, and evil of the world into himself” (p. 192). This is pitted explicitly against the idea of the shedding of blood as an appeasement of wrath. But then, somewhat bizarrely, the paragraph concludes with an allusion to penal substitutionary atonement. This is why I said in my review that these forensic categories are present, but don't make much sense in the logic of his argument.

My mixed feelings about The Reason for God therefore remain. I would still like to ask why Tim Keller chooses to explain sin, hell and the cross in the way he does. It's a genuine (humbly asked!) question. He deals with many of the other ‘scandalous’ aspects of Christianity so helpfully and winsomely; I would love him to do the same for these!

Scott Newling of Berowra, NSW, AUS (03/05/2010)

There is not much I wish to add to Scott's comments, except to affirm that I thought that his review was an object model of what a good critical book review should be. It was thoughtful, judicious, gracious, insightful and in its own way courageous. It is no light matter to express reservations about a massively popular book, written by one of the leading figures of Reformed-evangelicalism. That Scott was prepared to do so, and to do so in the careful and humble way that he did, I thought did him great credit.

As for the timing of the review and its coinciding with the UK Passion for Life mission, that was certainly not planned! In some recent correspondence with Dr Keller on this point, I apologized for any inconvenience or difficulty that this caused.

Tony Payne of Kingsford, NSW, AUS (03/05/2010)