ENCOUNTERS WITH JESUS
Unexpected answers to life’s biggest questions
By Tim Keller
Hodder & Stoughton. 212 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 1 444 754 131
This book is written in two halves: the first five chapters come from a series of evangelistic talks that Keller presented for OICCU in 2012, about individuals who ‘encountered Jesus’ in John’s Gospel.
The last five chapters are from a more varied series of ‘encounters with Jesus’, given at a business breakfast at New York’s Harvard Club. Starting with a ‘skeptic’s’ encounter, he addresses different issues, including death, faith, the devil, etc., all the way to Jesus’ encounter with a committed disciple.
As is typical of Keller, it’s full of helpful illustrations and quotes from philosophy, literature and the media (including C.S. Lewis and Jonathan Edwards), all designed to reach those specific Oxford and New York audiences respectively. For that reason this is not a book you would give to anyone who isn’t a thinker.
Insightful
Nevertheless, he lives up to his reputation as a skilled communicator and apologist: his applications stem from a long ministry with broad experience of people. He provides insightful sound-bites and I have used some of his material even as I have been preparing to write this review! Ch 7 contains one of the most helpful explanations of the person and work of the Holy Spirit as our advocate that I have read anywhere.
Yet I confess to being frustrated by this gifted man’s handling of the Bible! He tends to impose his framework on the text of scripture and he tries to make it say something that it doesn’t, to illustrate or justify his point. On a couple of occasions he was pro-vokingly wrong (such as Jesus not being ‘written into the Bible script’ until Genesis 6 or Jesus ‘actually tasting’ the cup of God’s wrath in Gethsemane).
So, would I recommend this book? Yes, but with significant caveats: for provoking thought and illustration of how the gospel impacts our society and culture, but not as the best model for how to handle the Bible.
