As public intellectuals, pastors are not commonly known for citing their sources. In fact they’re often explicitly discouraged in training from doing so, for fear of distracting the congregation with author and book names they won’t remember. Keller breaks that mold. From Tolkien to Taylor, Clowney to Conn, Keller shows his work, so we can carry on his project. Future generations will honor Keller better by reading his library than by quoting him. How ironic if the pastor who gathered from such varied tributaries became a solitary river flowing down through the years.
What a closing paragraph… while I don’t consider Tim Keller a formative influence of my own, his lived synthesis of these other writers / theologians / pastors certainly is.
