Almost immediately I sensed that was a wrong thing to do. And afterward my whole team, including my wife, said the same. By saying, “Maybe there’s more to it than we can see now—but this is all we are told,” I was giving people the impression that I thought maybe there is another way of salvation.

Editor’s Note: Earlier this week The Aquila Report published an article written by Mike Riccardi on The Cripplegate Blog. Earlier Justin Taylor of the Gospel Coalition had reprinted portions of a 2008 interview Keller had given to a New York Times reporter and Riccardi (as well as others) found fault with one answer Tim had given on the topic of the exclusivity of Christ.

Keller had been out of town on study leave when the story broke, and he has now posted his response on The Gospel Coalition site.
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This interview from three and a half years ago was the first public event like this I had ever done, and a number of my responses were less than skillful. One in particular—the one about whether there is any way of salvation outside of faith in Christ—was misleading and unhelpful.

Then and now, when people struggle with something the Bible says, I sometimes invoke the principle of Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” The thought that God doesn’t tell us everything there is to know, and that if he doesn’t we don’t need to know it, is helpful at a number of points in life.

It’s helpful when people are struggling with the difficult doctrines—of the Trinity, or how God can be sovereign and yet human beings be responsible for their decisions, or over why God allows suffering to continue. At those points it’s helpful to say, “There is more truth than God has told us, and maybe when we get to heaven he’ll show it to us. That may shed new light on things that we find difficult. Till then, we go with what we are told. That’s all we need.”

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