Gospelbound

I want to tell a story about how I learned something that changed my life. It was the first Keller Center retreat in 2023. Our inaugural fellows, a couple dozen of them, didn’t know each other well. We had just finished a team-building scavenger hunt crisscrossing Manhattan. We settled into a Sunday school room at Redeemer West Side on W 83rd Street. We were about to do a Zoom call with Tim from his hospital room. It was the last time many of us spoke with him. He would die within weeks. He left us notes on what he wanted to see from the center.
In that exercise before we talked to Tim, I led a discussion on the Great Dechurching, the unprecedented decline in Christian practice in the United States since the year 2000. I’ve led this exercise many times before and since, without incident. The goal is to identify what events and trends really shift culture. In this case, a majority of Americans had the internet in their homes by 2000. Add smartphones and social media and now AI and you can see that the dawn of the information age is perhaps the biggest story of the 21st century so far.
But the exercise didn’t sit well with many of our fellows. We weren’t yet comfortable with each other. Some wanted to dig a lot deeper with ideas and a lot further back in history. Others saw the internet more as a vehicle rather than the driver of cultural change. Some just misunderstood the exercise altogether.
I’ll never forget Michael Keller’s response. He pulled some of his dad’s notes on how to share the gospel in our current age. He described various overlapping and conflicting cultural narratives that help us make sense of the world, apart from God. And then he showed how Jesus critiques and ultimately completes those narratives. It was brilliant work.

The whole center rallied around this idea. We recorded and wrote the group study Making Sense of Us: Exploring Six Stories that Shape How We Live. Michael Keller wrote the foreword. And we rallied behind a new book, The Stories We Live By: Seven Cultural Myths That Fail Us and the Story That Never Will, published by Zondervan. It’s written by Michael and his father, Tim, based on those notes we saw in 2023. Ever since that day I’ve adapted what I learned into my own teaching, not just about cultural narratives, but about how we think about the various deep levels of cultural change. And I’m eager to talk now about this book with Michael on Gospelbound. We’ll also discuss another new book Michael recently wrote, Talking to Kids About Hard Things: Honest Conversations When Life Gets Complicated. He wrote that book with Rebekah Hannah and published it with New Growth Press.

In This Episode:
00:00 – Why the best gospel presentation cannot save your children
00:58 – How an early Keller Center retreat shaped The Stories We Live By
05:02 – How Michael and Tim Keller began the book together
07:11 – The seven cultural stories shaping modern life
09:37 – Why identity may be the defining cultural narrative of our age
11:10 – Cultural narratives as Christian heresies
13:52 – The strengths and failures of expressive individualism
15:58 – What Michael hopes The Stories We Live By changes in the church
18:15 – How cultural narratives shape Christians too
20:27 – What remains in Tim Keller’s unpublished notes
23:06 – How Michael handles ongoing criticism of his father
25:35 – Tim Keller, “third way” criticism, and diagonalization
26:50 – What church planting taught Michael that he could not learn secondhand
29:56 – Redeemer’s transition after Tim Keller
30:49 – Why the best way to honor Tim Keller is not to imitate him
32:28 – Introducing Talking to Kids About Hard Things
35:09 – Why Michael was skeptical of parenting books
36:36 – “Your kids need your repentance more than your perfection”
38:25 – Why apologizing to your children matters
40:14 – The gospel in action through forgiveness and repentance
41:40 – Why technique cannot produce saving faith
44:01 – How to help children feel safe asking hard questions
45:17 – Teaching like Jesus by asking questions
47:53 – How parenting reveals who we really are
49:18 – Control, repentance, and what parenting exposed in Michael
51:52 – How Michael wants his daughters to remember him
53:27 – Collin on integrity between public ministry and private family life
54:58 – Integrity, not perfection
57:29 – Final reflections and recommended books
58:16 – Outro
Resources Mentioned:
The Stories We Live By by Michael Keller and Timothy Keller
Talking to Kids About Hard Things by Michael Keller and Rebecca Hannah
Making Sense of God by Timothy Keller
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
Center Church by Timothy Keller
Making Sense of Us
Handing Down the Faith by Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk
Gospel in Life
Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
The Gospel Coalition
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Like many others, generative AI has become a nearly daily part of my life in the last couple years. I’ve found help for home repairs. Diet and exercise plans. Meal preparation. Trip planning. Personal health assessments. Footnote formatting. Even baseball swing and pitching advice for my son. Combine the best of Google and YouTube, tailored to my specific needs and situations from changing windshield wipers to fixing sump pumps, and that’s how I’ve used AI so far. I know I’m not even scratching the surface of what agentic AI can and will eventually do. I’ve seen friends spin up websites it would have taken years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build just five years ago.

But do you know the most common use? It’s not one I’ve employed myself. And it’s not one I’d recommend. But according to Harvard Business Review, it’s remained perched on the top from 2025 to 2026 even as other common uses have wildly fluctuated up and down the charts.

It’s therapy and companionship.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering about how AI chatbots could be the reasons companies like OpenAI have been valued at $852 billion. Or why AI has become the widely and quickly adopted new technology in human history. Isn’t AI supposed to revolutionize business? Upend every profession and transform entire economies?

Perhaps.

The trend is clear. It looks like many others have been turning to AI for help in fixing their toilets. (Claude was wrong in my situation, by the way.) More commonly, AI is less of a computer interface and more of a, well, human face. A friend to share jokes and silly pictures. An imaginative storyteller. A trusty counselor to assess your new relationship. A medium who can predict your future. And a wise confidant who promises not to lead you astray (or tell you what you don’t want to hear).

Given the wild predictions about AI’s unparalleled value, how can these cases be the most common ways we employ the technology? Is your daily horoscope worth $852 billion?

Now, what if I told you this is exactly what the builders of AI expected us to do?

That’s the vision behind a new book, The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, which I edited along with Skyler Flowers and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. I spoke on my introduction from the book at a recent TGC regional chapter meeting in Nashville.

Thank you to TGC Nashville and Edgefield Church for hosting and recording this podcast in front of a lively and engaged audience. You could have heard a pin drop when I talked to these (mostly) pastors about why AI will write their next sermon. Now is the time to work through the ethical implications together and decide where to draw the line.

In This Episode:

0:00 AI's Unexpected Role as a Human Companion and Counselor

7:21 AI, Love, and the Lessons from Her

13:37 The Role of AI in Defining Human Purpose

20:17 The Impact of AI on Literacy and Human Creativity

28:51 The Irreplaceable Human Touch in Preaching Amid AI Advancements

38:39 Navigating AI Ethics in Church, Family, and Education

40:41 The Impacts of AI on Society and Economy

Resources Mentioned:

AI Apocalypse edited by Collin Hansen

Empire of AI by Karen Hao

The Odyssey by Homer

Social Acceleration by Hartmut Rosa

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics

The Gospel Coalition

Recorded (Podcast) by The Gospel Coalition

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Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.
Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

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The patron saint of cultural apologetics is Augustine of Hippo, author most famously of City of God and Confessions. Second place is up for debate. But you’ll get a lot of votes for a 17th-century disciple of Augustine, the Frenchman Blaise Pascal.

Graham Tomlin describes Pascal as the “man who made the modern world” in a new biography. Tomlin is the director of the Centre for Cultural Witness in Oxford, England. He writes of Pascal that “it is hard to think of anyone who has impacted so many fields of human endeavour in such a short time.” 

Here’s a taste from Tomlin about Pascal’s accomplishments: he basically invented probability theory; proved the existence of the vacuum; laid the foundations of integral calculus; conducted the first modern scientific experiment; developed theory that made possible the hydraulic press; demonstrated that air has weight; designed and built the first mechanical calculating machine, which led to what we know as the computer; set the trend of wearing wrist watches; and built the first public urban transportation system in Europe. 

And did I already mention he was one of the most effective and enduring cultural apologists of all time, perhaps second only to Augustine? Tomlin writes, “His was a Christianity founded in a profound experience of God, an intense devotional life and a form of faith that offered a radical alternative to the comfortable assimilation to culture that the Church of his day often seemed to promote.”

Let’s talk to Graham Tomlin about this remarkable man, who lamented man’s inability to sit quietly by himself, who observed, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

In This Episode:

00:00 – Pascal’s wager and living as if Christianity is true

00:49 – Introducing Blaise Pascal, the cultural apologist who helped make the modern world

02:36 – Pascal’s remarkable inventions, including public transportation and the Pascaline

05:42 – Augustine’s influence on Pascal’s theology of desire, fallenness, and grace

08:11 – Why Pascal trusted reason in science but not as the starting point for faith

10:46 – Pascal’s “Night of Fire” and encounter with the living God

16:43 – Why Pascal went to war with the Jesuits

20:20 – Jansenism, Calvinism, and Pascal’s understanding of grace

25:51 – The hiddenness of God as an argument for faith

32:38 – How human misery points toward human greatness

39:46 – What Pascal’s Wager actually means

48:45 – Pascal, Jonathan Haidt, and the psychology of belief

49:05 – “Make it attractive”: Pascal’s enduring strategy for cultural apologetics

51:59 – How Pascal anticipated both the modern and postmodern worlds

59:22 – What Pascal would say about modern science and scientism

1:01:43 – Why Pascal’s faith speaks to people who have looked into the abyss

1:03:21 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

Blaise Pascal by Graham Tomlin 

Pensées by Blaise Pascal 

The Provincial Letters by Blaise Pascal 

Confessions by Augustine 

City of God by Augustine 

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt 

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt 

The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics 

 

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Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.
Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

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Back in 2024 Kevin Vanhoozer’s book Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically won the Christianity Today book award in the academic theology category and also won The Gospel Coalition book award in biblical studies. I couldn’t even begin to account for all the other awards he’s won for earlier works. 

I had the blessing of studying under Dr. Vanhoozer at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And I was challenged in this book just as I was challenged and encouraged in his courses. Mere Christian Hermeneutics helps all of us who live on the far side of the “demise of biblical civilization.” When Westerners want to tell the story of the world, we no longer open the Bible. Vanhoozer aims to reconnect us with Scripture as our means of enjoying “covenant fellowship with the triune God.” I loved this summary in the book: “How an unholy people can come into the presence of a holy God is the chief complication in the biblical narrative to which the gospel is the solution.”

So let’s get into mere Christian hermeneutics, reading the Bible spiritually, the Transfiguration, and much more.

In This Episode:
00:00 – The transfiguration of Jesus and the way Christians read Scripture
00:39 – Introducing Mere Christian Hermeneutics
01:58 – What makes this approach to hermeneutics “mere”?
03:26 – How different reading cultures divide Christians
05:01 – Polarization among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians
06:52 – The loss of Christianity’s cultural influence in the West
07:46 – Does Catholic authority solve Protestant interpretive pluralism?
10:43 – What does it mean to interpret the Bible spiritually?
13:23 – How the transfiguration guides Christian interpretation
16:08 – Why Christians should not separate Jesus from the Bible
18:24 – Johannes Oecolampadius and Scripture’s Christ-centered scope
21:57 – Bridging the divide between biblical scholars and theologians
25:05 – Kant, critical thinking, and the rise of biblical criticism
27:34 – The hidden assumptions modern readers bring to Scripture
30:14 – Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and teaching systematic theology
32:37 – Cultural hermeneutics and the formative power of culture
36:24 – The current state of theological interpretation of Scripture
39:29 – Potential dangers in theological retrieval
41:40 – Protestant catholicity and unity amid secondary disagreements
42:02 – Vanhoozer’s work with the Alexandrian Institute
44:35 – His four-volume systematic theology project
46:19 – Brahms, young theologians, and reasons for hope
47:13 – What pastors can learn from Henry James
48:54 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

Mere Christian Hermeneutics by Kevin Vanhoozer

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Meditation in a Toolshed by C. S. Lewis

The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith

The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies by Michael C. Legaspi

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics

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▫ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0kRYr5FTKr5ru1N7MR65Br

✅ SUBSCRIBE: 

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Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.
Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.
Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

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Only a couple years out of college, I told my coworkers that I looked forward to being old. They weren’t just dismissive of that comment. They were indignant. On one level, I know why. I understood little to nothing at age 23 about the hardships of aging and caring for the dying. I hadn’t yet suffered many of life’s inevitable pains.

At the same time, I looked forward to greater wisdom, maybe even defeat of some sins and temptations. I was excited about all I could learn if the Lord granted me years. Maybe I even had a couple Bible verses in my head, like Proverbs 16:31: “Gray hair is a crown of

glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” Or Job 12:12: “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.”

Both those verses are cited by Jen Wilkin in her excellent new book, Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World, published by Crossway. If you take my youthful naiveté at its best, I was recognizing what Jen distinguishes in her book: the world says to age is to diminish. But the Bible says to age is to deepen. Now in middle age, however, I experience the good and bad: the invisibility because no one would possibly notice my appearance. But also the freedom: because I have that middle-age dad’s superpower of not caring what other people think of my appearance. 

I didn’t realize how much I needed Jen’s book, and I’m eager to ask a whole bunch of questions now on Gospelbound.

In This Episode:

00:00:00 – Jen Wilkin reflects on her mother’s death and the symmetry of life

00:00:49 – Why Collin has long looked forward to old age

00:01:20 – Introducing Dust to Dust and the contrast between cultural decline and biblical deepening

00:02:31 – Why modern culture values youth over old age

00:03:55 – Jen’s first moments of realizing she was aging

00:05:46 – How aging feels different for men and women

00:07:49 – Why many people fear becoming a burden

00:10:08 – Assisted suicide, dependency, and surprising cultural opposition

00:14:47 – The “chiasm of life” and how beginning and end mirror each other

00:21:02 – Why midlife offers a unique vantage point for perspective and wisdom

00:24:50 – Caring simultaneously for children and aging parents

00:29:12 – Why caregiving is not a season but a default setting of life

00:32:10 – How modern longevity has changed the experience of family and aging

00:36:25 – “You will not surely die”: the anti-gospel of age denial

00:37:52 – How suffering narrows our priorities

00:40:34 – Honoring parents and the fuller meaning of the fifth commandment

00:45:44 – Retirement, crystallized knowledge, and later-life vocation

00:50:46 – A theology of aging before a debate about anti-aging practices

00:55:33 – Jen’s regrets, sanctification, and learning to honor parents well

01:00:26 – Final reflections on aging, family, and hope

01:01:07 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

Dust to Dust by Jen Wilkin

From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks

The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

 

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📫 SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound

🎁 Help The Gospel Coalition build up a renewed church for tomorrow. Let's Build Together: Donate Today at https://www.tgc.org/together

🎧 Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen

▫ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gospelbound/id1499898207

▫ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0kRYr5FTKr5ru1N7MR65Br

✅ SUBSCRIBE: 

▫ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thegospelcoalition

▫ TGC Updates: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/newsletters

Use code “GOSPELBOUND” for 25% off tuition.
Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email info@downlineministries.com for group pricing and discounts.
Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.