Interview with Craig Keener (Part 6 of 6)

This is the final installment of an interview series with Craig Keener, who is a professor of biblical studies at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, as well as, the current president of the Evangelical Theological Society.

JR:  Go ahead and tell us about George Ladd's influence on you. I know readers will be fascinated.

CK:  Thanks for asking me that question that I sort of hinted that you should ask me (smile). The

George Eldon Ladd

eschatology issue that attracted me to Gordon Fee also attracted me to George Ladd, and a bit earlier. From another part of my testimony, you may rightly gather that I was initially suspicious of scholars, my freshman year in Bible college. Yet I noticed that it was scholars (rather, a particular group of them) who were pointing out the same things I saw in Scripture itself, in contrast to their critics. Thus I decided that perhaps scholarship might also be a good thing. I had also felt led to take Greek and Hebrew starting my freshman year, though I had not yet seen the connection with scholarship.

There were a few other evangelical scholars talked about at our school, such as F. F. Bruce and I. Howard Marshall. But George Ladd's books were widely available at that time, and I devoured them. I never met him, but I later heard descriptions of him from those that knew him. One told me how he (Ladd) grieved whenever he heard what he felt was bad exegesis. I can identify with that! It sounds to me like he faced so much criticism, saying things that contradicted both secular scholarship and popular evangelical ideas, that he was personally wounded, though he kept saying what he believed was right. I believe that God really raised him up, and he could not have known the wide impact he has had on scholarship of all stripes, including even in circles once dominated by his critics. When the criticisms come hard, I need to remember his example; it is not about popularity, but about faithfulness to God's call and the foundations that lays for the future.

One of those foundations was obvious in his work on the kingdom: Jesus not only proclaimed God's reign; He demonstrated it by healing the sick and casting out demons. Now I don't know where he stood personally on expecting such signs today, but his theology does not easily fit cessationism. One of our professors, who was pre-tribulational and I think not happy that so many of us liked Ladd, pointed out that he had been at Harvard with Ladd decades earlier and Ladd was anti-Pentecostal. I don't know if this professor had had some unexpected influence on Ladd, or if it was simply his exegesis or something else, but Ladd's published work on the kingdom puts signs and wonders in their biblical place so well that his work was not at all anti-Pentecostal.

If the Kingdom is already/not yet, and the kingdom is demonstrated by healings and exorcisms in the Gospels and Acts, and if you do not hold to a dispensational schema, then the kingdom should be demonstrated in healings and exorcisms today as well. John Wimber, provoked by reports of what was happening in evangelism in other parts of the world, agreed with Ladd's theology and simply started putting it into practice, as a practitioner. This in turn shaped both the early Vineyard movement and, if I'm not mistaken, the New Wine renewal within the British Anglican church. It offers one of the sound, biblical models for Pentecostal/charismatic experience and theology today, keeping us centered on Christ and the kingdom. As a good biblical scholar, Ladd gave us important foundations. He took a lot of criticism and did not live to see all of the fruit of his ministry, but God used him greatly. When discouragement with my task overwhelms me, Ladd's example (and that of other evangelical scholars who paved the way for us today) encourages me as a biblical scholar to stay faithful to Scripture and not be moved (at least try not to be).

JR:  Thank you for your time, Craig, and for being faithful to the ministry the Lord has given you. That ministry has blessed many.

In 2019, Craig published a massive commentary on Galatians. The nine-minute video below gives viewers a walk through the commentary.