PRAY: Tim Keller Reveals Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment By Tré Goins-Phillips for Faith Wire
Tim Keller, a well-known theologian, itinerant speaker, and founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, revealed Sunday he is being treated for pancreatic cancer.
“Less than three weeks ago, I didn’t know I had cancer,” he announced.
The 69-year-old preacher first shared the news on Instagram.
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“I feel great and have no symptoms,” Keller wrote. “It was what doctors call an ‘incidental pickup,’ otherwise known as providential intervention. I haev terrific human doctors, but most importantly, I have the Great Physician himself caring for me.”
Through the treatments he has endured in the last few weeks, the famous preacher said God “has been remarkably present.”
Keller has previously battled thyroid cancer. In a 2008 interview with First Things, he said that experience held him eliminate doubts he had about God — uncertainties he didn’t even realize were there.
In fact, that experience is part of what inspired his book, “The Reason for God,” a primer for anyone seeking to understand how belief in God is a logical and rational hope.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Keller said at the time. “It was both an intellectual and emotional experience: You’re facing death, you’re not sure you’re going to get over the cancer. And the rigorous intellectual process of going through all the alternative explanations for how the Christian Church started. Except the resurrection, none of them are even tenable. It was quite an experience.”
