Gideon Lee 

Introduction

Any attempts to evaluate the methods and influence of Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer (Jan. 30, 1912 – May 15, 1984) have to confront wide ranging opinions in multiple areas.  In each area, the assessments of Schaeffer range from monumental, ephemeral, to regrettable.  To make sense of this complex picture, we must begin by drawing a distinction between impact and influence.  Unquestionably, Schaeffer had made a huge impact in the evangelical community and beyond.  Many reacted strongly to his persona and messaging styles.  However, to assess his influence, we cannot ignore his ideas.  It is an open debate how many people truly understood Schaeffer.  People might react to a celebrity, even strongly, without knowing at all what the celebrity thought.  People are only influenced by a thinker if they understand his ideas.  Schaeffer was known far too well for his dramatic presentation.  Yet, he was a serious thinker and only when he was seriously treated as one could his influence be assessed.

This essay consists of two parts.  In the first part, I will sketch out the impressions and impact of Schaeffer based on the opinions of contemporary scholars.  A sociological study of the critics of Schaeffer would perhaps reveal much about the ideological orientation of the contemporary Anglo-American scholars in religion.  However, this is not an essay about them.  Neither is this a defense of Schaffer against the critics among them.  The first part merely aims at explaining the perceived milieu where this essay is written.

In the second part, I will discuss the ideas and influence of Schaeffer.  I try to make sense of Schaeffer and understand his works in relation to the goals he set out to accomplish.  What problems did he see?  What solutions did he discover?  What do they have to do with evangelism?  The Francis Schaeffer I see was a philanthropist, a lover of mankind whose charity is in the treasury of his ideas.  His heart rejoiced in the glorious hope for human dignity but ached for the present human misery.  He refused to accept the status quo.  The bible taught him that change is not only required, it is actually possible.  Evangelism is neither the starting point nor the end goal, but rather, an integral part of a worldview revolution for human dignity. 

The most basic methodical questions for Schaeffer are general questions about the process of change: how changes happen?  What are the conditions for change?  What are the responsibilities of human beings as change agents?  His reflections on the nature of change led him to conclusions remarkably similar to what historians of science have discovered: revolutions take place through anomalies, crises, and paradigm shifts.  Unless the cultural presuppositions which ensnare the modern humanity into its self-image are challenged, religious revivals will be difficult because the gospel has become unintelligible.  Schaeffer became a cultural revolutionary because he was an evangelist.  Schaeffer became an evangelist because he was a philanthropist.

Schaeffer insisted on testing truth claims based on practical consistency.  If there is orthodoxy but no orthopraxy, maybe the orthodoxy is not that orthodox after all.  Change is more than an exuberant decision.  Change is real only when the living testimony matches the beliefs.  How could anyone be certain whether their beliefs correspond to the Truth otherwise?  If real life were not transformed, what difference would beliefs make anyway?

I would like to thank Dick Keyes and Prof. Urlich Becker for lending me time to explore their experiences at L’Abri and to investigate how that transformed their lives.  We see the influence of Schaeffer perhaps more clearly through the lives he touched.  I regret having to exclude all but a handful of vignettes from the amazing life stories of Francis and Edith Schaeffer in order to make room for his ideas, especially those that seemed to have been neglected or misunderstood. 

For those interested in learning more about his life, I recommend some of the excellent biographical materials available.[1]

Impressions and Impact

Mission to Intellectuals

In 2006, the staff members at Christianity Today selected fifty books that have most profoundly shaped the evangelicals.[2]  In the fourth place was The God Who Is There, Schaeffer’s first book published by the InterVarsity Press (IVP).  For many evangelicals, Schaeffer was remembered as a broad-minded thinker who inspired a whole generation of scholars.  A web page introducing the history of the IVP comments that publishing the works of Schaeffer “put IVP on the map as a publisher of note.”[3]  Andrew T. Le Peau blogged,

Perhaps no other author set the tone for what IVP would become more than Schaeffer… The influence of Schaeffer on an entire generation helped create the world of vigorous Christian scholarship we see today… One of the main reasons IVP was able to undertake a serious academic publishing program in the early 1990s was the existence of a newly emerging author pool… Many of these potential authors had been inspired as students by the books of Francis Schaeffer in the seventies.[4] 

L’Abri, a retreat center co-founded by Francis and Edith Schaeffer in the Swiss ski-resort village of Champéry, became widely known after a Time magazine article titled “Mission to Intellectuals” was published in January, 1960.[5]  Describing their mission as a shelter for intellectuals who normally could not find a place in the Christian church, the article added to the steady stream of visitors to L’Abri.  The reputation of Francis Schaeffer as a lecturer began to grow as he was invited to speak to students from some of the most renowned universities in the USA and the UK.  In 1968, he published his first two books through IVP.[6]

Well-received as Schaeffer was as a public speaker, scholarly assessments of his ideas varied greatly.  There have certainly been admirers.  Os Guiness noted,

[Schaeffer] had a massive impact on the lives of individuals, including me, but his wider significance was as a ‘gatekeeper,’ or a door opener. When almost no Evangelicals were thinking about culture and connecting unconnected dots, Schaeffer not only did it himself but blazed a trail for countless others to follow.[7]

In his popular introduction to philosophy, Colin Brown presented Schaeffer alongside some of the most well-known philosophers in western history.[8]  Timothy George wrote in 2009, “I was one of many younger evangelicals who fell under the spell of Francis Schaeffer…  As never before, we need to revisit the legacy of Schaeffer today.”[9]

There have also been reservations.  In a Newsweek article titled “Guru of Fundamentalism” published in November, 1982, Arthur Holmes was quoted as saying that they used Schaeffer at Wheaton “as an example of how not to do philosophy.”[10]  Mark Noll was quoted in the same article as saying, “The danger is that people will take [Schaeffer] for a scholar, which he is not.  Evangelical historians are especially bothered by his simplified myth of America’s Christian past.”[11]  Alan Jacobs tweeted in 2011, “I've been teaching at an evangelical college for +25 years, and I'm still waiting for a colleague *or* a student to cite Francis Schaeffer.”[12]  In his biography of Schaeffer, Barry Hankins insinuated, “It is highly unlikely that Schaeffer ever actually read Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard, and the other modern thinkers he would later critique in his lectures and books.  It is doubtful that he even read Barth in depth.”[13]  Elsewhere, Hankins concluded, “while Schaeffer had inspired a generation of Christian young people to become scholars, he had little ideas of what scholars actually do.”[14]

Guru of Fundamentalism

Schaeffer’s impact outside the evangelical community was manifested mainly through his involvement with the Christian Right movement.  Charles Colson observed,

Perhaps more than anyone else, Schaeffer jolted conservative American Protestants out of their parochialism and complacency and showed them how to challenge the surrounding culture with the truth of God’s words… His condemnation of abortion, conveyed in another film series, Whatever Happened to the Human Races? helped to mobilize evangelicals for the pro-life movement.[15]

While many Christians embraced Schaeffer’s political activism with enthusiasm, some reacted with disdain.  Thirty years after he died, some are still reacting.  Molly Worthen’s Apostles of Reason is a recent example.  Her devastating flak against Schaeffer easily matched if not surpassed the most ardent critics of Schaeffer to date.  According to Worthen, Schaeffer was a “brilliant demagogue who offered up all of Western history in an hour’s lecture, stripping of confusing nuance.”[16]  Roe v. Wade “radicalized Schaeffer’s priorities.”  Until then, “there was no evangelical pro-life movement to speak of.”  Schaeffer’s film, How Should We Then Live?,

dramatized Schaeffer’s narrative of the West’s decline, culminating in the legalization of abortion. … Schaeffer’s gloomy message appealed to evangelicals troubled by conservative white Protestants’ eroding authority in American society.  And in these years of economic stagnation, rising urban crime, and what Jimmy Carter would soon call a ‘crisis of confidence’ that ‘strikes at very heart and soul of our national will,’ the idea that the country had crossed over a ‘line of despair’ resonated with many Americans regardless of their theology.”[17]

Worthen observed that even as Randall Terry and others in the pro-life movement called Schaeffer “the greatest modern Christian philosopher,” John Howard Yoder and others were “appalled by Schaeffer’s ham-fisted caricature of history.  For all of his emphasis of careful argument, Schaeffer was notoriously irresponsible as a scholar.”  Schaeffer condensed “500 years of intellectual history in a paragraph,” doing so with “exaggerations, oversimplifications, and misinformation that would make a specialist cry.  He was a brazen editor of history.”[18]

Ideas and Influence

Worldview Revolution

To explain Schaeffer’s philosophical analysis of change, which I denote as “worldview revolution” in this essay, it is helpful to begin with the revivalist conversion pattern which Bruce Hindmarsh observed in the spiritual biographies that were popular in the early modern England.[19]  The pattern can be described as: (1) Christian upbringing, (2) youthful rebellion, (3) repentance, and (4) growing in spiritual maturity.  Hindmarsh suggested that the evangelical Christians in the period saw their personal lives as a microcosm of the overall biblical narrative, in parallel to (1) creation, (2) fall, (3) redemption, and (4) sanctification.  As the traditional social order began to break down but had not fully run its course, most people still grew up in pious Christian homes, where a spiritual seed is planted for a prodigal son return after a period of youthful rebellion.  This common experience became rare later in England as fewer were raised Christian.  However, the prodigal son paradigm continues to be popular through the revivalism in the United States due to a stronger culture of church attendance, especially among the youth.

Schaeffer observed that many modern non-believers in the west grew up with no church experience.  Reflective of the modern culture, their metaphysical, moral, epistemological, and spiritual presuppositions stand in quadrilateral opposition to the Christian meta-narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and sanctification.[20]  Conversion for the modern non-believers requires no less than a complete reconstitution of their worldview.[21] 

Lane Dennis noticed that Schaeffer’s own conversion reveals some notable similarities with Thomas Kuhn’s observations of the general historical structures of scientific revolutions.[22]  Schaeffer thought highly of Michael Polanyi,[23] whose work was a known influence to Kuhn.[24]  The perennial debate between the deductivist and the inductivist had occupied much recent history of the philosophy of science.  As a scientist-turns-philosopher of science, Kuhn was less drawn to prescribing a norm and more interested in describing how scientific revolutions historically happened.  He observed that there have been periods when science proceeded more deductively, which he called periods of normal science.  There were also periods when science proceeded more inductively, which began with anomalies, accumulated into crises, and eventually causing worldview revolutions characterized by paradigm shifts.[25]

 A similar debate between the presuppositional and the classical apologists characterizes the modern history of Christian apologetics.  Presuppositionalists, following Cornelius Van Til to various degrees, hold that true knowledge is obtainable only when the biblical truths are accepted as the starting point.[26]  Biblical truths are internally consistent and correspond to experience deductively.  However, biblical truths cannot be proven inductively from natural knowledge of the world.  In contrast, classical apologists argue that some truths about God and the world are evident from nature.[27]  They believe that every human being is born with an innate knowledge of God and moral law, even if they hate and suppress that knowledge.

John Feinberg classified Schaeffer as a presuppositionalist alongside Van Til, who taught Schaeffer at Westminster.[28]  Kenneth Harper called Schaeffer an “inconsistent presuppositionalist.”[29]  Schaeffer himself regarded his ideas as consistent with Van Til but he postulated that a subset of biblical truths could be thought of as constituting a worldview, which the unbelievers could be persuaded to adopt as working presuppositions.[30]  It is commonly held that Immanuel Kant coined in his work Critique of Judgment the term Weltanschauung, from which “worldview” was calqued.[31]  Schaeffer considered the process of worldview revolution as beginning with the demonstration of the inconsistencies in an unbeliever’s worldview (Kuhn’s anomalies), leading to the point of despair (Kuhn’s crisis), and resulting in a paradigm shift.  The unbelievers are not necessarily converted spiritually by switching to the new worldview.  But as a result of the change, they come closer to the point where the gospel message becomes intelligible.[32]  If spiritual conversion has the effect of a permanent Lasik-surgery, worldview revolution is similar to a pair of prescription eyeglasses.

Reporting that countless Christians in the second half of the twentieth century “cut their worldview teeth on Schaeffer’s writings,” David Nuggle counted James Orr, Abraham Kuyper, Gordon Clark, Herman Dooyeweerd, Carl Henry, and Schaeffer as the key figures in the evangelical lineage that contributed significantly to worldview thinking.[33]  James Sire, who served as the editor of Schaeffer’s early publications at IVP, defined worldview as:

a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic construction of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being."[34]

Thomas Morris explained Schaeffer as contending that “non-Christians would have a difficult time of consistently working out their presuppositions as they lived in the context of their own and the external world.”[35]  Agreeing with Morris’s explanation, Ronald Nash observed, “Schaeffer’s work has been misunderstood, ironically, by a number of evangelical thinkers.”[36]  Within the Reformed tradition which Schaeffer belonged, two kinds of critical questions were often raised against the idea of worldview apologetic: first, whether such a worldview revolution could be achieved, and second, whether it should be attempted. 

Reasoning from a post-foundationalist viewpoint, Morris was skeptical that people would abandon their worldview when inconsistencies are demonstrated.[37]  Modern people seem quite capable of dissolving any inconsistencies by compartmentalizing their lives.  Among postmodern people, Morris was skeptical that any inconsistencies could even be meaningfully demonstrated at all.

Responding from the presuppositionalist perspective, Van Til and his successor Greg Bahnsen also expressed skepticism that Schaeffer’s approach would work.[38]  They argued that Schaeffer’s approach is practically the same as the classical approach, only with different semantics.  From Van Til’s perspective, the pragmatic verificationism of Schaeffer made his epistemology the same as that of Edward Carnell, which Van Til regarded as classical.

Gordon Lewis, a student of Carnell, was unsurprisingly supportive of Schaeffer.[39]  More notably, some classical apologists such as R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsay wanted to claim Schaeffer as one of their own, even though Schaeffer had mixed feelings for their hero Thomas Aquinas.[40]  They claim that Schaeffer misunderstood Aquinas.[41]  Eduardo Escheverria, a Roman Catholic, also found certain common ground with Schaeffer.[42]

Whether worldview revolution is theoretically achievable or not, the normative question remains.  Jerram Barrs, who became a Christian partly through listening to Schaeffer’s tape and had served with the L’Abri Fellowship for 18 years, said people have often asked him if Schaeffer made the gospel too complicated.  Not at all, he thought:

The beginning for modern people, and even more for postmodern people, is denial or doubt about the existence of God and denial or doubt about the existence of truth.  While these might seem like abstract issues… nothing is more practical, more basic than the conviction that there is truth that can be known… The more consistently people live with the loss of truth, the more their lives will fall apart, for the center does not hold.  … My own conversion bears on this…  I wondered how any meaning and value can be given to human life… Is there any reason for suffering, any ultimate explanation for it, or is it meaningless in the end?[43]

 A World Made for the Good of Humanity

According to Sire, Schaeffer had “a passion for the God who is there, a passion for truth, a compassion for people, a passion for relevant and honest communication, and a passion for Scripture.”[44]  The five are not unrelated passions but revolve around Rom. 8:28, which for Schaeffer is the center of the Christian Worldview: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (NIV).  Barrs and Randy MacCaulay, Schaeffer’s son-in-law, gave a biblical-theological exposition to that vision of humanity in their book Being Human.[45]  Human is neither a machine nor a ghost in the upper story of a dualist world.  Human is made in the image of God. 

Among his five passions, Schaeffer was most expressive in defending the Truth and yet perhaps least understood.  In his comparative study of the positions of Van Til, Schaeffer, Henry, Donald Bloesch, and Millard Erickson on the nature of truth, James Emery White gave one of the more succinct evaluations of their conceptions of truth from the perspective of the next generation of evangelical scholars who seek to affirm the absolute objectivity of biblical truth as a matter of divine self-revelation while taking fully into account the “polymorphous character” of the biblical text.  White claimed that Schaeffer shared the weakness of Van Til’s fideism in their common presuppositionalism, accepting certain doctrines such as biblical inerrancy for granted without expending much effort to explain them.  Echoing Holmes, White criticized Schaeffer for confusing metaphysics and epistemology, the real and the truth, the universal and the absolute.  The central objection White sought to level against the older generation of evangelical theologians is the inadequacy of a single theory of truth, which has been the correspondence theory, in handling biblical revelation.  As White quoted Anthony Thiselton as saying, “the understanding of truth varies according to context.”[46]

Whether Schaeffer was understood at all, he had articulated his theory of truth intently using the rather idiosyncratic phrase “true truth.” As Colson and George observed,

The denial of "true truth" was not some passing academic fad. In both its post-Kantian and postmodernist garb, this denial detaches language from reality and leads to the kind of moral and spiritual relativism that is the current coin of contemporary discourse, especially in Europe and North America.[47]

Schaeffer would undoubtedly agree with White that the meaning of a literal proposition varies according to its context.  That is exactly why Schaeffer said the bible makes little sense to people in the modern cultural context.  However, Schaeffer would see no problem in maintaining a single correspondence theory of truth.  The correspondence to historical events is not the only kind of correspondence, because historical events constitute only a subset of particulars in the total reality.  Schaeffer’s metaphysical reality contains other particulars as well as universals.

Schaeffer thought of universals, such as the Truth and humanness (“mannishness” as he called it), to be real.  They are eternal universals that exist logically prior to the particulars (truths and people).[48]  Conceptualists think universals are mental concepts and have no reality outside the mind.  Beauty is in eye of the beholder.  Schaeffer rejected conceptualism as an inadequate philosophy for Christians.  For example, how could one explain Jesus Christ when he said that he is the Truth (John 14:6)?  Similarly, the good of all who love God in Rom. 8:28 is a universal.  Schaeffer would insist that such goodness metaphysically exists.  It is real!

White might insist upon a distinction between epistemology and metaphysics.  From Schaeffer’s view, epistemology is meaningless outside metaphysics.  Meanings of things are metaphysically, eternally, and immutably real.  All revelations are pointers to meanings.  People understand a revelatory act only when they grasp the referred meaning.  One either grasps it or not.  Though an eloquent translator, Schaeffer’s native philosophical tongue is Neo-Platonic, “Byzantine” as he called it.  Losing the ability to think in classical philosophical terms is why he thought much of the historic Christian theology makes little sense to the modern person.[49]

Humanness Lost: Escape from Reason

Schaeffer thought the modern person has lost the holistic self-image of freedom, morality, rationality and dignity that was once held as part of a common worldview.  The modern person is reduced to the sum of its pieces: part mechanical, part ethereal, co-existing separately in the garage and the loft of a two-story building.  Schaeffer saw the root cause of this loss to be philosophical, although the idea had spread through art, music, general culture, to theology.[50] 

In Escape from Reason, (likely a pun of “Prison,”) Schaeffer set out to identify the paradigm shifts that led to the modern misunderstanding of humanness.[51]  Just as the western mind went through multiple paradigm shifts in metaphysics (in Aquinas), morality (in Kant), epistemology (in G.W.F. Hegel), and spirituality (in existentialism) to arrive at the present view, Schaeffer believed that counteractive paradigm shifts must happen before the modern person can be restored with a Christian worldview.

I should note in passing that Schaeffer himself came to faith through reading philosophy.[52]  Therefore, he recognized the importance of philosophy in the evangelistic context.  As a “straight-A” pre-ministerial major at Hampden-Sydney (where he graduated second in his class), he would certainly be exposed to the writings of key western philosophers.  He would be made familiar with Aquinas, if not also Barth, at Westminster.[53]  Hankins owes his biography readers at least a course syllabus check for alleging that Schaeffer never even read Kant.

Metaphysical Paradigm Shift: Schaeffer attributed the modern confusion of humanness to an emphasis of “particulars” since the late medieval period.[54]  Schaeffer tried to explain in art and cultural terms what philosophers called the problem of universals.  As aforementioned, the word “humanness” refers to a universal.  Who is man?  The answer to that question is partly determined by how one conceives of universals.  Where is that humanness?

When Schaeffer suggested that the late medieval period made a sharp turn from the “Byzantine” worldview, he was referring, at least partly, to the Neo-Platonist view of the reality of the universals.  Schaeffer thought Thomas Aquinas helped create a two-story worldview that began the process of splitting humanness into parts.[55]  Schaeffer has been criticized for drawing a grace vs. nature distinction in Aquinas even though Aquinas never suggested that nature is without divine providential grace.[56]  My reading of Schaeffer’s main concern is how Aquinas thought about spiritual and natural universals.  In his synthesis of Christian theology and Aristotelian philosophy, Aquinas accepted a dichotomy where he maintained a realist view for the universals in the spiritual realm (ante rem) while allowing for a conceptualist or moderate realist view for the universals in the natural realm (in re).[57]  The ambiguous dichotomy inspired more questions than answers for universals that exist in both realms, such as humanness.  The distinction arguably set the stage for religion and philosophy to eventually part their ways.[58]

Contemporaneously, propositional logic emerged as the de facto ruler in both realms, giving a boost to what Schaeffer called “autonomous reason.”[59]  Following the Christian philosopher Boethius, rationality (Logos in Greek) was understood as the substance of human nature since the sixth century.  However, in the late medieval period, reason (Ratio in Latin) came to be understood as systems of syllogistic propositions.  The re-discovery of propositional logic in the twelfth century by thinkers including Peter Abelard, teacher of Aquinas, moved the western metaphysical worldview gradually away from realism towards nominalism which, for better or worse, played an undeniable role in the rise of rationalism, humanism, and naturalism.

Moral Paradigm Shift: Schaeffer saw Kant as standing at the apex of natural and autonomous reason.[60]  That assessment of Kant is relatively non-controversial and attracted less critical attention.  However, John Frame pointed out that Kant was even more influential in shaping the self-image of the modern person than Schaeffer might have recognized.[61]  Prior to Kant, both Descartes and Hume had raised doubts against reason.  Borrowing tech parlance, Descartes was skeptical of the reliability of the sense inputs to the mind while Hume had doubt about the semantics of the logical reason.  Is causality really out there?  Kant sought to put out the doubts by arguing that the mind is as good as it gets.  Essentially, his defense for autonomous reason is that reason could do no better than what people naturally are.  Whatever ways the brain/mind is scientifically discovered to work, that is rational.  Thus, Kant seized the reasoning faculty from the hands of the philosophers and gave it to the scientists.  To do that, Kant obviously would need to deny any higher norm of reason above human.  Therefore, Kant completely moved away from the two-story hybrid realism of Aquinas and adopted a unified conceptualism, making human mind the ultimate model for reason.  Kant proposed instead a two-story epistemology with two types of reason, the pure-scientific and the practical-moral.  God, free will, and immortality of the soul are presupposed because Kant needed them as moral incentives.  But they are unnecessary in moral judgment and cannot even be known to exist.  In summary, under Kant, the mind lost its window to spiritual reality and is not allowed to doubt even the validity of its own reasoning.

Epistemological Paradigm Shift: Schaeffer saw Hegel as standing at the threshold of “the line of despair,” beneath which the notion of rationality as the substance of human nature completely disappears.  For Hegel, the world is forever becoming.  The universals are in the world soul, whose relationship with the world is just like that of the mind to the body.  As Kant argued for the necessary rationality of the brain/mind, Hegel said whatever is becoming of the world -- that is becoming rational for the world soul.  The world soul might sound similar to the Neo-Platonist Oneness.  It is not.  While the universals in Neo-Platonist Oneness are eternal and immutable, the Hegelian world soul is forever becoming and the universals in it are moving targets, too.  Schaeffer should be understood as making a consequential observation when he said “antithesis” disappears under Hegel: one can no longer say if a being is human or is not human when the meaning of humanness keeps changing.[62]  The same can be said of any number of universals: from truth, marriage, to divine knowledge.  Truth claim is short-lived to the point of pointless when the meanings of universals are perpetually open to revision.  As Schaeffer noted, people are “rationalistic” at each moment, but become schizophrenically irrational as a whole.

Schaeffer seemed to be portraying Hegelianism through the tinted lens of Marxism and Darwinism, both of which are more materialistic in orientation.  It is not surprising because Marxism and Darwinism were two of the most dominating ideologies when Schaeffer formulated his ideas.  Neither is it surprising that Schaeffer considered both Marxism and Darwinism as antithetical to the Christian view of humanness.  In Marxism, humanness becomes a description for the human society, which is always progressing through class struggles.  The individual person becomes human when he accepts the social reason.  He is subservient to his class.  His personal freedom is lost.[63]  In Darwinism, humanness is reduced to the description for a stage in the evolution for a biological bloodline that arose purely out of chance.  There is nothing inherently worthy in humanness.  His divine dignity is lost.[64]

Spiritual Paradigm Shift: Descended under the line of despair and faced with the loss of freedom and dignity, the modern person sought to “escape from reason” (prison) by a “leap of faith.”[65]  When Schaeffer conjured up those phrases, the existentialism of Sartre was the most formidable alternative to the Christian worldview among young people in Europe.  Schaeffer traced the origin of existentialism to Kierkegaard, whom he referred to as the first man under the line of despair.  Kierkegaard spoke against the church of his days for its lack of spiritual vibrancy.  There was orthodoxy but no orthopraxy.  Barth was notably responsible for the rediscovery of Kierkegaard in the twentieth century.  In some sense, Barth could be seen as arguing a similar point in his neo-orthodoxy movement against the rationalistic liberal theology.  Some have criticized Schaeffer for misreading Kierkegaard as advocating mysticism.  Whether Schaeffer had misjudged Kierkegaard is hard to say since Schaeffer actually wrote relatively little on Kierkegaard per se.  Schaeffer clearly saw Kierkegaard as influential to Barth, whose existentialism Schaeffer found quite problematic.[66]

The contrapositive argument Schaeffer leveled against Christian existentialism can be explained as this: if there is “orthodoxy” but no orthopraxy, isn’t it possible that the “orthodoxy” is not that orthodox after all?

The indictment of inconsistency that Schaeffer made against the Christian and atheist existentialists is devastating because existentialists pride themselves of being authentic.[67]  For example, Sartre famously refused to accept the Nobel Prize in 1964 because he considered receiving it “bad faith,” inconsistent with his beliefs.  Schaeffer actually agreed with the existentialists that people should live authentically.  However, Schaffer pointed out that the existentialists often do not live consistently with their ideas.  When they fail, is it right to describe the people as being unauthentic?  Could it be that their beliefs are simply untrue?

Back to Freedom and Dignity

Lest the implications for his indictment of inconsistency be unobvious, I must emphasize that Schaeffer’s charge was brought also against all Christians who adopted a two-story worldview, living in the lower story six days of the week and making a leap of faith every Sunday to the upper story.[68]  To their pastors Schaeffer would ask: if they cannot live out their faith consistently, isn’t it at least possible that what you teach them is simply not true?

In maintaining the test of practical consistency for truth, Schaeffer argued on behalf of the “little people” who in their lack of sophistication wonder why the emperor has no clothes.  The little people are the unchurched that he hosted at L’Abri.   They are the parishioners he ministered as the pastor of a small rural church.  They are the black kids he taught every Sunday afternoon while a college student.[69]  They are the working class neighbors he grew up knowing.  Unsurprisingly, Schaeffer could also be a nuisance to the establishment, whatever that happens to be.  His was a shrill voice from the wilderness that some would gladly do without. 

The emphasis of authenticity and practical consistency in Schaeffer’s thinking originated from a period where Schaeffer suffered a crisis of faith.[70]  In True Spirituality, Schaeffer gave an account of this transformative experience, which he reckoned as the foundation of the work of L’Abri fellowship.[71]  Several years after his family moved to Switzerland in 1945, Schaeffer grew weary of the lack of compassion shown by some people in his denomination.  The lack of love was irreconcilable with what Jesus told his disciples: that even the world will recognize them to be his disciples by their love (John 13:35).  Schaeffer was also upset by the lack of progress in his own spiritual growth.  Duriez suggested that the meeting he had with Karl Barth in 1950 and the scathing letter Barth subsequently sent him contributed to his soul-searching in this period.[72]  Schaeffer told Edith that he had to re-think his faith from the beginning and if he could not resolve it satisfactorily, he would leave Christian ministry altogether.  Strolling in the wilderness of the Alps and in his small bedroom at the Chalet, Schaeffer wrestled with his inner man and with God.  Eventually, like the sun dawning on him, Schaeffer found himself writing poems praising God again.  He realized that there were some important biblical truths about sanctification that nobody ever taught him in his Christian walk.  Out of this crisis, Schaeffer became confident that it is possible for Christians to live authentically and consistently.  As Jesus promised, it is the living testimony of love, an anomaly in this world, which witnessed the faith to the world.  Borrowing Karl Jasper’s notion of final experience, Schaeffer called the living testimony the “final apologetic.”[73]

His theology of sanctification proved controversial among some co-congregants in his denomination.  Some took that as a challenge to the leadership.  After his furlough in the United States in 1954, it became clear that it would be difficult for him and Edith to continue serving through their mission board.  The L’Abri fellowship was born partly out of practical necessity.[74] 

Structured as a faith mission that does not actively solicit donors, L’Abri models its core operating principles after Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Missions (now OMF), with which George Seville, the father-in-law of Francis Schaeffer, had served as missionary.[75]  Seville became L’Abri’s treasurer and main contact-person in the United States.  The operating principle of faith mission reflects a desire to depend completely on God, allowing the providence of God to be a demonstrated confirmation of their works.[76] 

A key feature of L’Abri is the open discussion.  No questions are considered out of bounds, even when the answers might turn out to be difficult and disturbing.  The open discussion is meant to show respect for the rationality, freedom, and dignity inherent in every person as well as to encourage authenticity.   Politics, philosophy, science, and popular cultures were all keenly discussed. 

Dick Keyes, who served for many years as the director of L’Abri branch in Massachusetts, went to Champéry in the 1960s as an unbeliever.  He had graduated from Harvard but had lost interest in learning.  Like many young people in the United States who were “roaming the globe” at the time, he went over there partly to postpone the draft.  Grown up as an atheist, Keyes brought with him many difficult apologetic questions, such as the authority of scriptures.  As noted, Schaeffer had been criticized in his published writings for accepting biblical inerrancy without much defending it.  Keyes recalled that after Schaeffer listened to his questions attentively, Schaeffer picked up a book from B. B. Warfield and said “read this!”  The point is that Schaeffer saw no need to repeat what other scholars had brilliantly produced.  Keyes also remembered being challenged by Schaeffer to re-examine his view on Darwinian evolution.  Schaeffer once asked Keyes, point blank: “so you want to be a cabbage?”[77]

Urlich Becker, professor of Physics at MIT, went to L’Abri quite a few times in the 1960s and 1970s.  Brought up in Germany, he became a Christian as a school boy after listening to the testimony of a former SS officer.  Becker was working at CERN and saw L’Abri as a good place to introduce the Christian faith to his colleagues.  For him, L’Abri provided a safe environment where Christians and non-Christians alike could honestly share their doubts about virtually any subjects without fearing that they say something wrong.  That freedom is what scientists seldom enjoy in their academic work environments, where everyone is constantly judging everyone else.  Becker feels that even Christians rarely enjoy that freedom at their church.  For many years, he was alienated from his church because of the hard determinism some people held.  However, he was brought back to faith after his brother died in an accident.  At L’Abri, he found a place where he could witness his faith as he truly believed.[78]

Udo Middlelmann, Schaeffer’s son in law, observed that the willingness to wrestle with doubt is a key strength of Schaeffer and it is fully reflected in the work of L’Abri.[79]  Finding faith through doubt is what the gift of human rationality and freedom is all about.  Schaeffer had enough confidence in the workmanship of God to not worry about throwing people off balance, even pushing them towards the point of despair.  The crisis of faith is an unavoidable step in a worldview revolution.

Schaeffer cautioned that the bitter medicine must be prescribed in love.  Christians must be skeptical of their own motives.  Am I pushing people to win an argument?  Am I trying to win souls for God so that I can present them as my tribute?  Or am I doing it because I genuinely love their souls?  As Bryan Follis sub-titled his book on the apologetic approach of Francis Schaeffer, apologetic is about telling the truth with love.[80]

The Church before the Watching World

Beyond L’Abri, Schaeffer was also connected with numerous Christian movements over his lifetime.  Even though it is hard to quantify the personal influence he brought to each movement, his capacity to transcend theological and denominational lines for the kingdom work of God is indisputable.  For example, Schaeffer was intimately involved with the Lausanne Congress and the International Council of Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI).[81]  Both of these movements focused on published statements.  Although Schaeffer was not part of the core statement drafting teams, he was active in the reviewing process.

In 1974, Schaeffer wrote an article “A Step Forward” in the Presbyterian journal during the formation of the Presbyterian Church in America.  In the article he observed,

Two things are happening simultaneously now: The first is a resurgency for Christian truth. Going back to the 1930's in the United States, the larger historic denominations were largely lost to the liberals, but three were not: The Lutheran Church-Missiouri Synod, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Southern Baptists. Thirty-five years later, these three denominations are now grappling with the same issues, all of which are rooted in the question of the authority of Scripture.

The Missouri Synod under the leadership of courageous men seems to have won its battle. The Southern Baptist Church now finds itself in the same position as the Presbyterian Church US in the 1930's. That is, the churchmen are largely faithful, but the seminaries are infiltrated with liberalism.

One may hope and pray that the Baptists will stir themselves before it is too late. If the Baptists practice the principle of the purity of the visible Church in the direction the Missouri Synod has gone, then they may not have to travel the unhappy route of withdrawal as had to be done in the Southern Presbyterian Church.[82]

During a panel discussion held recently at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Judge Paul Pressler recalled receiving a message through a friend from Schaeffer.  “You tell him [Pressler] that I pray for him every day, because the future of evangelical Christianity in America depends on what happens in the Southern Baptist Convention.”  Pressler thought to himself: “If that’s what Dr. Francis Schaeffer believed, then that jarred me.  And it meant that winning was not optional; winning was mandatory.”[83]

Practical Illustration and Conclusion

Noting that apologetics tend to have a short shelf-life because the world culture is always changing, D. A. Carson observed,

Francis Schaeffer’s approach to such questions is perhaps more important than the answers he gave.  That approach should last for a long time; whether or not it will, I cannot say.  The approach was characterized by a combination far too rare: on the one hand, a robust orthodoxy that did not flinch in its eagerness to maintain the whole counsel of God, and on the other, an extraordinary commitment to “listening” to the culture.[84] 

Schaeffer listened to the culture by asking probing questions.  Schaeffer said if he is given an hour with a person, he would spend at least fifty-five minutes to ask questions.[85]  He asked questions to help people realize the tension points in their worldviews.  Alister McGrath suggested that Schaeffer’s most significant contribution to apologetics is found in his method of “taking the roof off” the intellectual cocoon of people.[86] 

The dialectical method can also be adapted to preaching by approaching the text like a modern person reading the bible for the first time.  Take John 3:16.  Why is the word “loved” in the past tense?  Does it mean that God no longer loves the world?  Does it mean that God did this sacrificial act one last time, giving his son, and that is it?  Or is it because that is precisely what is frustrating God, that the world is dead?  Why would a finite comparative, “so,” be used in describing an infinite God?  What is the world?  Is that the whole universe?  Is that the third planet in the solar system?  Is that just people?  And why did Jesus say believe “in him” rather than believing “in that”?  What does that mean for the nature of faith and the nature of truth?  These are the sorts of questions Schaeffer would ask.  He might not even need an hour.

Schaeffer did not only ask probing questions.  He was prepared to give honest answer.  Schaeffer insisted that the modern person must make “three bows” to God, metaphysical, moral, and epistemology, before the gospel would make sense.  What is the gospel?  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).  Underlying that proclamation is metaphysics (“I am”), morality (“the way”), epistemology (“the truth”), and spirituality (“the life”).  If what Jesus literally said seems unintelligible because the modern person lost the ability to see the reality of universals, the task of the evangelist is not to flinch from the incommensurability of the two horizons, but to draw out the differences in order to make them clear.

To sum up the ideas and potential influence of Schaeffer in one word, it is all about what is real.  Propositions refer to nothing unless meanings exist.  Biblical inerrancy logically depends on Christological inerrancy.  Everything Jesus Christ said is true; everything Jesus Christ does is right.  Without presupposing that worldview as the logical starting point, the world remains an unsolved mystery.  Yet the world is used to that.  What could stir the world into a crisis of faith is seeing the anomaly of Christians living authentically with their beliefs, when they genuinely love each other as human beings with divine dignity.  By their love, the world recognizes that they are the disciples of Him who is the Truth.  That is the final apologetic of Francis Schaeffer.  That apologetic should last for a long time; whether or not, we shall see.

bibliography

Bahnsen, Greg L. Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended. Edited by Joel McDurmon. Powder Springs, GA; Nacogdoches, TX: American Vision;Covenant Media Press, 2008.

———. Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1998.

Barrs, Jerram. “Francis Schaeffer: The Man and His Message,” October 24, 2012. http://www.covenantseminary.edu/the-thistle/francis-schaeffer-the-man-and-his-message/.

———. “Francis Schaeffer’s Apologetics.” In Francis Schaeffer: A Mind and Heart for God, edited by Bruce A. Little. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010.

Brown, Colin. Philosophy & the Christian Faith: A Historical Sketch from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968.

Colson, Charles W. “The Common Cultural Task: The Cultural Work from a Protestant Perspective.” In Evangelical and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, edited by Charles W. Colson and Richard John Neuhaus. Dallas: Word Books, 1995.

Colson, Charles W., and Timothy George. “Flaming Truth: With Laser-like Precision, Francis Schaffer Hit on the Fundamental Issue of Our Day.” Christianity Today 56, no. 2 (January 1, 2012): 45.

Dennis, Lane T. “Conversion in an Evangelical Context: A Study in the Micro-Sociology of Religion.” Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1980.

Duriez, Colin. Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008.

Echeverria, Eduardo J. “The Christian Faith as a Way of Life: In Appreciation of Francis Schaeffer (on the Fiftieth Anniversary of L’Abri Fellowship).” Evangelical Quarterly 79, no. 3 (July 1, 2007): 241–52.

Feinberg, John S. Can You Believe It’s True?: Christian Apologetics in a Modern and Postmodern Era. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2013.

Follis, Bryan A. Truth with Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006.

Frame, John M. Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1995.

———. “Some Thoughts on Schaeffer’s Apologetics,” May 14, 2014. http://www.frame-poythress.org/some-thoughts-on-schaeffers-apologetics/.

Fuller, Steve. Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Hankins, Barry. Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America. Library of Religious Biography. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008.

———. “‘I’m Just Making a Point’: Francis Schaeffer and the Irony of Faithful Christian Scholarship.” Fides et Historia 39, no. 1 (December 1, 2007): 15–34.

Harper, Kenneth C. “Francis A Schaeffer : An Evaluation.” Bibliotheca Sacra 133, no. 530 (April 1, 1976): 130–42.

Hindmarsh, D. Bruce. The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

InterVarsity Press. “Our History.” Accessed May 14, 2014. http://www.ivpress.com/about/history.php.

Jacobs, Alan, September 1, 2011. https://twitter.com/ayjay/status/109232907746422784.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Le Peau, Andrew T. “Francis Schaeffer: Fifty Years after Time.” Andy Unedited, January 11, 2010. http://andyunedited.ivpress.com/2010/01/francis_schaeffer_fifty_years.php.

Lewis, Gordon Russell. Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims: Approaches to Christian Apologetics. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990.

Little, Bruce A., ed. Francis Schaeffer: A Mind and Heart for God. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010.

Macaulay, Ranald, and Jerram Barrs. Being Human: The Nature of Spiritual Experience. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1978.

McGrath, Alister E. Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011.

Middlelmann, Udo. “Francis A. Schaeffer: The Man.” In Francis Schaeffer: A Mind and Heart for God, edited by Bruce A. Little. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010.

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “Inerrancy Panel Discussion with Judge Paul Pressler and Dr. Paige Patterson,” May 18, 2014. http://vimeo.com/92213890.

“Mission to Intellectuals.” Time, January 11, 1960.

Morris, Thomas V. Francis Schaeffer’s Apologetics: A Critique. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987.

Nash, Ronald H. Faith & Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988.

———. “The Life of the Mind and the Way of Life.” In Francis A. Schaeffer: Portraits of the Man and His Work, edited by Lane T. Dennis. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1986.

Naugle, David K. Worldview: The History of a Concept. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002.

Parkhurst, Louis Gifford. Francis Schaeffer: The Man and His Message in Honor of the 30th Anniversary of L’Abri Fellowship, June 5, 1955-June 5, 1985. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1985.

Ruegsegger, Ronald W. “Franics Schaeffer on Philosophy.” In Reflections on Francis Schaeffer, edited by Ronald W. Ruegsegger. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986.

Schaeffer, Edith. L’Abri. New expanded ed. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1992.

———. The Tapestry: The Life and Times of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1981.

Schaeffer, Francis A. “A Step Forward.” The Presybterian Journal, March 6, 1974, 7–8.

———. “Back to Freedom and Dignity.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 1. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

———. “Christian Manifesto.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 5. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

———. “Escape from Reason.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 1. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

———. “He Is There and He Is Not Silent.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 1. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

———. Introduction to Francis Schaeffer: Study Guide to a Trilogy: The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, and He Is There and He Is Not Silent, plus “How I Have Come to Write My Books.” Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1974.

———. “The Church before the Watching World.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 4. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

———. “The God Who Is There.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 1. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

———. “The Mark of a Christian.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 5. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

———. “True Spirituality.” In The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, Vol. 3. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985.

Sire, James W. “Forward.” In The God Who Is There, Thirtieth Anniversay Edition. Downer Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

———. The Universe next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog. 5th ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

Sproul, R. C. “The Christian and Science (Part 2),” May 14, 2014. http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/christian-and-science-part-2/.

Sproul, R. C., John H. Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley. Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984.

Taylor, Justin. “An Interview with Os Guiness on the 25th Anniversary of Francis Schaeffer’s Death.” Between Two Worlds, May 7, 2009. http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2009/05/07/interview-with-os-guinness-on-25th/.

“The SBJT Forum: Dimensions of Schaeffer’s Life and Thought.” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 6, no. 2 (June 25, 2002).

“The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.” Christianity Today, October 6, 2006. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/october/23.51.html.

Van Til, Cornelius. “Apologetics.” Westminster Theological Seminary, 1963.

———. The Apologetic Methodology of Francis A. Schaeffer. Unpublished class notes, n.d.

Wellman, Sam. Francis and Edith Schaeffer: Defenders of the Faith. Heroes of the Faith. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour Publishing, 2000.

White, James Emery. What Is Truth?: A Comparative Study of the Positions of Cornelius Van Til, Francis Schaeffer, Carl F.H. Henry, Donald Bloesch, Millard Erickson. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1994.

Woodward, Kenneth L. “Guru of Fundamentalism.” Newsweek, November 1, 1982.

Worthen, Molly. Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2014.