Roman hump-backed bridge, like Roman culture, could only stand if not subjected to overwhelming pressures. There is no foundation strong enough for society or the individual life within the realm of finiteness and beginning from Man alone as autonomous.
Schaeffer claims that, through looking at history, we can see how presuppositions determine events. Does his discussion bear this out and, if so, how? Here, as in succeeding suggestions for further study, it will be assumed that if you want to devote a great deal of time to a topic you can consult a library or a good bookstore.
Suggestions given below are made on the basis of relevance to the text, readability, and availability. Not all the books will necessarily agree at all—or in all details—with Dr. But as in the general conduct of life, so in matters of the mind, one must learn to discriminate.
If you avoid reading things with which you disagree, you will be naive about what most of the world thinks. On the other hand, if you read everything—but without a critical mind—you will end up accepting by default all that the world and especially your own moment of history thinks. In about A. Previously, he had said the same things to Greek thinkers while speaking on Mars Hill in Athens.
He had spoken with the Acropolis above him and the ancient marketplace below him, in the place wherethe thinkers of Athens met for discussion. A plaque marks that spot today and gives his talk in the common Greek spoken in his day. He was interrupted in his talk in Athens, but his Letter to the Romans gives us without interruption what he had to say to the thinking people of that period. He said that the integration points of the Greek and Roman world view were not enough to answer the questions posed either by the existence of the universe and its form, or by the uniqueness of man.
He said that they deserved judgment because they knew that they did not have an adequate answer to the questions raised by the universe or by the existence of man, and yet they refused, they suppressed, that which is the answer.
To quote his letter:. The retribution of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known of God is evident within them [that is, the uniqueness of man in contrast to non-man], for God made it evident to them.
For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived by the things that are made [that is, the existence of the universe and its form], even his eternal power and divinity; so that they are without excuse.
Here he is saying that the universe and its form and the mannishness of man speak the same truth that the Bible gives in greater detail. That this God exists and that he has not been silent but has spoken to people in the Bible and through Christ was the basis for the return to a more fully biblical Christianity in the days of the Reformers.
It was a message of the possibility that people could return to God on the basis of the death of Christ alone. But with it came many other realities, including form and freedom in the culture and society built on that more biblical Christianity.
The freedom brought forth was titanic, and yet, with the forms given in the Scripture, the freedoms did not lead to chaos. And it is this which can give us hope for the future. It is either this or an imposed order. As I have said in the first chapter, people function on the basis of their world view more consistently than even they themselves may realize. The problem is not outward things. The problem is having, and then acting upon, the right world view — the world view which gives men and women the truth of what is.
Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. But society has to be […]. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]. Impressionism Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]. I saw it first in and it had such a big impact on me. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […].
Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […].
To use an image, the biblical account of human life fits like a glove on the hand of reality. Christianity is true to the way things are. Schaeffer was deeply convinced of this, and indeed every believer should be convinced of this. When we stand up in a worship service and declare the affirmations of the Creed, we are saying what we believe to be true:. These affirmations are not like cartoon balloons floating loose in the air. No, they are statements about the way things truly are.
Human life is possible only because the Christian Triune God lives. It is because God is good that we can affirm that there is a difference between good and evil. It is because God is good that we can commit ourselves to the pursuit of moral beauty. Morals are possible for us because God is moral. Because we are made in the image of our Creator we are designed to love, designed for relationships—a relationship of love with our Creator and relationships of love with one another. Love is possible for us because God is love.
We humans are created by God to have knowledge: knowledge about the Lord, knowledge about ourselves, and knowledge about our world. We will never know exhaustively, for we are finite; but we can know truly, otherwise we would not be able to function at all in this world.
Knowledge is possible for us because God knows all things and because He upholds all things and because He has designed us so that there is coherence between us and everything around us.
Because we know God, or rather, because God has made Himself known to us, it is possible for us to know ourselves. Because Christianity is the truth about the world in which we live and about our lives, it is proper for Christian believers to encourage one another, to encourage our children, and to encourage unbelievers to ask their questions, to express their doubts, and to raise their objections against Christianity.
In addition, God has made Himself known in the created order and in human nature in such a way that we can think carefully about what He has revealed.
In the same way, the apostle Peter encourages Christians to always be prepared to give a reasoned defense of their hope in Christ. Schaeffer saw this calling as part of the birthright of every believer—not just of pastors or some specially trained apologists. He was terribly distressed when people would come to his home at the point of giving up their faith because no one in their church would take their questions seriously.
Her father was a pastor, but as a young teenager she began to have doubts and she wrote down some of her doubts and questions in her personal journal.
One day her mother started reading through this journal though it was private and was horrified to read there the struggles her daughter was having. She was then just 16 years old! This kind of situation broke his heart, and he would devote himself to listening for hours to the struggles and questions of those who came to his home.
Some were people lost and wandering in the wasteland of twentieth-century Western intellectual thought. Some had experimented with psychedelic drugs or with religious ideas and practices that were damaging their lives.
Some were so wounded and bitter because of their treatment by churches, or because of the sorrows of their lives, that their questions were hostile, and they would come seeking to attack and to discredit Christianity. But, no matter who they were or how they spoke, Schaeffer would be filled with compassion for them. He would treat them with respect, he would take their questions seriously even if he had heard the same question a thousand times before , and he would answer them gently.
Always he would pray for them and seek to challenge them with the truth. But this challenge was never given aggressively. You are not trying to win an argument or to knock someone down. You are seeking to win a person, a person made in the image of God. This is not about your winning; it is not about your ego. If that is your approach, all you will do is arouse their pride and make it more difficult for them to hear what you have to say. Schaeffer believed and practiced the conviction that it is God who saves people.
He would say that we do not have to try to push and to pressure people into the Kingdom. Because Christianity is true, and because God is the one who delights to draw people to faith in Christ, we do not need to put emotional pressure on unbelievers, nor do we need to try to manipulate them into responding to our message.
Rather, we commend the truth to them by seeking to show them that it is indeed the truth, and we pray for the Spirit to open their hearts to that truth. In addition to his deep compassion for people in their struggles and in their lost state, Schaeffer also had a strong sense of the dignity of all people.
The conviction that all human persons are the image of God was not simply a theoretical theological affirmation for him; nor was it just a wonderful truth to be used in apologetic discussion. It was a passionate shout of his heart, a song of delighted praise on his lips, just as for David in Psalm This conviction of the innate dignity of all human persons had many consequences for Schaeffer.
He believed and practiced the belief that there are no little people. He invited people into his home who were damaged in body and mind and he treated them with the same dignity and compassion as the most brilliant or accomplished visitors.
It was this same conviction of the dignity of people and his compassion for them that led him to desire to avoid aggressive confrontation with unbelievers. This conviction also led him and Edith into their work of child evangelism, to which I have also already referred—the Children for Christ ministry that Francis and Edith had begun while they were in St.
As I wrote earlier, this work eventually became international and was greatly used by God to reach children in many countries with the Gospel. Francis and Edith wrote the materials for the meetings, and Edith designed flannel-graphs to be used with them.
They would model this by leading a study with the adults as if they were a group of children. If one is able to find a copy of these materials there were, for example, studies on Genesis and on the Gospel of Luke, the latter published in a different format under the title Everybody Can Know , it quickly becomes clear that Schaeffer takes the same basic approach to communicating biblical truth to children as he does with adults.
I had the privilege of leading an evangelistic study for inner city children while I was a seminary student in St. Louis, and managed to find a copy of the studies on Genesis to use in my teaching. Obviously, in this context the communication of truth to children is taking place with the use of different language and with other appropriate adjustments—but children need precisely the same truth and ask just the same questions as adults: indeed, some of the most difficult questions I have ever been asked were asked by little children.
In these Bible studies for children, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were dealing with the same fundamental questions about the nature of human existence and with the same wonderful answers that the Bible gives to these questions—the very same questions and answers that he presents in He Is There and He Is Not Silent. This is an important point to notice for several reasons. First, Francis Schaeffer was sometimes criticized for being too intellectual.
The fact that the same questions and truths could be used and used very powerfully and in a way that was greatly blessed by the Lord to communicate the good news to little children shows the inappropriateness of such a criticism of his apologetic work. Second, in similar fashion Schaeffer was accused of making the Gospel too complicated.
If people already share a Christian worldview because of growing up with a church background and with knowledge of the Bible, then, of course, we may begin with the ABCs, for this will make sense to them. But, if they are like the people of Athens whom Paul addresses Acts —34 then we will have to start with the true nature of God and with the false ideas and idolatry of the pagan thinkers if we desire to make Christ known to them.
Schaeffer recognized that there are fewer and fewer people who truly hold to a biblical worldview. Consequently, he saw that it is absolutely essential with the majority of people we meet to begin at the beginning. The beginning for modern and 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, they are not in fact abstract. Rather, they are very practical. Nothing is more practical, nothing is more basic, than the conviction that there is truth that can be known. Without this conviction—and the more consistently people live with this loss of truth—life becomes more and more intolerable and more and more filled with alienation.
Another response that should be made to this criticism that Schaeffer was making the simple Gospel too complicated is that he did not develop his apologetic approach in a study far removed from the lives of real people. The answers he gives in all his apologetic writings and lectures were developed in the heat of battle, so to speak.
His home was filled with people seeking answers to the questions of existence, morals, and knowledge. My own conversion bears on this issue. As a non-Christian I wrestled with several of the problems that are addressed repeatedly by Schaeffer. I wondered how any meaning and value can be given to human life. I did not see any basis for being able to make a distinction between good and evil. I felt there was a difference, and I longed for there to be a difference, but I could find no reason for such a difference.
Does not the same end come to those who seem morally upright and those who devote themselves to wickedness? Does it ultimately matter, or is it just an illusion to think that moral integrity is important? I was haunted by the reality of suffering. Is there any reason for suffering, any ultimate explanation for it, or is it meaningless in the end? Is it just that we live and die, we win some and lose some, we have fleeting moments of joy and longer periods of sorrow, but none of it makes any sense?
And is there any resolution to suffering? I found myself unwilling to take either of these routes, for both seemed a betrayal of everything I treasured largely thanks to my parents, who were truly good people and who were excellent parents with a genuinely happy marriage. For me, the lack of answers drove me to the very edge of suicide. I was prevented thank God! I felt constrained to keep searching just a little longer before taking such a final step.
The first evening he led a reading and reflection on the first two chapters of Ecclesiastes. It pierced me to the heart, for here was a man, Mike, and here was a book, the Bible, that took my questions seriously and began to give them answers. Within a little over a year and a half, Mike led me in a prayer of commitment one Tuesday evening in November as we knelt side by side on his kitchen floor.
God had brought another reluctant sinner to Himself! Nothing could be farther from the truth. They can stand when pressures are not too great, but when pressures mount, if then they do not have a sufficient base, they crash-just as a Roman bridge would cave in under the weight of a modern six-wheeled truck.
Culture and the freedoms of people are fragile. Without a sufficient base, when such pressures come only time is needed and often not a great deal of time-before there is a collapse. Problem: dilemma of social breakdown and violence leading to authoritarianism which limits freedom.
Any starting point in history would be good; we start with Rome because it is direct ancestor of modern West. Christians persecuted because they would worship only the infinite-personal God and not Caesar also.
They had an absolute whereby to judge the Roman state and its actions. Christians had infinite reference point in God and His revelation in the Old Testament, the revelation through Christ, and the growing New Testament. Christians could confront Roman culture and be untouched by its inner weakness, including its relativism and syncretism.
Roman hump-backed bridge, like Roman culture, could only stand if not subjected to overwhelming pressures. There is no foundation strong enough for society or the individual life within the realm of finiteness and beginning from Man alone as autonomous. Schaeffer claims that, through looking at history, we can see how presuppositions determine events. Does his discussion bear this out and, if so, how? Here, as in succeeding suggestions for further study, it will be assumed that if you want to devote a great deal of time to a topic you can consult a library or a good bookstore.
Suggestions given below are made on the basis of relevance to the text, readability, and availability. Not all the books will necessarily agree at all—or in all details—with Dr.
But as in the general conduct of life, so in matters of the mind, one must learn to discriminate. If you avoid reading things with which you disagree, you will be naive about what most of the world thinks. On the other hand, if you read everything—but without a critical mind—you will end up accepting by default all that the world and especially your own moment of history thinks. In about A. Previously, he had said the same things to Greek thinkers while speaking on Mars Hill in Athens.
He had spoken with the Acropolis above him and the ancient marketplace below him, in the place wherethe thinkers of Athens met for discussion. A plaque marks that spot today and gives his talk in the common Greek spoken in his day.
He was interrupted in his talk in Athens, but his Letter to the Romans gives us without interruption what he had to say to the thinking people of that period. He said that the integration points of the Greek and Roman world view were not enough to answer the questions posed either by the existence of the universe and its form, or by the uniqueness of man.
He said that they deserved judgment because they knew that they did not have an adequate answer to the questions raised by the universe or by the existence of man, and yet they refused, they suppressed, that which is the answer. To quote his letter:. The retribution of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Because that which is known of God is evident within them [that is, the uniqueness of man in contrast to non-man], for God made it evident to them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived by the things that are made [that is, the existence of the universe and its form], even his eternal power and divinity; so that they are without excuse.
Here he is saying that the universe and its form and the mannishness of man speak the same truth that the Bible gives in greater detail. That this God exists and that he has not been silent but has spoken to people in the Bible and through Christ was the basis for the return to a more fully biblical Christianity in the days of the Reformers.
It was a message of the possibility that people could return to God on the basis of the death of Christ alone. But with it came many other realities, including form and freedom in the culture and society built on that more biblical Christianity. The freedom brought forth was titanic, and yet, with the forms given in the Scripture, the freedoms did not lead to chaos.
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