Francis Schaeffer: a mind and heart for God

Francis Schaeffer said himself that the heart of his apologetics can be found in three books, The God Who Is There, Escape From Reason, and He Is There and He Is Not Silent.

These three books together set forth an outline of how he defended and commended the truth of Christianity. He Is There and He Is Not Silent presents a basic Christian worldview in a more systematic way than the other two books. The lecture series that stands behind it, titled Possible Answers to Basic Philosophical Questions, illustrates how Schaeffer’s method works in practice.

Apologetic evangelist

I remember these lectures very well as I took them for one hour of seminary credits at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. Schaeffer covered the three areas of existence, morals and knowledge, and showed how in each of these areas ‘modern-modern man’ (today he would say ‘postmodern man’) is left with only the hell of alienation. Christianity, on the other hand, gives answers that are satisfying both intellectually and personally, and allows for true beauty in each of the three areas. One young man, an unbeliever who had faithfully attended the whole week of lectures, became a Christian as the last one finished.

I mention this story here, both because it is a precious memory and also because it reveals something about the way Schaeffer approached his lecturing and his writing. He was not interested in either abstract or purely academic apologetics. He saw himself as an evangelist — that is how he thought of himself and spoke of his ministry. All of his lectures and books were developed to answer the questions of those who came and sat at his table in Huemoz-sur-Ollon in Switzerland where he and Edith founded the work of L’Abri (‘The Shelter’). He used the same approach in his books and lectures that he would at mealtimes — he would encourage his companions to raise their questions and doubts about the Christian faith and he would give answers to their questions.

Truth about the universe

Schaeffer believed passionately that Christianity is the truth about the universe in which we live. He also believed that God has made known to us what we could never discover by ourselves in our questioning and searching. The Bible fits with the nature of reality. Christianity is true to the way things are. The historic creeds aren’t human inventions to relieve emotional or intellectual difficulties, but propositions which are objectively true. God really does exist. Human beings really are made in God’s image — and so on. Schaeffer was deeply convinced of this, and, indeed, every believer should be.

In fact, Schaeffer often used to say: ‘I am more sure of God’s existence than I am of my own’. What he meant was that human life is possible only because the Christian triune God lives. Furthermore, morals, knowledge and love are only possible because God is moral, all-knowing, and exists in loving relationship.

This being so, it is entirely proper for Christian believers to be encouraged to ask their questions, express their doubts, raise their objections. And then, in turn, to be open to the questions put to them by unbelievers. We don’t need to put emotional pressure on anyone or to manipulate a positive response to our message. Rather, we commend the truth by seeking to show that what the Bible teaches makes sense of our experience and of the universe in which we live — when nothing else does. And as we do so we pray for the Spirit to open their hearts to that truth. Human beings have an innate dignity despite their sin and, as such, we should approach them with respect.

Criticism

Schaeffer was and is criticised on three grounds: that he is too intellectual, that he complicated the gospel and that he believed that he could argue people into the kingdom.

Nothing could be further from the truth. He stated categorically many times that argument alone will not save people, because the human heart is hard and resists acknowledging dependency on God. But he recognised that there are fewer and fewer people who truly hold to a biblical worldview.

The beginning for modern people is a denial of or doubt about the existence of God and about the existence of truth. This may seem rather abstract. But nothing is more practical, nothing more basic than that truth can be known. Consequently he saw it as absolutely essential with the majority of such people today to begin at the beginning. Without a possibility of truth life becomes more and more intolerable and filled with alienation. The issues addressed in Schaeffer’s apologetic works are the questions of real people. He wasn’t trying to answer theoretical questions. His answers were developed not in the library but in the heat of the battle, with the inevitable struggles which result from denying God and his truth in the Bible.

Edge of suicide

My own conversion bears on this issue. As a non-Christian I wrestled with several of the problems addressed repeatedly by Schaeffer. I wondered how human life can be given any meaning and value. I did not see any basis for being able to make a distinction between good and evil. I was haunted by the reality of suffering. As a teenager in England in the 60s, many of my friends struggled with such questions, but most of them attempted to drown their anxious thoughts with alcohol, drugs, or promiscuous sexual encounters, or to bury themselves in trying to find a life that would give them ‘personal peace and affluence’ (to use Schaeffer’s expression). For me, the lack of answers drove me to the very edge of suicide. One January day I was prevented (thank God!) from throwing myself over a cliff. What stopped me was the glory of creation even in the middle of winter. This led me to keep searching just a little longer before taking such a final step. About two weeks after this I met a Canadian PhD student, Mike Tymchak. He had studied under Schaeffer at the Swiss L’Abri. Over the next few months he played some of Schaeffer’s recorded lectures and his approach to my questions was similar to Schaeffer’s. Within a little over a year and a half he led me in a prayer of commitment as we knelt side by side on his kitchen floor. God had brought another reluctant sinner to himself!

Reason, life and prayer

Schaeffer understood that there are three elements, all equally important, to the demonstration of the truth of Christianity: first, providing compelling reasons for faith, then demonstrating the truth of the gospel by our lives, and then prayer. In fact, the order should be reversed, for Schaeffer believed that prayer is the most important and must be central, whether in apologetics or in any other area of our lives.

I think Francis Schaeffer would have been fascinated to see the many attempts to pigeonhole him into a particular apologetic approach. He regarded himself as a Presuppositionalist and argued, therefore, that all morality, all meaning, all rationality presupposes the existence of the God who has made himself known in the Bible. At the same time he was passionately committed to seeing the common ground of different perspectives among believers, and one of the earliest articles that he wrote (‘A review of a review’, published in The Bible Today, October 1948, pp.7-9) was an attempt to get J. Oliver Buswell, a leading classical apologist, and Cornelius Van Til, a Presuppositionalist, to see that they had much in common.

Schaeffer’s approach

In this article, he set forth an outline of his approach to his apologetics that helps us understand his life’s work. Here is a summary, in my own words, as a series of brief points:

1. All people, no matter what their beliefs or ways of life, live in God’s universe, for it is the only one there is.

2. They may invent another world to inhabit — and such inventions constitute what all religions and alternative worldviews actually are, i.e. not truth but a kind of make-believe.

3. Whatever the inventions, the problem is that they don’t and can’t fit what is actually there — so the unbeliever lives in a tension between two worlds, his invented world and the real world.

4. If the unbeliever were consistent to his or her make-believe world, he/she would be driven to meaninglessness, amorality and irrationality. But, thank God, no one is fully consistent.

5. The unbeliever has to live with what is, in fact, a deceit, benefiting from God’s world and general grace, but suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

6. God constantly confronts unbelievers with the truth. The Spirit is the world’s prosecutor. He allows them to taste the bitterness and falsity of their chosen alternatives and yet continues to bless them with his good gifts in creation. This challenges the unbeliever to repent and seek the one true God and renders unbelief inexcusable.

7. A biblical way to address this is to focus on the tension, helping those who don’t believe to see that all that is good and true and beautiful in human experience actually comes from God — and that other worldviews are inadequate.

8. At the same time we have to acknowledge that even though the Christian worldview is consistent in a way no other worldview can be, we ourselves live inconsistently because of sin. So, in this sense, we too live in two worlds. This should lead us to communicate with humility, understanding, grace and respect.

Schaeffer saw his work simply as applying Paul’s words in Romans 1 concerning the suppression of the knowledge of God and the worshiping and serving of the creation instead. False belief systems, just like practical idolatries, destroy our humanity. Only the truth made known by the triune God in the Bible can make sense of our lives and set us free to be truly human.

This article is an extract from Francis Schaeffer: A Mind and Heart for God, edited by Bruce A. Little, in which two chapters are by Jerram Barrs (P&R Publishing), abridged by Rachel Thorpe.