Francis Schaeffer

Francis A Schaeffer (1912–1984), a Christian theologian and Presbyterian pastor, is most famous for his writings and his establishment of the l'Abri community in Switzerland. Opposed to theological modernism, Schaeffer promoted an orthodox Protestant faith and a presuppositional approach to apologetics, which he felt answered the questions of the age.

Today, more than twenty years after his death, his teachings continue, in the same informal setting, at the Francis Schaeffer Foundation, led by one of his daughters and sons-in-law. The Covenant Theological Seminary has established the Francis Schaeffer Institute, which continues his tradition and "seeks to train God's servants to demonstrate compassionately and defend reasonably the claims of Christ upon the whole of life."

Schaeffer is credited with helping spark a return to political activism among Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially around the issue of abortion. By popularizing, in the modern context, a traditional Puritan and Reformed perspective, he is considered by some to be the godfather of contemporary Dominionism. Schaeffer argued that Christians have a duty to "live Christianly" in every area of life and to challenge encroaching secular humanism. Christian Right leaders such as Tim LaHaye have credited Schaeffer for influencing their theological arguments urging political participation by evangelicals (LaHaye, Battle, p. 5). Authors such as Sara Diamond and Frederick Clarkson argue that Schaeffer influenced some forms of Dominionism and even Dominion Theology by prompting a debate about this type of political participation [1] (http://www.publiceye.org/diamond/sd_domin.html) [2] (http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre2.html).

According to Diamond:

"The idea of taking dominion over secular society gained widespread currency with the 1981 publication of...Schaeffer's book A Christian Manifesto. The book sold 290,000 copies in its first year, and it remains one of the movement's most frequently cited texts.

"In A Christian Manifesto, Schaeffer's argument is simple. The United States began as a nation rooted in Biblical principles. But as society became more pluralistic, with each new wave of immigrants, proponents of a new philosophy of secular humanism gradually came to dominate debate on policy issues. Since humanists place human progress, not God, at the center of their considerations, they pushed American culture in all manner of ungodly directions, the most visible results of which included legalized abortion and the secularization of the public schools. At the end of A Christian Manifesto, Schaeffer calls for Christians to use civil disobedience to restore Biblical morality...."[3] (http://www.publiceye.org/diamond/sd_domin.html)

Contents

1 Writings 2 External links 2.1 Critical 2.2 References

Writings

Schaeffer wrote twenty-two books, which cover a range of spiritual issues. They can be roughly split into five sections, as in the edition of his Complete Works (ISBN 0891073477):

• A Christian View of Philosophy and Culture: The first three books in this block are known as Schaeffer's trilogy, laying down the philosophical and theological foundation for all his work.
  • The God Who Is There: Deals with the existence and relevance of God, and how modern man came to first distance himself from, and ultimately disbelieve, God as revealed by the Bible.
  • Escape from Reason: How the rejection of the Biblical God causes man to lose contact with reality and reason.
  • He Is There and He Is Not Silent: How God speaks to man through the Bible on the three philosophically fundamental areas of metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology.
  • Back to Freedom and Dignity: An answer to B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, arguing that freedom and dignity of man are God-given and therefore can't be left aside without dire consequences.

• A Christian View of the Bible as Truth
  • Genesis in Space and Time: Argues that an almost literalist view of Genesis as historically true is fundamental to the Christian faith.
  • No Final Conflict
  • Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History
  • Basic Bible Studies: Biblical studies on the fundamentals of the faith.
  • Art and the Bible

• A Christian View of Spirituality
  • No Little People: Argues that Christians should never despair of having a significant life of realisations, small as they seem to be.
  • True Spirituality: The spiritual foundation for Schaeffer's work, as a complement to the theological and philosophical approach of most other books. Useful for gaining a balanced view of the whole of Schaeffer's life and ministry.
  • The New Super-Spirituality: Claims the intellectual decadence of students and the counter-culture from the late sixties to the early seventies can be traced back to the conformism of their fathers, only with fewer moral absolutes, and predicts the contamination of the church. Offers an analysis of Postmodernism.
  • Two Contents, Two Realities

• A Christian View of the Church
  • The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century
  • The Church before the Watching World
  • The Mark of the Christian: Analyses the balance between orthodoxy of doctrine and that of communion — love.
  • Death in the City
  • The Great Evangelical Disaster

• A Christian View of the West
  • Pollution and the Death of Man
  • How Should We Then Live?
  • Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
  • A Christian Manifesto: Christian principles for secular politics.

External links

• L'Abri Fellowship International (http://www.labri.org/)
• Schaeffer's Papers (http://www.pcanet.org/history/findingaids/schaeffer) at the PCA Historical Center
• The Francis Schaeffer Institute (http://www.covenantseminary.edu/fsi/) at Covenant Seminary
• Francis Schaeffer: Portraits of the man and his work (http://www.francisschaeffer.com)
• The Shelter (http://www.rationalpi.com/theshelter/index.html), a site dedicated to the thought and writings of Schaeffer (Internet Explorer required)

Critical

• article by Sara Diamond (http://www.publiceye.org/diamond/sd_domin.html)
• article by Frederick Clarkson (http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre2.html)

References

Tim LaHaye, The Battle for the Mind, (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1980).