Foreword
A biblical prophet, it has been said, is not one who sees into the future, as stargazers and crystal ball readers purport to do. Rather, he’s one who sees things in the present that others are blind to. And a prophet is one who warns us of what will happen in the future if we don’t mend our ways.
By that definition, Francis Schaeffer was the great prophet of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was God’s most powerful voice to both church and culture.
Schaeffer saw things in the sixties and seventies that others didn’t —or wouldn’t —see. So he warned us that the great issue was truth —“true truth,” or “flaming truth,” as he used to cry out in his rasping, high-pitched voice.
Schaeffer saw that relativism and existentialism, advanced by European intellectuals, was infiltrating mainstream American thought. He argued eloquently, as well, that Christianity was a worldview, and he did so at a time when the Jesus movement was at its absolute peak; many people thought Jesus was the beginning and the end of the biblical account. Schaeffer talked about commitment and the authority of Scripture when all around us the institutions of authority were crumbling. He was, in short, contra mundum, or as one church declaration put it, “against the world for the world.”
People came to hear him in droves, for he was a curiosity of sorts. He certainly made for a colorful figure, standing on the stage in his knickers and goatee, pleading with his audiences. He was an intellectual, but he preached like a revivalist. Thinking Christians heard his message and devoured his books; the dropouts from the hippie culture of the sixties flocked to L’Abri, his retreat in the Swiss Alps. His provocative film series made the rounds of evangelical churches. But the ranks of evangelicals never really understood the full weight of what he preached.
Today, however, we all understand what Schaeffer and his disciples truly saw 40 years ago. The world today is awash in relativism. Seventy-two percent of the American people say there is no such thing as absolute truth. Even more shocking, 67 percent of evangelicals say there is no truth, while claiming to follow the One who says He is the truth! Despite the best efforts of some of us who have picked up on Schaeffer’s teachings and themes, understanding of worldviews is still very limited in most evangelical circles. A quarter of born again Christians embrace New Age ideas like reincarnation.
Though I confess that I didn’t understand it as well then as I do today, Schaeffer’s message nonetheless struck home. His books and speeches helped launch me on an intellectual and spiritual quest. Since the mid-eighties, I have preached on worldview and the need to see Christianity as an integrated life system, as an explanation of all of reality. I have been so influenced by Schaeffer, in fact, that I dedicated my most recent book, written with my co-author Nancy Pearcey, to Francis Schaeffer. (Nancy, in fact, studied at L’Abri, and her experience there was instrumental in her conversion.)
Schaeffer was not only a great prophet and intellectual, but he was also a gracious and loving teacher. I first met him when I visited L’Abri in the late seventies, and then I spent many hours with him in the years that followed. I never failed to learn, never failed to be inspired. At one of the most stressful points in my ministry, I sought Schaeffer’s counsel. His reply was, “Don’t try to do everything. Every need is not a call.” That particular advice liberated me.
It was advice Schaeffer lived. He avoided many distractions, carefully skirting political controversies that would not profit the Christian world. He concentrated on defending orthodoxy and truth, encouraging true spirituality, and advancing a Christian view of all of life. Schaeffer’s message is enduring, his teaching as important to this generation as it was to the flower children and the evangelical church in the seventies.
The two books helpfully republished here are truly classics, each in its own way. He Is There and He Is Not Silent makes the fundamental Schaeffer case on the truth of biblical revelation and of the biblical understanding of life. It is a masterful apologetic, providing a grand understanding of Christianity against the great philosophical trends and assaults of the modern age. He Is There is one of the most important of the many books he wrote of this genre. It will powerfully engage your mind (both the first time you read it and during subsequent readings, as I have discovered).
True Spirituality is entirely different. It seeks to ground the believer in true faith. It is a probing, penetrating search through the Scriptures for what it means to be truly Christian. Schaeffer himself said it should have been his first book, and he may have been right, for until you are grounded in the truth of God and are living it, you have nothing to defend in the marketplace of ideas. If He Is There and He Is Not Silent engages your mind, then True Spirituality will engage your heart.
This is a great combination of books, the two I would recommend of all the Schaeffer books to begin your study of this remarkable man’s work. They give you both the spiritual and intellectual foundation to begin to think and behave Christianly in the world. The books are challenging and bracing reading —guaranteed to make you a Schaeffer devotee. That’s good, because while we didn’t listen well enough in the seventies, we can and must do so today.
The prophet speaks. There is still time.
Charles W. Colson
March 13, 2001
Washington, DC