4 Academic Or Apologist?
4
ACADEMIC OR
APOLOGIST?
INTRODUCTION
Given that the previous chapter examined the importance Schaeffer afforded to rationality and considered whether or not he was a rationalist, it is interesting to see him criticized for the inadequacy of his argumentation. This chapter will explore whether Schaeffer was inconsistent in the way he used reason in his apologetics, and in particular it will consider whether he relied upon a presuppositionalist approach rather than attempting to argue his case. As Burson and Walls observe, the “question of apologetic methodology is probably the most disputed and controversial subject surrounding the life and ministry of Francis Schaeffer.”1 I hope to demonstrate that Schaeffer was not a presuppositionalist in the Van Til sense nor an evidentialist in the Warfield sense. Instead I will argue that Schaeffer’s approach was more like that of a verificationalist. However, in seeking to understand Schaeffer’s apologetics, we do well to remember that he did not regard himself as an academic apologist but as a front-line evangelist. Thus, rather than try to squeeze his apologetics into the mold of any particular theoretical methodology, we need to view him as a practitioner interested in reaching individuals with the truth of Jesus Christ. As Schaeffer himself noted, he did not believe “there is any one apologetic which meets the needs of all people.”2
THE USE OF ASSUMPTIONS AND HIDDEN PREMISES
In his book Francis Schaeffer’s Apologetics: A Critique, Thomas Morris criticizes Schaeffer for failing to undertake “careful formal analyses” and for not succeeding “in demonstrating the necessity of his position.” 3 Far from regarding Schaeffer as a rationalist, Morris has argued that his strategy was that of a “pre-evangelistic, presuppositional apologetic.” He believes that the main thrust of Schaeffer’s scheme
is carried through by a tripartite argument from design intended to communicate the inadequacies of antithetically non-Christian presuppositions and the truthfulness of basic Christian presuppositional claims.4
Although Schaeffer nowhere identifies his apologetic as an argument from design, Morris thinks that his focus on the non-Christian positions of atheism, irrationality, and amorality “correspond to three major areas of human philosophical enquiry traditionally known as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, respectively.”5 These, he feels, are the three divisions or approaches of Schaeffer’s argument from design.
By metaphysics, Schaeffer meant the question of Being and the existence of mankind. He agreed with Sartre that “the basic philosophic question is that something is there rather than nothing being there.”6 However, Morris detects a presupposition in Schaeffer’s metaphysical argument with his rejection of an impersonal beginning to the universe. He argues that the three problems raised by Schaeffer about personality in an impersonal universe are not fully argued by him. The three problems are: (1) human aspirations for personal fulfillment in a universe that is finally impersonal are ultimately unfulfillable; (2) personality could never have arisen from the impersonal; and (3) an impersonal universe has a problem of unity and diversity, for it allows no special significance to any particular configuration. Furthermore, Morris suggests that all Schaeffer manages to establish “is that a personal beginning and ultimate ground of being is needed for a universe containing human personality. The question is still unanswered as to what specific kind of personality began, and is foundational to, the universe.”7 Thus one cannot adjudicate between rival positions such as Judaism, Islam, or polytheism, and Schaeffer has no grounds for his specific conclusions that orthodox Christian presuppositions are the answer, never mind his claim that they are the only ones that answer the problems facing man. Morris maintains that because “such conclusions are beyond the valid extensions of design argument, Schaeffer fails to complete the argument in its own valid form.”8 He also criticizes Schaeffer for not disclosing that the source of two specifications he makes—that God must be personal-infinite and Trinitarian—is biblical revelation. Morris believes that Schaeffer “has presented them as if they were tightly argued conclusions, universally acceptable.”9
WEAKNESS OF ARGUMENT
If the impersonal beginning of the universe is the presupposition rejected by Schaeffer in his metaphysical argument, rejecting the presupposition of a closed system of cause and effect is for Morris the epistemological counterpart.10 Schaeffer regarded epistemology (i.e., the theory of knowledge or “how we know that we know”) as the central problem facing Christians in communicating their faith. Yet Morris feels that he does not adequately address it and again says that “the argument from design cannot lead directly from the data being considered to the specific orthodox Christian presuppositions being put forth by Schaeffer.”11 In particular, he suggests that in “proposing the Christian epistemological base to be propositional, verbalized revelation, Schaeffer does not argue its necessity but its possibility.”12 Morris accepts that Schaeffer’s “direction of argumentation” has a “significant value” in showing Christianity to be “a reasonable philosophical position.” However, he maintains that the argument presented by Schaeffer cannot adjudicate between Schaeffer’s own system and other possible systems that also hold to the uniformity of natural causes in an open system.13
Morris speculates that Schaeffer recognized the limitation of his argument given the more gentle tone he adopted. For example, after
pointing out the data to be considered and the problems to be solved, he presents his set of orthodox Christian presuppositions as a specific type of open system which, if true, would adequately explain the data and answer the problems.14
However, it is Morris’s complaint that Schaeffer moves from “if Christianity is true” to “therefore, Christianity is true.” The “logical gap between possibility and necessary actuality has, in his move, been jumped unwarrantedly as it was in the metaphysical argument.”15 Yet again, Schaeffer is regarded by Morris as seeking a solution by first “postulating biblical revelation” as the source of the Christian answers and then beginning to enumerate those answers.16 Although Morris does not deal with it, it should be noted that Schaeffer’s epistemological argument is also considered defective by some writers because of what they regard as his inaccuracies. His historical analysis and his understanding of secular and religious thinkers have been strongly criticized. 17 One scholar, Richard Pierard, has claimed that trying to fit different thinkers into his preconceived interpretation has led Schaeffer to be guilty of a “distortion of the past and outright myth-making.” He regards these flaws to be so serious that they place Schaeffer’s whole interpretative system in jeopardy.18
Meanwhile, returning to Morris, he finds Schaeffer’s moral argument to be his weakest and declares that Schaeffer’s conclusions are reached “after presenting only a group of generalized claims and arguments [which are] most highly disputable if not plainly false.”19 He criticizes Schaeffer’s very basic assumption about the dilemma of man (who is capable of both great beauty and horrible cruelty) as “a loaded claim” and states that “this very first move would be unacceptable from various philosophical positions which consider such terms finally meaningless.”20 Morris believes that Schaeffer’s claim to prove the moral necessity of the Christian presuppositions “would require an examination and demonstrated negative evaluation of all other possible basic presuppositions” and that this is an impossible task.21 He also maintains that Schaeffer must substantiate his claim that men everywhere have the same basic underlying moral standard through anthro102 pological data. Morris finds Schaeffer’s arguments about a moral continuity or discontinuity to man to assume
many notions having to do with his particular generic view of humanity (presumably arising from such orthodox doctrines as original sin), which he never articulates, and which function as hidden premises in the argument, rendering it unconvincing if not completely incomprehensible to those who do not already share the same notions.22
THE LIMITS OF FOUNDATIONALISM
With his various “assumptions” and “hidden premises,” one can see why Morris regarded Schaeffer as a presuppositionalist in his apologetics. While Morris does not mention Van Til by name, Forrest Baird claims that “Schaeffer was heavily influenced by Van Til,” and Peter Hicks regards him as “one of Van Til’s best-known followers.”23 As stated in the opening paragraph, I wish to show that Schaeffer was not a presuppositionalist in the Van Tilan sense, but first I want to consider the rationale behind the criticism of Schaeffer by Morris. As we saw in the previous chapter, Gordon Lewis has accused Morris of “making no serious attempt to expound Schaeffer’s views with any degree of objectivity.” 24 I would not go as far as Lewis, but I do think there is an unacknowledged element of subjectivity in Morris’s writing. In criticizing Schaeffer for reaching conclusions “unwarranted by any argument offered” and presenting them with the “finality of a tightly reasoned conclusion,” we need to remember that his objection is not to a rational approach. Rather, it is to the alleged lack of rational argument and evidence. In making such an objection, Morris reveals in his own approach a hidden assumption of evidentialism.
Evidentialism maintains that “a belief is rational for a person only if that person has sufficient evidence or arguments or reasons for that belief.”25 Evidentialism is rooted in classical foundationalism, which constructs knowledge “by first laying a very secure, undoubtable foundation and then building other truths on that base.”26 Beliefs that are part of a foundation—basic beliefs—must be self-evident or indisputable, and thus only a few very secure propositions are permitted in the foundation. Although he does not refer to evidentialism by name, Morris seems to go along with it in his criticism of Schaeffer for making moves in his argument without warrant—i.e., for lacking evidence for some of his claims or conclusions. It is not really surprising to find that Morris has absorbed evidentialism, given that classical foundationalism has been so pervasive in Western philosophy, including among Christian thinkers. As David Clark has pointed out, just as “critics of Christian knowledge have assumed it in their attack, so advocates have presupposed it in their defense.”27
REFORMED EPISTEMOLOGY
However, in recent years Reformed epistemology, particularly through the writings of Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga, has launched a serious challenge to evidentialism. By highlighting the narrow, restrictive foundation of knowledge in evidentialism, Reformed epistemology has shown how that philosophy eliminates “many beliefs humans do normally and correctly accept as knowledge.”28 As one Reformed critic has written:
[S]urely one is perfectly rational in believing that one had breakfast this morning, that there is an external world, and that one’s wife is a person . . . classical foundationalism requires that they be supported by an argument from properly basic beliefs. But no one has ever produced a good argument for these beliefs.29
Plantinga queries whether it is even rational to accept classical foundationalism given that it is not a properly basic belief, nor can it be inferred from one’s basic beliefs. He concludes that it does not satisfy its own first condition for rationality, and so he regards it as bankrupt. For Plantinga, insofar “as the evidentialist objection is rooted in classical foundationalism, it is poorly rooted indeed.”30
Wolterstorff notes that evidentialism is “peculiarly modern,” and that until the modern age, “Christian apologetics consisted mainly not in giving or defending arguments for Christianity, but rather in answering objections to Christianity.”31 Rather than seeking to prove the existence of God, Reformed epistemology holds that it is entirely rational to start with belief in God. Plantinga argues that belief in God resembles belief in other minds in that it is produced immediately without the support of other beliefs. Belief in God may be accepted as basic, and though you may not have proof or argument for such belief, you do not need them. Yet Plantinga maintains that a Christian’s belief in God “can be perfectly rational even if he knows of no cogent argument, deductive or inductive, for the existence of God—indeed, even if there is no such argument.”32
Nevertheless, Reformed epistemology does not regard belief in God as groundless or arbitrary. Plantinga distinguishes between evidence and grounds, the former being what apologists look for in theistic proofs, while the latter is more straightforward. Direct experience provides grounds to justify belief even without argumentation. One’s experience of God appropriately grounds belief in His existence.33 Reformed epistemologists stress the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit as confirming, for example, that the Bible is the reliable revelation from God. Stephen Evans believes that those who dismiss this Reformed approach as fideism (i.e., irrational faith based solely upon personal experience) try to understand it in evidentialist terms.34 He says that it should be understood in externalist terms, which means
that the factors that determine whether or not I am justified or warranted in holding my belief do not have to be internal to my consciousness. At bottom the externalist says that what properly “grounds” a belief is the relationship of the believer to reality.35
For Reformed epistemologists such as Evans, the biblical story is self-authenticating in the sense that “through the work of the Spirit the story itself produces a conviction of its truth in persons, and it is in that sense epistemologically basic.”36
I would not wish to endorse all the claims that Reformed epistemology makes for itself, nor regard it as providing a complete explanation. Nevertheless, one can accept that it has mortally wounded the classical foundationalism of evidentialism. Thus one must question the validity of the evidentialist presupposition behind Morris’s criticism of Schaeffer for lacking a warrant for the conclusions reached. Even if Schaeffer’s arguments lack proof and validity for the claims made, the requirement for such proof and validity lacks warranty in itself. The criticism by Morris does not therefore invalidate Schaeffer’s argumentation or his apologetics, which remain a helpful option for those engaging in discussion with non-Christians. Furthermore, it must be stated that even if evidentialism had not been discredited by Reformed epistemology, Morris would only be justified in his criticism of Schaeffer if the latter were adopting an evidentialist approach and could therefore be assessed in purely evidentialist terms. Yet it is Morris himself who points out the various “assumptions,” “hidden premises,” and “loaded claims” within Schaeffer’s arguments. Clearly Schaeffer is not a strict evidentialist, for he is making use of presuppositions within his apologetical approach.
OLD PRINCETONIAN INFLUENCE
However, as stated in the opening paragraph of this chapter, I believe that Schaeffer was not a presuppositionalist in the Van Tilan sense of the word, nor an evidentialist like Warfield. To properly evaluate Schaeffer’s apologetic approach, we need to understand his intellectual roots and his aim. Intellectually, he was influenced by both the scientific rationality of the Old Princeton theology and the presuppositionalism of Van Til and Kuyper’s Dutch school. In addition to the above two streams of theological thought flowing into Schaeffer’s mind, there was also a strong undercurrent of pietistic spirituality influencing Schaeffer’s ministry.
Turning first to the Princetonian influence, as mentioned in Chapter One, Schaeffer studied under Gresham Machen at Westminster Theological Seminary and absorbed his enthusiasm for the Old Princeton theology. Machen believed “that science, philosophy, and religion all dealt with the same thing—facts.”37 He was concerned that the chief tendency in modern thought was away from direct knowledge of facts to subjective experience. Machen rejected the new view that the historic creeds of the Christian faith are only “the changing expression of a unitary Christian experience.” For him, the creeds were a “setting forth of those facts upon which experience is based.” He believed that Christianity, like any other historical phenomenon, “must be investigated on the basis of historical evidence.”38 Oliver Buswell, editor of The Bible Today, for which Schaeffer wrote in the 1940s, was another source of Princetonian influence on Schaeffer. As Lewis points out, Buswell was an inductive apologist who maintained that human reason is “responsible for critically testing truth claims by the observable evidence and casual inference.”39
Both Machen and Buswell reflected the nineteenth-century Princeton tradition of “the Baconian ideal which held that the duty of science was first to observe and register the facts and then to generalise about them.”40 They, like the Old Princetonians, held that the work of the theologian was like that of the scientist. The strong emphasis on discovering facts and the role played by reason in this has led some evangelical writers to suggest that the Princeton approach was “overly sanguine about the powers of rational apologetics.”41 As detailed in Chapter One, the Old Princeton theology was influenced by Scottish Common Sense philosophy. This has led George Marsden to observe that while “Calvinists had maintained that the human mind was blinded in mankind’s Fall from innocence, in the Common Sense version, the intellect seemed to suffer from a slight astigmatism only.”42
THE VAN TILAN INFLUENCE
In sharp contrast to the Old Princeton theology, the approach of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) and his Dutch school held that individuals, including their rational capacities, needed to be redeemed before they could reason properly. Far from attempting to argue someone toward a knowledge of God, Kuyper insisted that “knowledge of God is founded, not upon something prior to itself, but rather on God himself breathing into the minds of humans.”43 Cornelius Van Til, under whom Schaeffer studied at Westminster for two years, used Kuyper’s notion of the antithesis (i.e., that an absolute antithesis exists in all of life between the believer and unbeliever) to develop his presuppositional apologetics.
Although Van Til accepted a point of contact with the nonChristian, he did not believe there is any neutral, common epistemological foundation between a Christian and a non-Christian. To Van Til, all “empirical observation is inescapably theory-laden (there are no uninterpreted ‘brute facts’) . . . and unbelievers (like believers) are not all unbiased, impartial or without motive or good.”44 If a person does not intellectually acknowledge his or her need to presuppose God, any attempt to reason and interpret experience is not intelligible. John Frame has noted that for Van Til, presuppositionalism did not denote apriorism, but the “pre- in presupposition refers to the ‘pre-eminence’ of the presupposition with respect to our other beliefs.”45 Like Kuyper, who viewed knowledge in terms of the overall relationships it involves, Van Til recognized a unity in knowledge, and he argued that “the very essence of knowledge is to bring our thoughts into agreement with God’s revealed Word.”46 For Van Til, thinking God’s thought after Him was to be the rule in every sphere of life, including apologetics.
The evidentialist apologetics of those influenced by the Old Princetonian approach and the presuppositionalism of Van Til provided Schaeffer with a rich intellectual heritage. In his own apologetics there are elements of both traditions, and this has led to criticism by Clark Pinnock that Schaeffer “floats back and forth between these two very different standpoints as suits him.”47 Was Schaeffer inconsistent, or was he simply eclectic in his approach, or was he attempting to do something new?
HOW SCHAEFFER UNDERSTOOD PRESUPPOSITIONS
Schaeffer freely used the word presuppositions and was convinced about “the importance of thinking in terms of presuppositions, especially concerning truth.”48 As mentioned earlier, many writers, including Thomas Morris and Peter Hicks, therefore tend to view Schaeffer, albeit incorrectly, as a presuppositionalist in his apologetics. It is true that, like Van Til, Schaeffer believed there “are no neutral facts, for facts are God’s facts” and maintained that “there is no use talking today until the presuppositions are taken into account.”49 Furthermore, Schaeffer felt there was a “weakness” in the Princetonian apologetics because of its “assuming that the man has the same presuppositions as you have.”50 Indeed he even argued that the “floodwaters of secular thought and liberal theology overwhelmed the Church because the leaders did not understand the importance of combating a false set of presuppositions.” 51 However, and this is a crucial difference from Van Til, Schaeffer did not believe that you have to require the non-Christian to presuppose God before you can have a meaningful discussion with him.
While there were no neutral facts, Schaeffer believed there was common ground between the Christian and non-Christian because
in reality no one can live logically according to his own non-Christian presuppositions, and consequently, because he is faced with the real world and himself, in practice you will find a place where you can talk.52
In his book The God Who Is There, Schaeffer did not criticize Van Til by name, but in a lecture he gave in 1963 he referred to their different approaches.53 Speaking to a small group at L’Abri, Schaeffer said there was “a weakness” and “a mistake” in Van Til’s argument “in saying that you can’t even talk to a man until he accepts your presuppositions.”54
Van Til’s view reduced apologetics to the defense of the faith and giving an explanation to the Christian, and Schaeffer lamented that “at the point where they could reach others, they [the Van Tilans] just stop.” Although he was “very unhappy to say it,” Schaeffer stated that “in practice, in some ways, Van Til sounds almost the same as Barth. In both cases there is no real discussion.”55 Such an interpretation of Van Til, and especially the comparison of him with Barth, is strongly contested by Van Tilan scholars. For example, William Edgar, the present Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, regards the suggestion that Van Til accepted no common ground as a significant error. In contrast to Barth, who resisted any natural knowledge of God, Van Til assigned “the point of contact to human consciousness, which is constantly aware of God.”56 Van Til believed his approach drew upon Romans 1 and was consistent with Calvin’s idea of the sense of deity.
Thus Van Tilans reject Schaeffer’s criticism that Van Til was, in practice, no different from Barth. Yet it must be said that Schaeffer genuinely believed that Van Til’s apologetics prevented meaningful discussion. For Schaeffer, drawing upon the Old Princetonian approach, apologetics was to be used for evangelism by “the communication of the gospel to the present generation in terms they can understand.”57 He sought to do that by pushing the non-Christians to the logical (but unacceptable) conclusion of their own presuppositions and then presenting a rational argument in favor of the Christian truth-claims, which do not contradict reality.
UNDERLYING CORE BELIEF
So what about presuppositions? What status did Schaeffer afford them? How exactly did he think they operated? He defined a presupposition as a belief that “consciously or unconsciously affects the way a person subsequently reasons.”58 Presuppositions are the most basic tenets of a person’s belief system. Because they affect how a person thinks about truth, and since there has been a change in how people come to truth, Schaeffer believed that now, “more than ever before, a presuppositional apologetic is imperative.”59 Yet his understanding of presupposition was quite different from Van Til’s. For the latter, the term indicated the role that divine revelation ought to play in human thought. Van Til used presupposition transcendentally, that is, as the ground or framework that gives each person meaning. A presupposition was the precondition whereby things have meaning and value.60 By contrast, Schaeffer understood presuppositions to be the underlying core personal beliefs of each individual. It was by drawing out these basic beliefs that Schaeffer managed to find a point of contact with an individual and so engage in meaningful dialogue. Thus for Schaeffer, presuppositions were an apologetical tool to be used to open people up to the truthclaims of Christianity—to challenge the basis of their existing beliefs, and to commend the reasonableness of Christian belief. Convinced that Christian presuppositions match the real experience of life, he urged people to consider the different sets of presuppositions and decide “which of these fits the facts of what is.”61
One long-term worker at L’Abri, Barry Seagren, spent some time studying under Van Til at Westminster Theological Seminary and came to realize that Van Til and Schaeffer meant different things by the word presuppositions. He believed that for Van Til they were axioms—i.e., starting points that couldn’t be questioned. Meanwhile, for Schaeffer they were only basic ideas that he used as part of his strenuous efforts to reach non-believers with Christian arguments. In his 1963 key lecture on apologetics, Schaeffer had criticized Van Til for failing to engage in meaningful argument with non-Christians unless they presupposed God. However, when Jerram Barrs first visited L’Abri in 1967, Schaeffer was still encouraging students to read Van Til so as to “draw upon his insights about the importance of presuppositions.”62 Yet as Barrs noted, in contrast to Van Til, Schaeffer was using presuppositions as an argument for the existence of God. Indeed Seagren suggests that Schaeffer should really be seen as an evidentialist but “an evidentialist of ideas.” While others bring in archaeology or the historical evidence for the resurrection, Schaeffer did not. Instead “he presented ideas: the personal God, man made in His image, the Fall etc and asked ‘does this explain the world we live in?’”63
CRITICISM FROM VAN TIL
It wasn’t only Schaeffer’s close colleagues such as Seagren and Barrs who realized that he afforded presuppositions a different status and role than Van Til. Van Til himself was quick to spot the different approach and was eager “to distance himself and the presuppositional school of thought from Schaeffer’s apologetic method.”64 In an academic paper that became a part of his apologetics curriculum at Westminster, Van Til strongly criticized Schaeffer for the way he handled presuppositions. Although it was very easy to gain the impression from Schaeffer’s terminology that he was a presuppositionalist, Van Til complained that
at the critical moment Schaeffer seeks to show the unbeliever that Christianity is true because it is in accord with fact, and in accord with logic as the non-Christian understands fact and logic. At no time does Schaeffer point out the fact that on the presupposition of the unbeliever the words “fact” and “logic” have no meaning. In particular, Schaeffer over and over again appeals to “reason” as though it were something on the nature of which Christians and nonChristians agree. In short Schaeffer’s approach in apologetics is not basically different from that of the late Edward Carnell.65
By inviting the non-Christian to choose between Christian and non-Christian presuppositions on the basis of which of them best “fits the facts of what is,” Van Til believed that Schaeffer treated presuppositions as though they were hypotheses. He criticized Schaeffer for allowing the non-Christian to judge whether Christianity best met the facts of the world around him. Van Til was convinced that although Schaeffer kept saying Christianity is the only answer, he “also keeps saying that Christianity must prove itself true to apostate man in terms of the standard that this apostate man has devised.”66 Thus Van Til argued that for all practical purposes, Schaeffer still employed the traditional method of apologetics. When Van Til first read a copy of the lectures that Schaeffer delivered in 1965 at Wheaton College, he expected to find “in them a frank assertion to the effect that we can find no effective point of contact with the modern unbeliever except in terms of the self-identifying Christ of Scripture.”67 He expressed his considerable disappointment that Schaeffer failed to make such an assertion and instead proposed to engage in conversation that was designed to allow the non-Christian to “discover the truth of the Biblical system for himself.”68
Van Til believed that Schaeffer had not taken “sufficient account of the blinded condition of the sinner who can only misconstrue the very possibility of the truth of Scripture.”69 He recognized that in Schaeffer’s writings, the great sin of modern thought is its irrationalism. While commending Schaeffer for seeking to counteract the irrationalism of neo-orthodox thinking, Van Til maintained that “it is just as necessary to counteract the rationalism of the classical view of truth.”70 Van Til rebukes Schaeffer for “consistently thinking in terms of Christianity as something additional to naturalism.” He suggests that Schaeffer’s approach is more like that which you would expect to hear from a Roman Catholic theologian or philosopher.71 Van Til acknowledged that he was a sinner until “God reached down to change my inmost disposition. . . . Only now that I live do I understand something of the nature of the death from which I have been rescued.”72 Thus for Van Til no one could enter into a right relationship with God “unless by the regenerating and enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, we believe the words that he has spoken of himself in Scripture.”73 Without presupposing this truth, apologetics is useless.
Schaeffer and Van Til both used the term presuppositions, but clearly each gave it a different meaning. Far from wanting students at Westminster to think that Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics was essentially the same as his own, Van Til compared Schaeffer to Edward Carnell. Like Carnell, Schaeffer expresses a commitment to the idea that we must presuppose God’s revelation to man in Christ through the Scriptures as absolutely authoritative but then permits man’s rationality to decide whether Christianity is true or not. As mentioned earlier, for Van Til this meant treating Christian presuppositions as though they were hypotheses.74 Schaeffer’s willingness, on the basis of John 17:21, to treat love between Christians as the “final apologetic” was also criticized by Van Til. Comparing him to Carnell who set up the nonbeliever as judge with respect to the truth-claims of believers, Van Til accused Schaeffer of setting up “the same apostate man as judge over the spiritual claims of believers.”75
CHALLENGED BY VAN TIL
Concerned over Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics and the confusion created by his use of the word presuppositions, Van Til challenged him through a series of personal letters. As Burson and Walls point out, instead of clarifying his position Schaeffer simply refused to respond. There appeared to be three reasons for this attitude. First, as an evangelist he was consumed with the day-to-day conversion of souls and could not justify the energy it would take to engage in an academic debate. Second, he continued to respect Van Til and believed he was drawing upon a great deal of his thinking. And, third, knowing how ugly academic debates could become, especially those involving Van Til, Schaeffer wanted to avoid heated exchanges.76
However, it is fascinating to note that in the later editions of The God Who Is There, Schaeffer deleted the reference in Chapter One to the necessity of presuppositional apologetics. In the early editions of the book he wrote, “Man thinks differently concerning truth, and so now for us, more than ever before, a presuppositional apologetic is imperative.”77 Yet, by 1982 when The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer were published, he cut out everything after the word truth. Given that the sentence originally appeared in italics so as to underline its importance, its removal from the later editions was clearly a deliberate choice by Schaeffer. One can only speculate the reason, but it does seem fair to suggest that Schaeffer realized the confusion being caused by referring to a presuppositional apologetic. He continued to talk about presuppositions, but the status he afforded presuppositions continued to be quite different from that of Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic. While presuppositions—in the sense of a person’s underlying core beliefs—played a key part in Schaeffer’s apologetics, he was not a presuppositional apologist. It is quite misleading, therefore, for Peter Hicks to describe Schaeffer as “one of Van Til’s best-known followers.”78
THE USE OF PRESUPPOSITIONS AS HYPOTHESES
Gordon Lewis suggests, given Schaeffer’s view that presuppositions can be verified and shown to be true or false, that he “would communicate better if he called presuppositions ‘hypotheses.’”79 Indeed when Schaeffer was first published in 1968, Colin Brown was quick to notice that his approach could be compared with a set of hypotheses in science. As with a good hypothesis, Schaeffer in his argument attempted to “make sense of the observed facts and take into account the maximum number of other observed facts.”80 Brown noted that Schaeffer did not attempt to prove God’s existence but took it for granted. In presenting the belief system of the Bible, Schaeffer argued that it made good sense of “what is.” For Brown, this is like a hypothesis that presents in the first instance “an unproved theory designed to account for something hitherto not understood.”81 Lewis is critical—and deservedly so—of Thomas Morris for describing Schaeffer’s approach as presuppositionalist even though he (i.e., Morris) is aware of the way in which Schaeffer treats presuppositions like hypotheses. Twice Morris “quotes Schaeffer to the effect that he is testing presuppositions (obviously as hypotheses rather than untestable presuppositions) by whether or not they fit the facts.”82
Despite using the word “presupposition,” it is clear that Schaeffer’s starting point was more like a hypothesis. And it is important that we grasp that Schaeffer is not an “inconsistent presuppositionalist,” as Kenneth Harper suggests in Bibliotheca Sacra. Nor is his approach to apologetics just a “milder form of presuppositionalism” as David Clark would have us understand.83 Schaeffer’s use of hypotheses places him outside presuppositionalism, for certainly presuppositionalism rejects any notion of neutral facts or common ground. Yet I am indebted to Jock McGregor for the insight that if the concept of antithesis is regarded as the heart of presuppositionalism, then Schaeffer can still be seen as a presuppositionalist. Indeed, given the emphasis Schaeffer gave to antithesis, I believe his approach could be understood as very presuppositional. However, when we consider the overall picture, I think Gordon Lewis is correct to identify Schaeffer’s approach as owing much to the verificational method of apologetics.
The verificational method starts with tentative hypotheses from any type of experience and then “subjects these hypotheses to testing and confirmation or disconfirmation by the coherence of their account with the relevant lines of data.”84 The verificational method is sometimes considered a type of evidential apologetics because it has an inductive element whereby it tests hypotheses by their conformity with the empirical data. However, it is also sometimes seen as a form of presuppositionalism given its deductive element that starts from assumed premises. Lewis argues that the verificational method is neither a form of evidential or presuppositional apologetics but is a third method, having a distinctly different, logical starting point—i.e., a hypothesis to be tested. Lewis suggests that the verificational method in apologetics has existed explicitly since Elton Trueblood’s The Knowledge of God was published in 1939. Yet the scholar most closely identified with the verificational method was Edward Carnell.85
EDWARD CARNELL
In 1948 Carnell published his prize-winning volume, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics. He recognized that the basic doctrines of historic biblical Christianity appeared to the modern mind “to be but figments of superstition and imagination, gratuitously assumed by timorous supernaturalists.”86 And that was a view that Carnell, with all his intellectual brilliance, sought to challenge. He believed that the reason of man, corrupted by nature through sin, although darkened, was “not extinguished.” Thus it had important interpretative functions. In setting tests so that a person might recognize truth, Carnell argued that a judgment could be said to be true and could be trusted “when it sticks together with all the facts of our experience.”87 Thus there had to be consistency, and this consistency had to be systematic. By consistency he meant obedience to the law of contradiction, for where you find contradiction, you “can be sure that truth is conspicuous by its absence.”88 Carnell maintained that this law (also called the law of non-contradiction) was innate to each person, for “if we have not innate knowledge of the rules for right thinking, right thinking cannot start.”89
Carnell pointed out that he was not attempting to demonstrate God’s existence by rational argument. Instead he was merely attempting to explain data “which makes the hypothesis of God’s existence coherent.”90 Recognizing that not all people were troubled with rational objections to the faith, he acknowledged that he was one of those whose “heart cannot believe what my mind rejects as false.”91 Yet Carnell also recognized the limits of rationality and noted that natural reason was incompetent and incapable of working out a complete view of God or a philosophy of life “without a special revelation from God.”92 Unlike earlier Christian apologists who adopted a firmly evidentialist approach and who argued to an objective conclusion on the basis of “simple facts,” Carnell acknowledged the myth of neutrality. He believed that it was useless to say, “just stay with the facts,” as each person makes assumptions in his or her thinking. Everyone makes “assumptions because we must make assumptions to think at all. All knowledge is inferential and all inferences are assumptions. Knowledge is the mind’s construction of meaning, and properly construed meaning is truth.”93
Carnell believed that people make numerous assumptions in everyday life when dealing with simple facts like broken glass, dead batteries, or the smell of gas. Each fact-situation has to be explained, and your explanation is in fact a hypothesis. When there is a number of possible explanations, that “one which leads us coherently into all of our experience is the true one.”94 Long before the ground-breaking work of scholars such as Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn made it fashionable to query the notion of pure empiricism and complete objectivity, Carnell was doing just that. In rejecting the claims of science to deal only with absolute facts, Carnell argued that the procedures employed by the scientists were really no different from the ordinary person making everyday assumptions. The only difference he allowed scientists was that they conducted their procedures on a more refined scale. Carnell challenged the worldview assumptions that the scientist must presuppose and complained
that the scientist rejects the Christian world-view because it involves certain nonempirical, metaphysical hypotheses, while assuming for himself a truckload, each of which goes as much beyond sensory observation as does the Christian’s postulate of the God Who has revealed Himself in Scripture.95
PROBABILITY OF PROOF
Carnell accepted that proof for the Christian faith—as with any worldview—could not rise above rational probability. For him, Christianity was a way of life, and because it was not an “unabridged edition of the Pythagorean theorem, it cannot enjoy the demonstrable certainty of the latter.” However, he maintained that the more the evidence increases for a given hypothesis, the more the strength of probability increases. Carnell realized that some Christians would be disappointed by his admission of probability in Christianity. Yet he suggested that this was actually a strength because if his approach was correct, “then the system of Christianity can be refuted only by probability.”96 Convinced that neutrality in metaphysics is impossible, Carnell believed that at this level (i.e., the level of ultimate meaning), “the system of Christianity and the system of non-Christianity have absolutely no truth in common.”97 However, unlike Cornelius Van Til, Carnell argued that as long as ultimates are not talked about, the Christian and the non-Christian can enjoy common ground. Because of common grace, the non-Christian is not consistent in his worldview in that “he uses Christian presuppositions to give frame and support to his pagan ultimates.” 98 Thus for practical purposes, Carnell argued that there was a genuine common ground between the Christian and the inconsistent non-Christian.
Carnell saw the purpose of Christian apologetics as removing from critics any excuse for not repenting before God. He was convinced that “men who refuse Christ because of presumed ‘logical errors’ in Christianity are men with a self-righteousness in the area of knowledge. They are resting on props which must be pulled away.”99 Nevertheless, he recognized that you cannot argue a person into becoming a Christian, and he believed that the apologist was to “gently refute error, then preach the gospel, for men are saved by the power of the gospel.” Indeed he stressed that the “power of repentance comes from the effective agency of the Holy Spirit, and apart from this power, no man can know Christ’s saving grace.”100
CARNELL AND THE VERIFICATIONAL INFLUENCE
The similarity in the way Schaeffer used presuppositions and the role of hypotheses in Carnell’s apologetics is clear. In fact, on the basis of their similarity, Gordon Lewis makes a strong case for regarding Schaeffer as a verificationalist both in terms of his use of explicitly verificational terminology and his methodology.101 However, it must be said that at times Lewis is a little too keen to claim Schaeffer as a verificationalist. While accepting a similarity between Schaeffer and Carnell in their willingness to test the reasonableness of their hypotheses, I question the wisdom of placing Schaeffer totally in the verifica118 tionalist school of apologetics. For example, Schaeffer would not have shared Carnell’s appreciation of Søren Kierkegaard’s emphasis on inward experience. Although Carnell did not uncritically endorse existentialism and did not accept the claim that there is a polarity tension between objective certainty and subjective faith, he was very willing to acknowledge his indebtedness to Kierkegaard.102
Nevertheless, Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics is more like that of a verificationalist such as the early Carnell than an evidentialist like Warfield or a presuppositionalist like Van Til. In a journal article published in 1973, E. R. Geehan compared Schaeffer’s testing of Christian presuppositions concerning the world and mankind to Carnell’s approach and noted their similarity.103 In this, Geehan, who himself adopts a presuppositionalist approach to apologetics, was following the criticism of Schaeffer made by Van Til in the 1960s when he compared him with Carnell. While finding aspects of Carnell’s first apologetic book—published in 1948—to be helpful, Van Til argued that “gradually, however, in his later works his method became more and more like that of Aquinas and Butler.”104 Van Til told his students at Westminster that “for all of Schaeffer’s claim to use a presuppositional or biblical approach, his method is still basically similar to that of the traditional Aquinas-Butler approach.”105 Given that Schaeffer regarded Thomas Aquinas as being responsible for opening the intellect to much that was destructive, he would have found the comparison with him very damning. While he did not engage in a public dispute with Van Til, it does appear that Schaeffer did attempt to distance himself from Carnell.
Schaeffer did not acknowledge in his books any influence on his apologetics by Carnell. However, in his 1948 article on apologetics, he did refer to Carnell’s book.106 It may be that Schaeffer’s later failure to mention Carnell, thus distancing himself, arose from a desire to avoid coming under heavy fire by Van Til. In 1964 Van Til wrote The Case for Calvinism in which he sought to demolish three other authors, one being Edward Carnell. Among many criticisms, Van Til claimed that the tests of truth employed by Carnell “are identical to those used by unbelieving philosophy, especially Kantian philosophy.”107 As mentioned earlier, Schaeffer was anxious to avoid a public dispute with Van Til. Part of the reason for this was his conviction, deeply held since his spiritual crisis of 1951, that personal attacks were “completely ruinous spiritually” to those who employed them. The other possible reason why Schaeffer wanted to distance himself from Carnell was the fact that the latter had come to be viewed with suspicion by many evangelicals because of his apparent difficulties with the historical reliability of the biblical revelation.108 Given Schaeffer’s strong commitment to the inerrancy of Holy Scripture, identifying with Carnell was in itself just undesirable.
SCHAEFFER’S DIFFERENT STYLE
Perhaps a more fundamental reason why Schaeffer maintained a distance from Carnell was the simple fact that there was a distance between them. True, Schaeffer drew upon Carnell’s approach to apologetics in relation to making one’s presuppositions open to verification.However, in relation to other aspects—for example, the question of probability of proof—Schaeffer drew more upon the evidentialists than from Carnell. Schaeffer was not committed to Carnell’s method in the same way that he was not committed to any particular theoretical methodology. Schaeffer, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, was a practitioner, not a theoretician, and in his own approach to apologetics he drew happily upon several different sources. In blending the evidentialist method of Warfield with the presuppositionalist method of Van Til, Schaeffer was adopting a similar approach to the verificational method of Carnell, which was in itself an integrationist approach. Indeed Carnell had written that since “apologetics is an art and not a science, there is no ‘official’ way to go about defending the Christian faith.”109
However, it is wrong to depict Schaeffer as someone who was privately greatly influenced by Carnell but who publicly kept his distance out of fear. While Schaeffer was acquainted with Carnell’s 1948 prizewinning book on apologetics, there is no indication from Schaeffer’s private papers, discussions at L’Abri, or comments to close colleagues that he continued to follow Carnell. Indeed I am convinced that Schaeffer was following no one Christian scholar in particular but was forging a new style in apologetics to enable him to reach disillusioned or unchurched people. Schaeffer was first and foremost an evangelist with a burden in his heart to win people for Christ. Yet he believed that “my talking about metaphysics, morals and epistemology to certain individuals is a part of my evangelism just as much as when I get to the moment to show them that they are morally guilty and tell them that Christ died for them on the cross.”110 For Schaeffer, speaking and writing in the 1960s, not the sexual revolution but epistemology was “the central problem of our generation” because “the modern generation looks at knowledge in a way radically different from previous ones.”111
Because positivism (which repudiated the possibility of a theological or metaphysical explanation of reality) had failed, all that was left for secular society was “cynicism or some mystical leap to knowing.”112 Schaeffer noted: “[W]e find a uniform need for an irrational experience to make some sense of life. Their views have brought them to a wall, and by an unrelated leap of faith they hope to clear the wall.”113 Given his conviction, as already mentioned in the previous chapter, that “rationality is needed to open the door to a vital relationship to God,”114 Schaeffer made it a key battle of his apologetics to fight the loss of rationality. Thus his whole approach appears more evidentialist than does that of those who give a greater emphasis to the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. Yet, unlike Warfield who endorsed the theistic proofs, Schaeffer felt that “all the classic proofs were worthless.”115
RATIONALITY AND PERSONALITY
Indeed it is very important to grasp that although Schaeffer wanted to convince people that “there are good and sufficient reasons to know why Christianity is true,”116 he was not an evidentialist in the traditional sense. For example, he did not focus on the integrity and reliability of the New Testament documents. Nor did he seek to develop a substantive historical case for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although Schaeffer appealed to “the universe and its form” as part of his total case, Burson and Walls find it striking that he never gave serious attention to classical cosmological and teleological arguments.117 Instead Schaeffer, focusing on the “mannishness of man,” gave importance to the question of personality and human significance. Just as he made the fight for rationality a key element in his apologetics because of the prevailing irrationalism in contemporary secular thought, so he stressed human personality against dominant impersonal worldviews.Schaeffer’s emphasis on the “mannishness of man” in his apologetic undermined “the presuppositions of the dominant impersonal worldviews, while simultaneously providing a rational basis for hope, the two things Schaeffer thought most necessary to combat the naturalistic conditioning of the human race.”118
At Schaeffer’s particular moment of history, the great battle in Christian apologetics was against irrationalism and an impersonal worldview. The importance he attached to the role of rational argument in his apologetics and the priority he gave to the question of human personality reveals how keen Schaeffer was to challenge the spirit of the age. In Chapter Three it was noted that some of Schaeffer’s L’Abri colleagues thought he was adopting the perspectability approach. By this they meant that at certain points, certain perspectives need to be emphasized, albeit they are not given a higher importance. I agree with this analysis of Schaeffer, and I believe that it applies not only to the style but also to the content of his apologetics. It helps explain why Schaeffer, without being a rationalist, gave rationality such importance and why his arguments were so different from the normal evidentialist approach.
AN ACADEMIC, AN APOLOGIST, OR AN EVANGELIST?
Again, it is impossible to understand Schaeffer, never mind properly evaluate his apologetics, unless we grasp that he was a practitioner and not a theoretician, and so interpret him in the context of what he sought to do. Much effort has been spent, most of it wasted, by academics attempting to shoehorn Schaeffer into some particular philosophical or apologetical methodology. Furthermore, I doubt whether it is profitable for scholars to dissect Schaeffer’s writings as if they formed a carefully crafted—and much revised—philosophical or theological treatise. Schaeffer’s books mainly emerged from his lectures and discussions at L’Abri, and as Colin Brown has rightly observed of one book, it must be read and judged for what it is: a “suggestive and provocative essay.”119 Schaeffer himself never tired of saying to visitors at L’Abri, “I’m not a philosopher but an evangelist.” And as James Sire has said of him, “You have to take him on his own terms.”120
However, Clark Pinnock is one who has refused to do that and has instead made a blistering attack on Schaeffer. He criticizes Schaeffer’s “lack of credible scholarship,” his “fuzzy and blurred presentations,” and his “pseudohistorical” approach.121 Pinnock has acknowledged that he wished “we could say that Schaeffer was just an evangelist and ward off his criticism, but his own claims and those made for him in the books and on film would not allow it.”122 It is certainly true that extravagant claims have been made for Schaeffer by his publishers, and this is most clearly seen in relation to his two film series. In promotional material for Whatever Happened to the Human Race? it was claimed that Schaeffer was “one of the world’s most respected thinkers.”123 He was not, never claimed to be, and most surely must have been quite embarrassed by such claims. As James Packer has noted, “Schaeffer has been criticized as a grandiose guru, but the criticism is inept. It assumes a degree of egoism and calculation that was simply not there.”124
So why did he tolerate others making such claims about him? First, as anyone who has been involved in commercial publishing will be aware, the author has very little influence over what the publishers say about him or her. Eager to market their products, most companies “talk up” their authors. But in Schaeffer’s case, the second significant reason why he had to go along with the grandiose claims was the role of his son, Franky. It was he who produced the films and who was responsible for some of the more extravagant claims about his father. It is probably fair to say that Franky never fully grasped what his father’s ministry was about in terms of the founding principle that they would allow the work to develop as the Lord led, that they would pray and wait upon the Lord, and that they would not solicit funds.125 In moving, without further reflection, to plan the two film series and seeking to raise the necessary funds for the projects, Franky rode roughshod over this central principle of L’Abri.126 Franky’s style and claims about his father not only left Francis Schaeffer open to criticism but also caused problems within L’Abri.127 Obviously Schaeffer’s love for his son put blinders on his judgment, but some aspects of Franky’s later behavior suggests that parental indulgence didn’t do him any good either.128
WEAKNESS OF SCHOLARSHIP
However, Clark Pinnock is unwilling to acknowledge that the exaggerated claims about Schaeffer were only made by others and so views him as partly responsible. In therefore considering Schaeffer against the criteria of a great scholar, he finds him sadly lacking. Indeed he finds “large gaps” in Schaeffer’s knowledge of the great thinkers and regards his writings as “pseudohistorical.”129 For Pinnock, Schaeffer’s historical sweep of Western thought can simply be regarded as “pretentious.” 130 Pinnock’s criticism of Schaeffer is unfortunate because it is fundamentally unfair. The point made earlier by James Sire is very valid: you must take Schaeffer on his own terms—that is, view him as an evangelist. Schaeffer repeatedly stated that his interest was not in academic apologetics but in evangelism.131 Given that Pinnock studied (and even worked) at L’Abri in the 1960s and knew of Schaeffer’s passion for evangelism from firsthand experience, there is really no justification for his failing to view Schaeffer as an evangelist.
Of course, there are aspects of Schaeffer’s work where his presentation may be fuzzy or blurred and points may be suggested rather than proved. But then, as Colin Brown points out, “many seminal works in the history of thought have done the same.”132 Furthermore, Schaeffer was not writing specifically to a scholarly crowd but was making a broad appeal to ordinary persons. As Burson and Walls note, Schaeffer, in common with C. S. Lewis, rejected the notion “that weighty metaphysical matters are the exclusive property of trained philosophers” and sought to communicate in “language and imagery that would be more readily accessible to the common person.”133 That Schaeffer helped free the philosophy of ideas from an academic elite and made it available to rank-and-file Christians as an apologetic tool is to be welcomed. Nor did he claim that his books contained the final word on any subject but merely that they put the issue on the table for discussion.
In an appendix to The God Who Is There, Schaeffer stated that while he was not a professional academic philosopher, the “more academically oriented philosopher” could deal with “more of the necessary details” that he had just alluded to. Yet, as you would expect from an evangelist, he was adamant that “all the cultural, intellectual or philosophic material is not to be separated from leading people to Christ.”134 People—not academia—was, and always remained, Schaeffer’s overriding concern.
TAKING TIME TO LOVE
His love of people, and in particular his desire to see people rescued by Christ, explains why Schaeffer gave so sacrificially of his time to individual people. He was convinced of the biblical truth that to enjoy the loving acceptance of God, “there must have been a moment in the past when by grace we accepted Christ as our Saviour and were therefore declared justified by God.”135 Schaeffer saw his mission, indeed his calling, as an evangelist, but an evangelist who dealt with the philosophical and intellectual questions that obscured the gospel.136 Doing so meant treating all persons as individuals, given that they had a particular life story, personal intellectual misunderstandings, and perceptions distinctive to themselves. However, this was very time-consuming, emotionally draining, and pastorally demanding. Yet Schaeffer always sought to make the effort. Even when he was seriously ill with cancer and undergoing treatment in the USA, he continued to find time to talk with individuals and to conduct discussion groups.137
Schaeffer made the effort with individuals because he believed it was necessary (from an evangelistic perspective) and because he regarded each individual as worthy of the effort. Given that nonChristians do not live a life consistent with their own value-system and thus have a point of tension between their belief and reality, Schaeffer argued that
the first consideration in our apologetics for modern man, whether factory-hand or research student, is to find the place where his tension exists. We will not always find it easy to do this. Many people have never analyzed their own point of tension. Since the Fall man is separated from himself. Man is complicated, and he tries to bury himself in himself. Therefore, it will take time and it will cost something to discover what the person we are speaking to often has not yet discovered for himself.138
As Schaeffer noted, this sort of one-to-one ministry is not easy. It takes time, and it costs in terms of emotional energy, personal inconvenience, and spiritual struggle. Yet Francis and Edith Schaeffer gave unstintingly of themselves to countless individuals over the years. As one long-term worker observed of Schaeffer, “he was very good pastorally, very warm. He would take time, he listened and he treated people individually.”139
Schaeffer gave of himself so that people could be brought into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. To reach those beyond the church, who could not grasp the truth of the gospel, he was willing to work on a one-to-one basis. However, as stated above he did so not just from necessity but because the individual was worthy. Schaeffer warned that
to be engaged in personal “witness” as a duty or because our Christian circle exerts a social pressure on us, is to miss the whole point. The reason we do it is that the person before us is an imagebearer of God and he is an individual who is unique in the world.140
Love for individuals led Schaeffer to be willing to open his home to strangers, to warmly receive unexpected guests, and to spend hours with the spiritually lost. One Italian student who was a frequent visitor to L’Abri said of Francis and Edith Schaeffer that they “were willing to carry the burdens that all these multitude of people came with. Their life was busy indeed—meals to prepare, endless dishes to be made, mountains of washing—and picking up the pieces of broken lives.”141
No doubt he didn’t spend the same amount of time reading the original works of the great thinkers as did some evangelical academics. But then, unlike critics such as Clark Pinnock or Richard Pierard who complained about his lack of reading, Schaeffer wasn’t cocooned in a college. Schaeffer did not choose the leisurely life of academic reflection seated safely in his study. His insight into secular society and his ministry of apologetics were forged between living by faith, growing food for his family, and helping individuals with all sorts of problems who made all sorts of demands upon Schaeffer’s home life. Given the circumstances under which he worked and the fact that his insight was perceptive and his ministry effective, Pinnock’s comments about Schaeffer’s “lack of credible scholarship” and being “beyond his depth” are, sadly, somewhat petty.
CONCLUSION
Even if we accept some error of detail in Schaeffer’s writings, his big picture has proven durable. As Michael Hamilton has observed, the “conceptual centerpiece of Schaeffer’s historical view is the triumph of relativism in the modern post-Christian world.” The advent of “postmodern” thought would not have surprised him, nor “would he have been surprised by the resultant moral vacuum that characterizes much contemporary academic thinking.”142 Indeed it is quite remarkable that in the early 1960s—long before the views of Gadamer were essential reading for every aspiring academic—Schaeffer recognized that all people bring their presuppositions to a text and “read it” from their particular point of view.143 It was his recognition of the futility of the search by the secular academy for objective truth that marked Schaeffer as a perceptive thinker. Yet unlike the postmodernist slide into cynicism, despair, and nihilism, Schaeffer continued to contend for objective truth and hope—a truth and hope located only in Jesus Christ. Schaeffer was not an academic in the traditional sense, but he was a thinker, and indeed, I would suggest, a thinker with prophetic insight. Hamilton is right to note that Schaeffer “was evangelicalism’s most important public intellectual in the 20 years before his death. Ideas were to him literally matters of life and death.”144
However, of fundamental importance to Schaeffer was the conviction that not only is there a truth that has content and can be verbalized, but this truth has to be lived. He was adamant that in an age that does not believe truth exists, you cannot speak with credibility if you did not practice truth.145 Indeed, on the basis of John 17:21, he argued that the final apologetic involved relationships between Christians. Schaeffer maintained that you could not expect the world to believe Christianity is true “unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.”146 Thus in trying to evaluate the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer, once more we are challenged by the fact that he did not just follow a particular theoretical methodology. Indeed, although his own style of apologetics placed great importance on the role of rational discussion, it was in the practice of truth by Christians that Schaeffer located ultimate importance. Hence in considering Schaeffer’s apologetics, any evaluation that attempts to understand him by only examining his books is seriously deficient. Instead of disputing which apologetical school fits Schaeffer, time would be better spent studying the actual manner of how he conducted his ministry of apologetics. As stated in previous chapters, for Schaeffer the manner of how apologetics is conducted is as important as the message. And by manner I mean not only the way Schaeffer conducted the apologetical discussions but the way he lived and related to other Christians.
As Schaeffer himself said in the preface to one of his books, in his apologetics he wanted to deal with the intellectual and cultural questions of the modern person. But he also regarded it as essential that at L’Abri they would “demonstrate that the Personal-Infinite God exists.” Both elements had to be kept together in unity, for to separate them “would grieve the Holy Spirit and sever the link with modern man.”147 Visitors to L’Abri talked about “the feeling of well-being which enveloped” them and the reality of prayer as communication with God.As the Schaeffers intended, students visiting often recognized that L’Abri “existed on the basis of prayer, as a demonstration of God’s existence.”148 Furthermore, L’Abri sought to model authentic Christian community and to show the reality of relationships among Christians who have experienced substantial healing and a special oneness in Christ. In fact, Schaeffer believed that you could not explain his ministry or the work of L’Abri without reference to the concept of community.149
It was this powerful combination of a loving Christian community, rational discussions with individuals, and the reality of God working supernaturally through prayer that made Francis Schaeffer so effective as an apologist. We now live in an age when reason is devalued, and for many people “behind every truth claim is an unacknowledged bid for control and power.” In such a situation, the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer with its stress on rationality seems to have little relevance. However, as Burson and Walls argue, sacrificial love, “credibly demonstrated, has as much chance as anything at breaking down the walls of suspicion within which many postmoderns have chosen to shelter themselves.”150 In the concluding chapter we will therefore consider to what extent the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer can still be used as a tool in evangelism.