Conclusion: Love As The Final Apologetic
CONCLUSION: LOVE AS THE
FINAL APOLOGETIC
IS SCHAEFFER STILL RELEVANT?
After Francis Schaeffer died on May 15, 1984, there was a risk, as James Packer noted, that some of the people at L’Abri would “labor to build the prophet’s tomb, embalming into hallowed irrelevance thoughts that were once responses to the desperations of our time.”1 That this did not happen was the result of a deliberate effort by the leadership of the various branches of L’Abri to remain faithful to Schaeffer’s original vision. In other words, they sought to welcome visitors who were struggling in one way or another and to come alongside them with the saving love of Jesus Christ. As people came over the succeeding years with new problems, new doubts, and new questions, L’Abri sought to provide new answers rather than merely parroting stock answers to previous questions. By this approach, L’Abri continued to relate to new generations of disillusioned youth struggling with doubts and problems in relation to the Christian faith and Christian life. However, the question now arises, given the fundamental changes in cultural and intellectual attitudes over recent years, as to whether apologetics (with its stress on rationality) has a meaningful part to play in evangelizing people in a postmodern age.
The shift from modernism to postmodernism, which some see as the biggest cultural change since the Enlightenment, has been extremely well (indeed exhaustively) documented and is beyond the scope of this study.2 Yet, what are relevant to our discussion are the differences in approach and outlook brought about by postmodernism and how these changes impact Christian witness in general and apologetics in particular. Observing the differences that university missions must now face, Don Carson has said that many of “these differences are nothing other than the outworking of one form or another of pluralism, both in the academic world and in the culture at large.”3 However, another evangelical writer, Alister McGrath, finds the problems and difficulties to be with evangelical apologetics itself. He has suggested that evangelicalism has operated within an Enlightenment worldview of universal human rationality. It thus regards evangelism as being about “persuading people of the truth of the gospel—with that crucial word ‘truth’ being understood in a strongly rational manner as propositional correctness.”4 McGrath believes that a strongly rationalist spirit can be discerned within the writings of evangelicals like Carl Henry and Francis Schaeffer in relation to their view of Scripture as well as in their approach to apologetics.
McGrath argues that
the Enlightenment forced evangelicalism into adopting approaches to spirituality which have resulted in rather cool, detached, and rational approaches to Scripture. The traditional “Quiet Time” has been deeply influenced by this outlook.5
McGrath wants to purge evangelicalism of what he sees as its Enlightenment rationalism, and he maintains that the “apologetic and theological adjustment to the decline of modernity” is a priority for evangelicalism.6 Dave Tomlinson is another critic, but one who would go further than McGrath. He even criticizes Schaeffer for his commitment to biblical inerrancy. Tomlinson, a one-time charismatic evangelical who now describes himself as a post-evangelical, in his book The Post-Evangelical said of inerrancy that he simply marveled “that anyone should think it plausible or necessary to believe in such a thing.” For him, inerrancy was merely “a rationalist response to a rationalist attack, and it has proved to be one of the most troublesome and divisive pieces of evangelical dogma ever invented.”7 Were we to listen to these critics, we would conclude that not only does Schaeffer’s apologetics have no role or future in a postmodern age, but that they do not deserve to have any role in the future. However, the truth is somewhat different.
McGrath himself, in a scathing critique of Tomlinson’s book, reveals how ill-informed and inadequately thought through is The PostEvangelical.8 So we need not rehearse the arguments against Tomlinson or spend time on his theologically naive criticism of Schaeffer. Earlier in this book I dealt with those who regarded Schaeffer’s approach as being too rationalist, and elsewhere I deal with McGrath’s criticism of the influence of the Enlightenment on evangelicalism in general.9 Although McGrath is a distinguished scholar who raises serious theological concerns about the Enlightenment, I believe that his understanding of classical evangelicalism is defective. Thus I regard many of the conclusions that he reaches as being inaccurate. Yet, it is quite clear that there has been a genuine and fundamental cultural change. So, do the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer still have relevance? Without hesitation I would argue yes. Indeed, I would suggest that in a postmodern age Schaeffer’s approach is even more necessary.
POSTMODERNISM: FRIEND OR FOE?
Postmodernism has, as Stanley Grenz observed, a largely negative orientation in that it “began as a rejection of the modern mind-set launched under the conditions of modernity.”10 Some evangelicals have found the emergence of postmodernism encouraging, and others have even actively welcomed it. Rejecting the idea of any sort of objectivity and rationality, postmodernism argues that all theories, rather than being based on facts, are simply developed to empower those who hold them. Thus for Michael Foucault, a leading postmodernist writer, “truth” is the result of power-relationships that masquerade as neutral means of enforcing order.11 Yet Grenz finds common ground with postmodernism because of its rejection of Enlightenment epistemology. He feels that “evangelicals have often uncritically accepted the modern view of knowledge despite the fact that at certain points the post-modern critique is more in keeping with Christian theological understandings.”12 However, Grenz is wrong to think that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Postmodernism is largely non-theistic and united with modernism in its philosophical naturalism. The leading postmodernist thinkers “deny the objective existence of God and the supernatural, and take the material universe to be all there is.”13
Furthermore, by arguing not only that all knowing and all speaking is done from a particular perspective, but that each perspective is equally true and valuable, postmodernism promotes not merely an alternative truth but a plurality of truths. And this relativism extends to moral issues. As Douglas Groothuis notes, unlike modernists who “attempted to retain some sense of objective moral values or cross-cultural ethical standards,” postmodernists—though they tend to call themselves contextualists—are “moral relativists of one stripe or another.”14 Although some people (including those evangelicals who wish to work with postmodernism) like to view postmodernism as a radical departure from the modernism of the Enlightenment, it is in many ways nothing more than “modernism gone to seed, carried to its logical conclusions and inevitable demise.”15 Long before most evangelicals had ever heard of Foucault, Francis Schaeffer had spotted a 1966 review of his book Madness and Civilisation and recognized the significance of what Foucault was saying. For those who suggested that Schaeffer’s example of secular thought was unimportant because it was so “totally extreme,” Schaeffer, with prophetic insight, argued that Foucault is “not too isolated to be of importance in understanding our era.” Indeed, as Schaeffer predicted and as events would confirm, the “logical end of the dichotomy, in which hope is separated from reason, is the giving up of all reason.”16
As Groothuis has noted, postmodernism “is not only an overreaction to the true but exaggerated elements of modernism; it is also an exaggeration of the false elements in modernism.”17 Thus, far from welcoming postmodernism or even wanting to work with it, evangelical Christians need to confront it. It is no friend of the Christian faith, and it needs to be opposed. I believe that Don Carson is correct in his assessment that “philosophical pluralism is the most dangerous threat to the gospel since the rise of the Gnostic heresy in the second century.”18 Millard Erickson has criticized writers such as David Wells for condemning trends in secular thought but then failing to provide practical advice on how to reverse such trends.19 The same cannot be said of Francis Schaeffer. I am convinced that his apologetics provides a model that enables us not only to condemn but to oppose postmodernism. And not only to oppose it for the sake of opposing it, but to minister to individuals influenced by postmodernism (and thus blinded to their true spiritual state) so they will be led to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.
A LOVE FOR THE INDIVIDUAL
Schaeffer had a love for people that underpinned and inspired his apologetics. He had a concern for the individual person and a real burden for those separated from the saving love of Jesus Christ. It was a love that led Schaeffer to inconvenience himself and his family time and time again for the sake of the other person. Writing to a friend in 1953, two years before L’Abri was formally established, Schaeffer stated that “with so many people coming down our little path, it makes a severe problem,” but “talking about the things of the Lord always comes first, and when someone comes who wants to know about the Lord, all other things must wait.”20 This concern for individual people continued throughout his ministry, and even in the 1970s when he addressed meetings of four thousand and five thousand people, individuals mattered. Burson and Walls tell how, just after he had spoken to four thousand people, Schaeffer displayed “remarkable patience and compassion” with a man suffering from cerebral palsy who asked long and nearly incoherent questions.21
This sort of love and compassion speaks volumes to people. And people are quick to recognize whether it is genuine or merely a mask we wear while on duty doing our professional Christian ministry or engaged in apologetics. Schaeffer loved people, he cared deeply for individuals, and he was passionate about reaching them with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Indeed as he himself said, “If we fight our philosophic battles . . . coolly without emotional involvement, do we really love God?”22 Schaeffer knew God—His love, His truth, and His holiness. Yet looking at his own country and the Western world, he realized how it now trampled on what God had given and thus was under the judgment of God.
For Schaeffer, as with Jeremiah, this was a time for tears. He believed that “we must cry for the poor lost world, for we are all of one kind.”23
For Schaeffer, having love for the lost also meant confronting them about their sin and the need for repentance. From his experience of dealing with many unchurched and disillusioned young people, he found that if they could “feel real compassion in you,” they were willing to listen to what you had to say.24 Schaeffer was uncompromising about what needed to be said to individuals, but as one former L’Abri student noted:
[T]he rigor of his convictions was always tempered with love and understanding in person-to-person relationships as well as in public debate. He invariably treated those with whom he deeply disagreed with consideration and love.25
Unlike other types of apologetical argument, which are marshaled with polemical venom, Schaeffer demonstrated how “apologetics must be saturated with compassion and pastoral wisdom if the message is to be attractive.”26 For those of us living in the West during the twenty-first century, with all its biblical illiteracy, philosophical pluralism, and moral relativism, having a real love for the individual is an essential prerequisite for effective evangelism.
Yet even during the late 1960s, which was the heyday of intense philosophical discussion at L’Abri, it was Schaeffer’s love and compassion that often won over many individuals. Sylvester Jacobs, an AfricanAmerican who had been treated badly in the United States, even by those professing to be Christian, found that he and Schaeffer could “talk to one another as human beings.”27 Years after his visit to L’Abri (where he met his wife Janet), Jacobs recalls going for a hike in the mountains with Schaeffer. Struggling with difficult issues (for example, does God really care for black people?) and wrestling with painful emotions (including bitterness), Jacobs asked several searching questions that Schaeffer sought to answer. However, what really spoke to Sylvester Jacobs was the realization that this was Schaeffer’s day off, and he had invited Jacobs to be with him. Thinking of Edith Schaeffer, Jacobs remembers her as being like a mother figure: “I think of her as someone who cares, someone who loves me. She was part of my life in a very special way.”28
LOVE MADE THE DIFFERENCE
This genuine concern for people and the sense of love for the individual that the Schaeffers had, was, as one long-term worker at L’Abri noted, “what made the difference.”29 What has been called their “pastoral touch” was not merely some professional skill they exercised as part of their paid ministry. The love they displayed for individuals sprang from deep within their hearts, and that gave it an authenticity that was compelling. Francis Schaeffer, with all his commitment to rational apologetics, remained convinced that love between Christians was “the final apologetic.”30 Love and truth went together, and truth was never to be an abstract intellectual concept. Indeed Schaeffer argued that Christians must not merely speak about truth—they must practice it. He knew that in a skeptical age influenced by relativism, Christian apologetics with its claim to absolute truth would not be taken seriously if Christians did not live out the truth.31
Again, we need to emphasize that the love being displayed by the Schaeffers was not just a tool being used to commend their apologetics. Indeed I would maintain that the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer flowed from his love for people. Furthermore, it is clear that long before he engaged in a ministry of apologetics he (and Edith) had a deep love for individuals. Back in 1941–1943 when he was an associate pastor at a church in Chester, Pennsylvania, a family had a child with Down’s syndrome. The parents could not afford to give the boy a special education, and so Schaeffer, in addition to his normal duties, went twice a week with colored blocks in a variety of shapes and patiently taught him.32 This is true Christian love—a compassion for those considered by society to be unimportant and a compassion that is costly in terms of time, effort, and commitment.
Do we see compassion and love like this today in many churches? Can the outsider visit your church and experience the reality of Christ’s love and truth both being taught and lived? And what of our individual lives—do they reflect the love of Christ, and do we, in an age of doubt, commend His truth? We each have to start where we are, and for many that may initially involve asking the Lord to give us a greater love for other people and a willing spirit to serve and care for others. As churches, before we can meaningfully reach out with the love of Christ, we may need to learn how simply to welcome people, to have a concern for others that enables us to leave our comfort zone and reach out with a word of welcome to the stranger, to be willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of others and above all for the sake of the gospel. It has now been over twenty years since Francis Schaeffer died, but there is still much we can learn from how he and Edith manifested Christ’s love with a real compassion for individual people. And given the growing cynical selfishness of secular society, there is an even greater need for an authentic display of sacrificial love from the followers of Christ.
HONEST ANSWERS TO HONEST QUESTIONS
Schaeffer believed that loving a person involved being willing to give honest answers to honest questions. Conscious that each generation had its own particular questions and aware, from his own experience, that not every intellectual question is a moral dodge to avoid responsibility for sin, Schaeffer argued that there was a real need for somebody to provide an answer. Schaeffer encouraged those Christians who felt inadequate to deal with questions to “begin to listen with compassion, ask what this man’s questions really are and try to answer.”33 Having served as a pastor among ordinary working-class people, Schaeffer maintained that shipyard workers “have the same questions as the university man. They just do not articulate them in the same way.” Schaeffer did not confuse providing answers with salvation in itself, for he recognized the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s bringing the person to accept Christ as Savior. Nevertheless, he believed that answering questions helped clear away the obstacles preventing persons from seeing their need of salvation. Thus Christians had the responsibility to “have enough compassion to pray and do the hard work which is necessary to answer the honest questions.”34
Whatever else the critics may say about Schaeffer, his ministry, or his apologetics, no one can suggest that he lacked compassion or a willingness to do hard work. He made himself available to people, he sought to understand their difficulties (be they intellectual, emotional, or relational), and he attempted to share the truth of Christ in a relevant way. And we should do likewise. In the 1950s when Francis and Edith Schaeffer began the ministry at L’Abri, their approach to individuals was literally revolutionary. It was quite unique to have a place where you could ask any question, where doubt could be handled sensitively, where personal problems could be addressed and the gospel of Jesus Christ applied in a faithful manner. With the radical social upheavals of the 1960s, the rejection of traditional values, the questioning of all authority, and the widespread disillusionment among young people, Schaeffer’s approach struck a chord with many. No wonder that from 1968 L’Abri was almost constantly overwhelmed with a throng of young people who despaired of institutional religion but who still sought some meaning to life.35
Overwhelmed by large numbers of visitors and distracted in the late 1970s with a focus on other ministries, L’Abri may for a time have lost sight of the importance of providing answers to individuals struggling with Christianity. The introduction of one-to-one instruction in the 1980s at the various branches of L’Abri signaled a renewed importance in its ministry to individuals. Designed to complement group discussion around the meal table, these individual tutorials allowed people the opportunity to ask questions or deal with problems of a more relational nature. Introducing personal instruction has enabled L’Abri to minister effectively to individuals as the type of questions being asked has changed. Applications to visit L’Abri remain high at all its branches, and new branches continue to be established. So clearly the willingness to provide honest answers to honest questions remains attractive.
WILLING TO LISTEN?
For those of us living and witnessing outside the L’Abri community, a willingness to engage with individuals and to seek to deal with their questions, doubts, and problems still has much to commend it. I never cease to be amazed at just how unwilling many Christians are to engage outsiders, refusing to consider their questions or even to attempt to understand why they have problems with trusting in Christ. I recently attended a major Christian conference in my home province of Northern Ireland. About two thousand people were present, and the Bible teaching by the visiting speaker was excellent. On the last day he conducted a seminar where people could ask questions on any subject Most questions came from Christians and were about living out the faith, but then one non-Christian queried the biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The visiting speaker was outstanding in his handling of the question and followed through with an invitation to chat with him afterward on a one-to-one basis. What was so sad was the way many Christians openly disapproved of the question, murmured, “tut-tut,” or even said, “shame.” It was clear that for them the conference was a nice religious club of like-minded individuals, and they had no time for outsiders’ questions. How different from the ministry of Francis Schaeffer, and how different—more importantly—from the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ!
If we are serious about reaching the lost (and that perhaps is the first question many Christians need to consider), then we must engage with individuals and the particular questions and problems (be they intellectual or emotional) with which they struggle. Even in what was once religious Northern Ireland, the so-called Bible belt of the United Kingdom, large segments of society now have real doubts about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, questioning the historical reliability of the Bible accounts of His life, death, and resurrection, rejecting the need for absolute truth as revealed in the Bible, and struggling with the exclusive claims of Christianity as being the only way to salvation. To those who say that we now live in a postmodern society where most people don’t ask such questions or seek rational explanations, I want to say, get close to individuals and listen carefully. As you come alongside individual people, as they see that you care about them, as they grasp that you are open to free discussion (and will not think any less of them for raising difficult questions), you will discover that the questions will pour out.
Serving as minister of a church near the Queen’s University of Belfast, I deal with a variety of unchurched, skeptical people. In addition to providing a weekly Bible preaching ministry, I attempt each week to meet, on a one-to-one basis, in a local café with two or three individuals who have major problems or doubts about organized religion and to work through the particular questions they have. It has been amazing to see how people respond to these conversations and their subsequent willingness to attend a Christianity Explored course and their openness to the claims of the gospel itself. As you make yourself available for ministry like this, you will discover that it is not just university students who have questions to be answered. You will find yourself speaking with ordinary working people and with individuals of all ages.
Perhaps as an individual you don’t feel able to conduct one-to-one conversations with non-Christians about their doubts and problems. If so, why not invite them to a church or a special event where they can have the freedom to ask questions. It is very encouraging to see churches in England, where the preaching of the Bible is taken seriously, also run evangelistic events where people sitting around tables hear a Bible address and afterward take part in small discussion groups while written questions can be given to the speaker. Could your church organize an event like this even if you have to bring in an outside speaker? In the United States, Christian groups have organized the Veritas Forum at a number of universities. The ethos of the forum is not to provide a defense of Christianity but to enable any person to ask any question about the possibility of truth in relation to Jesus Christ.36 Over one hundred thousand students have become involved in the different forums. So yet again we are reminded that there is still a demand for honest answers to honest questions, and the approach of Francis Schaeffer obviously remains relevant today.
NEW TIMES AND NEW QUESTIONS
Nevertheless, one must recognize that there is not the same demand for the type of heated discussion that there was in the late 1960s. Os Guinness, the well-known Christian writer and speaker, was a student and worker at L’Abri in the late sixties and early seventies. Speaking in 2003 about the ministry of L’Abri during the “hippie era,” Guinness recalls, “the key thing was that it was a non-stop passionate discussion about the way things were [in society] and the relevance of the Christian faith.”37 Yet the absence of such passionate discussions does not mean an absence of questions needing to be answered. The 1960s was a revolutionary period in every sense of the word, and passionate discussions about everything and anything were part of that milieu. As is normal with all such periods in history, society soon experienced a collective “settling-down,” and there was a social reaction against fervor and enthusiasm for change. With such developments went the demand for passionate discussion.
Furthermore, the rise of pluralism and the triumph (at least in the media and the academy) of a radical tolerance has meant less discussion of competing ideas. As Professor Don Carson observes, there is
less discussion because toleration of diverse ideas demands that we avoid criticizing the opinions of others; in addition, there is almost no discussion where the ideas at issue are of the religious sort that claim to be valid for everyone everywhere.38
Os Guinness is correct to point out that “philosophically speaking, pluralism is not in itself relativism and need not entail it.”39 However, in practice this has been applied to mean just that, and thus truth is no longer something to be discovered but instead is something manufactured. For those who hold to relativism, “truth isn’t fixed by outside reality, but is decided by a group or individual for themselves.”40 Thus the claims of Christianity are not rejected because they lack truth but “because they purport to be true.”41 One survey of American university students found that the most common word used by non-Christians to describe Christians was “intolerant.”42
Yet, in spite of all that I have just said, I believe that Schaeffer’s desire to provide honest answers to honest questions still remains a meaningful and relevant ministry. Why? you might ask. Well, quite apart from the fact that a significant number of people are still willing to go where they can ask meaningful questions (as seen by bookings to L’Abri and attendance at the Veritas Forums), all people are by nature rational creatures. Thus all persons are capable of rational discourse, and as John Stott has pointed out, “one of the noblest features of the divine likeness in man is his capacity to think.”43 However unfashionable it may be to say so, people still have questions about fundamental issues (even if they are not verbalized) because that is how we are made. Confrontational discussions at public venues may not be appropriate today—if indeed they ever were—but engaging individuals on a oneto-one basis is extremely valid. It allows us as Christians to come alongside individuals, to listen to their questions (or even prod them into asking questions), to answer the questions within the framework of their own (defective) worldview, and then to explain a Christian worldview, the need for Christ’s saving work, and the reasons why we have accepted the gospel. The questions may be different from those handled by Francis Schaeffer, but the need to provide answers remains every bit as strong. Indeed I would contend that given the current ethos that all truth is relative and all faiths are equal, there is an even greater need for us as Christians to provide honest answers to honest questions.
A TRUTH FOR ALL
The truth choice offered to individuals in contemporary society has effectively reduced truth to one of personal taste. Some writers, such as Stanley Hauerwas, who himself is a Christian, have come to reject, as Curtis Chang points out, “any attempt to ground the church’s proclamation in the modernist fiction of a universally acknowledged rationality.”44 He repeatedly emphasizes that it is not the task of the Christian to demonstrate that all other positions are false. Instead, Christians—as the church—must be a “story formed” community. How the church encounters those outside its story is left rather vague, and Hauerwas accepts that his approach leads to a “certain kind of relativism.” What makes the claim of the Christian community unique, if anything? And how is the message of the Christian community any more right than, say, the conflicting message of the Mormon community or the Muslim community? And if you try to suggest that an inner spiritual experience has validated the truth of Christ for you, a Mormon or a Muslim could equally claim authority from a spiritual experience.
For Christians, truth is located in Jesus Christ and in His gospel, and this truth is not just for Christians but for all people everywhere. As Christ Himself said, no one comes to God the Father except through Him (John 14:6). And as John Stott reminds us, “God has revealed himself in words to minds. His revelation is a rational revelation to rational creatures.”45 Adopting Schaeffer’s strategy of providing honest answers to honest questions and doing so on a one-to-one basis in the context of a friendship is an effective way to identify false notions of what is true (and indeed of what is truth) and to clear away obstacles that prevent people from seeing their need for God’s saving grace. Working through particular issues, doubts, or problems with individuals allows them to see that coming to a saving faith in Christ is not an irrational experience or a blind leap of faith into the dark. And in an age when people have the choice to take any sort of blind leap in any kind of direction, it becomes even more important (not less) to provide solid rational and coherent reasons as to why Christianity, and it alone, is right and true.
However, it is essential in these one-to-one discussions that we actually listen to the person we are engaged with and endeavor to grasp just what it is that is bothering them or preventing them from being open to the truth-claims of Christianity. If our ministry is to be effective, we need to listen before we speak, so that the answers we offer really do relate to the questions being asked. It might save us a lot of hard work, but serving up pre-prepared answers to questions that the person hasn’t actually asked is not going to be productive. Listening to the person, working out an answer that engages him or her, and then seeking to present a Christian worldview will take time and effort. But if we have love for the individual, we will be willing to invest our time and make the effort, both on the intellectual and emotional levels. It is also important that we remember that many intellectual questions actually result from emotional barriers. Thus as Wim Rietkerk, the leader of Dutch L’Abri, has written, “in the process of coming to believe and growing in faith we can flounder when the emotional side of personal being is neglected.”46 Given the greater emphasis today on the emo144 tions and on how we feel, it is all the more necessary that in our apologetics we retain the integration of reason, will, and emotion.
This is not to regard Francis Schaeffer’s approach as inadequate or defective, but it does acknowledge the reality that new times bring new emphases as well as new questions. Such an understanding was integral to Schaeffer’s own approach. In January 1964 following a visit to the United Kingdom and the United States in December 1963, Schaeffer gave a key lecture in Farel House on the need to be aware of changes in society and to be able to address the changing scene. His visit had caused him great concern that evangelicals were failing to connect with the next generation, and he argued for communication that took account of the new ways of thinking about truth and reality.47 In this, Schaeffer showed himself able to adapt (and indeed eager to adapt) to a changing situation so that the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ could be meaningfully shared. Without fossilizing the particular arguments Schaeffer used at a given moment in history, we do well to continue to follow his approach, for then we shall be able to face the new times and new questions that confront the emerging generation.
NEW TIMES AND NO QUESTIONS
Of course some will suggest that the nature and scale of the intellectual and social changes since the 1960s are so radical that the type of apologetics practiced by Schaeffer no longer has any role. Not only have we moved away from the passionate discussion of the 1960s, but most people don’t even ask questions or care about the meaning of life. They are simply interested in themselves, in their own lives, and in having a “good time.” However, far from being left behind by these new social realities, Francis Schaeffer was tracing them and was adapting his apologetics accordingly. As early as 1973 he observed the emergence of a new bourgeoisie from the student radicals of the 1960s. Yes, their lifestyle was very different from the middle classes of their parents’ day. Those in the new middle class took drugs, were promiscuous in sexual matters, and were hedonistic. But they upheld the two cardinal values of personal peace and affluence. Schaeffer noted that they wanted “enough personal peace to practice their new life-style,” and they “couldn’t care less where the affluence comes from.... So long as they can afford . . . to do what pleases them, that’s enough.”48
Over the past twenty-five years this has led to a growth of a culture that worships the individual, is obsessed with self-fulfillment, and seeks to find meaning in the self as a substitute for God. As Professor David Wells has noted, life in society is now “characterized by self-righteousness, self-centeredness, self-satisfaction, self-aggrandizement, and self-promotion.”49 Living and seeking to minister in the first decade of the twenty-first century, hedonism rather than existentialism seems to be the main challenge to the Christian gospel. Certainly, serving as I do near a major university and dealing with students and young professionals, I have to say that not many are knocking on my door to ask about the purpose of their life. Instead I come across many who live without moral restraint or thought for other people or any consideration of the broader picture. They encapsulate the person from Ecclesiastes who declared that he denied himself nothing his eyes desired nor refused his heart any pleasure. To talk of apologetics in this situation seems utterly foolish.
Yet the hedonistic lifestyle did not just happen, and behavior does not just happen in a vacuum. Hedonism in itself is a set of beliefs (however basic and undeveloped) that then affect and govern behavior. Some folk who pursue a hedonistic lifestyle may have come to realize just how empty and ultimately how unfulfilling it is. And like the person in Ecclesiastes, they may have come to hate life because all of it is meaningless, “a chasing after the wind” (Eccl. 1:17, NIV). It is no wonder that social commentators talk about a growing sense of disillusionment and despair among young people, nor sadly surprising that youth suicides have risen alarmingly. Forty years ago, speaking to students and workers at L’Abri, Francis Schaeffer warned that suicide was the logical outcome for those knowingly living without meaning and who had descended into the blackness of irrationality.50 To those standing on the brink of suicide, Schaeffer argued in this lecture that Christians must reach out and offer the true hope of the gospel. His apologetics seemed an effective means for connecting with such disillusioned people, and they remain so today. Yet for those living a hedonistic lifestyle but who recognize its ultimate emptiness, many more are living in ignorance or denial of this reality. If they are quite happy with their lives and have no profound questions, can the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer play a role?
I believe the answer is yes. For if people are not asking questions, then we must be willing to ask them the questions they need to consider. One of the distinctive features of Schaeffer’s approach was his tactic of following the person’s values and presuppositions (even when the person has hitherto been unaware of them) to their logical conclusion. Convinced that no one could in reality live out these non-Christian presuppositions, Schaeffer wanted to find a point of tension within each person that forced him or her to question his or her own values. I agree with Schaeffer that many people do not so much reject Christianity as fail to even consider it because of their presuppositions (however hidden they may be), and therefore they need to be challenged. Apart from those who have gained their presuppositions unconsciously from the society around them, Schaeffer also recognized that some individuals try to bury themselves in themselves, for “down inside of himself, man finds it easy to lie to himself.”51
LIFTING THE ROOF OFF
Schaeffer realized that pushing persons toward the logical conclusion of their presuppositions and finding their point of tension would cause them pain. Nevertheless, he maintained that we must “have the courage to lift the roof off other people’s lives and expose them to the collapse of their defences.”52 People can live in denial of reality and build a life full of false psychological props or intellectual props (or these days antiintellectual props) or sociological props, all of which are designed to give a false sense of meaning or a fleeting feeling of satisfaction. Taking away these props would be utterly cruel but for one reason, and “that is because it is true. There is a hell. There is nobody in all history who has been so cruel as Jesus Christ unless truly men are lost and going to hell.”53 And thinking about the awfulness of hell should likewise inspire within us a new love for the lost and motivate afresh our pre-evangelistic and evangelistic witness. Love for the individual must remain real throughout our discussion. As Schaeffer wisely observed, “As I push the man off his balance, he must be able to feel that I care for him.”54
It is my experience from ministry that using Schaeffer’s approach to generate questions and to unsettle the individual can be a very helpful tool for engaging those who appear to be quite content to live their lives without reference to God. And I agree with Schaeffer that once a person has come to see his or her real situation and his or her need of God’s saving grace, there is no need to be complicated. For in sharing the gospel “not only can the same ideas be given, but even the same words can be used to all men.”55 Of course, not every person we expose to his (or her) point of tension will be willing for the true solution. Consequently, we
may seem to leave him in a worse state than he was in before. But this is the same as the evangelism of the past. Whenever the evangelist preached the reality of Hell, men who did not believe were more miserable after hearing the preaching than if they had never heard him.56
No one would willingly want to leave a person like this, and indeed our whole desire is for him or her to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. However, we must be extremely careful not to forget that only God through His Holy Spirit can regenerate people. Our task is just to present His gospel in such a way that it is properly understood.
HONESTY OR CYNICISM?
Pushing people to their particular point of tension relies upon being able to challenge them about their individual lack of intellectual consistency. I suspect that some readers will remain unconvinced about the effectiveness of such an apologetics weapon in an age that devalues reason. And to an extent that is true (if one may even talk of the truth with such confidence in an era of personal relativism!). However, Dick Keyes, who for many years has led L’Abri Fellowship in Massachusetts, has replaced the term consistency with honesty. Thus, while continuing to use Schaeffer’s style of apologetics, he has, as Burson and Walls observe, “accurately identified the popular sympathies of our postmodern age, and we applaud his attempt to adopt this method accordingly.” 57 Keyes has much more extensive experience of ministry among students than I have, and I have no doubt that he has dealt with student bodies in Harvard who are much more radicalized in their postmodernism than are those in Belfast. The fact that he has been able to successfully engage these students (and other cynical and selfish young adults) and find a real opening for the truth-claims of Christianity is a great encouragement. It has given us the confidence to use Schaeffer’s approach in this day and age, and I too can confirm that we have found it still to be an effective tool for apologetics.
The switch from stressing consistency to honesty may not seem like much, but I believe it enables us to penetrate the mind-set of the contemporary selfish, hedonistic, and relativist individual. When you point out to such a person that he is not logical in his views nor, in his lifestyle, consistent in his own values, he may just shrug his shoulders (as indeed some have done with me) and say, “So what?” However, when you challenge a person about failing to be honest and not being true to himself and continue to unpack this in terms of his not therefore being authentic as a person, you do tend to get under his skin. Again, as Francis Schaeffer warned, we must be careful not to cause unnecessary pain or to be offensive; yet in wanting to lift the roof off, our aim is to disturb the complacent and spiritually indifferent person. The widespread relativism and apathy that prevail may be dressed up in postmodern clothes, but people have attempted to divert themselves from the big questions of life in various ways since the Fall. Francis Schaeffer recognized that “most people in our society simply have been carried along by the cultural consensus.” He wanted to show them—and so must we—that “there is too much at stake in life to buy into any worldview, including Christianity, without adequate reflection.”58
CONTENDING FOR TRUE TRUTH
Lifting the roof off an individual’s life and challenging his or her lack of personal truth or authenticity is, as I have already mentioned, an effective means of connecting with those who were previously spiritually indifferent or complacent. Yet, to fail to move from the question of personal truth to objective truth and not to present the reality of the Christian worldview would only trap us in a relativist cul-de-sac. Certainly there is nothing wrong with understanding and engaging a culture on its own terms and modifying our apologetics accordingly. However, while it is true that “objective truth may not be the most fruitful point of entry in contemporary apologetics, it cannot be ignored or soft-pedalled in the long run without disastrous consequences.”59 Speaking in January 1964, Schaeffer perceived that the central battle for the new generation would revolve around the fact “that we are dealing with content and truth and we are not dealing merely with existential experience.”60
Prophetic though Schaeffer’s interpretation of cultural trends was, I doubt if he realized at that point just how much evangelicalism (or a substantial segment of it) would be influenced by the new intellectual climate. Many evangelical writers—seeing postmodernism as the vanquisher of modernity and its Enlightenment values—have rushed to embrace postmodernism. Thus Stanley Grenz says that he is in “fundamental agreement with the post-modern rejection of the modern mind” with its assumption that “knowledge is certain, objective and good.”61 For Grenz, truth is social—i.e., the product of the community of which the knower is a part. Not only are the specific truths we accept conditioned by the group or community we belong to, but so too is the very conception of truth. Hence, as Millard Erickson points out, for postmodernists “truth is relative to that community.”62
Grenz also laments that evangelical presentations of the gospel have been “accompanied by a rational apologetic that appeals to proofs for the existence of God, the trustworthiness of the Bible, and the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.”63 While noting that evangelical systematic theologies have generally focused on the propositional content of the faith, Grenz argues that we must “rethink the function of assertions of truth or propositions.” He believes that the evangelical understanding of the Christian faith “must not remain fixated on the propositionalist approach.”64 Clark Pinnock is also very critical of the previous emphasis on propositional theology and wishes to develop a narrative theology. In his approach, the task of theology is to help tell the Christian story, and he suggests that “doctrines that help us understand the story better are good and true; doctrines that ruin and distort the story are false and harmful.”65 Within his new theological approach, Pinnock believes there should be room for liberal “Christians to relate contemporary stories,” while conservative Christians can “rehearse the mighty deeds of God.”
The fact that what he calls “liberal Christians” are actually antievangelical and have a conflicting story to that which the evangelicals want to proclaim is not properly addressed. But then the fact that I am raising the whole issue of objective truth would, sadly, probably lead people like Grenz and Pinnock to label me as nothing more than a prisoner of Enlightenment epistemology. To be fair to Grenz, he does recognize and oppose the postmodern rejection of the correspondence theory of truth (the belief that truth consists of the correspondence of propositions with the world “out there”). He acknowledges that this “not only leads to a skepticism that undercuts the concept of objective truth in general; it also undermines Christian claims that our doctrinal formulations state objective truth.”66
Yet other writers from the new-style post-conservative evangelical stable, such as Philip Kenneson, appear to have no difficulty giving up on objective truth or the correspondence theory of truth. Since Kenneson does not believe that human beings can take a “view from nowhere,” truth cannot be “out there” since it cannot exist independently of the human mind. He views truth-claims as being “inseparably bound up with human language and are, therefore, inextricably linked to matters of discernment and judgment, which means they are irreducibly social or communal affairs.”67 But how do we share “our truth” with those outside “our community”? And why should anyone want to choose our truth-claim (other than personal taste) if there is no basis upon which it can be evaluated against all the other (and competing) truth-claims? Indeed, as James Sire has asked, why should anyone believe anything at all?
THE IMPORTANCE OF RATIONALITY
Of course in reality everyone believes in something, and everyone, at some point or other, uses their human rationality (no matter how rudimentary) to evaluate their belief when challenged. Whether it is our choice of football team, political party, or religion, there are reasons that guide our choice and a rational reflection (albeit in varying degrees) with an evaluation of reality that informs our decision. Universal human rationality is not an Enlightenment assumption; it is part of being human. Likewise, the correspondence theory of truth is not an invention of the Enlightenment. It may have been formalized as a philosophical theory during the Enlightenment, but it simply expresses how people live, consider reality, and deal with the world as it is. Even the skeptical philosophers who disputed the reliability of the senses tended to duck down when walking through a low doorway! They could not live out in the reality of life what they claimed to believe. By contrast, the correspondence theory of truth allows us to match the truth of belief with the truth of reality. And as we deal with individuals today, living in this so-called postmodern age, we discover afresh that in practice they believe in objective truth and the correspondence theory of truth, even if they have never heard of them.
Schaeffer was quite clear that truth must be non-contradictory and must give an answer to the phenomenon in question. Furthermore, one should be able to live consistently with one’s truth-claim. In the case of Christianity, one can ask, does it “conform to and explain what we observe concerning man as he is (including any knowledge of myself as a man)?”68 Schaeffer made much use in his apologetical discussions of the claim that the truth of Christianity is true to what is there in life. Christianity, he argued, is “not only true to what God has said in the Bible, but it is also true to what is there.”69 He maintained that the claims of Christianity were “exactly in line with the experience of every man” and that God acts in the world in a way that “confirms both my observations of the world, and also the way God says it is in the didactic portions of the Bible.”70 I believe that we would do well to continue to follow Schaeffer’s approach rather than be swept along by those wanting to embrace postmodernism. I fear that too many of the “open evangelicals” or “post-conservative evangelicals” or those in the “emerging church movement” approach postmodernism on the basis that it is an ally in the fight against modernity. However, like Schaeffer, I tend to view what has now become known as postmodernism as merely a development of modernity, and I believe that its fundamental assumptions are wrong because it continues to ignore the supernatural and merely replaces scientific determinism with cultural determinism.
We should continue to talk about objective truth (that is, truth that is true whether one believes it or not), and we should be unashamedly willing to promote Christianity as the truth that all people need to hear and respond to. We need to regain our confidence in the gospel as “true truth,” and we need to regain our courage and so be willing to share this gospel with all people. No doubt we shall be accused by society at large and the chattering classes in particular of bigotry and intolerance, but as we work with individual people on a one-to-one basis, we must combine love and truth. In his apologetical discussions, as already mentioned, Schaeffer displayed remarkable patience and compassion, not merely as a tactic but from a genuine concern for the individual. Yet he was adamant that you must emphasize with tremendous force the negative (what you don’t mean) before you present the positive message (what you do mean). His reason for urging this approach was to distinguish between the objective truth of content and the subjective truth of existential experience. For Schaeffer, the Bible was “the communication of communicable truth, a communication of rational truth, a truth which can be communicated in words which are understood to be meaningful.”71 It was a content that dealt with real events in history and as such, unlike the experience of existentialism, was open to verification. If we are to confront moral and spiritual relativism, we too must be willing to be negative and criticize that which is wrong and false so as to distinguish and commend the positive message of what is right and true. In Athens Paul did not offer the members of the Areopagus another god but the true “God who made the world and everything in it” (Acts 17:24). So must we.
EACH PERSON IS UNIQUE
Yet in contending for what Schaeffer called “true truth,” we must not enjoy it like a game or a kind of intellectual exercise. That would be cruel, and as Schaeffer warned, we could “expect no real spiritual results.”72 There must be a real empathy with the person and a proper relational and emotional dimension to the discussion. Some contemporary apologists want to give such an emphasis to the relational side that they talk about a “person-centered approach” and accept that they can “remain open to the instruction of my dialogue partner.”73 Schaeffer’s approach was very person-sensitive, but it was not personcentered, and neither should we become person-centered. We should always aim to win the person for Christ. We want to share the truth with sensitivity and love and in the context of a meaningful relationship, but with the fundamental purpose of leading someone into a relationship with Jesus Christ. It is good to see that the new generation of L’Abri leaders continues to combine Schaeffer’s commitment to love and truth.
Jerram Barrs, who is the Resident Scholar of the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, has written a major book on evangelism (The Heart of Evangelism). While encouraging Christians to reach out to the lost with the gospel, he urges us to treat each person as a unique individual and to be mindful that “every individual we meet is at a different stage in his or her spiritual journey.”74 In his book If Only I Could Believe! Wim Rietkerk, who led Dutch L’Abri, and in his book Beyond Identity Dick Keyes, who leads the L’Abri community in Southborough, Massachusetts, both give full recognition to the importance of relationships and addressing the emotions.75 Both remain committed to the concept of objective truth and to contending for the truth of Christ’s gospel, but both display a sympathy for the brokenness of individuals and an awareness of barriers that can hold people back.
We need to recognize, as we contend for the truth of Christ’s gospel and try to persuade individuals of the importance of accepting its truthclaims, that people are not logical machines or mini Mr. Spocks, devoid of emotions. Thus we may “win” the argument with someone about the truthfulness of Christianity, but they may hold back for a variety of reasons, one of which may be emotional ties to non-Christian family or friends. I have seen this happen when we have tried to reach international students in our city. Some will come, after a few sessions of apologetics or Bible studies, to recognize Jesus Christ as the Son of God and as the only way to know God the Father but draw back from receiving Him as Lord and Savior. The more we get to know the individuals, the more we discover that it is because of emotional and relational factors that they are holding back. Once again, I think we can learn from Francis Schaeffer in this regard.
In 1962 when leading a Bible study in Milan, Schaeffer spoke to a student from a devout Roman Catholic family who had become an evangelical Christian and told her, “If one day you have to leave home, you know that you can have a family with us.” When she later had to leave her family, Maria found a second home at L’Abri, where the Lord used the Schaeffers “to bring stability and love back” into her life. Even years later she could “remember vividly the feelings of well-being” that enveloped her at L’Abri.76 Not many of us may be able literally to take people into our family home, but can we, along with other members of our church, treat outsiders and new members like part of the church family? To the person wanting to leave another faith or to the person struggling to break free from a homosexual lifestyle, can we offer hospitality, can we show friendship, can we give time simply to be with them, and can we treat the other person as a whole person with whom we share love as well as truth? In other words, are we willing to practice what we preach? In reality, to display such loving friendship, given the limits of our time, may mean we need to cut out some activities so we have time to become good friends with a few people.
A COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS
It is quite fashionable today to want to describe the local church as a sacred community and to portray it as a place where the seeker can experience the divine transcendence.77 And a number of evangelical churches have responded to renewed interest in spirituality by wanting to make the point of entry as broad and as easy as possible by enabling a person to enjoy a spiritual experience without having to subscribe to any particular set of doctrinal truths. Thus Bible teaching and rational instruction in the truth of the Christian faith have been replaced to a large extent by efforts to create the “right environment” with subdued lighting, the use of candles or icons, and relaxing (and repetitive) worship and by providing personal space to the individual. Recognizing that there is an unparalleled interest in spirituality but a marked distrust of exclusive truth-claims, some writers suggest that the church has to accept “that post-modern people are more likely to come to faith in Christ through spiritual experience which leads to understanding of doctrine than through prior intellectual assent.”78
John Drane would contend that a Christianity that “has no place for the mystical and the numinous will not be a relevant gospel for the people of today and tomorrow.”79 And while Stuart Murray acknowledges that doctrinal formulations are “crucial,” he believes that the experiential side of Christianity and not doctrine should be the priority. He suggests that “spirituality may be the bridge over which doctrinal truth can be carried.”80 The whole approach being advocated seems to be for churches to become open and welcoming communities where people can experience spirituality, come to have a sense of belonging, and then later develop some understanding of the beliefs involved in the gospel.
I do believe that such an approach would indeed make it easier to draw people into your church, though I have serious doubts about the long-term retention rate. However, on a more fundamental level, is such an approach consistent with biblical Christianity? I think not; nor do I think, given the depth of our sinfulness, that a person can be genuinely converted to Christ through such a superficial approach. As Schaeffer has said, you “cannot have a personal relationship with something unknown,” and before a person is ready to become a Christian, he or she must have a proper understanding of the truth.81 Schaeffer was very comfortable with the experiential side of Christianity, but he was always keen to point out that “the Biblically-based experience rests firmly on truth. It is not only an emotional experience, nor is it contentless.”82 I believe that a religious or spiritual experience that is not grounded in biblical truth owes more to Hinduism or Buddhism than to biblical Christianity. It is no coincidence that since Eastern mysticism has become popular in the West, people have been more ready to accept the anti-rational ethos of postmodernism. Indeed, as Professor Don Carson has said, the new emphasis of the emerging church movement appears to constitute “a drift toward abandoning the gospel itself.”83
CONFRONTING IRRATIONAL SPIRITUALITY
In his day Francis Schaeffer recognized the irrationality of existential experience as a fundamental threat to biblical Christianity, which was a truth with content. He believed that we could not ignore existentialism but needed to understand the battle so Christians could speak into it. And even if the Christian message was “an antithesis contrary to the whole flow of twentieth century thought,” it was an antithesis that was valid.84 In our day we too must recognize the fundamental threat of an irrational postmodern spirituality and confront it rather than seeking to accommodate it within the evangelical church. The apostle Paul lived and served Christ in an age when people had every sort of spiritual experience to choose from. Yet in the Book of Acts we see that his approach to evangelism, while culturally sensitive, was always to share the truth of the gospel. As he preached, he “reasoned” and “explained” with the aim of “trying to persuade” them to believe the truth.85
As John Stott has said, the
New Testament shows preaching and teaching as working towards a decision and it isn’t just a case of conversion. They want people to trust Christ as He is trustworthy. They argue that He is unique and competent to save. They outline what makes Him competent: the incarnation, crucifixion and the resurrection.86
To have a Christian spiritual experience must involve the Holy Spirit, and so the person must be familiar with the truth of the gospel, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (John 14:15-27). As Stott observes, you “cannot exercise faith if you don’t exercise your mind. For faith to be involved, the mind must understand what it believes.”87 Schaeffer was concerned that the evangelical church was being influenced by the spirit of the age and “failing to recognize that an antithesis exists.” He believed that the central antithesis of the Christian faith was “the antithesis between being justified and not justified.”88
He contended for the need to stress thesis against antithesis—to point out truth against what was false so that the person could realize the real difference between salvation and being lost. Schaeffer was often criticized for not just preaching the “simple gospel,” but as he frequently pointed out, if someone knocks on your door and asks you, “How can I be saved?” in that case you don’t discuss presuppositions, you “tell him the gospel. Tell him how Jesus died for him.”89 For Schaeffer, the problem was not the gospel but “how to communicate the gospel so that it is understood.”90 Visiting the English branch of L’Abri at several points during the 1990s, it was encouraging to see a ministry continue and develop Schaeffer’s vision. A real effort had been made by Ranald Macaulay, Jock McGregor (now at the Rochester L’Abri), and Andrew Fellows to understand postmodernism, to be able to come alongside individuals influenced or confused by it, while still retaining a total commitment to the importance of sharing doctrinal truths such as biblical inerrancy and substitutionary atonement. This is a refreshing contrast with those in the “emerging church movement” who are willing to tone down the traditional doctrinal understanding so as to make Christianity more attractive to the postmodernist.91
THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY
Having stressed how utterly essential it is that we share unashamedly the truth of the gospel with individuals and confront irrational spirituality, I also want to emphasize the importance of the local church as a community. I do agree with Drane on this point: “in a world of dysfunctional relationships in which people are hurting and constantly being put down . . . many are desperately searching for a place where they can belong and be valued.”92 It is a sad reflection upon a society obsessed with sex that people are now desperate for intimacy and love But then as John Stott has said, the capacity for relationships is part of the divine likeness in man, whereby we are “made to love. To love other people, and above all, to love God.”93 And the local church as a community of believers should afford us the opportunity to love and be loved, in relation both to God and to other people.
Long before it became so fashionable to talk of the church as a community or the importance of Christian community in itself, Schaeffer gave a strong emphasis to the concept of community. As Burson and Walls note, some of his “most passionate writing revolved around this topic,” and even one of Schaeffer’s strongest critics, Jack Rogers, found the “description of life at L’Abri exhilarating.”94 For Schaeffer the local church should have “two orthodoxies: first, an orthodoxy of doctrine and second, an orthodoxy of community.”95 Indeed he regarded the sense of a real community as one of the true marks of the early church, and in his study of the Bible, the church at Antioch was his favorite. As Schaeffer noted, it “was a place where something new happened,” and “on the basis of the blood of Christ and the truth of the Word of God” believers from different racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds were united as one.96 Schaeffer believed that Christ’s command for Christians to love our neighbors meant “treating every man we meet well, every man whether he speaks our language or not, every man whether he has the colour of our skin or not.” Thus there was to be a beauty in human relationships, and much more so in “the relationships between true Bible-believing Christians, something so beautiful that the world would be brought up short.”97 Furthermore, Schaeffer observed that John 17:21 was a sobering thought in that “Jesus gives the world the right to judge whether the Father has sent the Son on the basis of whether the world sees observable love among all true Christians.”98
DEVELOPING A TRUE COMMUNITY
Yet as Schaeffer looked at the various evangelical churches, he had to conclude that many were little more than “preaching points and activity generators.” And if a person really has desperate needs, does “he naturally expect to find a supporting community in our evangelical churches? We must say with tears, many times no!”99 While recognizing that there cannot be perfection this side of eternity, Schaeffer nevertheless maintained that under the shed blood of Christ there is to be “a substantial healing of everything that the Fall brought forth.” One of those things is the division between people, and so the church, by God’s grace, was to show that “in a substantial way these can be healed.”100 But Schaeffer was honest enough to admit that all “too often young people have not been wrong in saying the church is ugly.”101 He believed that unless the church practiced the truth as well as talking about it, secular society—which was so skeptical about the concept of truth—would not take Christians seriously. There needed to be beauty and observable love in the relationships between Christians, and that needed to be expressed in the local church as a community.102
Through L’Abri, Schaeffer attempted to model what a Christian community should be like. In the 1950s when he and Edith opened their home and simultaneously sought to offer truth and love in a relational context, it was literally a revolutionary approach for someone from an evangelical background to do so. Fifty years later the L’Abri community remains a very powerful witness to both the skeptical unbeliever and the troubled believer. And yet it is a costly business to have a sense of community, and the Schaeffer family paid a heavy price, not only in terms of lack of privacy or normal family life but also in the destruction of their property. For example, in about the first three years of L’Abri, all their wedding presents were wiped out.103 Perhaps it is the realization to visitors of this very high cost, in every sense, that helps give Christianity at L’Abri the sense of reality.
Speaking of Christian young people from very comfortable families who lacked a sense of spiritual reality, Schaeffer said that if they “saw their parents opening . . . their homes at expense to their furniture and rugs, if they were told to pray not merely for the lost out there somewhere, but for specific people whom they knew sitting at the table in their own home, the unreality could be gone.”104 Schaeffer was always quick to acknowledge the imperfections and weaknesses of L’Abri, but he felt that if it, and the church, was a “little bit of what it should be, young people will come.”105 Individuals, no matter how unusual or “far-out,” have always been made welcome at L’Abri and accepted for who they are. Alongside the sense of community involving the L’Abri workers and their families, and the display of concern for the visiting students, there is the presentation of biblical truth through one-to-one instruction, table discussion, lectures, and preaching at Sunday services. Truth has not been abandoned or diminished for the sake of relationships or experience.
THE CHALLENGE TO US
Schaeffer wrote The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century and The Church Before the Watching World in 1970 and 1971. Some thirty-five years later, we need to ask in humility whether the evangelical church reflects any more faithfully the biblical picture of the church as a community. If we were to score each evangelical church on a scale of 1 to 10 for how good relationships are and how meaningful the sense of community is, I suspect that most would only merit a 2 or 3. Far from providing beauty in relationships, some will be riddled by division and jealousy; far from providing acceptance to the outsider, many will not even give a word of welcome to the visitor; and far from being places of transforming love, many will only reflect the shallow, superficial, and selfish relations of secular society. I said we need to ask in humility about the condition of the church, for given that we are a part of the church, we share a responsibility and bear some of the blame for its shortcomings.
The challenge for us is to be willing to structure our own church as a place for community and, while staying within the limits of the New Testament, to “have the courage to change all kinds of things in our service.”106 Are we even willing to open our own homes as places of community? Most of us probably cannot have people stay, but are we willing to have the person for a meal? A little hospitality and a sharing of our family time can mean so much to a person who lives alone or who is a visitor to our city or a new member of our church. Is your home a fortress or a place for ministry? And if for genuine reasons we can’t have people in our homes, are we willing to greet a stranger at church, to help integrate a new member by showing real friendship, or to support an existing member who is struggling with illness or an emotional problem? Surely none of us are incapable of giving a friendly word or delivering a meal to someone in need. If we are to make a difference and if we are to practice community, then as we said before, we will need to review our existing time commitments. We must be willing to cut out meaningless church activities imposed on us by tradition or social expectation, and we must individually be willing to sacrifice some of the leisure time presently reserved and restricted to ourselves.
Many people in our society are suffering, and many Christians feel unsupported and unable to seek help in their local church. I have come across Christians from conservative evangelical churches with excellent expository preaching and those from charismatic churches that have brilliantly arranged worship services but who have not experienced love, acceptance, or even real interest in them as individuals. Something is wrong, and—as we have already mentioned—if love is the final apologetic as Schaeffer claimed on the basis of John 17:21, then the evidence of its absence from most evangelical churches is unlikely to attract many people. Perhaps in repentance we need to turn to God and cry out to Him to send His Holy Spirit to stir up in us a new love for Him and for His people.
THE SPIRITUALITY OF SCHAEFFER
For a man so identified with rational apologetics, it is worth recalling that Schaeffer regarded his spiritual crisis of 1951 and the subsequent lectures he prepared on true spirituality as the essential foundation for the work of L’Abri. As he himself said in the Preface to True Spirituality, it was “out of these struggles that the reality came, without which an incisive work like L’Abri would not have been possible.” He came to see the need for reality as a Christian in the present life on the basis of the finished work of Christ. Lamenting the previous lack of reality in his own life and in the lives of many other Christians, he asked Edith
what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the reality and work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible. . . . We concluded that it would not make much difference in many board meetings, decisions and activities.107
Schaeffer wanted to live and serve in the reality of the supernatural universe, and he argued that this made sense of the biblical image of Christians as “the bride, linking themselves to Christ, the bridegroom, so that He, the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ, may bring forth fruit through them.”108 In practice this meant that “in our thoughts and lives now we are to live as though we had already died, been to heaven, and come back again as risen.” Schaeffer felt that if we viewed reality like this, nothing in the world would ever look the same, and the constant pressure to conform would be removed. And we would thus be strengthened in our calling to live in Christ moment by moment and be dead to all things so that “we might be alive to God at this moment.” 109 Although Schaeffer held that doctrinal truth was essential, he knew that “it is not an end in itself. There is to be an experiential reality moment by moment.”110 But unlike an existential experience or an experience of the Eastern religions, Schaeffer maintained that the Christian experiential reality was to be enjoyed “with all the intellectual doors and windows open.”
Schaeffer recognized that it was a practical problem for individuals to find the point at which they can begin to live moment by moment in this spiritual reality. For him, his own “personal point of beginning was the reality of bringing specific sin under the blood of Christ moment by moment, and knowing the reality of forgiveness and a restored relationship.”111 Whatever the point of beginning for each individual, the aim remained the same: a “moment-by-moment increasing, experiential relationship to Christ and to the whole Trinity.”112 Underpinning all of Schaeffer’s rational apologetics was the conviction that the “central doctrine of the Christian faith is not salvation, it is the existence of a personal God who truly is personal in the high order of the Trinity” (i.e., with all the love and communication between the members of the Trinity). Since humankind was made in the image of God, people were made for relationships and, above all, for a spiritual relationship with God.
SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT
Burson and Walls, while mainly complimentary about Schaeffer’s apologetics, are critical of his emphasis on substitutionary atonement as “the only path to divine satisfaction, forgiveness and, consequently, salvation.”113 Although they recognized that there was a relational side in Schaeffer’s teaching on salvation, they held that he viewed atonement primarily in legal terms. They also were concerned that if the notion of holiness is “interpreted through a fundamentally forensic grid, this doctrine will naturally appear to be heavily lacquered with a thick tar of legalism. Holiness cannot be reduced to a set of rigid rules without slipping into a tedious and repellent moralism.”114 I agree with Burson and Walls that legalism and moralism are both tedious and repellent. However, at the very heart of Schaeffer’s spirituality is the desire that the Christian life not be reduced to “merely a negative not-doing of any small list of things.”115 The spiritual crisis of 1951, described by Edith as a “central event” in his life,116 forced Francis Schaeffer to confront his legalism and bitterness of spirit. Yet as God worked through it, it also allowed Schaeffer to change and mature, and he never had any desire to return to a legalistic outlook.
Of course, there was an emphasis on substitutionary atonement in Schaeffer’s thinking about justification—and there needs to be if one is to be faithful to the teaching of the Bible. But it is wrong to suggest that he viewed salvation mainly in a legal or forensic sense. Schaeffer understood justification to be “absolutely irrevocable” because Christ on the cross took upon Himself the “punishment of all our sin.” But the whole purpose of this was to enable the individual to enter a real and meaningful relationship with God when he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. For Schaeffer, salvation was wider than justification, and there was and is a past, a future, and, just as real, a present. He frequently taught that “salvation is not just justification and then a blank until death; God never meant it to be so. Salvation is a unity, a flowing stream, from justification through sanctification to glorification.”117 The reality of salvation at every stage was to be in a loving relationship with God: the freedom to know the Father not just as our Judge but as our loving heavenly Father; to know Christ not just as our Savior but as our bridegroom and brother; and to know the Holy Spirit not just vaguely but as our Comforter who indwells and sustains us.118
THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Listening to tapes of his lectures at L’Abri and reading through his letters, one is struck by the constant references to the Holy Spirit and the need for His indwelling power. Long before the charismatic movement burst upon the scene in the 1960s and 1970s, Schaeffer was giving an emphasis (but not an undue emphasis) to the importance of the third member of the Trinity in a manner that was rare within evangelical Christianity. Writing in 1954 to a church leader, Schaeffer said Christians are called “to live in the power of the Holy Spirit in the small as well as large things; to practice doing what the world would consider stupid, in faith that it will please the Lord because it is right.”119 In contrast to the confidence and strength of the secular scientific world, Schaeffer offered a spirituality that emphasized the weakness and the dependence of the individual and his or her utter need of the Holy Spirit. Yet for many people, the authenticity of Schaeffer’s spirituality struck a chord and was deeply attractive. For folk visiting L’Abri, the lack of organizational planning to develop the work, the absence of an endowment or financial reserve to fund activities, and the unwillingness to engage in a publicity drive to promote the ministry was a living demonstration of Schaeffer’s spiritual reality. The Schaeffers’ constant looking to God in prayer to meet the needs of L’Abri, to sustain them in their ministry, and to lead individuals to a saving faith in Christ made a lasting impression on many persons.
I believe that Schaeffer’s spirituality is not only biblical but also very wise and indeed relevant. In today’s intellectual climate with its suspicion of power, technology, and easy answers, Schaeffer’s emphasis on the need of the Holy Spirit should have an even greater appeal among those influenced by postmodernism. Furthermore, given his insistence that true spirituality is not to concentrate on the negative but is finally positive, Schaeffer’s spirituality can enhance evangelical Christianity and strengthen its appeal to our contemporary secular society. Schaeffer acknowledged the need for a proper negative aspect to spirituality (i.e., being able to criticize that which is wrong without descending into destructive polemics) but maintained that true spirituality “sweeps over into a positive, and to stop at the negative is to miss the whole point.”120
Thus Schaeffer’s final emphasis on the positive (loving God and loving our neighbor) allows Christians to define themselves by what they are rather than by stressing what they are not. Sadly, too many con165 servative evangelicals seem to define their self-identity not in terms of the reality of their relationship to the Lord but by what and who they oppose and reject. This can lead to an identity that often is cold, unappealing, and lacking in the fruit of the Spirit. Not only is this spiritually damaging to Christians, but it also undermines the power of their witness. We—and here I include myself—need to be careful lest, in working hard and standing firm against wickedness, we (like the church in Ephesus) forsake our first love and fall from a great height.121 While many charismatic Christians talk freely of their ongoing relationship with the Lord and appear to have a strong spiritual reality, one sometimes has to question just how biblical their relationship really is. All too often as you take time to listen carefully to how some charismatics describe God, you realize that their understanding draws heavily on their own emotional experience, and their picture of Christ owes more to their own psychological projection than to the biblical revelation. By contrast, Schaeffer’s approach to spirituality is based upon the truth of rational understanding of biblical revelation that is then lived out in a moment-by-moment experiential reality.
SPIRITUAL REALITY
Schaeffer’s spirituality also affects how we live in relation to other people. Unlike mysticism, which would have us withdraw from everyday life and from contact with people so we can experience “holiness,” Schaeffer’s approach was geared to help us live out the faith in everyday lives. In True Spirituality he gave considerable space to how living in the spiritual reality of our Christian faith should bring “substantial healing” not only to our personal psychological problems, but also in our relationships with other people. Jim Ingram, who was Director of Swiss L’Abri until 2004, used Schaeffer’s True Spirituality to develop a very effective ministry to individuals struggling with deep emotional problems. By working on a one-to-one basis, he was able to lead confused and hurting believers into a more real and meaningful relationship with the Lord and then deal with issues such as low self-esteem and fractured relations with their family or church. Schaeffer also believed that true spirituality should have a major sociological impact, and when applied to society at large, it should provide the motivation to combat materialistic greed and racist prejudice. He maintained that you “cannot just trample human relationships and expect our relationship to God to be lovely, beautiful and open.”122 Schaeffer held that our spirituality should be real in every aspect of our life, and that should enable us to be involved in every area of society. For him, with his interest in art and music, holiness of life was about being world-redeeming rather than world-denying. It was positive, not negative.
Yet for many of the evangelicals who have come after him with proposals for involvement in politics and social concern, including some who have even claimed an inspiration from Schaeffer himself, there has been a lack of emphasis on true spirituality. Without this emphasis, and also the constant acknowledgment of mankind’s depravity, there is a real danger of Christian involvement in these areas being no different from that of other secular special interest groups. Schaeffer realized that with all the different concentric circles you could have for Christian activity and for the faith itself, the innermost circle must always be the spiritual—that is, the “personal relationship of the individual soul with a personal God.” Without this, it is not really Bible-believing Christianity.123 To preserve this innermost circle, Schaeffer regarded prayer as utterly essential. Since the time they became Christians, prayer had always been important to Francis and Edith Schaeffer.
THE PLACE OF PRAYER
Back in the late 1930s, serving in his first church, Schaeffer relied heavily on prayer and in particular on the prayer ministry of a housebound member. He “really felt that her prayers made a tremendous difference in very real situations and had a very real part in our ministry’s success.” 124 Edith, with her family background in the more pietistic China Inland Mission, had always believed strongly in praying for the provision of particular things or the resolution of particular problems.125 Following his spiritual crisis in 1951, Francis Schaeffer now also gave a high priority to relying on the Lord through prayer to meet particular material needs. This underpinned L’Abri, and as Schaeffer said in 1964, the life and work of the community was “built upon the concept of prayer.”126 Yet for Schaeffer, the praying for particular needs was only an outworking of the trust there should be in the Lord by His children and only a reflection of the reality of their relationship with the Lord. Coming to God in prayer deepens and strengthens a believer’s relationship with God, and Schaeffer likened it to a little girl who, wanting to be lifted, would say to her father, “Up, daddy. Up, daddy.”127
Given Schaeffer’s very strong emphasis on the power of prayer and on the importance of an experiential reality and the necessity of a relational understanding of God, it is difficult to see how critics like Clark Pinnock could accuse him of being a rationalist. Indeed one must question if they have really attempted to understand Schaeffer in the totality of his ministry and his writings. One often suspects that they take his three main apologetical books and study them in isolation from his other works and without reference to his spirituality. However, perhaps part of the fault is Schaeffer’s. Some feel that his rationality and spirituality run like two parallel railroad tracks: going in the same direction but only running alongside each other and never meeting. There is a degree of truth in this in that Schaeffer never expressed a fully integrated view as to how his apologetics and spirituality united. Yet to be fair to him, he did say that one needed to consider his apologetics and the reality of the life of L’Abri “as the two sides of a single coin” to gain a proper understanding of his ministry.128 Although he may never have presented a major theoretical overview explaining the integration of his rationality and spirituality, a practical demonstration was provided of the integration by the way he, Edith, their family, and subsequently other workers dealt with visitors to L’Abri.
As discussed in earlier sections, a genuine effort was made to welcome all individuals, and the attempts to build a sense of community and to show real compassion were costly and required sacrificial love. Indeed having watched the staff at different branches of L’Abri reach out to individuals, seek to provide answers to difficult questions, and cope with awkward (and sometimes just plain crooked) people, what struck me was the impossibility, humanly speaking, of doing so. Only a total reliance upon God and a willingness to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit made L’Abri possible. Having to share your home and life with spoiled college students from wealthy backgrounds while you, surviving on a very modest (and not even guaranteed) salary, struggle to provide for your own children is enough to embitter many a Christian worker. The fact that this has not become a major issue at L’Abri is testimony to the caliber of the workers, the sincerity of their spirituality, and the reality of the Holy Spirit. In mind-set and in everyday life the rationality and spirituality were united at L’Abri.
NO LITTLE PEOPLE
When L’Abri started in 1955, it was a small and insignificant work, and there was no indication that it would grow or that the Schaeffers would gain the international recognition they later received. Indeed when Hurvey Woodson, who was to be the first worker at L’Abri alongside the Schaeffers, told friends he was going to Switzerland, he recalls that “everyone thought I was wasting my time because there really wasn’t much of a work there.”129 Schaeffer was very content to accept that the work might remain very insignificant and often said that if the Lord called them to remain a very small work, they should accept it. This reflected his deeply held view that with God there are no little people and no little places, and the important thing for the Christian is to be what God wants you to be, where He wants you to be.130 Schaeffer believed, and knew from personal experience, that “quietness and peace before God are more important than any influence a position may seem to give, for we must stay in step with God to have the power of the Holy Spirit.”131
Although Schaeffer had no plans to develop the scale of the work, he always accepted that if God chose to extrude him (i.e., to force him under pressure) into a position of more responsibility and authority, he should be willing to accept that also. By the late 1970s Schaeffer was internationally renowned as a Christian apologist. He had written a number of books, several of which became immediate best-sellers (and Edith was well-known in her own right as a successful author). He had visited and lectured at the major universities in the UK and the USA. He had made two major film series on key issues. He had become a major figure in the evangelical world and an outspoken critic of the secular world with access to senior politicians and public figures. Yet he continued to be interested in individuals and to give time to those whom others hardly noticed. Once while staying at a hotel in the United States when he was due to address a conference of several thousand people, he fell into conversation with the maid looking after the room. For Schaeffer, talking with one person was as important as talking to several thousand, and the social background of the person was irrelevant.
As his eldest daughter, Priscilla Sandri, observed of him, over the years in his conversations “he wasn’t just trying to get people saved, he really had an emotional involvement.”132 This emotional involvement of his, his compassion for individuals, is in marked contrast to so many of the religious leaders and professionals we encounter. It is always revealing to watch such people “off-duty” and observe how they relate to those around them. When I attended a major international conference on apologetics, designed to enable Christians to reach out and relate more effectively with secular society, it was rather disappointing to see that many of the speakers and leading figures were not even aware of the hotel staff, never mind thanking them for their service or making an effort to reach them with the gospel.
Perhaps I am too hard on these people, perhaps I expect too much from them, and perhaps Francis Schaeffer is “the exception rather than the rule.” When Os Guinness was asked to sum up his view of Schaeffer, he said, “At the heart of everything he did and behind the genius of his life, were three very simple things you don’t often see in one person. A passionate love for God, a passionate love for people and a passionate love for truth.” Noting that Edith shared this passion, Guinness added, “I have never seen this combined in any other couple I have ever met.”133 I strongly agree with this assessment by Guinness, and I believe it explains why the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer were so effective: people knew he cared, and they were willing to listen. As we seek to be authentic witnesses in our generation, let us listen to the words of Francis Schaeffer, and may we
remember throughout our lives that in God’s sight there are no little people and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God’s place for us, at each moment. Those who think of themselves as little people in little places, if committed to Christ and living under His Lordship in the whole of life, may, by God’s grace, change the flow of our generation.134