Francis Schaeffer

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

Writings

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

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• A Christian View of Philosophy and Culture: The first three books in this block are known as Schaeffer's trilogy, laying down the philosophical and theological foundation for all his work.
• The God Who Is There: Deals with the existence and relevance of God, and how modern man came to first distance himself from, and ultimately disbelieve, God as revealed by the Bible.
• Escape from Reason: How the rejection of the Biblical God causes man to lose contact with reality and reason.
• He Is There and He Is Not Silent: How God speaks to man through the Bible on the three philosophically fundamental areas of metaphysics, morals, and epistemology.
• Back to Freedom and Dignity: An answer to B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, arguing that freedom and dignity of man are God-given and therefore can't be left aside without dire consequences.
• A Christian View of the Bible as Truth
• Genesis in Space and Time: Argues that an almost literalist view of Genesis as historically true is fundamental to the Christian faith.
• No Final Conflict
• Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History
• Basic Bible Studies: Biblical studies on the fundamentals of the faith.
• Art and the Bible
• A Christian View of Spirituality
• No Little People: Argues that Christians should never despair of having a significant life of realisations, small as they seem to be.
• True Spirituality: The spiritual foundation for Schaeffer's work, as a complement to the theological and philosophical approach of most other books. Useful for gaining a balanced view of the whole of Schaeffer's life and ministry.
• The New Super-Spirituality: Claims the intellectual decadence of students and the counter-culture from the late sixties to the early seventies can be traced back to the conformism of their fathers, only with fewer moral absolutes, and predicts the contamination of the church. Offers an analysis of Postmodernism.
• Two Contents, Two Realities
• A Christian View of the Church
• The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century
• The Church before the Watching World
• The Mark of the Christian: Analyses the balance between orthodoxy of doctrine and that of communion — love.
• Death in the City
• The Great Evangelical Disaster
• A Christian View of the West
• Pollution and the Death of Man
• How Should We Then Live?
• Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
• A Christian Manifesto: Christian principles for secular politics.

In addition to his books, one of the last public lectures Schaeffer delivered was at the Law Faculty, University of Strasbourg. It was published as "Christian Faith and Human Rights", The Simon Greenleaf Law Review, 2 (1982-83) pp. 3-12.

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Critical Assessments

• Boa, Kenneth D., and Robert M. Bowman, Faith Has Its Reasons: An Integrative Approach to Defending Christianity, NAV Press, Colorado Springs, 2001.
• Coward, Harold., Pluralism: The Challenge to World Religions, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1986.
• Cunningham, Stuart, "Towards A Critique of Francis Schaeffer's Thought", Interchange, 24 (1978) pp. 205-221.
• Fowler, Robert Booth, A New Engagement: Evangelical Political Thought 1966-1976, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1982.
• Hexham, Irving, "The Evangelical Response to the New Age," in Perspectives on the New Age, edited by James R. Lewis & J. Gordon Melton, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 1992, pp. 152-163.
• Morris, Thomas V., Francis Schaeffer's Apologetics: A Critique, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1987.
• Parkhurst, Louis Gifford, Francis Schaeffer: The Man and His Message, Tyndale House, Wheaton, 1985.
• Ramsey, George W., The Quest for the Historical Israel, SCM Press, London, 1982, pp. 107-115.
• Roper, D. L., "A Sympathetic Criticism of Francis Schaeffer's Writings," Interchange, 41 (1987) pp. 41-55.
• Ruegsegger, Ronald W. (ed) Reflections on Francis Schaeffer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1986.
• Stadler, G. Thomas, "Renaissance Humanism: Francis Schaeffer Versus Some Contemporary Scholars," Fides et Historia 2 (June 1989)pp. 4-20.