Francis
Schaeffer’s True Spirituality
Richard Klaus
October 29, 2005
1.
The powerful presence of Francis Schaeffer in
the second half of the 20th century
During
the next two decades [1965-1985] the Schaeffers organized a multiple-thrust
ministry that reshaped American evangelicalism. Perhaps no intellectual save C. S. Lewis affected the
thinking of evangelicals more profoundly; perhaps no leader of the period save
Billy Graham left a deeper stamp on the movement as a whole. Together the Schaeffers gave currency
to the idea of intentional Christian community, prodded evangelicals out of
their cultural ghetto, inspired an army of evangelicals to become serious
scholars, encouraged women who chose roles as mothers and homemakers, mentored
the leaders of the New Christian Right, and solidified popular opposition to
abortion.[1]
·
J. I. Packer speaks of Francis Schaeffer as “one
of the truly great Christians of my time.”[2]
·
Harold O. J. Brown calls Schaeffer “An
Athanasius of our day” and states:
There is no other important Christian thinker of our era who has
tackled a many fundamental intellectual, philosophical, and theological issues
as Schaeffer did … There are not many Christian thinkers who have dealt with as
many of the great issues of theology and philosophy as Schaeffer did, and no
one else has so revealed their relevance to us.[3]
·
President Ronald Regan eulogized Schaeffer with
these words:
He will long be remembered as one
of the great Christian thinkers of our century, with a childlike faith and a
profound compassion toward others.
It can rarely be said of an individual that his life touched many others
and affected them for the better; it will be said of Dr. Schaeffer that his
life touched millions of souls and
brought them to the truth of their Creator.[4]
·
Newsweek
(Nov. 1, 1982) referred to Schaeffer as the “Guru of Fundamentalism”
·
The
Humanist (Sept/Oct 1988) had an article entitled “Francis Schaeffer:
Prophet of the Religious Right”
·
Schaeffer’s integral involvement in:
o International
Council on Biblical Inerrancy
o Right
to life issues
o Influence
on numerous younger evangelical academics
·
Special significance: this year [2005] is the 50th
anniversary of the founding of L’Abri in 1955
Each L’Abri is study center, rescue
mission, extended family, clinic, spiritual convalescent home, monastery, and
local church rolled into one: a milieu where visitors learn to be both
Christian and human through being part of a community that trusts God the
Creator and worships him through Christ the redeemer.[5]
·
Focus for today:
o Not
a full biography of Schaeffer or analysis of his thought
o Rather:
Look at one point in Schaeffer’s life prior to the founding of L’Abri in 1955.
§
In 1951 and 1952 Schaeffer faced a
spiritual crisis—the resolution of
which set the tone for the rest of Schaeffer’s life and ministry
2.
Background material leading up to this portion
of his life
·
Early part of the 20th century: the
raging battle between Fundamentalism and Modernism
·
June 1932: Schaeffer returns from his first year
of college
o At
a church meeting the talk for the evening was “How I know that Jesus is not the
Son of God, and how I know that the Bible is not the Word of God”
·
Summer of 1935: J. Gresham Machen is defrocked
from the PCUSA
·
Schaeffer resigns from PCUSA and enrolls in
Westminster Theological Seminary
·
1937: There is a split within WTS around the
issues of Christian liberty and Premillenialism
o This
leads to the formation of the Bible Presbyterian Church with a new
seminary—Faith Theological Seminary—which Schaeffer joins
·
Schaeffer…
o 1st
pastor in Bible Presbyterian Church in 1938
o 1947:
He toured Europe for three months to scout out health of church
o 1948:
His family moves to Switzerland to become missionaries in Europe; work focused
on child evangelism
·
It is during this time that Schaeffer begins to
experience a profound disillusionment with the Separatist movement he is
involvement with as well as recognizing a lack of reality in his own spiritual
life.
3.
Spiritual crisis and spiritual awakening
·
Schaeffer’s preface to True Spirituality (1971)[6]
This book was published after a
number of others, but in a certain sense it should have been first. Without the material in this book there
would be L’Abri. In 1951 and 1952
I faced a spiritual crisis in my own life. I had become a Christian from agnosticism many years
before. After that I had become a
pastor for ten years in the United States, and then for several years my wife
Edith and I had been working in Europe.
During this time I felt a strong burden to stand for the historical
Christian position, and for the purity of the visible church. Gradually, however, a problem came to
me—the problem of reality. This
had two points: first, it seemed to me that among many of those who held the
orthodox position, one saw little reality in the things that the Bible so
clearly says should be the result of Christianity. Second, it gradually grew on me that my own reality was less
than it had been in the early days after I had become a Christian. I realized that in honesty I had to go
back and rethink my whole position.
We were living in Champery at that
time, and I told Edith that for the sake of honesty I had to go all the way
back to my agnosticism and think through the whole matter. I’m sure that this was a difficult time
for her, and I’m sure that she prayed much for me in those days. I walked in the mountains when it was
clear, and when it was rainy I walked backward and forward in the hayloft of
the old chalet in which we lived.
I walked, prayed, and thought through what the Scriptures taught, as
well as reviewing my own reasons for being a Christian.
As I rethought my reasons for being
a Christian, I saw again that there were totally sufficient reasons to know
that the infinite-personal God does exist and that Christianity is true. In going further, I saw something else
which made a profound difference in my life. I searched through what the Bible said concerning reality as
a Christian. Gradually I saw that
the problem was that with all the teaching I had received after I was a
Christian, I had heard little about what the Bible says about the meaning of
the finished work of Christ for our present lives. Gradually the sun came out and the song came. Interestingly enough, although I had
written no poetry for many years, in that time of joy and song I found poetry
beginning to flow again—poetry of certainty, an affirmation of life,
thanksgiving and praise.
Admittedly, as poetry it is very poor, but it expressed a song in my
heart which was wonderful to me.
This was and is a real basis of
L’Abri. Teaching the historic
Christian answers, and giving honest answers to honest questions are crucial,
but it was out of these struggles that the reality came, without which a work
like L’Abri would not have been possible,
I, and we, can only be thankful.
·
These brief paragraphs do not begin to capture
what Schaeffer experienced and felt during the early 1950’s.
·
Lane T. Dennis edited Letters of Francis A. Schaeffer (1985)
o First
section of the book (pp. 31-82) contains letters from this early period during
Schaeffer’s spiritual awakening
o Portrait
that emerges is instructive
·
Schaeffer had thrown himself into the separatist
movement with great zeal and energy.
Only in Switzerland did he begin to have the opportunity to re-think the
movement’s trajectory. Two
elements are crucial here: space and
time. His environment creates
the room for sustained reflection and meditation.
·
In a November 1951 letter Schaeffer writes to a
friend in the movemnent…
Tonight it is rainy outside, but a little higher in the mountain the
snow is falling again. The wood
fire is crackling with a rich personality. The children are sleeping, and Edith is typing some things
which she feels she must do. In
short, it is quiet here—the quiet that only the mountains can give.
As I was walking home from the post office today, where I had gone to
send off a great pile of letters and some packages, I was thinking of my answer
to you. And as I walked I looked
up at the Dents with their swirling mists so high above me. I thought how our dear Lord comes into
more proper perspective in our thinking in such a place as this—for the higher
the mountains, the more understandable is the glory of Him who made them and
holds them in His hand. But the
other side is also true: man also comes into his proper place. As the Lord gains in greatness, in
comparison to the mountains, so man diminishes.
As it is with space, it is also true of time. My letters from here go to so many countries, and in these
last few years I have found friends in many of them. As I have learned the history of these lands, from those who
tell the history from their hearts, time has come to mean something different
to me than it ever did before, when time was measured only by the short scope
of the hurrying clock or cold dates on a page of the history book. But as time falls into its proper
place, again God seems to grow greater by comparison, and again it has the
opposite effect on man. As the
mountains shrink him down to size, so also does time.
Then too, time is getting clearer to me because more of it has passed
me by. In a couple of months I’ll
be forty now, and as I look at Priscilla I realized indeed that time has been
passing. If God will spare me, I
will have more time yet ahead than has already passed me since I came to mature
thinking. But it does not seem to
stretch forever as it did even when I first came to Europe four years ago.
The three and a half years since I came to Europe have been the most
profitable in my life, with only one possible competitor, my three years in
seminary. But certainly (with that
one possible exception) no period even three times as long has marked me so.
First, the things of which I spoke above—the rectifying process of
space and time—have caused my view of the Lord to grow greater, and my view of
man and his works and judgments to grow proportionally smaller.
Second, for the first time since I entered college I have had a chance
to think. Not that we have not
been busy here; we have been, but it is a bi different from the rush of
college, seminary, and then ten years in the pastorate. Gradually my thinking has changed—I
have realized that in many things previously I have been mistaken.[7]
·
Schaeffer
began to notice some serious problems in the movement and in his own life.
o Lack
of love as seen in a constant desire to separate repeatedly
§
Separation from PCUSA
§
then from Westminster Theological Seminary and
the National Association of Evangelicals (N.A.E.)
§
then the movement began turning on itself
o Failure
to follow Christ as the head of the church and an ignoring of the leading of
the Holy Spirit
·
Continuing in the November 1951 letter mentioned
above…
When I first found Christ through
my Bible reading He was very real to me, and I yet remember the loving wonder
of His closeness. And then came
the struggle against the Old [Presbyterian] Church machine, and then against
Westminster, and then against the N.A.E. [National Association of
Evangelicals], and gradually “the [separatist] movement” loomed larger and larger. Do not misunderstand me: my experiences
here have convinced me more than ever that each of these struggles was needed
and right; but the correct perspective got mislaid in the process. And I tell you frankly, that though I
realize I may be wrong, it seems to me that I was not alone in my mistake—that
many are as deeply involved, or even more, than I have been. The “movement” grew in our thinking
like the great bay tree until for me that wonderful closeness which I had felt
to Him in previous days was lost.
I wonder if that is not what happened to the Church of Ephesus in
Revelation 2?
It seems to me all things became
grist for the movement’s mill … And if things or people got in the way, they
were blasted. The Presbyterian
Church fight [in the early and mid 1930’s] was a rough school of battle. First at unbelief, and then as time
went on, at that which represented unbelief, the Federal Council [of
Churches]. We threw everything
which came to hand. And then as
“the movement” grew, the N.A.E. stood in the way … and it seems to me we
continued to throw everything we had at hand. Again, don’t misunderstand me: from my perspective here [in
Europe] I am sure that we were correct in saying that the N.A.E. was
wrong. But we could have
remembered that, wrong though they are, they are for the most part brothers in
Christ …
But “the movement” rolls on, and
now differences arise between us.
Quickly the pattern repeats itself; the habit is too well learned. The movement is in jeopardy! So everything is thrown again [this
time at one another within the movement] … And who is wounded? We are and our Lord …
I am sure “separation” is correct,
but it is only one principle.
There are others to be kept as well. The command to love should mean something … [I am not
suggesting that] I have learned to live in the light of Christ’s command of
love—first toward God, then the brethren, and then the lost. I know I have not. But I want to learn, and I know I must
if I am to have that closeness to the Lord I wish to have, with its
accompanying joy and spiritual power…
…God willing, I will push and
politick no more… The mountains are too high, history is too long, and eternity
is longer. God is too great, man
is too small, there are many of God’s dear children, and all around there are
men going to Hell. And if one man
and a small group of men do not approve of where I am and what I do, does it
prove I’ve missed success? No;
only one thing will determine that—whether this day I’m where the Lord
of lords and King of kings wants me to be. To win as many as I can, to help strengthen the hands of
those who fight unbelief in the historical setting in which they are placed, to
know the reality of “the Lord is my song,” and to be committed to the Holy
Spirit—that is what I wish I could know to be the reality of each day as it
closes.[8]
·
Looking at Schaeffer’s letters and actions of
this time it becomes clear that he was questing for a more experiential life of
faith.
·
Schaeffer never left the objective Word of God
nor did he ever compromise with liberalism.
·
The three concentric circles of the Christian
life (November 1954)
I believe most strongly … that our efforts in Christian service fall
into three concentric circles: the outer circle is the apologetic and
defensive. This is an important
portion of Christian activity and should never be minimized, but it is not the
heart … The middle circle is inside the outer one and is more central. This is the intellectual
statement of the doctrines of the Christian faith in a positive way. (This to me is an even more important
portion of Christian activity, but if it stands alone, it still is not
Christianity.)
The innermost circle is the spiritual—the personal relationship
of the individual soul with a personal God, including all that is meant in the
apostolic benediction when we say, “The communion of the Holy Spirit be with
you all.” It is this last,
innermost circle with which the devotional deals and without which Christianity
is not really Bible-believing.
To me there is no alternative but to ask for God’s grace to keep these
three circles in proper position in my own life—to meditate upon this and
wrestle with its complete meaning and practice in my own life as I have not
wrestled with anything since I wrestled as an agnostic with the claims of
Christ as Savior …[9]
·
In a letter dated February 12th 1955
Schaeffer writes:
I have not changed my mind in the
need for purity in the visible church.
And yet I see that a combat for the faith must flow from an ever closer
walk with God and not take the place of it. I do feel that there is a growing number of the Lord’s
children who feel a deep need for spiritual reality. It can only be my prayer that somehow the Holy Spirit will
move to bring forth an abundance of life.[10]
·
Themes found in Schaeffer’s writing and teaching
of this time:
o Experiential
life of Christ—“moment by moment” application of the work of Christ by faith
o Following
the leading of the Holy Spirit
·
The following are snippets from letters written
between 1956-1958:
[When it comes to] waiting in a
practical way for the moving of the Spirit … I do feel there has been something
wrong with our whole theological system—not just recently, but extending back
to old Princeton and the old Dutch schools when they were completely
orthodox. It is something
difficult to put into words, but there seems to be a certain academic outlook,
or perhaps a limiting of the Biblical truths to the speculative realm.
______________
It is my belief that the
Reformation itself, with certain notable exceptions, made a basic error … (By
the word Spiritual with a capital “S” we are referring to nothing less than a
commitment to the Holy Spirit)… I think it is the “pendulum psychology” again.
The Roman Catholic Church had come
to teach the wrong doctrines. And
I feel that most of the Reformation then let the pendulum swing and thought if
only the right doctrines were taught that all would be automatically well. Thus, to a large extent, the
Reformation concentrated almost exclusively on the “teaching ministry of the
Church.” In other words almost all
the emphasis was placed on teaching right doctrines. In this I fell the fatal error had already been made. It is not for a moment that we can
begin to get anywhere until the right doctrines are taught. But the right doctrines mentally
assented to are not an end in themselves, but should only be the vestibule to a
personal and loving communion with God…
Personally I believe church history
shows that as this basic weakness in Protestantism developed into a completely
dead orthodoxy, then liberalism came forth. Thus, the solution is not to intellectually and coldly just
shout out the right doctrines and try to shout down the false liberal
doctrines. It is to go back to a
cure of the basic error. It is to
say “yes” to the right doctrines, and, without compromise, “no” to the wrong
doctrines of both Romanism and liberalism—and then to commit our lives to the
practical moment by moment headship
of Christ and communion of the Holy Spirit.
________________
On the other hand, the danger of
orthodoxy, even true orthodoxy, is in falling of the other side of the knife
blade: that is, in stating the intellectual position and then placing a
period. What we must ask the Lord
for is a work of the Spirit… to stand on a very thin line: in other words, to
state intellectually (as well as understand, though not completely) the
intellectual reality of that which God is and what God has revealed in the
objectively inspired Bible; and then to live moment by moment in the reality of a restored relationship with the
God who is there, and to act in faith upon what we believe in our daily lives.
Now I am sure that this cannot be
done in the flesh: it is possible to fall of the knife blade on either side in
the flesh. To stand on the knife
blade can only be accomplished on the basis of the finished work of the Lord
Jesus Christ, through moment by moment
faith in the power of the Spirit.
The practical problem for us
individually is to find a point at which we can begin to live moment by moment in reality. Many people in the past have emphasized
that the beginning point for them was the reality of victory over sin. With many others (such as Andrew
Murray), the beginning point has been the reality of the individual’s prayer
life. For myself I must say that
in wrestling with this problem about nine years ago in our hayloft in Champery…
my 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…[11]
·
Schaeffer was in the U.S. from April 1953 to
September 1954: in 515 days he spoke 346 times on “the deeper spiritual life.”
·
February 12, 1955 letter: “I have been working
on a book. The Lord willing, its title
will be Living in the Supernatural Now.”[12]
·
It would be sixteen years later when this book
would come forth as True Spirituality.
·
L’Abri starts April 1, 1955 “without our
realizing it” with the first meal in their new home in Switzerland.
·
June 4, 1955 the Schaeffers resign as
missionaries supported by the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign
Missions.
·
No plan for the future but praying for the
direct leading of God in all they did.
o Children:
Priscilla—18; Susan—14; Debbie—10; Franky—almost 3
o Francis
and Edith in their 40’s
·
L’Abri had its formation in the midst of this
formative time in Schaeffer’s life.
This spiritual crisis and awakening was crucial for the future tone of
L’Abri.
·
This is not always remembered or
understood. One recent writer has
written:
In the 1950’s and 1960’s disillusioned young people were searching for
something that they did not find in the traditional church. In that climate, Francis Schaeffer
founded L’Abri to give rational, Biblical answers that counteracted the despair
of twentieth century philosophy, dominated as it was by both religious and
secular existentialism. The answer
he proposed was a return to the Reformation understanding of the Scriptures.[13]
·
This is lopsided at best. L’Abri was to be demonstration of the
reality of God in his holiness and love.
A demonstration in thought, to be sure, but also a demonstration in
community and in trust of God’s practical leading. It was meant to be (and was) much more holistic than the
author quoted above recognized.
4.
The continuing reality and impact of Francis
Schaeffer’s spiritual awakening
·
Was this emphasis on spiritual awakening
eclipsed by later ministry concerns? No. Consider four pieces of evidence:
o Schaeffer’s
own comments about his book True
Spirituality in the preface of that book.
o Schaeffer’s
letters throughout his life point people to either the tapes (before 1971) or
the book True Spirituality.
o Schaeffer’s
writings contain these thoughts interspersed with his ideas about philosophy,
history, etc.[14]
o Louis
Gifford Parkhurst Jr. (Schaeffer’s pastor in the last years of his life) quotes
Schaeffer as saying, “True Spirituality
is the only one of my books that I read over and over again.”[15]
5.
Conclusion: What can we learn?
·
I read Schaeffer as a young man (the Trilogy: The God Who Is There; Escape From Reason; He
Is There and He Is Not Silent) and was impressed with his thought and
apologetic. I was impressed with
his mind
(one aspect of him).
·
I read him now impressed with him as a person.
·
The reality and power of Schaeffer’s ministry is
found in the dynamism of his interactive and existential walk with the Triune
God.
·
One of my early teachers told me: “Focus on the
depth of your relationship with the Lord and the let the Lord determine the
breadth of your ministry.” (2 Chronicles 16.9)
·
Francis Schaeffer was a man deeply immersed in
the life of God in Christ and God used him mightily. May we learn the lessons of his life and so be used by God.
