Francis Schaeffer
Francis Schaeffer
Francis August Schaefferwas an American Evangelical Christian theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor. He is best known for establishing the L'Abri community in Switzerland. Opposed to theological modernism, Schaeffer promoted a more historic Protestant faith and a presuppositional approach to Christian apologetics, which he believed would answer the questions of the age...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth30 January 1912
CountryUnited States of America
I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did.
The Christian in the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.
In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual.
If God exists and we are made in his image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what he has communicated to us.
The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.
This equation of the impersonal plus time plus chance producing the total configuration of the universe and all that is in it, modern people hold by faith.
Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship - and not as ends in themselves.
Apostasy must be called what it is, spiritual adultery.
Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.
Some psychological and sociological conditioning occurs in every man's life and this affects the decisions he makes. But we must resist the modern concept that all sin can be explained merely on the basis of conditioning.
...that is our calling: to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it.
But the fact that Christ as the bridegroom brings forth fruit through me as the bride, through the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit by faith, opens the way for me as a Christian to begin to know in the present life the reality of the supernatural. This is where the Christian is to live. Doctrine is important, but it is not an end in itself. There is to be an experiential reality, moment by moment.
Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person as a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism.
There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or compassion.