Francis Schaeffer (again!)

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

Increasing feeling the need to defend Francis Schaeffer. Perhaps because he gets such a harsh side-swipe in Carl Raschke’s ‘The Next Reformation’. (Ok, maybe it was only aimed at one part of his writing, but still I felt for him:)

[Note added: In re-reading Raschke, I've realise that I mis-understood what he's saying & incorrectly took it as negative. I leave the comment because my mis-reading was what inspired the rest of the post...]

I’ve discussed the aspect of L’Abri being a community showing an embodied apologetic, so I won’t do that one again (but, I think it is a big lesson and a big plus).

When reading ‘Engaging Unbelief’ (see last post), it seems to me that Schaeffer’s approach to apologetics wasn’t a million miles from the one discussed by Chang. His aim was to push people to see the consequences of their worldviews (for instance, ‘you think everything is chance, but you cannot live as if that is the case’). This, surely, is entering the conversation partner’s story and showing him the unresolved parts of the plot. For the final step, his books did show the other worldviews in the context of the ‘more compelling’ Christain story. Maybe we can look at his apologetic as in this tradition, rather purely caught up in the modern perspective. OK, you might say that Schaeffer got caught overly by the modern story, but that’s always the danger (as I said last post)…

Final defense: Schaeffer seemed very big on truly listening to your conversation partner. I’m always impressed that Schaeffer gave up debates because he saw you could frequently win the argument, but lose the person. It seems to me that he stepped well away from the confrontational/battle approach to evangelism that is attributed to modernism (see Brian McLaren’s ‘More Ready than You Realise’).

Hope you’re convinced :)

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Permalink | September 5th, 2005

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