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 
Tags: apologetics, Engaging Unbelief (Chang), L\'Abri/Francis Schaeffer
Engaging Unbelief
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Just finished reading Engaging Unbelief by Curtis Chang. Very interesting book. He looks at books by Augustine and Aquinas (City of God and Summa contra Gentiles) with the idea of seeing how they each did apologetics and how this might be useful for us in the face of post-modernism. He sees the context for each book as a useful parallel for today — each writer is facing a major change to the culture and is trying to engage that change. In both cases, Chang sees them taking a three step approach: entering the new story, re-telling it to bring out the unresolved plot-tensions or problems and then showing how it fits within the larger Christian story (‘a more compelling tale’), with the plot-tensions resolved. He then rounds up with thoughts on our current situation. Considering the book was written about 5 years ago, he does well in identifying issues (e.g. the now hot-topic of atonement theories), as well as kicking off interesting thoughts (e.g. ‘entering our challengers’ story will mean entering the movie theatre with them’). Definitely a book that should be more well-known.
Chang’s basic approach seems very incarnational: entering the stories of others and meeting them there. I like it a lot.
Of course, the other lesson from these books is that we have to be careful that our story captures those around us, not the other way around. The over-dependence of later Christians on Plato and Aristotle, suggests that, even if Augustine and Aquinas got it right those using their works later lost perspective. A similar problem to the one we see with modernism now. Better make sure we don’t make the same mistake with post-modernism, I guess…
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I forgot to add when I originally wrote this: I’m guessing this incarnational approach is close to what Paul meant when he said ‘To the Greeks, I become Greek’, etc…
Tags: apologetics, books, Engaging Unbelief (Chang)
Francis Schaeffer
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I found myself reading the article Francis Schaeffer, Last Great Modern Theologian, in parallel with a book of Schaeffer’s letters. I found it interesting to view L’Abri as ‘Community Apologetic’. If you haven’t come across L’Abri, it began with the Schaeffer’s opening their home to people who were searching — to help them work honestly through their questions and to show them the answers that Christianity presented. But more than that, my impression is that the visitors were welcomed into the community — it wasn’t just a matter of discussing apologetics, but of joining the life of the community while they were there. “He believed strongly that community is the place where God speaks. Not only that, but community is its own apologetic for the Gospel.”
Related to this, Schaeffer writes in one letter: “if this [intellectual defense] is all there is, eventually all it will prove is that Christianity is indeed the best system the mind of man has ever touched. In short, someting more is needed in addition if the system is to be proven to be Truth… this something in addition must be a demonstration that the existence of God is not merely theoretical … but a reality in history”
Interesting for someone who might be classed as strongly ‘modern’…
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