Not Your Father's L'Abri

Earlier this month I pointed to a letter Doug Groothuis wrote to Christianity Today in response to their article on how L'Abri's philosophy and methodology have changed to accommodate the postmodern ethos. The article is now available online.

Schaeffer - Guinness Exchange

Frank Schaeffer responds to Os Guinness's less than favorable review of his book Crazy for God, followed by a brief reply from Guinness that concludes as follows:

I replied to his book for one reason only: His portrait of his parents was wrong and destructive. It left me alternately grieved and outraged,and I wanted to witness to the truth as I see it before God. I hope one day we can sit down and talk it over amicably.

Groothuis on "Not Your Father's L'Abri"

Yesterday I read an article in the print version of the latest issue of Christianity Today called "Not Your Father's L'Abri." It looks at shifts in emphasis and methodology that have taken place since Francis Schaeffer's death and portrays Schaeffer's thought as largely obsolete for the contemporary scene.

Knowing of his indebtedness to and great respect for Schaeffer, and having recently read his review of Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God, I wondered how Doug Groothuis would respond to to the article (though I thought I had a pretty good idea). My wondering is over. Dr. G. wrote a letter to the editor. I was right and so is he.

New Apologetics Titles

James Sire dedicates his latest book, A Little Primer on Humble Apologetics, to Francis Schaeffer (in memoriam). Here's IVP's description:

Always be prepared to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. (1 Peter 3:15-16)

We've all felt the tension. An opportunity to speak for Christ comes up, and either we jump in with both barrels blasting or we cower in the corner and say nothing. Is there a better way? Can we learn to speak boldly, yet humbly, about our faith in Christ?

Veteran apologist Jim Sire offers salient counsel derived from over fifty years of experience in a vast array of settings. Through a variety of snapshots, both successful and unsuccessful, he helps us understand the nature, value and limits of apologetics, and suggests how to tailor our comments to respect our audience whether large or small, formal or informal. He then outlines five key arguments for the Christian faith and offers responses to five common objections. Finally, for those especially drawn to apologetics, he offers counsel on how to discern a call to apologetic ministry.

I noticed this small volume today while picking up Bryan Follis's new book, Truth With Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer which Crossway describes as follows:

Francis Schaeffer was a well-known, extremely influential apologist and thinker who made his mark defending orthodox truth in the face of strong opposition. He was foremost in the vocation of apologetic ministry, and he was a brilliant man whom God used mightily during the decades of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

In Truth with Love, Bryan Follis explores the theology and thinking that fueled the ministry of Francis Schaeffer, from his Reformed position to his understanding of fundamentalism. Follis examines SchaefferÂ’s apologetic argument and the role of reason in his discussions and writings. The position Francis Schaeffer took against modernism and its applicability in this day of postmodernism are studied as well.
This book is a beneficial resource for any Francis Schaeffer fan and any minister, teacher, or student who appreciates truth and its defense in the face of different kinds of opposition.

Asking, Listening, and Speaking

bethinking.org is an excellent apologetics site I've pointed readers to before. I subscribed to their monthly email newsletter and received the November mailing just a few minutes ago. It begins with a brief discussion of the importance of patiently listening to the questions of those we're seeking to lead to Christ as well as of asking good ones ourselves. Francis Schaeffer is quoted in the email as saying:

If I have only an hour with somebody, I will spend the first 55 minutes asking them questions so that in the last five minutes I will have something to say which really speaks to them. Instead of speaking past them, I want to speak to them.

What pastoral wisdom! Yes, we are to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us but knowing how to speak requires knowing how to listen. Schaeffer realized that taking the time to hear people out is every bit as important as speaking the truth to them for in so doing we can embody the compassion of Christ. Being people who take the time to sincerely know people by asking probing questions and being willing to listen to their answers can be a powerful witness to our frenzied, multitasking, and increasingly impersonal society.

Letters to Newsweek about American Spirituality

Newsweek's recent issue on spirituality in America received a lot of reader mail - so much so that the current print issue devotes an entire page to letters in response to the cover story. Reading them provides further insight into the intellectual climate in which we are called to bear witness to the gospel. If we're committed to that cause, it's imperative that we understand how our peers are thinking and how to respond. Here are some excerpts from the letters and some of my reactions.


One reader from New York wrote:

While reading the articles, I kept thinking that because there are so many diverse religious beliefs, it isn't possible for there to be one "true" religion. There cannot be one right way to worship or one correct set of beliefs. Therefore, the only false belief is one that denies other people the freedom to worship as they wish. There should be a place in society even for those who believe there is no Almighty.

There are a number of problems with this kind of reasoning. First, it simply doesn't logically follow from the fact that people disagree about the answer to a problem that no answer exists or, if one does, that it's impossible for anyone to know it. Take all the debate that's surrounding the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for example. The airwaves and newspapers are filled with divergent accounts of who and what are to blame for the countless victims of the storm not receiving aid sooner than they did. But it would be mistaken to conclude on the basis of divergent beliefs about the matter that none can be correct. 


Yet another flaw in this position is that it is self-refuting. Since the writer of the letter says that the only false belief is one that denies other people the freedom to worship as they wish, then he must be claiming that all other religious beliefs are true. Not only does this pose the problem of how contradictory beliefs can all be true, it's also disingenuous because this position necessarily leads to the conclusion that some religious beliefs, even those that do not deprive others of the freedom to worship as they choose, are also false. Here's what I mean. The writer of the letter says that there is no one true religion. That means that any religion that claims to be the one true religion, such as Christianity, is by definition false. But this is a blatant contradiction of the assertion that all religious beliefs are true.


Further, it seems that this Newsweek reader may be confusing rights and reasons. Have you ever noticed that when people are asked to give their reasons for believing something that they often assert their right to believe what they want? If the writer of the letter means that people should not be coerced to worship contrary to their convictions, I'm in full agreement. However, if he, like so many, believes that calling another's religious belief false is somehow denying him of the right to worship as he so chooses, I couldn't disagree more (see my previous post, "Forcing My Religion?").


On the flip-side of the reader who contends that all religious beliefs are true, is the reader who wrote the following in response to a Newsweek writer's claim that "In America even atheists are spiritualists, searching for meaning in parapsychology and near-death experiences":

As a longtime atheist, I can tell you that I am not searching for meaning of any kind and do not suffer the "existential anguish" he refers to earlier in that article. To me the whole concept of faith in some deity is, in a word, preposterous. I choose to stay firmly connected to reality, as established by the scientific method of inquiry. I accept both the beauty and the ugliness on our little planet as the result of millions of years of evolution and don't need a "relationship" with a concocted god to make my existence and the prospect of eventual death palatable.

One couldn't ask for a better illustration of the fact-value divide Nancy Pearcey describes in Total Truth than this. Faith has nothing to do with claims to knowledge or truth according to this perspective. Instead, it deals with the non-cognitive, non-rational realm of personally-preferred values. "Reality," on the other hand, can only be known by means of science. But this assertion rests on the conviction that the natural world is all that exists, a claim that is a philosophical starting point and not a scientific conclusion. Note too that this atheist speaks of the "beauty and ugliness on our little planet" as though beauty and ugliness have objective existence. But this is incoherent with his view since reality is established only by means of the scientific method. Beauty and ugliness are values which, according to his scheme of things, are relegated to the upper story of faith - the realm of the "preposterous."

Following Francis Schaeffer, Pearcey reminds us that humanity's lostness is metaphysical as well as moral:

The tragedy of the two-story split is that the things that matter most in life -- like dignity, freedom, personal identity, and ultimate purpose [and I would add "beauty"] -- have been cast into the upper story, with no grounding in accepted definitions of knowledge. We must never treat the divided concept of truth as merely academic; it produces an inner division between what people think they know (that we are merely machines in a deterministic universe) and what they desperately want to believe.

This can be a soul-wrenching dilemma, and it is illustrated dramatically in the life of the well-loved writer C. S. Lewis. As a young man, Lewis abandoned his childhood faith in favor of atheism and materialism. Yet the bracing new philosophies that tantalized his intellect left his imagination hungry. As he wrote later, "Nearly all that I loved [poetry, beauty, mythology] I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless" (119-120).

The last letter I'll comment on is from someone who was annoyed that Newsweek did not make any reference to 12-step programs in their examination of American spirituality. She wrote in part:

The key aspect that makes 12-step programs the only spiritual way that works for me is the third step: make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand God. Those last four words are what did it for me -- finally, a form of spirituality where no one else was telling me what my God should look or be like!

For some reason, "American Idol" comes to mind.

I Don't Have Enough Faith...Part III

When I wrote the first post in this thread, I had no intent of making the book by Geisler and Turek my focus. Rather, I wanted to concentrate on what I consider to be problematic with the saying whose popularity among Christians precedes its being used as the title of their book - "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" (or its variant "It takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian"). In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn't have made any reference to the book. Nevertheless, comments from Michael and Tony piqued my curiosity about the book, leading me to do some research.

As I didn't have it in my possession, I checked online in hope of finding an excerpt that might address the distinction between biblical and unbiblical understandings of the nature of faith. Amazon's excerpt didn't contain anything relevant to my question but I did note the following sentence in the book description: "All worldviews, including atheism, require faith. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist argues that Christianity requires the least faith of all because it is the most reasonable." Faith, as presented here, is obviously unreasonable belief. Unsure of whether this was a description provided by the publisher, I then checked Crossway's site which confirmed this as their chosen promotion of the book. The following is the full text of the description:

I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist argues that Christianity requires the least faith of all worldviews because it is the most reasonable. The authors lay out the evidence for truth, God, and the Bible in logical order and in a readable, non-technical, engaging style. A valuable aid to those interested in examining the reasonableness of the Christian faith, Geisler and Turek provide a firm challenge to the prior beliefs of doubters and skeptics.

As Tony noted in his comment, in the interest of reducing an opponent's position to absurdity, one may, for the sake of argument, adopt his or her assumptions and show their logical consequences. While I don't share the atheist's definition of faith as irrational or unwarranted belief, for example, I may nevertheless say to my atheistic friend, "Even if I did define faith the way you do, it would take more faith to be an atheist and here's why." Wanting to see if this was the stance Geisler and Turek take, I headed off to the bookstore today and at last procured my own copy (thereby disproving any suspicions that I was subtly calling for a boycott). From my reading so far, it seems that the authors are not merely adopting a concept of faith foreign to that of the Bible for the sake of argument, but are stating their own position.


In the book's introduction, after making the claim that "the atheist has to muster a lot more faith than the Christian" (p. 26), the authors explain what they mean:

We mean that the less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge. And it turns out that atheists have bigger gaps in knowledge because they have far less evidence for their beliefs than Christians have for theirs. In other words, the empirical, forensic, and philosophical evidence strongly supports conclusions consistent with Christianity and inconsistent with atheism (p. 26).

Earlier in the introduction, the authors describe the late Carl Sagan's well-known assertion that "the Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be" as "the ultimate statement of faith in atheistic materialism" (emphasis in the original). They then write: "How did he know that for sure? He didn't. How could he? He was a limited human being with limited knowledge. Sagan was operating in the realm of probability just like Christians are when they say God exists."

My original question remains. Is the concept of faith presented above compatible with faith as described in Scripture? Does one get the impression from the Bible that the amount of faith required is inversely proportionate to the scarcity of evidence? If the answer to this question is "no," which I think it is, is it really helpful to speak in such terms in our apologetic and evangelistic conversations with non-Christians? Wouldn't it be better to explain to them what it is that the Bible is speaking of when it uses the term and how that differs from blind faith? While looking for the quotation from Schaeffer's The God Who is There that I included in a previous post, I came across the following passage in which Schaeffer was determined to make that distinction:

Of course, faith is needed to become a Christian, but there are two concepts concerning faith. The two ideas of faith run like this: One idea of faith would be a blind leap in the dark. A blind leap in which you believe something with no reason (or, no adequate reason), you just believe it. This is what I mean by a blind leap of faith. The other idea of faith, which has no relationship with this, none whatsoever, is that you are asked to believe something and bow before that something on the basis of good and adequate reasons. There is no relationship between those two concepts of faith.

The biblical concept of faith is very much the second and not the first. You are not asked to believe in a blind leap of faith. The Bible teaches that there are good and sufficient reasons to know that these things are true. - Volume I, The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, pp. 181-182

None of this is designed to discredit either of the authors or the totality of the volume they authored. I only wish to think with other believers about how we may most faithfully and accurately present a biblical perspective to those to whom we commend and defend the gospel of Christ.

On Faithful Semantics (I Don't Have Enough Faith... Part II)

In response to a recent post advising Christians to refrain from saying things like "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist," Michael at Grace Sublime! commented: "Personally, I think you're making a issue out of a non-issue. I think the title is tongue in cheek to illustrate the irrationality of the atheist."

Although I was tempted to respond immediately, I decided to allow some time to pass in order to seriously consider whether my post was, in fact, picayune. I've decided that it wasn't, so I thought I'd take space here to further develop my thought on the matter.

I agree with Michael that the intent behind using the phrase in question as a title of an apologetics book was most likely to humorously display the irrationality of atheism. But that only serves to illustrate my point. Used in that context, "faith" is that which is required in proportion to the irrationality of a belief. The more irrational the belief, the more faith required. By saying "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist," I may mean "Atheism is irrational and therefore I can't bring myself to believe it," but what I'm actually saying (and what the atheist will understand me as saying) is that faith is the capacity to believe the absurd.

Actually, my purpose wasn't to target the book by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. I've not read it but from what I've heard from those who have, it's very good. My concern was, and remains, Christians carelessly using biblical terms in unbiblical ways, thereby perpetuating and contributing to misconceptions about biblical Christianity. We often talk about the importance of context for understanding a particular verse. Likewise, a Christian's understanding of the meaning of such words as "faith" should be derived from the usage of that word in the entirety of Scripture. There is, in other words, a canonical context that should govern how we define and use words like "faith." This is a function of biblical authority. When we converse with those whose concept of faith is contrary to that of the Bible, and adopt that usage ourselves, we are neither aiding them in their understanding nor faithfully representing the biblical perspective we are seeking to commend.

Francis Schaeffer frequently noted the ambiguity of the word "god" and the need for Christians to clarify what they mean by it. He writes in The God Who is There:

As Christians, we must understand that there is no word so meaningless as the word "god" until it is defined. No word has been used to reach absolutely opposite concepts as much as the word "god." Consequently, let us not be confused. There is much "spirituality" about us today that would relate itself to the word god or to the idea god; but this is not what we are talking about. Biblical truth and spirituality is not a relationship to the word god, or to the idea god. It is a relationship to the one who is there, which is an entirely different concept. - Volume I, The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, p. 159

The point Schaeffer makes about the word "god" is applicable to the word "faith." The Christian's concept of faith is constrained by God's revelation in Scripture. Of course, we can't prevent unbelievers from attaching alien concepts to biblical vocabulary. We can, however, do all in our power not to encourage such unbiblical thinking by refusing to adopt its linguistic practices ourselves.

The (Fragmentary) Christian Mind

Mike at Eternal Perspectives commented: "BTW, great quote in your masthead." Since Francis Schaeffer has played such an influential role in my Christian life, I'm particularly appreciative of the quote displayed in the masthead of Mike's blog. It's from Schaeffer's The God Who Is There:

True education means thinking by associating across the various disciplines, and not just being highly qualified in one field, as a technician might be. I suppose no discipline has tended to think more in fragmented fashion than the orthodox or evangelical theology of today.

Schaeffer was concerned that increased specialization tended to emphasize the parts at the expense of the whole. One of the potential dangers of focusing intently in one area of study is that that area's relationship to other subjects can be overlooked if not forgotten. Think of each discipline as one of the over 3 million dots of color in Georges Seurat's familiar painting "A Sunday in the Park on the Island of La Grande Jatte" (above). How foolish (not to mention unsatisfying) would it be for art students to set out to become experts in one point of paint? Standing with their noses pressed against the canvas, scrutinizing their particular dot, they would miss the grandeur and beauty of the entire piece.

The "today" Schaeffer was referring to was almost forty years ago. The information explosion presents even more obstacles to the kind of cross-disciplinary thinking he was advocating. Millard Erickson, in Christian Theology, describes the impact on theological scholarship:

Theology is now being done in a period characterized by, among other things, a "knowledge explosion." The amount of information is growing so rapidly that mastery of a large area of thought is becoming increasingly difficult. While this is especially true in technological areas, biblical and theological knowledge is also much broader than it once was. The result has been a much greater degree of specialization than was previously the case. In biblical studies, for example, New Testament scholars tend to specialize in the Gospels or in the Pauline writings. Church historians tend to specialize in one period, such as the Reformation. Consequently, research and publication are often in narrower areas and in greater depth.

The mass of theological data is too great for any one person or group of persons to master. I'm not so naive as to question that. What I do question is where the integrative task is being done. Where and how does theological Humpty Dumpty get put together again once we've analyzed his yolk, white, and shell? Are our seminaries aiding future pastors to become truly educated as Schaeffer defined true education? Are we training leaders who will be capable of teaching others to make the connection between their respective vocations and biblical faith?
In a previous post I quoted from the preface of Craig Bartholomew's and Michael Goheen's book The Drama of Scripture in which they warn of the consequences of approaching the Bible atomistically. Assuming that there's at least one person who hasn't gone back in this blog's archives, I'll post it again. It's that important:

Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little bits - theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore its divine author's intention to shape our lives through its story. All human communities
live out of some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter; a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshippers.