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
Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.
As Christians, we must see that just because an artist-even a great artist-portrays a worldview in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that worldview. Good art heightens the impact of that worldview, but it does not make it true.
Isolating the student from large sections of human knowledge is not the basis of a Christian education. Rather it is giving him or her the framework for total truth, rooted in the Creator's existence and in the Bible's teaching, so that in each step of the formal learning process the student will understand what is true and what is false and why it is true or false.
When a man comes under the blood of Christ, his whole capacity as a man is refashioned. His soul is saved, yes, but so are his mind and his body. True spirituality means the lordship of Christ over the total man.
Truth carries with it confrontation.
There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or compassion.
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.
Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.
The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.
A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.
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.
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.
A compassionate open home is part of Christian responsibility, and should be practiced up to the level of capacity.