Remembering Francis Schaeffer

I recently reviewed Colin Duriez's biography of Francis Schaeffer for Themelios.  You can read it here.

Here's a clip from my review:

Connecting the young Schaeffer to the more famous, older man is a great strength of Colin Duriez’s book. It has become well-accepted to break Schaeffer’s life up into segments and to characterize him as three different people. There is the young, fire breathing fundamentalist eager to “be ye separate” from the impure compromisers; the artsy, compassionate, bohemian founder of L’abri in Switzerland; and then the old man, brushing off his best instincts and returning to his fundamentalist roots to fight for the doctrine of inerrancy and “Christian America.” While it is possible to reach such a conclusion by looking at his early career and then considering the chronological development of his publications, this book rejects that approach by portraying Schaeffer as a consistent personality throughout. 

The man who cared enough to tutor a little boy with Down Syndrome is also the man who told his church in St. Louis that he would resign if a black person ever came to his church and felt unwelcome. The budding intellectual who answered the existential questions of college students in Europe is also the agitator who took up the cause of the unborn and became arguably the finest shaper of and advocate for a potent evangelical critique of modern culture. Two sentences in the book make this point about Schaeffer brilliantly: “It was not a new Schaeffer that was emerging. His theology, honed over many decades since the passionate articles of the later forties and early fifties, was that of the lordship of Christ over every area of life—the womb as well as the university seminar room” (p. 182).

Comments

[Steven B]

Schaeffer always struck me as "Mere Christianity" with bite. May we always remember his legacy.

By the way, has anyone cared to remember Peter Toon's recent passing away? I know a little about him, and he seems to be an important conservative Anglican worth eulogizing.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

I never read Franky Schaeffer's book about his dad. I did read several reviews of Franky's book, and Franky got taken to task for penning his memories. (I think the blogger the "Internet Monk" did post a good review of Franky's book however).

I also read an essay in the last year or two in Christianity Today about how L'Abri is doing. It seems that they by and large have embraced postmodernism over there. Which I don't think he would have embraced.

So I'm sad to see that Francis Schaeffer's legacy is being assaulted from the folks he loved.

Two books of his that I greatly enjoyed and learned from: "The God Who Is There" and "The Coming Great Disaster in Evangelicalism". (He was prophetic. Staunch in defending inerrancy and staunchly against egalitarianism.) And I really learned quite a bit from his student Nancy Pearcey's book, Total Truth.

P.S. Although I never read the book, there is a tome written comparing the apologetic styles of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer which I think would be highly interesting.

[Tim Tobin]

Francis A. Schaeffer has gone to his reward. Let us honor his memory and Lord. - Tim Tobin.