Schaeffer on truth, absolutes and worldviews:

It is always risky to call something a classic. Usually, one requirement is that it has stood the test of time – and usually a long time. But some things that are a bit more recent can also be called classics. The 1981 Francis Schaeffer volume A Christian Manifesto (Crossway Books, revised 1982) is one such example.

Schaeffer (1912-1984) of course was the famous Christian pastor, apologist and writer that influenced generations of Christians. See more about him and his work here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2009/10/14/notable-christians-francis-schaeffer/

All up he wrote 22 books, and Manifesto was his final volume. The book was meant to be a Christian alternative not just to The Communist Manifesto of 1848 but to the 1933 Humanist Manifesto and the 1973 Humanist Manifesto II. It was both a work contrasting competing worldviews and a call to action.

I have written various pieces in the past quoting from this book, especially concerning his views on statism, tyranny and civil disobedience. Here I will quote some key passages from the early chapters of the book. The opening paragraphs of Chapter One, “The Abolition of Truth and Morality,” are these:

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.

They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality – each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in world view – that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole. This shift has been away from a worldview that was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory (even if they were not individually Christian) toward something completely different – toward a world view based upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance. They have not seen that this world view has taken the place of the one that had previously dominated Northern European culture, including the United States, which was at least Christian in memory, even if the individuals were not individually Christian.

These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and also in their natural results – including sociological and governmental results, and specifically including law.

It is not that these two world views are different only in how they understand the nature of reality and existence. They also inevitably produce totally different results. The operative word here is inevitably. It is not just that they happen to bring forth different results, but it is absolutely inevitable that they will bring forth different results.

Why have the Christians been so slow to understand this? There are various reasons but the central one is a defective view of Christianity…. (pp. 17-18)

He goes on to discuss how Christianity is true for all of life:

True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful – which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. It is not only that true spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.

Related to this, it seems to me, is the fact that many Christians do not mean what I mean when I say Christianity is true, or Truth. They are Christians and they believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ’s miracles, Christ’s substitutionary death, and His coming again. But they stop there with these and other individual truths.

When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality—the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth — Truth about all of reality. And the holding to that Truth intellectually — and then in some poor way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is — brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results. (pp. 19-20)

He discusses the Humanist Manifesto and the role of Julian and Aldous Huxley, then says this:

They understood not only that there were two totally different concepts but that they would bring forth two totally different conclusions, both for individuals and for society. What we must understand is that the two world views really do bring forth with inevitable certainty not only personal differences, but also total differences in regard to society, government, and law.

There is no way to mix these two total world views. They are separate entities that cannot be synthesized. Yet we must say that liberal theology, the very essence of it from its beginning, is an attempt to mix the two. (pp. 20-21)

In Chapter Three, “The Destruction of Faith and Freedom,” he looks at the role of law and worldviews. As the secular humanist mindset grew stronger and more powerful, it greatly impacted everything, including law. It resulted in radically differing understandings of things such as pluralism. Schaeffer writes:

Along with the decline of the Judeo-Christian consensus we have come to a new definition and connotation of “pluralism.” Until recently it meant that the Christianity flowing from the Reformation is not now as dominant in the country and in society as it was in the early days of the nation. After about 1848 the great influx of immigrants to the United States meant a sharp increase in viewpoints not shaped by Reformation Christianity. This, of course, is the situation which exists today. Thus as we stand for religious freedom today, we need to realize that this must include a general religious freedom from the control of the state for all religion. It will not mean just freedom for those who are Christians. It is then up to Christians to show that Christianity is the Truth of total reality in the open marketplace of freedom. 

This greater mixture in the United States, however, is now used as an excuse for the new meaning and connotation of pluralism. It now is used to mean that all types of situations are spread out before us, and that it really is up to each individual to grab one or the other on the way past, according to the whim of personal preference. What you take is only a matter of personal choice, with one choice as valid as another. Pluralism has come to mean that everything is acceptable. This new concept of pluralism suddenly is everywhere. There is no right or wrong; it is just a matter of your personal preference. On a recent Sixty Minutes program on television, for example, the questions of euthanasia of the old and the growing of marijuana as California’s largest paying crop were presented this way. One choice is as valid as another. It is just a matter of personal preference. This new definition and connotation of pluralism is presented in many forms, not only in personal ethics, but in society’s ethics and in the choices concerning law. (pp. 45-47)

A few words from Chapter Four, “The Humanist Religion” are worth presenting here:

We live in a democracy, or republic, in this country which was born out of the Judeo-Christian base. The freedom that this gives is increasingly rare in the world today. We certainly must use this freedom while we still have it. There was a poll done by a secular group a few years ago which looked across the world to determine where there were freedoms today out of the 150 or so nations. Less than twenty-five were rated as today having significant freedom. We still have it. And it is our calling to do something about it and use it in our democracy while we have it.

Most fundamentally, our culture, society, government, and law are in the condition they are in, not because of a conspiracy, but because the church has forsaken its duty to be the salt of the culture. It is the church’s duty (as well as its privilege) to do now what it should have been doing all the time — to use the freedom we do have to be that salt of the culture. If the slide toward authoritarianism is to be reversed we need a committed Christian church that is dedicated to what John W. Whitehead calls “total revolution in the reformative sense.” (pp. 55-56)

One last quote – from Chapter Five, “Revival, Revolution, and Reform,” offers a call to action, for Christians to have an impact on their surrounding society:

As we turn to the evangelical leadership of this country in the last decades, unhappily, we must come to the conclusion that often it has not been much help. It has shown the mark of a platonic, overly spiritualized Christianity all too often. Spirituality to the evangelical leadership often has not included the Lordship of Christ over the whole spectrum of life. Spirituality has often been shut up to a very narrow area. And also very often, among many evangelicals, including many evangelical leaders, it seems that the final end is to protect their own projects. I am not saying all, by any means, but all too often that has been the case. I am again asking the question, why have we let ourselves go so far down the road? And this is certainly one of the answers.

Now you must remember, this is a rather new phenomenon. The old revivals are spoken about so warmly by the evangelical leadership. Yet they seem to have forgotten what those revivals were. Yes, the old revivals in Great Britain, Scandinavia, and the old revivals in this country did call, and without any question and with tremendous clarity, for personal salvation. But they also called for a resulting social action. Read the history of the old revivals. Every single one of them did this, and there can be no greater example than the great revivals of John Wesley (1703-1791) and George Whitefield (1714-1770)…

The Wesley and Whitefield revivals were tremendous in calling for individual salvation, and thousands upon thousands were saved. Yet even secular historians acknowledge that it was the social results coming out of the Wesley revival that saved England from its own form of the French Revolution. If it had not been for the Wesley revival and its social results, England would almost certainly have had its own “French Revolution.” (pp. 63-65)

Over 40 years ago Schaeffer made his impassioned plea. How much more does the church today need to hear – and act on – such words? There IS a war of worldviews, and it impacts all of life. Christians have a worldview. It is time they discover it and start applying it – to every aspect of life and society.

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