Truth with Love

The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer

Bryan A. Follis

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781433518980
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

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 Schaeffer'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.

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CALVIN AND THE REFORMED TRADITION

INTRODUCTION

To provide a benchmark against which to measure Francis Schaeffer, this chapter will examine John Calvin’s views on the knowledge of God. In particular, as Calvin’s writings often emerged in a polemic context, I wish to consider the point that his notion of the image of God in man took on different meanings in different contexts. This has led to different interpretations within the Reformed tradition of his teaching about the relationship of faith and reason. These different interpretations have thus affected the role accorded to reason in apologetics, and so distinctive schools of apologetics have developed.¹ This chapter will therefore also explain the different approaches of some key Reformed thinkers who have exercised an influence on Francis Schaeffer. This will help us evaluate Schaeffer’s own style of apologetics.

CALVIN AND PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEXT

Given the fact that within Reformed Christianity the Scriptures occupy a primary place in Christian epistemology, some Reformed writers stress that without God’s revelation “we cannot trust reason, sense experience, intuition, or any other methods purporting to give knowledge.”² Sometimes in their eagerness to distinguish Calvin’s approach from that of the Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), it is stated that Calvin found knowledge of God in Scripture alone. However, Calvin’s teachings on the sources of our knowledge of God are more complex than some are willing to accept. Calvin needs to be understood in the context of his time, and that means recognizing the intellectual influences that guided his thinking.

Calvin, more than Luther, came from a background colored by Renaissance humanism, and there was some continuity of thought with the humanist tradition after his conversion.³ Rejecting the otherworldliness of medieval scholasticism (which had developed from the writings of Thomas Aquinas), this humanism accepted the worth of earthly existence for its own sake. Following the French humanists, Calvin decried what he perceived as an overreliance on reason by the scholastics. He also attacked the scholastics for their view that grace is both operative (given by God alone) and cooperative (man working with God). Calvin believed that this implied a natural ability in human nature to seek the good. Indeed for the Reformers, the abuses of the medieval church and its whole penitential system resulted from a false epistemology. It was wrong knowledge that led to wrong practice, for a “natural knowledge of God is void of true soteriological [i.e., saving] knowledge.”⁴ Some Reformed commentators trace this to Aquinas, whom they view as the first great proponent of a natural theology distinguishable from revealed theology. He sought to draw upon the philosophy of Aristotle (384–322 b.c.) and to reclaim reason as a tool in Christian theology. Andrew Hoffecker has even suggested that the synthesis produced by Aquinas included heretical elements from Pelagius (a fourth-century monk) insofar as reason remains “unscathed by the fall, and the will is only partially debilitated by sin.”⁵

Although Calvin criticized those who followed Aristotle for their reliance on human reason and free will, and Zwingli, who led the Reformation in Zurich, was outspoken in his anti-scholasticism and anti-Aristotelianism, it is wrong to view the Reformation as completely overthrowing the Aristotelian inheritance bequeathed by Aquinas. Indeed as Alister McGrath has noted, Aristotelianism stubbornly persisted in Renaissance humanism to “the intense irritation of those who prefer to regard the Renaissance as essentially a Platonist reaction against scholastic Aristotelianism.”⁶ Calvin was interested in humanism’s concept of natural law, and it is inconceivable that there was no Aristotelian influence in this. Colin Brown finds not only similarities between Calvin and Aquinas but also extensive use of Aristotelian ideas by Calvin, not least in his articulation of the doctrine of election and predestination. Brown regards it as “tantalizing” to ask about philosophical influences on Calvin, and he speculates as to whether the Reformer’s doctrines were “purely and simply biblical theology” as he believed them to be.⁷ However, without further evidence this is only speculation. Furthermore, recognizing a residual Aristotelianism in Calvin’s thought—such as Aristotle’s concept of a fourfold causality—does not allow us to say that his theology was not under the supremacy of Scripture. Indeed, in a comparison of Calvin’s exposition of Romans 9 (on election and predestination) with that by Aquinas, Steinmetz found that several of Aquinas’s most characteristic modifications of the Augustinian tradition found “no corresponding echo” in Calvin’s exposition.⁸

While Calvin was prepared to draw upon non-scriptural sources, they were always subservient to Scripture and often used to confirm it, as is seen in his dialogue with Cicero in the Institutes of the Christian Religion. As McGrath notes, Calvin accepted classical wisdom in Christian theology “in that it demonstrates the necessity of, and partially verifies the substance of, divine revelation.”⁹ But when any secular or religious teaching or philosophical ideas were contrary to Scripture, such as natural theology on the scholastic pattern, Calvin regarded them as inadmissible. This was the same approach as that to his use of Patristic sources (which he frequently quoted). Calvin treats “the Fathers as partners in conversation rather than as authorities in the medieval sense of the term. They stimulate Calvin in his reflections on the text. . . . Nevertheless, they do not have the last word. Paul does.”¹⁰ Yet Calvin did not say that without Scripture man does not have some natural consciousness of God. He believed that “there exists in the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, some sense of Deity.”¹¹ What we need to consider is just what Calvin meant by this.

THE IMAGE OF GOD

The Bible states that to be human means to be made “in the image of God,” but the relevant passages (Genesis 1:26-27; 5:1-2; 9:6-7) do not define precisely what this means. For Augustine—from whose intellectual well Calvin was to drink deeply—it was the human capacity to reason that distinguished human from animal nature and by which contact was made with the divine. Although Augustine saw knowing God as primarily an intellectual matter, Sherlock argues, it was not a rationalistic understanding of “image” in that something far richer than mere “head knowledge” (i.e., creative thought) was meant.¹² Modern writers tend to have a very restrictive view of reason, and it is important that we do not read back into Augustine a contemporary understanding that is less than his concept of creative thought. Returning to the issue of the image of God in mankind, was it completely lost in the Fall? If one stresses the relational character of the image—that one stands in proper relationship with God—then for Calvin the image was destroyed by the Fall. However, Calvin also maintained that man still enjoyed “noble endowments which bespeak the divine presence with us.”¹³

Brian Gerrish has noted that “scholars have found an ambiguity in Calvin’s answer to the question: ‘Is the image of God lost in the fallen man?’”¹⁴ However, this apparent contradiction in Calvin’s thought is resolved when we understand the comprehensive conception he had of the image of God. Luther did not “seek the image of God in any of the natural endowments of man, such as his rational and moral powers, but exclusively in original righteousness, and therefore regarded it as entirely lost by sin.”¹⁵ By contrast, Calvin believed that the image of God extends to everything that makes human nature distinct from the other species of animals, and while the whole image was damaged by sin, only the spiritual qualities were completely lost. Indeed he said, “since reason, by which man discerns between good and evil, and by which he understands and judges, is a natural gift, it could not be entirely destroyed.”¹⁶ Man did not become a brute animal; he is still man, for in spite of his fall “there are still some sparks which show that he is a rational animal.” Calvin was convinced “that one of the essential properties of our nature is reason, which distinguishes us from the lower animals.”¹⁷ Yet Calvin did not regard man as being made in the image of God simply because he has reason. Rather, as Edward Dowey points out, the ability to reflect God’s glory and worship Him was also a key distinguishing characteristic.¹⁸

Although humanity retains the image of God (albeit in a reduced form), Calvin argued that this light was “so smothered by clouds of darkness” that in relation to a saving knowledge of God, people were “blinder than moles.”¹⁹ Nevertheless, Calvin is keen to stress Paul’s teaching that though we are unable without divine revelation to rise to a pure and clear knowledge of God, we cannot plead ignorance. Drawing upon Romans 1:18-28, Calvin argued that verse 20 clearly teaches that since people may know about God from His created world, they are “without excuse” and hence have “an utter incapacity to bring any defence to prevent them from being justly accused before the judgement-seat of God.”²⁰ However, this knowledge about God is not saving knowledge of God and is inadequate because of our blindness. We are not so blind that we don’t realize the necessity of worshiping God, but our judgment “fails here before it discovers the nature or character of God.” The problem is not a lack of evidence or knowledge but a moral deficiency: we refuse to submit to the evidence that God provides. For Calvin (as for Paul) we see enough to keep us from making excuses, but our blindness prevents us from reaching our goal, and it is only by the gift of faith and its light that “man can gain real knowledge from the work of creation.”²¹

THE CHARACTER OF OUR KNOWLEDGE

Medieval scholasticism taught that there is a natural law—i.e., a moral order divinely implanted in all people that is accessible by reason.²² At times Calvin seems to go along with this view, but at other times he appears to stress that without divine revelation man would be left in a state of agnosticism. However, not in vain has God

added the light of his Word in order that he might make himself known unto salvation, and bestowed the privilege on those whom he was pleased to bring into nearer and more familiar relation to himself.²³

Susan Schreiner suggests that Calvin’s notion of the image of God took on different meanings in different contexts, though not, she argues, contradictory meanings.²⁴ It is important to bear this in mind as we consider Calvin’s understanding of the character of our knowledge of God.

Calvin speaks of a double knowledge: the “simple and primitive knowledge to which the mere course of nature would have conducted us, had Adam stood upright” and the saving knowledge revealed through Scripture that focuses upon the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ who paid the penalty due to us, by which “salvation was obtained for us by his righteousness.”²⁵ Creation continues to provide to all people important points of contact with God, but in His mercy to His Church, God supplements “these common proofs by the addition of his Word, as a surer and more direct means of discovering himself.”²⁶

Calvin believed that Scripture only gives “a saving knowledge of God when its certainty is founded on the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit.”²⁷ Thus it is foolish to attempt to prove to nonbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God as it can only be known as such by faith. Taken in isolation—as it sometimes is—this appears to commit Calvin to fideism—i.e., the view that our knowledge of God is solely based on faith apart from any evidence or rational considerations. However, Calvin accepted that there were also rational grounds for arguing that Scripture is the Word of God and such human testimonies “which go to confirm it will not be without effect, if they are used in subordination to that chief and highest proof [the Holy Spirit], as secondary helps to our weakness.” He devoted a chapter in the Institutes to proving the credibility of Scripture “in so far as natural reason admits.”

While recognizing that such proofs w...