Customer Reviews

The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer

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The complete works of Francis Schaeffer have 5 volumes covering many topics from spirituality in the church to the effects of the Enlightenment on the Christian church for the last 200 years. His insight and understanding borders on the prophetic as he sees potential developments in the future which are starting to take place today, 25 years after his death. There is something for everyone within the 5 volumes. For the philosophers he looks at modern philosophical thought over the last 200 years and how it has affected the church through modern German natural theology and liberal thought. For the bible students he conducts intense studies into the biblical plot line taking into account figures such as David and Joshua. For those concerned with morals and ethics, he discusses extensively the problems of issues such as abortion and euthanasia. The freshness and clarity with which he discusses these issues is both exciting and inspiring. Since he did not live long enough to see the emergence of post-modernism, he paints such a clear picture of modernism that it is easy for the reader to subsequently read up on post modernism and understand the clear contrast between modernism and post-modernism. Other authors have criticized Schaeffer stating that he paints with too broad a brush. Yet one cannot deny his astute understanding of the effects of the like of Kierkegaard as the father of existentialism and Karl Barth as the father of modern liberal theology. The intellectual intensity mixed with real Godly spirituality makes it the ideal choice for those with real philosophical questions yet a desire to find the truth. An excellent work!

I think that it would be foolish and way beyond the scope of any review to attempt to critique the entire thinking of a great writer and thinker like Francis Schaeffer in this review so I won't. What makes his legacy so great, in my mind at least, is that he lived what he taught; his philosophy was not an end in itself but was a guide for him to live by, for him to find God by. You probably are not contemplating buying The Complete Works being unfamiliar with his thinking whose affect is still felt in Christendom and beyond, so I will comment from here on out on the actual set itself. This set contains all 22 of his major books. In 5 volumes, the books are not overly large so as to be unwieldy to attempt to read. Nevertheless, to put 22 full-length books into 5, you can imagine that the typeface is smaller than I normally like and the books are larger than I normally like. But for the price of this set, if you are going to read any of Schaeffer's work, this is definitely a very good value.

That said, if you are able to read effectively on a computer screen, I would highly recommend you purchase the digital publication of this same work in Libronix (Logos) format. The set is that much more valuable, to me at least, in digital form. It is the same cost, searchable, and makes clickable cross-references to itself and other resources you have in your library. Nevertheless, the paper-and-ink version of the complete set is still invaluable for any

Finally, because I don't see it anywhere within the Amazon reviews I will list off all of the books included in the order in which they are found:

Volume 1
*The God Who Is There
*Escape From Reason
*He Is There and He Is Not Silent
*Back to Freedom and Dignity
Volume 2
*Genesis in Space and Time
*No Final Conflict
*Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History
*Basic Bible Studies
*Art and the Bible
Volume 3
*No Little People
*True Spirituality
*The New Super Spirituality
*Two Contents, Two Realities
Volume 4
*The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century
*The Church Before the Watching World
*The Mark of the Christian
*Death in the City
*The Great Evangelical Disaster
Volume 5
*Pollution and the Death of Man
*How Should We Then Live?
*Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
*A Christian Manifesto

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