Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Truth and Love Must Go Together in our Evangelism!, January 31, 2007
It is hard to believe that it has been over twenty years since Francis Schaeffer's death. Yet, his writings, his many disciples, and his ministry are continuing across the world. Bryan Follis' book, Truth with Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer is a wonderful introduction to the man, and especially to the subject that was close to his heart- the proclaiming of the Gospel of grace in a way that modern man (and now post-modern man) would find understandable and reasonable.
So why should you read this book? I would suggest that it is more than just a study of what Schaeffer believed. The author brings out many valuable insights from all of Schaeffer's writings and shows how they apply to our current day and age, and these insights are invaluable for anyone who cares about thoughtfully sharing the Gospel. Contrary to many critiques of Schaeffer's methodology, Follis succeeds in taking Schaeffer on his own terms. "...it is impossible to understand Schaeffer, never mind properly evaluate his apologetics, unless we grasp that he was a practitioner and not a theoretician, and so interpret him in the context of what he sought to do." (pp. 122).
To those who say he was a rationalist. Follis stresses Schaeffer's utter belief that only the Holy Spirit can change hearts. "Reason, for Schaeffer, is never enough, whether seen as the source of answers to mankind's deepest questions or as the sole guide to bring a person into relationship with God. Revelation from God and the illumination of the Holy Spirit remain essential: reason is never autonomous." (pp. 75).
To those who say Schaeffer's works are not useful for reaching less-educated people, Follis points out that Schaeffer was convinced that "shipyard workers have the same questions as the university man. They just do not articulate them in the same way." (pp. 138). Follis also shows that throghout his life, Schaeffer believed that love was the ultimate apologetic, and he showed Christ's love to all kinds of individuals that he encountered - from philosophical atheists to the staff at hotels he stayed at during conferences. "Schaeffer saw his mission, indeed his calling, as an evangelist, but an evangelist who dealt with the philosophical and intellectual questions that obscured the gospel. Doing so meant treating all persons as individuals, given that they had a particular life story, personal intellectual misunderstandings, and perceptions distinctive to themselves. However this was very time-consuming, emotionally draining, and pastorally demanding. Yet Schaeffer always sought to make the effort. Even when he was seriously ill with cancer and undergoing treatment in the USA, he continued to find timet to talk with individuals and conduct discussion groups." (pp. 125).
Follis' final chapter may be the best! In this chapter, titled, "Conclusion: Love as the Final Apologetic", he takes the ideas and practices of Schaeffer and applies them to our current world and intellectual climate. "Love and truth went together, and truth was never to be an abstract intellectual concept. Indeed, Schaeffer argued that Christians must not merely speak about truth--they must practice it. He knew that in a skeptical age influenced by relativism, Christian apologetics with its claim to absolute truth would not be taken seriously if Christians did not live out the truth." (pp. 137). Why should you read this book? Let me close with this wonderful reminder that Follis gives of what Schaeffer should teach us:
"If our ministry is to be effective, we need to listen before we speak, so that the answers we offer really do relate to the questions being asked. It might save us a lot of hard work, but serving up pre-prepared answers to questions that the person hasn't actually asked is not going to be productive. Listening to the person, working out an answer that engages him or her, and then seeking to present a Christian worldview will take time and effort. But if we have love for the individual, we will be willing to invest our time and make the effort, both on the intellectual and the emotional levels." (pp. 144). Read this book if you care about reaching the lost, and you will learn how to speak truth with love, sharing the Gospel, and yet depending on God to change people's hearts.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A significant treatment of a major Christian apologist/evangelist, February 3, 2007
As one who awoke to the intellectual richness and cultural depth of the Christian worldview in the mid-1970s through the writings of evangelist-apologist-activist Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), I often worry that the next generation will fail to heed the challenge and receive the inspiration Schaeffer gave us through both his writings and his life of discipleship. Truth With Love is thus heartening because it winsomely explains both the rational and the relational apologetic of Francis Schaeffer to those who may not have otherwise heard the good news.
This book is a revised doctoral dissertation, but one that succeeds in being both intellectually meaty and existentially appealing to those outside the strictly academic crowd. There are plenty of quotations and footnotes, as well as personal interviews with those who knew Schaeffer well. While such a well-documented book needs an index of names and subjects as well as a bibliography, unfortunately, it has neither.
The promotional sheet put out by the publisher claims that the book can help ingratiate Schaeffer to "the emergent conversation" (or the emerging church movement). While the book itself does not take this particular angle (except to say that Schaeffer's approach is appropriate for reaching postmodern unbelievers), Schaeffer should appeal to those in the emergent movement who are weary of religious cliches, formulas, legalism, and dead orthodoxy, since Schaeffer left those things behind when he abandoned the Fundamentalist movement in the early 1950s. Schaeffer's approach will also offer them a theological and philosophical depth not always encountered in "the emergent conversation."
Follis begins with a chapter called "Schaeffer in Context," which traces briefly Schaeffer's historical and theological background. Schaeffer came of age during the Fundamentalist/Modernist split and was a Fundamentalist Presbyterian minister until the early 1950s when he and his wife Edith formed the L'Abri (which means "shelter") community in the Swiss Alps as a safe place for those seeking "honest answers to honest questions," as Schaeffer put it.
Schaeffer was always a man of the Reformation. His break with the legalism and lack of love in Fundamentalism never severed him from his Calvinistic commitments, although he was never a doctrinaire or pugilistic kind of Calvinist (as many are today). Thus, Follis begins with a chapter called "Calvin and the Reformed Tradition," which explores Calvin's doctrines--particularly the image of God, the noetic effects of sin, and general revelation--as they relate to apologetics. Follis notes that those in the Reformed tradition interpreted Calvin in various ways, due possibly to some imprecision or ambiguity in Calvin's writings on the subject. The Old Princeton school of A.A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen found in Calvin incentive to develop a strong apologetic based on the deliverances of reason--reason that was accessible even to the nonChristian mind. This apologetic approach involved argumentation from natural theology and the giving of Christian evidences for the reliability of Scripture. On the other hand, Abraham Kuyper, the great Dutch theologian, journalist, and politician, took a presuppositional approach that granted no substantial common ground between the believer and the unbeliever. This method greatly influenced Cornelius Van Til (one of Schaeffer's professors), who developed it through a long career at Westminster Theological Seminary and is known for his "presuppositionalism."
With this foundation laid, the next three chapters assiduously analyze and defend Schaeffer's apologetic method against various charges. Chapter two, "Arguments and Approach," explains Schaeffer's apologetic, which developed organically out of years of face-to-face evangelism with hundreds of questioning souls--mostly students and younger people--in the 1950s and 1960s. (His books came later and all grew out of his conversations, lecturing, and preaching.) The church was no longer communicating biblical truth to the younger generation because each employed different ideas of truth. The seismic cultural and intellectual upheavals of the twentieth century had brought formerly common sense notions of truth and its discovery into question. Schaeffer, ever the student of people in their concrete situations, realized that the battle for hearts and minds and cultures was being waged on a new level. Christians could no longer assume that unbelievers even understand the basic ideas of the Christian worldview. Therefore, Schaeffer traced the decline of the idea of objective truth as it affected philosophy, theology, and the arts, and sought to bring people to a realization of its implications for meaning, morality, and humanness.
Schaeffer argued that since we are made in God's image and dwell in God's world, we cannot totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity ("the mannishness of man," as he put it). This includes our conscience and our desire for real love and significance. But insomuch as the unbeliever is consistent with his nonChristian worldview, he must deny one or more of these truths and put himself into a position of tension between the logic of his presuppositions and what he really takes the world to be like. Schaeffer aimed to highlight this by "taking the roof off" of the nonChristian worldview. This was preliminary to presenting the Christian message. Once one understands the inadequacies of one's worldview, the Christian message will look far more credible, especially if it answers questions otherwise unanswerable. Schaeffer was particularly adept at this form of negative apologetics, but never practiced it in a combative or insensitive manner. In fact, he strictly warned against engaging in apologetics as a game. He always affirmed that Christianity must be lovingly presented as objectively true, rational, and meaningful to all of life. We need not put Christianity into a nonrational, mystical "upper story" untethered to facts and logic. No, Christianity explains all of life better than any rival viewpoint.
Follis's next two chapters, "Rationality and Spirituality" and "Academic or Apologist?" take up matters of debate concerning Schaeffer's apologetic method and whether or not it was consistently Reformed. Follis covers this contested terrain fairly well, although most of these debates are at least two decades old and of little interest to those not already interested in Schaeffer or in apologetic method. Nevertheless, Follis sizes up the key issue adroitly and defends Schaeffer's apologetic approach, which he identifies as a nontechnical form of verificationism. That is, Christianity is presented as a hypothesis to be verified or refuted by various lines of evidence. In this, Schaeffer's approach was similar to that of the brilliant apologist Edward John Carnell. But Schaeffer seldom quoted Carnell, and the similarity of method seems to be more coincidental than the result of studied emulation. Schaeffer was, therefore, neither a presuppositionalist nor an evidentialist, although he has been wrongly accused of being both. Although Schaeffer did build a cumulative case for the rationality and livability of the Christian worldview, he did not stress the specific historical evidences for the reliability of the Bible. While this dimension of historical verification has always been a vital part of apologetic endeavor, the need for a substantial apologetic from history has increased in light recent scholarly and popular interest in "the historical Jesus." Follis would have done well to make this point, but he does not. Moreover, even the more philosophically developed verificationism of Carnell does not support natural theology per se. But in recent decades the various arguments for God's existence--ontological, cosmological, design, moral, and religious experience--have been revived and formulated quite cogently. Any well-orbed contemporary apologetic should make good use of these cognitive resources.
Follis underscores the fact that Schaeffer was not an academic by training or vocation. He did not have endless leisure time to spend in the study in order to refine his theories. People were literally pounding on the doors wanting to talk about the meaning of life! Schaeffer painted with a broad brush, but seldom blurred the issues. He never claimed to be the last word on any subject, but always gave an important first word on how subjects should be addressed.
The last chapter, "Love as the Final Apologetic," argues that Schaeffer's apologetic was never a matter of abstract theorizing. Rather, it was born of person-to-person engagement in Schaeffer's own home at L'Abri where he and Edith practiced radical hospitality. Schaeffer believed that "the final apologetic" was the love among Christians and of Christians of unbelievers. Decades before evangelicals began to write on "community," Schaeffer advocated and lived out a radical dependence on God in community. The Schaeffers began L'Abri by simply opening their home to skeptics and inquirers. This became a full-time ministry as hundreds of people came to study, work, and eat with the Schaeffers and other Christian workers. There was a cost: family life was stretched, all the Schaeffer's wedding gifts were trashed, and some of the pilgrims were less than pleasant to work with. Schaeffer's later books and global influence stemmed from this lived-out reality. There was no grand plan for a series of books or an influential intellectual platform. There was, in fact, no methodology! Rather, the Schaeffers wanted to live in such as way as to demonstrate the reality of God. They did not solicit funds or advertise their ministry. Instead, they prayed, served, and sought God day by day.
Follis emphasizes that the principles...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remarkable, April 8, 2007
Having read nine of Francis Schaeffer's books and listened to some L'Abri tapes, this book was naturally attractive to me. I was further impressed by the sharp cover design and the great endorsements it has received. I must say that the book met my high expectations. This is one of the most engaging and dynamic books I've read in quite some time.
The book seems to be wrapped up in three main pursuits: 1) Outlining Schaeffer's approach, 2) Outlining and responding to critiques of Schaeffer and 3) Reflecting on Schaeffer's methods and suggesting how to adapt them to our present day.
For the first two pursuits, the author does a fantastic job on outlining the thought of Calvin and later Reformed theologians on apologetics and reason. This was very important so that the reader will be better equipped to understand where Schaeffer (and his detractors) are coming from. He then proceeds to outline Schaeffer's approach, and afterwards he has some frank and helpful interaction with Schaeffer's critics. As this book states, Schaeffer has been criticized for being too rationalistic, not rational enough, too presuppositional, and not presuppositional enough. The author fairly represents these critiques and provides some very convincing responses. Many critiques of Schaffer's work involve ignorance of the full range of Schaeffer's work. Others involved taking for granted (or ignoring) what Schaeffer's mission and purpose really was. The clear lesson is that you can't understand someone if you do not understand the whole range of his work.
Many of the critiques reviewed seem to be clearly wrong and baseless, such as those from Clark Pinnock. The author still deals with them sensitively. However, the author shows a remarkable deal of care in regard to the controversy with Van Til. The author is clear that Schaeffer is not strictly speaking a presuppositionalist. Further, he shows that Schaeffer was eclectic, drawing both on Princeton evidentialism and Van Tilian presuppositionalism, though strictly speaking, he was not a follower of either. Schaeffer was not intent on producing an apologetical system. He was primarily an evangelist at heart and he saw apologetics as means to an end and presuppositions, not as axioms, but as verifiable (or falsifiable) basic ideas. This put him at odds with Van Til, though they both respected each other a great deal.
A discussion of Schaeffer's apologetic that focused only on the controversies with other Christians would be quite useless, though I must say the author did a fine job of that part of the book. To Schaeffer, apologetics is ultimately about evangelism. His ministry ultimately revolved around community, prayer, and the final apologetic--love. Hence, "the final apologetic" is the heading of the concluding chapter, which brings us to the last pursuit of the book. I must say that this section is packed with a few too many semi-related things, and is sort of overwhelming, but I don't want to detract from its value! This section is perhaps the most compelling part of the book. I found it to contain excellent thoughts and helpful advise. It is ultimately concerned with reflecting on things of utmost importance to Schaeffer such as love, community, prayer, etc. It also discusses the relevance of Schaeffer's approach in our day, the progression from modernism to post-modernism, the emerging movement, etc. However, it is ultimately concerned with how we can apply and revise what we learn from Schaeffer so it has an impact today.
There is so much written by and about Francis Schaeffer that it is hard to believe that this book could provide something meaningful, let alone valuable. But Brian Follis has done a fine job, and I believe he has accomplished just that! I highly recommend that you get this book and read it if you have any sort of interest in the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer. And if you don't already have that interest, who knows? This book may spark a new interest in you!
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