…philosophy and religion deal with the same basic questions. Christians, and especially evangelical Christians, have tended to forget this. Philosophy and religion do not deal with different questions, though they give different answers and use different terms. The basic questions of both philosophy and religion (and I mean religion here in the wide sense, including Christianity) are the questions of Being (that is, what exists), of man and his dilemma (that is, morals), and of epistemology (that is, how man knows). Philosophy deals with these points, but so does religion, including evangelical, orthodox Christianity.
Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1
We need to learn that when we begin to tamper with the scriptural concept of true moral guilt, whether it be psychological tampering, genetic tampering, theological tampering or any other kind of tampering, our view of what Jesus did will no longer be scriptural. Christ died for man who had true moral guilt because man had made a real and true choice.
Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, Ch. 2
The Bible says that you are wonderful because you are made in the image of God, but that you are flawed because at a space-time point of history man fell. The reformers knew that man was separated from God because of manís revolt against God. But the reformers, and the people who following the Reformation built the culture of Northern Europe, knew that while man is morally guilty before the God who exists, man is not nothing. Modern man tends to think that he is nothing. The reformers knew they were the very opposite of nothing, because they knew they were made in the image of God. Even though they were fallen and, without the nonhumanistic solution of Christ and His substitutionary death, were separated from God and would go to Hell, this still did not mean that they were nothing.
Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, Ch. 2
Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.
Francis Schaeffer
When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, “not many men are in the room” — that is, although world-views have many variations, there are not many basic world-views or basic presuppositions.
Francis Schaeffer
“The gospel has been described as a pool in which a toddler can wade and yet an elephant can swim. It is both simple enough to tell to a child and profound enough for the greatest minds to explore.”
–Tim Keller
“In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.”
Francis Schaeffer
We’ve just finished a week of prayer at Nene Family Church. On Thursday last week I came across this quote…
‘You see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I dream the things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’” George Bernard Shaw
This is very provoking when you apply it to the church! I want to always live as a ‘George Bernard Shaw-type’ dreamer who is looking beyond the established status quo to the glorious possibilities that God has for His church!
I’ve just started reading the classic book by Francis Schaeffer ‘The God Who Is There’. Schaeffer was the founder of L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, is the author of many books, including The Mark of the Christian and Escape from Reason. He was, until his death in 1984, a noted apologist for the Christian faith. I love the reasoned arguments that Schaeffer outlines for the orthodox belief in God! As a result I’ve decided to post 7 great quotes by Schaeffer
Quote 1:
“Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life.”
(Francis Schaeffer)
Yesterday a good guy from our church led us in communion. He opened up the communion by applying John Piper’s worship quote to communion. He said… “our times spent round the communion table should be times of gravity and gladness”. Gravity and the magnitude of what Christ both gave up and accomplished for us. Gladness at the wonderful inheritance that is now our due to his sacrificial death for us. What a fitting description!
