Related articles and links |  1 of 3

Truth with Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer
Bryan A. Follis • Crossway • 208 pages • $15.99

Bryan A. Follis says an examination of Francis Schaeffer's books and his relationships at L'Abri reveals—contrary to his reputation—that Schaeffer was concerned about both truth and love. Follis quotes Schaeffer's remark that people must come to "understand that the gospel is truth … on the basis of good and sufficient reason," and also traces Schaeffer's emphasis on love to his 1951 "spiritual crisis" (involving dissatisfaction with his fundamentalist roots in the Bible Presbyterian Church).

Follis, rector of All Saints' Church, Belfast, Northern Ireland, zealously defends Schaeffer against the charge, leveled by Clark Pinnock and others, of overemphasizing reason. However, his rebuttal is clouded by inadequate definition of their critique.

Follis also resists Thomas V. Morris's contention that Schaeffer doesn't provide evidence adequate to support his claim that Christianity must be true. Morris objects to the must on the grounds that Schaeffer's arguments don't rule out all alternatives to Christianity. He thinks Schaeffer's arguments would be stronger if they instead demonstrated the possibility or plausibility of Christianity relative to other possible explanations of human experience.

Still, this book is valuable insofar as it shows the importance of Schaeffer's contributions despite the limitations of his methods and arguments. It would have been more effective if the author (who was brought back to Christ through a Schaeffer film series) had been more willing to acknowledge Schaeffer's shortcomings.

James E. Taylor; Professor of Philosophy, Westmont College

Q&A: Bryan A. Follis
Interview by Susan Wunderink

What made you write this book?

I had an interest in Francis Schaeffer for many years, going back to the time I was a university undergraduate. Initially, his apologetics drew me in. At this time, 20 years after his death, I thought maybe it was time for an evaluation and a look at both his apologetics and his spirituality.

How would you describe Schaeffer as a person? If we met him, what would he seem like to us?

Probably a bit strange. The knickers, goatee beard. A pretty intense individual, but an extremely caring individual. What I find fascinating is that when Schaeffer made it big in the 1970s and early 80s, when he was speaking in conferences of 5,000 and 7,000 people, his old slogan of "there are no little people, no little places" still rang true for him. So on one occasion, he was missing for a seminar. They couldn't find him, and they tracked back his movements to find Francis and Edith Schaeffer sharing with a chambermaid, sort of one of the junior staff at the hotel. Not an important person. But to him she was important, and I think that was part of the key to the man's success. People mattered. He was a kind, generally compassionate man, and his apologetics were a means of trying to reach people. They weren't simply a professional ministry tool. They flowed from his love for Christ and his real love for people.

What was Schaeffer's approach to truth?

Schaeffer himself came from a nominally Christian home. His family were blue-collar folk who had very nominal faith. He, actually an agnostic, came to faith when he was 18 through reading the Bible and comparing it with Greek philosophy. He became an evangelical Christian, but in later life, he became quite disillusioned through a spiritual crisis in his mid-30s at the lack of the truth being lived out. He looked around him at the fundamentalist movement, and people around him were arguing very strongly for evangelical biblical truth, against modernists, against liberals. Ends [were used] to justify the means—a complete lack of love. [The experience] brought him in a spiritual crisis back to the Bible and back to Christ working though the trustworthiness of Scripture and a renewed experience of Christ. His truth and love were both located in the personhood of Jesus Christ and then seeing this truth in Christ, the revelation of Scripture corresponding to reality. He took a look around the created order: It matches God's Word, and God's Word matches the creation, and he saw the two at work together.

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page

May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5