Schaeffer on Schaeffer, Part I: A Compassionate Critic

Question: Many Christian leaders have tried unsuccessfully to maintain the respect and enthusiasm of young people over a long period of time. But you have succeeded. Why?

Answer: First of all, different people have different qualities and gifts from the Lord. Having said this, I think there are some human elements.

I have dealt with the questions that have really touched on the developing contemporary scene and I haven’t gotten stuck back at the point of my own studies when I was a young man, the way some people seem to do. One reason for this is that I was not raised as a Christian. I went through a period when I was agnostic. I became a Christian at eighteen simply through reading my own Bible after reading a lot of philosophy. Therefore I think my own conversion is conducive to thinking in modern terms. Also, part of my education has been a continuing education, not just from the books that I read but from the many, many people that I talk to. So often Christians don’t listen to what the other person says; they just present the Christian position. I’ve always tried to listen to people who have come from all over the world and from all kinds of disciplines.

When young people come to me they find empathy, I think, for the simple reason that I don’t write off their questions, intellectually or otherwise, and just give them a formula. I really try to deal with the question.

Q: Some of your critics admit that what you’ve just said is true within the context of L’Abri. When you are with someone in person, you do understand and empathize with their questioning. On the other hand, in your writings—on the cold, dispassionate black and white page—when you deal with people like Karl Barth, for example, that same sort of true listening doesn’t occur. There you have a tendency to categorize and typecast people. Would you agree?

A: No, I really don’t. When you’re not writing twenty-six books about Karl Barth, you have to make summaries and, in general, my summaries are correct. Now everybody makes mistakes—I’m sure I’ve made some—but I would say that I’ve tried to treat other thinkers compassionately. In the type of writing I do, you must summarize: you can’t possibly deal with all the nuances. So I try to find the central things they’ve said and the results they’ve had and present them, and I always hold my breath because I know there are certain nuances that would sound different if I were talking for two hours instead of writing on one page.

Q: When How Should We Then Live? was breaking sales records, your publisher took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, asking, “Why is the secular media ignoring this book?” Does it disappoint you that the secular media has not picked up on your thoughts?

A: Yes, in a way; because I have tried to write my books to two audiences, the Christians and the non-Christians. The first publisher I offered a book to turned it down because, he said, it seemed directed at both audiences. I was sure books could be written and directed at both audiences, and factually this has proved to be true. Many non-Christians, whom Christianity wouldn’t normally reach, have been touched and even changed.

I’m disappointed, sure, because I’d like to see as big an impact as we can for the Lord in that world. Yet in order to be accepted in the secular media area, you generally have to be within their framework and I’m outside of it. But I don’t know anyone who has really taken a clear Christian position who has been more widely accepted in the secular area.

Q: In the evangelical world, at least, you have become a media figure with people bidding for your book contracts and audiences of seven thousand packing auditoriums, when you’ve been accustomed to a room of thirty people discussing issues. Has that been a difficult adjustment for you?

A: It hasn’t really, because I believe it is just an extension of my previous work. The Lord gave us something that none of us were sure could occur: an intimacy in the midst of those seven thousand which I found just as intimate as I did speaking to a hundred people in our chapel at L’Abri. So I haven’t found any tension at all there. As far as the actual commercial side of it, you have to live in the world you’re in. And this is the world we live in, in the same way supermarkets are in our generation. You might wish that the Christian booksellers’ business was a different business than it is in our present day. But if you’re going to publish books, you have to publish them in a setting that exists and not one that doesn’t exist.

Q: Do you think that you have been substantially tially changed by all that’s happened?

A: I’ve thought and prayed about this. I don’t see changes. Far more important than my own opinion is that of my friends who would be very honest, and they don’t seem to find any change either. Now, who knows? I have to wait to talk to the Lord on Judgment Day to be sure.

Q: Your wife very vividly describes your compassion for people. You care for people, and you listen to them intently. Have you always had this quality?

A: I think it is a gift.

Q: Was it present before you were a Christian? Were you drawn toward people?

A: I don’t think so. Neither was my intellectual interest. I got rotten grades until I became a Christian, and after that I always studied to try to excel. I graduated magna cum laude from Hampden-Sydney College even though in high school I hardly made it.

Incidentally, I would want to add something else—I know I have an analytical mind, and one thing I’ve learned in a long lifetime is that you don’t meet many people who have really analytical minds. This I had before I was a Christian. I became a Christian after analyzing the liberalism I was hearing preached on one side, and the philosophy I was reading on the other.

But I really believe that my ability to sit and talk with one person or seven thousand and answer the questions the way I answer them, covering the intellectual spectrum, is as much a gift of God as anything, and I think the Lord can take it away. As long as that gift is useful in this world, I’m thankful to have it.

Since I’ve had cancer we’ve realized more than ever before how God has used our work. I have professors in law who write and say, “After all my law studies it was reading your books that made me understand the modern framework of law.” Or people in medicine who write and say, “The whole discussion of medical ethics fell into place.”

Q: Could you give me a brief summary of the crucial thinkers who set you going on the way you’ve ended up, even back in college days?

A: Literally hundreds of people have influenced my thought. But there were certain key people who made a real difference in my thinking. It goes all the way back to my junior high school days where I had just one art teacher. I came from a family which was not interested in art at all. I didn’t even know she was a Christian, but she opened the door for me to an interest in art.

Then I had a professor in college, my philosophy professor, who was brilliant. I was his favorite student, because I think I probably was the only student in the class who understood him and stimulated him. He used to invite me down at night to sit around his pot-bellied stove and just discuss. He and I ended up in two very different camps. He became committed to neo-orthodox thinking, but he was very important in stimulating my intellectual processes.

Q: What historical people did you derive large benefit from? Of course the Reformers in a theological sense.

A: I tried to study the whole spectrum of the historic Christian background, specifically out of the Reformation, so I come from a Reformed background by choice. Then I went to Westminster for two years and to Faith Seminary. Cornelius Van Til and Allan MacRae of Biblical Theological Seminary stirred my intellectual thought. Those who are trying to minimize me try to link my thinking only into the Princeton thinking of Hodge and Warfield and so on. But a careful reading of my works shows that, although I am very thankful for those men and their day of history, I don’t believe they were facing the same problems we are facing in our day. My theological position would be similar to theirs, but our respective presentations are necessarily different.

Q: Because of the breadth of fields that you try to cover, are you pretty much limited to secondary sources? There’s no way you could encompass music, art, philosophy, literature, science, etc., through primary sources.

A: Secondary sources are very important to me, of course. On the other hand, I do try to keep up on primary things I think are crucial, so that when I read a secondary source I have a really good basis of judgment.

Also, you must realize that I do not work in isolation. L’Abri is not myself. L’Abri is made up now of a group of scholars. The outstanding example, I guess, is Rookmaker, whom I met first when he was still a student. Both he and I say that we have kicked stuff around for so long that in large areas, including art, we would hesitate to say who thought of an idea first. So I haven’t worked in isolation. I think that anybody who goes back searching for one or two people who can explain my position in my writings and my attitudes is pursuing a hopeless task.

Q: Have any of your major views significantly changed in the last decade—I mean, really abrupt reversals?

A: If I thought for a couple of days I might think of something. Not basic ones, I think. I’ve made tremendous shifts in details. But I think not in major views.

Q: At what point, then, was your basic framework pretty well developed?

A: Theologically, it was developed all the way back before I went to seminary. When I went to Hampden-Sydney College, the Bible professor, the college president, and the college chaplain were outstanding Christians. But I never would have had the equipment or the content to write the books I’ve written and deal with the people I deal with across such a wide area if I had remained in the United States. I think going to Europe was providential: it gave a wider intellectual framework from people coming from all over the world.

People often say, “Why don’t you come and help your own country?” But Edith and I have often said we think we’ve been greater help to the United States by having gone to Europe.

Q: Do you read in other languages?

A: No. And it’s been a limitation. My family’s all bilingual (French), but I’m not.

Q: As your role has changed over the years, do you think you have been subjected to different, specific attacks of Satan?

A: Yes, there would be a greater danger of spiritual pride, dealing with large numbers and with so many people reading the books. But then I quickly counteract that by saying I’ve never seen greater spiritual pride in my life than when somebody was elected president of the Sunday school class with three people in it. Pride is something inside you. Mere size doesn’t change the danger of it. Spiritual pride is something we’re all prone to. I believe Satan is playing chess against me and against you and he is clever enough to play it on the existential board we’re living on at the moment.

G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.

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