341 - How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
By Francis A. Schaeffer
Old Tappan, N.J., Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976. 288 pp. $12.95.

This volume must be viewed in a larger context. The publisher offers the book as the culmination of some forty years of work in apologetics and cultural analysis by Francis A. Schaeffer, popular "missionary to the intellectuals" (to use the words of Time magazine) through his celebrated Swiss chalet known as L'Abri. This volume is, moreover, only one component of a larger media package (containing a ten-episode film or television series and co-ordinated study guides) modelled after Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series. These films have already become a major force in the church world, attracting thousands to expensive previews, and launching his producer son's "Franky Schaeffer V Productions," now working on a follow-up series on "What Ever Happened to the Human Race." As such, this book constitutes one of the most important efforts at cultural and theological analysis to issue from the "post-fundamentalist evangelicalism" or "neo-evangelicalism" that emerged in this country after World War II. Indeed, the dust-jacket blurbs hyperbolically suggest that Schaeffer is "the foremost evangelical thinker of our day."

Schaeffer modestly disavows any effort to cover the whole of western culture and focuses instead on "analysis of key moments in history which have formed our present culture." The author is primarily interested in the "presuppositions" and "world views" upon which aspects of the culture are based, and he attempts to trace their impact through three strands-philosophy, science, and religion. After a very quick look at the decline of Ancient Rome (due, we are told, to "no sufficient inward base" or an inadequate world view) and a slightly longer survey of the Middle Ages, Schaeffer turns to his special interest, the Renaissance and Reformation and the interplay of their themes. But the golden age of the Reformation was short-lived, and almost half of the book traces the "breakdown" of science, philosophy, and religion in the modern age and the consequent pessimism that Schaeffer discerns. Here the author is perhaps at his best, reworking material presented in a score of other books-especially his Inter-Varsity Press trilogy The God Who is There, Escape From Reason, and He Is There And He Is Not Silent.

In spite of all the analysis offered, the basic purpose is apologetic and the interpretive scheme simple. The "pristine Christianity set forth in the New Testament" was progressively distorted through the Middle Ages by the admixture of a "humanistic element" climaxing in

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Aquinas and the Roman Catholic synthesis. Biblical Christianity was largely recovered in the Reformation, but successively undermined by the reassertion of Renaissance humanism, and eventually the Enlightenment, so as to lead to the present "collapse" that must follow from the eroding of Christian presuppositions. A recurrent motif is that only a society built on "biblical absolutes" can resist totalitarianism. This claim sets the choice implicitly reflected in the title: either re-establish society on a Reformationally understood "biblical base" or face an imposed totalitarian order.

I have tried to follow Schaeffer's work from early years before his popularity of the last decade-and, in fact, was prevented only by the 1967 Six-Day War in Israel from making my own pilgrimage to L'Abri in the manner of the young evangelical intellectuals of those days. In view of Schaeffer's great impact (millions of his books have been sold), I wish that I could be more enthusiastic about his work. Actually, I find very little of value. For me at least, not only is the underlying theology impossible, but the consequent cultural analysis shallow, simplistic, and in many cases distorted.

Schaeffer's whole historical analysis is, ironically, fundamentally predicated on what can only be considered an "a-historical" basis. He is concerned not only to establish the necessity of a transcendent foundation for society and thought, but assumes that such a foundation is effective only if it is manifested in terms of "absolute, universal standards" or "absolute values." His view of religious authority and biblical inspiration is explicitly predicated upon the idea that "when God tells people what he is like, what he says is not relatively true but absolutely true" (p. 86). This assumption leads Schaeffer immediately to a strong doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture and a fundamental opposition not only to the historical interpretation of the Bible but apparently to the whole modern historical consciousness.

Schaeffer makes some strange moves to preserve this position. In spite of his tendency to absolutize a rather scholastic reading of the Reformation, he is willing to criticize the Reformed tradition for its early lack of missionary activity, its "non-compassionate use of accumulated wealth," and its failure to oppose slavery and racial prejudice. Schaeffer is, however, quite clear that the Bible does provide "absolute" guidance on these issues; it was only inconsistency and disobedience that failed to produce, for example, opposition to slavery. There is in this book no sense of the ambiguity of the biblical witness on such issues as slavery or the role of women, no acknowledgment of the extent to which the critique of slavery required a hermeneutical shift inconsistent with his own theology, or no awareness of how the opposition to slavery was at least in part associated with a repudiation of the Reformed determinism that he would apparently defend.

This is but one illustration of the unnuanced reading provided. Specialist friends almost always report to me that his historical descriptions caricature beyond recognition. I have certainly found this to be true. Perhaps I had the misfortune to come to faith through the impact

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of Kierkegaard and to find theological nurture from the thought of Barth-two basic figures marking for Schaeffer the breakdown of philosophy and theology respectively. But even when I try to be objective, I find his portrayal of these figures not only unsympathetic but distorted and often trivial. On Kierkegaard is blamed the development of the existential methodology (usually so italicized in this book) and on Barth the importation of this abomination into theology. An appended "special note" intended "primarily for Christians" makes clear that anything less than a doctrine of the total inerrancy of the Bible with regard to "cosmos, history, and specific commands in morals" falls under his condemnation as existential methodology. From my own perspective, it is this assumption that seems not only to prevent Schaeffer from even understanding what the real theological issues are but also precludes his providing a useful or undistorted reading of the history he surveys. I am left therefore with feelings of sadness that all the effort that has gone into this work has produced so little of value, and regret for the intellectual impact that this book and its associated film series will have upon our churches.

Donald W. Dayton
North Park Theological Seminary
Chicago, Illinois