Francis Schaeffer

Life

Schaeffer was born on January 30, 1912, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in 1935 and married Edith Seville the same year. He studied at Westminster Theological Seminary under teachers including Cornelius Van Til. He then transferred to Faith Theological Seminary and in 1938 became its first graduate. That same year he became the first minister ordained in the Bible Presbyterian Church. After serving as a pastor in the United States, he went to Switzerland as a missionary in the late 1940s. Around 1951 he went through a profound spiritual crisis, an experience he later described as the starting point of L'Abri. In 1955 he left his mission board and began L'Abri in Huémoz, Switzerland. From 1982 he was a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). He died on May 15, 1984, in Rochester, Minnesota, while undergoing treatment for lymphoma.

Ministry and Work

L'Abri is French for "the shelter." The Schaeffers opened their home to the young people who came to them, living with their guests and discussing questions of philosophy and faith. People from diverse backgrounds gathered there, including atheists and adherents of other religions. As a matter of principle, the community did not solicit funds for its operation but sought its needs through prayer. L'Abri later spread to England, the Netherlands, the United States, and elsewhere.

In 1968 Schaeffer published The God Who Is There and Escape from Reason, followed in 1972 by He Is There and He Is Not Silent. In these books he argued that modern Western thought, by separating reason from faith, had lost absolute truth and had consequently arrived at relativism and despair. As the alternative, he presented the truth of the Bible. How Should We Then Live? (1976) surveyed the history of Western culture. Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979), co-written with C. Everett Koop, addressed the issue of abortion. In The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984) he warned that evangelicalism was losing hold of authoritative truths such as biblical inerrancy (the belief that the Bible is without error).

Influence on the Korean Church

Schaeffer's works have been translated into Korean and published as a collected edition. They are frequently cited in discussions of the "Christian worldview" within the Korean church. The Rev. Sung In-kyung and his wife, who had visited L'Abri in Switzerland, founded Korea L'Abri in 1990; it is now located in Yangyang, Gangwon Province.

Assessment

Supporters credit Schaeffer with modeling both intellectual apologetics and a hospitable community life. They also hold that he turned evangelicals' attention toward philosophy, the arts, and culture.

Critics contend that his interpretation of intellectual history is overly simplistic. He held no earned doctorate and never served as a full-time professor. He also clashed with historians such as Mark Noll and George Marsden over the interpretation of American history. His apologetic method drew criticism from both sides: evidentialists regarded him as a presuppositionalist (one who argues from biblical presuppositions), while presuppositionalists in the Van Til tradition considered him to lean toward rationalism. Because of his anti-abortion activism in his later years and his book A Christian Manifesto, he is also regarded as having laid the intellectual foundation for the American Christian Right. Defenders respond to these criticisms by noting that Schaeffer saw himself not as a scholar but as an evangelist.