Francis A. Schaeffer Quotes & Sayings

Leonardo da Vinci had foreseen that beginning humanistically with mathematics one has only particulars and will never come to universals or meaning, but will end only with mechanics. It — Francis A. Schaeffer

The ironic fact is that humanism which began with man's being central eventually had no real meaning for people. On the other hand, if one begins with the Bible's position that man is created by God and in the image of God, there is a basis for that person's dignity. — Francis A. Schaeffer

There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind
what they are in their thought-world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought-world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live
this lost world
means that we desert the people who need our greatest help. — Francis A. Schaeffer

To be really Bible-believing Christians we need to practice, simultaneously, at each step of the way, two biblical principles.
One principle is that of the purity of the visible church. Scripture commands that we must do more than just talk about the purity of the visible church; we must actually practice it, even when it is costly.
The second principle is that of an observable love among all true Christians. In the flesh we can stress purity without love, or we can stess love without purity; we cannot stress both simultaneously. To do so we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ and to the Holy Spirit. Without that, a stress on purity becomes hard, proud, and legalistic; likewise without it a stress on love becomes sheer compromise.
Spiritually begins to have real meaning in our lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness of God and the love of God. We never do this perfectly, but we must look to the living Christ to help us do it truly. — Francis A. Schaeffer

God's Word will never pass away, but looking back to the Old Testament and since the time of Christ, with tears we must say that because of a lack of fortitude and faithfulness on the part of God's people, God's Word has many times been allowed to be bent, to conform to the surrounding, passing, changing culture of that moment rather than to stand as the inerrant Word of God judging the form of the world spirit and the surrounding culture of that moment. In the name of The Lord Jesus Christ, may our children and grandchildren not say that such can be said about us. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Today we have a weakness in our education process in failing to understand the natural associations between the disciplines. We tend to study all our disciplines in unrelated parallel lines. This tends to be true in both Christian and secular education. This is one of the reasons why evangelical Christians have been taken by surprise at the tremendous shift that has come in our generation. — Francis A. Schaeffer

How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art. — Francis A. Schaeffer

There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.
We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Bible is the weapon which enables us to join with our Lord on the offensive in defeating the spiritual hosts of wickedness. But is must be the Bible as the Word of God in everything it teaches- in matters if salvation, but just as much where it speaks of history and science and morality. If we compromise in any if these areas ... we destroy the power of the Word and ourselves in the hands of the enemy. — Francis A. Schaeffer

I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist. — Francis A. Schaeffer

But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God. It is because there is a personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings. Human life then is filled with dignity, and the state and humanistically oriented law have no right and no authority to take human life arbitrarily in the way it is being taken. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We were free to create, as long as we never forgot that we are slaves to Jesus. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Lex Rex has become Rex Lex. Arbitrary judgment concerning current sociological good is king — Francis A. Schaeffer

Christian art today should be twentieth-century art. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The problem which confronts us as we approach modern man today is not how we are to change Christian teaching in order to make it more palatable, for to that would mean throwing away any chance of giving the real answer to man in despair; rather it is only a problem of how we many communicate the Gospel so that it is understood. — Francis A. Schaeffer

How can art be sufficiently meaningful? If it is offered up merely before men, then it does not have a sufficient integration point. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Lord calls us to love all people, including those who are enemies of the gospel and those who blaspheme. This may not be comfortable, and it may not be easy, but this is the gospel of Christ, for He loved His enemies so much that He died to save us. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Christian, therefore, has a sociological base which is extremely strong. As humanists are fighting today against prejudice, they have little philosophical base for their battle. But as a Christian I do: No matter who I look at, no matter where he is, every man is created in the image of God as much as I am. So the Bible — Francis A. Schaeffer

We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state. — Francis A. Schaeffer

I am not a Bible-believing Christian in the fullest sense simply by believing the right doctrines, but as I live in practice in this supernatural world. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The tree in the field is to be treated with respect. It is not to be romanticized as the old lady romanticizes her cat (that is, she reads human reactions into it) ... But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize that God made it and it deserves respect because he made it as a tree. Christians who do not believe in the complete evolutionary scale have reason to respect nature as the total evolutionist never can, because we believe that God made these things specifically in their own areas. So if we are going to argue against evolutionists intellectually, we should show the results of our beliefs in our attitudes. The Christian is a man who has a reason for dealing with each created thing on a high level of respect. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We cannot deal with people like human beings, we cannot deal with them on the high level of true humanity, unless we really know their origin-who they are. God tells man who he is. God tells us that He created man in His image. So man is something wonderful. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless. — Francis A. Schaeffer

In a fallen world, we must be willing to face the fact that however lovingly we preach the gospel, if a man rejects it he will be miserable. It is dark out there. — Francis A. Schaeffer

True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible tells us to do as absolutes which are sinful- which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these things the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. It is not only that true spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual. — Francis A. Schaeffer

If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography ... , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us. — Francis A. Schaeffer

What is is right. Thus — Francis A. Schaeffer

Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over nature. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences. — Francis A. Schaeffer

If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state. No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Christian in the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars. — Francis A. Schaeffer

People today are trying to hang on to the dignity of man, but they do not know how to, because they have lost the truth that man is made in the image of God ... We are watching our culture put into effect the fact that when you tell men long enough that they are machines, it soon begins to show in their actions. You see it in our whole culture
in the theater of cruelty, in the violence in the streets, in the death of man in art and life. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world view. Man must be treated fairly as man. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Regardless of a man's system, he has to live in God's world. — Francis A. Schaeffer

To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it. — Francis A. Schaeffer

For many, what they see on television becomes more true than what they see with their eyes in the external world. But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television and has been edited. The viewer does not see the event. He sees in edited form of the event. It is not the event which is seen, but an edited symbol or an edited image of the event. An aura and illusion of objectivity and truth is built up, which could not be totally the case, even if the people shooting the film were completely neutral. — Francis A. Schaeffer

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary. — Francis A. Schaeffer

A compassionate open home is part of Christian responsibility, and should be practiced up to the level of capacity. — Francis A. Schaeffer

A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We are to have a forgiving spirit even before the other person expresses regret for his wrong. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The hippies of the 1960s did understand something. They were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it too ... More than this, they were right in the fact that the plastic culture - modern man, the mechanistic worldview in university textbooks and in practice, the total threat of the machine, the establishment technology, the bourgeois upper middle class - is poor in its sensitivity to nature ... As a utopian group, the counterculture understands something very real, both as to the culture as a culture, but also as to the poverty of modern man's concept of nature and the way the machine is eating up nature on every side. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Culture and the freedoms of people are fragile. Without a sufficient base, when such pressures come only time is needed - and often not a great deal of time - before there is a collapse. — Francis A. Schaeffer

To demand the art forms of yesterday in either word systems or art is a bourgeois failure. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Sweeping out of the inward positive reality, there is to be a positive manifestation externally. It is not just that we are dead to certain things, but we are to love God, we are to be alive to Him, we are to be in communion with Him, in this present moment in history. And we are to love men, to be alive to men as men, and to be in communication on a true personal level with men, in this present moment in history. — Francis A. Schaeffer

I live in a thought world which is filled with creativity; inside my head there is creative imagination. Why? Because God, who is the Creator, has made me in His own image, I can go out in imagination beyond the stars. This is true not only for the Christian, but for every man. Every man is made in the image of God; therefore, no man in his imagination is confined to his own body. — Francis A. Schaeffer

But when the world can turn around and see a group of God's people exhibiting substantial healing in the area of human relationships in their present life, then the world will take notice. — Francis A. Schaeffer

This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free. Once more a humanistic utopianism ends in tyranny, whether in Rousseau's writing or in the Reign of Terror which carried his position to its conclusion. Robespierre, — Francis A. Schaeffer

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually corporately, tending to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them. — Francis A. Schaeffer

promises: "And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and — Francis A. Schaeffer

The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment - the infinite, personal God who is really there - then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth. — Francis A. Schaeffer

As my son Frankie put it, Humanism has changed the Twenty-third Psalm: They began - I am my shepherd. Then - Sheep are my shepherd. Then - Everything is my shepherd. Finally - Nothing is my shepherd. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Countries which have a different base, for example, a Christian one (or at least one with the memory of a Christian foundation) may indeed act most inconsistently and horribly. But when a state with a materialistic base acts arbitrarily and gives no dignity to man, internally or externally, it is being consistent to its basic presuppositions and principles. — Francis A. Schaeffer

If you demand perfection or nothing, you will always end up with nothing. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Among religious writings the Bible is unique in its attitude to its great men. Even many Christian biographies puff up the men they describe. But the Bible exhibits the whole man, so much so that it is almost embarrassing at times. If we would teach our children to read the Bible truly, it would be a good vaccination against cynical realism from the non-Christian side, because the Bible portrays its characters as honestly as any debunker or modern cynic ever could. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Humanism means that the man is the measure of all things ... But it is not only that man must start from himself in the area of knowledge and learning, but any value system must come arbitrarily from man himself by arbitrary choice. — Francis A. Schaeffer

In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual. — Francis A. Schaeffer

There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The strength of the Christian system - the acid test of it - is that everything fits under the apex of the existent, infinite-personal God, and it is the only system in the world where this is true. No other system has an apex under which everything fits.That is why I am a Christian and no longer an agnostic. In all the other systems, something 'sticks out,' something cannot be included; and it has to be mutilated or ignored. But without losing his own integrity, the Christian can see everything fitting into place beneath the Christian apex of the existence of the infinite-personal God who is there (p. 81). — Francis A. Schaeffer

in the absence of a biblical morality a new elite will always come forward to dictate arbitrary absolutes to society — Francis A. Schaeffer

Christianity is not just involved with "salvation", but with the total man in the total world. The Christian message begins with the existence of God forever, and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation. We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that. Man has a value because he is made in the image of God. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Christianity is realistic because it says that if there is no truth, there is also no hope; and there can be no truth if there is no adequate base. It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It leaves absolutely no room for a romantic answer. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We should realize that if something untrue or immoral is stated in great art, it can be far more devastating than if it is expressed in poor art. The greater the artistic expression, the more important it is to consciously bring it and it's worldview under the judgment of Christ and the Bible. The common reaction among many however, is just the opposite. Ordinarily, many seem to feel that the greater the art, the less we ought to be critical of its worldview. This we must reverse. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Cross of Christ is to be a reality to me not only once for all at my conversion, but all through my life as a Christian. True spirituality does not stop at the negative (death), but without the negative - in comprehension and in practice - we are not ready to go on. — Francis A. Schaeffer

A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society, the way that a child catches the measles. But people with understanding realize that their presuppositions should be *chosen* after a careful consideration of which worldview is true. — Francis A. Schaeffer

As Christians, we must see that just because an artist -even a great artist- portrays a worldview in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that worldview. Good art heightens the impact of that worldview, but it does not make it true. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Christ is with those in paradise now. But Christ - the same Christ, with the same reality - promises the Christian that he will bring forth fruit through us in this life now. The power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ will bring forth this fruit through us now. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We may not play with the new theology even if we may think we can turn it to our advantage. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The author called us to re-examine assumptions bequeathed to us from Greece and Rome. Just as a bridge built by the Roman Empire might have held up tolerably for centuries under foot traffic but crumble under the weight of a modern truck, the author cautions that classical thinking had limits exposed by contemporary events and certainly exposed by the modern world. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains!" Rousseau saw the primitive as innocent and autonomous freedom as the final good. We — Francis A. Schaeffer

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking,I am not confessing Christ. (Martin Luther) — Francis A. Schaeffer

Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person as a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism. — Francis A. Schaeffer

I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract. — Francis A. Schaeffer

When this happens, as it is today, then, to quote Eric Hoffer, "When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom."
At that point the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between authoritarian government from the right or the left: the results are the same. An elite, an authoritarianism as such, will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it - from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business, and the affairs of daily life. That is just what Rome did with Caesar Augustus — Francis A. Schaeffer

As a Christian I do not have to find my validity in my status, or by thinking myself above other men. My validity and my status are found in being before the God who is there. — Francis A. Schaeffer

There is no place in God's world where there are no people who will come and share a home as long as it is a real home. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Men in western governments who were themselves are often modern men, did not understand that freedom without chaos is not a magic formula which can be implanted anywhere. Rather, being modern men, it was their view that, because human race had evolved to a certain level by some such year as 1950, democracy could be planted anywhere from the outside. They had carefully closed their eyes to the fact that freedom without chaos had come forth from a Christian base. They did not understand that freedom without chaos could not be separated from its roots. ( ... ) Many countries where democracy has been imposed from the outside or from top downward, authoritarianism has increasingly become the rule of the day — Francis A. Schaeffer

If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God. — Francis A. Schaeffer

I have observed one thing among true Christians in their differences in many countries: What divides and severs true Christian groups and Christians - what leaves a bitterness that can last for 20, 30, 40 years (or for 50 or 60 years in a son's or daughter's memory) - is not the issue of doctrine or belief that caused the differences in the first place. Invariably, it is a lack of love - and the bitter things that are said by true Christians in the midst of differences. — Francis A. Schaeffer

What kind of judgment does one apply, then, to a work of art? I believe that there are four basic standards: (1) technical excellence, (2) validity, (3) intellectual content, the world view which comes through and (4) the integration of content and vehicle. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The principle of saying no to self lies at the heart of my attitude toward the world as it maintains its alien stand in rebellion against the Creator. — Francis A. Schaeffer

But our world at the end of the twentieth century has so much destruction without Christian artists so emphasizing the minor theme in the total body of their work that they add to the poorness and destruction of our generation. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Yet the possibility of information storage, beyond what men and governments ever had before, can make available at the touch of a button a man's total history (including remarks put on his record by his kindergarten teacher about his ability and character). And with the computer must be placed the modern scientific technical capability which exists for wholesale monitoring of telephone, cable, Telex and microwave transmissions which carry much of today's spoken and written communications. The combined use of the technical capability of listening in on all these forms of communications with the high-speed computer literally leaves no place to hide and little room for privacy. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Every once in a while in my discussions someone asks how I can believe in the Trinity. My answer is always the same. I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers. Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity, there are no answers. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The human hand has an amazing quality that nothing else has: tremendous efficiency of strength and yet total gentleness. — Francis A. Schaeffer

When a man comes under the blood of Christ, his whole capacity as a man is refashioned. His soul is saved, yes, but so are his mind and his body. True spirituality means the lordship of Christ over the total man. — Francis A. Schaeffer

People have presuppositions ... By 'presuppositions' we mean the basic way that an individual looks at life- his worldview. The grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. A person's presuppositions provide the basis for their values- and therefore the basis for their decisions. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Actually we do everything we can, whether it is in a philosophic sense or a practical sense, to put ourselves at the center of the universe. — Francis A. Schaeffer

For a long time this Bohemian life was taken to be the ideal for the artist, and it has come in the last few decades to be considered an ideal for more than the artist. — Francis A. Schaeffer

And with truth comes beauty and with this beauty a freedom before God. — Francis A. Schaeffer

The Christian should be the man with the flaming imagination and the beauty of creation. — Francis A. Schaeffer

What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be a vehicle for self-conscious evangelism. Christians ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. The Christian is the really free man. He is free to have imagination. — Francis A. Schaeffer

In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Without the infinite personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make systems. In today's speech we would call them gameplans. A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Evangelical Christians need to notice ... , that the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the Revelation of God in Christ Alone'. If you do not have the view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really have no content in the word 'Christ' - and this is the modern drift in theology. Modern theology uses the word without content because 'Christ' is cut away from the Scriptures. The Reformation followed the teaching of Christ Himself in linking the revelation Christ gave of God to the revelation of the written Scriptures. — Francis A. Schaeffer

To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at those points where there is a cost in our doing so, is to push the next generation in the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us. — Francis A. Schaeffer