Schaeffer Quotes & Sayings

People who share the same language, French or Chinese or whatever, have the same vocal cords and emit sounds which are basically the same, as they come from the same throats and lungs. — Pierre Schaeffer

As Schaeffer once wrote, there is nothing uglier than theological orthodoxy without understanding or compassion. — Nancy Pearcey

It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in colour and texture. Food should be served with real care as to the colour and texture on the plates, as well as with imaginative taste. This is where artistic talent and aesthetic expression and fulfillment come in. — Edith Schaeffer

We [Christians] have the dilemma of using a symbol system that was not made for our worldview, to give our worldview ... I think the thing we're waiting for is a genius to come forth who can either make a new symbol system which is still modern, or more properly, as symbol systems don't come overnight, a group of people to modify the symbol systems of our day, so that we can use them for our Christian message without a disadvantage. — Francis Schaeffer

He who loses the arts loses the culture. — Francis Schaeffer

Dad and I were mixing with a new set of people who had not known much, if anything, about my father. If they had even heard of Dad before he came on the pro-life scene in the mid-to-late seventies, they probably hadn't liked the sound of him. These people included Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, James Kennedy, and all the rest of the televangelists, radio hosts, and other self-appointed "Christian leaders" who were bursting on the scene in the 1970s and early '80s. Compared — Frank Schaeffer

Isolating the student from large sections of human knowledge is not the basis of a Christian education. Rather it is giving him or her the framework for total truth, rooted in the Creator's existence and in the Bible's teaching, so that in each step of the formal learning process the student will understand what is true and what is false and why it is true or false. — Francis Schaeffer

Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization. — Pierre Schaeffer

The overall way of thinking in the United States has shifted away from basic Biblical values, and the media share in the responsibility for this change. — Francis Schaeffer

The arbitrary division between church and state ... is used, as an easily identifiable rallying point, to subdue the opinions of that vast body of citizens who represent those with religious convictions. — Francis Schaeffer

Most people do not realize that there was a paid chaplain in Congress even before the Revolutionary War ended. — Francis Schaeffer

Acceding to researchers in the field of epigenetics, traumatic experiences produce fearful memories that are passed to future generations. A study carried out on mice in 2013 found that they could produce offspring with an aversion to actions and events associated with their parents' negative experiences. Nature and nurture turn out to be interrelated. — Frank Schaeffer

Let's imagine I happen to be writing some sort of truth here. By the time you read this, I might have changed my mind. Ten years from now, I would likely put it differently. By then I may regret that I wrote this. And regardless of how I feel then, I'll bet that if you reread my book twenty years from now, you'll have changed, so the book will have changed, too. So much for changeless truth. — Frank Schaeffer

Reason gives us tools to control nature. But it cannot indicate which uses of nature are good or humane. Reason shows us how to achieve our goals. But it cannot determine which goals are right to pursue in the first place. It ascertains what we can do, but not what we should do. What works, but not what is good. Facts, but not values. As a result, many people concluded that the only way to plumb the Big Questions was to "escape from reason" (the title of one of Schaeffer's books). That is, to leave reason behind and take a leap of faith from the lower story to the upper story. — Nancy Pearcey

Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting. — Francis Schaeffer

It's ridiculous that time and time again we need a radioactive cloud coming out of a nuclear power-station to remind us that atomic energy is extraordinarily dangerous. — Pierre 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 world has just got more dangerous because the things we use have got more dangerous. — Pierre Schaeffer

Sound is the vocabulary of nature ... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary ... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music. — Pierre Schaeffer

Scientists and theologians can't offer better than circular arguments, because there are no other kinds of arguments. Bible believers quote the Bible, and scientists quote other scientists. How do either scientists or theologians answer this question about the accuracy of their conclusions: In reference to what? — Frank Schaeffer

Noises have generally been thought of as indistinct, but this is not true. — Pierre Schaeffer

Science can't predict what stories my children's great grandchildren will tell. The ultimate story about the experience of our journey into consciousness is a closed book to theologians and scientists alike, but it is not a book without promise. At this point we've barely cracked the introduction, and already smartass scientists and theologians pretend they know not just how the story started but how it ends - and worse - what it means or doesn't mean. — Frank Schaeffer

Our personal afflictions involve the living God; the only way in which Satan can persecute or afflict God is through attacking the people of God. The only way we can have personal victory in the midst of these flying arrows raining down on us is to call upon the Lord for help. It is His strength, supplied to us in our weakness, that makes victory after victory possible. — Edith 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 must stress that the basis for our faith is neither experience nor emotion but the truth as God has given it in verbalized, prepositional form in the Scripture and which we first of all apprehend with our minds. — Francis Schaeffer

To die is to be with the Lord. It is not just an idea, it is a reality. — Francis Schaeffer

Ours is a post-Christian world in which Christianity, not only in the number of Christians but in cultural emphasis and cultural result, is no longer the consensus or ethos of our society. — Francis Schaeffer

I also happened to sincerely believe in my father's message, though "believe" is perhaps the wrong word. Rather, I had not yet begun to question my indoctrination. — Frank Schaeffer

The command is to love him, not just to think about him, or do things for him. We are not to stop with a proper legal relationship - for example, to think of a man as legally lost, which he is, in the sight of a holy God - without thinking of him as a person. Saying this, we can suddenly see that much evangelism is not only sub-Christian, but subhuman - legalistic and impersonal. — Francis Schaeffer

The whole problem of the sound-work is distancing oneself from the dramatic. — Pierre Schaeffer

The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all-reactionary, all-backward, 'there-is-no-global-warming' rube reality. Actual conservatives, let alone the educated classes, have long since fled. — Frank Schaeffer

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

A church split builds self-righteousness into the fabric of every new splinter group, whose only reason for existence is that they decide they are more moral and pure than their brethren. This explains my childhood, and perhaps a lot about America, too. The United States is a country with the national character of a newly formed church splinter group. This is not surprising. Our country started as a church splinter group. The Puritans left England because they believed they were more enlightened than members of the Church of England, and they were eager to form a perfect earthly community following a pure theology. — Frank Schaeffer

When I accept Christ as my Savior ... I am immediately in a new and living relationship with each of the three persons of the Trinity. — Francis Schaeffer

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance. — Pierre Schaeffer

Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless. — Francis Schaeffer

If God exists and we are made in his image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what he has communicated to us. — Francis Schaeffer

America still sees itself as essential and as destiny's instrument. And each splinter group within our culture - left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular - sees itself as morally, even "theologically," superior to its rivals. It is not just about politics. It is about being better than one's evil opponent. We don't just disagree, we demonize the "other." And we don't compromise. — Frank 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

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

The impressionists, Debussy, Faure, in France, did take a few steps forward. — Pierre Schaeffer

First, it doesn't surprise me that traditional music has experienced a kind of exhaustion in the 20th century - not forgetting that many musicians started to look outside the traditional structures of tonality. — Pierre 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

I often advise young brides who are traveling during their first weeks or months of marriage to start "homemaking" in a hotel, even if they are there for only a night, rather than groaning about having to "wait so long to have a home". How? ... Your own cloth, your own candlestick, just one rose or daffodil is enough to make a difference ... You will be surprised how much difference it makes to have done something to make a room your home, even for one night. — Edith 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

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

Morally, the world is both better and worse than it was. We are worse off than in the middle ages, or the 17th and 18th centuries, in that we have the atomic menace. — Pierre 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

Food cannot take care of spiritual, psychological and emotional problems, but the feeling of being loved and cared for, the actual comfort of the beauty and flavour of food, the increase of blood sugar and physical well-being, help one to go on during the next hours better equipped to meet the problems (p. 124). — Edith 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

There needs to be a homemaker exercising some measure of skill, imagination, creativity, desire to fulfill needs and give pleasure to others in the family. How precious a thing is the human family. It it not worth some sacrifice in time, energy, safety, discomfort, work? Does anything come forth without work? — Edith 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

Evangelicals are experts at adopting heroes, since their community produces so few with both moral standing and intellectual firepower. — Frank Schaeffer

Art is a reflection of God's creativity, an evidence that we are made in the image of God. — Francis Schaeffer

Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Christian, you are that because of where and when you were born. If you are an atheist, you are that because of a book or two you read, or who your parents were and the century in which you were born. Don't delude yourself: there are no good reasons for anything, just circumstances. Don't delude yourself: you may describe yourself to others by claiming a label of atheist, Jew, evangelical, gay or straight but you know that you are really lots more complicated than that, a gene-driven primate and something more. Want to be sure you have THE TRUTH about yourself and want to be consistent to that truth? Then prepare to go mad. Or prepare to turn off your brain and cling to some form or other of fundamentalism, be that religious or secular. — Frank Schaeffer

Take a sound from whatever source, a note on a violin, a scream, a moan, a creaking door, and there is always this symmetry between the sound basis, which is complex and has numerous characteristics which emerge through a process of comparison within our perception. — Pierre Schaeffer

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions. — Francis Schaeffer

It is only as we consciously bring each victory to His feet, and keep it there as we think of it - and especially as we speak of it - that we can avoid the pride of that victory, which can be worse than the sin over which we claim to have had the victory. — Francis Schaeffer

Sound is the vocabulary of nature. — Pierre 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

The inward area is the first place of loss of true Christian life, of true spirituality, and the outward sinful act is the result. — Francis Schaeffer

What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people? Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions. — Nancy Pearcey

Unconditional love is a love that says to a child, "I love who you are no matter what, even though I may not — Brenda Schaeffer

If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless. — Francis Schaeffer

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

Things, things, things. Always more things, and success is seen as the abundance of things. — Francis Schaeffer

There would have been no Bach had there been no Luther. — Francis Schaeffer

That is our calling: to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it. — Francis 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

In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute. — Francis Schaeffer

You will always be more than one person. You will always embody contradiction. — Frank Schaeffer

The spiritual battle, the loss of victory, is always in the thought-world. — Francis Schaeffer

The problem with the evangelical homeschool movement was not their desire to educate their children at home, or in private religious schools, but the evangelical impulse to "protect" children from ideas that might lead them to "question" and to keep them cloistered in what amounted to a series of one-family gated communities. — Frank Schaeffer

I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did. — Francis Schaeffer

If men act upon the teaching of the Word of God, and as proportionately men live according to the teaching and commands of the Bible, so they have in practice a sufficient psychological base. I will find you a man dealing with psychological problems on the basis of the teaching of the Word of God, even if he never heard the word psychology, or does not know what it means. — Francis Schaeffer

If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just 'dogmatically' true or 'doctrinally' true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life. — Francis Schaeffer

Modern man has no real "value" for the ocean. All he has is the most crass form of egoist, pragmatic value for it. He treats it as a "thing" in the worst possible sense, to exploit it for the "good" of man. The man who believes things are there only by chance cannot give things a real value. But for the Christian the value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it. — Francis Schaeffer

People who try to create a musical revolution do not have a chance, but those who turn their back to music can sometimes find it. — Pierre 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

If we do not show love to one another, the world has a right to question whether Christianity is true. — Francis Schaeffer

The tight little segregated life, always spent with people your own age, economic group, educational background, and culture tends to bring an ingrown, static sort of condition. Fresh ideas, reality of communication and shared experiences will be sparks to light up fires of creativity, especially if the people spending time together are a true cross-section of ages, nationalities, kindred, and tongues (p. 202). — Edith Schaeffer

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

Those of us raised in the Christian tradition need to choose to either see God in Jesus or to continue to let the Bible define God. Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book. Maybe we should be brave enough to admit that we are compelled to either become blinded ideologues or we need to forthrightly pick and choose what we follow in the Bible. Most Christians do that anyway, many just don't admit it. — Frank Schaeffer

Christ's crucifixion was on a hill, by a road, where everybody who passed by could not only see his pain, but also his shame. It was not done in a shadow, hidden away somewhere. — Francis 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

Don't be fearful about the journey ahead; don't worry about where you are going or how you are going to get there. If you believe in the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, also believe in the second person of the Trinity, the one who came as the Light of the World, not only to die for people, but to light the way ... This one, Jesus Christ, is himself the Light and will guide your footsteps along the way. — Edith Schaeffer

This equation of the impersonal plus time plus chance producing the total configuration of the universe and all that is in it, modern people hold by faith. — Francis 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

education and money. I go to church with the kids for the same reason Genie and I play our grandchildren classical music and litter the floors and chairs all over our home with open art books. Jack, age three, eats his lunch with a big Goya book propped in front of him asking for the — Frank 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

The Christian should be the person who is alive, whose imagination absolutely boils, which moves, which produces something a bit different from God's world because God made us to be creative. — Francis Schaeffer

When people insist on perfection or nothing, they get nothing. — Edith Schaeffer

We're living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We'd rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other. — Frank Schaeffer

Christianity believes that God has created an external world that is really there; and because He is a reasonable God, one can expect to be able to find the order of the universe by reason. — Francis Schaeffer

If you want a significant man, with absolutes, morality, and meaning, then you must have what the Bible insists upon - that God will judge men justly, and they will not be able to raise their voices because of the base upon which He judges them. — Francis Schaeffer

Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life. — Francis Schaeffer

God has communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. The One who made man capable of language in the first place has communicated to man in language about both spiritual reality and physical reality, about the nature of God and the nature of man. — Francis Schaeffer

If one starts with an impersonal beginning, the answer to morals eventually turns out to be the assertion that there are no morals. — Francis Schaeffer