My thoughts on Schaeffer (or a few of them, anyway)

I finished reading the Schaeffer book last week, and found it to be very interesting. I appreciate the book because it made me think about the important questions of meaning and purpose in life. As a Jew, I have a different theological perspective (I’m guessing) from most of you, and I will admit up front that I disagreed with most of Schaeffer’s premises and conclusions. I also found his arguments to be unconvincing. Overall, the book seemed to be very conclusory, with lots of assertions and few arguments. My main impression was that this was a work of Christian Triumphalism rather than serious scholarship. There was a lot in the book that I felt it would be interesting to discuss, but I will start out with a few comments and the one main question I had after finishing.

First, the comments:

• As Bruce and Bryan said already, I found Schaeffer’s treatment of art to be somewhat off the mark. I’m not sure how the ability to paint a subject so that his feet appear to be touching the ground makes one a more Christian artist. Also, it seems odd that at the beginning of the book, Schaeffer criticizes the early medieval artists for painting mere symbols instead of painting realistically, and then later in the book criticizes recent artists who have a realist style for being too realistic and failing to try to paint the invisible.
• I find Schaeffer’s claim that Christianity was a necessary precondition for the invention of science to be unconvincing. He acknowledges that other civilizations did some science (Islamic science or Chinese science) but says they gave up on it because they weren’t Christian. As much as Schaeffer talks about cause and effect in the book, I think he has confused them with coincidence in this case. He never makes any argument to this effect, merely the bald assertion. And anyway, the keystone of modern science is the scientific method which is well known to be an Islamic development.
• I was floored by Schaeffer’s assertion that existentialist philosophy is responsible for it being unsafe to walk the streets in the cities these days. As far as I know, most crime is due to poverty and drug use. I doubt poverty has much correlation with being Christian; and drug use – or most drug use, I should say, or maybe at least a lot of drug use – is due to poverty as well as the wide availability of cheap drugs. One could try and argue that the lack of the Christian base is responsible in some indirect way for violent crime, but I just don’t think Schaeffer came close to making that argument. I suppose one could argue that if you are a person with the Christian base, you wouldn’t do criminal things like that; but I don’t think that Christianity, alone, is enough to outweigh, in every case, the ugly effects of long-term poverty and hopelessness.
• Also, Schaeffer at one point mentions the “genuine” part of the “hippy movement”. That begs the question of what is the non-genuine part of the hippy movement, and what’s the difference, and why does it matter?

And second, my main question:

• Schaeffer talks a lot about how Christianity, or I should say Bible based Christianity, made the development of freedom and democracy possible. He also, at other points, talks about those who have the Christian base and those who believe (mistakenly believe, I think Schaeffer would say) that they have complete autonomy. My question is, what does Schaeffer believe Freedom, Autonomy and Free-Will are? He has a very negative view of those who believe man has full autonomy. How is full autonomy different from free-will? Schaeffer talks about “freedom” a lot, but I’m not sure I know exactly what he means. In a democratic society which Schaeffer believes is dependant on the Biblical Christian base, would Schaeffer be prepared to let others have the freedom to make choices that are incompatible with Bible-based Christian doctrine?

I hope my comments and questions made some sense; they are somewhat off the cuff. I’m interested to hear what others have to say.