Book Review by Michael Dolim

A CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO

by 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.

They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness,

pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and

finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality - each

thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have

failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in world

view - that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people

think and view the world and life as a whole. This shift has been

AWAY FROM a world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people's

memory (even if they were not individually Christian) TOWARD something

completely different - toward a world view based upon the idea that

the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its

present form by impersonal chance. They have not seen that this world

view has taken the place of the one that had previously dominated

Northern European culture, including the United States, which was at

least Christian in memory, even if the individuals were not

individually Christian.

These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to

each other in content and also in their natural results - including

sociological and governmental results, and specifically including

law. It is not that these two world views are different only in how

they understand the nature of reality and existence. They also

inevitably produce totally different results. The operative word here

is INEVITABLY. It is not just that they happen to bring forth

different results, but it is absolutely INEVITABLE that they will

bring forth different results.

Why have the Christians been so slow to understand this? There

are various reasons but the central one is a defective view of

Christianity. This has its roots in the Pietist movement under the

leadership of P.J. Spener in the 17th century. Pietism began as a

healthy protest against formalism and a too abstract Christianity.

But it had a deficient, "platonic" spirituality. It was platonic in

the sense that Pietism made a sharp division between the "spiritual"

and the "material" world - giving little, or no, importance to the

"material" world. The totality of human existence was not afforded a

proper place. In particular it neglected the intellectual dimension

of Christianity.

True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the

Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful - which do not conform to

the character of God. But aside from these 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.

When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total

reality - the total of what is, beginning with the central reality,

the objective existence of the personal - infinite God. Christianity

is not just a series of truths but Truth - Truth about all of reality.

And the holding to that Truth intellectually - and then in some poor

way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is - brings forth not

only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal

results.

Now let's go over to the other side - to those who hold the

materialistic final reality concept. They saw the complete and total

difference between the two positions more quickly than Christians.

There were the Huxleys, George Bernard Shaw, and many others who

understood a long time ago that there are two total concepts of

reality and that it was one total reality against the other and not

just a set of isolated and separated differences. The Humanist

Manifesto 1, published in 1933, showed with crystal clarity their

comprehension of the totality of what is involved. It was to our

shame that Julian and Aldous Huxley, and the others like them,

understood much earlier than Christians that these two world views are

two total concepts of reality standing in antithesis to each other.

We should be utterly ashamed that this is the fact.

There is no way to mix these two total world views. They are

separate entities that cannot be synthesized. Yet we must say that

liberal theology, the very essence of it from its beginning, is an

attempt to mix the two. Liberal theology tried to bring forth a

mixture soon after the Enlightenment and has tried to synthesize these

two views right up to our own day. But in each case when the chips

are down these liberal theologians have always come down, as naturally

as a ship coming into home port, on the side of the nonreligious

humanist. They do this with certainty because what their liberal

theology really is is humanism expressed in theological terms instead

of philosophic or other terms.

HUMANITARIANISM is being kind and helpful to people, treating

people more humanly. The HUMANITIES are the studies of literature,

art, music, etc. - those things which are the products of human

creativity. HUMANISM is the placing of Man at the center of all

things. Thus, Christians should be the most humanitarian of all

people. And Christians certainly should be interested in the

humanities as the product of human creativity, made possible because

people are uniquely made in the image of the great Creator.

Those who hold the material - energy, chance concept of reality,

whether they are Marxist or non-Marxist, not only do not know the

truth of the final reality, God, they do not know who Man is. Their

concept of Man is what Man is not, just as their concept of the final

reality is what the final reality is not. Since their concept of Man

is mistaken, their concept of society and of law is mistaken, and they

have no sufficient base for either society or law.

They have reduced Man to even less than his natural finiteness by

seeing him only as a complex arrangement of molecules, made complex by

blind chance. Instead of seeing him as something great who is

significant even in his sinning, they see Man in his essence only as

an intrinsically competitive animal, that has no other basic operating

principle than natural selection brought about by the strongest, the

fittest, ending on top.

The problem always was, and is, What is an adequate base for law?

What is adequate so that the human aspiration for freedom can exist

without anarchy, and yet provides a form that will not become

arbitrary tyranny? The humanists push for "freedom," but having no

Christian consensus to contain it, that "freedom" leads to chaos or to

slavery under the state (or under an elite). Humanism, with its lack

of ANY final base for values or law, always leads to chaos. The men

who wrote our constitution really knew what they were doing. We are

not reading back into history what was not there. We cannot say too

strongly they they really understood the basis of the government which

they were founding.

Think of this great flaming phrase: "certain inalienable rights."

Who gives the rights? The state? Then they are not inalienable

because the state can change them and take them away. Where do the

rights come from? They understood that they were founding the country

upon the concept that goes back into the Judeo-Christian thinking that

there is Someone there who gave the inalienable rights. Another

phrase stood there: "In God We Trust." With this there is no

confusion of what they were talking about. They publicly recognized

that the law could be king because there was a Law Giver, a Person to

give the inalienable rights.

When the First Amendment was passed it only had two purposes.

The first purpose was that there would be no established, national

church for the united thirteen states. To say it another way: There

would be no Church of the United States. James Madison clearly

articulated this concept of separation when explaining the First

Amendment's protection of religious liberty. He said that the First

Amendment to the Constitution was prompted because "the people feared

one sect might obtain a preeminence, or two combine together, and

establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform.

"Nevertheless, a number of the individual states had state

churches, and even that was not considered in conflict with the First

Amendment. In all but one of the thirteen states, the states taxed

the people to support the preaching of the gospel and to build

churches.

The second purpose of the First Amendment was the very opposite

from what is being made of it today. It states expressly that

government should not impede or interfere with the free practice of

religion.

Today the separation of church and state in America is used to

silence the church. The modern concept is an argument for a total

separation of religion from the state. The consequence of the

acceptance of this doctrine leads to the removal of religion as an

influence in civil government. It is used today as a false political

dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas. We live

in a secularized society and in a secularized, sociological law. By

sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a

group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the

given moment; and what they arbitrarily decide becomes law.

As the new sociological law has moved away from the original base

of the Creator giving the "inalienable rights" etc., it has been

natural that this sociological law has then also moved away from the

Constitution. At this moment we are in a humanistic culture, but we

are happily not in a totally humanistic culture. But what we must

realize is that the drift has been all in this direction. If it is

not turned around we will move very rapidly into a TOTALLY humanistic

culture.

If we are going to join the battle in a way that has any hope of

effectiveness - with Christians truly being salt and the light in our

culture and our society - then we must do battle on the entire front.

We must not finally even battle on the front for freedom, and

specifically not only OUR freedom. It must be on the basis of Truth.

Not just religious truths, but the Truth of what the final reality is.

Finney in his book 'Systematic Theology' on page 158 has a heading: "I

propose now to make several remarks respecting forms of government,

the right and duty of revolution." Do note his phrase "The right and

duty of revolution." On page 162 he says: "There can scarcely be

conceived a more abominable and fiendish maxim than 'our country right

or wrong.'" He then goes on to stress that not everything the

government does is to be supported, and he includes the Mexican War

and slavery. On page 157 he says: "Arbitrary legislation can never be

really obligatory."

What is ahead of us? I would suggest that we must have Two

Tracks in mind. The First Track is the fact of the conservative swing

in the United States in the 1980 election. With this there is at this

moment a unique window open in the United States. It is unique

because it is a long, long time since that window has been open as it

is now. And let us hope that the window stays open, and not just one

issue, even one as important as human life - though certainly every

Christian ought to be praying and working to nullify the abominable

abortion law. But as we work and pray, we should have in mind not

only this important issue as though it stood alone. Rather, we should

be struggling and praying that this whole other total entity - the

material - energy, chance world view - can be rolled back with all its

results across all of life. I work, I pray that indeed the window

does stay open. I hope that will be the case.

The Second Track is, What happens in this country if the window

does not stay open? What then? Thinking this way does not mean that

we stop doing all we can to keep the window open. Nevertheless some

people must be thinking about what to do if the window closes.

 

Contributed by

The Manna System

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