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- 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.
-
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