Volume 24 · Number 2 Summer 2020 L’Abri at 65 years Vol. 24 • Num. 2 L’Abri at 65 years Stephen J. Wellum 3 Editorial: Honoring the 65th Anniversary of L’Abri Ranald Macaulay 11 Contending for the Lamb Andrew Fellows 31 “The Church Before the Watching World:” Francis Schaeffer’s Burdens Greg Jesson 47 Francis Schaeffer’s Enduring Relevance: It All Comes Down to “True Truth” Dick Keyes 79 The Spiritual Integrity of Francis Schaeffer Barry Seagren 99 Francis Schaeffer—An Appreciation Levi J. Secord 109 How Should We Then Preach? What Today’s Pastors Must Learn from Francis Schaeffer William Edgar 125 Francis A. Schaeffer,How Should We Then Live? An Appreciation and Analysis Bradley G. Green 133 Notes from the Revolution: Reflections on the Crisis of the Summer of 2020 SBJT Forum 149 Book Reviews 165 Editor-in-Chief: R. Albert Mohler, Jr. • Editor: Stephen J. Wellum • Associate Editor: Brian Vickers • Book Review Editor: John D. Wilsey • Assistant Editor: Brent E. Parker • Editorial Board: Matthew J. Hall, Hershael York, Paul Akin, Timothy Paul Jones • Typographer: Benjamin Aho • Editorial Office: SBTS Box 832, 2825 Lexington Rd., Louisville, KY 40280, (800) 626-5525, x 4413 • Editorial E-Mail: [email protected] Editorial: Honoring the 65th Anniversary of L’Abri Stephen J. Wellum Stephen J. Wellum is Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theo- logical Seminary and editor of Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. He received his PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he is the author of numerous essays and articles and the co-author with Peter Gentry of Kingdom through Covenant, 2nd edition (Crossway, 2012, 2018) and God’s Kingdom through God’s Covenants: A Concise Biblical Theology (Crossway, 2015); the co-editor of Progressive Covenantalism (B&H, 2016); the author of God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (Crossway, 2016) and Christ Alone—The Uniqueness of Jesus as Savior (Zondervan, 2017); and the co-author of Christ from Beginning to End: How the Full Story of Scripture Reveals the Full Glory of Christ (Zondervan, 2018); and the author of The Person of Christ: An Introduction (Crossway, 2021). My family and I had the privilege of visiting L’Abri in Switzerland in July, 2019. Although I personally never met Francis and Edith Schaeffer, the impact of their work through their lectures, books, and films has been enormous in my life.1 As a young Christian seeking to share the gospel with my friends in high school, I was challenged to explain why I believed the Bible, and Francis Schaeffer was of immense help to me. Introduced to him by my mother, I read his famous trilogy—The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, and He is There and He is not Silent—which was so helpful in articulating the truths of the Bible and the glory of the gospel. In fact, the Lord greatly used Schaeffer’s works to call me into the Christian ministry and specifically, into theological SBJT 24.2 (2020): 3-9 3 The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 24.2 (2020) education. Francis Schaeffer’s charge for Christians to know what they believe and why, to give honest answers to honest questions, and to give our lives as “radicals for Christ,” challenged me to serve the Lord and his church. So given the influence of Francis Schaeffer in my life, one can only imagine how excited I was finally to visit L’Abri. Yet, as I walked around L’Abri, what struck me was its size, or better, lack of it. In contrast to large institutions or churches in America, L’Abri was minuscule in comparison. It is located off the beaten path, and if you are not careful, you will drive by it! But as I walked among the chalets, I was struck at how God graciously and powerfully used this “little” place and the Schaeffers’ lives to influence so many. In fact, as I walked around L’Abri, the memorable sermon of Schaeffer came to mind: “No Little People, No Little Places:” Though we are limited and weak in talent, physical energy, and psychological strength, we are not less than a stick of wood. But as the rod of Moses had to become the rod of God, so that which is me must become the me of God. Then I can become useful in God’s hands. The Scripture emphasizes that much can come from little if the little is truly consecrated to God. There are no little people and no big people in the true spiritual sense, but only consecrated and uncon- secrated people. The problem for each of us is applying the truth to ourselves ... Those who think of themselves as little people in little places, if committed to Christ and living under His Lordship in the whole of life, may, by God’s grace, change the flow of our generation. And as we get on a bit in our lives, knowing how weak we are, if we look back and see we have been somewhat used of God, then we should be the rod “surprised by joy.”2 What Schaeffer preached in this sermon was true of his own life: God mightily used him in a far off place to influence and transform the church. In thinking about Schaeffer’s influence, it is not an overstatement to say that there is no single person in the latter half of the 20th century that has impacted evangelicalism more than him. After L’Abri started in 1955, for the next three decades, its ministry expanded into a multiple-thrust work that reshaped evan- gelicalism. Michael Hamilton rightly asserts that “[p]erhaps no intellectual save C. S. Lewis affected the thinking of evangelicals more profoundly; perhaps no leader of the period save Billy Graham left a deeper stamp on the movement as a whole. Together the Schaeffers gave currency to the idea of intentional 4 Editorial: Honoring the 65th Anniversary of L’Abri Christian community, prodded evangelicals out of their cultural ghetto, inspired an army of evangelicals to become serious scholars, encouraged women who chose roles as mothers and homemakers, mentored the leaders of the New Christian Right, and solidified popular evangelical opposition to abortion.”3 Or, in the words of Harold O. J. Brown, “There is no other important Christian thinker of our era who has tackled as many fundamental intellectual, philo- sophical, and theological issues as Schaeffer did … Even when dealing with the big issues that were his specialty, Schaeffer treated them not as theoretical problems to be fitted into a comprehensive world view, but as questions that individual persons needed to answer in order to find meaning in their lives.”4 What is also important to remember about Schaeffer’s influence was that much of it, especially early on, was done outside of the evangelical educa- tional institutions and publishing houses, hence outside of the evangelical establishment. Instead, Schaeffer’s influence was made indirectly, through his own personal contact with people. For Schaeffer,personal evangelism and discipleship were no cliché as L’Abri touched the lives of countless people—many of whom would later become future evangelical leaders. This is a powerful lesson for us to learn today. God can use “little people and places” to do extraordinary work for him, if our lives are consecrated unto him. We do not need big budgets, and institutions to do gospel work. What we need are people wholly devoted to the Lord, who take him at his Word, and above all proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ. In addition, in thinking about the legacy of Schaeffer and L’Abri, at least three other important truths come to mind which are important for the evangelical church to recapture. First, Schaeffer taught us that the truth of the gospel and the triune God of the gospel must be central in our lives. As numerous articles in this issue of SBJT stress, Schaeffer was best known for his calling the church to live under the Lordship of Christ and to obey the truth of Scripture in every area of life. Schaeffer knew that the age in which he lived was characterized by a massive loss in objective truth, hence his call for the church to emphasize “truth truth.” That is why he championed—to his death-bed—the need to affirm without equivocation the full authority and inerrancy of Scripture as well as such crucial issues as: the historicity of Genesis 1-11, the doctrine of creation, the centrality of the doctrine of God, and the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life.5 5 The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 24.2 (2020) Also, Schaeffer’s call to live under Christ’s Lordship was not merely the- oretical but practical. This is how we should understand his call for the evangelical church in the 1970s to stand for the sanctity of life against the Roe v. Wade decision. In the 1970s, evangelicals were doing little on the social front and it was Schaeffer almost single-handedly who challenged millions of evangelicals to take an active role in shaping their society and its values.6 Yet, it is crucial to note that Schaeffer’s call for the church to live out thetruth was first centered in the truth of the gospel. In this way, Schaeffer rightly knew that evangelism and practical action were done together, but always evangelism had the priority for the mission of the church. Second, because truth matters, Schaeffer also realized and taught that “ideas have consequences”—indeed life and death consequences.7 Although people quibble over some of Schaeffer’s analysis of intellectual history, he was exactly right that western society has witnessed a “line of despair”—a slow process by which ideas trickle down from philosophy to art, music, the general culture and, finally, theology.