There are a handful of philosopher-theologians who have contributed immensely to the development of a Christian world view. Some of these are much earlier then we are living at this time. They produced a basis of how Christians view the world around them. During the last 50 years or so none has had such a major impact on how we should live our faith then Francis A. Schaeffer. He openly professed loyalty to the scriptures above all else. It is my intention to use his book as a series of studies. These will be found at Why Baptist Blog and also at Listen to God this is meant as a review and is in no way meant as an extensive analysis. The word of God is above else to be taken as the only authority in all maters of faith and practice (Sola Scriptura). “Few Christians have had greater impact during the last half of the twentieth century then Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer (Schaeffer, Francis A., 9). I am drawing as a theme statement that we are seeing a “growing disintegration and decline of truth and morality throughout our world (Schaeffer, 9). This includes both a historical perspective as well as a theological basis.
Every facet of our lives as Christians has been impacted by a growing, but extremely “devastating impact” of both the post immerging church movement and the “post Christian consensus” (Schaeffer, 9). Christians as a whole in our times are living without any kind of world view let alone a Christian world view. In fact one of our current (Christian) church leaders is now suggesting that we have a new reformation. It is suggested that we still follow the original reformation statements of truth, but have added a practical reformation. This implies as well as means that the Reformation was not sufficient or even might have been wrong. A practical reformation is actually a denial of the scriptures that gave us the protestant reformation. So what will it be the Word of God or the Word of Man, the choice can only be one of these. Which will you choose to follow.
Not only has the Christian message been impacted by the modern form of humanism, but so has “art, music, drama, theology and the mass media”. This has left “people with no basis for meaning, or truth, or hope in life…two impoverished values of ‘personal peace and affluence’”(Schaeffer, 10). This is indeed a personal question to each of us “How should we then live” (Schaeffer, 11)? Should it be by the changing whims of situation ethics? What about atheistic communism, does it have a sufficient basis for living? Should it be by atheistic evolution? As for me I choose to live by the Word of the living God and this only “Sola Scriptura”.
