True Spirituality, by Francis Schaeffer
My interest to read one of Francis Schaeffer’s books started probably with several mentions to him in the books and articles of Greg Koukl (check the summary I wrote about his book Tactics). Schaeffer is considered by several people one of the greatest names in apologetics from the 20th century. Another influence I had on this was from Brazilian pastors Guilherme de Carvalho and Igor Miguel, the first one leads L’abri Brasil. L’Abri Fellowship International is an institution created by Schaeffer and his wife when they were living in Switzerland, and it’s a mix of a retreat with a short-term seminary. Both Guilherme and Igor use Schaeffer’s cultural analysis a lot in their messages and talks. OK, but let’s focus on the book.
The basic of True Spirituality
The goal of the book is to explore what the Christian life, a.k.a. true spirituality, is actually like and how it can be lived in the context of the 20th century. The first point is that it is impossible to know about this true spirituality unless you are a Christian. In a world full of pluralistic ideas, Schaeffer reaffirms Jesus’ own exclusivistic words “No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6b). However, this Christian life continues after you accept Jesus as your savior, through the process of sanctification. This is the process of being freed from the bonds of sin; not just from external problems, but from internal ones: “first, I am to love God enough to be contended; second, I am to love men enough not to envy.” (p. 8) And we are not just dead to certain practices and thoughts, we are to love God with all our hearts and love men “in this present moment of history.” (p. 14)
If we are not willing to say no to our own desires, there will be no way to follow the command to love God and men. It is important to focus on the part that we must be crucified with Christ. Our life should follow the steps of Jesus, and Luke 9:22 says that he should be rejected, slain, and raised (so do we). However, after the death to ourselves, there is a resurrection. Paul said that we shall live in the same way Christ did after his resurrection. And Schaeffer focuses again on the aspect of this happening in the present history: “we are to live by faith now, in the present history, as though we had been raised already from death. That is the message of the Christian life.” (p. 37)
Again focusing on the reality of the aspects of the Christian life, Schaeffer will spend the next chapter arguing for the physical resurrection of Jesus and the consequent physical bodies that we will have for eternity. He also argues for the existence of two sides of the same reality, as in heaven and earth, and I found that very similar to the work of N.T. Wright. In the same chapter, he changes the topic to talk about the power of the Spirit in this renewed life, summarized in the following quote:
True spirituality is not achieved in our own energy. The “how” of the kind we have spoken of, the true Christian life, the true spirituality, is Romans 6:11: [“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”, ESV translation] This is the “how” and there is no other. It is the power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ, through the agency of the Holy Spirit by faith. (p. 52)
Supernaturally saved by Christ
In order to fully understand the transformation by the power of Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit, we must make sure we are not trapped in today’s naturalistic line of thought. That is the default thought of everyone around us (and it was already the case when Francis Schaeffer was writing this book), however “[t]he only reason the words ‘redemptive death’ have any meaning is that there is a personal God who exists and, more than that, has a character.” (p. 54)
If we are living our Christian lives with the supernatural aspect removed from the story, we are left with religion as a “sociological tool” and maybe get into the pluralistic movements of the 21st century, since all religions can improve the lives of their followers. At the same time, we cannot merely understand the supernatural aspects, and do not live them in practice:
[Christianity] is the only philosophy that is consistent to itself and answers the questions. It is a good philosophy precisely because it deals with the problems and gives us answers to them. Nevertheless, it is not only a good philosophy. The Bible does not just speak in abstractions; it does not tell about a religious idea far away. […] it tells us how to live in the real universe as it is now. Remove this factor, and it becomes only a dialectic. (p. 57)
When we understand what should happen after we are transformed by Christ, it is interesting to understand the whole process of salvation, from the past, in the present, and to the future.
We were declared justified by God through the sacrifice of Christ. Justification that happened in history, in our space-time reality, but salvation is broader than mere justification by grace through faith. In the future, we will have our glorification, and in the present, we must live our Christian life as part of sanctification. If we were justified, but we are not bringing forth the fruit that is expected, this is a sort of unfaithfulness from our part. It may be just because of ignorance, by the fact that we never thought about the consequences of our life with Christ, or that we didn’t internalized that same doctrine. It is important to emphasize: “in justification it is once and for all, and the Christian life is lived moment by moment. The Christian life is acting moment by moment on the same principle, and in the same way, as I acted at the moment of my justification.” (p. 77)
Freedom now from the results of the bonds of sin
The first thing that we should be freed from is our own conscience. Whenever our conscience reminds us of a sin we committed, we should realize that is indeed a sin, but that it is covered by the blood of Christ: “Now it is covered, and it is not honoring to the finished work of Jesus Christ to worry about it, as far as my relationship with God is concerned.” (p. 92) However, Schaeffer notes that we must also be freed from our thoughts, because the moral battles (and the resulting sins) start in our thoughts. In the same way, the true spirituality also begins in our thought-world.
When we understand what happened in the Fall, the separation of man from God, from His perfect creation, we can analyze why man seems so broken. The man without God does not have a reference point. At the same time, we cannot escape from our notion of objective morality. This is inside us somehow, as C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity. And we are in constant conflict with this: how is there something objective if there is no reference point? Man will look for anything to be this reference point: status, entertainment, intellectual pursuit, and so on: “there is no real answer to man’s psychological need and crushing load apart from the Creator-creature framework, the comprehension of the Fall, and the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ in history.” (p. 128)
Man’s separation from his fellow man
We need to love our neighbors, that is clear. This means that every time we treat someone not as a man in the image of God, but as a machine, we are not following this commandment, e.g. not paying attention to whoever answers the door for you every day at work, or who are the baristas at the coffee shop. The heart of human relationships is to recognize the other part as a human being. One important aspect of that is to realize all men are sinful, so we should not have high expectations on anyone. At the same time, we must avoid the humanist problem: give too much importance to humanity as a whole but forget about man as an individual. Christianity teaches an individualized love.
In order to keep our relationship with God healthy, we cannot dismiss our relationship with man. This means that we should be ready to say “I’m sorry” whenever we hurt someone, to confess to others if we have slipped. At the same time, Christians have their basis on God and God must always be the only one where we deposit our hope. As always, Schaeffer will remember us that doctrine must be accompanied by practice: in this case, human relationships.
These relationships are even more important in the context of the church: “The real unity is not basically an organization unity; the real unity is not of one part with the other parts, but a unity in which each part is under the control of the Head and therefore functions together.” (p. 146) For Schaeffer, the church should teach the true spirituality. In other words, it should teach the truth, but also a practice of the existence of God, his holiness and love.
Finally another post written, right? To be honest, I would say that reading my notes from the book in order to write the post made me realize that this book is confusing. I really liked the overall message, and there are also several minor points throughout the book that I may have skipped, but Schaeffer repeats stuff too much, in my opinion. There were several times that I would go to the next chapter and only in the second half of the chapter I would find some new information to include in the blog post. I still gave it 4 stars on Goodreads.
I will try to be more consistent in my posts from now on, and I can say that I have several small things from my classes that I will prepare as blog posts and add it here. Please, comment below with what you thought about the book summary or the actual book if you have read that.
