Since Francis Schaeffer has taken a drubbing lately from both secular journalists and Christian secularists, I thought it might be good to remind the younger generation that there was a time when Schaeffer was the lone evangelical talking about art and philosophy, sort of the way that Woody Allen was the lone movie director talking about Russian literature on love and death.
In Art and the Bible (1973), Schaeffer wrote:
Modern art often flattens man out and speaks in great abstractions; sometimes we cannot tell whether the subject is a man or a woman. Our generation has left little place for the individual. Only the mass of men remains. But as Christians, we see things otherwise. Because God has created individual man in His own image and because God knows and is interested in the individuals, individual man is worthy of our painting and of our writing. . . .
. . . a Christian artist does not need to concentrate on religious subjects. After all, religious themes may be completely non-Christian. The counterculture art in the underground newspaper in which Christ and Krishna are blended – here is religious art par excellence. But it is comply anti-Christian. Religious subjects are no guarantee that a work of art is Christian. On the other hand, the art of an artist who never paints the head of Christ, never once paints an open tomb, may be magnificent Christian art. For some artists there is a place for religious themes, but an artist does not need to be conscience-stricken if he does not paint in this area. Some Christian artists will never use religious themes. This is a freedom the artist has in Christ under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
A post over at No Left Turns reminded me of those heady days when the little man from Switzerland was inspiring young evangelicals to take philosophy classes and go to museums. The post quoted from the Pope Benedict on beauty. Here’s one:
Therefore, may our visits to places of art be not only an occasion for cultural enrichment — also this — but may they become, above all, a moment of grace that moves us to strengthen our bond and our conversation with the Lord, [that moves us] to stop and contemplate — in passing from the simple external reality to the deeper reality expressed — the ray of beauty that strikes us, that “wounds” us in the intimate recesses of our heart and invites us to ascend to God.
No offense to the Bishop of Rome or those in fellowship with him, but Benedict’s sweeping comments on art strike me as having the same sort of broad scope that Schaeffer’s young admirers found disappointing in their intellectual mentor when they began to read more deeply about art and beauty. For some Christians, a theologian writing about art is a novelty, something that makes the young and restless take the faith of the theologian more seriously. The problem for Schaeffer’s admirers, though, which may turn out to be a similar affliction for Roman Catholicism, is that the deeper you go into the faith of your inspiring theologian, the less your aesthetics resonate with the technical doctrine behind the beauty. In other words, the converts to Reformed Protestantism that Schaeffer encouraged turned out in many cases not to care for all of the Reformed rigor they found in Presbyterian churches and upon which the apologist with the funny pants represented implicitly.
But, as I say, there was a time when Schaeffer was the rare evangelical thinker who was writing about such matters. That gave him a large audience. And I do sense that the similar breadth of the recent papacy’s writings on philosophy and culture is also responsible for the appeal of Rome to Christians hoping to preserve western civilization. The question remains how solid a base such a cultural approach to the faith will be for the long, hard road of pilgrimage.
Old Life 
Yea, but what saith the Bishop of Manhattan?
LikeLike
DGH,
I have to ask, since didn’t you spend some time at L’Abri…is some of this autobiographical?
I am curious. I sense some disenfranchisement when you write on Schaeffer, though I do not disagree. Nevertheless, I am thankful that he wrote Escape from Reason, and others, for they were a great help for me. They pushed me in the right (and wrong) direction, but I ended up in a confessing church. I find beauty in the strictness, the liturgical, the historical. FAS helped me get there if indirectly.
LikeLike
Narvich, me too. Truth be told, the bigger question in my mind is the neo-Calvinist tradition of worldview thinking from which Schaeffer drew both through Van Til and Rookmaacher. I am not congenitally opposed to all things Dutch. Heck, the CRC ordained me as an elder. But the more I study the Dutch Calvinist tradition, going back both to the Secession of 1834 and Kuyper’s GKN of 1886, I am puzzled and intrigued by the gap between historical circumstances that brought those churches into existence and the all too easy and abstract attempt at worldview thinking that goes on in the U.S. The antithesis is a valuable way for understanding SOME of the differences between believers and unbelievers. But as cultural analysis or political theorizing it is well nigh totalitarian. In my view, Schaeffer is just one of many Americans who found the Dutch tradition useful. His problem (if there is any) was to popularize neo-Calvinism for many evangelicals who went no farther in Reformed thought than Schaeffer or Guinness.
LikeLike
I discovered FAS while pursuing my philosophy degree. I was encouraged that there was at least someone who was kindasorta doing Christian philosophy, and immediately read most of his books. I then found CVT at the Massachusetts L’Abri, which was clearly not their intent. CVT then pointed me towards the OPC.
I think the idea was that FAS would dabble in the various disciplines to show it can be done by an evangelical then others would specialize in those fields and advance what he was doing.
Today’s evangelicals retain the concept of worldview, but it seems to only have political implications.
LikeLike
Darryl said: “The problem for Schaeffer’s admirers, though, which may turn out to be a similar affliction for Roman Catholicism, is that the deeper you go into the faith of your inspiring theologian, the less your aesthetics resonate with the technical doctrine behind the beauty. In other words, the converts to Reformed Protestantism that Schaeffer encouraged turned out in many cases not to care for all of the Reformed rigor they found in Presbyterian churches and upon which the apologist with the funny pants represented implicitly.”
I’m not sure why it follows that the “deeper you go into the faith of your inspiring theologian, the less your aesthetics resonate with the technical doctrine behind the beauty.” And what are some examples of the “Reformed rigor” that the “apologist with the funny pants” represented implicitly.
Those two sentences are saying a lot and can be easily misinterpreted by those who do not have your objective and subjective experience at L’Abri. And I was not sure whether that was meant as a compliment or a criticism of FAS. Did FAS not like some of the Reformed rigor
and those who followed him did the same or did many of his followers not buy into the rigor he represented? I am assuming it is the latter.
FAS played a key role in making me aware of reformation theology and in shaping some of my ideas on how to relate to unbelievers and other cultural concerns. Like the theonomists, you learn how sort out the truth from the error after reading what critics say about their literature.
LikeLike
John, what I meant was that L’Abri has not been known for channeling young Christians into Reformed churches. Don’t you think that’s a fair description of many L’Abri grads. I too came into Reformed convictions through FAS. But I stayed there through JGM.
LikeLike
Many Reformed thinkers do have a tendency to shoot off into tangents that confuse rather than clarify the important issues. I look at confessionalism as an attempt to reign in the tangents and concentrate on the things that matter most to the Christian faith. This centers us in on how we worship God on Sunday mornings. The cultural issues then take on more meaning when this is done properly and lose the status of our ultimate concerns. This has brought me lots of contentment when everything else in my life seems anything but content.
So, to answer your question, yes it seems L’Abri got Christians to ask big questions but did not really answer them sufficiently through channeling them into churches like confessionalism does. I guess it takes “reformed rigor” to stay plugged into the Church. Our autonomous selves (is that a VanTillian term?) do not particular like the reformed vigor it takes to trust the Church and the Christ who is supposed to reign there. At least that has been my objective and subjective experience.
I came into Reformed convictions through FAS and R.C. Sproul but I stayed there through Luther and other confessionalist writers like yourself.
LikeLike
“John, what I meant was that L’Abri has not been known for channeling young Christians into Reformed churches”
Isn’t that more or less by accident rather by design? Insofar as the problem with aesthetics is concerned, it seemed more to be lacking in the execution rather than any particular theoretical shortcomings.
It does get Christians involved in art, I’m not sure that the art is all that great though, and they seem to be lacking somewhat in craft.
LikeLike
Chris E, if students at L’Abri hear little about the church and the importance of membership, wouldn’t that count as a theoretical shortcoming?
LikeLike