“Francis Schaeffer at 100″

Open publication – Free publishing – More evangelicalism

 

Francis Schaeffer at 100

The year 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). It is difficult to think of an evangelical figure in the 20th century who so seriously engaged the philosophies and ideologies of the secular world and set them over against the Christian worldview than Francis Schaeffer.

But Schaeffer was no ordinary evangelical. The man wore knickers and knee high socks when he lectured, sporting not only long hair but a goat’s-chin beard! Most importantly, Schaeffer did not fear man, but feared God. Not only did he engage secular worldviews, but he confronted his fellow evangelicals, even rebuking them for doctrinal concession and compromise.

As many have observed, it is not an overstatement to say that the Schaeffers transformed, reshaped, and in many ways reformed American evangelicalism. Those writing in this new issue of Credo Magazine are proof, each writer bearing testimony to how Francis Schaeffer has made a monumental impact on how we understand and articulate the Christian faith and life in the world of ideas. Contributors include Bruce Little, William Edgar, Bryan Follis, Stephen Wellum, and many others.

Here is a preview of the cover and table of contents to get you started!  Continue at CredoMag

God Is Not Dead Yet

You might think from the recent spate of atheist best-sellers that belief in God has become intellectually indefensible for thinking people today. But a look at these books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, among others, quickly reveals that the so-called New Atheism lacks intellectual muscle. It is blissfully ignorant of the revolution that has taken place in Anglo-American philosophy. It reflects the scientism of a bygone generation rather than the contemporary intellectual scene.

That generation's cultural high point came on April 8, 1966, when Time magazine carried a lead story for which the cover was completely black except for three words emblazoned in bright red letters: "Is God Dead?" The story described the "death of God" movement, then current in American theology.

But to paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of God's demise was premature. For at the same time theologians were writing God's obituary, a new generation of young philosophers was rediscovering his vitality.

Back in the 1940s and '50s, many philosophers believed that talk about God, since it is not verifiable by the five senses, is meaningless—actual nonsense. This verificationism finally collapsed, in part because philosophers realized that verificationism itself could not be verified! The collapse of verificationism was the most important philosophical event of the 20th century. Its downfall meant that philosophers were free once again to tackle traditional problems of philosophy that verificationism had suppressed. Accompanying this resurgence of interest in traditional philosophical questions came something altogether unanticipated: a renaissance of Christian philosophy.  Continue at William Lane Craig

See Also: A New Day for Apologetics

IMAGE

Know Your Evangelicals: Francis Schaeffer

Name: Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984)

Why you should know him: Schaeffer was one of the most influential figures in American evangelicalism in the period between World War II and the mid-1980s.

Previous roles: Founder of L'Abri Fellowship International; Lecturer and author of eighteen books.

Education:
B.A., Hampden-Sydney College
B.Div. Faith Theological Seminary
Honorary D.Div., Highland College

Area of expertise/interest: Apologetics, philosophy, Western culture, abortion, neo-Calvinism

Books: The God Who is There (1968); Escape from Reason (1968); Death in the City (1969); The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (1970); The Mark of a Christian (1970); Pollution and the Death of Man (1970); The Church Before the Watching World (1971); True Spirituality (1971); Back to Freedom and Dignity (1972); Basic Bible Studies (1972); Genesis in Space and Time (1972); He is There and He is Not Silent (1972); The New Super-Spirituality (1972); Art and the Bible (1973); Everybody Can Know (1973); No Little People (1974); Two Contents, Two Realities (1974); Joshua and the Biblical Flow of History (1975); No Final Conflict (1975); How Should We Then Live? (1976); Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (with C. Everett Koop) (1979); A Christian Manifesto (1981); The Great Evangelical Disaster (1983)

Online essays and articles: Continue at Joe Carter

Human Philosophy and Scientific Hypotheses Cannot Deliver "Truth"