Schaeffer Death in the City (repackage)

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4335-7681-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

A Redesign of the Classic Work by Francis A. Schaeffer Few Christians had a greater impact on the Christian response to modernism and postmodernism during the last half of the twentieth century than Francis A. Schaeffer, whose works offered a seemingly prophetic perspective that anticipated shifts in culture long before they happened. In Death in the City, originally written against the backdrop of the 1960s countercultural upheaval, Schaeffer shows that when the intellectual and spiritual foundation of a society fails, the society itself is destined to crumble. The death that follows subtly suffocates truth, meaning, and beauty out of the culture. Schaeffer offers a simple response to the rejection of biblical principles we see in our day-commitment to God's word as truth. This commitment is often a costly practice, but it is compassion for a world that is lost and dying without the gospel. Death in the City encourages us to respond to the changing culture-not by hiding away, but by living each aspect of life in supernatural communion with the Lord.

 Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984) authored more than twenty books, which have been translated into several languages and have sold millions globally. He and his wife, Edith, founded the L'Abri Fellowship international study and discipleship centers. Recognized internationally for his work in Christianity and culture, Schaeffer passed away in 1984 but his influence and legacy continue worldwide.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schaeffer, Francis A.

Leseproben

Chapter One

Death in the City

We live in a post-Christian world. What should be our perspective as individuals, as institutions, as orthodox Christians, as those who claim to be Bible-believing? How should we look at this post-Christian world and function as Christians in it?

This book will try to answer these questions. I will begin by asserting a proposition concerning the basic need of the orthodox church in our post-Christian world, and then I will consider that proposition in the biblical context of the books of Romans, Lamentations, and Jeremiah. Throughout we shall look at the situation we face in the modern world and the perspective we must have as Christians in that world.

First of all, I would like to set forth a proposition about reformation and revival. It will serve to focus our attention throughout the book. It is the basic need of the orthodox, evangelical church in our moment of history.

The church in our generation needs reformation, revival, and constructive revolution.

At times men think of the two words reformation and revival as standing in contrast one to the other, but this is a mistake. Both words are related to the word restore.

Reformation refers to a restoration to pure doctrine; revival refers to a restoration in the Christian’s life. Reformation speaks of a return to the teachings of Scripture; revival speaks of a life brought into its proper relationship to the Holy Spirit.

The great moments of church history have come when these two restorations have simultaneously come into action so that the church has returned to pure doctrine and the lives of the Christians in the church have known the power of the Holy Spirit. There cannot be true revival unless there has been reformation; and reformation is not complete without revival.

Such a combination of reformation and revival would be revolutionary in our day—revolutionary in our individual lives as Christians, revolutionary not only in reference to the liberal church but constructively revolutionary in the evangelical, orthodox church as well.

May we be those who know the reality of both reformation and revival, so that this poor dark world may have an exhibition of a portion of the church returned to both pure doctrine and Spirit-filled life.

The latter portion of the first chapter of Romans speaks of man as he is, and two verses tell how he came to be in that position. Romans 1:21 states, “Because, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their reasoning.”* It is important that we follow the Greek here with the word reasoning and not “imaginations” (as the King James Version renders it), because the emphasis is not on what our generation uses the word imagination to express, but on what it calls reasoning. What is involved here is men’s thinking, that which is cognitive, thought processes, comprehension. Thus, they “became vain in their reasoning, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:21–22). When the Scripture speaks of man being thus foolish, it does not mean he is foolish only religiously. Rather, it means that he has accepted a position that is intellectually foolish not only with regard to what the Bible says, but also to what exists—the universe and its form, and the mannishness of man. In turning away from God and the truth which He has given, man has thus become foolishly foolish in regard to what man is and what the universe is. He is left with a position with which he cannot live, and he is caught in a multitude of intellectual and personal tensions.

Such is the biblical position regarding man. And if we are going to begin to think of reformation and revival, we must have the same mentality God has concerning the position of man.

The Scripture tells us how man came into that situation: “Because, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful”; therefore, they became foolish in their reasoning, in their comprehension, in their lives. This passage relates to the original fall, but it does not speak only about the original fall. It speaks of any period when men knew the truth and deliberately turned away from it.

Many periods of history could be described in this way. From the biblical viewpoint there was a time when the ancestors of the people of India knew the truth and turned away, a time when the ancestors of the people of Africa knew the truth and turned away. This is true of people anywhere who now do not know the truth. But if we are looking across the history of the world to see those times when men knew the truth and turned away, let us say emphatically that there is no exhibition of this anywhere in history so clearly—in such a short time—as in our own generation. We who live in the northern European culture, including America and Canada, have seen this verse carried out in our generation with desperate force. Men of our time knew the truth and yet turned away—turned away not only from the biblical truth, the religious truth of the Reformation, but turned away from the total culture built upon that truth, which included the balance of freedom and form which the Reformation brought forth in northern Europe in the state and in society, a balance which has never been known anywhere in the world before.

Having turned away from the knowledge given by God, man has now lost the whole Christian culture. In Europe, including England, it took many years—in the United States only a few decades. In the United States, in the short span from the twenties to the sixties, we saw a complete shift. Of course, in the United States in the twenties not everyone was a Christian, but in general there was a Christian consensus. Now that consensus is gone. Ours is a post-Christian world in which Christianity, not only in the number of Christians but in cultural emphasis and cultural result, is now in the minority. To ask young people to maintain the status quo is folly. The status quo is no longer ours.

In four decades (from the twenties to the sixties) the change came in every portion and in every part of life. If in the twenties you had distributed a questionnaire in a place like Columbus Circle in New York, you would have found that most of the people might not personally have been Christians, but they would at least have had an idea of what Christianity was. Trafalgar Square in London, about 1890, would have been the same. But if today you distributed a questionnaire in these places, you would find that most of the people you asked would have little or no concept of true Christianity. They would know the word Christianity, but for most, in one way or another, the concepts they have about it would be erroneous. When we begin to think of them and preach the gospel to them, we must begin with the thought that they have no clear knowledge of biblical Christianity. But it is more than this; the whole culture has shifted from Christian to post-Christian.

Do not take this lightly! It is a horrible thing for a man like myself to look back and see my country and my culture go down the drain in my own lifetime. It is a horrible thing that sixty years ago you could move across this country and almost everyone, even non-Christians, would have known what the gospel was. A horrible thing that forty to fifty years ago our culture was built on the Christian consensus, and now we are in an absolute minority.

As Christians in this period of history we are faced with some crucial questions, the first one being this: what should our perspective be as we acknowledge the post-Christian character of our culture?

Let us refer to Romans 1:21–22 again: “Because, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their reasoning, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” Romans 1:18 tells us the result of men turning away from and rebelling against the truth they know: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” Man is justly under the wrath of the God who really exists and who deals with men on the basis of His character; and if the justice of that wrath is obvious concerning any generation, it is our own.

There is only one perspective we can have of the post-Christian world of our generation: an understanding that our culture and our country is under the wrath of God. Our country is under the wrath of God! Northern European culture is under the wrath of God. It will not do to say how great we are. It will not do to say the United States is God’s country in some special way. It will not do to cover up the difference between the consensus today and the consensus of a Christian world. The last few generations have trampled upon the truth of the Reformation and all that those truths have brought forth. And we are under the wrath of God. This is the perspective we must have if we are going to understand what...