So officially this is lecture 10, even though we've been doing book reports the last few weeks. It looks a little odd to go from lecture 7 to lecture 10, but that's where we're at in the scheme of things. And what that means is that we're down to the last four weeks of class. And I don't know about you, but it feels a little like reaching the top of a mountain and starting your way back down and feeling like it's going to be downhill from here. Except for some of you, it might be downhill in a different way because you still have to take the final exam. But at any rate, we are progressing right along. We've spent a good bit of the semester so far looking at a number of works of Schaefer. Five, six, seven, eight books, if I've counted correctly. And now we're ready to shift gears a little bit and start thinking more in terms of. What do we make of Schaeffer's work? We've done a little bit of critical thinking along the way, but now we move into a more formal aspect of that. And over these last few weeks, there are quite a number of people's perspectives that we will bring in and consider as we look at Schaeffer's apologetics and his manner of writing and so forth. So for the first segment tonight, We're going to be considering a chapter out of a book. This chapter is written by Lane Dennis and it's called Schaefer and His Critics. It gives us a bit of an overview of how Schaefer's work is viewed in various respects. This particular chapter was written in 1986, so just a couple years after he died. Now Lane Dennis In fairness, we'll say that Lane Dennis was a fan of Schaeffer. Dennis was a VP of Crossway Books and helped considerably in the publication of Schaeffer's books, The Christian Manifesto, and the final book, The Great Evangelical Disaster, which as I understand it, Dennis was critical in the completion of that work at the very end of Schaefer's life as he was very weak and having difficulty just getting through the process. A year after Schaefer died, Lane Dennis also edited a book called The Letters of Francis Schaefer, Personal Correspondence. And I think we've mentioned that Edith has published not one, but two books of letters, Libri letters. So lots of material like that kind of in the background that, you know, when you're interested in learning a little more about Schaefer personally, you might look at some of that. So Dennis describes Schaefer's critics as those Those who see his body of work as a whole, from the early to the late, and those who see a difference between the early Schaefer and the later Schaefer. And so his examination is going to concern those who see a distinction between the early and the late Schaefer. We know that Schaefer was not an academic specialist, he certainly never claimed to be, and that it's a dishonest criticism if We're going to try to discredit him on the basis of a definition. And here's where Dennis is describing what it means to be a scholar and that there's more than one way to be a scholar. So we should be interacting with his ideas and not simply trying to push them aside. He says that the criticism of Schaefer is typically going to follow in one of three categories. First, his view of the Christian consensus, as he describes it, his interpretation of the Reformation, and specifically his interpretation of Kierkegaard. Now here's where we bump into Mark Knoll again. Here's a little more of what he had said when we quoted him earlier in the semester. The danger is the people will take him as a scholar, which he is not. Evangelical historians are especially bothered by a simplified myth of America's Christian past. So then the question is, did Schaeffer teach that America is a quote, Christian nation? That it either is or was a specially chosen covenant people in the new world. He certainly used terms like Christian consensus and biblical consensus and Christian ethos. But does he imply by those things that America is a Christian nation? And the answer is no, but that certainly Christian principles were very widely known and were very influential in shaping the nature of the Republic and shaping the culture. Alexis de Tocqueville describes this kind of pervasive religious influence in his book, Democracy in America. Meanwhile, sociologist Max Weber sees the influence of Calvinistic thinking in American capitalism. So there are certainly connections to these religious presuppositions. These are Schaeffer's three undeniable points. That ideas have consequences, and specifically Christian ideas shape the culture of this country. Secondly, that there are many positive influences that grew out of the Christian consensus in the early years of the country. And thirdly, that something has changed drastically over the last 40 years or so. In other words, there has been, in recent years, a cultural revolution. So part of the question is whether Schaeffer saw the Reformation as a golden age, an ideal that we should try to return to. And here's how Ronald Wells describes it. That modern society should return to the absolute norms articulated by the Reformation. Well, is that what he said? Mark Null, surely the elder Schaefer is mistaken in his frequent assertion that the Reformation preserved both form and freedom in perfect balance. So is there any truth behind the assertion that Mark Null makes? And interestingly, Dennis says he looked at the references and couldn't find any connection to what Schaefer actually said. Here's what he did say, quote, the Reformation was certainly not a golden age, it was far from perfect, and in many ways did not act consistently with the Bible's teaching. And Dennis concludes that the assertions made by critics like Wells and Null are unfounded. Even Wells' own view of the Reformation was problematical. He says, Protestantism is the religious form of Renaissance Humanism. Stephen Evans says this, and again it's not difficult to discern some kind of axe to grind almost in some of these comments. He says, some well-known evangelical pastors and authors have chosen Kierkegaard as a central villain in their account of how the 20th century lost its faith and its moorings. And then he points to Schaeffer as being the primary source. Schaeffer said this, Kierkegaard led to the conclusion that you could not arrive at synthesis by reason. Instead, you achieve everything of real importance by a leap of faith. In his more philosophical writings, he did become the father of modern thought. What he wrote gradually led to the absolute separation of the rational and logical from faith. And the illustration that Kierkegaard uses for that is the leap of faith that Abraham takes in offering up Isaac as a sacrifice. Schaefer seems to treat Kierkegaard fairly even-handedly and says that there's much in his devotional writing that's worth considering. But that he was that point where things began to turn. Dennis says this, that Schaefer's views are misrepresented and an alternate somewhat novel view is being advanced by his critics. And so he sees a pattern like this. that some will level a criticism in a certain area, then he will misrepresent Schaefer's argument, then show that the false argument is untenable, then he'll present his own more tenable view, and Dennis notices that the untenable view is actually the one that's being proposed by the critic. And so here's where we could say, this sounds kind of like a strawman argument. You misrepresent the argument so that it's easier for you to knock it down. Now, Dennis adamantly defends Schaefer as a scholar, but not an academic scholar. That he's a very learned man and across a broad range of topics, but he's not in a category of an academic specialist. And how does Schaeffer describe himself? Well, as we've seen, he primarily describes himself as an evangelist. He doesn't even describe himself as an apologist, per se. And as well, he defended the need for those areas of academic specialization in the areas that he spoke about. He wasn't trying to be that specialist, but he certainly didn't try to tear down the idea of specialization. His approach was to emphasize the unity of all reality. So we see Schaefer as a generalist and that's gonna create some tension with his work and the work of academics. Why do you suppose? What happens when you try to be a generalist across many fields? You make your target, your bullseye bigger for people from those different fields to take pop shots at you. Well you can say it better because you're a specialist and you don't like this hot dog talking about your field. You know more. We know more specifically about what you're talking about so you can give a better commentary paper, more profound commentary than this generalist can. But that also gives you the ability to point out the errors that the generalist may be making in his statements. And then how can you then use that if you really don't want this guy to be talking about your particular field? to over-critique on their part. That maybe they misjudge in their critique too. You know, maybe overkill. It cannot rise to their level, but they can't accept anybody in their domain either. Yes, and so then it becomes easier for the specialist to find the errors in the statements of the generalist and perhaps use that as a way of trying to discredit him in what he's saying, rather than listening to what he's saying, accepting that there are going to be some errors in the particulars, but looking at what he's trying to do, because what is it that Schaeffer is trying to do as a generalist? Yeah, so the generalist then is in the position to look at all these different fields and not just to be a specialist in any one particular field, but to have a better understanding of how all the fields, what, fit together and work together. I say in the notes here that we could raise an assortment of objections to the specialization of the academic who, first of all, may naturally look down on anyone meddling in his area of expertise. So, there is a sense, and this is a pattern that I've seen in many different ways over the years. Think about how difficult it is Well, first of all, it's difficult to criticize a field from the inside. But then if you are outside that field and criticizing a field, what becomes the problem at that point? The fact that you're an outsider makes it more difficult for you to level a criticism. You're considered to be not a reputable critic if you're not inside that field. I think that's why the science people have a problem with creation scientists. It's the same principle. Like, how dare you speak about these things, you know? And they want to just totally omit them from the realm of science. real scientists and you guys are coming from another left field orientation with your creation science and your young earth philosophy and all of this what not. So it becomes easy to discredit an outsider especially when there is a broad consensus about a particular field. We'll think about this a little more because I'm going to go a little deeper into this what I think is a problem of academia. I say here that it's an axiom that academia attracts and or breeds enormous egos. And if you don't believe that, I've got a couple of suggestions. One is you can go watch the movie Expelled, which is from 2008 I think, somewhere around there. Yeah, Ben Stein's documentary. The other is to spend a few years in grad school and you'll find out for yourself. Can I share something real quick? Okay. My wife's nephew, before he went into his dental school, he's got his own practice now, but he came for a visit and he wanted to go see UCLA's Dentistry Center, go for a tour. So I took him up there and we went into the dental classroom area, really sophisticated area. This one Korean dentist, who's really well known, stood off with my wife's nephew, who's from Korea, and browbeat him for being there. Like, why are you here? What do you want? And he goes, do you know who I am? Like that. Do you know who I am? He just got it in his face. And I wanted to say, I was even intimidated. I wanted to say to him, do you know who I am? I'm a taxpayer. Income goes for your salary, that's what I wanted to say. Yeah, it's a different world and it has its own culture. I describe it like this, if you're an undergraduate you really don't have much contact with academic culture. You show up, you take notes, you take tests, you get your grades, you get your diploma, you go off and do your thing. When you step into grad school it's a different world because now you're interacting as it were in the belly of the beast and having to deal with not just one but a committee of professors who hold your academic career in their hand. It's not just a question of how well your academic work goes because you can do good work and still be at odds with your committee. So there's a lot of landmines that you have to navigate when it comes to academic culture, especially if you want to be in the club called PhD. That is not an easy task. So Dennis says it would probably be easier for you to become a post hole digger. It would certainly take less time. Schaeffer's concern, this is Lane Dennis, Schaeffer's concern was that philosophy or any other discipline needs to go beyond mastery of the details and to see the relationship of each discipline to the general map, to the larger questions of meaning, purpose, and the unity of all reality. Without this, the study of details is meaningless. And here's where I hear the academics howling. Because study of the details is not meaningless to the academic who has built his career on such microscopy. He is judged by his peers according to the depth of his specialization. And here I'm thinking of a certain epidemiologist who decided for himself what would be good for the entire country or the entire world as a response to a certain outbreak. academic specialists can do a lot of damage as soon as they step out of their expertise. Interestingly, Dennis says that Schaefer expected his critics to use his errors as a way of trying to undermine his whole argument. It's probably not that difficult to anticipate the kind of ways that people who disagree with your argument are going to try to attack you and discredit you. Dennis says that Schaeffer's work remains the standard since no other Christian thinker has attempted this kind of a comprehensive interpretation. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that Schaeffer would have been enthusiastic for specialists to take up in those various areas where he left off as a generalist and to go deeper into those fields of inquiry. There's no reason at all to think that Schaefer would have been hostile to such an idea. It wasn't that he was trying to make everyone a generalist or that he was trying to denigrate specialization, but that he saw his particular calling as being that kind of a generalist. And again, what's the endgame for Schaefer? It's not scholarship. It's not even apologetics. Yeah, the endgame for Schaeffer's evangelism. Let's think of the university as a battleground of ideas. Dennis says this, quote, it's not easy to go through a PhD program without being affected by the naturalistic presuppositions which reign virtually unchallenged in every discipline. And here we suspect that Dennis is understating the case. He received his PhD from Northwestern University in the sociology of religion. So rather than using the word affected, I'm going to propose the word constrained. Let me re-read the quote with that change. It is not easy to go through a PhD program without being constrained by the naturalistic presuppositions which reign virtually unchallenged in every discipline. And he goes on with some further explanation which I think is pretty consistent with that idea. Why is it that I say constrained? because frankly the professors control the institutions with their presuppositions. So if you're a Christian, a creationist, even a young earth creationist, try going into the scientific fields where evolution and long ages are the dominant philosophy. You're going to have a tough time with that. And especially if you want to get to those higher levels because Academia is that place where you're often compelled to toe the line if you want to be in the club. It's not just about the quality of your academic work or the originality of your ideas. There's a great deal of conformity that comes into play in that academic culture. Dennis goes on to say this, the danger is that in being forced to play the game by the naturalist rules, we will eventually absorb some form of naturalism ourselves and abandon a distinctly Christian position. And what's the fancy word for that? There's no bonus points here, but maybe brownie points. When you start mixing. Oh, syncretism. Two of you got it almost at the same time. Very good. I'll remember that. Syncretism. How do we explain, for example, so many of the ceremonial laws that came through Moses on the people of Israel? Now if we look at those things and say, what difference does it make whether we eat pork and shellfish? Is it for health reasons or is there something else behind it? That's true, but we know that that was part of what we call the ceremonial law of the old covenant and it's now abolished Right we can see we can see that separate or separate or whole like a Inkling of holiness in that though. We are different And God was making a difference for his people however there is some validation to some of those practices that can be traced to healthier living, too. If they're not all foolish, I mean, or unassociated with reality. Well, God gave them to the people for their good health, I think. Right, and it could be because of the development of things like refrigeration and clean, safe handling things like that too. It could have a lot to do with it. God knew that one day that wouldn't be an issue. But those are what ifs, I'm sorry. Yeah. Again, I won't dispute that there may have been an aspect of hygiene involved in some of those things. But I think the bigger picture of those kinds of ceremonial laws, you touched on it, Leland, when you said separation, to come out and be holy. You can't sit down and have a meal with just anybody. That even something like the restrictions in your diet will make it more difficult for you to sit down at the table with the Canaanites, who then will start talking about their religion and start influencing you and your thinking and your behavior. So there's a need for us to have protection against those kinds of influences and that's hard to do in academia because it is a secular system probably with a few notable exceptions of colleges that have maintained a Christian worldview. Can you get through the program Well, here's the problem with that. First of all, to get the PhD, to get into the club, you have to make sure that you make your advisors happy. That's the first thing. There's an argument that says maybe at some point, but then let's say you finish your PhD, you navigate those choppy waters and get your PhD without compromising your Christian convictions. If you're planning to stay in academia, what comes next? Maybe. You could do a post-doc, continue to live on a minimum wage salary. You have to publish a PhD. To do what? You're kind of expected to publish if you have a PhD, right? In order to do what? Teach. Right. If I were any good at charades. Yeah, just say it, man. Well, let's say you've done that. You've graduated. You've got the degree. What's next for you? Tell us. Well, if you want to stay in academia... Ah, so if you want to be in academia as a professor, you're going to have to get tenure. And what's that going to require? Leland mentioned part of it. You're going to have to teach, but it's going to be more brown nosy. Yeah, two of you said about the same thing at about the same time in slightly different ways. This is starting to scare me between my mind and Leo's mind. It's that collective soul they're talking about. You guys have some kind of a connection there. Yeah, so let's say you get a job at a nice university, but you're basically a bottom-of-the-rung professor. You're going to spend the next five years trying to appease the Promotion and Tenure Committee to get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which is tenure. At some point, you might have academic freedom But in the meantime, you're going to be pretty heavily constrained by that culture. So it's not as simple as it sounds. Dennis summarizes by saying this, that no genuine distinction can be made between the intellectual concerns of the early Schaeffer and the activist concerns of the later Schaeffer. And that he's one and the same person, that there's a unity and consistency of his work from the early part of his life to the later part of his life. So, that's where Dennis lands on that. Now, you'll notice instead of nine pages of notes, I only had two for this first session, and now I'm out. So that leaves some room for questions and discussions. Hopefully everyone had a chance to read the material. What are your own thoughts and observations from what you've read so far? Eli wants to speak. Eli has the floor. I'm almost not even sure where to start. Just in terms of Dennis's work on its own merits, I think he commits the same errors that he is trying to criticize other people. That is true, right, the way that academia affects people, how it can influence people. But that doesn't mean that he demonstrated that that is the reason why people are saying the things they're saying. Schaefer, when he wrote the appendix for God Who's There, he wrote that appendix I guess in 1984-ish, he admits that he has errors in there. And then you had the bullet point there that his concern is that his critics are going to use his errors to undermine his whole argument. OK, but here's the question. Do his errors undermine his argument? He has as much of a responsibility as anybody else to answer that question, I think. Randy? where Schaefer did, said something in his lecture. Somebody said, you didn't get this right. He says, I know, but I was trying to make a point. I wish I could, I wish I could remember that, where that was because it would give us context and the particular error. So, perhaps he did, as a generalist, try to draw, make a point that may well have been an unforced error or an intentional error that could well have consequences down the road in terms of somebody's understanding. Okay. But, sometimes how it plays out. Aquinas did not purposely separate nature and grace. Maybe Schaefer could have said more clearly that he didn't mean to, it was just the ripple effect. Something like that. But he did notice how things flowed. And I can't remember if it was in this chapter or if it was somewhere else that, maybe it's in the next part, that part of the danger of being the generalist is oversimplifying things that are complex. And so maybe what you're describing is a case of intentionally oversimplifying something to make a point. But then the danger is that if you get your premises wrong, you may eventually get your conclusion wrong too. So, details matter. But, um... But you know, they made a very interesting comparison. Okay. With, uh, with Schaefer. He, he did say he was comparing his, uh, his, his generalism with works of that like um of other western culture writers like lord kenneth clark civilization and the work of jacob bronowski the ascent of man he's comparing them saying they're he's actually saying schaefer exceeds their clear, you know, high marks for Schaefer, no doubt. Well, and again, part of the lesson, I think, as we consider these last few weeks of class, and we're going to be looking at what different people have to say, Eli kind of made the point that everyone is going to bring a certain perspective to their criticism. Some are going to be favorable to Schaefer's work and may bring a bias in favor of Schaefer into the criticism of his work. Others, I shouldn't be surprised if it's the case that we might bump into somebody who doesn't necessarily like Schaefer very much and may be more harsh in his criticism than he needs to be. Like our other author that we studied last week. That should make an interesting discussion in our second hour. Because, you know, and I decided at the last minute to include that. I can't remember exactly where I saw the reference, but I was reading something and saw the reference to that critique and I thought, wait a minute, I've got that book. So I went and pulled it out and read that portion of it. And wow, that was an eye-opener. And again, it's a case that There are some valid things that we need to think about in these arguments. So part of the process here and part of the difficulty is that as we look at the critiques of Schaefer, we're also going to be thinking about critiquing the critiquers because that road runs both ways. So that'll be part of our thinking process. Other questions or comments? What else jumped out at you from this chapter? The humanism that you passed that rabbit trail, but we never really disembarked from the main route about the Reformation and humanism. How people were trying to tie the Reformation to the humanism the author it was it was it was Lane that said that that that is a form of reductionism. He's calling it reductionism by diminishment of the Reformation by tying it so closely with with a man-made movement kind of taking the wind, the divine wind out of the sails, I would say, for want of a better term. Well, if you look at everything through a humanistic or naturalistic perspective, then that's going to affect your interpretation of everything. You're already denying that something that you're looking at could be supernatural, so if you don't believe that the Reformation was a supernatural work of God, what's going to be your explanation for it? Because it was such a movement with such influence that you can't simply ignore it. The question then becomes, how are you going to explain it? And I guess this was the attempt of Ronald Wells to explain it as the religious form of Renaissance humanism. Other thoughts, questions? Randy? three or four years now. And my son-in-law, Aaron, and Sarah, took us to a winter retreat for All Christians Fellowship here in Colorado. And the evening speaker crafted his evening talk on character. And How does Sarah feel about this? As the, and, I'm probably just sticking my, I mean, his talk troubled me. But it was as if, okay, he focused, sorry, here, sorry, focused only on that one event. He didn't focus on the later revelation, for instance in Hebrews, saying that Abraham knew that God would bring his son back to life, even if it did, even if he did die. And to consider a 21st century evangelical speaker defending this is just, like I said, You didn't get invited back, did you? But, I mean, on page 115 of our article, there is a kind of, looks like about three or four paragraphs where Schaefer does actually say about the Dane and put him in a little more perspective. There at the end he says, I do not think Kierkegaard Those were his statements. He didn't mean for them to go as far or something. That's accurate as far as we can determine, but perhaps he still didn't anticipate where that was going to lead. Or what others would do with that. Yeah and it's almost inevitable that and this is part of the dilemma of anyone in a position of public speaking or publishing any of that kind of thing is that it's almost inevitable that somebody is going to misinterpret what you say and wasn't that one of Schaefer's concerns as we get ready to segue into a break about the Christian Manifesto and may explain why he may have toned down the language somewhat in the Christian Manifesto because of his concern that there could be those who would misinterpret what he was trying to say and do things that he had no intention for them to do. I was just wondering, I may be hearing this wrong. I want to straighten out my thinking regarding this. that it was a leap of faith, that it was a leap from rational to something irrational, to lift up a knife upon your child and ready to offer him as a burnt offering. But what is more irrational? When you know that God has spoken to you, not guessing, not hoping, there's absolutely no doubt that Abraham knew God spoke to him and told him to do that. It's not like us today, we read Abraham, his example in the word, and we should do likewise. I mean, that's a blind leap of faith. Again, I think I've said this before, that'll get you arrested. And you'll be booked for murder. But Abraham knew he was hearing God's voice. The real faith was, and faith is 99.99% obedience. He obeyed. That's the faith. He did what God, he knew what God said, and he did it even though he had to wait for that promise half of his life. He still did it even though he didn't know God would raise him up, but he knew God had spoken to him without a doubt. Yeah, so Randy mentioned the reference in Hebrews to the expectation that even if the sacrifice was carried out that God could bring him back to life because there was that promise that he was what? That promised child, that covenant child who was going to carry on the promises of God to the next generation. How else was Abraham going to become a father of nations and fulfill all those promises without Isaac? But it occurs to me something else as well as they're on the way What does Isaac say to his father? Behold the fire and the wood, where's the lamb for the sacrifice? And the answer is what? God will provide. That'd be me. Yeah, he says God will provide for himself a burnt offering. So part of that, we're not told everything in the historical text about exactly what God said to Abraham. We're told enough. But there may be more detail there that's revealed in the answer to a question like that, that Abraham not only had faith that God could deliver Isaac back to him alive, but maybe even that there was going to be some turn of events that took place as they were beginning to make that sacrifice. And of course that's what happened. But Abraham was prepared to carry through with it, and that was Like Leland says, obedience is the test. Are we willing to exercise the faith of obedience in order to see God fulfill His promises? let myself down over the edge, hopefully there will be something down there to catch me. That's different than, y'all are in the same position, you hear a voice and say, I live in these moments, you can't see me, but I can see you from my vantage point. And if you do let yourself down, The other part of that illustration that Schaefer uses is that he wants to know the guy's name. Remember that? Because he knows by name those who know the mountains and whether they can be trusted with that kind of knowledge. So, interesting. Alright, let's wrap this session. We'll come back in 10 minutes and start looking at The critique of Christian manifesto, that should be a fun time.