The Shelter - A Francis A. Schaeffer Site


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No Final Conflict
(1975)

Summary

"It is my conviction that the crucial area of discussion for evangelicalism in the next years will be the Scripture. At stake is whether evangelicalism will remain evangelical.

The issue is whether the Bible is God's verbalized communication to men giving propositional truth where it touches the cosmos and history, or whether it is only in some sense "revelational" where it touches matters of religion. The early chapters of Genesis relate to this discussion, but ultimately the question is not (and cannot be) confined to them: the whole Bible is involved."
(Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict, Introduction)

Commercial Availability of Work

The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (paper)
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Quotes From The Book

We must say that if evangelicals are to be evangelicals, we must not compromise our view of Scripture. There is no use in evangelicalism seeming to get larger and larger, if at the same time appreciable parts of evangelicalism are getting soft at that which is the central core -- namely, the Scriptures.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict, Ch. 1)

If faith is separated from fact and specifically pre-Abrahamic, space-time history, it's only another form of what we today call a trip.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict, Ch. 1)

We must say most lovingly but clearly: evangelicalism is not consistently evangelical unless there is a line drawn between those who take a full view of Scripture and those who do not.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict, Ch. 1)

If we try to separate the religious passages in the book of Genesis from those which touch on history and the cosmos, the religious passages are relegated to an upper-story situation. They have been removed from any connection to space-time verification, and that means no historical or scientific study can refute them. But it also follows that no studies can verify them. In short, there is no reason to accept the upper-story religious things either. The upper-story religious things only become a quarry out of which to have our own personal subjective, existential, religious experience. There is no reason, then, to think of the religious things as being other than in one's own head.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict, Ch. 2)

The neo-orthodox position is that the Bible contains mistakes in the areas of history and science, but we are to believe it anyway in the religious areas, that somehow a "religious word" breaks forth from it. The result is that religious things become "truth" inside of one's head -- just as the drug experience or the Eastern religious experience is "truth" inside of one's head.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, No Final Conflict, Ch. 2)