Summary
In Back to Freedom and Dignity, Schaeffer explain how in the reduction of man to his genetic makeup and the conditioning of his environment, man is ultimately reduced to a machine. Man as a product of the impersonal plus time plus chance is left without intrinsic value and his freedom becomes an illusion. It is only when we recognize man as made in the image of God that he has true value, personality and freedom.
Commercial Availability of Work
Back to Freedom and Dignity (paper - out of print)
The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (paper)
The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (Windows CDROM)
Quotes From The Book
The problem is that with man being considered a product of the impersonal plus time plus chance, all values are arbitrary and open to manipulation.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity, Ch. 1)
If people today were to take good reading courses, they would be better off. Americans don't read enough (that's true), and Americans read too much (that's true too). What I mean is that many don't read enough material to really be informed, and yet they read too much because what they do read they often do not stop to assimilate and think through. I urge you, in such a day as ours, to really truly learn to read!
(Francis A. Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity, Ch. 2)
Christians consider that man is autonomous in that he is significant, he affects the environment. In behavioristic psychology, the situation is reversed. All behavior is determined not from within but from without. "You" don't exist. Man is not there. All that is there is a bundle of conditioning, a collection of what you have been in the past: your genetic makeup and your environment.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity, Ch. 7)
(Note: The word "autonomous" is used in this book in the very specific context of meaning "not determined.")
The Christian does not say that there is no chemical or psychological conditioning. Some may argue that way, but if so they are trapped because chemical and psychological conditioning can be demonstrated. My height was determined at conception by the chemical properties of my genes. Many aspects of my physical makeup were conditioned by heredity. But to a Christian, though man may undergo a good deal of conditioning, he is not only the product of conditioning. Man has a mind; he exists as an ego, an entity standing over against the machinelike part of his being.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity, Ch. 8)
When Christians and evangelical churches do not have the courage to stress the balance of the exhibition of the love of God and the holiness of God and to make an absolute distinction between cultural norms and biblical absolutes, a whole generation is being opened to the possibility of ...rejecting Christ himself.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity, Ch. 8)
Democracy, freedom without chaos, as we know it in northern Europe, was built on the Reformation and it has not existed anywhere else, and this includes the small city states in Greece long ago. This cannot be built or last long without the position outlined in Samuel Rutherfordís Lex Rex. When one removes the Bible in which God has spoken propositionally and the resulting Christian consensus, freedom without chaos will not long remain. It can't. Something will take its place, and it will be one of the elites.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity, Ch. 8)
What has happened to man? We must see him as one who has torn himself away both from the infinite-personal God who created him as finite but in His image and from Godís revelation to him. Made in God's image man was made to be great, he was made to be beautiful, and he was made to be creative in life and art. But his rebellion has led him into making himself into nothing but a machine.
© 1999 Rational Pi, all rights reserved
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