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How Should We Then Live?

Summary

Schaeffer wrote that, "To understand where we are in today's world -- in our intellectual ideas and in our cultural and political lives -- we must trace three lines in history, namely, the philosophic, the scientific, and the religious." That is exactly what he does in How Should We Then Live?. The way a person lives is based on how they view the world. Ideas are not without consequences.


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Quotes From The Book


There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind -- what they are in their thought-world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought-world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo's chisel, and it is true of a dictatorís sword.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
Ch. 1)



People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world-view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
  Ch. 1)



When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, "not many men are in the room" -- that is, although world-views have many variations, there are not many basic world-views or basic presuppositions.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
  Ch. 1)



No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had that absolute in God's revelation. Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
Ch. 1)



At its core...the Reformation was the removing of the humanistic distortions which had entered the church.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
Ch. 4)



The Reformation was certainly not a golden age. It was far from perfect, and in many ways it did not act consistently with the Bible's teaching, although the Reformers were trying to make the Bible their standard not only in religion but in all of life. No, it was not a golden age. For example, such overwhelming mistakes were made as Lutherís unbalanced position in regard to the peasant wars, and the Reformers showed little zeal for reaching people in other parts of the world with the Christian message. Yet though they indeed had many and serious weaknesses, in regard to religious and secular humanism, they did return to the Bibleís instruction and the example of the early church.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
Ch. 4)



Because the Reformers did not mix humanism with their position, but took instead a serious view of the Bible, they had no problem of meaning for the individual things, the particulars; they had no nature-versus-grace problem. One could say that the Renaissance centered in autonomous man, while the Reformation centered in the infinite-personal God who had spoken in the Bible. In the answer the Reformation gave, the problem of meaning for individual things, including man, was so completely answered that the problem -- as a problem -- did not exist. The reason for this is that the Bible gives a unity to the universal and the particulars.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
Ch. 4)



First, the Bible tells men and women true things about God. Therefore, they can know true things about God. One can know true things about God because God has revealed Himself. The word God was not contentless to Reformation man. God was not an unknown "philosophic other" because God had told man about Himself. As the Westminster Confession (1645-1647) says, when God revealed His attributes to people, the attributes are not only true to people but true to God. That is, when God tells people what He is like, what He says is not just relatively true but absolutely true. As finite beings, people do not have exhaustive truth about God, but they can have truth about God; and they can know, therefore, truth about that which is the ultimate universal. And the Bible speaks to men and women concerning meaning, morals, and values.

Second, the Bible tells us true things about people and about nature. It does not give men and women exhaustive truth about the world and the cosmos, but it does give truth about them. So one can know many true things about nature, especially why things exist and why they have the form they have. Yet, because the Bible does not give exhaustive truth about history and the cosmos, historians and scientists have a job to do, and their work is not meaningless. To be sure, there is a total break between God and His creation, that is, between God and created things; God is infinite ó and created things are finite. But man can know both truth about God and truth about the things of creation because in the Bible God has revealed Himself and has given man the key to understanding Godís world.

So, as the Reformation returned to biblical teaching, it gained two riches at once: it had no particulars-versus-universals (or meaning) problem, and yet at the same time science and art were set free to operate upon the basis of that which God had set forth in Scripture. The Christianity of the Reformation, therefore, stood in rich contrast to the basic weakness and final poverty of the humanism which existed in that day and the humanism which has existed since.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
Ch. 4)



It is important that the Bible sets forth true knowledge about mankind. The biblical teaching gives meaning to all particulars, but this is especially so in regard to that particular which is the most important to man, namely, the individual himself or herself. It gives a reason for the individual being great. The ironic fact here is that humanism, which began with Man's being central, eventually had no real meaning for people. On the other hand, if one begins with the Bible's position that a person is created by God and created in the image of God, there is a basis for that person's dignity. People, the Bible teaches, are made in the image of God -- they are nonprogrammed. Each is thus Man with dignity.

That Man is made in the image of God gives many important answers intellectually, but it also has had vast practical results, both in the Reformation days and in our own age. For example, in the time of the Reformation it meant that all the vocations of life came to have dignity. The vocation of honest merchant or housewife had as much dignity as king. This was strengthened further by the emphasis on the biblical teaching of the priesthood of all believers -- that is, that all Christians are priests. Thus, in a very real sense, all people are equal as persons. Moreover, the government of the church by lay elders created the potential for democratic emphasis.

The Bible, however, also says that man is fallen; he has revolted against God. At the historic space-time Fall, man refused to stand in the proper relationship with this infinite reference point which is the personal God. Therefore, people are now abnormal. The Reformation saw all people as equal in this way, too -- all are guilty before God. This is as true of the king and queen as the peasant. So, in contrast to the humanism of the Renaissance, which never gave an answer to explain that which is observable in people, the Bible enabled people to solve the dilemma facing them as they look at themselves: they could understand both their greatness and their cruelty.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
Ch. 4)



It is not only Christians who can paint with beauty, nor for that matter only Christians who can love or who have creative stirrings. Even though the image is now contorted, people are made in the image of God. This is who people are, whether or not they know or acknowledge it. God is the great Creator, and part of the unique mannishness of man, as made in Godís image, is creativity. Thus, man as man paints, shows creativity in science and engineering, and so on. Such activity does not require a special impulse from God, and it does not mean that people are not alienated from God and do not need the work of Christ to return to God. It does mean that man as man, in contrast to non-man, is creative.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?,
  Ch. 4) 


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