The Daily Hatch

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE

The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book  really helped develop my political views concerning abortion, infanticide, and youth euthanasia, and it gave me a good understanding of those issues.

Christians need to take time to read the books and watch the films by Francis Schaeffer. Since the election time in November of 2012 there has been a renewed interest in the works Francis Schaeffer in the Christian community. One of the most challenging papers Schaeffer wrote was the chapter called

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Chapter 2 from The Great Evangelical Disaster (Crossway Books, 1984)

Part 1

Schaeffer rightly points out that previously Christians all accepted the inerrancy and trustworthy nature of the Bible but today many Christians do not. Schaeffer encourages Christians to return to the traditional respect for the Bible’s accuracy.

A Watershed

Not far from where we live in Switzerland is a high ridge of rock with a valley on both sides. One time I was there when there was snow on the ground along that ridge. The snow was lying there unbroken, a seeming unity. However, that unity was an illusion, for it lay along a great divide; it lay along a watershed. One portion of the snow when it melted would flow into one valley. The snow which lay close beside would flow into another valley when it melted.

Now it just so happens on that particular ridge that the melting snow which flows down one side of that ridge goes down into a valley, into a small river, and then down into the Rhine River. The Rhine then flows on through Germany and the water ends up in the cold waters of the North Sea. The water from the snow that started out so close along that watershed on the other side of the ridge, when this snow melts, drops off sharply down the ridge into the Rhone Valley. This water flows into Lac Leman – or as it is known in the English-speaking world, Lake Geneva – and then goes down below that into the Rhone River which flows through France and into the warm waters of the Mediterranean.

The snow lies along that watershed, unbroken, as a seeming unity. But when it melts, where it ends in its destinations is literally a thousand miles apart. That is a watershed. That is what a watershed is. A watershed divides. A clear line can be drawn between what seems at first to be the same or at least very close, but in reality ends in very different situations. In a watershed there is a line.

A House Divided

What does this illustration have to do with the evangelical world today? I would suggest that it is a very accurate description of what is happening. Evangelicals today are facing a watershed concerning the nature of biblical inspiration and authority. It is a watershed issue in very much the same sense as described in the illustration. Within evangelicalism there are a growing number who are modifying their views on the inerrancy of the Bible so that the full authority of Scripture is completely undercut. But it is happening in very subtle ways. Like the snow lying side-by-side on the ridge, the new views on biblical authority often seem at first glance not to be so very far from what evangelicals, until just recently, have always believed. But also, like the snow lying side-by-side on the ridge, the new views when followed consistently end up a thousand miles apart.

What may seem like a minor difference at first, in the end makes all the difference in the world. It makes all the difference, as we might expect, in things pertaining to theology, doctrine and spiritual matters, but it also makes all the difference in things pertaining to the daily Christian life and how we as Christians are to relate to the world around us. In other words, compromising the full authority of Scripture eventually affects what it means to be a Christian theologically and how we live in the full spectrum of human life.

There is a sense in which the problem of full biblical authority is fairly recent. Up until the last two hundred years or so virtually every Christian believed in the complete inerrancy of the Bible, or in the equivalent of this expressed in similar terms. This was true both before the Reformation and after. The problem with the pre-Reformation medieval church was not so much that it did not hold to belief in an inerrant Bible as that it allowed the whole range of nonbiblical theological ideas and superstitions to grow up within the church. These ideas were then placed alongside of the Bible and even over the Bible, so that the Bible’s authority and teaching were subordinated to nonbiblical teachings. This resulted in the abuses which led to the Reformation. But note that the problem was not that the pre-Reformation church did not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture; the problem was that it did not practice the inerrancy of Scripture, because it subordinated the Bible to its fallible teachings.

Thus it is important to note that, up until recent times, (1) belief in the inerrancy of Scripture (even when it was not practiced fully) and (2) claiming to be a Christian, were seen as two things which necessarily went together. If you were a Christian, you also trusted in the complete reliability of God’s written Word, the Bible. If you did not believe the Bible, you did not claim to be a Christian. But no one, until the past two hundred years or so, tried to say, “I am a Christian, but at the same time I believe the Bible to be full of errors.” As incredible as this would have seemed to Christians in the past, and as incredible as this may seem to Bible-believing Christians today, this is what is now happening within the evangelical world.

This problem which started some two hundred years ago has within the past two decades come to the forefront among evangelicals. It is a problem which I (and others) began to address publicly in the mid-sixties, again in the seventies and repeatedly in the eighties. We can be thankful for the many who have taken a strong stand on this; but we must also say, sadly, that the problem continues and is growing. Evangelicalism is divided, deeply divided. And it will not be helpful or truthful for anyone to deny this. It is something that will not simply go away, and it cannot be swept under the rug. What follows in this chapter grows out of the study, thinking, and prayer, often with tears, which I have done concerning this watershed issue during my whole life as a Christian, but especially as I have dealt with this in my speaking and writing during the past two decades. The following, then, is a restatement on further development as a unified whole of my work in this area.

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