June 7, 2023 Show with Dr. Gregory Edward Reynolds on “Your Father’s L’Abri: Reflections on the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer”

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I am thrilled to have back as a returning guest today, Dr. Gregory Edward Reynolds. I know that the listeners in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience, especially those that are Orthodox Presbyterian, will immediately recognize that name.

He is an author and an ordained minister and church planter in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination. And today we are going to be addressing his latest book, Your Father's Libri, Reflections on the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Gregory Reynolds.

Thank you, Chris. It's great to be with you again.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Its Origins in the Fundamentalist Controversy

And for the sake of our listeners who may be unfamiliar with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination, why don't you let our listeners know briefly something about that fine body of believers.

Well, we grew back during the 20s. There was a great battle in the large Presbyterian Church, the PCUSA, over everything about the supernatural reality of the Christian faith, the Bible, Christ, the resurrection, historical resurrection, and all those sorts of things.

They were referred to as the fundamentals, but those are the basic apostles' creed truths that the Bible clearly teaches. And so out of that battle, J. Gresson Machen very bravely led a small group, I was not alive at that point, but of us who desire to continue a true Presbyterianism which is faithful to Scripture and to the Reformed tradition of understanding what the Bible says, the system of doctrine taught in it.

Well, if anybody is interested in finding out more about this fine denomination, perhaps you want to find out what congregations in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church may be near where you live or near where loved ones of yours live, just go to opc .org, opc .org, opc for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, that's opc .org.

Francis Schaeffer’s Early Life, Conversion, and First Encounters with His Work

Well now we are going to be entering into our discussion on your book, Your Father's Libri, Reflections on the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer. Francis Schaeffer is one of the great heroes of the Christian faith for many who are Reformed and even outside of the Reformed faith.

And his voice, I believe, needs to be heard today more than any other decade of the Christian faith, I think. Let's hear from you first of all, who was Francis Schaeffer and when and where was he born and raised, and in what religion, if any, was he raised?

Yes, and so he was, Francis Schaeffer was born in 1912 on January 30th, and he was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania into a working class family, a father German, a mother was English, and he was someone who had, I think he had a vague religious upbringing, it was perhaps Lutheran, I'm forgetting the details of that.

But at one point in his, as a young man, while he was still living at home, he helped a white Russian count learn English. What an interesting relationship that must have been. And it got him to reading some serious philosophy, and as he went through and read Ovid, he read the Bible, so he was kind of scratching at the surface of a classical education.

And he became a believer by going to a Billy Zioli tent meeting back in 1930. And so he was converted, apparently, on August 19th of 1930, and then in his diary, not long after that, about 10 days, he wrote that all truth is from the Bible.

So he had come under a real conviction of his own sin, his need of a Savior, and his need of the guidance of the Word of God.

Now, who was Billy Zioli? Is that the name you mentioned?

Yes. Well, he is more famous in Schaeffer's life, apart from the tent meeting, the revivalist meeting that he went to in 1930, as the person largely responsible for getting the Schaeffers involved in the film, the two films, actually.

Certainly the first one, Well, How Shall We Then Live?, that would have been in the 70s. And that's when he would be well known. I don't really know much about him, except he was a real revivalist. I don't think he was Reformed in his theology, but he was probably then a fundamentalist and maybe later on, more of an evangelical.

Yes, I think that this is a reminder to we who are Reformed, that although we should never stop being, we should never stop critically examining all theologies, especially those that claim to be Christian, and we must be very clear when we believe they are in error and are not according to the inerrant God-breathed scriptures.

But at the same time, we have to be more hesitant than we often are to be overly critical and especially condemnatory towards those that do not agree with us lockstep, because God has used men, as you have even given proof to that fact, he has used men outside of our Reformed camp to not only save sinners, but to save sinners that would eventually become Reformed heroes.

That's true, Chris, and it reminds me that the Lord so often uses a crooked stick to get done what he wants to accomplish. And I can say that as a minister of the Word, even though I have that wonderful theology of the Reformation, I'm also a crooked stick.

I'm an imperfect human being, and that he uses imperfect human beings to bring people to himself is remarkable, and it's a testimony to the supernatural realities that Schaeffer really held firmly to.

And how did you first discover Francis Schaeffer?

Well, actually, I have my testimony, if anyone's interested, was printed, published by Christianity Today back in May of 2021. They have a feature at the end of their monthly magazine called The Testimony, and I give much more detail there.

But I had become a Christian by reading the book of Jonah, and I did have some gospel truth in my background late in my high school life through my mom and my uncle, who was a Gideon. And so I did have something to recall, but I realized in the midst of the counterculture the emptiness of what we believed.

It was kind of a mixture of American idealism and Eastern mysticism, and it came to a dead end. And I think the drug deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix back in 1971 really kind of rocked my hippie counterculture world.

And so I started, when I became a believer, I just got down on my knees and asked God to forgive my sins and lead me. And I went to my mother's fundamentalist church in Manchester, New Hampshire. I would drive home from, drive up from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Manchester.

And there was a dear family there, their name was The Darlings. They ran a local business, and they were perceptive enough in that fundamentalist environment to give me the church at the end of the 20th century.

And I actually have that book here with me, and I just wanted to quickly read the table of contents to show you why this would have appealed to me, because nobody else, I mean nobody that I knew or had heard of or was being introduced to in the Bible-believing world was addressing these things.

So here's the contents. The Roots of the Student Revolution. So there he's understanding where I was coming from. The International Student Revolution. The Church in a Dying Culture. Form and Freedom in the Church.

The Practice of Community and Freedom. The Threat of Silence. Modern Man and the Manipulator. And then Revolutionary Christianity. He also has an appendix. The Mark of the Christian, and I've noticed in looking through my library of his books that the Mark of the Christian is there as an appendix in quite a number of them.

But he was someone who was addressing the world out of which I had come as a very new believer. And I would say it was not maybe a month after my conversion that The Darlings put that book in my hands, and I read everything that he'd written up to that point.

I think there were four or five different books that he had written, and The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, and The Death of Culture, and I think there was another one too on ecology. And so those, I read them very rapidly and wrote a letter to the Schaffers and asked them if I could come, and they said, sure, come on over, and that's exactly what I did.

Schaeffer’s Three-Ministry Phases and the Need for Supernatural Reality

Praise God. And did Francis Schaffer, during his years as a public figure, go through any notable changes in his own theology, his worldview, and his approach to and focus on ministry?

Yes, that's a very interesting question, and an important one, I think, in evaluating both the strengths and weaknesses of Francis Schaffer. I actually take the position of Barry Hankins, who looks at his life in terms of three phases.

Now Schaffer himself would say, I never changed, but there are three phases of his ministry. The first was his fundamentalist phase in the 30s and the 40s, and I mean, that was the Christianity into which he was converted, and so it was natural for him to become associated with the fundamentalist movement, very much separatistic, and he had a very narrow view of the Christian life.

And it wasn't until he was in Europe doing work for the Foreign Missions Board, it was an independent Foreign Missions Board. He was doing work for them in Europe, and he came to kind of a crisis in his life.

Bill Edgar has a wonderful article on the Desiring God website called His Hayloft Experience, and he really went back and questioned all of his fundamental beliefs as a Christian, and really wrestled with the Lord for quite some period, a period of time.

Mrs. Schaffer was quite anxious during that period, but he came out really believing firmly that all he had believed was true, but there had been a lack of supernatural reality and love in his life. And so that really changed everything for him, and it opened him to begin the ministry several years later called Le Brie, which is French for shelter, and he began really with his eldest daughter bringing back students from university, I think in Lausanne and elsewhere, to discuss Christian faith, and he found that that very informal atmosphere of his own home, he was able to articulate answers to the questions that the students had in a way that brought a number of them to Christ, and that was the beginning of that phase.

So then the Le Brie, European Le Brie phase, where he was an evangelist and really came to understand the counterculture and some of the questions my generation of baby boomers were asking during our student days.

And then in 78, when he got into the filmmaking phase, he came back to America, of course, because he had to go to the Mayo Clinic for treatments for his cancer, and his son Frankie had kind of talked him into doing film, and he got very much involved in the American context as a culture warrior.

And so there was a definite switch. Now I think Hankins would say, and I pretty much agree with him, that underlying all of that there was definitely, even in his understanding of culture and art, which I deeply appreciated, there was still a fundamentalist strain in his way of thinking, and I think that's true.

But there were definitely those three distinct phases in his life.

Now, when you said earlier that he, while reexamining his fundamentalism, two of the things he found lacking in his life were the supernatural and love. When you say he was lacking supernaturally, are you speaking of his recognition of the supernatural in his life at that time?

Yes, exactly. I think that what, and of course, the most practical revelation of that need was prayer. So he realized, I think, that prayer and the belief that God works in history, that He works through us, that He guides us and gives us wisdom through His Word, that sense of God being present in his ministry and working through him to encourage others and bring them to faith, that's what he meant by supernatural reality.

And don't you think that we who are Reformed can learn a great lesson from that? Because it's not just our fundamentalist brothers and sisters who may be going through that in their lives, a lack of a recognition of the supernatural, but it seems very often we who are Reformed operate in that way.

Yes, we do tend, because of our native sinfulness, to depend upon ourselves and our own wisdom, even if it's just we think Christianly. But if we don't depend on God to use us and to form us, not just to use us to help others, but to form us after the image of His Son, if we don't have that trust and dependence, we won't make much progress in the Christian life.

Schaeffer as an Evangelical Intellectual and Evangelist to the Counterculture

Now, how did Schaeffer stand out as a unique voice for the Christian faith amongst his contemporaries in ministry during the most prominent years as a public figure?

Well, I think that he became—it was interesting, I think it was Time magazine in 1960 somehow got a hold of his ministry, they found out about it, and called him an evangelical intellectual. And I think while he was a brilliant man in his own right, I mean, he was magna cum laude from Hampton-Sydney College, he was a very bright man, he was not—it's odd that he would be a public intellectual, because he really didn't have the kinds of academic training that most public intellectuals have.

And so what he would say of himself is that he was a voice for the gospel that was speaking the truth in love and seeking to reach out to a wide swath of human beings. I think his unique voice, especially at the beginning of his ministry, was certainly with baby boomers, with my generation in the counterculture, and of course that attracted many others as his ministry grew and became a worldwide phenomenon.

Well, at the height of his ministry, would there have been a label that Schaeffer most prominently used to identify himself? You were speaking earlier when describing him that there was a point when he would have most identified himself as a fundamentalist and so on, so was there a specific label of his preference that he eventually landed on?

Well, I think he would say that he was an evangelist, and I saw him in action, of course, having lived at LaBrie for six months, I saw him in action many times, a man of—he had great compassion, and he really knew how to connect with people and to—he paid attention to them.

Nothing distracted him when he was talking to you personally, and since I got to live in his chalet at Les Malaise, there in Waymo, in the midst of the community of LaBrie, I got chances to talk with him personally, and he always—he was never condescending, he was always very personable, a very compassionate man.

So I think he would call himself an evangelist. Now he was an unusual, unique evangelist, as one of my chapters in the book is titled, and unique because he had a unique connection with Christians coming out of the modern culture in which we lived.

And I'm going to give our listeners our email address in the event that they have questions of their own that they would like to ask of Dr. Reynolds about our theme today, Your Father's LaBrie Reflections on the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer.

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We understand that those things can exist. But please, if you are asking a general question, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. And as far as Dr. Schaeffer's harshest criticisms of evangelical Christianity at large, what were some of those?

Well, I would say that the lack of love, which he detected in himself, first of all, and in those that he was associated with, like Carl MacIntyre in his fundamentalist period at the beginning of his ministry for a couple of decades, the lack of love, I would say, would be a main theme.

Now, near the end of his life, in one of the last books that he wrote, had to do with a lack of faithfulness to the Bible. And of course, he saw neo-evangelicalism compromising the Bible, but he also understood that fundamentalists had a way of adding to the Bible, adding rules such as forbidding alcoholic beverages or adult beverages, forbidding the smoking of tobacco or playing cards, those sorts of things.

He felt that they added to the Bible, but also, by doing that, failed to pay attention to other things in the Bible, particularly what he always liked to refer to as the final apologetic in the high priestly prayer of Jesus in the Gospel of John, where basically Jesus prays for those that he is calling out of the world into his kingdom, and prays that their love for one another would be something that would be noted by the world.

And so, a lack of that, he would say, detracts in a serious way from our evangelistic communication of the Gospel. And so, a lack of love and a lack of faithfulness to the Bible in its entirety, I think also a lack of cultural awareness.

And it's interesting, you know, Tim Keller just went to be with the Lord in New York City. We were actually there when he left this world, and we were with people who were members of his church. And as I followed his ministry over the years, the thing that is unique about him is that he was able to connect with professional, highly educated professional and very secular people in New York City.

And so, there was that unique niche. Now, his ministry went far beyond that, but there was that niche which he addressed that nobody else was really communicating and connecting with, and that's what Schaeffer did.

And he did it partly through cultural awareness. For example, in my own background, I was raised with a love of classical music, of opera, and of art. And in the fundamentalism that my mom became a Christian in, there was a disdain for that largely.

And so, I had been to architectural school, was starting a career in architecture, and none of those things were appreciated. Well, Schaeffer appreciated all of those things and encouraged understanding, appreciating, and even enjoying many dimensions of culture.

And so, that was something that was definitely lacking in fundamentalism. Not so much in evangelicalism, but definitely in fundamentalism.

And I think having gotten to know quite a number of fundamentalists over the years and developing close friendships with them, I think that there is a public persona that a lot of fundamentalists have that have a disdain for the arts and so on that is not so much a part of their personal lives.

I've gotten to know fundamentalists that have really fallen in love with secular Celtic music and Broadway show tunes and all that kind of a thing, and perhaps even opera and so on. So, I think some of that is they're doing what they think they're supposed to be doing in the sight of their colleagues and friends in fundamentalist ministry.

Well, that is true, and I know that, I know a fundamentalist, a very famous fundamentalist leader who I won't mention, a long, long time ago, but would disdain the drinking of alcoholic beverages. But when he was in Europe buying art, he would drink wine with his friends and colleagues there.

So, the thing is, you didn't have to be a hypocrite with Schaeffer, because he understood what legalism was. And also, I will say this, that my mom's experience in her first church, which was a fundamentalist conservative Baptist church, there were lovely people there.

They were people who were very sincere, and they were real serious believers. But they also told my mom that her love of opera was sinful, and that her love of architecture we had designed and built our own house in New Hampshire was also worldly.

And so, those things were very difficult for my mom to hear. And Hidden Art by Edith Schaeffer, which I came to discover early on in my time there at LaBrie, ended up really being a tremendous source of liberty for my mom.

That's interesting, architecture. That's a new one for me. I had no idea that there was an abhorrence of architecture by fundamentalists.

Well, I wouldn't say generally that there's an abhorrence, but I would say that if you're too interested in cultural things, you're probably being worldly. And my mom certainly understood that. I think she felt that the women that came to her Bible study, or that came to do a Bible study in her home, felt that that was worldly.

So I think, too, that fundamentalism today has probably changed quite a bit from what it was back in the late 60s, early 70s, when I became a Christian.

But they still exist, though. I know some pretty hardcore fundamentalists, who I love and enjoy their fellowship, but just disagree with some of the extreme criticisms they have and extreme forms of separation that they have.

But isn't it interesting what you were speaking about? Being in love with the world of art and so on is typically amongst many fundamentalists viewed as a strong negative thing to be rebuked, that Bob Jones University has one of the largest collections of religious art in the world.

Yes, that is true, and they also have their wonderful Shakespearean theater. And so there's some funny contradictions there. And we see that in the Christian world, and we realize when we point out those weaknesses in our fundamentalist brethren, that we also have our own weaknesses.

Well, we are going to our first commercial break. If you have a question for Dr. Greg Reynolds about his experience at LaBrie, about Francis Schaeffer as an individual, as a Christian hero of the faith, just send in your questions to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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That's royaldiadem .com. We are now back with my guest today, Dr. Greg Reynolds. We are discussing his latest book, Your Father's Libre, Reflections on the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer. And our email address, if you have a question, is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And before I go to any listener questions, I wanted to ask the flip side of the question that I asked you before the break. I asked you what Dr. Schaeffer's harshest criticisms of evangelical Christianity at large were, but who were his own harshest critics, those that most vociferously criticized Francis Schaeffer during his heyday?

Schaeffer’s Critics: Barth, Marsden, and Noll

Well, perhaps just prior to his heyday, Chris, he actually had an encounter with Karl Barth. And because he was very favorable to the work of Cornelius Van Til, who was a professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, he strongly disagreed with Barth.

And Barth, in turn, basically said, You don't know what you're talking about. You really don't understand my theology. And so that was, I think, the first really strong critic. Now, later in his life, when he encountered people like George Marsden, who was an evangelical church historian of some note, and Mark Knoll would be another.

These are people that I know, have known throughout my ministry, and read with much appreciation. And they had some, I think, serious and legitimate criticisms of his work, particularly in the Christian Manifesto, which was really, I think Marsden said it was more of a culture war tract than it was serious history.

And they pointed out a number of real mistakes in his historical accuracy, as well as his application of it to American life and politics in particular. So he had critics that I think I would not favor.

On the other hand, he had some critics that I think had some legitimate concerns. The Marsden and Knoll criticisms were very much, let's say, loving criticisms, because they believed that he had a wonderful ministry, and they appreciated the strengths of Schaeffer and his ability to address, especially the baby boom generation with the gospel, and also his commitment to the Word of God and to true Christian doctrine.

But those were critics, and he certainly had many more along the way.

Now, was Barth correct in his criticism that Dr. Schaeffer was not rightly understanding Neo-Orthodoxy, or more specifically, Barth's own theology? Or do you think that Schaeffer was closer to being correct in his assessment than Barth was willing to admit?

Well, how much of his theology? Because Barth was voluminous and detailed and also deeply intellectual in his writing, and so I doubt that Schaeffer read lots of Barth. But Schaeffer knew enough about Barth through Van Til to know that his doctrine of Scripture was seriously wrong.

And so I would agree 100 with Schaeffer in terms of assessing Barth's doctrine of Scripture as being simply very subjective and not the orthodox view that the Bible is, from beginning to end, infallible and inerrant.

Recommended First Reading on Francis Schaeffer

Well, let's go to some of our listener questions. We have Seth in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, who says, Greetings, gentlemen. As someone who has yet to read anything by Francis Schaeffer, which of his writings would you recommend first reading?

Oh, good question. I would say, actually, so if you want to understand, for me, the church at the end of the 20th century, of course, which was my first read, that introduced me to the broad structure of Schaeffer's thought and to the different themes that, to me, coming out of the counterculture, were extremely important and which no one else was saying.

Now, having said that, I would actually say that reading a biography, and I would recommend the Bill Edgar biography of Schaeffer, which focuses on true spirituality, which has been one of Schaeffer's most popular books.

I would recommend starting by reading Bill Edgar's book, and hold on one second, and I'll get the title of that.

And while you're doing that, I'll announce our e-mail address again. If anybody wants to join us with a question, it's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, and have you found that title?

Yes, and so it would be Schaeffer and the Christian Life, Countercultural Spirituality by William Edgar. It's a crossway publication in 2013. It should be readily available on the Internet.

Well, thank you, Seth. And if you could give me your full mailing address in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, you have won a free copy of your father's Libri, Reflections on the Ministry of Francis Schaeffer, compliments of my guest today, Dr. Gregory Edward Reynolds, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, who will ship that book out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

We have a mutual friend of both of ours, Dr. Reynolds, who has submitted a question, someone with whom I recently enjoyed two wonderful opportunities of fellowship, once over lunch and then once at a worship service of the Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian congregation in Deer Park, Long Island, New York.

Our mutual dear friend for many years, Dr. Pastor Bill Shishko, has submitted two questions to you. And the two questions are, first he says, thank you for your book and your interview. A couple of questions from items in your book.

The second and third stages of Francis Schaeffer's ministry have been called the Bohemian Schaeffer and the Bourgeois Schaeffer. You note that you preferred the Bohemian Schaeffer, as I do. Well, I can't even think of a way of saying somebody is bourgeois without it being a pejorative or an insult.