CHRISTIANITY AS A CIRCLE

'Christianity is not to be considered as a single point or a narrow, repetitive line, but as a circle which provides form but within which there is freedom to move in terms of understanding and expression. Christianity is a circle with definite limits, limits which tend to be like twin cliffs. We find ourselves in danger of falling off on one side or on the other; that is, we have to be careful not to avoid one sort of doctrinal error by backing off into the opposite one.

We must ask God to help us, and we must hep each other, not to fall off the cliffs. There is room for discussion within each circle, but we must not forget that there is a circle to be in.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.93.

DOCTRINE MATTERS

'There is no Christian doctrine that does not have a meaning in the existential, moment-by-moment, life. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity is affirmed in our Christian lives as we practise the reality, and the importance, or personality at this present moment. This is true both of the practice of personal relationship towards God and towards people.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.88.

YOU NEED GOD'S SPIRIT TO BE A BALANCED CHRISTIAN

'...in the flesh we can stress purity without love or we can stress the love of God without purity, but ...in the flesh we cannot stress both simultaneously. In order to exhibit both simultaneously, we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ, to the work of the Holy Spirit.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.45.

THE POINT OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE

'We find that the man-woman relationship of marriage is repeatedly stressed in Scripture as a picture, an illustration, a type, of the wonder of the relationship of individual and Christ and the church of Christ.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.39.

CHRISTIAN WORD PLAY

'Historic Christianity and either the old or the new liberal theology are two separate religions with nothing in common except certain terms which they use with totally different meanings.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.35.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

'The real difference between liberalism and biblical Christianity is not a matter of scholarship but a number of presuppositions. Both the old and new liberalism operate on a set of presuppositions common to both of them, but different from those of historic, orthodox Christianity.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.12.

FAILURE

'...if a servant of God falls, then the first question I should ask is, Have I shared his burden? Specifically, have I treated him as a piece of wood or a religious symbol, or have I prayed for him as a person.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'The Weakness of God's Servants' in No little people, p.61.

PERFECTIONISM

'...we must understand that the expectation of personal perfection is a romanticism not rooted in Scripture. If I demand perfection from myself, then I will destroy myself. Many Christians vacillate between being permissive in regard to sin toward themselves on the one hand, and demanding perfection from themslves on the other. They end up battered and crushed because they do not live up to their own image of perfectionism.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'The Weakness of God's Servants' in No little people, p.51.

RELATIONSHIPS

'If we demand, in any of our relationships, either perfection or nothing, we will get nothing.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'The Weaknness of God's Servants' in No little people, p.51.

THE BIBLE

'If someone asks us, "What is the Bible?" we probably would not begin our answer by saying, "The Bible is a realistic book." Yet in the twentieth century this might be the best place to start - to stress the realism of the Bible in contrast to the romanticism which characterizes the twentieth-century concept of religion. To most modern people, truth is to be sought through some sort of leap from which we exract our own personal religious experience.

Many feel that that the Bible should portray a romantic view of life, but the Bible is actually the most realistic book in the world. It does not glibly say, "God's in heaven - all's right with the world!" It faces the world's dilemmas squarely. Yet unlike realism which ends in despair, it has answers for the dillemmas. And, unlike modern romanticism, its answers are not optimism without a sufficient base, not hope hung in a vacuum.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'The Weakness of God's Servants' in No little people, p.47.

LEADERSHIP

'...if we deliberately and egotistically lay hold on leadership, wanting the drums to beat and the trumpets to blow, then we are not qualified for Christian leadership. Why? Because we have forgotten that we are brothers and sisters in Christ with other Christians. I have said on occasion that there is only one good kind of fighter for Jesus Christ - the man who does not like to fight. The belligerent man is never the one to be belligerent for Jesus. And it is exactly the same with leadership. The Christian leader should bea quiet man of God who is extruded by God's grace into some place of leadership.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'No Little People, No Little Places' in No little people, p.31.

BELIEF & BEHAVIOUR

'Throughout Jesus' teaching...two words know and do occur constantly and always in that order. We cannot do until we know. but we can know without doing.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'No little people, no little places' in, No little people, p.28.

THE CHURCH

'The central problem of age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolothic consensus that surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.'

Francis Schaeffer, 'The Lord's Work in the Lord's Way' in No Little People, p.66.

THE CHURCH

'Just as people smash marriages because they are looking for what is romantically and sexually perfect and in this poor world do not find it, so human beings often smash up what could have been possible in a true church or true Christian group. It is not just the "they" involved who are not yet perfect, but the "I" is not yet perfect either. In the absence of present perfection, Christians are to help each other on to increasingly substantial healing on the finished work of Christ.' 

Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p.158.  

THE CHURCH

'The church is not a body that thinks up ideas, the church is a declarative statement of what God has revealed concerning himself in Scripture.'

Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p.147.  

RELATIONSHIPS

'It man tries to find everything in a man-woman or a friend-to-friend relationship, he destroys the very thing he wants and destroys the ones he loves. He sucks them dry, he eats them up, and they as well as the relationship are destroyed. But as Christians we do not have to do that. Our sufficiency of relationship is in that which God made it to be, in the infinite persdonal God, on the basis of the work of Christ in communication and love.

The same thing is true for Christian parents and their own children. If we try to find everything in human relationships or if we forget that neither we nor they are perfect, we destroy them. The simple fact is that the bridge is not strong enough. To try to run on the bridge of human relationships that which it cannot bear is to destroy both the relationship and ourselves. But for the Christian, who does not need to have everything in human relationships, human relationships can be beautiful.'

Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p.142.

RELATIONSHIPS

'The trouble with human relationships is that man without God does not realize that all men are sinful, and so hangs too much on his personal relationships, and they crush and break. No love affair bewtween a man and a woman has ever been great enough to hang everything on. It will crumble away under your feet. And as the edges begin to break away the relationship is destroyed. But when I am a creature in the presence of God, and I see that the last relationship is with an infinite God, and these human relationships are among equals, I can take from a human relationship what God meant it to provide, without putting the whole structure under an intolerable burden. More than this, when I acknowledge that none of us are perfect in this life, I can enjoy that which is beautiful in a relationship, without expecting it to be perfect.'

Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p.134.

MARRIAGE

'One does not have to have had much pastoral experience to have met married couples that refuse to have what they can have, because they have set for themselves a false standard of superiority. They have set up a romanticism, either on the romantic side of love or the physical side, and if their marriage does not measure up to their own standards of superiority, they smash everything to the ground. They must have the ideal love affair of the century just because they are who they are! Certainly many of the multiple marriage and divorce situations turn just upon this point. One couple refuses to have less than what they have set as a romantic possibility, forgetting that the Fall is the Fall. Another may want sexual experience beyond what one can have in the midst of the results of the Fall. You suddenly see a marriage smashed - everything gone to bits, people walking away from each other, destroying something really possible and beautiful - simply becasue they have set a proud standard and refuse to have the good marriage they can have.

We wait for the resurrection of the body. We wait for the perfect application of the finished work of Christ for the whole of man. We wait for this, but on this side of the Fall, and before Christ returns, we must not insist on "perfection or nothing," or we will end with nothing.' 

Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p.120.  

TEMPTATION

'Moral battles are not won in the external world first. They are always a result flowing naturally from a cause, and the cause is in the internal world of one's thoughts.'

Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p.98.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

'...it is obvious that there is no mechanical solution to true spirituality or the true Christian life. Anything that has the mark of the mechanical is a mistake. It is not possible to say, "Read so many of the chapters of the Bible every day, and you will have this much sanctification." It is not possible to say, "Pray so long every day, and you will have a certain amount of sanctification." It is not possible to add the two together and to say, "You will have this big a piece of sanctification." This is a purely mechanical solution, and it denies the whole Christian position. For the fact is that the Christian life, true spiritulaity, can never have a mechanical solution. The real solution is being cast up into the moment-by-moment communion, personal communion with God himself, and letting Christ's truth flow through me through the agency of the Holy Spirit.'

Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, p.78.