What would Francis Schaeffer say to the evangelical church today?[1] To answer this question, I first must highlight two crucial aspects of Schaeffer’s life and ministry. First, the burden of his life was to teach that the message of Christianity isn’t primarily about “religious experiences,” but about “true Truth.” Second, in contending for the truth, Schaeffer sought to do so with gentleness and compassion, and by doing so to practice simultaneously the holiness and love of God. To uphold God’s holiness requires that we stand against falsehood and unrighteousness. To uphold God’s love requires that we stand for the truth while also remembering life’s brokenness, including our own, and to walk moment-by-moment with Christ as we seek to love and honor God more than any created thing.
Throughout his entire ministry, Schaeffer practiced these two crucial points. He not only personally believed the gospel, he also taught and demonstrated that Christianity’s truth claims were really true in contrast to non-Christian thought. As such, he was willing to stand against those who either denied the truth or compromised it, and especially against those who did so within the church. Schaeffer loved and trusted Scripture. His message was the same whether chatting to individuals or addressing crowds. Honor God and revere his Word; follow Christ and submit to Scripture. What mattered to him was the trustworthiness of God’s written Word, hence the reason why he contended tirelessly for Truth in a post-truth society. For Schaeffer, if one tampers with the Bible, all is lost. This explains his concern at the end of his life regarding the direction of evangelicalism. As Schaeffer warned in his last book, The Great Evangelical Disaster, some evangelicals were in danger of compromising the full authority of Scripture, and up until his last breath, he sought to call the evangelical church back to a full commitment to Scripture and the truth of the gospel.
With this in mind, we are now able to answer the question of what Schaeffer would say to today’s evangelical church, and also to discover his ongoing relevance for Evangelicals today. I will do so in two steps. First, I will answer the question of why Schaeffer’s commitment to truth and the full authority of Scripture is still relevant for evangelicals today despite the changes that have occurred in our culture since his death. Second, I will conclude with what I believe Schaeffer would say to us today.
Schaeffer’s Commitment to “True Truth”: Is it Relevant for Evangelicals Today?
Many evangelicals, I think, would be hesitant to answer yes. Why? So much has changed. For one thing Schaeffer died before Postmodernism took center stage. More specifically, his stress on antithesis and confrontation was a bone of contention even during his lifetime and the reaction to this would be stronger today: at best impractical, at worst offensive, unloving, and fractious. As a friend put it, why focus on Truth when people are interested only in experience, or why contend with falsehood when everyone just wants to be tolerant and accepting?
This attitude to Schaeffer’s alleged rationalism and commitment to “true Truth” is unfortunate because his opposition to the Enlightenment could not have been clearer. For example, Schaeffer argued strongly that, “the central ideas of the Enlightenment stand in complete antithesis to Christian truth. More than this, they are an attack on God himself and his character.”[2]
Nevertheless, some evangelicals have argued that his commitment to objective Truth reflects the Enlightenment more than the Bible: that he was wrong to talk of “propositional revelation;” that he emphasized the mind too much; that his view of inerrancy was too literalistic; that he was too dogmatic, etc. Their dislike of the Modernist tradition is intense. By contrast they favor the Postmodern approach. They see it as more congenial to faith, more accepting, more open, more attentive to the heart rather than the head. Those who think this way conspicuously overlook Schaeffer’s warnings back in 1974 when he spoke in Lausanne. His message was blunt: if the Enlightenment was bad the existential methodology is worse. In Schaeffer’s view its foundations are like shifting sand, its proposals like poison.
The irony here is striking. Despite Postmodernism’s dislike of Modernism, we must never forget that it is itself derived from Modernism. Once Descartes and the Empiricists started to work out the logic of their ideas, they ran into difficulty. David Hume realized that even causality (the sine qua non of science) was a problem: “Do I sense the cause in causality” he asked, “or do I merely observe two consecutive events? I see billiard ball number one strike billiard ball number two—but do I observe ‘cause?’” Evidently not. With his empirical foundation, he had no answer—even though he admitted he couldn’t operate like this when playing board-games with his friends! Immanuel Kant tried to respond, but it was a hopeless task. Knowledge, like everything else, requires a metaphysical source. As a result, Modernism gradually nose-dived into Existentialism, which in turn morphed into Postmodernism—but only because the original epistemology was inadequate. When the cracks started to appear, the philosophers should have acknowledged that they had taken the wrong turn. On this point, Schaeffer was entirely on point!
But that was precisely what the Postmodernists didn’t do. Instead of back-tracking to reconsider where they’d come from, namely, the Christian worldview, they carried European thought towards “the hermeneutic of suspicion.” All attempts to establish worldviews based on rationality, they said, are suspect. According to Jacques Derrida, for example, not even language works that way. “Nothing exists outside the text,” he said. In other words, everything is an interpretation. No definitive explanation of anything is possible because language itself is relative. Similarly, Jean-François Lyotard dismissed all metanarratives, all, that is, which claim to be true and therefore exclusive—especially Christianity. Overarching stories of what life is about and how best to live are valid, but only as stories, never as “Truth.” Michel Foucault undermined things further by arguing that language, like everything else in society, is just a power-game: powerful social groups dominating others—oppressors/their victims, men/women, rich/poor, white/black, Europeans/colonials and so on.
The net effect of the postmodern slide was catastrophic. Particularly in relation to that, sadly, many have failed to appreciate the importance of what Schaeffer said about “rationality” and “rationalism.” This goes a long way to identify Postmodernism’s essential flaws and to show how best to counteract them.
In the first place, he said, Christianity isn’t rationalistic because it rests upon the reality of creation. It doesn’t start with the human mind. That was Descartes’ mistake. When he said, “I think, therefore I am” his assertion raised an obvious question: where does the (knowing) “self” come from in the first place? No answer. He just assumed it. By comparison, the Bible starts further back: it says the individual is able to think only because he or she is a creature created by the triune personal God. Given this starting point, rational thought itself—the great stumbling block of modern secular philosophy—becomes intelligible. Christianity also deals with the problem of sin and insists humanity needs a supernatural Savior because guilt is real and has to be atoned. Only Christ can do this, because he is the divine Son of God. Human attempts to merit salvation are worthless. In short, the Bible is God-centered throughout.
The second distinction Schaeffer used a lot was between “true knowledge, but not exhaustive knowledge.” What he meant is that human knowledge is limited, of necessity, because all our experience is superficial. No one knows even the tiniest thing completely. We see bits and pieces only. In addition, each person is unique. No two people share the same background or have the same interests or gifts. Yet the human mind is adequate: it grasps truth adequately if not exhaustively. Its limitations don’t invalidate either rationality or communication. Our experiences, though individual, are reciprocal.
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 Jesus Calling isn’t what we do in the PCA. PCA ministry doesn’t do that. Let’s just drop it. It is pointless. Who needs to dwell on things vaguely unpleasant? Methodists are Methodist, and they are Christians. Who should judge another man’s servant? I’m busy doing God’s work. That book doesn’t belong in my sphere of influence. If not a yuck factor, it’s an ick, polite and collegial.

As three or four of my friends know, I have posted two blog articles about the book Jesus Calling and the Presbyterian Church in America. The first is condemnatory, of the book and of the PCA’s birthing it. The second presents an argument for an overture to the General Assembly seeking an investigation to determine whether the denomination is in fact guilty of abetting gross idolatry.
Obviously, the two articles have been wildly popular– almost all of my Facebook Friends know that I posted them. My presbytery added the overture to our January docket for a first reading, and will take it up in April. A total of three elders in my presbytery have actually spoken to me about it. Of course, they were only stirred to interest after watching my gesticulations on Presbycast.
A Mystery to Me
The most interesting turn in that podcast conversation was the mystery: why is Jesus Calling the PCA’s biggest best kept secret? Why did ByFaith introduce their biographical celebrations of Sarah Young with essentially, “you probably didn’t know that this lifelong member of the PCA is the author of Jesus Calling, which made her the best-selling Christian author of all time.” How could anyone in the PCA not know which PCA author had outsold Tim Keller by several Manhattan miles? With the multiple critical reviews of Jesus Calling by Reformed bloggers, ministers and Gospel Coalition B-list celebrities, has any “significant player” in the PCA ever published something positive or negative or even aware of the book? Despite Presbycast’s usual piercing insight, our sagacious trio was stumped.
I recently received a letter  from an independent researcher who has been studying the industry of Jesus Calling for a decade (The book was published in 2004). She is well aware– as I was not– that PCA leaders have been petitioned previously. She and her colleagues have wondered at the silence. She thinks the PCA’s general on-the-ground health has made the book practically irrelevant: by and large a functional conviction of sola scriptura and concern for sound theology has made it of little concern in the pews of the PCA. I am heartened by that assessment from an observer outside the Reformed-ish orbit. Anecdotally, I have the impression that the book had more notice among women of the PCA before 2015, but it has dwindled off– as somewhere else 9 million units sold increased to 45 million.
In point of fact, I do think that Jesus Calling is treasured by some part of the PCA. That was particularly evident at Sarah Young’s Memorial Service in 2023. But, I will return (D.V.) to that in a subsequent post, as I will to the modest request for “critical study” presented to the Stated Clerk in 2019 . Before these apparent outliers, the mystery is more interesting. 
Many seem to know of an aunt or grandmother still quite taken with the book, and they see a copy on and off again– at least they see it on sale at Costco or Hobby Lobby. They know it is still out there, but they don’t see it frequently in the PCA. Sales of 45 million do surprise them, but they aren’t incredulous. They know that it is incredibly popular. A few women have expressed to me an urgent desire for my little teacup to tempt some PCA somebody into making a real noise about it; they report dire and unassailable influence among women they know. Well, if it isn’t even a tempest, I do brew a strong cuppa. With their exhortation to me, these women also report their abiding surprise that the PCA doesn’t seem to know it birthed this atrocious book. Why is Jesus Calling shrugged off in the PCA?
The PCA is a big tent, and differences are noticeable if not everywhere thick on the ground. Still, PCA people commend the denomination with reference to Tim Keller’s various books. I don’t think that commendation commonly mentions our best selling author. If no cantankerousness about the book in the past (?), then why simultaneously no common knowledge? Why no common thankfulness or sanctified bragging about the PCA’s largest published contribution to evangelicalism? What could have eclipsed it? How does something this big become invisible in its hometown? Is this just the fate of every prophet? That is the mystery.
The Yuck Factor
In a pithy phrase, you can’t stop Methodists from being Methodists, but you can sure be obnoxious trying. The word winsome is somewhere in reach, but that is merely descriptive. The PCA teaches convictions which far more evangelicals don’t practice, but they are still our spiritual kith and kin. By and large, it seems that PCA folk know of Jesus Calling as “one of those books” like The Prayer of Jabez (remember that?), or The Purpose Driven Life. Other folks are “into that,” and we recognize common ground; but we are generally polite. 
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Written by David S. Steele |
Sunday, May 22, 2022
As followers of Jesus Christ, may we cling to the truth, proclaim the truth, and defend the truth. May we stand with the men and women throughout redemptive history who were willing to lay their lives down for the great cause of truth. May the cry of our hearts be, “nothing but the truth!”

Scripture warns, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8, ESV). As followers of Christ, we need to be vigilant, constantly on guard, and discerning good from evil. One of the ways that the worldly system “takes us captive” is by marginalizing truth or eliminating it altogether. It is important to understand that the worldly system militates against the Christian view of truth. Is it any wonder, then, that the importance of truth is highlighted so much in Scripture?
David Understood the Importance of Truth
King David acknowledged that since God is truth, he expects his people to live truthful lives. He writes, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Ps. 51:6, ESV).
The implications of David’s words are massive as we consider our inward motivations, conversations, and the way we conduct our lives. Ask yourself, “Am I a person that is committed to the truth?” “Does the love for truth undergird my life and worldview?”
Paul Spoke Often About the Truth
The apostle begins the book of Titus with these revealing words: “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness” (Titus 1:1, ESV) . Notice the relationship between truth and godliness. Indeed, they are intimately connected. “The truth of the Gospel,” writes Warren Wiersbe, “changes a life from ungodliness.”1 As Christians, we unapologetically adhere to the truth. We must not only adhere to the truth; it must stand at the very center of our lives.
Additionally, Paul referred to the church as ” … a pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15, ESV). The church, then, is God’s appointed means of declaring the word of God to the nations.
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