Francis A. Schaeffer > Quotes

“Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.”
― Francis Schaeffer

“The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live -- this lost world -- means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.”
― Francis Schaeffer

“One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century

“A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.”
― Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer

“Christianity is not just involved with "salvation", but with the total man in the total world. The Christian message begins with the existence of God forever, and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation. We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that. Man has a value because he is made in the image of God.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster

“Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person as a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“The central problem of our 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 monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat. The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually 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 A. Schaeffer, No Little People

“I am convinced that when Nietzsche came to Switzerland and went insane, it was not because of venereal disease, though he did have this disease. Rather, it was because he understood that insanity was the only philosophic answer if the infinite-personal God does not exist.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

“Christians . . . ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. Great painting is not "photographic": think of the Old Testament art commanded by God. There were blue pomegranates on the robes of the priest who went into the Holy of Holies. In nature there are no blue pomegranates. Christian artists do not need to be threatened by fantasy and imagination, for they have a basis for knowing the difference between them and the real world "out there." The Christian is the really free person--he is free to have imagination. This too is our heritage. The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society, the way that a child catches the measles. But people with understanding realize that their presuppositions should be *chosen* after a careful consideration of which worldview is true.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

“A compassionate open home is part of Christian responsibility, and should be practiced up to the level of capacity.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer

“The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment - the infinite, personal God who is really there - then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth.”
― Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“The tree in the field is to be treated with respect. It is not to be romanticized as the old lady romanticizes her cat (that is, she reads human reactions into it). . . . But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize that God made it and it deserves respect because he made it as a tree. Christians who do not believe in the complete evolutionary scale have reason to respect nature as the total evolutionist never can, because we believe that God made these things specifically in their own areas. So if we are going to argue against evolutionists intellectually, we should show the results of our beliefs in our attitudes. The Christian is a man who has a reason for dealing with each created thing on a high level of respect.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man

“The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto

“People today are trying to hang on to the dignity of man, but they do not know how to, because they have lost the truth that man is made in the image of God. . . . We are watching our culture put into effect the fact that when you tell men long enough that they are machines, it soon begins to show in their actions. You see it in our whole culture -- in the theater of cruelty, in the violence in the streets, in the death of man in art and life.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from Reason

“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography ... , the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

“Regardless of a man's system, he has to live in God's world.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art.”
― Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world view. Man must be treated fairly as man.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“When a man comes under the blood of Christ, his whole capacity as a man is refashioned. His soul is saved, yes, but so are his mind and his body. True spirituality means the lordship of Christ over the total man.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“If you demand perfection or nothing, you will always end up with nothing.”
― Francis Schaeffer

“If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto

“The Christian should be the person who is alive, whose imagination absolutely boils, which moves, which produces something a bit different from God's world because God made us to be creative.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at those points where there is a cost in our doing so, is to push the next generation in the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us. ”
― Francis Schaeffer

“In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual.”
― Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue.”
― Francis Schaeffer