The Fall of Man and the Rise of Science

Two Interesting reviews of a book by an Oxford guy. here and here.

The book is “The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science” and the Oxford guy is Peter Harrison.

I'm intrigued by the book, and will likely buy it, but I have to say I find this thesis vaguely familiar. Francis Schaeffer outlined a similar viewpoint decades ago.

There are a few distinctly Christian presuppositions about the universe that many argue were necessary for science as we know it to come into existence. The first is often cited and understood by Christians in the ID and Creationist camps. It is simply the idea that the universe is orderly and that our brains can apprehend that order.

Somebody Who Understands Schaeffer

Few people I speak to have read significantly from Francis Schaeffer. Many who have mistakenly critique him as a clone of his mentor Cornelius Van Til, or a populist who got too involved with conservative politics. In light of his son's disturbing attacks on him in his novels and most recent book, which I refuse to even name, I found the following article by Christopher Tinker and Melvin Tinker very refreshing. These guys actually understand what Schaeffer was trying to do and why it remains significant and relevant.

Fifty Years On: The Legacy of Francis Schaeffer - An Apologetic for Post-Moderns not only summarizes Schaeffer well, it points out why the collective provocations of Tony Jones, Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt are so distressing.

They state regarding Schaeffer's most basic point about modernism "‘Rationality and faith are totally out of contact with each other.’ This is where modern man was left, in a state of despair. He could understand nature (lower storey) as a closed system rationalistically, but meaning (upper storey), in terms of purpose and significance, were unattainable and continued to elude him. The only way in which meaning could be found was to look to the upper storey where all rationality must be abandoned."

In other words, modernism was left saying that we could have objective knowledge about the material world, but the spiritual world was beyond science and reason. So anything related to the spirit, such as meaning, purpose, love, significance, had to be completely separated from the category called "knowledge". God may exist, but we can know nothing of him. For all practical purposes, all spiritual truth is unattainable if it exists at all.

Os Guinness on Frank Schaeffer

Os Guinness has, thankfully, written a review of Frank Schaeffer's disturbing expose' Crazy For God. This is a detailed rebuttal from someone who was there. People need to read the whole thing, and pray for Franky. He is truly a bit of a lost soul.

Frank Schaeffer - Over the Cliff...

Frank Schaeffer. What in the world happened to this man? The son of Francis Schaeffer, a voice that stirred a generation, seems to have completely cut all ties to his father.

There may be a few good reasons, at the risk of trying to psychoanalyze someone I don't know. He was raised in a home that had the influences of 1950s fundamentalist behavior codes, which is true of most anyone born in the 1950s. He was sent off to boarding school while his father's fame and influence took off. Francis is known to have had a temper.

On the other hand, the rigid fundamentalist tag seems a difficult one to make stick. No one, twenty to thirty years ago was more in favor of engaging the culture than Francis Schaeffer. Few were as critical of legalistic insistence on unbiblical absolutes, of being "absolutist about everything". Few were more supportive of Christian involvement in the arts, in simple citizenship, in the full spectrum of living a life as if all things were God given gifts. All the things Franky accuses fundamentalists of depriving him of, his father supported. Odd.

Weeping with Francis Schaeffer

I've generally liked the comments of John Fischer, who has generally been solid, calm and reasonable. This week he remembers Francis Schaeffer, the American who singlehandedly preserved my faith and my sanity for much of my adult life with his writings, and inspired me to think more than any other. Fischer writes about Schaeffer's compassion. His key point, Francis was not a man who only railed about political issues as a few portray him today. He was a man who wept over a culture that was disintegrating. His political involvement was borne of compassion, not a quest for power.

Schaeffer was a man who had a temper, and descriptions of that temper have leaked out of L’Abri, partly through equally fiery son Franky. He could be unbending and hard, I’m told, from at least one source I would tend to respect. Yet he could weep with compassion - like Jesus wept with compassion over Jerusalem.

And why did Francis weep? Because, like Christ, he saw people as sheep without a shepherd, as individuals adrift in a sea of moral chaos. At the heart of Schaeffer’s theological and cultural analysis was his proverbial "line of despair", a line he defined as that place where human beings give up on finding real answers to the central questions of life.