Chapter 3: The Destruction of Faith and Freedom

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In October 2022, Christ Over All authors examined the ten chapters of Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto in order to explore their significance for today. Each title corresponds to the chapter name in Schaeffer’s work, which can be found here.

The famous political philosopher Leo Strauss once answered the question regarding what is a just political order “par excellence” as “how to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom which is not license.”[1] All nations are still trying to determine the correct formula. Strauss was not a Christian, but his statement captures the same tension and dilemma described in chapter three of Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto on “The Destruction of Faith and Freedom.”

1. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952), 37.

Schaeffer’s chapter captures what political philosophers and public theologians alike refer to as the “theo-political question”: How does a society secure its future in perpetuity when varying degrees of religious, ideological, and moral diversity confront it? In other words, how much moral diversity can a society withstand before it collapses beneath the weight of relativism and moral subjectivism? What ultimate standard can serve as such a guide?

Some degree of moral consensus is necessary for a social order to persist, even if it is modest in scope. The question is how “thick” or “thin” such a consensus must be before the outer boundaries of social cohesion are stretched beyond their limits. Scripture teaches the same principle as well (Prov. 29:18). Society needs a shared moral horizon to offset the corresponding temptations of totalitarian rule by the state and autonomous rule by the subjective self. A just political order comprises neither too much liberty (license) nor too little liberty (oppression). Some Being, authority, force, order, or object must be present to shape that moral vision and measure the extremes of license and oppression. Schaeffer sees Scripture’s God as the only sustainable option given the reality of divine revelation. When God is denied, ignored, or treated as inconsequential, rival systems offering rival moralities contend for the space left vacant by God’s “absence.” The result is confusion—and one or many systems that are inimical to a rightfully-ordered society.

To make his argument, Schaeffer draws attention to three main areas where he sees the creep of secular humanism making inroads. All three areas converge at the point of making morality a product of human design, which subverts the long-term viability of moral cohesion, social order, and the principled basis of liberty.

Three Areas of Rising Secularism

First, Schaeffer identifies the legal landscape, which impacts the nature of power. Schaeffer sees law as having been emptied of anything resembling theistic natural law and having taken a turn toward “sociological law,” which rejects “higher law” (Divine Law). Whether knowingly or not, a culture that rejects the “higher law” will inexorably substitute something in its place, with the intended impact being that man-made authorities or ideologies, over time, are bent toward self-aggrandizement, thus reshuffling where the presumption of liberty resides. In a Christian worldview, the state is inherently limited. In a secular worldview, nothing inherently limits the state other than its own discretion.

Second, Schaeffer draws attention to the area of science, which impacts the existence of any sort of binding morality. An intelligent Creator has been exchanged for the blind forces of evolution and materialism. Again, because morality is collapsed into the material, nothing outside the observed world can impose any form of morality. Schaeffer observes how even humanists are aware of the tensions that pull on morality absent the idea of God. He quotes humanist historians Will and Ariel Durant as observing how “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion” (A Christian Manifesto, 45; citation found in The Lessons of History, 51).

Third, Schaeffer sees “pluralism” as signaling a death knell to stable order. Rather than pluralism recognizing the diversity of viewpoints in a society as a descriptive reality, Schaeffer sees pluralism as morphing into a normative reality resulting in relativism. A pluralistic society is one where “anything goes” and Schaeffer looks to the scourge of abortion as the proof.

What results from all three areas is the creation of situational ethics. In situational ethics, there are no absolute binding moral norms, but instead a subjective standard to do what seems “right” in each situation. Situational ethics is the logical conclusion of a world where sociological law, scientific materialism, and moral pluralism eviscerate the concept of teleological order.

Schaeffer argues that the only eventual options in society are humanism or Christian theism. This binary produces stark differences in society’s organizing principles:

We have to understand that it is one total entity opposed to the other total entity. It concerns truth in regard to final and total reality—not just religious reality, but total reality. And our view of final reality—whether it is material energy, shaped by impersonal chance, or the living God and Creator—will determine our position on every crucial issue we face today. It will determine our views on the value and dignity of people, the base for the kind of life the individual and society lives, the direction law will take, and whether there will be freedom or some form of authoritarian dominance. (pp. 51)

Abandoning God Chokes Liberty and Fuels Tyranny

Schaeffer’s chapter is as relevant today as it was when it was first written, perhaps even more so. Name your cultural pathogen: Abortion, attacks on religious liberty, same-sex “marriage,” transgenderism, euthanasia, critical theory—all of these are acids built upon the common theme of human-centered morality driven by a human-centered epistemology.

Today, we are not freer, better people with looser morals. We are not better off with a larger state occupying greater levers of power. The most secular nations are the nations where the state plays a greater role. In Schaeffer’s analysis, this is a natural progression: Abandoning the God of the Bible means increasing reliance upon, and subservience to, the state. Unable to govern ourselves with an acknowledgment of theistic natural law, we look to the state to govern us with ever more exacting laws.

For Schaeffer, rejecting true freedom that comes with knowing the limits of a God-given human nature, we are deceived into believing that casting off the ineluctable decrees of God will make us more liberated. The opposite, in fact, is true. There is no more misery, whether individually or socially, than when God’s authority is cast off (Rom. 1:18-32). Scripture teaches that humans are truly free to the extent they follow God’s law (Ps. 119:45). There—and only there—are true human liberation and sound social order found.

Alexis De Tocqueville saw the same thing that Francis Schaeffer did, though writing a century earlier in 1835. He, too, saw the necessary foundation for liberty, morality, and social order in religion, not humanism. He wrote in Democracy in America:

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity? (Chapter XVII, final paragraph)

We live in an age whose moral barbarisms eclipse what Schaeffer saw in his own day. Were he alive today, Schaeffer would not be shocked in the least. Instead, watching the wreckage of the world, he might say with tears, “You should have listened to me” (cf. Acts 27:21). Contemporary society is living proof of Schaeffer’s correctness, and we should not fail to listen to him now.

It should not go unsaid that Schaeffer’s chapter ends with chastising those who should have seen what was happening in their respective disciplines and did nothing. So, too, shall we ask ourselves the question Schaeffer would ask of them: Do we see the rot before us? Are we attuned to how anti-Christian the forces of secularism are and how detrimental they are to human flourishing? If so, let us be about the task of telling the world what is true about itself—even if it refuses to listen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author

  • Andrew T. Walker

    Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves as an Associate Dean in the School of Theology. He is a Fellow with The Ethics and Public Policy Center and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions. He and his family are members of Highview Baptist Church where he leads a Sunday community group and men’s Bible study.

Andrew T. Walker

Andrew T. Walker

Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves as an Associate Dean in the School of Theology. He is a Fellow with The Ethics and Public Policy Center and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions. He and his family are members of Highview Baptist Church where he leads a Sunday community group and men’s Bible study.