WELCOME
Welcome to the Francis A Schaeffer’s new website. We improved and combined the access to various resources here. You will find a list of the published books by Francis A. Schaeffer and Edith R. Seville Schaeffer. In addition, you will find audio recordings of sermons and lectures on Biblical subjects by the Foundation’s director and expositions of Scripture passages in response to many of the basic philosophical questions which persons raise from our exposure as persons to the reality around us.
The Francis A Schaeffer Foundation was initiated by Edith Schaeffer in 1989 as “a place where Dr. Schaeffer’s ideas will be given an opportunity to be researched and studied, where ideas will be given a possibility of spontaneous combustion. It’s to be a place, in my prayer at least, in my longing, of inspiring people to originality and creativity, of helping anyone to have courage to go on”.
Francis Schaeffer learned ways to communicate the truth of Biblical Christianity in a way that combined intellectual integrity and practical, loving care. It grew out of an extensive understanding of Scripture, a genuine inquisitiveness about the ways of human beings, and deep commitment to Jesus Christ with an analytical mind which understood the roots of our culture’s thinking and practice, and how they come to their logical conclusion in a wide range of disciplines. Schaeffer had a searching mind that drew on his immersion in European culture, daily life, art, and personal involvement with people surrounding him.
With the material in this website library, the Schaeffer Foundation hopes to create a wider impact for the vision which Francis and Edith Schaeffer have throughout their life and work. Their uncompromising belief that Scripture is the only possible explanation and fitting description of the real world follows the historic Christian view. It begins with the real existence of the unique infinite-eternal-personal God whose three personages Father, Son and Holy Spirit created vis-à-vis themselves a good, rational, unfinished, mutating and diverse universe, as described “in the beginning”, in Genesis. Human persons exist by their nature in God’s image, mandated and able to create, love, name and shape aspects of creation. In their creative imagination they chose to transgress, disobeyed, and desiring to be like God, created a break in all prior harmony and wholeness as evil and marked by death.
After 50 years of hosting students and guests in our home who pursued the truth of lived reality, to which Scripture makes a necessary contribution, our hospitality, meal time discussions and living lectures have largely ceased. The Francis A Schaeffer Foundation Website now continues to make many of our ideas accessible, lays out our understanding of life in a fallen world, our response to the political, moral, intellectual and cultural drifts.
We especially draw your attention to the addition of the lectures by Deborah Middelmann – Schaeffer on the book of Job in the Old Testament and Paul’s letter to 1st century Roman Christians in the New. Other lectures encourage passionate personal interactions against all that oppresses life, bears the mark of the Fall in Genesis, and bows to death in any form.
In her study of the Bok of Job, Deborah Middelmann lays out the Bible’s response to the moral tension between God’s holy personality and Job’s experience in a history that lacks justice and respect among his friends. They abandon moral clarity to give life’s cruelty their God’s approval. Job’s insistent demand to get an explanation for evil defies the usual appeal to God’s justice from a view of his sovereignty. While that assumes the normality of every event, Job clearly shows the present abnormality that waits for the Messiah’s coming.
Paul’s letter to the church in Rome gives us an uninterrupted version of what the Apostle had in mind for speeches and sermons elsewhere before he was attacked, threatened, laughed at and had to flee. It is the Apostle’s answer to our deepest question, the understanding of the why? the what? and for what? in response to the original puzzle and problems in all existence.
FOOTNOTES, which was published by the Francis A Schaeffer Foundation four times a year from 1990 to 2017, is found a different section. It was mailed out to around 700 friends and continues since then on a less regular schedule. We addressed a then-current issue and argued for a more Biblical view on it. While teaching Russian educators about a Biblical worldview and ethics for social interaction – at the request of and under contract with the Moscow Ministry of Education – each copy of FOOTNOTES related personal experiences, reactions, and reflections on local culture and historical contexts about the 62 provinces that hosted us.
The Foundation owns the complete correspondence of Dr. Francis and Edith Schaeffer, their lecture and sermon notes, schedules and references. By a decision of its Board, this material is on loan to the library of South-Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. After careful protective efforts, most of the material has been digitized and is now available for research. The Schaeffer Foundation desires to help with such studies in any way, being prepared to clarify details and to explain the original contexts of sources. Anyone interest to do research in this material should contact SEBTS directly.