Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020)
Article: Francis Schaeffer—An Appreciation
Author: Barry Seagren

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Francis Schaeffer—An Appreciation

Barry Seagren

Barry Seagren received his BA in Physics from Haverford College and then worked as an engineer in the US space program. During that time he was converted and his life redirected. He received his MDiv from Covenant Seminary, graduating first in his class and winning the homiletics prize. During his Covenant years he spent a summer at L’Abri in Switzerland where he met his English wife, Veronica. After Covenant Seminary they joined the staff of L’Abri, serving for 23 years first in Switzerland, then in Southborough, MA, and finally in Greatham, England. Barry then became pastor of the church that had grown out of the English L’Abri, serving there for twelve years before retiring. He and his wife continue to live in England where they have three children and eight grandchildren. They try to contribute where they can in their church and community and family.

The person who touched me more deeply and shaped me more profoundly than anyone else was Francis Schaeffer. He had his faults and his critics. It’s not my purpose to discuss those. I want to briefly recount his life in an attempt to show why he had such an impact on me and on so many others, and why his legacy is still crucial for us today.

Francis Schaeffer was born in Philadelphia in 1912. He was the only child of working class, unbelieving parents. He was converted at the age of 18. He had become interested in philosophy and was reading some of the Greek and Latin classics. He started to read the Bible, not because he believed it or expected to find anything in it, but simply out of intellectual curiosity. He used to tell of having Ovid and the Bible at his bedside. Over time, he found he was reading less and less of Ovid and more and more of the Bible. What he discovered was that the biblical worldview provided answers to the fundamental questions of life that philosophy was raising, but could not

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answer. There was no dramatic conversion, but over a period of six months, all on his own, he became a Christian. That conversion gave him a profound confidence in the Bible.

He always argued the truth of the Christian faith in terms of these basic biblical ideas, what he called presuppositions.1 Three themes ran through all his thinking: (1) the existence of the infinite-personal God as the only basis for meaning and for moral absolutes; (2) our creation in the image of God as the only explanation for our humanness—love, morality, language, creativity, spiritual aspirations; (3) a real space-time fall as the only way we can understand suffering and evil and still say that God is good. Only the bi...