Quotes by 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 ult...”

“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 bec...”

“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 tot...”

“We may not play with the new theology even if we may think we can turn it to our advantage.”

“What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be a vehicle for self-conscious evangelism. Christians ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. The Christi...”

“The Christian in the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.”

“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.”

“In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual.”

“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.”

“Christian art today should be twentieth-century art.”

“To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. If Christians are to take advantag...”

“There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine,...”

“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 ha...”

“Sweeping out of the inward positive reality, there is to be a positive manifestation externally. It is not just that we are dead to certain things, but we are to love God, we are to be alive to Him...”

“Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.”

“The author called us to re-examine assumptions bequeathed to us from Greece and Rome. Just as a bridge built by the Roman Empire might have held up tolerably for centuries under foot traffic but cr...”

“Today we have a weakness in our education process in failing to understand the natural associations between the disciplines. We tend to study all our disciplines in unrelated parallel lines. This t...”

“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 ro...”

“Now having travelled from the pride of man in the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment down to the present despair, we can understand where modern people are. They have no place for a personal Go...”

“There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind -- what they are in their thought-world...”