PER:A Review of 'A Christian Manifesto'  by Michael Dolim

   A CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO by Francis A Schaeffer Crossway Books $5.95

   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 totals.

   They have very gradually become disturbed over permisiveness,
pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and
finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality - each
thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have
failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in world
view - that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people
think and view the world and life as a whole. This shift has been AWAY
FROM a world view that was at least baguely Christian in people's
memory (even if they were not individually Christian) TOWARD something
completely different - toward a world view based upon the idea that the
final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present
form by impersonal chance. They have not seen that this world view has
taken the place of the one that had previously dominated Northern
European culture, including the United States, which was at least
Christian in memory, even if the individuals were not individually
Christian.

   These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to each
other in content and also in their natural results - including
sociological and governmental results, and specifically including
law.It is not that these two world views are different only in how they
understand the nature of reality and existence. They also inevitably
produce totally different results. The operative word here is
INEVITABLY. It is not just that they happen to bring forth different
results, but it is absolutely INEVITABLE that they will bring forth
different results. Why have the Christians been so slow to understand
this? There are various reasons but the central one is a defective view
of Christianity. This has its roots in the Pietist movement under the
leadership of P.J. Spener in the 17th century. Pietism began as a
healthy protest against formalism and a too abstract Christianity. But
it had a deficient, "platonic" spirituality. It was platonic in the
sense that Pietism made a sharp division between the "spiritual" and
the "material" world - giving little, or no, importance to the
"material" world. The totality of human existence was not afforded a
proper place. In particular it neglected the intellectual dimension of
Christianity.

   True spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible
tells us as absolutes which are sinful - which do not conform to the
character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers
ALL of life and ALL of life equally. It is not only that true
spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the
spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning
reality that is not spiritual.

   When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality -
the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective
existence of the personal - infinite God. Christianity is not just a
series of truths but Truth - Truth about all of reality. And the
holding to that Truth intellectually - and then in some poor way living
upon that Truth, the Truth of what is - brings forth not only certain
personal results, but also governmental and legal results. Now let's go
over to the other side - to those who hold the materialistic final
reality concept. They saw the complete and total difference between the
two positions more quickly than Christians. There were the Huxleys,
George Bernard Shaw, and many others who understood a long time agao
that there are two total concepts of reality and that it was one total
reality against the other and not just a set of isolated and separated
differences. The Humanist Manifesto 1, published in 1933, showed with
crystal clarity their comprehension of the totality of what is
involved. It was to our shame that Julian and Aldous Huxley, and the
others like them, understood much earlier than Christians that these
two world views are two total concepts of reality standing in
antithesis to each other. We should be utterly ashamed that this is the
fact.

   There is no way to mix these two total world views. They are
separate entities that cannot be synthesized. Yet we must say that
liberal theology, the very essence of it from its beginning, is an
attempt to mix the two. Liberal theology tried to bring forth a mixture
soon after the Enlightenment and has tried to synthesize these two
views right up to our own day. But in each case when the chips are down
these liberal theologians have always come down, as naturally as a ship
coming into home port, on the side of the nonreligious humanist. They
do this with certainty because what their liberal theology really is is
humanism expressed in theological terms instead of philosophic or other
terms.

   HUMANITARIANISM is being kind and helpful to people, treating people
more humanly. The HUMANITIES are the studies of literature, art, music,
etc. - those things which are the products of human creativity.
HUMANISM is the placing of Man at the center of all things.Thus,
Christians should be the most humanitarian of all people. And
Christians certainly should be interested in the humanities as the
product of human creativity, made possible because people are uniquely
made in the image of the great Creator.

   Those who hold the material - energy, chance concept of reality,
whether they are Marxist or non-Marxist, not only do not know the truth
of the final reality, God, they do not know who Man is. Their concept
of Man is what Man is not, just as their concept of the final reality
is what the final reality is not. Since their concept of Man is
mistaken, their concept of society and of law is mistaken, and they
have no sufficient base for either society or law.

   They have reduced Man to even less than his natural finiteness by
seeing him only as a complex arrangement of molecules, made complex by
blind chance. Instead of seeing him as something great who is
significant even in his sinning, they see Man in his essence only as an
intrinsically competitive animal, that has no other basic operating
principle than natural selection brought about by the strongest, the
fittest, ending on top.

   The problem always was, and is, What is an adequate base for law?
What is adequate so that the human aspiration for freedom can exist
without anarchy, and yet provides a form that will no become arbitrary
tyranny?The humanists push for "freedom," but having no Christian
consensus to contain it, that "freedom" leads to chaos or to slavery
under the state (or under an elite). Humanism, with its lack of ANY
final base for values or law, always leads to chaos.The men who wrote
our constitution really new what they were doing. We are not reading
back into history what was not there. We cannot say too strongly they
they really understood the basis of the government which they were
founding. Think of this great flaming phrase: "certain inalienable
rights." Who gives the rights? The state? Then they are not inalienable
because the state can change them and take them away. Where do the
rights come from? They understood that they were founding the country
upon the concept that goes back into the Judeo-Christian thinking that
there is Someone there who gave the inalienable rights. Another phrase
stood there: "In God We Trust." With this there is no confusion of what
they were talking about. They publicly recognized that the law could be
king because there was a Law Giver, a Person to give the inalienable
rights.

   When the First Amendment was passed it only had two purposes. The
first purpose was that there would be no established, national church
for the united thirteen states. To say it another way: There would be
no Church of the United States. James Madison clearly articulated this
concept of separation when explaining the First Amendment's protection
of religious liberty. He said that the First Amendment to the
Constitution was prompted because "the people feared one sect might
obtain a preeminence, or two combine together, and establish a religion
to which they would compel others to conform.

   "Nevertheless, a number of the individual states had state churches,
and even that was not considered in conflict with the First Amendment.
In all but one of the thirteen states, the states taxed the people to
support the preaching of the gospel and to build churches.

   The second purpose of the First Amendment was the very opposite from
what is being made of it today. It states expressly that government
should not impede or interfere with the free practice of religion.

   Today the separation of church and state in America is used to
silence the church. The modern concept is an argument for a total
separation of religion from the state. The consequence of the
acceptance of this doctrine leads to the removal of religion as an
influence in civil government. It is used today as a false political
dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas. We live
in a secularized society and in a secularized, sociological law. By
sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a
group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the
given moment; and what they arbitrarily decide becomes law.

   As the new sociological law has moved away from the original base of
the Creator giving the "inalienable rights" etc., it has been natural
that this sociological law has then also moved away from the
Constitution. At this moment we are in a humanistic culture, but we are
happily not in a totally humanistic culture. But what we must realize
is that the drift has been all in this direction. If it is not turned
around we will move very rapidly into a TOTALLY humanistic culture.

   If we are going to join the battle in a way that has any hope of
effectiveness - with Christians truly being salt and the light in our
culture and our society - then we must do battle on the entire front.
We must not finally even battle on the front for freedom, and
specifically not only OUR freedom. It must be on the basis of Truth.
Not just religious truths, but the Truth of what the final reality is.
Finney in his book Systematic Theology on page 158 has a heading: "I
propose now to make several remarks respecting forms of government, the
right and duty of revolution." Do note his phrase "The right and duty
of revolution." On page 162 he says: "There can scarcely be conceived a
more abominable and fiendish maxim than 'our country right or wrong.'"
He then goes on to stress that not everything the government does is to
be supported, and he includes the Mexican War and slavery. On page 157
he says: "Arbitrary legislation can never be really obligatory.

   "What is ahead of us? I would suggest that we must have Two Tracks
in mind. The First Track is the fact of the conservative swing in the
United States in the 1980 election. With this there is at this moment a
unique window open in the United States. It is unique because it is a
long, long time since that window has been open as it is now. And let
us hope that the window stays open, and not just one issue, even one as
important as human life - though certainly every Christian ought to be
praying and working to nullify the abominable abortion law. But as we
work and pray, we should have in mind not only this important issue as
though it stood alone. Rather, we should be struggling and praying that
this whole other total entity - the material - energy, chance world
view - can be rolled back with all its results across all of life. I
work, I pray that indeed the window does stay open. I hope that will be
the case.

   The Second Track is, What happens in this country if the window does
not stay open? What then? Thinking this way does not mean that we stop
doing all we can to keep the window open. Nevertheless some people must
be thinking about what to do if the window closes.

   Contributed by The Manna System
