Theopedia

Francis Schaeffer

Overview

Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984) was an American Presbyterian pastor and apologist who, with his wife Edith, founded L’Abri, a study community in the Swiss Alps.1 He is remembered less as a systematic theologian than as an apologist: his argument for the necessity of propositional revelation and his conviction that God’s greatness grounds rather than threatens the individual’s significance are both still cited directly in later theological and apologetic work, and late in his life he warned that evangelicalism itself was drifting from a serious commitment to the authority of Scripture.234

Life and Ministry

Schaeffer was born January 30, 1912, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and died May 15, 1984, in Rochester, Minnesota, of lymphoma.1 He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in 1935, enrolled that fall at Westminster Theological Seminary, and transferred in 1937 to Faith Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1938 as its first graduate and the first minister ordained in the newly formed Bible Presbyterian Church.1 He went on to pastor congregations in Grove City and Chester, Pennsylvania, and in St. Louis, Missouri, before relocating with Edith to Switzerland.1

In 1951 Schaeffer reached a personal crisis that would reshape the rest of his ministry. As he later described it, “it seemed to me that among many of those who held the orthodox position one saw little reality in the things that the Bible so clearly said should be the result of Christianity,” and, further, “it gradually grew on me that my own reality was less than it had been in the early days after I had become a Christian.”5 He spent an extended season working through the crisis in silence and solitude, walking in the mountains near his home or back and forth in a hayloft when it rained: “I walked, prayed, and thought through what the Scriptures taught as well as reviewing my own reasons for being a Christian.”5 He concluded that he had lost sight of what the finished work of Christ means for the Christian’s present life, and that recovered conviction became, in Donald Whitney’s assessment, “a major turning point in Schaeffer’s life and the foundation upon which the rest of his unique and now-famous ministry, L’Abri, in Switzerland, was built.”5 Schaeffer and Edith opened L’Abri in 1955, welcoming travelers and students to discuss philosophical and religious questions in their alpine home.1

Theological Contribution

John Oswalt cites an analogy Schaeffer used to make an epistemological point about the need for a trustworthy, articulate word from God rather than a bare, contentless encounter: “A climber in the Alps late in the day is suddenly enveloped in cold, blustery clouds. Knowing that he is on a narrow trail on the side of a cliff, he is afraid to go forward or back. At the same time, he knows he cannot remain in that exposed place through the night, for he will die of cold and damp. But suddenly, he hears a voice out of the fog telling him to get down and lower himself …”2 Oswalt calls it “a helpful analogy” for why revelation has to say something, propositionally, to be of any use.2

A recurring theme of Schaeffer’s is that the greatness of God is what grounds, rather than threatens, the significance of the individual person. Matthew Barrett cites this directly: “Francis Schaeffer famously has said, with a very big God in mind, that there ‘are no little people.’”3 Barrett takes up the same conviction Schaeffer titled a book after: it is because God is infinite in power, knowledge, and wisdom that no person he has made is beneath his care.3

In his later years Schaeffer turned his diagnostic method on evangelicalism itself. In The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984) he argued that the movement had abandoned a serious concern for authoritative, propositional truth, particularly regarding the inerrancy of Scripture.4 John Thomas English’s assessment, writing three decades later, was that “many critics argued that Schaeffer’s claim was too strong,” but that “several decades later, it is clear that Schaeffer certainly did not overstate his case, but, if possible, may have understated it.”4

Historical Significance

English’s own retrospective judgment, writing three decades after The Great Evangelical Disaster appeared, is that Schaeffer’s warning about evangelicalism’s authority crisis held up better than his critics expected at the time.4 Barrett’s use of the “no little people” line, in a book published thirty-five years after Schaeffer wrote it, shows the same staying power on the apologetic side: later writers on the divine attributes still reach for Schaeffer’s own formulation rather than restating the point in their own words.3

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Wikipedia, s.v. “Francis Schaeffer,” accessed September 5, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. John N. Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature?, Ancient Context, Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), “Notes,” citing Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1972), 99-100. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 10, “Is God All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and All-Wise? Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnisapience.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. John Thomas English III, “The Evangelical Doctrine of the Authority of Scripture,” in “Thus Says the Lord: A Trinitarian Account of the Authority of Scripture” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014), 5-6, citing Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1984). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. Francis Schaeffer, quoted in Donald S. Whitney, “Chapter 10: Silence and Solitude …,” in Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, anniversary ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2024). ↩ ↩2 ↩3