Top 50 Francis A. Schaeffer Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Here is a sentence to memorize: To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

2. “In this setting modern modern science tends increasingly to become one of two things: either a high form of technology, often with a goal of increasing affluence, or what I would call sociological science. By the latter I mean that, with a weakened certainty about objectivity, people find it easier to come to whatever conclusions they desire for the sociological ends they wish to see attained.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

3. “In John 13 the point was that, if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he is not a Christian. Here Jesus is stating something else which is much more cutting, much more profound: We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

4. “As we consider the coming of an elite, an authoritarian state, to fill the vacuum left by the loss of Christian principles, we must not think naively of the models of Stalin and Hitler. We must think rather of a manipulative authoritarian government.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

5. “Here is a simple but profound rule: If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

6. “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 because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

7. “At that point the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between authoritarian government from the right or the left: the results are the same.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

8. “Without the context of the biblical teaching about Man, meaning, and morals, such rightful insights and tools as democracy, economic interests, global relations, and techniques take on a life of their own. Fanatical religion will replace truth and commitment. They turn the human being into a little god with monstrous, because untrained, irrational and unrestrained intentions who has tools at his disposal to justify the most murderous competition, selfishness, and greed.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

9. “But we must notice that there is a second result of modern man’s loss of meaning and values which is more ominous, and which many people do not see. This second result is that the elite will exist. Society cannot stand chaos. Some group or some person will fill the vacuum. An elite will offer us arbitrary absolutes, and who will stand in its way?”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

10. “And beauty has a place in the worship of God. Young people often point out the ugliness of many evangelical church buildings. Unfortunately, they are often right. Fixed down in our hearts is a failure to understand that beauty should be to the praise of God. But here in the temple which Solomon built under the leadership of God himself beauty was given an important place.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

11. “Culture and the freedoms of people are fragile. Without a sufficient base, when such pressures come only time is needed – and often not a great deal of time – before there is a collapse.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

12. “Lex Rex has become Rex Lex. Arbitrary judgment concerning current sociological good is king.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

13. “If they had worshiped Jesus and Caesar, they would have gone unharmed, but they rejected all forms of syncretism.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

14. “God, because he is infinite, can create out of nothing by his spoken word. We, because we are finite, must create from something else that has already been created.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

15. “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 tends to be true in both Christian and secular education. This is one of the reasons why evangelical Christians have been taken by surprise at the tremendous shift that has come in our generation.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

16. “As a Christian we know why a work of art has value. Why? First, because a work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the Creator. The first sentence in the Bible is the declaration that the Creator created: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

17. “Often Christians, young and old alike, have not faced the facts about their own countries – that they are under the judgment of God. Perhaps that explains why they are often without enthusiasm in their proclamation of the gospel, why they just give the crumbling wall a coat of paint.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

18. “No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

19. “But our world at the end of the twentieth century has so much destruction without Christian artists so emphasizing the minor theme in the total body of their work that they add to the poorness and destruction of our generation.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

20. “Having turned from the One who can fulfill, the One who can give comfort, having turned away from His love, His propositional revelation, there will be death in your city, in your culture!” Modern man stands in that place.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

21. “We should realize that if something untrue or immoral is stated in great art it can be far more destructive and devastating than if it is expressed in poor art or prosaic statement.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

22. “There is no real preaching of the Christian gospel except in light of the fact that man is under the wrath of God – the moral wrath of God. So Paul has a reply to the man who shrugs his shoulders and says, “Why do I need salvation?” His response is this: “You need salvation because you are under the wrath of God. You have broken God’s law.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

23. “The temple was covered with precious stones for beauty. There was no pragmatic reason for the precious stones. They had no utilitarian purpose. God simply wanted beauty in the temple. God is interested in beauty.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

24. “The Lord calls us to love all people, including those who are enemies of the gospel and those who blaspheme. This may not be comfortable, and it may not be easy, but this is the gospel of Christ, for He loved His enemies so much that He died to save us.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

25. “Christianity is not just involved with “salvation”, but with the total man in the total world. The Christian message begins with the existence of God forever, and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation. We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that. Man has a value because he is made in the image of God.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

26. “No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

27. “Religious subjects are no guarantee that a work of art is Christian.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

28. “In passing we should note this curious mark of our age: The only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

29. “The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

30. “As Christians, we must see that just because an artist -even a great artist- portrays a worldview in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that worldview. Good art heightens the impact of that worldview, but it does not make it true.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

31. “We were free to create, as long as we never forgot that we are slaves to Jesus.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

32. “In contrast to this, humanism has no final way of saying certain things are right and other things are wrong. For a humanist, the final thing which exists – that is, the impersonal universe – is neutral and silent about right and wrong, cruelty and non-cruelty. Humanism has no way to provide absolutes. Thus, as a consistent result of humanism’s position, humanism in private morals and political life is left with that which is arbitrary.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

33. “Second, an art work has value as a creation because man is made in the image of God, and therefore man not only can love and think and feel emotion but also has the capacity to create. Being in the image of the Creator, we are called upon to have creativity.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

34. “It is a special annoyance of mine that men try to separate philosophy and religion. This is false separation, because both ultimately seek the meaning of life.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

35. “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, we are to be in communion with Him, in this present moment in history. And we are to love men, to be alive to men as men, and to be in communication on a true personal level with men, in this present moment in history.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

36. “A quiet disposition and a heart giving thanks at any given moment is the real test of the extent to which we love God at that moment.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

37. “Is the creative part of our life committed to Christ? Christ is the Lord of our whole life and the Christian life should produce not only truth – flaming truth – but also beauty.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

38. “Man beginning with his proud humanism, tried to make himself autonomous, but rather than becoming great, he had found himself ending up as only a collection of molecules-and nothing more.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

39. “The Christian, therefore, has a sociological base which is extremely strong. As humanists are fighting today against prejudice, they have little philosophical base for their battle. But as a Christian I do: No matter who I look at, no matter where he is, every man is created in the image of God as much as I am. So the Bible.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

40. “This reality of which I speak falls into two parts: the fact that the universe truly exists and it has a form, and then what I would call the “mannishness” of man – which is my own term for meaning that man is unique.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

41. “Christ is with those in paradise now. But Christ – the same Christ, with the same reality – promises the Christian that he will bring forth fruit through us in this life now. The power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ will bring forth this fruit through us now.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

42. “And with truth comes beauty and with this beauty a freedom before God.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

43. “Nobody cared who worshiped whom so long as the worshiper did not disrupt the unity of the state, centered in the formal worship of Caesar.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

44. “The Christian should be the man with the flaming imagination and the beauty of creation.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

45. “Before a man is ready to become a Christian, he must have a proper understanding of truth, whether he has fully analyzed his concept of truth or not. All people, whether they realize it or not, function in the framework of some concept of truth. Our concept of truth will radically affect our understanding of what it means to become a Christian. We are concerned, at this point, not with the content of truth so much as with the concept of what truth is.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

46. “The principle of saying no to self lies at the heart of my attitude toward the world as it maintains its alien stand in rebellion against the Creator.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

47. “How can art be sufficiently meaningful? If it is offered up merely before men, then it does not have a sufficient integration point.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

48. “Whenever men say they are looking for greater reality, we must show them at once the reality of true Christianity. This is real because it is concerned with the God who is there and who has spoken to us about himself, not just the use of the symbol god or christ which sounds spiritual but is not.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

49. “I am not a Bible-believing Christian in the fullest sense simply by believing the right doctrines, but as I live in practice in this supernatural world.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer

50. “No man has stood in a great place who has not, by the grace of God, stood in lesser ones before. If a person cannot stand faithful in a lesser place, how will he be able to stand in the center of his own culture in front of the twentieth century’s own kind of fiery furnace? To be a man or woman of faith requires training.”

— Francis A. Schaeffer