How Should We Then Live Part 1: The Roman Age

Many if not most readers will already be familiar with Francis Schaeffer and his famous series which first appeared in the late 1970's. The Fundamentalist circles I was in during the 1980's would not have bothered too much with someone like Schaeffer and would have viewed him as strange and too worldly.

And yet, even then he was exerting an intellectual influence on the larger Evangelical movement which would start to come into its own throughout the 1980's and 1990's, perhaps yielding the greatest impact in the years just following his death in 1984. During the 1990's, after I began to attend Reformed and Calvinistic-leaning congregations it was not uncommon to find this series in use for Sunday School. At the time I was happy to find it being watched. It's intellectual and somewhat robust especially when compared to the often folksy and simplistic style of Fundamentalist commentators. Schaeffer's film was a breakthrough, a serious attempt to engage the culture. At the time I embraced his arguments but I can also remember doubts creeping in. Even now I enjoy revisiting the series and what was once almost overwhelming to me, I now see through very different eyes and eventually came to understand that Schaeffer isn't half as profound as means to be, dogmatically states many points that are open to serious question, mixes a great deal of error with truth and in general terms has greatly missed the mark. That said, I still find the film series to be compelling and I've wanted to interact with it in written form for many years. I hope some will find these challenges to Schaeffer stimulating, food for thought.

From the very beginning Schaeffer is assuming the Church is to engage in the transformation of culture. The pronoun 'we' is frequently employed referring to a conflation of the Church with Western Civilisation.

The Grand Pronoun Error or Church Identity Error is an echo of Rome's essential sanctification of Hellenistic or Greco-Roman culture, a concept that Schaeffer assumes without question and without Biblical examination. The Bible is talked about, hinted at and appealed to but always in vague terms. And yet for one even remotely familiar with the New Testament text, red flags are immediately raised.

While Schaeffer clearly admires Rome and it has to be admitted the civilisation possessed a certain genius and grandiosity, he has neglected to reckon with the fact that in the Scripture it is clearly presented as a Beast, an enemy and rival of Christ's Kingdom. It is a Kingdom destroyed by prophecy in Daniel and an enemy of the Church in the Apocalypse.

Listening to his appeals regarding the foundations of society and the need for an eternal base as opposed to the failed systems of the pagan world built on finite gods, one must ask – can an eternally based society be constructed in this age? Where does the New Testament suggest we are to do this? Where in the New Testament is this laid out for us as a concern?

During the pre-Constantinian Roman Age the Church maintained its antithesis, a point we can agree on and indeed the Church suffered for its stand but to Schaeffer this 'stand' is but a mere tactic, an episode of perseverance awaiting the transformation of Roman society into the Kingdom of Christ. Enmity and the expectation of defeat at the coming of Christ is turned into transformation and appropriation of both resources and heritage. The overall goal for Schaeffer in appealing to the Church's witness in the Roman era is not separatism (an otherworldly identity at odds with the world) at all or even antithesis for these concepts are to become meaningless in light of the transformed society. At such time Christian piety would be expressed through integration and the embrace of the social thesis... the coherent monist construct sacralists of all varieties seek after.

Schaeffer makes many questionable claims and yet this first episode probably contains the fewest. From errors in his interpretation of art... the Dying Gaul being identified as a gladiator or misunderstanding shifts in style, culture and political interests with apathy, a frankly ridiculous and deeply flawed analysis of the Arch of Constantine... he makes a rather sweeping generalisation in stating that the Roman Republic collapsed because its legal base was built on sand – an obvious allusion to the words in the Gospel referencing the house built on sand versus that built on the rock (of Christ).

And yet, does that really explain what happened to the Republic? Was it just a collapse in law and order? The argument would certainly appeal to his 1970's audience which had just witnessed a breakdown in social order during the latter part of the 1960's and early 1970's. Even by the late 1970's while the protests had stopped there was a crime wave in progress and large-scale urban decay. Like the complexities surrounding the collapse of the Empire there is also debate over what made the Republic fall. No historian would dare reduce the question to one factor or even one main factor. Was there a collapse in law? Of course but that was rooted in problems associated with the already growing empire, the resulting economic changes and social stresses and those seeking solutions and angling for power.

Was there a spiritual element to these events? Of course, but Schaeffer actually seems to gloss over such questions as what he's primarily focused on is an argument for the reconstruction of so-called Christian society founded not on Greco-Roman law and tradition but on (what he believes to be) Biblical foundations.

How foreign is this thinking compared to the ideas expressed by Paul who speaks of this world as that which is passing away. Schaeffer won't have it. He is determined to transform culture and it's this agenda and its assumptions which dominate his video series.

He lauds the early Church's avoidance of syncretism but fails to understand that their antithesis was rooted in a separatist pilgrim identity, an identity he has utterly rejected by embracing the assumptions of Sacralism.

He speaks of opposition to pagan culture but he insinuates political opposition. Christians are to judge the state he says but he doesn't mean this in the sense of evaluation and the maintenance of antithesis through vigilant discernment but rather his focus is clearly with a mind toward reform and reconstruction or as mentioned above transformation and appropriation.

Throughout the episode Schaeffer focuses on the question of Rome's internal collapse. It's a question that compels him because his real concern is found with the patent and very real analogies of Rome's implosion with the collapse of the modern West – something he had witnessed throughout his life. He wants Christians to learn from history so that they can save the West before it follows the same course.

But of course there's a glaring contradiction with regard to his thesis and it's simply this. Schaeffer would celebrate the Christianisation of Rome that began under Constantine. He acknowledges that it was flawed but in principal he supports the transformation of the Empire and (by implication) the Church. And yet it was shortly after this transformation that Rome (the Western Empire) collapsed. Christianisation failed and by some accounts accelerated the collapse. Was it simply a matter of too little too late? That's not much of a testimony in terms of the (supposed) transformative and sustaining power of Biblical Christianity applied to law and culture. A troubling statement perhaps, but not so for one who believes such aspirations are actually in conflict with the New Testament.

And yet in many respects Schaeffer will celebrate the Roman Catholic culture which rose from the ashes of Rome and the Dark Ages. He will not be uncritical of it but when juxtaposed with the post-Enlightenment West Schaeffer will evidently prefer the Roman Catholic model. Of course for him the real high point is the Reformation and the Protestant culture it produced and yet I would argue he cannot properly account for its origins and foundations, let alone its collapse. He is certainly blind to its flaws and fails to grasp the profundity of its weaknesses.

And yet again it must be stated that the series is interesting. To watch it is (for me) an exercise in reminiscence coupled with a degree of nostalgia for what was in my experience a simpler time. The films are by now quite dated and I don't imagine too many churches use them. I would count it a good thing given the gravity of their error and yet I suspect the modern varieties are even worse.

Continue Reading Part 2