Before we get going on the next section, did anyone have any questions arising from our last class? Well, let's get going. I thought what we'd start on today is to look briefly at the basic Bible studies. This wasn't the first book published. It was actually published by Tindale House here in the States in 1972, and by Hodder and Staten in England in 1973, I've got the English edition here, but it had been written many years before. I couldn't find anything about its origins in Edith's books, so I asked her while she was here the other day and had the opportunity to ask her directly. And her response was that these studies and the basic Bible studies were originally written for an individual, with whom Francis Schaeff was meeting, who was converted, and then who was growing as a Christian as they went through these studies together. That was in the late 50s, perhaps even the middle 50s, so they go way back. They then were duplicated by hand many, many times at first, lots of as many carbon copies as possible on a typewriter. I remember when my wife was secretary there in 1967, she was still doing that kind of thing, making 10 carbon copies of things on the typewriter, getting feintra and feintra as they went down, and then after that for a while, by the early 60s, they actually had one of those old duplicators which you put in con and wind them round, you know. There's always breaking down, because I remember trying to work it myself. Eventually, the basic Bible studies printed sometime in the mid 60s, and it printed them and published them itself, just for internal use, for the use of people staying at the Swiss branch of the Brie and in Holland, and they were also sold for people coming through who wanted to take them off to use with other people. They weren't published, as I said, until 1972, by an outside publisher that is Tindale Havs, but they were in a sense one could say they were the earliest book, in terms of reaching printed form at a much earlier stage. I thought it would be helpful just to look at several things that come out in the basic Bible studies, several themes, which became dominant themes in Francis Schafer's teaching as the years went by. The first three things are from the introduction to these Bible studies. The first is this, a confidence in the system of doctrine, or the system of teaching, which is found in the Bible. By that, he didn't just mean that the Bible is a unity, that there is a system of doctrine in it, which we can discover. By that system, what he clearly meant, was a system of thought, a system of ideas, a system of teaching, which really answers the questions that people ask. In other words, a system, a unity of teaching, which actually fits the reality that is out there in which everyone inhabits. That's the first point I want to make here. And the second is very closely related to it, and that is that the Bible has answers to the questions of our own generation. But it isn't a book, which was written all those years ago simply, but because it's God's word, it has answers to the questions of today. And let me just read what he says here. It's studied in this way, that is, as a unit, as a book which contains a system of ideas and teaching, studied in this way the way the Bible will be seen to have many things to say in answer to the questions which men are asking in our generation about the meaning and purpose of life. It tells us who man is, man's purpose, the source of man's problems, and the solution to those problems. So that's the second point. He saw the Bible as a book which isn't first simply preaching sermons from to help Christians grow, but the Bible is a book which answers the questions of every human being. And it answers the questions our generation is asking 2,000 years, 3,000 years after much of it was written. The third is his emphasis on prayer as you study. As an interesting note at the end of the introduction where he says, it would be my advice that each time you do these studies you speak to God and ask him to give you understanding through the use of the Bible and the study together. And he suggests this to the unbeliever too, and this is particularly interesting, I think. If someone pursues these studies who does not believe that God exists, I would suggest that you say aloud in the quietness of your room, oh God if there is a God, I want to know whether you exist, and I ask you to make me willing to bow before you if you do exist. Now he would often say that to unbelievers. I heard him say that kind of thing many, many times to people in the context of discussions, and I know he said it to many individuals he was speaking to, but they should cry out to God and ask him to help them as they were thinking through their questions, even if they weren't sure of his existence. Now why did he say that? Why did he say that? Was it because he felt that God has an obligation to listen to the prayers of unbelievers? Clearly not. He would say this to people as he says it here, because he knew that only God can save people, that people do have hard hearts, and that it's necessary for God to enable somebody to become willing to bow before him. That's one reason why he emphasized this, but the other was because he was confident that God delights to save people, that God has no delight in the death of the wicked, and he loved to quote that passage of Scripture, that God delights to save people, and he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and therefore even though he's under no obligation to listen to the prayer of the unbeliever, God is very merciful and very gracious. So those are three points just from the introduction, and of course they're basic to so much of what he said later on. Now if you've got any questions as we go along, please don't hesitate to stop me and ask them. Moving to the studies themselves, how many of you have had a chance to look at them? Okay, several of you have done. Perhaps I could ask you what you noticed, Rob. Right, the comments are very, very brief, which come after each text. What these are is really a challenge to people to start really reading the Bible themselves as a source of truth. That's the thing that comes out so strongly in them. It gives you a text to read, and then it just makes a short comment on it. But as Rob was saying there, if you start looking at those comments together, there's actually an enormous amount of solid information being communicated in them. But he was really challenging people to see for themselves what that system of truth is, which Scripture declares, and that it does answer the questions that people are asking. Let me draw attention to some points that come up repeatedly. First of all, with regard to God himself, I want to make several points here, with regard to God himself. The first point is this. This isn't necessarily the first point he makes, though, in fact it is. So I'm not going to go through all the points that he makes, otherwise we'd be here for the next 10 weeks just looking at this book. But rather, I'm picking out some things which struck me as I was going through them in terms of emphasis, which stand out so clearly in his teaching over the years. The first is the emphasis on God being personal. He refers to several verses which stress the infinity and power of God and the infinite knowledge of God. But the strongest emphasis in the section on God is on the fact that God is personal. I'll just read one little section here. This is a comment on John 3.16 for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. He says, God not only thinks and acts, God feels. Love is an emotion. The God who exists is personal. He thinks acts and feels. Three distinguishing marks of personality. He's not an impersonal force nor an all-inclusive everything. He is personal. When he speaks to us, he says, I and we can answer him you. That's the first thing there. The emphasis on God being personal. That's not usually the comment you get on John 3.16. And of course he would have many other things to say about John 3.16 and that's the point he makes in his introduction as well. But he's not attempting to speak about everything that's said in all these verses, but to draw out particular points. He draws attention later in that same study to the communication and love which exists between the members of the Godhead before the world was made. This is a comment on Genesis 1.26 on John 17.24. Communication and love existed between the persons of the Trinity before the creation. What is the point he's making here? It's a point that he was to make a very much greater length over the years. In fact, there's a really outstanding sermon of his. We've got in the library there called before the beginning, which I'd recommend to you. It's on the Trinity before God created the universe. And the point that he's emphasizing in that tape as he does here is that we really are living in a personal universe. Our generation has spoken of reality as impersonal, whether it's the new age and the influence of the ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism, or whether it's the scientific materialism of the West, which sees matter as ultimate. Those views are rate against Christianity, or which shape the thinking of our culture ultimately see reality as impersonal. We're living in an impersonal universe. It's one of the great cries of the existentialist. And Schaeffer is saying over against that. Even before anything else existed, there was personality, true personality, in the relationship between the members of the Trinity, the father and the son and the spirit loved each other before the world was made, and communicated with each other before the world was made. We are living in a personal universe. That's the first point. And this became one of the central points in his apologetic. Over the years. Okay, well, please, if you don't understand the point, say so. Otherwise, we're not getting anywhere. That's great. Now, why don't you understand it? What's the problem? Well, he's referring to the passage in Jesus high priestly prayer in John 17, where Jesus speaks about the love with which the father loved him before the world was made. And there are many other pastors in Scripture, which speak in a similar kind of way. As point is this, because what I'm getting at here is that even when he prepared this, these simple Bible studies for somebody, which were then used in many, many people's lives, he was always thinking of the apologetic force of any particular part of the biblical message, or of the biblical system of truth. And that answers the questions of our generation. One of the big problems of the whole of 20th century thinking is it sees the beginning of everything as being impersonal, the whole of Western materialism, whether it's scientific materialism, or whether it's dialectical materialism, materialism of the Marxists, that ultimately matter exists, that there was once a dense ball of matter, and then there was the big bang. But there is no God, no personal being who created this universe. We're just living in a purely physical world, purely material universe. The East says the same thing, if we look at Hinduism, there is spirit, but that spirit is impersonal. Ultimately, if you look at the teaching of the New Age, this comes across very powerfully. There's no belief in a personal God with particular attributes and characteristics, God is beyond definition. Now, why is that a problem? Shafers point is this, and this is developed at great lengths in his later books, in the God who was there, he is there, and he is not silent in particular in many other different places. If you say that there is an impersonal beginning, among other things, you have no explanation whatsoever for the personality of human beings, and this has been one of the problems that 20th century thinkers have struggled with. How do we give any value to the human person, if there is an impersonal beginning? Well, there are several things that people try to do. Some of them will simply deny that human beings are personal. They will say, we are just machines. Human beings are just like complicated computers. That is all human being is. There is nothing else to you, apart from complex chemistry. You know, you are just a bag of water and some chemicals mixed together, and you happen to have this particular form which is developed over time. But to speak about love in human relationships, or to speak about real communication using words, using language between people, or to speak about moral significance, that it makes a difference what I do, whether I do good or evil, to speak about creativity, to speak about choice is meaningless. If, in fact, I am purely matter, that all the things we think of as being precious to our human life simply don't exist. That is a common theme of much of 20th century Western thought. There is no freedom and dignity to the human person at all. Now, there is no personality. That would be one answer. There is none at all. It just simply doesn't exist. Human beings are machines. Complex machines, okay? Perry London, an American psychotherapist, used that image that the human brain is like a digital analysis computer. It is very complex, but in the end, everything that anybody does is totally predictable. If we knew enough about a person, either about their genetic makeup, or their environmental conditioning, we could tell you everything that they would ever do in any circumstances, ever place them. There is no person there. There is simply a machine. Mortar Adler. Adler wrote a book called The Difference of Man, and the difference it makes. An Arthur Kessli used to speak about the ghost in the machine. Really dealing with this question, is there something in man that's different? And many people have answered that, no, there isn't. There's nothing different at all. People are just machines. Well, that's a terrible thing to say. If you think about what it does, if you start reading Shaper, you'll see him constantly giving examples of people he spoke to, who would take this position that human beings are just simply machines. I remember in ourselves in a discussion we had at Gratem once, there was a young fella sitting there who took this view, and he was sitting there with his girlfriend, and they were obviously very deeply in love. And we were having this discussion about what is a human being. And he was saying, well, people, there's no such thing as personality at all. We're just products of our environment, our genetic conditioning, and so on. That's all there is. And we just pushed him very gently along, and eventually I said to him, well, what's going on between you and your fiance? Is this just sexual pheromones? Is that all there is here? Is this just a matter of chemistry and nothing else? And he understood very well what I was saying, and obviously if you're going to say something like that to somebody, you say it very gently, not harshly, but he said yes. But you can see the effect of how I don't know his fiance, I mean she was horrified. Sure she had a word with him later, about it, but it really shook him up, and it really shook her up too. And you're trying to get somebody to see the things which we do hold as having tremendous value as human beings, which we just take for granted, which are part of our common humanity, cannot be true if we are living in an impersonal universe. They have no reality to them. Now, the one answer is to say there is no reality to them at all. Another is really the answer of the existentialist, which is to say that they are what Sylvia Platt, PLATH, the American poet, calls Tricks of Radiance, they're an illusion, which would be really the existentialist position, they don't have any reality, but we experience them, and they are an illusion, they don't have any final meaning, but they are what makes us have any meaning to our life at all. So that we have, here this gets into something else, sheafer kept talking about the line of despair, which we'll have to come back to later, on the level of reason, on the level of science, on the level of what we can know, we have to say that human beings are machines, there is no reality to love, to morality, to significance, to creativity, to language, etc. But up here, in the area of experience, even though we know it's a luxury, I do experience love, I do experience moral notions, I do experience personal significance, and I'm going to hang on to that, because they what enables me to keep going. There's a very moving palm, I ought to bring it along by Sylvia Platt, I read it to some of you in Awich to Contemporary Culture, where she actually uses this expression, that these are Tricks of Radiance, she eventually committed suicide after trying many times, because of this dilemma. But she ends her poem by saying, the weights begun again, the long weight for the angel, in other words there, most of the time she knows perfectly where her life is completely meaningless, that human personality simply doesn't exist. And occasionally there's what she calls a miracle, or a trick of radiance, when she has this sense that after all she means something, her life means something, these things really matter. But she calls it a trick of radiance, a miracle, the angel, says that the weights begun again, the long weight for the angel, for that rare random descent. Now, what shape is getting at here is this. From, if we look at what the Bible has to say, it tells us that we're not living in an impersonal universe at all, but this problem doesn't exist. But rather we're living in a personal universe, that God's personality is not something made in our image, as the non-Christian will often say you've made God in your image, it's exactly the other way around. The God has always been personal, the personality is at home in the universe, that before the creation of the world there was the father, the son, and the spirit. The shape would express it later by saying, personality existed at the high order of Trinity, and that the father and son and spirit loved each other and communicated with each other, before the world was made. Oh, it's love, communication, choice, thinking, planning, acting are not something which is true, which we hope is true of human existence. It really is true of human existence because it finds its home, its source in God himself. This is the point that he's making here, he doesn't spell it out in this context, he's going to spell it out in much more detail if you read he's there and he's not silent, and the God who was there. But it's a very profound point we're making here, that the most basic experience we have of being human, of our humanity, really is meaningful. Because we're living in God's universe and God is a personal God, that human beings do really love each other because they're made in the image of the God who loves, and who loved before the world was made before anything else existed. What's original in the universe is not a dense ball of matter, personal triune God. Is that answer your question? But please ask as we're going along, because otherwise you won't know why I think all this matters, unless I know whether you're understanding me or not. Yes, well he would include individuality, that's a good question, would he later on separate personality from individuality, he would include individuality within personality, that there are three distinct members of the Trinity, they are all equally God, but they are individual, they are distinct from each other, they have their uniqueness. And he would say the same thing about human beings, we are created in the image of God, not only in the sense that we love like God, that we are moral like God, that we have significance like God, that we are rational like God, we think like God, that we choose like God, that we create like God, we communicate like God, but that we are personal too in the sense that we are individual, all of us are unique. For that too is reflected in our humanity as the image of God, the uniqueness of every person. Okay, the second point here, please ask your questions as we're going along, because this will be much more helpful if you do. The second is that God is sovereign over creation, over history, and over salvation. In this second study, he's commenting on Revelation 4.11, and Ephesians 1.11, and he says, God created all things of his own free will. He did not have to create, and again he makes this point before creation, the triune God stood complete, and there was love and communication between the persons of the Trinity. He's always coming back to that, keep coming back to that over and over again. But his point here is this, God didn't have to create. God sovereignly and freely chose to create. Another way he would come to express this later was to say that there is nothing back of God. There is no sort of determinism behind God. There is no sort of an extrable law somewhere in the universe which shows God has to do this and God has to do that. God's not controlled by anything except himself. There is nothing back of God. There isn't a kind of God behind God, if you like. So God created because he freely chose to. He did not have to create. Coming back to your question of that personality, that comes up here as well. Shaffer would make the point later on, but in any system, in any world view, which believes only in one God, in rigid monotheism, that God would lose his personality. What do I mean by that? Let me explain that. It is related to this point that I am making here about that being nothing back of God or God not having to create. If God is only one, how can we say that love, that communication, that personality are really true of God himself? Who does he love? Who does he have to communicate with? Nobody. He isn't able to love or to communicate until he creates somebody to love and to communicate with. Some of you may know that poem, God's trombones, forgotten who was written by, but in which God says he was lonely. So he decides to create man and woman, Adam and Eve, in order to have somebody to love and to talk to. Well, that's nonsense, bitbically. God doesn't create because he has to, to fulfill his personality, to love somebody, to have somebody to communicate to. God creates because he wants to. A Shafer's point here is a very interesting one. His point is this that in Islam, for example, where you have a rigid monotheism, the personality of God will always disappear. The more consistent somebody is. So is the Islamic view that God is only one. And that's really true. Ella is not compassionate. Ella is not loving. He is totally arbitrary. Love and compassion are not fundamental to his being. He tends to become a distant figure. We may worship him. We may be an or of him, but can we love him as our father? That is something which is unique really to Christianity. That we can have a personal relationship with God because he is truly personal in himself, not just in relationship to us, because if it's only in relationship to us, it's not fundamental to who he is. It's not basic to who he is. It's kind of drawn out by his creation. It's not necessary to him. That's why in Islam, God is distant. God is cold because he is only one. Muhammad rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, but he lost the possibility of a truly personal relationship with God in doing so. You have fear as the dominant feature and or rather than love and compassion is. Okay, if God is only one before creation, who does he have to love? Who does he have to communicate with? Nobody. It inevitably follows, therefore, that love and communication are only expressed, if at all, when something is created. In other words, for eons and eons, God exists without communication, without expression, without love. You have to conclude from that. It's not fundamental to who he is. That's why in any monotheistic religion, God becomes cold and distant. The more consistency there is. You're either going to move in a mystical direction where God becomes completely impersonal, and you see that in Sufism within Islam, when you end up with a kind of Hindu mysticism, or you're going to have this very hard God, where His justice, His judgment, His arbitrariness, becomes dominant. And if you, the Islamic image of salvation, and this is an Islamic image, not my image of Islam, is of people walking across a bridge over an abyss, and God just knocks people off into that abyss. Arbitrarily, you also end up with a rigid determinism. There is no personal relationship between the individual and God which can change things. Everything becomes rigidly determined. And so your response to anything that happens is, it's the will of Allah. It's not a personal God whom you can appeal to and say, Lord, what's happening here? Deliver me from this situation. Well, let's try and put it this way. In Christianity, we have a God who is truly personal. There is this relationship of love, of communication, of language, of thinking and planning together, between the members of the Trinity. From all eternity, the Bible very clearly expresses that. Trinity chooses to create. They create together. So creation is said to be the work of the Father, the Son of the Spirit, and various different parts of Scripture. We don't have time to go into a kind of basic Bible study, but you all know the pastures I'm referring to. Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, John 1, etc., speaking about Christ, for example, is the creator of the universe. They work together. They think it out together. They plan it together. They choose together and they do it. They are deciding. There is love express between them. The Son delights to honor the Father to bring glory to the Father. He offers Himself to be the salvation for human beings. The Father loves to honor and to bring glory to the Son. That's why Jesus prays, Father, glorify Me with the glory we had before the world was made. There is this personal relationship between them, where there is a delight to honor each other and to serve each other. The Son is eternally the Son. He doesn't become the Son when he becomes incarnate. There is an eternal relationship of Fatherhood and the Son between the Father and the Son. So there is this real individuality coming back to the question here. There are these three unique persons relating together before anything is made. Now we've said some very profound things about who God is. When I come to God, I know that God is truly personal. That love is foundational, fundamental to His character. That significance is fundamental to who He is. The Father and the Son and the Spirit have chosen to do things together, this way rather than that way. This is what they've decided. I know that communication is fundamental to who God is. There has been communication between the Father and the Son and the Spirit forever. When I come to God and try to communicate with Him, I'm not communicating with a God who is in Himself silent. That's where Schaefer gets his title from. He is there and He's not silent. Speaking, communication is fundamental to who God is. Both in the sense of communication between individuals in the Trinity and communication in the sense of revealing oneself to others again. It's all bound up together. I'm coming to a God who I know is this in His very being. This is so different from the whole of modern theology of liberal theology, which says that God cannot be named. God cannot be known. God is totally transcendent. He is completely different. Therefore we cannot. It's like trying to name the whirlwind, to name God. Well, it's not the way the Bible speaks about God at all. God is a personal being who can be known who has these characteristics. We can communicate with Him. Let me use a little picture that Schaefer used to use over and over again. He speaks of God as infinite and personal. Now, if we think about ourselves as human beings, between us and God there is an absolute barrier on the side of God's infinity. We are finite. God knows everything. He rules everything. He's the creator of everything. Nothing is hidden from Him at all. He has infinite power, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, goodness, etc. etc. as the confession says, as the catechism says. But we are finite. We are limited. We only see. We don't see it in the future at all unless God tells us. We have come into being at a pointed time. We are very tiny. We're not like God at all. At that point, on the side of personality we are the same as God. That's what it means to you made in the image of God. So, on the side of personality, Schaefer would say over and over again, the barrier is at a different point. Here is God. Here is infinite and personal. Here are we, human beings. We are like God on the side of personality. We are like Him. We love like Him. We're made to choose like Him, to have significance, to create, to use language and so on. And here, the barrier comes between us and animals, plants and what Schaefer used to call the atom or machines, the purely mechanical. There is an absolute barrier between us and the rest of created reality. We are really like God. Now, what this means is that God can indeed be known among other things, because we really like Him. If you look at the whole of Neo-Worthodox theology, the whole of liberal theology basically says God cannot be known. Liberal theology says something very different. If you look at Carbard, basically there is God here and there are human beings here and the barrier between us is absolute. God is infinite. We are finite. God is transcendent. We are here in this very much non-transcendent world. How can we know God? Can God speak to us in language? No, because language is a human thing. God is completely beyond all that. Because God is the unknowable, the transcendent God. Now, if on the other hand as Scripture tells us God is personal, there is no barrier between human beings and God on the level of our being. At all, we have been created for fellowship with God, created to speak to Him, created to know Him, created to love Him, created to be like Him. The barrier between us and God is a different one. It is sin. It's a moral problem. Now, if you get rid of the personality of God, if God is either the sort of impersonal spirit of the new age, or if He is the rigidly monotheistic God of Islam, then you have a God with whom a personal relationship is really impossible. You don't have real communication. We don't have real significance before Him, because of who He is in Himself. You follow what I'm saying? Okay. Now, that's taken our whole time. This is a very fundamental question in terms of trying to understand what Shafer is talking about, because it's basic actually to everything He says in so many different contexts. We didn't get anywhere near as far as I expected to today, but that's just fine. But I would encourage you if you haven't read it already to read chapter 4 of whatever happened to the human race. And as well, if you've got time to look at, he is there and he is not silent or the God who is there, because the things I'm going to be talking about here come up over and over again in his books. And they are absolutely fundamental to his understanding of apologetics.