Schaeffer Biography

It is a while since I read anything by or about Francis Schaeffer and it has been good to read the book about his life by Colin Duriez recently (the IVP book appeared last year). Our CU in Aberystwyth showed the film series How should we then live? I found his books enormously helpful and stimulating as an undergaduate. By the time I became a pastor I felt I could see a little beyond Schaeffer and so moved on, perhaps unwisely.

Well written biographies are always interesting. You get the background as well as what you knew already and there's always some surprise or other (eg his premillennialism or the threat to throw him out of Switzerland) or something you'd missed (eg the apparently haphazard way things developed, his enormous popularity). Often there are things chiefly only of interest to you personally. I'd not seen in print before that he was dyslexic (like one of my sons) or that he was treated at the Royal Free at one point (near where we live). I also noticed that Welshamn Geraint Fielder edited his first IVP book.

Duriez is well placed to do the job being a real fan who met and corresponded with the great man but with some perspective and a number of other interests. This results in a good balance of objectivity and insider info (much like the lectures from Dr Edgar this week). The warts are all there but so is a portrait of a godly man seeking to serve the Lord in his own time. No doubt what he wrote will continue to be a help to many in the years to come, however the main challenge of this book is to live the authentic life in Christ that all believers, well known or not, are called to live.