Death in the City - chapter one

Death in the City by Francis Schaeffer (IVP, 1968)

Chapter One

This book is an adaptation of a series of lectures Schaeffer gave at Wheaton College in 1968. He starts the book with the question: How should orthodox, bible-believing Christians view life in a post-Christian world? His goal is to attempt to answer this question through the lens of Jeremiah, Lamentations and Romans.

To those who long for revival, Schaeffer offers this corrective: “There cannot be true revival unless there has been reformation.” He also admits that reformation is incomplete in the absence of revival. The two go together. He writes: “Reformation refers to a restoration to pure doctrine; revival refers to a restoration in the Christian’s life.”

He lays the blame for the directionless and morally bankrupt nature of our society on human foolishness. Quoting Romans 1:21-22, “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasoning”. This foolishness in rejecting God is not merely religious foolishness, but intellectual foolishness. Man has taken a position that is out of step with what he, if he really examines things carefully, knows to be true about the universe. Thus, he is left in a position of intellectual and personal tensions. He laments that, while humans have always turned from God, the speed with which western society has rejected God in his own generation is remarkable.

His phrase “post-Christian”, is now part of the evangelical lexicon. In the generation before his, Christians could have had common ground on which to discuss question of value, ethics, and religion; but in the course of a generation, western (European/North American) culture has abandoned its cultural, religious and intellectual heritage.

He sums up the result of this rejection with strong words: Western culture is under the wrath of God.

There is currently a popular praise song called “Days of Elijah”. Schaeffer, however, believes that we are living in the day of Jeremiah. He writes: “The book of Jeremiah and…Lamentations show how God looks at a culture that knew Him and deliberately turned away. But this is not just the character of Jeremiah’s day of apostasy. It’s my day. It’s your day.”

How does God judge? Unlike Zeus who throws down thunderbolts, God can directly intervene or he can simply turn away, letting the natural course of history do what it has always done. Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. These are the civilizations that make up the detritus of history. Western culture is in danger of the same fate. He concludes the chapter with this statement: “As the Jews of Jeremiah’s day were hungry for bread and had no comforter, our post-christian world is hungry in state and society and in the individual longings of the heart, for it too has turned in our own day from the only sufficient Comforter.”