Death in the City - Chapter Seven

Death in the City Chapter 7 – The Man Without the Bible

There are a few instances where Paul addresses people who did not have the Bible such as Lystra (Acts 14) and Mars Hill (Acts 17). Romans 1 is addressed to a church made up mainly of Gentiles and possibly a significant minority of Jews. Though the Jews had scriptures, the gentiles would not have; so Romans 1 & 2 constitute an extended discussion about God based not on a written revelation but on the evidence from within (conscience) and without (nature). His example is important for us who deal with a generation which has never read a bible. How does one start to speak to a person like this, by quoting Bible passages? Paul didn’t (even though, interestingly, his words later became part of the bible).

There is, Schaeffer says, a moral law in our universe which corresponds to the character of the Almighty Himself. He writes: “There is no law behind God that binds God. Rather God Himself is the law because He is not a contentless God but a God with a character….when a man sins, he sins against the character of God, and he has moral guilt in the presence of the Great Judge.”

In knowing the truth, albeit suppressed, man is different from animals. He has “moral motions, [a] need for love, [a] fear of non-being, and [a] longing for beauty and for meaning.” All men, even a Marquis de Sade who says there is none, by their actions and in their writings, demonstrate what they deny, namely that an objective morality exists. Schaeffer writes: “I have always enjoyed the thought of Kruschev sitting at the United Nations, pounding on the table with his shoe and shouting, ‘It’s wrong. It’s wrong.’ Isn’t that an interesting thing for a materialist to say? He didn’t mean that something was merely counter to the best interests of the Soviet Union. He was saying something was wrong.”

Schaeffer makes reference to several thinkers: Levi-Strauss’ work which showed that all men, from primitive peoples to cultured societies, think in the same fashion; Michael Polanyi’s (in response to Francis Crick’s determinism) view that DNA’s chemical and physical properties alone cannot explain what a man is; Mortimer Adler’s view that man knows within himself that he is not the same as non-man.

Paul’s words in Romans is as applicable today as it was in the first century: men suppress the truth of what they know. All men, primitive, cultured, ancient, modern, eastern, or western know that man is more than what their theories explain.

He writes: “What Paul is stressing here is that when you turn away from God and follow other presuppositions, the more consistent you are to your presuppositions, the further you get away from reality itself….Therefore, a breakdown in morality occurs. God says to man in this position: You are under my judgment. And so these questions arise; ‘How are men without the Bible going to be judge?’ and ‘Is this just?’”