True Spirituality

by Francis A. Schaeffer

  These are external results of a previously adopted position in the thought-world. There is an additional element here which is most important in our thinking. The work of the Holy Spirit, as the agent of the Trinity, is not a coat we put on. It is not an external thing at all, but internal, bringing in turn something external.

  So here we move on in our understanding of true spirituality in the Christian life. Basically it is a matter of our thoughts. The external is the expression, the result. Moral battles are not won in the external world first. They are always a result flowing naturally from a cause, and the cause is in the internal world of one's thoughts. In fact, Jesus emphasized this with great force: "0 generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matthew 12:34).

  There are those who would make a distinction here and regard "the heart" as more than just thoughts, but even if one held this view the important fact is simply that here we are dealing with the internal world. What Jesus is saying is that if the internal condition is not right, one cannot bring forth proper results.

  "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man" (Matthew 15:11). Jesus is talking about the question put to him earlier: "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread." This kind of question is very important to the externalist. But Jesus says: Don't you understand something? It is what comes out of a man, this is what defiles a man.

  "Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornica­tions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man" (verses 17-20).

  Again it is the internal that Jesus stresses. The internal comes before the external and the internal produces the ex­ternal. It is a matter of cause and effect.

  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus deals with this, too. "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judg­ment. But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment" (Matthew 5:21, 22a).

  Compare this with 1 John 3:15a: "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer."

  Now we have come a step further. The thought-world is still first, but here we are told something else. In relation to morals, the thought is the thing. Hate does not just lead to murder; morally it is murder. Now I am stressing "morally," because that is different from murder in the external world. Nevertheless, morally the hate is the murder.

  So far we have taken three steps: first, the internal is first; secondly, the internal causes the external; thirdly, morally the internal is central. You will remember that in Chapter 1 we saw that any time we break one of the other commandments we have already broken the internal commandment, not to covet.

  In the story of Joseph, in Genesis 37:4ff., we have a perfect example of this. "They" (Joseph's brothers) "hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him." It is the internal hate that is the root of the whole thing. Then, "They hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words." The hate is piling up, and the hate is an internal thing. Indeed, it has already produced its fruit, in that they cannot speak peaceably with hire. And now it is just piling up, like a great wave ready to break. Then : "And his brothers envied him."

  Here we have the breaking of the commandment not to covet. This is broken now, and internally the thing is past. As far as the moral situation is concerned, although the total ex­ternal result has yet to come, the reality of it is already upon them. "And they conspired against him to slay him. . . ." "Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams." They are perfectly willing to kill their brother and break their father's heart. All these things arose in the internal world of their thoughts, in their hatred, in their envy, not in the external world. The sin of the brothers was not when they sold Joseph to Egypt, but in the reality of the internal world. It is the in­ternal world of thought that distinguishes man as man. In the introduction to The Epic of Man, Loren Eisley, an anthro­pologist in the University of Pennsylvania, said this about man: "Ancestral man has entered his own head and he has been adapting ever since to what he finds there."

  This is a most amazing statement, because it is as clear and as sharp as a diamond. It is perfectly true in one portion of it, and perfectly untrue in what he makes of it.

  Eisley made this statement into an evolutionary proposi­tion, and here he is wrong, but he is completely right in ob­serving that man, whether one finds him in a more primitive state or in a sophisticated and culturally civilized state, is dis­tinguished as man by the fact that in a very real way he lives inside his own head. He has an internal world of thought that is unique. The modern depth-psychology has the same comprehension. The modern depth-psychology says the thing which distinguishes man from animals is that man—strangely enough for them, for they do not know where this came from —has a fear of non-being. Something "in his head" distin­guishes man, not something external. He has a thought-life which is different from anything else we observe in our world. Man lives in his head; this (with verbalization) is the unique­ness of man.

  In the account of the fall of man in Genesis 3:6 we read: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. . . ." Here is the realization that sin is first in­ternal where moral things are concerned. But it has an external result: "She took the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." The fall runs from the internal to the external.

  But we discover a startling thing in Isaiah 14:13, 14—the fall of Satan, prior to the fall of man: "For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the most High."

  Where did all this take place? First of all we must realize that Satan is not pictured in the Bible as having a corporeal body such as we have, nor a corporeal heart. This Scripture is talking about things which are internal. Where is the sin of Satan, Lucifer, as he fell? "Thou hast said in thine heart." The rebellion of Lucifer, and then of Eve as it followed, is first in­ternal and then the external flows from it.

  But let us come back to Adam and Eve for a moment, in the fall and in their rebellion. What do we find here? We find Adam—and I speak only of him because it is easier to speak of one—operating as a unit of personality. His thoughts, his will, and his emotions are all involved as a unit. He is not just a collection of parts. There is a unit which is the individual man, the individual personality, and that is what is in operation here: somebody we can call Adam, or Eve. In each case we are dealing with a unit of personality.

  Now as we deal with the fall of Satan and then with the fall of Adam and Eve, in one sense we must think of them unitedly, for Satan has rebelled before he leads Eve into temptation, and before she in turn gives the fruit to Adam. In terms of what I call "the theology of the fall," the really vital factor is that there was no prior conditioning. What we have is the unit of personality making an absolutely unconditioned choice, in the thought-world. And thus there is here a true first cause. The whole of Christian theology and every Christian answer falls to the ground if we allow previous conditioning to enter in at this point. There is a unit of personality which makes in the thought-world a true choice, which is a true first cause of an external result. It produces something that did not exist before, something terrible, something that has led us to all
our tears and all our sorrows: evil. God, being infinite, knows all things without experimentation with them. God, being infinite, knows not only all that shall be, but all that could be. He does not need to experiment in order to know the possibilities. He has made man and angels and there is a possibility for evil in the universe because God has made them as truly moral and really rational. He has made them so that they can love or can say "no" to love, even against God himself. And here, at the fall, we have the unit of personality making a true choice in the world of thought, with a true first cause which produced some-thing that flashed like lightning over all the world of man: evil, black and dark, with a vast sea of tears. They have thought, as a unit of personality; they have chosen, and they have brought forth into the external world.

  So here is our next point: from the inside outward they have made something. From the inside outward they have truly made sin.

  Now let us think of this in relationship to God. God is spirit. Therefore he is not corporeal, but he is personal. We see this in the Epistle to the Hebrews 11:6, where it says that God "is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." That which distinguishes the Judaeo-Christian God is the concept of God as personal yet infinite. And as a personal God he thinks, he acts, and he feels. And in the area of creation, God thought, God spoke and it was: a real external world. This is wonderful beyond words. Christian Science is wrong when it makes ev­erything only a thought-world. Eastern thinking is wrong, which very often would reduce everything eventually to a dream of God. The external world is not an extension of God's essence: the universe is not God; it has a real objective exis­tence. There is a real external existence outside of God, because he made it outside of himself. It is not a part of himself. He spoke and it was, externally and really. Let us notice the Bible's statement that after creation "all things by him consist" (Colossians 1:17), all things by him "hang together." The ex­ternal world which he made is now not a rival center in the universe. By him all things hang together, and yet the Bible it-self insists that because God made it, it is a real, objective, ex­ternal world.

  But we must not forget the other side, or we forget part of the wonder of what we should know about the world as it is and God as he is. And that is that the thought of the Trinity came first. God said, "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26). We are swept back into the Trinity before the creation of the world. Here is thought, because God is a personal God, who thinks, who acts, and who feels in his love. The balances here are most delicate and we must hold both sides or we lose the wealth of the Christian position. There is an external world; it is not the extension of God's essence. But while there is a true external world which is not the extension of God's essence, God thought first. These realities were in the thought of God before they were brought forth by his power, his creative fiat as the objective and external world.

  On the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in Rome there are the tremendous frescoes by Michelangelo. Among them is that magnificent picture of the creation of man. God is reaching out his finger and man, having just been created, reaches to him as well. But their fingers do not touch. This is a true Christian in-sight. Man is not an extension of God, cut off like a reproducing amoeba. God created man external to himself, and they must not touch in the picture. Whatever Michelangelo had in mind, surely these who formulated the Chalcedonian Christology in the early creeds of the Church had this sharply in mind when they said that even in the one person of Jesus Christ there is no co-mingling of the human and the divine na­tures. But there is another part of this fresco of Michelangelo which I would use as an illustration at this present point. The arm of God is thrown backwards and there are two kinds of figures under his arm. There are some little cherub figures that one would take as the Renaissance idea of the representation of angels. But there is another person under his arm, a beautiful girl. Her face is startled, but she is magnificent. And most peo­ple have felt that this is a representation of Eve. She is not yet created, but she is in the mind of God.

  At this point one must say what would be a wrong in­terpretation of Michelangelo's painting and what would be right. If he were saying that she was just as "real" in the mind of God as she would be later after he had created her, then that is a non-Christian concept. It is Eastern. Eve became exter­nally, objectively real at that great moment when he put Adam to sleep and he made the female from the male. But if Michelangelo meant that before God created Eve he had al-ready thought about her, then this is flamingly true. The thought of God preceded his creative acts.

  However, we must make a second point, and it teaches us something about ourselves as well. It is this: That which was created out of nothing and now has objective external reality, does show forth the thought of God and is therefore an exhibition of who and what he is. The external world is not an exten­sion of the essence of God; nevertheless, the external world does reveal and exhibit who and what God is. We must hold both sides. There has been a fall, which has marred the created world; nevertheless, Paul reminds us in Romans 1 that man is condemned against the backdrop of the creation which, in spite of the fall, still speaks of God. The external created world is a revelation of God. In theology this is spoken of as the gen­eral revelation of God, which surrounds man in the external world, exhibiting God's deity: both in the internal nature of man himself which speaks of God as personal, and in the evidence of the thought of God expressed in the external, created universe.

  "General revelation" and "special revelation" are theologi­cal terms which deserve some analysis. The Bible is the special revelation. We need the Bible for the message of salvation, and for the knowledge it gives which is the "key" to general revela­tion. But the general revelation—that which God has made and which we are and that which surrounds us—shows forth the existence of God and gives a true revelation of him. General revelation and special revelation constitute a unified revelation.

  Now let us move back to man. All of this is parallel to what the Bible says about us, as made in the image of God. The in­ternal thought-world is first, and the internal thought-world causes the external. This should not surprise us, because we have been made in the image of God, and thus are rational and moral. Putting these elements together, we find: God thinks, and then God brings forth into the external world which he had originally created out of nothing; we think, and we bring forth into the external world. God's creation was not an exten­sion of his essence but it does exhibit what he truly is. Equally, our acts in the external world which spring from our thoughts are not an extension of our essence, but they do exhibit what we are. The table that is shaped by the carpenter is not an ex-tension of the essence of the carpenter, but it does show some-thing of the essence of the carpenter, out of his thought-world. Satan, Adam, and Eve brought forth evil, and brought it forth as a true first cause, each one in his personality, each one-acting as a unit. And each one of us, too, created in the image of God, is a true first cause. We are finite, so we cannot create out of nothing; only God creates out of nothing. I am limited, but out of my thought-world I can bring forth, through my body, into the true external world. My body is the bridge into the external world.

  Let us notice that this is exactly the reverse of how we are affected by the external world. Something occurs in the outward, external world. I come into contact with this through my senses. It feeds back, through my senses, my body, into my thought-world, and affects me. My senses are the bridge be­tween what happens in the external world and the affecting of the unit that I am, a personality. My body is the bridge. Now it is exactly the same in the opposite direction. My body is the bridge. I think, but when I think, I am able to bring forth, flowing through my fingertips into a true, objective, external world, and I am able to influence and make in that external world. How great is man! We think, and through our bodies the reality flows out into the external world. We do not create out of nothing, as God creates, but in the sense of which we are speaking here it is proper to say that the artist does create and each of us
creates. I remember that when I was younger I was always greatly distressed at the use of the word "create" where the artist, the poet, the composer, is concerned. I thought this word ought to be saved for God. But now that I have thought it through more and have struggled more, I am glad that the word "create" is used. It is perfectly accurate. God's creation and mine differ, of course. God can create out of nothing, by fiat. I cannot, because only he is infinite. In crea­tion, he is limited only by his own character. I am limited not only by my character, but by my finiteness. When I create, I bring forth in the external universe that he has created. But nevertheless, understanding the limitations and differences, it is perfectly proper to say God creates, and we create.

  It can be said that it is impossible for men not to create things constantly and truly. Even if I wished to stop I could not. It is impossible not to be creating things truly and con­stantly out of my thought-world into the external world and giving them permanent expression. The artist thinks, and he brings his picture forth into the external world. But it was first of all in his mind. It is the same for the engineer, for the ar­ranger of flowers, for me writing this book. When we find the creation of a personal being, it has the marks of thought upon it, in contrast to that which pure chance brings forth. There are some borderline cases, of course, such as a stalactite or a piece of driftwood into which we "read" shapes, but almost always when I look at that which I see, I can tell whether it has the mark of personality and thought behind it, or whether it is just a product of mechanical forces. In spite of his theories of chance, we may be sure that when Jacques Monod looks at that which surrounds him, he makes exactly this same kind of judg­ment in the everyday things of life.