A Tribute to Jerram Barrs
This post appeared as the Foreword to The Jerram Barrs Collection: Selected Shorter Writings, a volume of some of Prof. Barrs’s shorter works put together in honor of his three decades of service to Covenant Seminary and his work with the Francis Schaeffer Institute (FSI), which Prof. Barrs founded in 1989. This is the first of a periodic series of posts featuring pieces from the volume as we pay tribute to Prof. Barrs during his final semester before retirement. To buy a copy of the book, visit our online store here.
Twenty-five years ago, I set foot on the campus of Covenant Theological Seminary for the very first time. It was August 1997, the evening of the President’s Welcome Reception, and less than one week before the commencement of the fall term. I had arrived from Australia never having been to the U.S. before and knowing remarkably little about Covenant as a school. In fact, apart from the persuasive endorsement of a fellow Australian and Covenant alumnus, Linleigh J. Roberts, I knew only two things for sure: David Jones taught ethics and Jerram Barrs was leading the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute (FSI). While David Jones sharpened my thinking at many points and I had the joy and privilege of regularly visiting with him and learning from him until his passing in 2017, it was Jerram Barrs who would play an outsized role in my life, modulating my apologetics and shaping my ministry in concrete ways right up through the present time.
In terms of my relationship with Jerram and what I have learned from him over the past quarter-century, three distinguishing emphases loom large in my mind. These three emphases are the tip of the iceberg in terms of what I have gained from Jerram, but I share them here as each is resonant with and can be discerned within the selection of shorter writings that compose this volume.
Compassionate Disposition over Curated Methodology
Having completed various programs of theological study in Australia, I came to the U.S. to pursue additional work in Christian apologetics. Tutored in the apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, my interest was piqued when my esteemed Old Testament professor Dr. Allan M. Harman, himself a student of Van Til, told me near the end of my studies at Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia, “We need more men like Francis Schaeffer, men who will practice apologetics, who will keep their apologetic work connected to evangelism, accessible to a wide variety of people, yet rooted within the Reformed confessional tradition.” Later, when I began to look for this combination of qualities more actively, other Westminster men, including Professors John Frame and William Edgar, pointed me to the L’Abri communities, to the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute, and to Jerram Barrs in particular.
Although I had no reason to imagine that I would ever get to know Jerram in the way I am so glad for today, it certainly didn’t hurt that four out of six of my first fall term classes at Covenant Seminary were taught or overseen by Professor Barrs (as were two of my following spring term classes). While I once imagined that I had distinguished myself as a student under Jerram’s (and then FSI Director Wade Bradshaw’s) tutelage, it now seems far more likely to me that completing six classes plus two cycles of FSI Special Lectures—17 credit hours of Barrs classes in one academic year!—meant that being invited to serve FSI as an intern and Jerram as a teaching assistant in my second year was more a fait accompli than any indication of aptitude.
Regardless of how the opportunity to work with FSI and Jerram came about, in 1998, as part of my second year, I took four further courses with Jerram and continued to benefit from his classroom instruction. At the same time as I was taking in what Jerram was teaching, I would often ask him in rather obtuse fashion why he (and, back of him, why Schaeffer) was not more explicitly presuppositional in terms of his apologetic methodology. Jerram welcomed my questions and spoke to questions of methodology with insight, but what I eventually learned and took to heart was the primacy of disposition over methodology. Clearly Schaeffer was indebted to Van Til, and just as clearly, Jerram was alert to presuppositionalism’s central tenets. However, what Jerram, following Schaeffer, has always been most concerned to communicate and see carried forward among his students is the need for a more outward-facing, compassionate apologetic. (A clear statement of Jerram’s vision for apologetics at Covenant can be found in his chapter titled “Francis Schaeffer: His Legacy and His Influence on Evangelicalism,” in Francis Schaeffer: A Mind and Heart for God, edited by Bruce A. Little [P&R, 2010]).
Recognizing that it is God who saves people and that all persons possess innate dignity by being made in the image of God, so Jerram calls for (and models) a compassionate disposition toward individuals and their questions, regardless of who they are and how their questions challenge the Christian position. In terms of teaching apologetics, Jerram’s deepest desire is not that we commit to and master a specific methodology, but that we treat our interlocutors with respect, answer their questions gently, and pray for them while also challenging them with the truth in compassionate fashion (avoiding the twin errors of aggressive confrontation or evangelistic indifference).
Relationships and “Being Human” over “Gotcha” Apologetics
In addition to seeing Jerram in further classes and serving him as a TA, I also got to know him more personally. I was often able to converse with him at length in the old FSI building on the edge of campus. Sometimes I joined him in public contexts where he was speaking, and occasionally I visited with him and his wife, Vicki, in their home. Regardless of the setting, I was positively impacted by the remarkable consistency I observed. Whereas many popular apologists tended to speak in shrill tones, Jerram spoke plainly, kindly, and always with a disarming vulnerability.
Further, whereas I was troubled by the tendency of apologists I had benefitted from to defend the faith out of an impersonal “us versus them” posture, Jerram modelled another way. He was remarkably accessible, practicing his “bridge-building” approach by way of embracing people in relationship. Indeed, it was not uncommon to see individuals unconnected with the Seminary park their cars in the lot, cut through the leafy verge that bordered it, and disappear into the white Schaeffer Institute building to discreetly visit with Jerram. Despite his teaching load and frequent travel for Covenant, Jerram would deliberately schedule time to meet one on one with local non-Christians. He willingly gave time to their individual concerns, even allowing them (as was beneficial to them and to his students) to sit in on his evening classes.
Whether he was dealing with a mature Christian, a new Christian, or a not-yet-Christian, Jerram always put into practice what he taught in the classroom. He gave time to those whose sorrows and struggles eclipsed their ability to believe, as well as to those for whom the pleasantness and current ease of life made Christianity seem unnecessary or austere. He received every question with seriousness and addressed all questions from an unwavering commitment to making known the goodness of God and with an eye toward encouraging “being human”—emphasizing human responsibility and the construction of a beauty-filled and pleasing life, which glorifies God.[1]
Never one to perpetrate “gotcha” apologetics or to offer trite answers to sincere questions, Jerram worked hard to match his response to the need he discerned. Sometimes his way was to draw attention to trusted works such as those written by his L’Abri colleagues, or by others who wrote more broadly yet whom Jerram found personally helpful.[2] On other occasions, it was less about directing questioners toward external resources and more about inviting those with stubborn doubts into a deeper dialogue with himself and his own life experience. Frequently, Jerram responded by weeping with those who were overwhelmed—and always he listened generously and gave of himself. In a manner that I had seldom seen before, Jerram invested in relationships without backing away from his own firm commitment to God’s truth and kindness. With tenderness and tenacity, Jerram commended a biblical spirituality which acknowledges our profound sinfulness even as it moves us closer toward God and toward what he intended us to be as human creatures.
Beauty and “the Basics” over Everything Else
Apologetics, like every vocation, has its unique challenges and deformations. In always contending with assaults upon our faith, there is a temptation toward constantly responding to critiques, to then becoming reactive and critical by default, thereby succumbing to a gradual loss of joy and delight in the manifold goodness of life. While thankful for the number of women and men in the work of apologetics who maintain biblical standards and sound doctrine, it is true that relatively few of us are known for our joyful relationship with Christ and thankful reception of every good thing created by God. Yet here again, I am indebted to Jerram, who openly delights in beauty and in the basics of the Christian faith over everything else. As an heir not only of Schaeffer but also of Abraham Kuyper (who previously spoke in similar ways), the essence of Jerram’s apologetics is found not so much in his pushing back on Christian critics, but rather in living a life of his own within the circle of what God has given and made known.
In ways I did not immediately grasp as a student, I have come to see over time that Jerram’s witness to the beauty he finds in God’s still-good earth is part and parcel of his apologetic posture. His side comments on prominent figures whom he movingly spoke of as being on their way to faith; his stories of the power of Florida sunsets drawing vacationers out of restaurants and condos onto the beach; his insistence on reading Calvin’s Institutes in French; his insertions of poetry (especially Hopkins) into his lectures; his collection of pictures of English woodland flowers heralding the spring; photos of backyard birds visiting his Missouri home, and of zebras, elephants, lions, and tigers populating the African plains; and even images of collided protons and massive particles from the Large Hadron Collider on the Franco-Swiss border—all of these are part of what Jerram’s Apologetics and Outreach students may recall as the “various testimonies of God in the lives of unbelievers.” More interested in assisting you toward constructing a satisfying human existence than compelling you to agree with a particular point, Jerram maintains a focus on the basic truths of the Christian faith and provocatively traffics in beauty, thus reminding the Christian to acknowledge—and calling the non-Christian to account for—whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise in the world around us.
While it remains true that we are to respond reasonably to the ever-shifting concerns and objections of contemporary critics, Jerram teaches us to live a uniquely Christian life wherever we are placed. He is an exemplar of rejoicing in the many beautiful things that God sustains and of living confidently within the circle of basic Christian truths revealed to us. Opening our hearts, abandoning our fears, demonstrating joy, and embracing beauty and truth where we find it—these are vitally important and can preserve us from becoming cynical and unduly critical.
Having had the good providence of being able to learn these things from Jerram and observe these emphases in him firsthand, I am now glad to fall quiet and to allow Jerram’s own writings to speak and further fill out what I have barely outlined.
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[1] Jerram’s volume, Being Human: The Nature of Spiritual Experience (IVP, 1978), co-written with Ranald Macaulay, does not talk much about apologetics, yet undergirds and informs Jerram’s practice of apologetics in foundational ways. Though it is one of Jerram’s earlier writings and indebted to his work at L’Abri rather than in the seminary context, I continue to return to it and to hear Jerram’s more explicit teaching on apologetics in dialogue with this volume.
[2] Jerram is widely read, but as all students know, his go-to authors include William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Wendell Berry, Marilynne Robinson, and of course, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
