The French Revolution and After

Questions and Answers

What is Dr. Lloyd-Jones' central thesis about the French Revolution?

Dr. Lloyd-Jones argues that the French Revolution was not simply one more episode in the long history of political upheaval. It was, he contends, something entirely new — a revolution of beliefs, not merely of governments. Where the English Civil War of the seventeenth century and the American War of Independence retained residual deference to divine authority, 1789 marked the emergence of what he calls an anti-Christian religion: the systematic repudiation of revelation, the enthronement of human reason, and the declaration that man alone is the measure of all things. He draws heavily on the Dutch statesman and historian Groen van Prinsterer, who in his 1847 work Unbelief and Revolution identified the Revolution as a world-historical rupture — not a chapter in political history, but the birth of a new and hostile religion.

How does Dr. Lloyd-Jones assess the role of the church in producing revolutionary conditions?

One of the most searching passages in the address concerns the complicity of the institutional church — Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican alike — in generating the very revolutionary reaction it deplored. Dr. Lloyd-Jones argues that the historic alliance between church and state, particularly in France and Russia, made it nearly impossible to disentangle antagonism to corrupt monarchy from antagonism to corrupt religion. When the people revolted against the king, they revolted against the church, because the two had become indistinguishable. He issues a pointed caution that Protestants and evangelicals are by no means exempt from this failure: Anglicanism functioned, as it was said, as the Tory Party at prayer; nonconformists who prospered often became opponents of the very working-class reforms their own theology should have demanded; and the Plymouth Brethren, by refusing political engagement entirely, effectively sanctioned the status quo by default.

What three dangers does Dr. Lloyd-Jones identify for Christians living in a revolutionary age?

Dr. Lloyd-Jones identifies three principal dangers. The first is the identification of Christianity with the established order — the impression, however unintentional, that to be a Christian is to be a conservative defender of existing social and political arrangements. He regards this as historically the most damaging failure, one that has alienated the working classes from the gospel and given revolution a moral legitimacy it should never have possessed. The second danger is the opposite: an uncritical enthusiasm for political and social reform, a belief that the church's primary calling is to reshape the structures of society. He argues that the social gospel, however sincerely motivated, has uniformly failed — it fills churches while politics is preached and empties them the moment the true gospel is proclaimed. The third danger is a complete otherworldliness — a withdrawal from all earthly concern — which he treats as equally contrary to Scripture, since the Christian is called to be salt and leaven in the world.

What does Dr. Lloyd-Jones teach about the relationship between the gospel and social reform?

Dr. Lloyd-Jones is careful to hold two convictions simultaneously, and resists the pressure to surrender either. On the one hand, he insists that Christianity is not a blueprint for political revolution, and that the New Testament never advocates rebellion against civil authority. The apostle Paul, writing to slaves, does not call for the abolition of the institution — he transforms the relationship from within, by declaring the slave a beloved brother. On the other hand, Dr. Lloyd-Jones insists with equal force that the Christian must never be perceived as indifferent to injustice or oppression. A demonstrable lack of concern for the poor and the marginalized has, he argues, been one of the primary causes of the church's failure to reach the working classes. His resolution is not a compromise but a distinction: the Christian works as a citizen for the best possible within a fallen order, while knowing that only regeneration — the new birth — produces the transformation that no legislature can compel.

How does eschatology shape Dr. Lloyd-Jones' response to the revolutionary age?

Dr. Lloyd-Jones introduces eschatology as the decisive frame through which a Christian must read the present moment. He argues that the biblical view of history is not a dialectical spiral toward a human utopia, but a purposeful movement toward the return of the Lord Jesus Christ — that one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves. The proper function of government and culture, under this view, is not to redeem the world but to restrain evil, to make ordered life possible, and to create the conditions under which the gospel may be proclaimed. He asks, with characteristic directness, whether the present age — with its worship of man, its violent anti-God movements, its restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine — may be approaching the ultimate stage described in Scripture. His conclusion is not despair but watchfulness: the Christian holds, in one hand, a profound realism about what human effort can achieve in a fallen world, and in the other, a glorious confidence in the appearing of the Lord. That eschatological hope does not produce passivity — it produces urgency in proclamation and sobriety in political engagement.