This is the first book of Schaeffer's that I have read, and I must say, I am pretty excited to continue to learn from this godly evangelist. In The God Who Is There, Schaeffer weaves in and out of so many philosophical systems and history that it is quite impossible to list it all in a book review. Schaeffer is definitely a classic presuppositional apologist. Meaning that he tries to get the listener or reader to get to the very reason they believe in the certain system that they believe in. He then points out their holes in their arguments and shows how Christianity is the better and most reasonable option there is in philosophical thought. Most of this argument comes from Romans 1:18 where it states,

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,"

If they suppress the truth, that means that the truth is definitely inside them, as they are made in the image of God, their Creator.

In The God Who Is There, Schaeffer shows how the modern man has woven himself through philosophy, art, music, theatre, movies, etc. After showing how this has been done throughout history, Schaeffer shows that the "leap of faith" does not happen in Christianity, but actually in humanism, or modern atheism. Schaeffer explains it this way:

"Of course, faith is needed to become a Christian, but there are two concepts concerning faith. The two ideas of faith run like this: One idea of faith would be a blind leap in the dark. A blind leap in which you believe something with no reason (or no adequate reason), you just believe it. This is what I mean by a blind leap of faith. The other idea of faith, which has no relationship with this, none whatsoever, is that you are asked to believe something and bow before that something on the basis of good and adequate reasons. There is no relationship between those two concepts of faith. The biblical concept of faith is very much the second and not the first. You are not asked to believe in a blind leap of faith. The Bible teaches that there are good and sufficient reasons to know that these things are true. If you examine the ministry of Paul and also of Christ, you find they endlessly answered questions. There was no concept here of "Keep quiet, just believe"; it just does not exist. Paul answered the questions of the non-Jews, he was always answering questions; and the book of Romans certainly answered the questions of those without the Bible as well as of those with it. There are good and sufficient reasons to know that these things are true. We have already with the fact of reality and everybody having to deal with reality; (1) the existence of the universe and its form; (2) the dinstinctiveness of man; (3) you can relate these to a third thing, and that is the examination of the historicity of Scripture."
Francis Schaeffer

This is what the book aims to answer. Not only does Schaeffer answer these through the understanding of the triune God of historic Christianity, but he shows how humanism, or atheism, cannot fully answer these questions, therefore, they are the ones taking the "blind leap of faith", not Christianity. There is so much in this book that I did not mention, but Schaeffer had a strong conviction that the Christian cannot live in a castle with a moat, but must be among the culture to help answer the question of those that desire to know the answer to the question, "Why are we here?" He resonates much of what I desire to do within the ministries that God has given me and the convictions of my heart.

I very much enjoyed this book and would recommend anyone desiring to take up the challenge to read Schaeffer as well. I do not think that this is the only answer to the understanding of the existence of God, but believe it helps move us all in the right direction. Highly Recommended.

Christian apologetics often face the dilemma of having to choose between stern orthodoxy and compromising compassion. Dr. Schaeffer demonstrates conceptually and experientially from his personal ministry that it does not have to be so. In other words, it is possible to be orthodox and compassionate in our engagement with the world. In fact, he seems to put more premium on the latter without neglecting the former considering in this book he reminds the readers over and over again that we are dealing with people created in the image of God and ought to treat them as such. "... we must remember that the person to whom we are talking, however far from the Christian faith he may be, is an image-bearer of God. He has great value, and our communication to him must be in genuine love. Thus, emotionally as well as intellectually, we must look at the man before us as our kind. This man is our counterpart; he is lost, but so once were we" (p. 130-131).

Further, he wrote, "...Christians in their relationship should be the most human people you will ever see. This speaks for God in an age of inhumanity and impersonality and facelessness. When people look at us their reaction should be, `These are human people'; human because we know that we differ from the animal, the plant and the machine, and that personality is native to what has always been. This is not something only to put forward intellectually - when people observe us their reaction should be: `These are human people!'" (p. 173). Solid orthodoxy is then not merely an intellectual exercise but has a genuine love to people as its motive and driving force. Perhaps he had seen enough of the rudeness and coldness of the fundamentalists' mechanical method to evangelism of which I had been guilty in the past as well.

But this compassionate orthodoxy is not uniquely Schaeffer-style apologetics. It is biblical apologetics because 1 Peter 3:15-16 is the basis of such approach though Schaeffer did not explicitly mention it; that is, always be prepared to make a defense (apologia, the orthodoxy part) to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in us, yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience (the compassionate part). While exhorting the readers to love people, Schaeffer also warns about the danger of blind faith or what he called, "leap of faith" promoted by those from the so-called neo-orthodoxy camp which seems to bow to the pressure of existentialism. It says you just need to believe and there is no need to know what you believe. Again, this phenomena is not new. There is nothing new under the sun. We learn the apostle Paul encountered some Athenians who brought offering at the altar to the "unknown God" that they, according to Paul, "ignorantly worshipped" (Acts 17:23), yet afterwards he corrected with respect and gentleness by telling them that this God, though infinite and transcendent (v.24-26) above all his creations, is personal and knowable (v.27-31).

Here is one of the key thesis that Schaeffer brought up in "The God who is There" on the Christian faith, reasonable and open to verification; that there exists an infinite personal God, not just a concept or idea of "a god", but a real supreme Being who revealed himself and gave us worldviews through the Bible. An acknowledgment of this truth inevitably leads to the gospel because in his revelation, we are also told about a real moral guilt (not psychological or environmental or chemical imbalance problem), because of both the Fall and our own personal sins and the grace of God through Jesus Christ who undertook the removal of this moral guilt by his death and resurrection, both are real events, though this is not the only thing He accomplished on the cross. The Christian system of belief, Schaeffer argues, solves the disconnect between faith and reason, the lower and upper story; the dilemma both the modern men and the new theology face. With this in mind, Schaeffer went on to argue against both using what he calls "the point of tension", that it is impossible for modern men to be consistent between the logical conclusion of their non-Christian pre-suppositions and the reality of himself and the world around them. To say it in another way, "The more logical a man who holds a non-Christian position is to his own presuppositions, the further he is from the real world; and the nearer he is to the real world, the more illogical he is to his presuppositions" (p.134). Beforehand, however, he elaborates in great details about the issues further related to the dichotomy between the pessimistic rationalism, and irrational optimism, or the separation between the rational and logical versus the non-rational and non-logical embraced by both secular and religious existentialists (p.15-90). The effects of this dichotomous view in music, art, language, literature and general culture are then explained with various examples.

In the first chapter of Section 5 entitled, "Commending the Christian Faith to Our Generation," the opening statement says, "There are two purposes of Christian apologetics. The first is defense. The second is to communicate Christianity in a way that any given generation can understand" (p.151). Dr. Schaeffer throughout his ministry had accomplished both. He quickly became one of my "dead mentors" whose legacy of thoughts and other evangelistic labors are ground for a profound gratitude to God.

Say Francis Schaeffer's name and the informed Christian will straighten his armor of righteousness and stand erect with his Sword of Truth, or the Word of God. "Schaeffer [is] the great prophet of our age," is how Charles Colson describes him. Schaeffer's seminal work, "The God Who Is There," is an explanation of the despair that wracks modern man to his core and explains that the only logical response is "The God Who Is There."

God is There (or Here) because he tells us he is. How? Through His Word, the book of his words and deeds. He brought the world into existence through his Word, then he gave himself through his Word, Jesus Christ. The Bible is of utmost importance because God shows us himself through his Word.

However, modern man took words and made them into a twisted form of themselves, making meaning nil or ineffectual. The informed follower of Christ should learn the ways of the modern world and its nihilistic meanings. Only then can he combat its destructiveness. This is one of Schaeffer's main themes.

Schaeffer outlines the new world order and its debilitating effects. This new outlook developed between 1913 and 1935 in the United States with the rise of Humanism. Prior to that time, man had absolutes on which to rely. If there is evil, then its antithesis is good. Christians had a sound basis on which to live in the world. (Their moral code, of course, comes from the Bible.)

Then Julian Huxley edited The Humanist Frame The Modern Humanist Vision of Life" in which he emphasizes man as the source of all meaning, knowledge, and value. (Huxley is cited only as a humanist of Schaeffer's time as an example.) The man who originally drew this line of despair was Hegel, making truth the result of cause and effect, not absolutes.

According to Schaeffer, Kierkegaard is "the father of all modern thinking" by creating the concept of existential thought, both secular and theological. By its nature, existential thinking cannot be communicated. The informed Christian can counteract this lack by talking about God and Christ, who CAN be communicated. Since God's Word is written, it therefore can be communicated.

Sartre and Camus added to existentialism by saying that only an act of will can authenticate one's life, still placing man below the line of despair. Huxley played with evolutionary humanism, making it a religious substitute without a god. The other "authentic" experience comes through the use of drugs, which Schaeffer seriously debunks. The major proponent of this use to bring about a "first-order" experience was Timothy McLeary, a Harvard professor at the time (1960's). On the other hand, the Christian has a real external world which God created (as outlined in his Word).

Art was the next step in modern man's attempt to live in a world not made of despair. Van Gogh and Gauguin tried to connect through their paintings. Each experienced failure in their set goals and died in despair. Picasso, through his cubism, illustrates that communication is not even possible because people are no long human, but monsters.

The meaning of despair in music began with musique concrete, in which notes could be distorted enough that your ears began to distrust what they heard. In the end, whether art, music, philosophy, the public came to understand that what they face is alienation, corruption, lostness, chance, randomness.

Schaeffer discusses a number of other disciplines which have fallen to the slipperiness of a truth without an opposite. What is a Christian to do in such a world? He devotes the first half of his book to laying out the new truth and its consequences of despair.

In the second half Schaeffer examines the Christian counter point to this despair: "[T]he answer of the historic and Reformation Christian position which states that there is a personal God, that man is made in his image, that he has communicated to his creatures...."(106).

Schaeffer insists that the only way man can live in an uncertain world is to have an antithesis to truth. Death is not the end of our lives. The most important communication from God to man was the work of Christ on the cross. "John 3:16--He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life and he that believeth not in the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him" (164).

Space dictates an end to this review. This book deserves much more. Schaeffer very neatly and clearly shows how modern thinking has gone wrong and how man can get back to an accessible truth--that God is who He says he is, that Jesus lived in time and space, and that we can depend on the God who is there. A riveting book!

Francis Schaeffer is a warrior for Jesus Christ and a defender of Truth. He says, "the Christian is the real radical of our generation, for he stands against the monolithic modern concept of truth as relative" Schaeffer has come to an understanding that few of us will reach. He brings a new and refreshing perspective in apologetics, backed with powerful arguments; he is able to communicate to the laymen as well as test the Scholar. He tells us, "first I am not an apologete if that means building a safe house to live in, so that we Christians can sit inside with safety and quiescence. Christians should be out in the midst of the world as both witnesses and salt, not sitting in a fortress surrounded by a moat."

Schaeffer takes us through the steps that brought the world to, what he calls the "line of despair": the continual decline of absolutes and morality (relativism), especially in the last 100 years, through culture and philosophy, led by humanistic rationalism. These early influential men who have changed our culture were themselves not even able to live their lives the way they believed, but expected the world to. The church was not immune, so they developed their own "new theology" (or morality).

The dichotomy that one must hold on to in the world of humanistic rationalism cannot stand against Christianity; for the non-Christian, it is impossible to remain consistent in their beliefs, there lies a tension; we need to understand this when making our case. For those who hold on to humans as only a machine, Schaeffer offer this, "no one has thought of a way of deriving personality from non-personal sources"; this is one of many dilemmas----just another form of faith.

There is one area where I disagree with Schaeffer, and still struggle with: being "born again". His definition: a new relationship with Christ----a conversion. This raises some difficulties: what then is baptism, and are those whom are ableminded the only ones able to receive this relationship?

I will end with this message: "In face of this modern nihilism, smashing or the apathy, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to live the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there, we would be among the first to have the courage to step out of the queue."

The purpose of man?: the 1st commandment

Wish you well
Scott

This is an outstanding presentation of a philosophical defense of historic, orthodox Christianity. Dr. Schaeffer makes his points concisely and plainly in only 176 pages for what is not an easy topic to approach. This will be a book I intend to read again and again. Although this was written in 1968, it has important relevance today. The main point of the book is that Western philosophy has drifted away from logic and reason and brought along with it art, music, and even theology. Schaeffer does a good job of showing that this drift has eroded our understanding of a real and personal God that exists. Highly recommended!