Summary
"Every
generation of Christians has this problem of learning how to speak meaningfully
to its own age. It cannot be solved without an understanding of the changing
existential situation which it faces. If we are to communicate the Christian
faith effectively, therefore, we must know and understand the thought forms
of our own generation. These will differ slightly from place to place, and
more so from nation to nation. Nevertheless there are characteristics of
an age such as ours which are the same wherever we happen to be. It is these
that I am especially considering in this book. And the object of this is
far from being merely to satisfy intellectual curiosity. As we go along,
it will become clear how far-reaching are the practical consequences of
a proper understanding of these movements of thought."
(Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, Introduction)
Commercial
Availability of Work
Escape
From Reason (paper)
Trilogy
(hard - 367 pages)
The
Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (paper)
The Complete Works of Francis
Schaeffer (Windows CDROM)
Book
Reviews
Review
by W. Simpson at Logos Word Review
Quotes
From The Book
There
were very good things that resulted from the birth of Renaissance thought.
In particular, nature received a more proper place. From a biblical viewpoint
nature is important because it has been created by God, and is not to be
despised. The things of the body are not to be despised when compared with
the soul. The things of beauty are important. Sexual things are not evil
of themselves. All these things follow from the fact that in nature God
has given us a good gift, and the man who regards it with contempt is really
despising Godís creation. As such he is despising, in a sense, God Himself,
for he has contempt for what God has made.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 1)
Today we have a weakness in our educational process in failing to understand
the natural associations between the disciplines. We tend to study all our
disciplines in unrelated parallel lines. This tends to be true in both Christian
and secular education. This is one of the reasons why evangelical Christians
have been taken by surprise at the tremendous shift that has come in our
generation. We have studied our exegesis as exegesis, our theology as theology,
our philosophy as philosophy; we study something about art as art; we study
music as music, without understanding that these are things of man, and
the things of man are never unrelated parallel lines.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 1)
It is an important principle to remember, in the contemporary interest
in communication and in language study, that the biblical presentation
is that though we do not have exhaustive truth, we have from the Bible
what I term true truth. In this way we know true truth about God,
true truth about man, and something truly about nature. Thus on the basis
of the Scriptures, while we do not have exhaustive knowledge, we have
true and unified knowledge.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 2)
We
cannot deal with people like human beings, we cannot deal with them on
the high level of true humanity, unless we really know their origin --
who they are. God tells man who he is. God tells us that He created man
in His image. So man is something wonderful.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 2)
The Bible says that you are wonderful because you are made in the image
of God, but that you are flawed because at a space-time point of history
man fell. The reformers knew that man was separated from God because of
manís revolt against God. But the reformers, and the people who following
the Reformation built the culture of Northern Europe, knew that while
man is morally guilty before the God who exists, man is not nothing. Modern
man tends to think that he is nothing. The reformers knew they were the
very opposite of nothing, because they knew they were made in the image
of God. Even though they were fallen and, without the nonhumanistic solution
of Christ and His substitutionary death, were separated from God and would
go to Hell, this still did not mean that they were nothing.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 2)
...whenever art or science has tried to be autonomous, a principle has
always manifested itself -- nature eats up grace. Thus art and
science themselves soon began to be meaningless.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 2)
People
today are trying to hang on to the dignity of man, but they do not know
how to, because they have lost the truth that man is made in the image
of God. Adam was an unprogrammed man, a significant man in a significant
history, and he could change history.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 2)
We
need to learn that when we begin to tamper with the scriptural concept
of true moral guilt, whether it be psychological tampering, genetic tampering,
theological tampering or any other kind of tampering, our view of what
Jesus did will no longer be scriptural. Christ died for man who had true
moral guilt because man had made a real and true choice.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 2)
The
sobering fact is that the only way one can reject thinking in terms of
an antithesis and the rational is on the basis of the rational and the
antithesis. When a man says that thinking in terms of an antithesis is
wrong, what he is really doing is using the concept of antithesis to deny
antithesis. That is the way God has made us, and there is no other way
to think.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 3)
The
early scientists believed in the uniformity of natural causes. What they
did not believe in was the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system.
That little phrase makes all the difference in the world. It makes the
difference between natural science and a science that is rooted in naturalistic
philosophy. It makes all the difference between what I would call modern
science and what I would call modern modern science. It is important to
notice that this is not a failing of science as science, but rather that
the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system has become the dominant
philosophy among scientists.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 3)
The
result of seeking for a unity on the basis of the uniformity of natural
causes in a closed system is that freedom does not exist. In fact, love
no longer exists; significance, in the old sense of man's longing for
significance, no longer exists.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 3)
The
twentieth-century pornographic writers all trace their origin to the Marquis
de Sade (1740-1814). The twentieth century now treats him as a very important
man -- he is no longer just a dirty writer. A generation ago, if anyone
was found with one of his books in England he was liable to have difficulties
with the law. Today he has become a great name in drama, in philosophy,
in literature. All the nihilistic black writers, the writers in
revolt, look back to de Sade. Why? Not only because he was a dirty writer,
or even that he has taught them how to use sexual writing as a vehicle
for philosophic ideas, but also basically he was a chemical determinist.
He understood the direction that things would have to take when man is
included in the machinery. The conclusions he drew were these: if man
is determined, then what is, is right. If all of life is only mechanism
-- if that is all there is -- then morals really do not count. Morals
become only a word for a sociological framework. Morals become a means
of manipulation by society in the midst of the machine. The word morals
by this time is only a semantic connotation word for nonmorals. What is,
is right.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 3)
We
are watching our culture put into effect the fact that when you tell men
long enough that they are machines, it soon begins to show in their actions.
You see it in our whole culture -- in the theatre of cruelty, in the violence
in the streets, in the death of man in art and life.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 3)
The
basic position of man in rebellion against God is that man is at the center
of the universe, that he is autonomous -- here lies his rebellion. Man
will keep his rationalism and his rebellion, his insistence on total autonomy
or partially autonomous areas, even if it means he must give up his rationality.
(Francis
A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason,
Ch. 3)
© 1999
Rational Pi, all rights reserved
|
