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He is There and He is Not Silent
(1972)

Summary

One of philosophy's biggest problems is that anything exists at all and has the form that it does. Another is that man exists as a personal being and makes true choices and has moral responsibility. The Bible gives sufficient answers to these problems. In fact, the only sufficient answer is that the infinite-personal triune God is there and He is not silent. He has spoken to man in the Bible. It is time for the church to stop "talking to itself" and speak "true truth" to the world in language that it understands.


Commercial Availability of Work
He is There and He is Not Silent (paper - 100 pages)
Trilogy (hard - 367 pages)
The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (paper)
The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer (Windows CDROM)



Quotes From The Book
Behaviorism, and all forms of determinism, say that man is not personal -- that he is not intrinsically different from the impersonal. But the difficulty with this is first that it denies the observation man has made of himself for at least 40,000 years (if we accept the modern dating system); and second, there is no determinist or behaviorist who can really live consistently on the basis of his determinism or his behavioristic psychology -- saying, that is, that man is only a machine.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)




...evangelicals have often made a serious mistake by equating the fact that man is lost and under Godís judgment with the idea that man is nothing -- a zero. This is not what the Bible says. There is something great about man, and we have lost perhaps our greatest opportunity of evangelism in our generation by not insisting that it is the Bible which explains why man is great.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)



...philosophy and religion deal with the same basic questions. Christians, and especially evangelical Christians, have tended to forget this. Philosophy and religion do not deal with different questions, though they give different answers and use different terms. The basic questions of both philosophy and religion (and I mean religion here in the wide sense, including Christianity) are the questions of Being (that is, what exists), of man and his dilemma (that is, morals), and of epistemology (that is, how man knows). Philosophy deals with these points, but so does religion, including evangelical, orthodox Christianity.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)



Christians have tended to despise the concept of philosophy. This has been one of the weaknesses of evangelical, orthodox Christianity -- we have been proud in despising philosophy, and we have been exceedingly proud in despising the intellect. Our theological seminaries hardly ever relate their theology to philosophy, and specifically to the current philosophy. Thus, students go out from the theological seminaries not knowing how to relate Christianity to the surrounding world-view. It is not that they do not know the answers. My observation is that most students graduating from our theological seminaries do not know the questions.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)



No man can live without a world-view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)



There are not many possible answers to the three basic areas of philosophic thought, even though there is a great deal of possible detail surrounding the basic answers. It will help us tremendously -- whether we are studying philosophy at university and feel buffeted to death, or whether we are trying to be ministers of the gospel, speaking to ordinary people -- if we realize that although there are many details which can be discussed, the possible answers -- in their basic concepts -- are exceedingly few.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)



If a man held that everything is meaningless, nothing has answers and there is no cause-and-effect relationship, and if he really held this position with any consistency, it would be very hard to refute. But in fact, no one can hold consistently that everything is chaotic and irrational and that there are no basic answers. It can be held theoretically, but it cannot be held in practice that everything is absolute chaos.

The first reason the irrational position cannot be held consistently in practice is the fact that the external world is there and it has form and order. It is not a chaotic world. If it were true that all is chaotic, unrelated, and absurd, science as well as general life would come to an end. To live at all is not possible except in the understanding that the universe that is there -- the external universe -- has a certain form, a certain order, and that man conforms to that order and so can live within it.

Perhaps you remember one of Godard's movies, Pierrot le Fou, in which he has people going out through the windows, instead of through the doors. But the interesting thing is that they do not go out through the solid wall. Godard is really saying that although he has no answer, yet at the same time he cannot go out through that solid wall. This is merely his expression of the difficulty of holding that there is a totally chaotic universe while the external world has form and order.

Sometimes people try to bring in a little bit of order; but as soon as you bring in a little bit of order, the first class of answer -- that everything is meaningless, everything is irrational -- is no longer self-consistent and falls to the ground.

The view that everything is chaotic and there are no ultimate answers is held by many thinking people today, but in my experience they always hold it very selectively. Almost without exception (actually, I have never found an exception), they discuss rationally until they are losing the discussion, and then they try to slip over into the answer of irrationality. But as soon as the one we are discussing with does that, we must point out to him that as soon as he becomes selective in his argument of irrationality he makes his whole argument suspect. Theoretically the position of irrationalism can be held, but no one lives with it in regard either to the external world or the categories of his own thought world and discussion. As a matter of fact, if this position were argued properly, all discussion would come to an end. Communication would end. We would have only a series of meaningless sounds -- blah, blah, blah. The Theatre of the Absurd has said this, but it fails, because if you read and listen carefully to the Theatre of the Absurd, it is always trying to communicate its view that one cannot communicate. There is always a communication about the statement that there is no communication. It is always selective, with pockets of order brought in somewhere along the line. Thus we see that this class of answer -- that all things are irrational -- is not an answer.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)



We are considering existence, the fact that something is there. Remember Jean-Paul Sartre's statement that the basic philosophic question is that something is there rather than nothing being there. The first basic answer is that everything that exists has come out of absolutely nothing. In other words, you begin with nothing. Now, to hold this view, it must be absolutely nothing. It must be what I call nothing nothing. It cannot be nothing something or something nothing. If one is to accept this answer, it must be nothing nothing, which means there must be no energy, no mass, no motion, and no personality.

My description of nothing nothing runs like this. Suppose we had a very black blackboard which had never been used. On this blackboard we drew a circle, and inside that circle there was everything that was -- and there was nothing within the circle. Then we erase the circle. This is nothing nothing. You must not let anybody say he is giving an answer beginning with nothing and then really begin with something: energy, mass, motion, or personality. That would be something, and something is not nothing.

The truth is I have never heard this argument sustained, for it is unthinkable that all that now is has come out of utter nothing. But theoretically, that is the first possible answer.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


Beginning with the impersonal, everything, including man, must be explained in terms of the impersonal plus time plus chance. Do not let anyone divert your mind at this point. There are no other factors in the formula, because there are no other factors that exist. If we begin with an impersonal, we cannot then have some form of teleological concept. No one has ever demonstrated how time plus chance, beginning with an impersonal, can produce the needed complexity of the universe, let alone the personality of man. No one has given us a clue to this.

Often this answer -- of beginning with the impersonal -- is called pantheism. The new mystical thought is almost always some form of pantheism -- and almost all the modern liberal theology is pantheistic as well. Often this beginning with the impersonal is called pantheism, but really this is a semantic trick, because by using the root theism a connotation of the personal is brought in, when by definition the impersonal is meant. In my discussions I never let anybody talk unthinkingly about pantheism. Somewhere along the way I try to make the point that it is not really pantheism, with its semantic illusion of personality, but pan-everythingism. The ancient religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as the modern mysticism, the new "Pantheistic" theology, are not truly pantheism. A semantic solution is being offered. Theism is being used as a connotation word. In The God Who is There I have emphasized the fact that the modern solutions are usually semantic mysticisms, and this is one of them.

But whatever form pan-everythingism takes, including the modern scientific form which reduces everything to energy particles, it always has the same problem: in all of them the end is the impersonal.

There are two problems which always exist -- the need for unity and the need for diversity. Pan-everythingism gives an answer for the need of unity, but none for the needed diversity. Beginning with the impersonal, there is no meaning or significance to diversity. We can think of the old Hindu pantheism, which begins everything with om. In reality, everything ought to have ended with om on a single note, with no variance, because there is no reason for significance or variance. And even if pan-everythingism gave an answer for form, it gives no meaning for freedom. Cycles are usually introduced as though waves were being tossed up out of the sea, but this gives no final solution to any of these problems. Morals, under every form of pantheism, have no meaning as morals, for everything in pan-everythingism is finally equal. Modern theology must move towards situational ethics because there is no such thing as morals in this setting. The word morals is used, but it is really only a word.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


At times I get tired of being asked why I don't just preach the "simple gospel." You have to preach the simple gospel so that it is simple to the person to whom you are talking, or it is no longer simple. The dilemma of modern man is simple: he does not know why man has any meaning. He is lost. Man remains a zero. This is the damnation of our generation, the heart of modern man's problem. But if we begin with a personal and this is the origin of all else, then the personal does have meaning, and man and his aspirations are not meaningless. Man's aspirations to the reality of personality are in line with what was originally there and what has always intrinsically been.

It is the Christian who has the answer at this point -- a titanic answer! So why have we as Christians gone on saying the great truths in ways that nobody understands? Why do we keep talking to ourselves, if men are lost and we say we love them? Man's damnation today is that he can find no meaning for man, but if we begin with the personal beginning we have an absolutely opposite situation. We have the reality of the fact that personality does have meaning because it is not alienated from what has always been, and what is, and what always will be. This is our answer, and with this we have a solution not only to the problem of existence of bare being and its complexity -- but also for man's being different, with a personality which distinguishes him from non-man.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


If we begin with less than personality, we must finally reduce personality to the impersonal. The modern scientific world does this in its reductionism, in which the word personality is only the impersonal plus complexity. In the naturalistic scientific world, whether in sociology, psychology or in the natural sciences, a man is reduced to the impersonal plus complexity.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


There is only one philosophy, one religion, that fills this need in all the world's thought, whether the East, the West, the ancient, the modern, the new, the old. Only one fills the philosophical need of existence, of Being, and it is the Judeo-Christian God -- not just an abstract concept, but rather that this God is really there. He exists. There is no other answer, and orthodox Christians ought to be ashamed of having been defensive for so long. It is not a time to be defensive. There is no other answer.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


Let us notice that no word is as meaningless as is the word god. Of itself it means nothing. Like any other word, it is only a linguistic symbol -- g-o-d -- until content is put into it. This is especially so for the word god, because no other word has been used to convey such absolutely opposite meanings. The mere use of the word god proves nothing. You must put content into it. The word god as such is no answer to the philosophic problem of existence, but the Judeo-Christian content to the word God as given in the Old and New Testaments does meet the need of what exists -- the existence of the universe in its complexity and of man as man. And what is that content? It relates to an infinite-personal God, who is personal unity and diversity on the high order of Trinity.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


Every once in a while in my discussions someone asks how I can believe in the Trinity. My answer is always the same. I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers. Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity, there are no answers.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


God did not need to create; God does not need the universe as the universe needs Him. Why? Because we have a full and true Trinity. The Persons of the Trinity communicated with each other and loved each other before the creation of the world.

This is not only an answer to the acute philosophic need of unity in diversity, but of personal unity and diversity. The unity and diversity cannot exist before God or be behind God, because whatever is farthest back is God. But with the doctrine of the Trinity, the unity and diversity is God Himself -- three Persons, yet one God. That is what the Trinity is, and nothing less than this.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


Nobody else, no philosophy, has ever given us an answer for unity and diversity. So when people ask whether we are embarrassed intellectually by the Trinity, I always switch it over into their own terminology -- unity and diversity. Every philosophy has this problem, and no philosophy has an answer. Christianity does have an answer in the existence of the Trinity. The only answer to what exists is that He, the triune God, is there.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


I find that many people who are evangelical and orthodox see truth just as true to the dogmas, or to be true to what the Bible says. Nobody stands more for the full inspiration of Scripture than I, but this is not the end of truth as Christianity is presented, as the Bible presents itself The truth of Christianity is that it is true to what is there. You can go to the end of the world and you never need be afraid, like the ancients, that you will fall off the end and the dragons will eat you up. You can carry out your intellectual discussion to the end of the discussion because Christianity is not only true to the dogmas, it is not only true to what God has said in the Bible, but it is also true to what is there, and you will never fall off the end of the world! It is not just an approximate model; it is true to what is there. When the evangelical catches that -- when evangelicalism catches that -- we may have our revolution. We will begin to have something beautiful and alive, something which will have force in our poor, lost world. This is what truth is from the Christian viewpoint and as God sets it forth in the Scripture. But if we are going to have this answer, notice that we must have the full biblical answer. Christianity must not be reduced to the pan-everythingism of the East, or the pan-everythingism of modern, liberal theology (whether Protestant or Roman Catholic), and the Bible must not be weakened. We must not allow a theological pantheism to begin to creep in, and we must not reduce Christianity to the modern existential, upper-story theology. If we are going to have these great, titanic answers, Christianity must be the full biblical answer. We need the full biblical position to have the answer to the basic philosophical problem of the existence of what is. We need the full biblical content concerning God: that He is the infinite-personal God, and the triune God.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)


He is not silent. The reason we have the answer is because the infinite-personal God, the full Trinitarian God, has not been silent. He has told us who He is. Couch your concept of inspiration and revelation in these terms, and you will see how it cuts down into the warp and woof of modern thinking. He is not silent. That is the reason we know. It is because He has spoken. What has He told us? Has He told us only about other things? No, He has told us truth about Himself -- and because He has told us truth about Himself -- that He is the infinite-personal, triune God -- we have the answer to existence.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Ch. 1)



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