The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer 

The book is The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer. It was originally published in 1968 by L’Aba Fellowship. I read the 1998 Intervarsity Press paperback edition. I read it in April of 2023.  

The title comes from Schaeffer’s point that we cannot escape the reality that God exists. He is there and we must deal with him. To stray from that is to stray from reality itself.  

I read it because I want to read all of Schaeffer. I’ve read a few of his books and they’re all great.  

Schaeffer is saying that God is there and we must deal with him in some way. Everyone does. Everyone actually does have a relationship with God, it’s either one of wrath or of peace. But no matter what, there is no escaping him. Schaeffer also gives a little history of where the most common godless ideologies come from.  

  

The biggest takeaway for me was Schaeffer’s response to someone who says we just haven’t discovered it yet when talking about where the matter of the universe came from or where consciousness comes from. Schaeffer basically says we can all do that about anything. We can all just say, well maybe we haven’t discovered the non-theistic answer to such-and-such scientific question. Also, lack of solid proof or answers should force atheists to stop making matter-of-fact statements judgment calls about humanity and the universe but it doesn’t.  

I also really liked how Schaeffer explains that we should have pity on the blind atheists and godless thinkers. They really are blind, and we should not push them into the brick wall with any pleasure or meanness. Any apologetic discourse should always be covered in the gospel. With Schaeffer’s presuppositional apologetic, this always happens.  

Nothing was confusing. Schaeffer does a great job of explaining complicated philosophies and theology into simple terms.  

I’d recommend this to any Christian who wants to learn how to share the gospel in a biblically faithful way.  

******************************** 

Notable Quotables 

In the end the philosophers came to the realization that they could not find this unified rationalistic circle and so, departing from the classical methodology of antithesis, they shifted the concept of truth and modern man was born. (p31) 

his writing of Abraham and the “sacrifice” of Isaac. Kierkegaard said this was an act of faith with nothing rational to base it on or to which to relate it. Out of this came the modern concept of a “leap of faith” and the total separation of the rational and faith. (p35) 

Marx-Engels form of communism should properly be regarded as a Christian heresy. Only Christianity, of all the world’s religions, has produced a real interest in man. Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam could never have produced idealistic communism because they do not have sufficient interest in the individual.) (p64) 

It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished; let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. It leaves absolutely no room for a romantic answer. (p66) 

The very “mannishness” of man refuses to live in the logic of the position to which his humanism and rationalism have brought him. To say that I am only a machine is one thing; to live consistently as if this were true is quite another. (p87) 

The Christian is the real radical of our generation, for he stands against the monolithic, modern concept of truth as relative. (p136) 

But, in fact, no non-Christian can be consistent to the logic of his presuppositions. 

Carl Gustav Jung has correctly observed that two things cut across every man’s will-the external world with its structure, and those things which well up from inside himself. Non-Christian presuppositions simply do not fit into what God has made, including® what man is. This being so, every man is in a place of tension. Man cannot make his own universe and then live in it. (p150) 

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. (p152) 

As we get ready to tell the person God’s answer to his or her need, we must make sure that the individual understands that we 

about real truth, and not are talking seems to about something vaguely religious which work psychologically. We must make sure that he understands that we are talking about real guilt before God, and we are not offering him merely relief for his guilt-feelings. (p157) 

I am not saying that non-Christians do not live in the light of real existence. I am saying that they do not have any answer for living in it. I am not saying that they do not have moral motions, but they have no basis for them. (p200)