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Francis A. SchaefferTyndale House / 1972 / Trade PaperbackOur Price$11.994.7 out of 5 stars for He Is There & He Is Not Silent. View reviews of this product. 3 Reviews
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Jack Cheadle5 Stars Out Of 5April 5, 2007Jack CheadleHe Is There and He Is Not Silent is for the individual who is not in the position to submit blindly by faith to any dogmatic worldview, but instead one who seeks out lifes greatest questions earnestly and yearns for understanding. The purpose of Schaeffers book is to address the philosophical necessity of God being there and not being silent, in the areas of metaphysics, morals, and epistemology.
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shrimptoast5 Stars Out Of 5The final base volumeJanuary 24, 2019shrimptoastQuality: 5Value: 4Meets Expectations: 5He Is There and He Is Not Silent is the third and final volume of Schaeffer's core books that introduce his thought system. The proper order to read the core books is The God Who Is There, then Escape From Reason, then this book. I do recommend reading them in order because he will refer to previous concepts and books occasionally. Let's get into the content. This book is philosophy 101, so it goes through metaphysics, morals, and epistemology.
The first chapter is on metaphysics which is a fancy way of stating it deals with existence and origins. Schaeffer walks through the various mental approaches to this topic. He talks about the options of there not being a rational answer versus there being a rational answer. The non-rational answer dead-ends, so he moves into rational perspectives. Within rational perspectives, he goes into the branches of everything coming from nothing (true nothing, or as he puts it, nothing nothing), everything coming from nothing by an impersonal force, or everything coming from a personal source (a god). He compares God against the pantheistic concept of God being one with the universe.
In the area of morals, he talks about the impersonal branch versus the personal branch (referring to the previous topic). On the personal-creation side, he compares the viewpoints of man having always been evil (as if we had been created that way) versus man having Fallen (per the Bible) and the consequences of the different views. He goes on to show the great results of the Christian belief system -- we can now explain why man is bad without God being bad. Jesus' substitutionary (in our place), propitiatory (reconciles us to God) death makes sense. We can fight evil without fighting God (because God is not evil). Many good conclusions here, and I did not list them all.
The final two chapters are on epistemology which is of course the concept of how we know and how we know we can know. The final part of the final chapter really made the whole book for me. As good as the previous chapters were, the final part is just so perfect. He clearly shows how as Christians we have a definite basis for truly knowing things -- not exhaustively -- but for truly having knowledge we can use (in a philosophical sense of course). In other words, if you take a secular perspective in life, your philosophy precludes you from knowing that you can definitely know things, that you can definitely have knowledge about anything. It is a sad state of existence.
The second amazing insight that Francis Schaeffer provides is that the Christian always knows a non-Christian because everyone is made in the image of God. Even though a non-Christian may not know (or be able to understand) the inner workings of other people, that just isn't so for a Christian. We know that the non-Christian has the same deep moral sense that we do. God made them that way. We know about them, but they do not know about us. We have the upper hand and can approach them (for salvation) knowing that in their innermost being they are made in the image of the one, true God, the Triune God of the Bible.
I read this book over the course of about 6 months, and even though I took enough notes to write this review, I'm sure I could have done better. Read this! I cannot recommend it enough. -
a reader4 Stars Out Of 5April 12, 2008a readerThis is a very thought provoking book. Some of it seemed a little over my head philosophically, but still a good and challenging read.
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