Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from reason,

Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape from reason, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1971.

Paperback

Pages- 96.

Christian responsibility is not only to hold to the basic, scriptural principles of the Christian faith inside the Church, but to communicate these unchanging truths into the generation in which it is living. Every generation of Christian has problem of learning how to speak meaningfully to its own age. If we are to communicate the Christian faith effectively, therefore we must know and understand the thought form of our own age. So in this book the author Francis A. Schaeffer was an American Christian theologian, philosopher, apologist, and Presbyterian pastor, as well as the founder of the L'Abri community in Switzerland. He talks in this book the characteristic of an age in which, how we must present the gospel to the people.

This book contains seven chapters. In first chapter he begins with the Thomas Aquinas and he states Thomas Aquinas's view the will of man was fallen, but the intellect was not. From this incomplete view of the biblical fall flowed all the subsequent difficulties. Man's intellect became autonomous. From the basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became free, and was separated from revelation. Aquinas’ view of nature and grace did not involve a complete discontinuity between them. When nature is made autonomous it soon ends up by devouring God, grace, freedom and ultimately man. In chapter two he states the Reformation accepted the biblical picture of a total fall. He traces a line through the renaissance, the reformation, the development of science, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, contemporary existentialism, into contemporary culture.  The whole man had been made by God, but now the whole man is fallen, including his intellect. He adds, "What the Reformation tells us, therefore, is that God has spoken in the Scriptures concerning both the upstairs and the downstairs. He adds, the biblical position, says that when the historic space-time fall took place, it affected the whole man on the basis of Christ's work there is redemption for the whole man this meant a lordship of Christ in culture. So it means that Christ is equally Lord in both areas Grace and Nature.  In chapter three he argues, "Modern scientists insist on a total unity of the downstairs and the upstairs, and the upstairs disappears. Neither God not freedom are there any more everything is in the machine. In fact, love no longer exists significance no longer exists in the old 'upstairs; nothing exists. He observes, "I call this line in the diagram the Line of Despair What is this despair? It arises from the abandonment of the hope of a unified answer for knowledge and life. In chapter four he is tracing the hope of a connecting link between the two spheres has disappeared. There is no permeation or interchange there is a complete dichotomy between the upper and lower storeys. This is what it means to say man is dead. He was always dead but did not know enough to know that he was dead. He also brings Kierkegaard’s two existentialism secular existentialism and religious existentialism. It is this that separates modern man from Reformation man, who actually possessed a rational unity above and below the line on the basis of the content of the biblical revelation. In chapter five he addressing nature had come to represent determinism the machine, with man in the hopeless situation of being caught in the machine. The universe is not rational, it is an impersonal machine and man a part of that. But man is a personality and personhood according to Schaffer cannot be found in a mechanistic universe. As man strives to express his freedom in his autonomous fashion, much, though not all, of his art becomes meaningless and ugly.  Furthermore in chapter six he continuing the subject of the leap modern man has long since abandoned "grace" or "heaven" or "Scriptures" as the principle of experiential unification, he has nothing left but despair. So now, man is trying mysticism, pornography, drugs, death and other forms of ways to 'leap' into something else that can provide meaning. In the last chapter he says, in spite of all the evil work which is dominating over modern age. To answer the entire problem Christianity is only can stand and answer the despaired of the human being.  

However this book is a good challenge for the modern Christians in the world where the art and philosophy have dominating so it is very important to know that how we should present the gospel to the evil practice world I recommend this book to all of the Christian ministers, especially to the Evangelist and Christian Apologetics.