There is no part of man that is autonomous. However, we must learn to navigate and engage our culture who believes in the dichotomy. God created a universe and objective truth that we can know.Ĭhristians must reject this dichotomy since God created the whole of man. This is contrary to what the Bible says that teaches man is created in God’s image, therefore, he has significance. Relativism rules and “the absurd” ensues. When man becomes autonomous, when his logic is the final authority to what is truth, he becomes nothing, is without hope or meaning. When this dichotomy is accepted, it leads to a wrong belief of who we are, who God is. Throughout history, man has proposed this dichotomy (soul vs body, grace vs nature, irrational vs rational), all the while searching for a unified field of knowledge that their logic couldn’t provide. This opened a can of worms that eventually led to our current post-modern world where rationality is thrown out the door. It starts with Thomas Aquinas and his introduction of the autonomous intellect of man (though his will is fallen).

9).Įscape from Reason is a must-read Christian classic that is a short introduction to the history of philosophy and how it has affected our culture and general thought processes. I would absolutely recommend this book, as long as it's read critically, by someone who knows not just what modern thinkers are saying, but why and how they're communicating.Įscape from Reason brings together a staggering array of academic disciplines, cultural trends and influential thinkers, and provides an integrative, mature analysis and critique of their ideas from within an historic Christian worldview. Kierkegaard's understanding of God as impossible and transcendent is relatable to the modern man, and may inspire him to seek out God, with God revealing himself as immanent, on his own terms. Schaeffer rejects Kierkegaard's understanding of God, that God is fundamentally other from reason this is a tragedy. This is most clear to me in his treatment of Kierkegaard. Yes, he gets the despair of modernity however, his defense of Biblical Christianity as a relevant modern worldview is ill-posed. While, factually, Schaeffer, seems to present most thinkers accurately, he does not fully get modern philosophy. His review of the western intellectual history is quick and accessible, and his great insight in this book is to point to Aquinas' fault of placing reason 'upstairs'-assuming that human reason is immune to the fall.

I love Schaeffer, the person, but I totally disagree with half of what he says.

Escape from reason book