Escape from Reason: A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought (IVP Classics)

by Francis A. Schaeffer

Modern man has come to his position because he has accepted a new attitude in regard to truth. Nowhere is this more clearly and yet tragically seen than in modern theology. In order to see this new attitude to truth in perspective, let us consider two other concepts of truth: first that of the Greeks and then that of the Jews. Often the Greek concept of truth was a nicely balanced metaphysical system brought into harmony with itself at all points. The Jewish and biblical concept of truth is different. It is not that the rational concept which the Greeks held to was unimportant to the Jews, for both the Old and the New Testaments function on the basis of that which can be reasonably discussed; but, to the Jewish mind, something firmer was needed. And the firmer base was an appeal to real history—history in space and in time which could be written down and discussed as history. The modern view of truth drives a wedge between the Greek and Jewish views, but it does so at the wrong point. Those who hold the modern view would picture the Greeks as holding to rational truth and the Jews as being existentialists. In this way they would seek to claim the Bible for themselves. This is ingenious but a complete mistake. The Jewish concept is separated from the Greek in that the Jewish was rooted in space-time history and not just a balanced system. But the Jewish and biblical concept of truth is much closer to the Greek than to the modern, in the sense that it does not deny that whic...