The God Who Is There Quotes

“Regardless of a man's system, he has to live in God's world.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“In a fallen world, we must be willing to face the fact that however lovingly we preach the gospel, if a man rejects it he will be miserable. It is dark out there.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“But when the world can turn around and see a group of God's people exhibiting substantial healing in the area of human relationships in their present life, then the world will take notice.”
― Francis August Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“The problem which confronts us as we approach modern man today is not how we are to change Christian teaching in order to make it more palatable, for to that would mean throwing away any chance of giving the real answer to man in despair; rather it is only a problem of how we many communicate the Gospel so that it is understood.”
― Francis August Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“But if one begins to consider the differences between Christianity and rationalistic philosophy’s answers, one must begin by understanding that man and history are now abnormal. It is not that philosophy and Christianity deal with completely different questions, but that historic Christianity and rationalistic philosophy differ in their answers—including the important point as to whether man and history are now normal or abnormal. They also differ in that rationalistic thinking starts with only the knowledge finite man can glean for himself.5”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“Many people have never analyzed their own point of tension. Since the Fall man is separated from himself. Man is complicated, and he tries to bury himself in himself. Therefore, it will take time and it will cost something to discover what the person we are speaking to often has not yet discovered for himself. Down inside of himself man finds it easy to lie to himself. We, in love, looking to the work of the Holy Spirit, must reach down into that person and try to find where the point of tension is.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“This reality of which I speak falls into two parts: the fact that the universe truly exists and it has a form, and then what I would call the “mannishness” of man—which is my own term for meaning that man is unique.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“First, I am not an apologete if that means building a safe house to live in, so that we Christians can sit inside with safety and quiescence. Christians should be out in the midst of the world as both witnesses and salt, not sitting in a fortress surrounded by a moat.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“Before a man is ready to become a Christian, he must have a proper understanding of truth, whether he has fully analyzed his concept of truth or not. All people, whether they realize it or not, function in the framework of some concept of truth. Our concept of truth will radically affect our understanding of what it means to become a Christian. We are concerned, at this point, not with the content of truth so much as with the concept of what truth is.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“Knowledge precedes faith. This is crucial in understanding the Bible. To say (as a Christian should) that only that faith which believes God on the basis of knowledge is true faith, is to say something which causes an explosion in the twentieth-century world.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“Once the truth of God’s existence is known to us, and we know that we have true moral guilt before a holy God, then we should be glad to know the solution to our dilemma. The solution is from God’s side, not ours.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“Whenever men say they are looking for greater reality, we must show them at once the reality of true Christianity. This is real because it is concerned with the God who is there and who has spoken to us about himself, not just the use of the symbol god or christ which sounds spiritual but is not.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. If Christians are to take advantage of the death of romanticism, we must consciously build back the mentality and practice of antithesis among Christians in doctrine and life. We must do it in our teaching and example toward compromise, both ecclesiastically and in evangelism. To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at these points where there is a cost in doing so, is to push the next generation into the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“Modern man cannot talk about the object of his faith, only about the faith itself. So he can discuss the existence of his faith and its 'size' as it exists against all reason, but that is all. Modern man's faith thus turns inward. In Christianity the value of faith depends upon the object towards which the faith is directed. So it looks outward to the God who is there, and to the Christ who in history died upon the cross once for all, finished the work of atonement, and on the third day rose again in space and in time. This makes Christian faith open to discussion and verification.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“This turns upon his [Kierkegaard's] 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 'leap of faith' and the total separation of the rational and faith. In this thinking concerning Abraham, Kierkegaard had not read the Bible carefully enough. Before Abraham was asked to move toward the sacrifice of Isaac (which, of course, God did not allow to be consummated), he had much propositional revelation from God, he had seen God, God had fulfilled promises to him. In short, God's words at this time were in the context of Abraham's strong reasons for knowing that God both existed and was totally trustworthy.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“his turns upon his [Kierkegaard's] 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 'leap of faith' and the total separation of the rational and faith. In this thinking concerning Abraham, Kierkegaard had not read the Bible carefully enough. Before Abraham was asked to move toward the sacrifice of Isaac (which, of course, God did not allow to be consummated), he had much propositional revelation from God, he had seen God, God had fulfilled promises to him. In short, God's words at this time were in the context of Abraham's strong reasons for knowing that God both existed and was totally trustworthy.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“The optimistic jump is a necessity because man is still created in the image of God, whatever he may say about himself, and as such he cannot go on living in meaninglessness.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“The validity and meaning of love rest upon the reality that love exists between the Father and Son in the Trinity. When I say I love, instead of this being a nonsense word, it has meaning. It is rooted in what has always been in the personal relationship existing in the Trinity before the universe was created. Man’s love is not a product of chance that has no fulfillment in what has always been. Love is a thing not only of meaning but of beauty and wonder to be nourished in joy.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“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. I am not saying that the person with a non-Christian system (even a radical system like Buddhism or Hinduism or the modern Western thinking of chance) does not know that the object exists—the problem is that they have no system to explain the subject-object correlation. As a matter of fact, this is their damnation, this is their tension, that they have to live in the light of their existence, the light of reality—the total reality in all these areas—and they do live there, and yet they have no sufficient explanation for any of these areas. So the wiser they are, the more honest they are, the more they feel that tension, and that is their present damnation.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“It is not “just a religious book”; the Bible is rooted in space-time history and speaks of the totality of reality.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“We have to face the reality of the universe and its having an existence and having a form. We have to face the reality in the uniqueness of man. We are able to discuss the fact that the Bible is rooted in history.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“I think this should be love. I think these things turn on love and compassion to people, not as objects to evangelize but as people who deserve all the love and consideration we can give them, because they are our kind and made in the image of God. They are valuable, so we should meet them in love and compassion. Thus, we meet the person where he or she is.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“All too often evangelicals are paper people.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“So it is with becoming a Christian. In one way you can say that the new birth is everything; in another way you can say that really it is very little. It is everything because it is indispensable to begin with, but it is little in comparison with the living existential relationship.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“We are to consider whether these things are true, but then we are faced with a choice—either we believe him, or we call God a liar and walk away, unwilling to bow to him.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“As long as a genuine continuity remains between the defined verbalization and what is added, then all kinds of enrichment can be brought in.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“With the propositional communication from the personal God before us not only the things of the cosmos and history match up but everything on the upper and lower stories matches too: grace and nature; a moral absolute and morals; the universal point of reference and the particulars; and the emotional and aesthetic realities of man as well.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“With the Christian answer it is now possible to understand that there are true moral absolutes. There is no law behind God, because the furthest thing back is God. The moral absolutes rest upon God’s character. The creation as he originally made it conformed to his character.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There

“Because God created a true universe outside of himself (not as an extension of his essence), there is a true history which exists. Man as created in God’s image is therefore a significant man in a significant history, who can choose to obey the commandment of God and love him, or revolt against him.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who Is There