He Is There and He Is Not Silent Quotes

“The Christian should be the person who is alive, whose imagination absolutely boils, which moves, which produces something a bit different from God's world because God made us to be creative.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“I live in a thought world which is filled with creativity; inside my head there is creative imagination. Why? Because God, who is the Creator, has made me in His own image, I can go out in imagination beyond the stars. This is true not only for the Christian, but for every man. Every man is made in the image of God; therefore, no man in his imagination is confined to his own body.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“The strength of the Christian system — the acid test of it — is that everything fits under the apex of the existent, infinite-personal God, and it is the only system in the world where this is true. No other system has an apex under which everything fits.That is why I am a Christian and no longer an agnostic. In all the other systems, something 'sticks out,' something cannot be included; and it has to be mutilated or ignored. But without losing his own integrity, the Christian can see everything fitting into place beneath the Christian apex of the existence of the infinite-personal God who is there (p. 81).”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“The Christian should be the man with the flaming imagination and the beauty of creation.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“Some might say there is another possibility-some form of dualism, that is, two opposites existing simultaneously as co-equal and co-eternal. For example, mind (or ideals or ideas) and matter; or in morals, good and evil. However, if in morals one holds this position, then there is no ultimate reason to call one good and one evil-the words and choice are purely subjective if there is not something above them. And if there is something above them it is no longer a true dualism. In metaphysics, the dilemma is that no one finally rests with dualism. Back of the Yin and Yang there is placed a shadow Tao; back of Zoroastrianism there is placed an intangible thing or figure. The simple fact is that in any form of dualism we are left with some form of imbalance or tension and there is a motion back to a monism. Either men try to find a unity over the two; or in the case of the concept of parallelism (for example, ideals or ideas and material) there is a need to find a relationship, a correlation or contrast between the two, or we are left with a concept of the two keeping step with no unity to cause them to do so. Thus in an attempted parallelism there has been a constant tendency for one side to be subordinated to the other, or for one side to become an illusion. Further, if the elements of the dualism are impersonal, we are left with the same problem in both being and morals as in the case of a more simple form of final impersonal... Perhaps it would be well to point out that in both existence and morals, Christianity gives a unique and sufficient answer in regard to a present dualism yet original monism. In existence, God is spirit-this is as true of the Father as of the Holy Spirit, and equally true of the Son, prior to the Incarnation.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“...three Persons in existence, loving each other, and in communication with each other, before all else was. If this were not so, we would have had a God who needed to create in order to love and communicate. In such a case, God would have needed the universe as much as the universe needed God. But God did not need to create; God does not need the universe as the universe needs him. Why? Because we have a full and true Trinity. The Persons of the Trinity communicated with each other, and loved each other before the creation of the world...Let us notice again that this is not the best answer; it is the only answer. Nobody else, no philosophy, has ever given us an answer for unity and diversity... Every philosophy has this problem and no philosophy has an answer. Christianity does have an answer in the existence of the Trinity. The only answer to what exists is that he, the triune God, is there.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“With an impersonal beginning, morals really do not exist as morals. If one starts with an impersonal beginning, the answer to morals eventually turns out to be the assertion that there are no morals (in however sophisticated a way this may be expressed).”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent

“The beginning for modern and postmodern people is the existence of God and the existence of truth. While these might seem like abstract issues, they are not in fact abstract. Rather, they are very practical. There is nothing more practical nor more basic than the conviction that there is truth that can be known. Without this conviction life becomes more and more intolerable, and more and more filled with alienation, the more consistently we live with the loss of truth.”
― Francis A. Schaeffer, He Is There and He Is Not Silent