The God Who Is There

Francis Schaeffer's The God Who Is There represents a significant evangelical response to twentieth-century intellectual culture, arguing that modern thought's rejection of absolute truth leads inevitably to despair, which only biblical Christianity can adequately address. Writing in 1968, Schaeffer diagnoses what he calls "the line of despair" in Western civilization, tracing a philosophical trajectory from Hegel through Kierkegaard to existentialism that abandons rational categories and objective truth in favor of subjective experience and relativism.

The work employs a distinctive presuppositional apologetic method, arguing that all worldviews rest on unprovable assumptions, but that only the Christian worldview provides a coherent foundation for understanding reality. Schaeffer contends that modern philosophy, theology, and culture have crossed an epistemological threshold by embracing irrationality and abandoning the law of non-contradiction. This shift manifests across disciplines: in philosophy through existentialism, in art through abstraction, in theology through neo-orthodoxy, and in popular culture through the drug movement and Eastern mysticism.

Central to Schaeffer's argument is his critique of what he terms "escape from reason." He maintains that contemporary thinkers, unable to find meaning through autonomous reason alone, make an irrational leap into non-rational experience. Against theologians like Karl Barth who separate faith from verifiable history, Schaeffer insists that Christianity stands or falls on its historical claims. He argues that biblical revelation provides both propositional truth about God and existential meaning for human life, uniting what modern thought artificially separates.

The monograph's significance lies in its systematic engagement with contemporary culture from an evangelical perspective, offering intellectual tools for conservative Christians to critique modernism while defending orthodox belief. Schaeffer pioneered what became known as worldview analysis, demonstrating how philosophical presuppositions shape cultural expressions. His work influenced a generation of evangelical intellectuals and apologists, establishing L'Abri Fellowship as a center for cultural engagement.

While critics challenge Schaeffer's historical generalizations and his reading of modern philosophers, his central insight about the relationship between truth claims and cultural despair continues to resonate in debates about postmodernism and meaning. The God Who Is There remains influential for its ambitious attempt to diagnose Western culture's spiritual crisis and prescribe a return to biblical theism as the only viable solution to modern nihilism.