About the Author

Publisher's Description

Few Christians have had a greater impact during the last half of the twentieth century than Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer. A man with a remarkable breadth of cultural interest, with penetrating insight into modern life, and with a clear sense of spiritual reality, Schaeffer was also a man who cared deeply about people and their search for truth and reality in their lives. With the publication of this Trilogy, Dr. Schaeffer's three foundational books are available for the first time in one volume. Schaeffer himself considered these three books to be essential to everything he wrote (twenty-three books in all), and it is here especially that we see his ability to understand the deep need of modern man for truth, beauty, and meaning in life. In the first book, The God Who Is There, Schaeffer shows how modern thought has abandoned the idea of truth with tragic consequences in every area of culture--from philosophy, to art, to music, to theology, and within culture as a whole. Escape from Reason, the second book, explains especially how the disintegration of modern life and culture grows from corrupted roots that reach far into the past. In the last book, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Schaeffer contrasts the silence and despair of modern life with the Christian answer that God can indeed be known because He is there and He is not silent. In addition to the convenience of having Schaeffer's three foundational books in one volume, the Trilogy is especially valuable in that it uses the text revised and updated by Schaeffer shortly before his death. Why was Schaeffer able to understand and communicate so effectively to a generation? The best way to know is to find out firsthand, by reading his essential works as found in this Trilogy. Few who begin this journey will come to the end without having their life profoundly changed.

Endorsement

Have you ever wondered what existentialism is all about, or what the real difference between absolute and relative truth is? When is theology liberal?, when is it orthodox?, and when is it neo-orthodox? What is it that separates Reformed theology from 'Leap in the Dark' theology? Is Christian faith rational or irrational? How can I know what I believe is true, and how can I know that I know? I am not aware of any book that serves as a better introduction to these and other issues than Francis Schaeffer's Trilogy. And, of course, it paves the way for all his other books. In his own words: 'All the others fit into these as spokes of the wheel fit into the hub.'
Schaeffer remains the leading Christian apologist for the 60s generation, and has done many of us an immense favour by exposing the countercultural, flower-power utopianism of the Woodstock generation for what it was: A non-rational escape leading to nothing but despair. I first read this book as a college student and it impacted me so much that I rushed out to buy his collected works - one of the best investments of my life. If you are serious about understanding your faith, Schaeffer is a must. And if you are serious about understanding Schaeffer, his Trilogy is a must.