by Francis A. SchaefferFew 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.