Foreword
Foreword
The leaves were beginning to fall on the campus of the University of Vermont. It was the autumn of 1972. I had come to faith in Jesus Christ in 1968 through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ at the University of Missouri, and upon graduation in 1970, I joined Crusade staff and spent my first two years in Colorado. In the summer of 1972 I went to Vermont to open the Crusade work at the university.
I was an intellectually curious young man before my conversion and that continued to be important to my newfound faith. It was the 60s, the culture was in turmoil, movements multiplied faster than rabbits, and Timothy Leary was rumored to be dead. The winds of a multitude of ideologies swirled around college campuses, and all sorts of activists vied for student allegiance. It was critical to have intellectual leadership for the Jesus Movement, and the works of such luminaries as Josh McDowell, C. S. Lewis and F.F. Bruce helped to fill this void.
Earlier that autumn day at the University of Vermont, I had engaged in a lengthy debate with Marxist radicals at their book table in the square outside the student union. I was new at all this, and I realized my need for more ammunition, more reflection from a Christian worldview and more exposure to deep Christian thought. And I was painfully aware of the need for such material for the new converts who were popping up all over the country.
Suddenly, I came across a group of about ten students sitting on the lawn. From a distance it was apparent that they were having a deep, sometimes heated discussion. As I neared them, it became obvious that they were Christians. And they were all holding copies of the same book that was clearly the intellectual source of their conversation. What was the book? It was Francis Schaeffer’s Escape from Reason.
I immediately went to a Christian bookstore, bought and read the book, and became hooked on everything Schaeffer wrote. Schaeffer’s thought, and in particular this little mental time bomb Escape from Reason, formed the core of the reflection and marching orders for an entire generation of young Christian radicals. I was no exception. Along with Bruce’s The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Lewis’s Mere Christianity and Schaeffer’s other revolutionary manifesto The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason shaped, matured, informed, inflamed, inspired and empowered a movement whose impact is still being felt the world over.
To be sure, Escape from Reason has had its critics. Some claim it is too simplistic. After all, they argue, how can one cover Kant and Rousseau in three and a half pages? Others argue, sometimes correctly, that Schaeffer paints with too broad a brush and, as a result, somewhat misrepresents certain thinkers. I, for one, do not think his treatment of Thomas Aquinas is entirely fair or accurate. However, at the end of the day these criticisms miss the genius of this book. Escape from Reason brings together a staggering array of academic disciplines, cultural trends and influential thinkers, and provides an integrative, mature analysis and critique of their ideas from within an historic Christian worldview. No one else was even close to doing that in those days, and Schaeffer did it well. This is why, if currently asked, the overwhelming majority of Christian philosophers, theologians and thinkers in their thirties or older will say that Schaeffer was their intellectual father and that they were nurtured at his knee by Escape from Reason.
I am overcome with emotion at the rerelease of this classic. I am also filled with hope. Today’s evangelical culture is in a struggle with the worldviews of naturalism and postmodernism, and Schaeffer’s discussion of the upper and lower stories is as relevant today as ever. Today’s evangelicals also need to connect with their history, especially their recent past, and the long shadow of Francis Schaeffer covers much of that past. May the rerelease of Escape from Reason spark a revolutionary movement for this generation as it did for mine.
J. P. Moreland
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy
Talbot School of Theology, Biola University