He Is There and He Is Not Silent

By Francis A. Schaeffer 

Part II: Philosophy’s Moral Problem as Answered in the Existence of the Infinite-Personal, Triune God

From Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. 128, July-September 1971, pp. 195-205

In this series of articles with the theme "He Is There and He Is Not Silent," the first two articles deal with the philosophical necessity of the Christian position. In the first article the area of metaphysics was discussed dealing with the basic problem that all philosophies must deal with¾the question of Being or of existence. This article deals with a second major area of philosophical thought¾man and the dilemma of man.

There are two problems concerning man and the dilemma of man. The first of the problems is the fact that man is personal, he is different from non-man, and yet he is finite. He is finite, and therefore he has no sufficient integration point in himself. Jean-Paul Sartre has said that if a finite point does not have an infinite reference point, it is meaningless and absurd. In this he is correct.

Man is finite and does not have a sufficient integration point in himself. Yet he is different from non-man, that which I call in my books personal, or that which is the mannishness of man. This is the first problem: man with his mannishness is different from non-man, and yet he is finite, he does not have a sufficient integration point within himself.

The second problem concerning man and the dilemma of man is what I call the nobility of man. We might not like this term because of the romantic ties into the past of the use of this word. But still there is the wonder of man, and yet the cruelty of man. So you have man who stands with all his wonder and with his nobility, and yet with his horrible, horrible cruelty that you find throughout the warp and woof of man’s history.

Or you can express it in yet another way¾man’s estrangement from himself and other men in the area of morals. Now we have come to the word "morals." In my previous article, the discussion was involved with the problem of metaphysics. This article deals with the problems of morals.

As we consider man’s finiteness and his cruelty, it would seem certainly that these things are not one thing but two things. Mankind always has thought of these things as not being the same. Man’s finiteness is his smallness, he is too small, he is not a sufficient reference point to himself, but yet his cruelty would seem to be an entirely different thing. This cruelty has always been considered as distinct from his finiteness. This seems to be not one thing but rather two things.

Morals and the Impersonal Beginning

It would seem, therefore, that the problem of man’s being finite is not the same as his being cruel, and yet we must notice something. If we begin with the impersonal beginning, in reality we will finally come to the place where man’s finiteness and his cruelty become the same thing. This is an absolute rule. No matter what kind of impersonality we begin with, whether it is the modern scientist with his energy particles, or whether it is the "paneverythingism" of the East or neoorthodox theology, eventually these two things merge. Cruelty and finiteness merge into one problem rather than two problems. With an impersonal beginning, morals really do not exist as morals. Though there may be a very sophisticated twisting and turning on the way, if you begin with an impersonal beginning the answer to morals eventually leads to the fact that there are no morals! Beginning with the impersonal always leads to the fact that eventually morals disappear in terms of what has always been meant by the word morals, because with the impersonal beginning everything is finally equal in the area of morals.

Or we may say it another way, that is, with an impersonal beginning, eventually morals are just another form of metaphysics, of Being. Morals disappear and you only have one philosophic area rather than two. Morals become a problem of metaphysics. This is true in every form of beginning on the side of the impersonal. We can talk about what is antisocial or what society does not like, or hedonistically, what I do not like, but beginning with the impersonal, we cannot talk about what is really right and what is really wrong. If we begin with the impersonal, man’s alienation as he is now is only because of chance, because he has become that which is out of line with what the universe always has been, that is, the impersonal.

By chance, man has become that which has aspirations, including moral motions for which there is no ultimate fulfillment in the universe as it is. If you begin with the fact of the impersonal, man has been kicked up by chance in a way so that he has developed a feeling of moral motions. Man has been kicked up in a way that he has developed a feeling of moral motions when in reality these have no meaning in the universe as it is. Here is the ultimate cosmic alienation. The dilemma of our generation is cosmic alienation, and in the area of morals it functions at a high degree. Man has a feeling of moral motions, and yet in the universe as the universe, it is completely out of line with what is there.

You might ask why I use the term "moral motions." I choose the term simply because I am not talking about specific norms. I am talking about the fact that men have felt that things are right and things are wrong. I am not talking about certain norms being right or wrong. All men have this sense of moral motions. You do not find man anywhere back in antiquity without the feeling of moral motions. You do not find the little girl prostitute upon the street without some feeling of moral motions. You do not find the determinist, the behaviorist in psychology without the feeling of moral motions, even if he says they do not exist. So what you have now is man in a very difficult position. Man is cast up with a feeling of moral motions when in reality this only leads to a complete cosmic alienation for the simple reason that in the universe as it is there is no place for moral motions if you begin with the impersonal. In such a situation, there is no standard in the universe which gives final meaning to such words as right and wrong. The universe, if you begin with the impersonal, is totally silent concerning any such words as right or wrong.

To the pantheist, the final wrong or final tension is always the failure to accept your impersonality. If you take those places where pantheism has worked itself out more consistently than in our modern, liberal theology or the hippie-kind of pantheism, you will find that the final wrong in man is the fact that he will not accept his impersonality. In other words, you will not accept who you are.

As you examine the new theology as well as the pantheism of the East, you come finally to the place where you cannot rightly speak of right or wrong. In western religious "paneverythingism," we find men trying to hold this off, to stem this off, to still have a distinction between cruelty and non-cruelty. They try to hold off eventually coming to the place where they have to acknowledge there is no basic meaning to the words right and wrong. But it cannot be done. It is like starting a stone down hill. Once you begin with an impersonal beginning, though you may use religious terms, even Christian terms as much as you wish, if you begin with an impersonal beginning, eventually you come to the place where the words right and wrong have no real meaning.

In the universe, if you begin with the impersonal there is no final absolute and there are no final categories in the universe concerning right and wrong. It is always what has always been. There is no final absolute, no final categories, in what has always been concerning right and wrong. Hence, what you are left with may be worded in many different ways in different cultures, but there is only the relative. Morals are reduced to that which is sociological, statistical, situational¾the standard of averages¾nothing else.

Finally, we must understand, that to be right is just as meaningless as to be wrong in this kind of a setting. Morals as morals disappear and what you are left with is just metaphysics. All you are is the little against the big and nothing that has meaning in right and wrong. Morals as morals simply disappear.

We are rapidly coming to this in our modern culture. One can think of Marshall McLuhan in his concept that democracy is finished. What will we have in place of democracy or morals? He says there is coming a time with modern electronics where we will be able to wire everybody up to a giant computer so that what the computer strikes as the average at that given moment is that which is right and wrong. You may say that is farfetched. Not so, because you must understand that is exactly what Kinsey set forth, a statistical sexual ethic. This is the way Sweden runs its sexual ethics at the moment. It is not theoretical. We have come to this place in our western culture because man sees himself as beginning from the impersonal, the energy particle, and nothing else. You only have statistical ethics and that is all you can have. You cannot have morals.

If we use religious language instead of secular language, it seems to remove the strain somewhat. But when we get behind the religious words, they have no more real meaning than the naturalistic, psychological reduction of morals to conditioning and reflexes. We may try to use religious words and stem off the conclusion by connotation words, but eventually we come to the same place. If you go behind the religious words and insist on meanings rather than connotation words, you find the same thing is true as you have in the secular world. The concept of morals as morals eventually just disappears. If we begin with the impersonal, morals as morals simply are not there, and all we have left is an amoral question of what is. The man who has expressed this better than anybody else is the Marquis de Sade with his chemical determinism. He simply made the statement, "What is, is right." Nobody can really argue against this once you begin with an impersonal beginning.

In summary, when beginning with the impersonal, there is no explanation for the complexity of the universe or the personality of man. It is not that Christianity is the best answer, but if you begin with the impersonal, in reality you do not have an answer to the metaphysical questions, as I pointed out in my previous article. I would insist the same thing is true in the area of morals. If you begin with an impersonal, no matter how you phrase that impersonal, there is no meaning for morals. It does not exist, and no one has found a way to make it exist if you begin with an impersonal beginning.

Morals and the Personal Beginning

Now let us turn to the opposite answer¾the personal beginning. In this answer morals and metaphysics have the possibility of being kept separate. That is the first thing to notice, a profound thing though it may sound very simple. If we begin with an impersonal, eventually there can be no real distinction between morals and metaphysics. The two merge. If you begin with the personal, however, there is the possibility of morals and metaphysics being kept separate. In other words, man’s finiteness may be separated from his cruelty. But as soon as we say this and we rejoice and say that is wonderful, immediately we are faced with a tremendous question, an overwhelming question. If indeed you begin with a personal beginning and you look at man as he now is with his cruelty, then how do we explain the dilemma of man, man and his cruelty, as we see him now? We are suddenly confronted with the fact that if man is cruel, how are we going to deal with this if we begin with a personal beginning?

There are two possibilities at this point. The first one is that man as he now is in his cruelty is what he has always intrinsically been, in other words, that is what man is. Man has always been cruel. The symbol m-a-n equals that which is cruel, and you cannot separate the symbol man from his cruelty because that is what he has always intrinsically been. Wherever you turn to man, you have an absolutely unbroken line of cruelty. In this view, man has always been cruel. It is an intrinsic part of man to be cruel in this view. But if this is so, we are faced with two problems.

The first problem I want to deal with at length. If man, as he is now, was created by a personal-infinite God, how then can we escape the conclusion that the personal God who made man cruel is also a bad and a cruel God? This is where the French thinkers Charles Baudelaire and Albert Camus come into the scene. Baudelaire was a famous art historian and a great thinker, and he has a famous sentence in this regard. "If there is a God, he is the Devil." At first Bible-believing Christians upon hearing this sentence might say this is a horrible sentence and react negatively. But if you are really a Christian, you will not react negatively because after thought a real Christian would agree with Baudelaire. If there is an unbroken line between what man is now and what he has always intrinsically been, then Baudelaire is not wrong, he is right. If there is an unbroken line and there is a God, he is the Devil. As Christians, we would definitely differ with Baudelaire, but not in his conclusion if you begin with his premise, that is, man in his cruelty is what man has always been in an unbroken line. He would be right if this were the situation.

Now Camus approached this problem from a slightly different viewpoint, but dealing with the same problem. If there is a God, then we cannot fight social evil, for if we did we would be fighting the God who made the world as it is. There are many other great figures, but these two are representative, casting down the gauntlet. What they say, I think, is irrefutable if you accept the premise that man stands where be always has stood and that there has been a continuity of cruelty.

At this point, there is often entered a selective answer in the area of irrationality. Much that is religious, and specifically the western liberal theology today, moves over into the field of irrationality and says, "All right, we have no answer for this, but let us take a step of faith against all reason and we will just say that God is good against all reason and all reasonableness." But this should always be seen for what it is. This is a part of the answer of chaos and irrationality. I have said in the first article that these people who argue irrationality to be the answer are always selective in choosing where they will become irrational. That is certainly true of this area of which we are speaking here. Men who have been arguing with great reason suddenly become irrationalists at this point and say that there is only an irrational answer for the question of how God is good. But you must understand that it is a switching over into a portion of the irrational argument, that is, they have no answer. They attempt to limit this irrationality to this one area, but they definitely move over into the answer of irrationality. Liberal modern theology is firmly fixed in this classification.

Let us look at this with a little more care. As soon as irrationality is brought in at this point, it will lead to tension in two directions at the same time. First, there will always be a movement back toward reason because as people state that God is a good God against all reason and all rationality, there is something in them that creates a tension. Consequently, you find a tendency eventually to split off back into reason. Every time they split off and they come back into the area of reason they are mired in pessimism because all the optimism concerning God’s goodness rests upon irrationality. It is an absolute mathematical formula that is bound to follow at this place. As soon as you step back into the area of reason, you are back into pessimism, that is, if there is a God, He is a bad God. In Baudelaire’s words, "He is the Devil." As you flee into irrationality at this point, there is always the tendency to spin off back into rationality and pessimism.

The other tension that is immediately set up when you give this irrational answer is the tension to spin off in the opposite direction, that is, the motion toward making everything irrational. Some people are spun off toward rationality, then God becomes the Devil. Some people are spun off in the other direction and they ask, "If I am going to accept irrationality at this point, where do I stop? I will just accept the whole irrational, chaotic situation, and there is no meaning in using religious God words at all." Irrationalism cannot be shut up to saying God is good against all reason. These are the two tensions that are set up immediately as soon as one tries to bring the answer of irrationality in at this crucial point.

The second problem in this situation is, if we say man in his present cruelty is what man has always been and intrinsically is, how can there be any hope of a qualitative change in man? You can have quantitative change, but you can never have qualitative change. That is, there is no hope of real change in man, of man becoming something other than cruel. If this is what man intrinsically is, as he has been from the beginning, you might hope to alleviate the cruelty a little bit on a small scale, but you can never hope for a really qualitative change. If God has made man as man now is, then this is what man is. There is no hope of finding any place where real qualitative change could come from, so we are left with pessimism in regard to man and his actions. These are the two problems that arise as soon as you select the side that man has always been what he is now.

Let us go back, however. Let us say we are on the side of a personal rather than an impersonal beginning, and that man has been made by that which is personal rather than merely being a part of a total, final and complete impersonal everything. We come back to a personal beginning for man¾man was created by a personal God. At this point there is definitely a second possibility. Man as he is now is not what be has always been, and there is a discontinuity between what man now is and what he has been. Or to say it another way, man is now abnormal.

We come now to another choice: If God changed man, by making him abnormal, God is still a bad God. This choice would solve nothing. But there is another possibility, and that is that man created by God as personal has changed himself and that he stands at the point of discontinuity rather than continuity, not because God changed him but because he changed himself. Man as he now is is by his own choice not what he intrinsically was. In this case, we can understand that man is now cruel, but that God is not a bad God. If man made by a personal God has changed himself, we can look at man and his present cruelty, but we are not now at the place where we must say that God is a bad God. This is the Judaistic-Christian position. It is exactly what Christianity says.

The Judeo-Christian God Is the Only Answer

We have considered all the philosophic possibilities and we have seen what is wrong and where they lead in every case. We have come to the other possibility¾the Judaistic-Christian position. There was a space-time historic change in man. There is a discontinuity and not a continuity in man. Man made in the image of God and hence not programmed, by choice turned from his proper integration point at a certain point of history. Man now is not what he was, so man and the dilemma of man is a true moral problem rather than merely a metaphysical one. At a certain point of history non-programmed man changed himself. Hence, he stands in a discontinuity in his cruelty with what he was, and we have a true moral situation, morals suddenly exist. This turns upon the fact that man is abnormal now. Everything hangs on this point.

The difference between the Christian thinker and the non-Christian philosopher has always been at this point. The non-Christian philosopher has always said that man is normal now, but biblical Christianity says he is abnormal now. When you come to the Christian answer, however, you must understand that everything hangs in reality upon the fact that man is abnormal now because at a point of space-time history he changed himself.

Four things immediately proceed from the fact that man is abnormal now. First, we now can explain what is, namely, that man is now cruel without God being a bad God.

Second, there is a hope of a solution for this moral problem that is not intrinsic to the mannishness of man. If his cruelty is intrinsic to the mannishness of man, if that is what man always has been as an intrinsic thing concerning man, then there is no hope of a solution. But if it is an abnormality, there is a hope of a solution. It is in this setting that the substitutionary, propitiatory death of Christ has meaning. In the liberal theology, the death of Christ is always nonunderstandable God words. But in this setting to which we have come, the substitutionary death of Christ has meaning. It is not merely God words; it is not merely an upperstory thing. In this setting, suddenly the substitutionary death of Christ has absolutely solid meaning. We can have the hope of a solution concerning man if man is abnormal rather than being what man always intrinsically has been.

The third point that flows from this is that on this basis we can have a real ground for fighting evil, including social evil and social injustice. The modern man has no real basis for fighting evil. The person who sees man as normal, whether he comes out of the "paneverythingism" of the East or of modern theology, or out of the it paneverythingism" of reducing everything including man to only energy particles, such a person has no real basis for fighting evil. He has none, but the Christian has. We can fight evil without fighting God. We have the solution for Camus’ problem. We can fight evil without fighting God, for God did not make things as they are now and as man in his cruelty has made them. Cruel man and the results of man’s cruelty are not the way God made them. These are abnormal to that which God made, and as such we can fight the evil without fighting God. The Christian should be in the forefront of fighting the results of man’s cruelty for we know that it is not what God has made. We are able to be angry at the results of man’s cruelty without being angry at God or angry at what is normal to what God has made.

The fourth result is that now we can have real morals and moral absolutes, for God now is the absolutely good God, with the total exclusion of evil from God. God’s character is the moral absolute of the universe. We must understand at this point that Plato was absolutely right. He understood something, that is, unless you have absolutes you have no morals. Unless you have absolutes, you do not have epistemological understanding or certainties either. Plato spent his time trying to find a place to root his absolutes, but he was never able to do so because his gods were never big enough. But here is the infinite-personal God who has a character, with all evil excluded from Him, and thus His character is the moral absolute of the universe. Now we have an absolute in the universe. It is not that there is a moral absolute back of God that binds men and God, because that which is furthest back is finally always God. So, it is not that there is a moral absolute behind God, but it is God Himself and His character which is the moral absolute of the universe.

As in the area of metaphysics, we must understand again that this is not the best answer, it is the only answer in morals for man in his dilemma. The only answer in the area of morals as true morals, including the problem of social evil, turns upon the fact of God’s being there. If God is not there (not just the word God, but God being there with the content of the Judaistic-Christian position), there is no answer to the problem of evil and morals. It is not only necessary that He be there, but that He is not silent. He is there and He is not silent. It is necessary that He is not silent as well as being there. He has spoken in verbalized, propositional form and He has told us what His character is.

We need propositional facts. We need the fact of knowing who God is, and knowing what His character is because His character is the law of the universe. He has told us what His character is, and this becomes our moral law, our moral standard. It is not arbitrary, for it is fixed in God Himself, it is fixed in what has always been, so it is the very opposite of that which is relativistic. Again as in the area of metaphysics, this is not the best answer, it is the only answer! He is there and He is not silent. It is either this or morals are not morals but only sociological averages or arbitrary standards imposed by society or by the state. It is one or the other.

Let us notice that it is not improper for men to ask these questions concerning metaphysics and morals. We as Christians should point out that there is no answer to these questions except that He is there and He is not silent. Do not tell your students or young people to keep quiet when they ask questions. Point out to them that they are right in asking the questions, but these are the only answers. It is this or nothing.

If this is true, then man is not just metaphysically small but he is really morally guilty. He has true, moral guilt, and he needs a solution for his true moral guilt. It is here that the substitutionary death of Christ is needed and fits in, and it has to be substitutionary or the whole thing has no meaning. There is nothing wrong with man being metaphysically small, in being finite. This is the way God made him in the first place. But we need a solution for our true moral guilt before the absolutely good God who is there.

In conclusion, as in the area of metaphysics the answer was not just in the word "God;" that will never do. Modern men are trying to find answers just in the word "God," God words, whether it is the new theology or the hippie answer. The answer is not just in the use of the word "God," but in the content God has told us concerning Himself as the infinite-personal God and true Trinity¾He is there, and He has not been silent.

In the area of morals, we have none of these answers except on the basis of a true, space-time, historic fall. Remove the true, historic, space-time fall and the Christian answer in the area of morals, in the area of man in his dilemma is gone. In many places where I go I find evangelicals playing games with the first half of Genesis. Remove a true, historic, space-time fall and the answers are finished. It is not only that historic, biblical Christianity as it stands in the stream of history is gone, but every answer we possess in the area of morals is gone. There was a time before the fall, and then man turned from his proper integration point by choice¾in doing so, he became abnormal.