Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020)
Article: Francis Schaeffer’s Enduring Relevance: It All Comes Down To “True Truth”
Author: Greg Jesson

SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020) p. 47

Francis Schaeffer’s Enduring Relevance: It All Comes Down To “True Truth”

Greg Jesson

Greg Jesson recently retired from teaching philosophy at Luther College, Decorah, Iowa and the University of Iowa. He was also the Director of the Center for Ethics and Public Life at Luther College. Dr. Jesson earned his MA in philosophy at the University of Southern California and his PhD in philosophy at the University of Iowa, where he focused on philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion. Dr. Jesson has published numerous articles and taught at several colleges. He is an editor of Ontology and Analysis (De Gruyter, 2007) and Defending Realism (De Gruyter, 2014). Greg also spent time at L’Abri where he studied with Francis Schaeffer.

Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy, as the Good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic Good and evil. With fictional Good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional Good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive, profound, and full of charm.

Simone Weil
“Morality and Literature” in Science, Necessity, and the Love of God

SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020) p. 48

I know that there is truth opposite falsehood, and that it may be found if people will search for it, and that it is worth seeking.

John Locke, 1662
Engraved on the wall of Christ Church College, Oxford University

For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

St. Peter
2 Peter 1:16 KJV

The Crisis Du Jour

A culture that is concerned only with penultimate issues, such as politics, business, and entertainment, while gleefully ignoring the ultimate issues, such as the question of God, the foundation and content of ethics, and what it means to be human, is a culture that is increasingly adrift from the stabilizing landmasses of reality. Because of this, it is a culture that is quickly coming to a time of reckoning. Ours is now such a culture, and 2020 is proving to be such a time.

Who would have ever thought in the closing hours of 2019 while toasting in the New Year that things could fall apart so quickly? The Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting economic catastrophe, coupled with the unprecedented hatred on both sides of the political spectrum, along with an impossibly contentious election that will unquest...