Modern man has put himself in a dilemma, as evangelical scholars such as Francis Schaeffer have frequently pointed out. Throughout virtually all of history, man had what philosophers call a unified field of knowledge. That is, man understood the supernatural, human history, science, ethics, economics—everything—within one frame of reference. These areas were all part of total reality. But then we had a great movement in philosophy known as rationalism, which denied the very existence of the supernatural, including—especially including—God. Men such as Graf, Wellhausen, Bauer, Strauss, Renan, and many others began systematically to undercut every supernatural doctrine or belief.

A prime target was the Bible. Often in the name of biblical scholarship they contradicted, by supposed disproof, every supernatural claim of Scripture. They reduced all knowledge and reality to the area of natural reason, which dealt only with what the physical senses could observe and measure and with what the human mind could interpret on its own. Man became the measure of all things. Everything outside the sphere of man’s physical experience and intellectual understanding was denied or discounted.

But most men could not handle this radical explanation. Even from the human perspective, it left too much unaccounted for. It made man nothing more than part of a huge, meaningless machine. Some philosophers began to see the limitations of rationalism. Kierkegaard, for example, decided to make a place for the supernatural by putting it in a different order of reality than the everyday world. This “upper story,” as Schaeffer describes it, is thought not to be knowable in the same way that the lower, earthly level is knowable. It is experienced only by a “leap of faith.” Because it supposedly cannot really be known, every man is free to make of the supernatural what he wants. He can believe in a “Wholly Other” kind of god, as did Paul Tillich; or he can simply believe in believing, have faith in faith. But what is believed has no definite content, no definite reality, no definite truth. It is purely existential, without content, nonrational, and nonlogical. To use a phrase from Schaeffer again, it is an “escape from reason”—the opposite extreme from that of rationalism. Both of these philosophies, of course, are escapes from the true God.

Such nonrational philosophy is perfectly illustrated in the book Catch-22, which centers on a squadron of World War II American fliers stationed on the ficticious island of Pianos in the Mediterranean. Their job was to fly extremely dangerous missions over southern Europe, and they had to complete 25 missions before being eligible for transfer. One of the men, Yosarian, was especially anxious to get out. But when he had completed his twenty-fifth mission, the new commanding officer raised the number to 30, and then to 40, 45, 50, and so on. Insanity became the only justification for transfer. But if a flyer turned himself in for being insane in order to get out of flying the missions, that was evidence he was sane. It became clear to the fliers that they were playing a sadistic game, with no way out. So Yosarian decided to build a raft and float to Sweden—no matter that a whole continent was between him and Sweden or that the ocean currents would have taken him anywhere but there. Despite the impossibility of accomplishing what he intended, he could not be dissuaded. He had devised a hopeless escape from a hopeless situation, and insisted on his right to pursue it. He jumped headlong into the absurd.

Most philosophy is mere doodling with words, as many people do with a pencil. Without revelation, a source of basic truth, the best it can do is make verbal squiggles. Some are more impressive than others, but none can lay claim to the truth or to ultimate meaning. Paul warned the Colossians, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men” (Col. 2:8).