Intellectuals Who Found God

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN (1918–2008)

Solzhenitsyn was born into the new Russian Revolutionary system. In 1945 he was arrested for writing disparaging comments about Stalin in his letters and was sentenced to a “mild” eight years in the Soviet Gulags (labor camps). Upon his release, he was exiled to the desert in Kazakhstan and then in 1974 was exiled to the West. During this period, Solzhenitsyn became an orthodox Christian. He came to recognize that only Christianity provides both a realistic understanding of the human condition of sin and the one solution to the human condition that makes any sense. His works on the Soviet Gulags and on Russian history have become classics that have given the West a clear picture of life in the repressive Soviet system.

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER (1912–84)

Schaeffer grew up in a liberal Protestant home. As a teenager, he began to read the Bible and was surprised to find that it contained answers to life’s greatest problems. He gave his life to Christ and, contrary to his family’s wishes, determined to enter Christian ministry. In 1948 he and his wife, Edith, moved to Switzerland. There they gave their lives to talking to and witnessing to young people, mostly disaffected youth from America and Western Europe.

Schaeffer was never afraid to confront modernity and postmodernity on their own grounds. His writings demonstrate a dialogue with the key intellectual and cultural developments of the last two centuries. If there is one important thing to be learned from Schaeffer, it is that a person can face the best (and worst) that the nontheistic world can offer and still have confidence that God is there and that he is not silent.

J. S. BACH (1685–1750)

Bach entered the world as one of the most gifted musicians of all time. The sheer amount of work he turned out is almost unbelievable, amounting to nearly a thousand compositions, many of which have since been lost. He set the Christian faith to music in a way that no one before or since has done. He read the Bible faithfully and sought to give accurate presentations of its truths not only in lyrics but in musical composition as well. Bach also demonstrated that one could serve God by producing music that was not specifically Christian in orientation, such as his Brandenburg Concerti, but which, by their very structure, still demonstrate a conviction that God has made a well-ordered universe. Bach’s commitment to Christ can be seen in his telling his students that unless they committed their talents to Jesus they would never become great musicians.

LEWIS WALLACE (1827–1905)

Wallace was a Union general during the Civil War. Later he sat on the court-martial that dealt with the Lincoln assassination conspirators, and then became governor of the territory of New Mexico. His life began to change when he had an extensive conversation with the well-known infidel scholar Robert Ingersoll. In the conversation he was unable to refute Ingersoll’s arguments. So he set himself to learn everything he could about the life, setting, and historical context of Jesus Christ. Wallace was not overawed by the reputation of Ingersoll, but he believed that investigation of the facts of the gospel message could lead one to the truth about Jesus. Wallace’s investigations led to his writing the novel Ben-Hur.

In the novel a Jewish man named Judah Ben-Hur encounters Jesus and hears him say, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Later Ben-Hur returns to Rome and gives all his wealth to promote the Christian faith.