Nathan E. Lewis

Check out my three videos on Youtube: 1) “The Creator/creature Distinction; 2) “Transcendence/immanence; 3) “How Can We Know God?” Continue reading »

I have been teaching a workshop at RYM camp, helping teens listen to popular music, analyzing the worldviews of the songwriters. Overwhelmingly, the alternative rock and folk music of the past decade has presented humanity as vile and broken. The biblical doctrine of the total depravity of humanity has little to no correction to the views presented in the music of Limp Bizkit, Stain’d, Cake, Brett Dennen, Steven Sufjan, and U2. The humanism of the modern era is dead.
The Christian/biblical view of humanity is founded on two pillars: 1) God made man, male and female in his own image; 2) Humanity fell into sin and death and is irreparable apart from divine and gracious work. Any Christian seeking to present the gospel to the prevailing worldviews of our present culture must emphasize that humanity is made in God’s image.
I asked the students to shout out the names of the most vile people. Quite a few names were shouted including Marilyn Manson. I asked the campers to raise their hands if they believed that Marilyn Manson was made in God’s image. Continue reading »

read this candid interview with an influential American leader close to death

A Calvinist Faces Death
Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007 By DAVID VAN BIEMA
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Blaise Paschal (1623-1662), a French scientist and religious philosopher, wrote his “Pensees,” fragments, if not little gems presenting his view of the world. His thoughts trace the universal search for God as he cuts across doctrine and into the very heart of the moral problem. When I am tired or distracted, Paschal’s terse sentences can re-start my thinking. He wrote, “Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only.” Continue reading »

Have you read the University of Oregon ads in The Oregonian? They each include the slogan, “If UOnly knew.” My favorite is titled, “Snowflakes, Stress, and Semiconductors: Do you See a Pattern Here?” Yes! I do see good order in the world around us! The ad reads, “Do you see a pattern here? Richard Taylor does. The UO professor of Physics is lead the way with internationally recognized research into fractuals, curious patterns found in nature that repeat themselves. Continue reading »

In her book, “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas,� Elaine Pagels takes issue with the Church as a confessional community. She believes that creeds exclude people from the community of the Church that ought to be welcomed as members. She opens by sharing her personal story of finding warm reception at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City, during a difficult time in her life. She writes on page five, “I wondered when and how being a Christian became synonymous with accepting a certain set of beliefs.� She references Jesus telling his disciples that the world will know them by their love for one another, and concludes that the only mark of the Church should be love.
I decided to call the rector of the Church of Heavenly Rest. I never doubted Pagel’s report of this church’s warm acceptance of people. I needed to discover whether or not this church was a confessional church.
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Elaine Pagels has devoted much of her time to Irenaeus, that fiery Christian theologian, circa 125-202. He published “Against Heresies,” a strong apologetic against Gnostics. Clearly Pagels is trying to make room for Gnostics in the Church. Her book, “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas,” would be more appropriately titled, “Beyond Belief: Why I Reject Irenaeus as Founder of the Church.”
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Elaine Pagels is a primary source of inspiration and content for Dan Brown. Most of her scholarship has been devoted to the Nag Hammadi texts, discovered in Upper Egypt in 1945. These texts are mostly fragments of the writings discarded by the Church in the process of canonizing the Bible. In 1979 Pagels’ “The Gnostic Gospels� was published. Her subsequent books have each taken up a theme or issue that can be recognized as “Gnostic.� In 2003 Pagels’ “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas,� continued her life’s work to promote the Nag Hammadi texts as equally valid documents for the Christian religion, alongside of the books of the Bible.
Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code,� popularly spins and embellishes the stories that are told by those who have read the Nag Hammadi texts.
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In today’s issue of the Oregonian, Saturday, May 13, 2006, Nancy Haught “pulls together observations and ruminations” concerning the Da Vinci Code. Under her “Web sites” she recommends three, one of which is Westminster Theological Seminary’s site, www.thetruthaboutdavinci.com.
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