Dan Brown Video

Dan Brown, controversial author of The Da Vinci Code, made a rare public appearance in New Hampshire. This event, and excerpts from the speech were given special time on the Today Show. At the end of the speech, Brown quoted a priest as having said:

"Christian theology has survived the writings of Galileo, and the writings of Darwin, surely it will survive the writings of some novelist from New Hampshire."

Now here is a statement that makes a lot of sense! The Church has nothing to fear as far as The Da Vinci Code is concerned. Do we need to provide a response to the attacks? You bet. But we have nothing to fear.

Historical Christian theology is under attack, today as always. But those who are called of the Lord, whose eyes are opened to the truth, they will understand the divine gift and preservation of Scripture, regardless of the assaults presented against it in the name of "science." This so-called "science" turns out to be the biggest game of speculation that can be imagined. It gets nowhere near the truth, but I admit, it makes for a good novel.

Francis Schaeffer Speaks to the Problem of Ecology

The following review of Francis Schaeffer's book Pollution and the Death of Man will be published in an upcoming Areopagus Journal called "Three Scholars Every Christian Should Know." The journal issue will focus on the lives and teachings of C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, and Francis Schaeffer. At only $25 per year, Areopagus Journal is a key way you can absorb important apologetic information for the enrichment of your Christian life and it is a wonderful way to support the Apologetics Resource Center at the same time. Subscribe Today!

Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology
By Francis Schaeffer

When the man Francis Schaeffer is thought about, his great books that detail how true biblical Christianity answers the problem of man usually also come to mind. The God Who is There, Escape From Reason, He is There and He is Not Silent, and later on, How Should We Then Live are some of his dominant and most influential writings. But tucked away in an obscure corner of any complete Schaeffer library is his thinking on ecology, a topic most Christians rather enjoying ignoring, perhaps because we have a taste for beef and chicken, and we find little time for recycling or protecting endangered species. In fact, environmentalism is often associated with left wing liberal types and organizations such as PETA, thus to protect the environment, oddly enough, has a non-Christian flavor to it in our modern day.

Schaeffer, in his wisdom, begs to differ. In this short treatise, he offers the only lasting solution to the current ecological crisis, namely, a solid stance on the Christian worldview. He points out in the first chapter, however, that not all agree that this is so. He refers to an article written by Lynn White Jr., who emphatically declares that the problem is Christianity itself, with its belief that man has “dominion” over the earth, and thus deduces that he can treat it any old way that he pleases; that is, he has the right to “despoil nature.” Of course, this is a terrible interpretation of the dominion mandate given in the first chapters of Genesis, and Schaeffer goes on to show White’s error.

A major part of Pollution and the Death of Man is spent demonstrating that other worldviews are insufficient in providing an intellectual base for protecting the environment. Chapter 2 is a lengthy presentation revealing the inadequacies of pantheism to provide the needed foundation for keeping the planet clean. Schaeffer summarizes the problem:

“What I am saying is that a pantheistic answer is not just a theoretically weak answer, but it is also a weak answer in practice. A man who begins to take a pantheistic view of nature has no answer for the fact that nature has two faces: it has a benevolent face, but it may also be an enemy. The pantheist views nature as normal. There is no place for abnormality in nature, in this view…If we accept this romantic and non-Christian mysticism, the difficulty is that we have no solution for the fact that nature is often not benevolent.”

The Christian, on the other hand, has a sufficient base, the authority of the Word of God, in order to see both aspects of nature, both its benevolent and brutal sides. For example, the pantheist has no ground for seeing death or plague as evil. It must be treated as all nature is treated. However, the Christian rightly sees both sides.

After detailing a few other inadequate answers to the ecology problem, Schaeffer, in chapter 4, begins detailing the Christian view, which not surprisingly finds its basis in the act of God to create. Creation is not equal with God nor is it an extension of God, but “created things have an existence in themselves. They are really there.” As such nature has value in itself since God made it. Schaeffer deduces therefore, that God “treats his creation with integrity: each thing in its own order, each thing the way He made it.”

This view leads to a “substantial healing” among created things, as Schaeffer details in chapter 5. Because God created all things and treats them with integrity, so should we. This is not pantheism, but rather a way of honoring the creator. Thus, as a human, I recognize that I am more valuable than an ant, but the ant is a fellow creature, both of us made by the same God. I have the right to kill him, but only under certain conditions. Schaeffer explains, “We have the right to rid our houses of ants; but what we have no right to do is to forget to honor the ant as God made it, out in the place where God made the ant to be. When we meet the ant on the sidewalk, we step over him.”

Schaeffer builds this Christian view of ecology not in spite of the dominion mandate given to man, but squarely upon it. He points out that man is fallen and has used his dominion to exploit and destroy rather than to rule and build. No wonder many think that Christians are to blame for the crisis! But certainly of all people, those who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, should attempt to possess dominion over the earth in the way that God originally intended, treating each created object, living and non-living, with integrity, in its own order, each thing the way God made it.

Pollution and the Death of Man offers powerful insight into how the Christian should approach modern environmental issues. My critique of the book is it's date. At the current crossroads, more Christians must step up to the plate in order to communicate clearly the truth Schaeffer so eloquently conveys in this book, namely, that the Christian worldview is the only lasting answer to modern man’s ecological crisis.

The Gospel of Judas: More Gnostic Nonsense

Last Sunday night I watched the National Geographic Special on “The Gospel of Judas.” As usual with other recent programs of this sort that deal with the topic of the historical Jesus, I came away somewhat frustrated, perhaps even angry—not because the program attacked my personal beliefs or challenged the truth of Christianity, but because (once again) shoddy historical research and politically motivated revisionist history were being passed on to a gullible, biblically illiterate public as indisputable fact.

The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel similar in many respects to other “lost” gospels that have become the subject of popular discussion in recent years due to the popularity of the best-seller, The Da Vinci Code—works such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. As The Gospel of Judas has it, Judas was not the villain that orthodox Christians have portrayed for 2000 years. Rather, he was Jesus’ most trusted disciple, and the only one who truly understood his mission. According to the story, Jesus actually gave Judas the task of “betraying” him so that Jesus could die on the cross and be freed from his physical body (Gnostics believe physical stuff to be evil). So, Jesus’ betrayal and death were apparently not evil acts in themselves, but spiritual necessities designed to release Jesus from a physical prison. Rather than an evil traitor, Judas was actually a hero and the recipient of the secret knowledge (gnosis) required for true salvation.

Now why is this a big deal? Why would we think this Gnostic gospel anything more than a harmless historical curiosity? It’s because the producers of the National Geographic special, inspired by the revisionist history of Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman (the two scholars given the bulk of the airtime on the show), are pushing the idea that the Gospel of Judas presents us with a picture of Jesus and of early Christianity that is just as authentic, and perhaps more authentic, than the portrait of Jesus and the church that we find in the four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Ehrman and Pagels have made a name for themselves in recent years by pushing the thesis that in early Christianity there was no “orthodoxy,” no single standard of belief about the identity and mission of Jesus. Instead, the early church manifested a great deal of doctrinal diversity with many different, even conflicting, views of Jesus. What is their proof for this idea?—the so-called Gnostic Gospels, many of which were contained in the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of Gnostic works discovered in Egypt in 1945. So, according to Pagels and Ehrman (and the National Geographic Society), there existed in the early church about 30 gospels, not just four, and these gospels show that early Christianity was a mosh-posh of theological traditions and it wasn’t until the third and fourth centuries that the camp we call “orthodox Christianity” one supremacy through political oppression of opposing version of Christianity.

It ought to be enough to respond to this theory with one word: hogwash! For that is exactly what it is. Unfortunately, many people (even church-going people) are being misled by the likes of Pagels and Ehrman. So, a more substantial response is called for. There is not time or space here to be thorough, but let me offer the following remarks in rebuttal:

1. The Gnostic Gospels cannot support the Pagels-Ehrman thesis about early church diversity for several reasons. First, because the Gnostic gospels (including the Gospel of Judas) did not exist in the early church. The manuscripts of the Nag Hammadi library were transcribed between A.D. 350-400. And there is no evidence whatsoever that any of these books were written before A.D. 150. Before that time, the Gnostic gospels were unknown—which is a strong indication that they were not written until after that time. Concerning the Gospel of Judas, we have a reference to it in the works of the church father Irenaeus in the year 180. So, we can know that this gospel existed at that time. However, there is no reason to think that it existed prior to that time. Second, we know that that all four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were written in the first century, during the apostolic era. What is more, some time before Irenaeus, the canonical gospels became universally accepted throughout the church as authoritative and divinely inspired works. For instance, the Muratorian Canon (c. 170) lists the four gospels along with 16 other New Testament books as homologoumena (books accepted as authoritative by all the church). Though containing many differences, these four gospels nevertheless tell the same basic story about Jesus and identify him as fully human and fully divine (and they paint Judas as a traitorous villain). No other gospels as close to the life of Jesus as these four existed in the early church, least of all the Gnostic gospels.

2. There is ample evidence from early Christian documents that there was a single, orthodox Christian faith from the very beginning. First Corinthians was written by Paul about A.D. 55. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, Paul speaks of the gospel message he “received” and “passed on” to others. That message included the account of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus (the latter is especially important since Gnostics do not believe in a bodily resurrection). The words of this text are written in a highly formulaic style indicative of a creedal statement. So, what Paul is saying is that he had earlier “received” this creed and had passed it on to the Corinthians. When did Paul receive this doctrinal tradition? No doubt, he received it on his visit to Jerusalem as recorded in Galatians 1:18-19). This means (as most critical scholars acknowledge) that this creed dates no later than A.D. 40, within ten years of Jesus’ death. This same Paul also says in Galatians (his earliest epistle, written about A.D. 49) that there is only one gospel message, and any teacher who deviates from that message is accursed—a clear indication of a standard of orthodoxy. Elsewhere, Paul states that there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Eph. 4:5). Throughout the New Testament, in books known to be early first century documents, there are numerous exhortations to hold on to sound doctrine and warnings against false doctrine (Matt. 24:4-14; Col. 2:8-9, 16-23; 2 Tim. 4:1-5; Heb. 13:9; 2 Pet. 2; 1 John 2:18-23; 4:2-3; Jude). All of this is a clear indication that there was a discernable Christian orthodoxy in the early, first-century church, long before the advent of Gnosticism and the writing of the Gnostic gospels.

3. Another point is worth mentioning. The earliest Christian canon was the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. These Scriptures taught that the world (and material things) was created by God and was inherently good. This fact explains very clearly why the Gnostic gospels could not possible have been taken seriously by early Christians and could not possibly have been just one, competing “version” of Christianity. The Gnostics rejected the goodness of the created order and they rejected the authority of the Old Testament, believing that the God of the Old Testament was not really God, but an evil spirit who rebelled against the true God. The presence and authority of the Old Testament in the early church provides the reductio ad absurdum to the Pagels-Ehrman thesis that Gnosticism was an authentic expression of early Christianity.

Is the Bridge Out? The Dangers of Agnosticism

Agnosticism is much more humble than atheism, since it admits that it does not have enough information or a wide enough scope of information to state bluntly that God does not exist. Having said that, agnosticism does face two dangers.

First, it fails to consider the consequences of eternity. Agnosticism is open to the possibility that people survive death in some form. Of course it is the heart of the position to either say the afterlife is unknowable or that the individual agnostic does not know, however, agnosticism is also by definition, open to the possibility.

If I were on a passenger train and a man whispered to me, "Have you heard? The bridge is out 50 miles ahead. This train is going to crash." But another passenger overhead and said, "Wrong! That is a mere rumor. The bridge is not out and we are going to be fine." Well, I must admit that I would be an official agnostic, afterall I have no way of knowing which person is right. But I do know this, I would be doing everything in my power to find out the truth. I would ask other passengers, listen to the news on the radio, even go to the cabin and ask the engineers. I would not simply sit back and be content with the answer, "I don't know." That is the danger of agnosticism. It is open to the possibility of eternal consequences, but more often than not, seems apathetic. Of all people who should be seeking diligently for the truth, it should be agnostics, since they are open to the possibility of God's existence and eternal life / death.

The second danger of agnosticism is its failure to examine all the evidence in proper context and in an unbiased fashion. Realizing that it is hard, if not impossible, to be totally unbiased, nonetheless an effort must be made to let the evidence speak for itself. Just one example of this is the Resurrection of Christ. Many agnostics dismiss this event simply because they have not seen a person rise from the dead but often they fail to consider the Resurrection of Christ within a theistic worldview. They should say to themselves, "If God exists could I expect him to raise someone from the dead even if I never see it?" The answer is yes. Most agnostics instead say, "Since I have never seen a person raised from the dead, therefore it must not happen or I have no way to verify that it did happen." But if the existence of God is granted for the sake of argument, then it should not be difficult at all to believe in the possibility of the Resurrection.

THEN, if you believe in the possibility of the Resurrection, all I ask is that you take a long hard look at objective testimony and data. Here are several articles to help you think through this issue. Craig, Craig2, and Habermas.

Bottom line: agnosticism is better than atheism, but still very dangerous.