In the “Da Vinci Code” Dan Brown, with one statement, takes a swipe at two central tenets of the Christian faith. Here is what he writes:

“Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike” (234).

In one fell swoop, Brown asserts that the Bible and the divinity of Christ were virtually invented in the fourth century (325 A.D. at the Council of Nicea) by the political shenanigans of a semi-pagan emperor in order to control the church. How much truth is there to this claim? My answer would be about 5% with the remaining 95% classified as a (using pre-politically correct language) “pack of lies.”

The New Testament—How We Got It

The period from the time of the Apostles to the final canonization of the New Testament can be divided into roughly four eras.

First Era: was, of course, the period of the Apostles. It was during the time of their lives that the books that we now consider the New Testament were written by the Apostles or their co-workers. For instance, the gospel of Mark is considered to be the first gospel to be written. It was penned by Mark who is mentioned a number of places in the New Testament and was the nephew of Barnabas. However, according to the witness of the early church, Mark was actually the scribe for the Apostle Peter writing the things Peter remembered from the time and ministry of Jesus. Consequently, the gospel of Mark is connected to the Apostle Peter. Likewise, the other New Testament books are connected in some direct fashion with a disciple of Christ, an Apostle, or co-worker of an Apostle (e.g. Luke and Mark).

Second Era: the period immediately following the Apostles is known as the period of the Church Fathers. This was the time of men like Polycarp and Papias, for instance, who had been disciples of the Apostle John. Doctrinal authority during this period rested on two sources, the Old Testament (O.T.) and authority invested into those who had been directly taught by the Apostles. At this point the New Testament (N.T.) was written, but it was not in the form of a separate book like the O.T. This was a time when the Church Fathers were consumed with the practical affairs of the early church. Though they did not have the time nor need to develop technical theological insights on the incarnation and Trinity, yet, the Church Fathers clearly believed that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were God. Here is just one quote from that era by Ignatius in his “Letter to the Ephesians:”

Ignatius of Antioch: "For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God's plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit" (Letter to the Ephesians 18:2 [A.D. 110]).

Third Period: after the early Church Fathers comes the era of the Apologists and Theologians, roughly including the second, third, and fourth centuries. It is during this period that the Church takes the initial steps toward establishing a "rule of faith" or Canon. Because of the threat of heretical movements during this time a list of NT era books was developed. This list was called the Muratorian Canon and listed all the books of the Bible except for 1 John, 1 and 2 Peter, Hebrews, and James around A.D. 180. Also, Irenaeus, as bishop of Lyon and disciple of Polycarp, mentions all of the books except Jude, 2 Peter, James, Philemon, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation. The Syriac Version of the Canon, from the third century, leaves out Revelation. Irenaeus, in his work Against Heresies, argues that, "The Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God [Christ] and His Spirit"

Fourth Era: It was during the fourth century that concentrated attempts were made both in the East and the West to establish the authoritative collection of the Canon. In 365, Athanasius of Alexandria listed the complete twenty-seven books of the New Testament which he regarded as the "only source of salvation and of the authentic teaching of the religion of the Gospel.” Jerome was Athanasius’ counterpart in the West. Jerome in 394 listed just 39 O.T. books and our current 27 N.T. ones. Jerome worked on a Latin text to standardize the Scripture. The resulting Vulgate was used throughout the Christian world. The Synods of Carthage in 397 and 418 both confirmed our current twenty-seven books of the NT.

Bottom line: Constantine and the Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament. Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code are completely mistaken on this issue. Brown overlooks the fact that the process of canonization had progressed for centuries before Nicea, resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of Christianity in 313.

Jesus the God/Man

Consider the following quotations, all of which predate the Council of Nicea:

In John 20:28, Thomas falls at Jesus’ feet, exclaiming, "My Lord and my God!" (Greek: Ho Kurios mou kai ho Theos mou—literally, "The Lord of me and the God of me!")

In Philippians 2:6, Paul tells us that Christ Jesus "[w]ho, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped" (New International Version). So Jesus chose to be born in humble, human form though he could have simply remained in equal glory with the Father for he was "in very nature God."

• Ignatius of Antioch: "For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God's plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit" (Letter to the Ephesians 18:2 [A.D. 110]).
• Tatian the Syrian: "We are not playing the fool, you Greeks, nor do we talk nonsense, when we report that God was born in the form of a man" (Address to the Greeks 21 [A.D. 170]).
• Clement of Alexandria: "The Word, then, the Christ, is the cause both of our ancient beginning-for he was in God-and of our well-being. And now this same Word has appeared as man. He alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things" (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1 [A.D. 190]).
• Tertullian: "God alone is without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is also God" (The Soul 41:3 [A.D. 210]).
• Origen: "Although he was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was: God" (The Fundamental Doctrines 1:0:4 [A.D. 225]).

These quotes are merely the tip of the iceberg. However, perhaps the strongest evidence one can have are statements by one’s enemies whereby they admit to something that is commonly understood. Concerning this, Pliny the Younger was governor of Pontus/Bithynia from 111-113 AD. We have a whole set of exchanges of his letters with the emperor Trajan on a variety of administrative political matters. In one of these letters Pliny describes ancient Christian worship. Here is what he wrote:

“They (persecuted Christians) asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so.”

This should rest the case. Jesus has always been worshipped as divine from the very earliest times and even against severe persecution. Constantine and political shenanigans had nothing to do with this belief.

It is interesting to note that there are some pantheistic religions or quasi-pantheistic religions like Kabbalah (“With origins cryptically entwined in Gnostic traditions and Jewish myths”—Lance S. Owens) may believe that intelligent beings have always existed in some state or another and that they progress forward to a final eternal state. However, there is a serious problem with this belief. The problem is that if the past series of events in time is infinite, then all intelligent beings should have already achieved their final state by now. Yet, these religions tend to see intelligent beings as in a state of continued progress.

Someone might say that these intelligent beings have not reached their final state because there just hasn’t been enough time for them to progress to a state of finality. Unfortunately, this is not a good solution to the dilemma because pantheists affirm an infinite universe. Consequently, an infinite universe has an infinite length of time that has already transpired. The fact is, you can’t get more time than infinite. If the task cannot be completed in infinite time—it cannot be done. Restated another way, if it can be done, infinite time is way more than enough time to get it all done.

The only conclusion one can come to is that if intelligent beings are still in progress toward a final state of existence—which pantheistic religions affirm—whether that state is to be godlike or to receive heavenly rewards or punishment, then the pantheistic view is false. If intelligent beings are still in progress toward some final goal or state of being, then there must have been a finite beginning to their progress. One cannot have an open-ended, limitless infinity and still have intelligent beings progressing if they have supposedly existed from that infinity. All intelligent beings would have reached their final state eons ago.

Christians don’t have to worry about such a convoluted dilemma because they believe that God is the only infinite being and He is the Creator of all things including time and space. All created things are finite and come into existence at a finite time. Christianity, you see, is coherent and true.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

May 19th is the date that director Ron Howard releases his movie version of Dan Brown’s novel, “The Da Vinci Code.” I saw the trailer yesterday and the movie looks extremely well made. It is likely to be a blockbuster. If you thought people were affected by the book, you haven’t seen anything yet. The visual power of the cinema is sure to cause people to re-think traditional Christianity.

I know, I know, I’ve heard it numerous times, you may be thinking, “Hey, it’s just a book, it’s just fiction, what’s the big deal?” Well, if Dan Brown and Ron Howard were just into this for the fun of it and just to entertain, then tell me why the movie trailer specifically targets my faith in Christ. After a series of powerful images, actions and sounds the trailer ends with a black screen with huge letters fading in and off the screen. The final message is—get ready—“No matter what you have read, no matter what you believe, the journey has just begun.” Obviously, Sony pictures and Ron Howard are taking a sideswipe at the Bible (what you have read) and Christian faith (what you believe). As the trailer loudly proclaims, the movie will reveal a secret so powerful that it has been kept secret for centuries and people will kill to keep it from you. Boy, I’m glad they don’t have any “agenda” other than entertainment; otherwise we’d really be in trouble—yeah, right. The trailers can be seen at http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808625216

Code #1 Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child which undermines the divinity of Christ.

Here is what the book says on pages 249 and 254: “…(This is) the greatest cover-up in human history. Not only was Jesus Christ married, but He was a father….A child of Jesus would undermine the critical notion of Christ’s divinity and therefore the Christian church, which declared itself to be sole vessel through which humanity could access the divine and gain entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven.”

First, the premise is totally fallacious. Even if Jesus had been married it would not undercut the doctrine of His divinity. The marriage bed is sanctified and blessed by God. It was Gnostics that had a problem with marriage and sex and not Christians.

Secondly, there is no mention of Jesus being married in any biblical reference, historical writing, devotional literature, or even in the writings of all of pseudo-gospels and false teachers. The false teachers had to start at “Ground Zero” and build up there counterfeit notions. “Ground Zero” was, of course, the basic narrative-story of Jesus of Nazareth. One of the strongest evidences for a thing is when your enemy affirms a fact. False teachers affirmed Christ’s singleness.

Prof. Paul Maier of Western Michigan University is an expert on ancient history. He is also an author of historical fiction. He notes that there are two things that go into good historical fiction. One is the foreground characters and the other is the historical background. An honest author of good historical fiction should feel free to develop his fictional characters any way that he chooses. He should feel free to allow them to say and do whatever he wants them to say and do. However, the backdrop for his novel must be accurate history. The author of historical fiction must take care to provide the reader with correct detail, dates, places and background material. Prof. Maier rightly points out that Dan Brown (and now Ron Howard) got only about 20% of his background facts right. 80% of the “Da Vinci Code’s” supposed detail is completely erroneous.

So what’s the deal? Dan Brown and now Ron Howard are attempting to build a straw man in your mind. That straw man is that a big dark secret has been keep from you. Ultimately that secret is that Jesus wasn’t really divine. Ergo, your faith is futile! Or, ergo, you don’t have to pay any attention to that “man behind the curtain”—that silly clergyman that wants to pretend like he knows God and tells you how to behave. Why yes, he’s been hiding the real Jesus all these centuries and the real Jesus is just like one of us. So—the message goes—feel free to live any way you want to and not pay any attention to the Bible, salvation, heaven, hell or that “man behind the curtain.” My friends, the book and the movie have a very dangerous spiritual message.

Next post: Code #2—Christianity as we know it was a 4th century creation.

The strangest convergence I have ever seen is taking place right under our noses. You may be aware that liberal scholars have been fascinated by ancient Gnostic writings as a way of showing that early Christianity had many “conflicting” visions of Jesus (e.g. the feminist Jesus, the New Age Jesus, the gay Jesus, etc.) but, unfortunately (they believe), the rigid, fundamentalist view of Jesus eventually won out because the power of the Roman state persecuted other versions of Christianity. This, of course, is just an urban myth created with smoke and mirrors to advance a liberal social agenda. The media fascination with the Gospel of Thomas and the recent hype about the Gospel of Judas are examples of this developing myth. This is not to say that there isn’t authentic scholarly work being done on ancient Gnostic texts. I actually encourage Christians to read these documents because their strikingly different theology and strange and otherworldly Jesus tend to confirm one’s faith in the truth. However, what blows my mind is that the LDS, which has for a long time presented itself as a form of Christianity, is now drinking heavily at the fountain of Gnosticism.

Melaine Layton has written a book entitled: “The Truth About the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Writings in Reference to Mormonism.” The Nag Hammadi Writings were from so-called Gnostic Christians living in Egypt from the late first to fourth centuries. She notes that LDS lecturer, Einar C. Erickson, has given numerous talks to LDS church groups concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi writings, Mandean Ginza and related Middle East finds. She writes: “Mr Erickson states that the writings discovered in the vicinity of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, are one of the greatest confirmations of the "truthfulness" of the Mormon church that anyone would find… Mr. Erickson attempts to convince his listeners that the writers of the Nag Hammadi were the true Christians, (based upon his allegation of their similarity to Mormonism) and that all others had slipped off into apostasy.” The problems with this sort of thinking within the LDS are manifold. A summary of Melaine Layton’s writings on the subject can be found at the Believer’s Web: http://www.believersweb.org/view.cfm?ID=601. However, allow me to go right to the heart of the matter.

First of all, the Apostles vigorously opposed early forms of Gnosticism. For instance, it is the witness of the early church that the Apostle John (the Beloved) was prevailed upon by the early church to write both his gospel and epistles in order to counter the false teachings of a proto-Gnostic named Cerinthus. Cerinthus was of Egyptian origin, and originally Jewish. He received his education in the Judaeo-Philonic school of Alexandria. Cerinthus, along with Marcion (another proto-Gnostic) were perhaps the most infamous false teachers of the second half of the first century. In fact, it is believed that the “anti-Christ” teachers that are referred to in 2 John are, indeed, Cerinthus and his followers. Cerinthus taught that there were many levels of knowledge (the word Gnosis means “knowledge” referring to the secret knowledge of their false religion) that advanced Christians could attain that went beyond the baby-level of the Bible. Being dualists they taught that matter and the human body were evil and the spirit realm was good. Because of Gnostic dualism, Cerinthus denied the literal incarnation of Jesus Christ in the flesh. This is what John is referring to when he writes against those who deny that Christ came in the flesh. These early Gnostics also rejected the Old Testament and added in all kinds of pagan myths, rites and rituals to their teachings. Just to demonstrate how opposed the Apostles were to proto-Gnostic teaching, the early church records that on one occasion the Apostle John found himself at the same public bath in Ephesus with Cerinthus. The Apostle, hearing who was there, fled from the place as if for his life, crying to those who were with him: "Let us flee, lest the bath fall in while Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is there." On another occasion, Polycarp (a direct disciple of the Apostle John) met Marcion the Gnostic and greeted him, "Dost thou know me?" "I do know thee, the first-born of Satan." Obviously, the Apostles and early disciples lived before the era of political correctness so they simply called a spade a spade.

Secondly, Gnosticism has always been opposed by authentic Christianity. Its tenets are both deadly and deceptive. At its heart Gnosticism is dualistic and denies the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Additionally, it offers an intellectually based “works gospel” that is antithetical to the finished work of Christ upon the cross. It is truly a form of anti-Christ teaching. It is straight from the pit of hell. For LDS to use Gnostic writings as a way of validating its sacred texts and teachings is a “pact with the devil.”

We “went Catholic” this year for Good Friday—sort of. At my church we made the decision that our typical Good Friday service was not having the impact that it should so we thought “outside the box.” What we came up with was to transform our sanctuary into an environment for a self-guided tour through the Stations of the Cross. This, of course, is a traditional Catholic concept but we took the liberty of removing some of the stations that are not rooted directly in Scripture and, therefore, made it more Protestant-friendly. We also provided some high tech touches such as having portions of the movie “The Passion of the Christ” running silently on our video screens and using worshipful music playing softly in the background. To say the least, the event has exceeded our expectations by the largest measure I could have imagined. I went through it early in the morning with our men’s prayer ministry and by the time I got to the second station I was completely and utterly overwhelmed by the experience. Truly, it is good to avail ourselves of these time-tested traditions.

On this Good Friday I would like to reflect on why Christ suffered for us.

1. Christ’s passion removes the stain of our sin. Just as obedience to God is the soul’s beauty, so our sin is its stain.
Isaiah 53:5 (NIV) But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

2. The anger of God against our sin is assuaged and we are set free from the just penalty that was due us for our rebellion.
Col. 2:14 (NIV) having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.

3. By and through the cross God’s grace empowers us to live a life that is pleasing to Him. Christ strengthens us in our weaknesses.
Romans 6:6-7 (NIV) For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- [7] because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

4. By Christ’s atoning work on the cross we are freed from eternal punishment to have eternal life with God.
Romans 6:8-10 (NIV) Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. [9] For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. [10] The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

5. Christ’s passion of the cross provides a model for how we are to face the difficulties and suffering in life. Augustine said, “Christ’s Passion affords us a model in all the circumstances of life, since whoever wishes to lead a perfect life needs only to despise what Christ despised on the Cross and to desire what He desired. There is no virtue an example of which we do not find on the Cross.”
Philip. 1:29 (NIV) For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him,

May the cross of Christ always be at the center of your faith.