Posted on 05/27/2004 11:28:58 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Dan Brown’s historical thriller The Da Vinci Code has now reached its sixtieth week on the bestseller list with more than five million copies sold in the United States alone. Plans are being made to turn the book into a movie. It would seem that the influence of Brown’s novel—which is based on the premise that Jesus was only human, not divine—has never been greater.
Yet a number of Christian voices are now speaking out about the flaws and fabrications of The Da Vinci Code. The New York Times reports that in the past couple of months, at least ten books refuting Brown’s argument have been released. One such book is Dr. Darrell Bock’s Breaking The Da Vinci Code.
A lot of people don’t understand why Christians are making so much fuss about a mere adventure novel. But in his book, Bock asserts that The Da Vinci Code is much more than a novel. The book is an attempt to promote a worldview, one that’s deeply antithetical to the Christian worldview.
Through his characters, Brown argues that the divinity of Jesus and the authority of the four Gospels were not decided until the Council of Nicea in the fourth century. He also claims that the church unjustly suppressed the view of the Gnostics.
By examining church history, however, Bock proves Brown wrong on all counts. The Gnostic gospels of which Brown writes were written well after the Gospels in our New Testament, and the church never considered them authoritative. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were always considered the “preeminent” sources of authority on Jesus’ life.
Bock also points out what any serious reader of the Bible would realize: The original Gospels proclaimed Jesus the Son of God, and they were accepted centuries before the Council of Nicea. Gnosticism was rejected, in fact, because it differed from this long accepted and practiced belief.
What’s really surprising is that Brown doesn’t even get his facts about Gnosticism straight. According to the Gnostic gospels, Jesus is a spiritual being who didn’t die on the cross; a human “substitute” was crucified by the people while the real Jesus was “laughing at their ignorance.” And Gnosticism teaches that salvation comes not through God’s grace, but through secret knowledge that is given only to those intelligent and self-aware enough to receive it—nice if you’re one of the chosen ones, but not so nice for the rest of us.
But we get none of this in Brown’s account. To the contrary, Brown misstates Gnosticism by asserting Jesus was human. The book is yet another example of what Frederica Mathewes-Green calls “our culture’s penchant for pick-and-choose religion.” She goes on to say that, “every pick-and-choose religion has this limitation: The follower can never grow any larger than his own preconceptions. He has established himself a priori as the ultimate authority, and his thoughts will never be larger than his hat size.”
By contrast, Christian truth is rooted in the authority of the Scriptures—tested, reflected upon, and debated over two millennia—and is rooted in the Church and creed, not in personal preferences.
Critiquing The Da Vinci Code is a matter of defending truth, and you need to learn to do this from Bock’s book or from another. Set your neighbors straight; with five million copies out there we’ve got a big job.
1. Uncle Tom's Cabin was a novel, too.
2. Once you take the stuff explaining the nature of the heresy out, Colson's essay could be expressed in one sentence: "A story using a major heresy as a premise has become hugely popular, and as Christians we should be able to discuss this story and refute said heresy." Reading down through this thread, I've found a whole lot of Freepers who are absolutely positively freaking out at the idea that we might want to do so. Y'all are acting like we're going to start burning copies of this book, or turn every church in the world into a DaVinci Code Refutation Center.
What are y'all so worked up about?
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with god, and the Word was God."
Those words were written decades before any known "vote", or council, or creed, or pope.
That Jesus was divine was, by all EVIDENCE, the consensus among believers in the earliest written records we have. You are free to think He is not, but you are not free to make up facts off the top of your head.
Unless you're writing fiction.
It was the convention for painters of the Italian Renaissance to depict the apostle John as a comely young man with long, flowing hair.
Brown's exploiting the almost complete artistic ignorance of the American semi-reading public.
You said you were going to stop stalking me, but you lied.
According to Dan Brown on his official web site: "it is my belief that the theories discussed by these characters have merit".
1. saying a book is based on bad history and this is misleading people, and this is not good, and
2. this book should be burned along with its author--
apparently, this distinction is too subtle.
Imagine if a novel was written premised on a completely false version of Darwin's life and thought. And the implication of the book was that all the followers of Darwin had built their lives on a lie.
Further, imagine this book became a world-wide best-seller and many people who simply weren't well-read enough to judge the facts thought the novel's version really cool, or interesting, or at least "worth considering".
Of course, the fact that it was a "work of fiction" would make all the difference in the world to the scientific establishment. They would just say to each other "lighten up! It's a NOVEL FOR PETE'S SAKE!" And that would be the end of it.
Or maybe not.
There are a lot of gaps. People have been freely filling in the gaps for thousands of years and fighting to the death over interpretations. Note the imagery of mortal combat in posts above.
I responded with one instance of a dozen such quotes assuming Jesus' divinity written decades before any such vote.
An honest person would incorporate facts into their opinions. An honest person would simply say "well, apparently the earliest major works of Christian opinion held Jesus to be a divinity. I did not know that."
Or, "there are a lot of gaps."
Come on, that's not scholarship.
It was a 6-5 vote. Like Florida. The winner: Constantine.
Are you illiterate? The entire New Testament was written before Constantine's parents were born.
Know anything about Thomas?
"Yes. Heck, it's more like the pot and the kettle getting together and calling the refrigerator black!"
LOL
Jesus said: I am the light that is over them all. I am the All; the All has come forth from me, and the All has attained unto me. Cleave a (piece of) wood: I am there. Raise up the stone, an ye shall find me there.
Is the book you're talking about? Do you think He thinks He is divine here?
Or the one that ends with this?
Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.
This Thomas? This proves -- what, exactly?
Jesus was not originally thought divine, but later was "voted" divine?
The councils suppressed an earlier strata of gospel which was friendlier to women in favor of more patriarchal texts.
Is the text you want to use to argue that Jesus was "voted" divine?
Go ahead.
Who was Thomas?
You are eminently correct! People have trouble separating fact from fiction all the time. Just look at the RATs.
I'm not worked up, just amused at the amazing responses to the issue. It's a novel, folks!
You are obviously an art historian. I'm not, but the seven copies of the Supper theme I have in my art books showing other Italian Reaissance artist's ideas re the Last Supper, only Da Vinci's has an effeminate-looking John (if it is John, that is). Hey, it's just a conjecture about a novel--not a religious argument! The original painting has detiorated so much it is hard to make out details anyway.
Sorry, that post was in error. Don't worry, your surrender has been accepted and you won't hear from me again, unless you once again pick a fight out of your weight class.
No offense, but when a man...
...writes about events he witnessed
...is backed up by other detailed eyewitness accounts and 500 additional witnesses
...goes unchallenged in his day
...and someone comes along thousands of years later and says, "Oh, of course it didn't happen that way, that's silly"
...that's not someone filling in a gap, that's either slander or stupidity, but it's not scholarship. There are a million voices saying, "I have the Truth!" Don't believe any of them. Look at the evidence and decide for yourself. He is risen indeed.
Who?
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