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.
From Encyclopedia.com:
It has been said that 318 persons attended, but a more likely number is 225, including every Eastern bishop of importance, four Western bishops (among them Hosius of Córdoba, president of the council), and two papal legates. The chief figures at the council were Arius and his opponent, Athanasius....The creed was accepted by all the bishops except two, who were banished along with Arius to Illyricum.318 to 2 or 225 to 2...both sound like a blowout to me.
Yep, looks like they gave Arius the boot. Whatever happened to Thomas?
John. Taliesan quoted John 1:1. I should have said "unrefuted in his time"; there were many in his time (as in all times since) who didn't believe in the Resurrection, but they couldn't discredit the accounts. No body, too many witnesses, too many people who would have had to knowingly risk horrible deaths to prop up a lie.
Thomas?
I think that if you're still bringing up Thomas after the evidence Taliesan presented, you truly have a closed mind.
Please quit while you're behind. You can only look silly from here.
So was The Turner Diaries. So was Uncle Tom's Cabin. And I still don't see where the hysteria is on our side. You guys are reacting as if we plan to burn the man on a pile of his books, when all we wish to do is point out that his book is drivel.
As Romulus pointed out in 125, Brown believes this stuff is true. As Taliesan pointed out in 126, it is doubtful that people would yell, "It's a novel, lighten up" if the subject matter was "Charles Darwin was a fraud."
The Resurrection was widely believed already in some regions. Other regions not. What is the rate of belief these days? Pretty low in the ME, no doubt.
What does that have to do with anything? I don't get your point.
What about Thomas?
Most of the same folks that attacked "The Passion". They were wrong then, they are wrong now. At least they're consistent.
I'm half way thru the book. Then again, I'm half way through the final instalment of Lord of the Rings. I can't tell which one is more credible.
You've nailed it. No pun intended. Here's a wild premis: homosexuals are really the next evolutionary step (DaVinci), masked in androgenous male/female form (aka mona Lisa), which the Catholic Church is trying to surpress, no matter what the cost. What's done in the Vatican, stays in the Vatican?
May God help us.
Hmmm, good point. So what do you think of the Mel Cibson's "The Passion"?
Amen
I'm the only christian I know who hasn't seen it. I'm also going to be the first guy in line when it comes out on DVD. It looks like a great film.
Thomas? Oh, you mean this guy?
Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!"
But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"
Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."
Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."--John 20:24-29 NIV
You mean Thomas, they guy who wanted proof that Jesus had risen, and upon receiving it, called Him God? That Thomas?
Seriously though...this Thomas?
("quoting" Peter) "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus supposedly adds, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.""There is no reason why the student of this conflict should shrink from making a value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose."--F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture
"Finally, the most popular and ardently defended text, the Gospel of Thomas, was not mentioned in the early church until the early third century."--Don Closson, "The Gnostic Matrix"
"The Jesus Scholars have declared that the Gospel of Thomas and the Q Source were written within the forty years between Jesus' death and the fall of Jerusalem, pushing forward the writing of the four canonical gospels (a necessity on their part to uphold their theory) to very late in the first century."--Jimmy Williams, "The Jesus Seminar" (And don't forget the Jesus Seminar is the group that decides what in the Gospels is accurate by deciding if it "sounds like" something Jesus might have said. Very scholarly, dude.)
"It is highly unlikely that these two obscure sources, Quelle and the Gospel of Thomas, could have been circulating throughout the Christian community and having such impact that they overshadowed what Paul was at the very same time saying about Jesus in all of his epistles."--ibid.
Basically, we're left with a bunch of scholars who think that the Gnostic Gospels, especially Thomas, are the real Christian deal just because it feels right, or just because everybody knows that Bible-thumpers who believe in the authority of scripture are hopeless banjo-picking idiots. And who are the orthodox Christians to dare ask these people for some evidence that backs their case up? The nerve,asking scholars to cite proof!
If you really do have an open mind, there are three links below that you will find educational about Jesus and the formation of the New Testament. If your mind is not open, please don't bother bringing this subject up again, it's pointless.
From "The Gnostic Marix" by Don Closson:
As New Age thinking has progressed in its many forms, the use of Gnosticism as a theoretical underpinning has grown. Since English translations become widely available in the late 1970s, Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the First Apocalypse of James have been used in conjunction with Eastern religious writings to support both New Age radical environmentalism and neo-pagan feminist religion. Gnostic writings have motivated scholars like Elaine Pagels and Joseph Campbell to find parallels between Buddhism and Christianity. They have also lent support to the belief that it was a Christ (or Buddha) consciousness that made Jesus a powerful example of how humans can experience enlightenment. But are the Gnostic scriptures faithfully represented in these modern ideas?Author Douglas Groothuis argues that the Gnostic worldview is often misrepresented by its modern adherents. For instance, Pagels and psychologist Carl Jung translate the teachings of the Gnostics into general psychological truths while rejecting their teachings regarding the origin and operation of the universe. It seems inconsistent at best to adopt the supposed outcomes of the Gnostic faith while rejecting its core teachings.
Neither does Gnosticism affirm current attitudes towards the environment found among many New Agers. Gnosticism teaches that all matter, including mother Earth, is seen as a deterrent towards reaching our true spiritual state. In fact, Gnosticism holds that all matter is a mistake. It is certainly not to be worshipped or revered as many of our pantheistic friends do.
Although female divinities are part of the Gnostic hierarchy of emanations and the New Age journal Gnosis devoted an entire issue to the Goddess movement, the Gnosticism of the early church era was decidedly not feminist. The divinity Sophia is at the heart of the problem facing humanity; her offspring brought into existence the physical world from which the Gnostic must escape.
Women in general do not fair well in the Gnostic texts. The Gospel of Thomas quotes Peter as saying, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus supposedly adds, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."{3} Jesus shows no sign of Gnostic influence in the New Testament. He never demeans women for being female, nor does he suggest that they become men.
Finally, Gnostic texts are used to support the New Age doctrine of tolerance for those on a different spiritual journey, and the popular belief in reincarnation. But Groothuis notes that "several Gnostic documents speak of the damnation of those who refuse to become enlightened, particularly apostates from Gnostic groups."{4} It's interesting that these passages aren't often taught by New Age followers.
If the Gnostic Gospels and such are so cool, why do Pagels and others ignore so much of what the Gnostics believed? Because that's the way their itching ears like it.
That is one dang fine post. Good work, as are the posts further down.
I for one am not "worked up" about anything. I just think it's silly to waste time arguing about something that's the product of someone's imagination. We have far more important things to worry about, IMO. At least Uncle Tom's Cabin had a factual basis.
Carolyn
If that's all we have today on Thomas, how about James?
"Most of the same folks that attacked "The Passion". They were wrong then, they are wrong now. At least they're consistent."
It is very important to socialists/commies that Orthodox faith be undermined and stomped out. How else can one worship/depend on the nanny state? That is why The Passion put them into such a hysterical state. I'm beginning to find angry, foaming-at-the-mouth libs rather humorous.
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