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Seek the Truth -- The Da Vinci Code (III)

The movie is out now and in spite of the negative reviews from critics at the Cannes Film Festival, The Da Vinci Code (TDVC) has lived up to its box-office expectations, drawing the second-largest worldwide opening ever. One movie-goer (a 26-year-old high school teacher) was quoted in the news as saying, "It's a very good movie. I know some of it is not true, but it was actually a good history lesson.” I hope that history is not this teacher’s subject, for the truth is that almost nothing in the TDVC is historically accurate. Sadly, however, TDVC has caused many people to question their faith while others have simply been given a convenient excuse to the reject the Bible offhand. With that in mind, last week we began to examine some of the claims made in TDVC. Let’s continue.

One claim made by the Code is that Constantine instituted a new Bible in 325 A.D., omitting those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits (i.e. the Gnostic Gospels) and embellishing those that made Him godlike (i.e. the four canonical Gospels). Few of Dan Brown’s claims are as far from reality as this one. Neither Constantine nor the Nicene Council had anything to do with the canon of scripture, let alone the Gnostic gospels. These things were not even discussed at the Nicene Council.

The word “canon” simply means “list” or “standard”, eventually being applied to various lists of New Testament books accepted as inspired by God. These “lists” did not determine which books to include in the Bible, but merely recognized and affirmed what the Christians had already accepted. The first “church” council to discuss the canon of scripture was the Council of Hippo in A.D. 393, overseen by the Roman Catholic bishop, Athanasius. This was fifty-six years after Constantine’s death! However, there were various canons (lists) long before this, as early as A.D. 140. Most scholars agree that there was a general consensus among the churches regarding the canon of scripture by the end of the Second Century, a full 200 years before any “church councils” discussed the issue, and 150 years before Constantine. This earlier consensus among Christians was little or no different than our Bible today.

The Bible itself shows us that the New Testament letters and Gospels were generally accepted by the First Century Christians. For example, Peter refers to Paul’s writings as “scripture” (2 Pet 3.16;), Paul quotes Luke’s Gospel (1 Tim 5.18; Lk 10.7) and Paul commends the Christians for accepting his letters as the word of God (1 Thes 2.13). As we mentioned last week, the early Christian writers also give witness to which books were accepted and which were not, affirming our Bible as we have it today.

The Code’s claim that Constantine collated our Bible is as absurd as saying that the U.S. Constitution was written by Hitler. Unfortunately, most people do not know enough about ancient history to know any better. Dan Brown is playing on our ignorance of the past. He is not the first to do so however, nor will he be the last. The veracity of the Bible has been attacked many times throughout history. The French philosopher Voltaire, a skeptic who destroyed the faith of many people in the 18th Century, boasted that within 100 years of his death the Bible would disappear from the face of the earth. Voltaire died in 1778, but the Bible lives on. Ironically, fifty years after his death, his home became the headquarters for the Geneva Bible Society, who printed thousands of Bibles on Voltaire’s printing presses.

Another inaccuracy about Brown's claim is that the Gnostic Gospels emphasize Christ's' human traits, picturing a merely human Jesus rather than a divine Jesus. In other words, Dan Brown seeks to portray Jesus as a mere man, appealing to the Gnostics. Ironically, the Gnostics did not view the Christ as a mere man. On the contrary, they actually saw Christ as so divine that he could not be man. Since Gnostics believed that all flesh is evil, they taught that the divine Christ and the human Jesus were two different persons in one. They taught that the divine Jesus came into the human Jesus at his baptism and then departed from him as Jesus hung on the cross. For example, in the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter 81.4-24, we have Peter speaking with the divine Jesus who supposedly is above the cross while the human Jesus hangs on the cross:

“I [Peter] saw him [Jesus] apparently being seized by them. And I said, ‘What am I seeing, O Lord? Is it really you whom they take? And are you holding on to me? And are they hammering the feet and hands of another? Who is this one above the cross, who is glad and laughing?’ The Savior said to me, ‘He whom you saw being glad and laughing above the cross is the Living Jesus. But he into whose hands and feet they are driving the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute. They put to shame that which remained in his likeness. And look at him, and [look at] me!’”

This "duality" (separating God from the creation and thus from Jesus' humanity) was a central characteristic of Gnostic teachings. They saw Jesus as divine, but so divine that they had to invent a dual Jesus because they saw all flesh as evil. In the Gnostic thinking, the divine Jesus could not be truly human, so they invented a dual Jesus. Thus, Brown not only grossly misrepresents history, he does not even represent Gnosticism correctly.

Next week we will discuss the issue of Jesus being married.