May 28, 2006

BREAKING THE DA VINCI CODE

          Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, has sold more copies than any other fictional work in U.S. history.   According to Barna research, The Da Vinci Code  has been read “cover to cover” by roughly 45 million adults in the U.S. – that’s one out of every five adults (20%). About two and a half years ago, Todd was home for Christmas, and was headed off to Urbana.  He had the book laying around, and I asked if I could read it while he was gone.  He said, Sure, but you won’t be able to put it down.  He was right!  I have seldom read a book that drew me in so quickly and kept me riveted, reading as fast as I could to see where the story would go next.  It’s really well done. 

          The genre of this book is historical fiction.  James Michener is famous for this type of writing, in which the author weaves historical truth and fictional characters together to create the story line.  In the case of The Da Vinci Code, the author, Dan Brown, has done what he could to muddy the water as to how much of the book is fiction and how much is fact.  On the page with the copyright it says, “This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.”  But before the prologue is a “Fact” page.  Among other things, it says:  “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”  Any really good historical novel weaves historical fact and fiction together so skillfully that the average reader can’t tell where one leaves off and the other begins.  The danger in this book is that it attacks the central truths of Christianity, and most people today, including many Christians, are not well-informed of the facts, so they can’t refute the errors promulgated in it in the name of fiction. 

          The Da Vinci Code story begins with art historian Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks in the movie), who tries to solve a murder in the Louvre Museum. In the course of his investigation, he uncovers the mother of all conspiracies.  By tracing secret clues in artistic masterpieces, decoding mysterious riddles, and dodging murderous Christians, the hero learns that Christianity is really a monumental fraud. The Holy Grail, the chalice that contained the blood of Jesus, is really a person, or a whole set of people, the physical descendants of Jesus. The savior called Christ, he learns, was really the founder of an occult religion that worshipped the "Sacred Feminine."  When Jesus died, his true successor was his wife, Mary Magdalene, followed by the couple's daughter and subsequent "holy grails."  According to this storyline, the Christian church created the Bible, the dogmas of Christ's divinity, and sexual morality in order to suppress this true religion. But instead, this religion went underground, passed down in a secret society of Western civilization's great minds, who combined feminist ideology, cultivation of the occult, and sex rituals as a bulwark against the religion of the Scriptures.

          The book raises several very significant questions for Christians, and I want to look at three of them with you this morning. 

I.        Was Jesus Human or Divine, and Who Says So?

          A.          The Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed

                    The Da Vinci Code makes it sound like the Roman Emperor Constantine manipulated or coerced the Council of Nicea into dictating that Jesus was divine, when (so Brown claims) the early church really believed He was merely human.  Let’s look at that.  The Council of Nicea[1] was convened in AD 325 by Constantine (a Christian) because he wanted peace and unity in the empire.  There was a debate going on among the churches about the exact nature of Jesus’ deity, and he felt it would help the unity of the empire if they could agree on that important doctrinal point. The question was not whether Jesus was divine, but in exactly what way was He divine.  They were debating and asking whether Jesus was of the same essence (they used the word substance, but they didn’t mean physical substance) as God the Father, or only of similar substance (essence) as God the Father.  In the end, they agreed on this wording, which we have in the Nicene Creed printed in our hymnbook. 

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty

Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds;

God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God;

begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father…

          So no, it is not historically accurate to say that the early church really believed Jesus was merely human.  Nor is it correct that Constantine manipulated the Council.  There were about 300 bishops present, with perhaps another 1200 deacons and elders, and they discussed this question for a month before coming to a conclusion that all but 2 of the bishops could agree on.[2]  The point is that these church leaders had no political agenda: they were simply searching for the truth about Jesus.  Why did they come to the conclusion they did?  One major factor was the claims Jesus made about Himself. 

          B.          Jesus’ claims

                    In the earliest written records of Jesus’ life – the gospels we have in the New Testament, which were written in the last half of the first century—Jesus Himself certainly claimed to be divine.  We have such statements as these:

·        John 10:30, “I and the Father are one."

·        John 14:9, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.“

·        John 15:23, “He who hates me hates my Father as well.”

·        John 8:58, "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I AM!"  He took the name of the God who appeared to Moses at the burning bush.

Jesus also claimed to be able to do things that only God can do, like forgive sins (Matt 9:2), and judge the world (Matt 25:31-46).  The reason the early Christians believed Jesus was divine was because He claimed to be so, and then proved it by rising from the dead.  This belief in Jesus’ deity was not something that the hierarchical, organized, politicized “Church” imposed on ignorant Christians; it was foundational to the understanding of all Christians from the very beginning. 

II.       What Books Should Be in the New Testament?

          A.          The Council of Nicea

                    The Da Vinci Code says that the Council of Nicea established the canon of the New Testament, leaving out other “gospels” that give a very different view of Jesus, as human.  Brown says many other books were in serious contention for inclusion in the Bible, but were excluded by people with a political agenda, namely: they wanted to squash the “truth” that Jesus was fully human and had a child by Mary Magdalene. 

          The word “canon” means the accepted standard.  The canon of Scripture is the list of books that are recognized as inspired by God, and therefore authoritative.  Interestingly, the Council of Nicea did not even address the question of the canon.  They issued the Nicene Creed and twenty other statements, but none of them dealt with the canon of the New Testament.[3]  The notion that the Council determined the New Testament is just a piece of fiction that Brown made up for the sake of his story.

          The canon of scripture[4] was determined by church leaders compiling books that early Christians found were inspired by God, relevant to the historical situations in which they lived, consistent with the Hebrew Old Testament, and authored by an apostle or close associate of an apostle. The books considered authoritative were not hammered out in large, bureaucratic Church council meetings, but in the secret worship sessions of lower-class peasant Christians. While church leaders did finally solidify the canon, this was a relatively late development, based on the consensus of the whole Church. 

          B.          The “other gospels” (the Gnostics)

                    Brown says that there were other “gospels” like the gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip, etc. which were excluded from the New Testament (he says) because they taught Jesus was fully human and not divine.  He wants to say that the truth of Jesus’ humanity was suppressed by “the church”.  In fact, the exact opposite was true.  These “other gospels” portrayed Jesus as fully divine, and not so human as in the canonical gospels that were accepted.  These “other gospels” were written one to two centuries later than the eyewitness accounts in the New Testament, by followers of the philosophy called Gnosticism.            Gnosticism was essentially dualistic in nature; that is, they believed that matter was evil, and spirit was good.  Therefore, they taught that Jesus, being good, was fully divine, but not fully man.  We have an example of this view in the Gospel of Judas that has been in the news recently.  It has Jesus saying to Judas, "You will sacrifice the man that clothes me."  The point being made there is that Jesus was essentially divine, but housed in a human shell, or clothing.  This is exactly the opposite of what Brown says the Gnostic gospels teach. 

          The Gnostic gospels were not serious contenders for inclusion in the New Testament.  Christians had always believed, from the very beginning, that Jesus was fully God and fully man, and therefore they rejected the later Gnostic attempts to rewrite history.[5]

          The real hot-button question the book raises is,

III.      Was Jesus Married?

          The book says that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and they had a child, and their heirs are still alive today.  The conspiracy, which gives the book its appeal, is that the Church has “engaged in the greatest cover-up in human history” in an attempt to snuff out this “truth”, which the book asserts, “is a matter of historical record.”  The book takes its name from the allegation that one of the figures next to Jesus in Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, is actually Mary, not John, and that this is a code that Da Vinci knew about it and was trying to show the intimate relationship between Mary and Jesus. 

          Brown’s characters claim that these descendants of Mary and Jesus were kept under cover to protect them from the “church” which would have killed them to protect the false claim that Jesus was divine, but they managed to live, and procreate, and actual physical descendants of Jesus married into the French royal family.   

          What can we say about this?  No biblical text, or any writing from early church fathers gives any historical support to the notion that Jesus was married.  Four different men wrote about Jesus’ life—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—you would think at least one of them would have mentioned something as significant as His marriage.  Only one of the Gnostic gospels, the Gospel of Philip, suggests that Jesus and Mary were married,[6] and it was written two hundred years after the original eyewitnesses. 

          As for Da Vinci’s “code”, art historians are united in their conclusion that the person in the painting alleged to be Mary is, in fact, John.[7]  I think the most convincing argument for this is the question, “If that’s Mary, where is John?”  There are only twelve people besides Jesus in the painting, and it is inconceivable that Da Vinci would leave John out.  If you look closely at the picture, the person just to the left of Jesus (on His right) does appear somewhat effeminate, but that was the style of painting that was in vogue in Florence at that time.[8]

          So in summary, what we can say is that Dan Brown has simply made up some things that fit with the story he wants to tell, and has woven them into the factual historical framework so skillfully that if you don’t know your history all that well (and how many people are experts at Gnostic history, or art history?) you could easily believe that the whole thing is true—especially since Brown himself hints as much at the beginning of the book. 

IV.     The Real Danger

          You’ve no doubt heard that our culture is becoming more post-modern, but you may not know what that means.  Among other things, postmodernism is a resurgence of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.  Gnostics believed that historical facts were not nearly as important as one’s personal experience of Christ.  The word “Gnostic” comes from the Greek word for knowledge; Gnosticism emphasized personal, experiential, and often secret knowledge that only the “cognoscenti” had.  If you were a Gnostic, you were “in the know.”  Postmodernism also belittles history and facts in favor of personal experience.  Near the end of the movie, Tom Hanks’ character says to the heroine, “The only thing that matters is what you believe.”  The context is that the facts of history do not matter at all, only what you believe matters.  That’s why you will sometimes hear postmodernists say in response to Christians’ claims, “It’s true for you; it’s not true for me.”  If you look at that statement closely, you will see that it is rightly called “non-sense”.  It makes no sense at all to say something can be true and not true at the same time.   You can say you don’t believe it, but not that it isn’t true just because you don’t believe it.   But this is the post-modern mind set.  If religion is not a matter of objective truth, but just inner experience, why not let an enjoyable thriller teach us about Jesus?  Many people today won’t care that Brown plays fast and loose with the facts about Jesus, or about Da Vinci’s paintings.  Facts aren’t all that important to them; they just believe the parts that they want to believe. 

          A George Barna poll found that 53 percent of the book's readers said that it aided their "personal spiritual growth and understanding."[9]  “Upon reading the book, many people said they encountered information that confirmed what they already believed. Many readers found information that served to connect some of their beliefs in new ways.”[10]   That’s the real danger in this book and movie – it reinforces falsehoods that people already believe or want to believe. 

          This problem is exacerbated by the suspicion that many people have toward the institutional church.  The book is a fairly heavy-handed attack on the Catholic Church, and by extension on all organized churches.  Many people today are very spiritual, but they do not trust organized religion (and to be fair, we’d have to say they often have good reasons for that).  So the book plays right into their prior suspicions, and gives them plenty of (false) reasons not to trust churches at all. 

V.      Our Opportunity

          So what should our response be to this situation?  Some Christians have advocated boycotting the movie, on the grounds that it teaches heresy and we therefore should not support it in any way.  I can understand that position, and respect it, but I think that so many people have already read the book, and so many are going to see the movie anyway (thanks to lots of publicity, not great reviews of the movie), we would do better to see this as an opportunity. 

          We loved The Passion of the Christ because it accurately portrayed the suffering of Jesus and put it in a thoroughly biblical context.  The Da Vinci Code does not do that, but it still gives us an opportunity to talk to people about matters of faith.  Dan Brown himself said, “My hope for The Da Vinci Code was, in addition to entertaining people, that it might serve as an open door for readers to begin their own explorations and rekindle their interest in topics of faith.”  My personal opinion is that Dan Brown’s intention in writing this book was not just to entertain, which it does beautifully, but to promote his own belief system.  But regardless, it does give us the opportunity to talk with people about matters of faith. 

          The book and movie raise questions about the deity of Christ, when the New Testament was formalized, and how it was decided what books should be in it, the nature of Jesus’ relationship with Mary, and, at a larger level, the role of history in faith. 

          A.          Fast-food religion

                    Christianity is perhaps the only world religion that is so thoroughly based on a historical event.  Most other religions are based on the teachings of their founder, and the historical events don’t matter.  In other words, those faiths do not make “truth-claims” that can be verified.  Hinduism teaches reincarnation, but that is not provable or disprovable.  Buddhism merely teaches a moral code to live by.  Animism says the world is dominated by spirits.  But Christianity bases its entire validity on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  As Paul said, 1 Cor. 15:17-19 (NLT), “if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation for your sins. [18] In that case, all who have died believing in Christ have perished! [19] And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world.”   The whole of Christianity hangs on the historical event of the resurrection.  If it could be proven that Christ did not rise from the dead, Christianity would be proven to be false in its entirety.   So it is worth engaging people in a discussion of what do they believe and why.  Do they have good reasons for their faith, or is it merely a collection of ideas that seem good to them?  The difference between basing your religious faith on feelings or on facts is something like the difference between a person who eats mostly fast food, depending on whatever appeals to them at the moment, and one who follows the government’s nutritional guidelines for healthy eating.  We have seen from the experience of the guy who ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a month and nearly killed himself that this is no trivial difference.  In the same way, picking only those parts of religious faith that feel good is equally dangerous to our souls.  We were designed by our Creator to function best on a healthy, balanced diet; and we were designed by that same Creator to need truth in our religious faith.  Believing something is true does not make it true.  We need a reason to believe, and that reason must be true.  Christianity provides such a truth, and other religions, or the individualized faiths of most of our friends, do not.    [SLIDE OFF]

          So my encouragement to you is to read the book, or see the movie, and take someone with you to see it.  Or at least ask people if they’ve seen it or read it, and if they have, begin to ask them some questions about their reaction to it. 

          We have provided you with a number of helpful resources on the Information Center counter that will arm you with the facts you need for such a discussion.  Campus Crusade for  Christ has produced this one, “The Da Vinci Code: A Companion Guide to the Movie”, by Josh McDowell.  McDowell also has a short novelette, The Da Vinci Code: A Quest for Answers, which provides many more facts in the context of a story about some friends who decide to read the book together and discover the truth in the process.  And this little one, “Breaking the Da Vinci Code”, is a very concise analysis of three of the major issues raised by the book.  All three of these pieces include a presentation of the gospel message for anyone who wants to compare it to the religion of occult feminism presented in the book and movie.  So take one or more of these, bone up on the facts, engage your friends in conversation, and give them one of these to take home and chew on, and then talk about it later with them.  This sermon, with footnotes, will also be available on the church web site www.faithepc.org if you wanted to capture some of the specific points I made today.  It is also available on tape or CD by filling out a request form just outside the office door. 

          I think that for many of us, the hardest part in “fishing for men” is just getting up off the couch and putting our line in the water.  This book and movie will help us do that.  It will make it easy to get started in a conversation about the Bible and Jesus Christ, and once you’ve broken the ice, and gotten into it, the Holy Spirit can direct the conversation wherever He wants.  At least, that’s what we should pray that He will do.  We need to pray much for our friends, and ask God to use us to draw them closer to Himself.