May 7, 2006

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Deciphering the Da Vinci Code

Colossians 2:8-19

I received an interesting phone call a few weeks ago.  The woman on the other end explained that she presently lived in another state, but she and her husband were planning to move to Mount Vernon.  She wanted to know about our church to see if she would feel welcome here.  She said, “I am a very spiritual person.  I have a very close relationship with Jesus, but I also have a strong attraction to Buddha and his teachings, as well as Hinduism.  I like to study various religions and benefit from all their teachings.  I am very much into spiritual things.”  This is a growing trend in our culture: People who are attracted to spirituality, but who do not want to subscribe to any settled specifics, especially in regard to Christianity. 

            I assured her that she would be very welcome here, and I hope she comes.  But when she does, I trust that she will eventually understand that Christianity is not a smorgasbord of religious ideas, and that Jesus is not just one among many religious figures.  Jesus is unique in the history of the world, and his teachings complete our spiritual understanding and provide everything necessary in order for us to know God and live for him.  Jesus is not one religious leader along the path of spirituality, he is the end of faith.  Ben Witherington, in his excellent book on this subject The Gospel Code, states: “Western culture is a Jesus-haunted culture, and yet one that is largely biblically illiterate.”  And therein lies the problem.  We have an affinity for Jesus, but we do not understand his claim of being the universal and exclusive Savior of the world.  He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  We hear those words, but don’t take seriously the exclusive nature of Jesus’ claims.  The reason The Da Vinci Code, and similar books and films, have the potential for being very misleading to the general American public is that we are disinterested in truth and ignorant of the teachings of Scripture. 

            Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code is well written and full of suspense.  If you take the book for what it is, a fiction thriller, then it is great reading.  After all, it is now the best-selling fiction book of all time.  I am sure the film which comes out this month will be equally entertaining.  The problem is that many people will read the book, or see the film, will be overwhelmed with all the questions and assertions thrown at them, and not know where historical fact ends and the book’s fiction begins.  Many will take it as serious historical research, and mistakenly believe it gives the real story behind the New Testament, the church, and the character of Jesus.  

            Dan Brown begins his book with a page titled “FACT,” which says that not only is there a Priory of Sion and a Catholic sect known as Opus Dei, but that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”  Historian Dr. Paul Maier, at Western Michigan University, disagrees.  He says, “Detailing all the errors, misinterpretations, deceptions, distortions, and outright falsehoods in The Da Vinci Code makes one wonder whether Brown’s manuscript ever underwent editorial scrutiny or fact-checking.”  But whether or not Dan Brown actually intended for people to take the book as historical fact or not, the reality is that many people are taking it as “gospel truth”.  And this provides us with an excellent opportunity to review the basic tenets of our faith. 

            Much of the material from the book is taken from another book (whose authors recently sued Dan Brown) called Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and the theme and message of the books are essentially the same.  The inside flap of the book cover of Holy Blood, Holy Grail asks these questions:

$          Is the traditional, accepted view of the life of Christ in some way incomplete?

$          Is it possible Christ did not die on the cross?

$          Is it possible Jesus was married, a father, and that his bloodline still exists?

$          Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of the best-kept secrets of Christendom?

$          Is it possible that these parchments contain the very heart of the mystery of the Holy Grail?

At one point, Teabing, one of the main characters of the Da Vinci Code asserts that “almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.” 

            So what is The Da Vinci Code saying?  What is the story line?  In a nutshell, the story begins in France where the lead character, Robert Langdon, from Harvard University is visiting as a guest lecturer.  The French Police come to his hotel and take him to the Louvre Museum to assist in the investigation of a murder which has taken place in its silent, after-hour halls.  The murder is an attempt to conceal a secret that has been held by a clandestine society since the days of Christ.  Before his brutal murder, Jacques Sauniere, the museum’s chief curator, leaves a variety of clues around the gallery where he has locked himself in trying to escape his killer.  His body lies in a symbolic pose beneath da Vinci’s painting of Mona Lisa.  Langdon does not realize that he is actually a suspect in the murder.  He narrowly escapes with the help of the beautiful police cryptographer Sophie Neveu (whose name means “New Wisdom”).  It turns out that the murdered Sauniere is not only Sophie’s estranged Grandfather, but he is also the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion — a clandestine society with a secret, which, if revealed, would destroy the Christian church as we know it.  Langdon and Neveu find several puzzling codes at the murder scene, all of which form a treasure map to the fabled Holy Grail.  Their flight from the police takes them through France and England, and several centuries of history.  During their quest, Langdon lectures Sophie about the fallacies of Christianity and the Bible, as well as the evils of the church. 

            Langdon tells Sophie that Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus intended to be the real head apostle, not Peter.  He tells her the proof is that Mary, not John, is pictured sitting next to Jesus in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper — da Vinci being a member of the secret society.  He explains that the Holy Grail was not the chalice used at the Last Supper to symbolize his blood, but the womb of Mary Magdalene where the blood line of Jesus would continue.  She bore a daughter to Jesus whose name was Sarah.  The descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene became the Kings of France, among other nobles and artisans.  Jesus was not actually the Son of God, he was a man like any other man.  He was a mortal prophet, and influenced many people for the good, but according to the story, his original disciples never identified him with God.  His deification took place only because the emperor Constantine wanted to give power to the Roman Catholic Church which supported him politically.  So, according to the conspiracy theory, prior to A.D. 325, no one believed Jesus was divine.  And even then, the vote regarding Jesus’ divinity at the Council was very close. 

            There are several key points of conflict between the biblical and Christian historical accounts and The Da Vinci Code.  The first is this: The nature of Jesus Christ.  According to the book, Jesus was not divine, did not die on the cross for our sins and did not rise from the dead.  Instead, he married Mary Magdalene, had a family, and Mary and her daughter eventually moved to France.  The claim is made that certain documents suggest that Jesus and Mary were married.  At the heart of the Christian faith is the reality of who Jesus is.  The Christian faith teaches that Jesus Christ is a part of the divine Trinity, and he existed before the world or time began.  Jesus Christ came to earth from his heavenly kingdom in order to seek and save his creation.  This was the incarnation — God coming in the flesh, as a human, to the world he made.  This is what we mean by Emmanuel — God with us, in the person of Jesus.  He not only came to the world, but died for the sins of the world, rose from the dead, and lives and reigns over the universe.  He created the world, and will return to the world to call history to a close and usher in new heavens and a new earth.  He will then reign over a new kingdom of righteousness and peace that will never end.  If there is any mystery to the life of Christ, it as the Bible says, “Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory” (1 Timothy 3:16). 

            Contrast, then, Christian teaching to the purported secret that Jesus was an ordinary man, with an ordinary birth and death, who fathered children by one of his female disciples, and that it was only a Roman Emperor who tried to make him divine hundreds of years after his death.  Remember that it was “doubting” Thomas who held the nail-scared hands of Jesus after his resurrection and proclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).  Jesus’ response to him was, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).  Peter said to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).  So the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were the ones who proclaimed Jesus to be God, not just a church council hundreds of years later.  The Bible says of Jesus: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.  After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Hebrews 1:3).  And these New Testament books, which speak of the deity of Jesus in more places than we can even begin to cover this morning, were written many years before the so-called Gnostic gospels — where Brown claims to glean his information. 

            The second point of conflict between the Da Vinci Code and Scripture is this: The nature of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  The book makes the case that Jesus and Mary were married and had a daughter.  This information supposedly comes from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, discovered only 60 years ago at Nag Hammadi in the desert of Egypt.  However, the Gospel of Philip does not make any such claim.  It does say that Mary was a “companion” of Jesus, but the New Testament also makes this claim.  It says, “Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.  The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Cuza. . . .  and many others.  These women were helping to support them out of their own means” (Luke 8:1-3).  The Gospel of Philip also says that Jesus kissed Mary, but if this happened it is probably nothing more than a kiss of greeting.  This was common in the early church.  Paul writes the Romans, Corinthians and Thessalonians and says, “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:26).  Even liberal feminist Karen King of Harvard University states in her book that the kiss spoken of in the Gospel of Philip is most likely a chaste kiss of fellowship.  Even so, a kiss is a long way from marriage, which is not stated in this document or any other early document in existence. 

            The third conflict between the book and the Bible is: The nature of Scripture.  Brown has one of the characters in the story say, “The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.”  Actually, I would agree with that statement.  God spoke through real, living people to communicate his Word to us.  He did not dictate the Bible into the ears of those who wrote it.  He did, however, inspire their minds and hearts as they wrote in order to give us reliable documents.  The Bible freely talks of this when it says, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation.  For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).  The implication in the book is that these recently discovered documents are just a legitimate as anything in the New Testament, and possibly more so since the church tried to suppress them.  The point is that these documents would not have been discarded and lost if the early Christians thought they were reliable.  First, they were written much later than the New Testament documents, which means they were that much farther from the eyewitnesses who actually knew Jesus and were taught by him.  Secondly, the earliest Christians did not find them reliable.  Third, the authors of these documents were not whom they claimed to be. 

            The fourth conflict between the book and the Christian faith is: The nature of the church.  The book assumes that the church is basically a corrupt organization which covers up truth in order to protect itself.  The church, according to Dan Brown’s book, knew all along that Jesus was married, but tried to hide the truth because its power and influence over people would be diminished.  The book implies that no one believed Jesus was divine before the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325.  However, the apostle Paul spoke of, “Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” (Romans 9:5).  The New Testament states, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9).  These statements were made long before any church council existed — even before the church was formally organized. 

            There is a good reason these Gnostic writings were lost — the early Christians did not believe they were reliable, and they conflicted with the truth they had been taught by the Apostles — those who knew Jesus.  Just reading some of the Gnostic gospels, as I have done, you will immediately see that the quality and consistency of the writing cannot compare with the eloquence and clarity of the New Testament documents.  And to denigrate the church because they did not promote these pseudo gospels is a serious error.  In fact, the Council of Nicea was called to counter the heresies, Gnostic and otherwise, which were vying for attention at that time.  The church carefully guarded what it knew to be true and rejected what it knew to be false. 

            No serious biblical scholar today, whether liberal or conservative, believes that Jesus was married or had a sexual relationship with any woman.  The church, as imperfect as it has been throughout history, has preserved the truth about Jesus Christ as passed down to us by those who saw him, touched him and knew him intimately.  The New Testament exists in its present form today because these documents over many others had the ring of truth.  Many documents, like the Gnostic writings, and others as well, were rejected because they had an obvious agenda and were understood to be false teaching.  Jesus Christ is the pre-existent Son of God who came into the world to redeem sinners like me.  For one, I am eternally grateful that truth has been preserved so that I might understand it and come to know God personally. 

            Brown is correct in emphasizing the importance of the Council of Nicea.  The newly converted Roman Emperor Constantine called bishops from around the world to present-day Turkey to settle an all-important matter.  A man named Arius and his small following began to say that Jesus was not God in the flesh who had come to earth, but was merely a created being.  This was not what the church at large had understood and accepted from the beginning.  More importantly, this was the very truth that Christians had been willing to die for — and did.  It is absurd to say, as Brown claims, that “until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.”  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The truth of Christ’s deity was a reality for which men and women gave up their lives, before the Council of Nicea was even thought of, in order to be a true and faithful witness to their divine, living and loving Savior who had come to redeem them and transform their lives.  Christians did not admire Jesus, they worshiped him. 

            And, by the way, instead of the vote regarding the divinity of Christ at the Council of Nicea being “very close” as The Da Vinci Code claims, the truth is that only two expressed doubts in the vote — 318 declared their faith that Jesus Christ was indeed God, the divine Savior of the world. 

Rodney J. Buchanan

May 7, 2006

Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH