Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church : Kewanee, Illinois

The Da Vinci Code: Old Heresy, New Clothes
By Charles Lehmann

The Sainted Apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Galatia writes: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned." (Galatians 1:8, NIV)

Christians sometimes are given a bad reputation for taking stands against works of literature. Sometimes, that reputation is well earned. Sometimes, we are revealing ourselves to be artless and legalistic. But when we condemn Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, it is not one of those times. Saint Paul's words are apt when authors like Brown sling satanic arrows at the truths, drawn from Scripture, that the Church has always confessed.

Brown draws on a mythos that fascinates the American mind. He endeavors to tell the "true story" of the Holy Grail. We love Grail stories. We love watching Arthur answer "these questions three" at the Bridge of Despair. We shiver when the Knight Templar, within an ancient city, says to Indiana Jones, "you have chosen. . . wisely." Dan Brown also spins a good yarn. I read The Da Vinci Code in one sitting of about ten hours.

Unfortunately, that is the problem. Brown is such a skilled wordsmith that it gives his message credibility when it deserves none. His book could easily shake the faith of one who is weak. It should not be read by any not well versed in the history of the early Church.

In brief, this is Brown's argument:

The Early Church never believed, taught, or confessed that Jesus was divine. This belief was the result of a really close vote in 325 at the Council of Nicea.
Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and intended her to lead his church after his death.
At the time of Jesus death, Mary Magdalene (The Holy Grail) was pregnant with Jesus' child (The Blood of Christ). This child, named Sarah, was later born and raised in France, where Jesus' descendants became the Merovingians of Paris.
After Jesus' death, Peter and the apostles, jealous of Mary Magdelene, usurped her authority and built a male-god Jesus myth based on the pagan rites of Mithras and other pagan Roman gods.
The text for the New Testament books was not set until well into the fourth century (at the earliest).

Here's a Christian response.

The New Testament is unequivocal about Jesus' divinity. We can see from early liturgies of the church that we have worshiped Jesus Christ as true God ever since the age of the apostles. The vote at the council of Nicea was not a johnny-come-lately attempt to deify Jesus. It condemned a new heretical teaching by a renegade Alexandrian theologian named Arius. Arius taught of Christ that "there was when he was not," denying His divinity. At Nicea, Arianism was condemned. The Nicene Creed was there confessed, not as a new teaching, but as what the Scriptures had always taught.
That Jesus intended Mary Magdalene to lead the church after his death is an argument that is inextricably bound up with Brown's idea of "the sacred feminine." Brown is essentially a dualist. God must have a male and female element. The female element, he argues, is Mary Magdalene. In support of this and Jesus marriage to Magdalene, Brown offers that there were over 80 "gospels" written but only four included in the Bible. Among these other "gospels" are the "gnostic gospels," including the oft touted Gospel of Thomas. Gnosticism, like Brown, embraces a dualistic view of the cosmos.
The canon of the New Testament was determined by a number of factors. Apostolic authorship was one such element. This is why we have so many New Testament pseudepigrapha, that is, books that have the name of an apostle tacked onto them even though the apostle did not write them. None of these are in the New Testament. In fact, many pseudepigrapha were written after their namesakes died. Another factor was adherence to the regula fidei or "rule of faith." This was the teaching of the apostles. It was known that if a book didn't confess what the apostles confessed then it could not be the Word of God. It is on this basis that Brown?s other "gospels" were rejected. Also, none of these other "gospels" were regularly used in the congregations of the early church.
Though the Scriptures do not directly say, "Jesus never married," we do know that he never did. A brief look at a few passages will be helpful in this regard. Matthew 8:20 teaches that Christ had nowhere to "lay his head." Jewish men were expected to be able to provide a home for their wives. Jesus had no home. Far stronger is Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church." Throughout the New Testament we are taught that the Church is the Bride of Christ. Indeed heaven is described as the wedding feast. Our good works are our wedding gown. (Revelation 19) One of my students, a high school sophomore, is quick to point out, "Why would Jesus provide for His mother as He died on the cross, but not His soon to be widowed wife?" Steve asks a good question.
Though there were legends among early heretics about Mary Magdalene doing all sorts of odd things, no one close to the apostles ever touted such lies. We can dispose of these legends along with the imaginary marriage.
Liberal "scholars" of the 20th centuries love apostolic conspiracy theories. The usual suspect is Paul, who they will say made up such silly doctrines as "justification by grace through faith." Laying the blame at Peter's feet is only slightly innovative. It is true that many pagan religions of the past and present involve cycles of life, death, and resurrection, but the 1st century historical evidence for the reality of Jesus? death and resurrection are simply too strong to be ignored. Even Roman officials and non-Christian Jewish historians of the first century acknowledged the truth of many events in Jesus' life.
The claim that the text of the New Testament was set late in history is one of the more absurd claims Brown makes. We have thousands of manuscripts that are in essential agreement on the text of the New Testament. The earliest come from less than fifty years after the books were originally written. Some non-Christian scholars of the Bible will even acknowledge this.

For those who would like more detailed reviews of the material in The Da Vinci Code, I would recommend the following excellent analyses:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/september2003/feature1.htm

http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html

Suffice to say, Dan Brown does indeed proclaim a gospel other than the one entrusted to us by our Lord Christ and His apostles. When we are presented with claims like these, we need only look to the faithful Word that Christ has given us. There we will find the truth of the matter.

In His Service,

Charles Lehmann