And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten…   -- Justin Martyr, 165AD

Why Should One Believe The Bible?

Copyright not reserved, so long as document repoduced in its entirety and without annotations or modifications.

May 5, 2006

Introduction

            The history of the Bible is, for too many Christians, an unknown history that leaves them vulnerable to attack.  If one won’t believe that the Gospels are all wrong, then convince one that the Pauline letters are wrong; after that the book of John is wrong; and then that Mathew, Mark, and Luke are really corruptions of “Q”; then that accounts of the resurrection were added later; that there are “suppressed” gospels; and that Constantine cooked the books to consolidate power.  In the end, even if one is not turned into an agnostic, or even into a Gnostic, one may concede that while there may be some vague truth here and there in the Bible, there is enough doubt to prevent one from becoming very excited about it.  It is scandalously easy to pervert history when hardly anyone knows the real history. 

            Popular knowledge of Early Church history often stops at the Pastoral Epistles, about 60AD.  History then restarts sometime after the 1500’s when the reformer or restorer of one’s choice reinstituted the church by following either Luther’s translation or the King James Bible that…dropped straight out of Heaven?

           All protestant denominations are predicated on the original church being corrupted at some point between Pentecost and the Papacy.  Although the Papacy began to be firmly established (i.e., the bishop of Rome assuming a greater authority over all other bishops) only in the 400 – 500AD time period and was only made absolute after the schism of 1054AD, it had hints of turning in that direction as early as 200AD; and apostolic succession was adhered to in the first century and was institutionalized in the second.  The problem, though, is that the New Testament was only finalized by the Early Church in 367AD.  It is at least implied, by restoration and by some reformation movements, that the Early Church had gone very wrong sometime after 60AD after which it was not inspired by the Holy Spirit in much of anything.  But somehow the Early Church, at least until 367AD, was inspired to select and preserve the New Testament.  A strange inconsistency.    

            The attitude in protestant denominations is almost that of “don’t ask, don’t tell” or even “don’t ask, because I don’t know” when it comes to the origin of the New Testament and the three hundred years of missing history.  The attitude in the Roman Catholic Church seems to be that they have been too busy in the last fifty years to teach their own church history and doctrine to their own members.  But if one does not know the history of the Bible and the Church that guarded it, the Bible cannot be defended except as an article of blind faith.  Saying that one believes the Bible (and why not the Koran or even the Church of the Sub Genius?) as an article of blind faith simply will not do.  The history of the Bible and the history of the Early Church are intertwined.  A few might be in danger of jumping ship for some ancient branch of Christianity¹, through an obsession with Early Church history; but the alternative is to be in danger of jumping the ship of Christianity altogether.  It is fine to argue within scripture, but if scripture itself cannot be defended then one simply has no foundation.  Otherwise the most imbecilic attacks against Christianity (e.g., The Da Vinci Code) will meet with little resistance. 

            To summarize The Da Vinci Code: Christ meant for Mary Magdalene (who he was romantically involved with) to be the leader of his sect (which was supposed to be a sort of Gnostic movement where pagan sex rituals were sacred, and where god was in all of us to be found through inner wisdom) after his death [apparently he stayed dead].  But Peter the woman hater chassed Mary off to Gaul where she gave birth to Christ’s offspring and a blood line still exists [i.e., Brown’s version of the “Grail”].  That was so that Peter could take charge and be powerful.  Three hundred years later, Constantine became head honcho of the Roman Empire by hijacking Christianity and inventing the idea that Christ was divine for the first time [the time being 300 years after Christ] and invented or at least radically edited the New Testament at the council of Nicaea.  That immediately instituted the “Vatican” [no mention of the Orthodox Church—it was excommunicated by the Roman Church but very considerately kept all of Rome’s secrets for the past 900 years?], which jealously guards the secret of Mary Magdalene to this day.  But [Leonardo from the town of] Vinci knew it all and put secret hints in paintings [which art historians think is silly²].  A group still keeps an eye on the heirs and will someday proclaim one of the heirs as the new emperor of Europe. 

            The tale tries to make some use of Gnosticism, which was a heresy of the second and third centuries.  Gnosticism was a belief that there were multiple gods, and an evil god made the earth and all that is in it.   This completely rejects the God of the Old Testament.  One of the good gods sent Jesus by (pick one) possessing the body of a mere man, sending a phantasm who merely looked human, or by adopting a good man.  The doctrine is not that there is a redeemer or a mediator, but rather than each person, through secret knowledge, can divorce themselves from the evil world until they are pure spirits.  This caters very much to the modern day pathological narcissism that inflicts so many who want to be their own little gods of their own little selves who really are quite wonderful and need no saving.  Some Gnostics held all flesh and material things to be evil and were ascetics; while others (Brown fits in here) decided that if all flesh was bad anyway, that there was no way to make it worse and thereby committed atrocious acts to prove the point.            

            Stated in one paragraph the novel looks like somebody needs to start taking their medicine again.  But Brown is clever enough to be very easy going the first couple of hundred pages while building empathy with the characters and spinning an interesting premise, and only then slowly throws a few darts at organized religion; then attacks the “Vatican” (which technically speaking did not exist until the 1200’s); then tries to pull the rug out from under all Christianity; and by the end of the book he has thrown every sample of new age crap he could lay his hands on in its place (e.g., pentagrams, Wicca, satanic symbols, sex rituals, pagan goddesses, snake worship).  This essay will address the history of the New Testament and the Early Church, while stopping here and there to address Dan Brown’s so-called facts. 

Who wrote the books and why were they recognized as being holy:

            Christ died 30-33AD.  Paul’s epistles first appeared about twenty to thirty years later, and the last of the works to be included in the New Testament were written mostly before or around 80AD.  The apostles were the witnesses to Christ. After Pentecost, those witnesses spread the gospel.  Their mission was the founding of churches and passing on the gospel in person.  As the Apostles grew near to the ends of their lives they recorded their gospels to preserve their first hand accounts.  At the same time, the letters of the apostles began to be treasured as instructions as to the conduct of the Early Churches.  The Early Church assemblies were like the Jewish synagogue services in that prayers were said, scripture was read, and someone discussed the scripture, among other things.   The writings of the apostles were part of the Early Church.

            The books in the New Testament were written by apostles or by those who were in direct contact with them.  Clement, who was killed by the Romans in 99AD, wrote that “those which contain the genealogies were written first; but that the gospel of Mark was occasioned in the following manner: ‘When Peter had proclaimed the word publicly in Rome, and declared the gospel under the influence of the spirit; as there was a great number present, they requested Mark, who had followed him from afar, and remembered well what he had said, to reduce these things to writing, and that after composing the gospel he gave it to those who requested it of him.  Which, when Peter understood, he directly neither hindered nor encouraged it.  But John, last of all, perceiving that what had reference to the body in the gospel of our savior, was sufficiently detailed, and being encouraged by his familiar friends, and urged by the spirit, he wrote a spiritual gospel.’”  The gospels were recognized and referenced in writing by the Church Fathers not more than twenty years after they were written, and even while John at least, was still alive.  The gospels with genealogies, Matthew and Luke, were written for the Jews, the point being that the genealogies needed to trace Christ’s relation to King David.  Mark was written in Rome for the gentiles, and dispensed with genealogies.  John is the longest gospel, as it was the last gospel written; any thing that needed to be written that was not in a previous gospel had one last chance to be included. 

Later on, Irenaus (writing in Against Heresies around 182AD), wrote: “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church.  After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter.  Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him.  Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.”

            Other early writers, some of whom were contemporaries of the apostles, (Clement, Polycarp, et al) and other documents (e.g., the Didache) were rejected simply because they were not apostolic, despite them being entirely consistent with the canonical works.  One entry from Clement’s Epistle to the Corinthians (Ch 7) reads: “Let us look steadfastly to the blood of Christ, and see how precious that blood is to God, which, having been shed for our salvation, has set the grace of repentance before the whole world.”  Chapter 32 states: “And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever.”  Clement rejected the Gnostic idea of secret wisdom and his writings refer to substitutionary atonement as well.  This work is notable in that it was lost in antiquity and was rediscovered by the Greek Orthodox Church in 1628AD.

            Another work of note is the Epistle of Mathetes of 130AD.  Chapter 5 states:

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

Chapter 7 states:

For, as I said, this was no mere earthly invention which was delivered to them, nor is it a mere human system of opinion, which they judge it right to preserve so carefully, nor has a dispensation of mere human mysteries been committed to them, but truly God Himself, who is almighty, the Creator of all things, and invisible, has sent from heaven, and placed among men, [Him who is] the truth, and the holy and incomprehensible Word, and has firmly established Him in their hearts. He did not, as one might have imagined, send to men any servant, or angel, or ruler, or any one of those who bear sway over earthly things, or one of those to whom the government of things in the heavens has been entrusted, but the very Creator and Fashioner of all things—by whom He made the heavens—by whom he enclosed the sea within its proper bounds—whose ordinances all the stars faithfully observe…This [messenger] He sent to them. Was it then, as one  might conceive, for the purpose of exercising tyranny, or of inspiring fear and terror? By no means, but under the influence of clemency and meekness. As a king sends his son, who is also a king, so sent He Him; as God He sent Him; as to men He sent Him; as a Savior He sent Him, and as seeking to persuade, not to compel us; for violence has no place in the character of God. As calling us He sent Him, not as vengefully pursuing us; as loving us He sent Him, not as judging us. For He will yet send Him to judge us, and who shall endure His appearing? … Do you not see them exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet not overcome? Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the greater becomes the number of the rest? This does not seem to be the work of man: this is the power of God; these are the evidences of His manifestation. 

Polycarp, writing around 150AD (before he was burned at the stake by the Romans), said: 

“But may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Son of God, and our everlasting High Priest, build you up in faith and truth, and in all meekness, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, forbearance, and purity; and may He bestow on you a lot and portion among His saints, and on us with you, and on all that are under heaven, who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father, who raised Him from the dead.” 

            These extracts are orthodox (orthodox here meaning the conventional understanding of Christianity, including but not exclusive to the Greek Orthodox Church) writings that were not included in the New Testament simply because they were not apostolic.  They also flatly contradict Gnostic positions and reveals Dan Brown’s contention (i.e., that no one thought Christ divine until Constantine in the 300’s) to be a ridiculous lie.   There are many works that agreed with the New Testament that were not included in it.  They were only rejected in the same way that a contemporary publishing house fails to include the works of, for example, Max Lucado in a current printing of the Bible.   A thousand years from now maybe some wild eyed conspiracy theorist will claim that Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, or even Wallace’s Ben-Hur, was a “lost gospel.” 

            The books that were disputed the longest (i.e., James, Hebrews, 2^nd and 3^rd John, Jude, 2^nd Peter, and Revelations) were the books that had disputed authorship, Hebrews being a good example (and, interestingly enough, the apostolic provenance of Hebrews and Revelations were both disputed by Martin Luther).  But again, they were not disputed because of their content, but because of their questionable authorship.   These disputed early writings unambiguously stated that Christ was the Son of God.  The early compilers of the New Testament were not out to stack the deck with as many orthodox gospels as they could find.   

            Until Dan Brown produces his claimed legion of historians that all agree with him, consider what the well known Pulitzer Prize winning historian Will Durant wrote regarding the scriptures.  Durant was an agnostic (raised a Roman Catholic but then turned to the philosophies of Darwin, Marx, et al, and later said that he simply had no conviction regarding “the absolutes”).   In his book Caesar and Christ (1944) he wrote, from the view of a non-believer, regarding the scripture:

The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essential the synoptic gospels [i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke] agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ.  In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies—e.g., Hammurabi, David, Socrates—would fade to legend.  Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest.  Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them.  That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic, so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.  After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.

When, and why, were the books recognized as scripture?

            Again, Clement referred to the four gospels no later than 99AD.  Before 165AD Justin Martyr wrote his First Apology, and that document quoted Matthew, Luke, and John over thirty times, and did not quote at all from the “suppressed gospels.”   This was written to Caesar by Justin as he was led to Rome to be executed.  In about 182AD Irenaeus, who had been a pupil of the martyred Polycarp, wrote in Against Heresies that the four gospels were indeed the only four gospels.  He also listed the authors of the books and, where appropriate, their associations with the apostles (see the prior section for his quote).  In other words, he established the provenance of the works.  It was not enough for the name of an apostle to be written on a scroll—the provenance had to be proved.  Had earlier writers and evangelists referred to them and considered them true?   Did the history of them establish when and where they were written by an apostle?

            But why wait until 182AD, or about one hundred years after they were originally written to state explicitly that they were the only four true gospels?   When they were first written they were the only gospels in existence, and for all one knows there could be an earlier list than Irenaeus’s lying under the desert sand waiting to be discovered.  After that an analogy is in order.  What if someone today developed a ridiculous history of Abraham Lincoln.   Maybe they claimed that he was really a Frenchman who was trying to split the country so the North could develop a new country with Quebec to put a corner on the timber industry in Michigan (call it the Priory of Saw Mill) and that John Wilkes Boothe was an environmentalist opposed to logging.  You know, Abe was the “rail splitter” after all.  What if that person then began to print books about that new history?  In response, bona fide history professors would band together and publish a list of the known reliable histories in print about Lincoln.  That Lincoln lived one hundred and forty years earlier would not matter regarding the validity of that list.  Until there are heretical writings, there is not much point in making a list of the non-heretical writings.    

            There is an inclination by the public to give equal weight to any text from antiquity, as though lies were only recently invented.  But consider the recent past, for example the 1950’s and 1960’s.   One can find booklets from the John Birch Society that claim that Eisenhower was a communist.  How about the writings of Joe McCarthy?  How about the countless contradictory histories of the Kennedy assassination that “prove” that some combination of Castro, Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, the KGB, the CIA, the State Department, the FBI, the Pentagon, and/or the Free Masons were the responsible party?  Go to a book store today and look for books regarding past Presidents: some may be sincere and mostly right, and some are crude hatchet jobs.  A future historian, one hopes, will discount that literature except to note the phenomena of the motivation behind it.  There are countless works of history that are the pure inventions of paranoid and deluded people.  Real historians consider the sources and weigh the evidence.  

            Besides works of outright heresy, there can also be works that appear to be the product of what might be called urban legend.  Possibly someone heard a story from someone who heard a story, and tried to do a good deed by writing it down.  The “infant gospels” and the two-page Gospel of Peter, for example, do not appear to contain anything that would challenge the orthodox understanding of the church (in fact, they rather well support some positions of the church as well as contradicting Gnosticism), but they were simply not apostolic and were probably neither inspired nor eye witness accounts.  The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena, for example, can be best be described as a historical novel (of Paul traveling to Spain).  Again, if a lot of urban legends around Lincoln were to be published (e.g., attributing speeches to him, nice speeches, but speeches that he never made), it would make sense for historians to compile a list of books that were known to be based on bona fide research and on eye witness accounts, even if some of the legends were appealing and did not contradict the character of Lincoln.  The majority of the “lost gospels” had no heretical content; they simply were not genuine. 

            In 190 AD, 20 of the 27 books in the New Testament were recognized in the Muratorian Canon (a list of canonical works in response to the Montanus heresy).   A hundred years before the council of Nicaea, Origen wrote in his Commentaries on Matthew:   “Concerning the four Gospels which alone are uncontroverted in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the Gospel according to Matthew, who was at one time a publican and afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ, was written first; and that he composed it in the Hebrew tongue and published it for the converts from Judaism. The second written was that according to Mark, who wrote it according to the instruction of Peter, who, in his General Epistle, acknowledged him as a son, saying, “The church that is in Babylon, elect together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Mark my son.”   And third, was that according to Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, which he composed for the converts from the Gentiles. Last of all, that according to John.”

           In 367AD (thirty years after Constantine died), St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, made the present list of the New Testament works (this was over forty years after the council of Nicaea—that council did not address the issue of the New Testament).   In 393AD and in 397AD councils were held that formerly acknowledged the completeness and the authority of the New Testament.   These lists of the writings were made as a defense against heresy, and also simply to distinguish between that which was from an apostle versus that which was good but not necessarily apostolic.

            To suppress something sounds like it is a cover up.  The “suppressed” gospels, including the Gnostic writings, were not covered up; rather they were uncovered and discussed at length by the Early Church fathers (especially by Irenaeus in the second century).  It was not suppression but exposition.  Some scholars are aware of heretical writings, now lost, only by reading the detailed refutations of those church fathers.  There are a lot of writings lost to time: since the first century both Rome and Constantinople were sacked at least once, and writings both good and bad have been lost forever.  Writings have been unearthed in the past few hundred years that completely support the orthodox understanding of the Church—those writings were not suppressed, they were simply lost.   The Gnostic gospels were only “suppressed” to the extent that a physics professor may “suppress” a flat earth society pamphlet from being published in his new textbook by carefully explaining how the earth is really round.  Furthermore, how does one in 182AD “suppress” some heretical gospels that had yet to be written?  As well, most heretical gospels were not written in Greek or Hebrews, which the true gospels were, they were written in Coptic (Egyptian) and were written during and after the second century.

Were they tampered with?

            If you do not like history, claim it is false (you know “history was written by the winners”).  So        the claim is that the whole history of the Church, and the Bible, was simply revised to enable a series of power grabs: Peter grabbing power by putting down Mary Magdalene; Constantine made up the divinity of Christ so as to make Christianity more attractive, etc.  But does this make sense?  Look at each issue one at a time:

Was Peter out to gain power, or was something manipulated to empower the Roman Church?

            This might be rephrased, although there is not much real reason to do so, as: was Peter out to invent and empower the Vatican?  The Vatican did not, technically, exist until 1200AD.  The primacy of the Bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope) was not really an issue until a few hundred years after Peter’s death.  So, Peter trying to empower the Papacy is not really an issue.  However, this is an oppurtune time to address the issue of the unadulterated nature of the New Testament in regards to the issue of whether or not the Bishop of Rome added anything to the New Testament to empower the Papacy.

           The only support for the papacy in the New Testament is a reference to Peter as being the rock on which the church would be built, a reference about the keys of Heaven, and to the mere existence of Bishops.  But in the book of Acts it appears as though Peter is not necessarily the head apostle at the first council.  And note that Peter has epistles in the Bible that he personally wrote, and the book of Mark was from his recollections; is one to believe that Peter was a megalomaniac yet failed to avail himself of his chance to, if he had wanted to, declare himself Grand Poobah for life; and to declare that women were still cattle, if he had been a woman hater?  For that matter why tell all future generations that it was he who denied Christ three times the night of Christ’s capture?  Why not claim that he tried to stop it and instead of running in terror he was instead captured and then valiantly escaped?  Why record that he was babbling like a fool at the transfiguration?

            Furthermore, books that would have added to the divinity of, and fear of, Christ were rejected (i.e., the Infancy Gospel attributed to Thomas).  The fear of Christ is significant: the concept of praying to the saints (a Protestant complaint against Roman Catholics) is encouraged by the idea that one can benefit from an intermediary not only to God the Father, but to Christ as well.  As well, the Roman Catholic doctrines of the sinless nature of Mary, and the claim that Jesus’ brothers were from an earlier marriage of Joseph, are firmly supported by the afore mentioned gospel.  For that matter, why is the second book of Maccabees, which featured prayers for the dead (yet another doctrinal issue with Protestants), relegated to the Apocrypha?  If the Roman Church adulterated the Bible, why did they not include those books that would lend great support for some of their controversial extra-Biblical teachings?  If those were the references someone sneaked into the New Testament to support the papacy, the Roman Church, or to bring power to Peter, they were amazingly incompetent at it. 

            What exactly did Peter end up with anyway: not power and riches but a horrible scourging and then an upside-down crucifixion at the hands of the Romans.  Paul was beheaded.  James was stoned as was Stephen; Phillip, Matthew, Mark, Matthias, Jude, Barthomew, Thomas, Luke, and Andrew were also killed.  Only John died a natural death, but only because he was banished by the Romans after they tried to execute him and failed.  The Early Church did not have and did not want earthly power, nor was it wealthy as a result of the gospel; in the first few hundred years it did well just to survive each new wave of persecution.  The only earthly rewards were scorn, torture, and death. 

Did Constantine adulterate the gospels to grab power?

            As to the state, and in particular to Constantine, the New Testament stated that taxes should be paid and that one is to live at peace with the state, and with everyone else.  But ultimately it calls allegiance to Christ’s Kingdom.  The New Testament did not suggest a theocracy, and if the New Testament was altered to support the state then an extraordinarily poor job was done.  There is a religion that is indivisibly intertwined with government (i.e., Mohammedanism), but Christianity has nothing whatsoever in it directly regarding the way in which civil governments should be established and administered nor does it suggest that Bishops should run civil governments.

            Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, who was really the first person known to make an explicit list of the true gospels (and also explain why they, and only they, were true), and who also made an exhaustive exposition of Gnostic heresies, did so in 182AD and was a few years later murdered with thousands of his followers by the Emperor Severus in one of the many persecutions.  How kind of Irenaeus to cook the books for Constantine…who was born over a century later.  How nice of Irenaeus to select the books for the greater empowerment of Rome (granting that point only for the sake of argument), when Rome was out to kill him and while Rome still worshiped the Greek gods.

            Not only were the Gospels well established long before Constantine was ever born, but so was the order of worship, the conviction that Christ was the Son of God, and even the practice of meeting on the first day of the week.  If the Gospels were later altered, then what was changed?  According to Justin Martyr, writing in his First Apology before the Roman Empire cut his head off in 165AD:

That all these things should come to pass, I say, our Teacher foretold, He who is both Son and Apostle of God the Father of all and the Ruler, Jesus Christ; from whom also we have the name of Christians.

…we who formerly delighted in fornication, but now embrace chastity alone; we who formerly used magical arts, dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to every one in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to persuade those who hate us unjustly to live conformably to the good precepts of Christ, to the end that they may become partakers with us of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all.

…

But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized [illuminated] person, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss [the claim that the Gnostic gospels, indulging the fantasy that they are true, prove that Christ and Mary were involved because of the claimed kiss falls apart as “greeting one another with a holy kiss” was basically a first century hand shake], . There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to [so be it]. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.

And this food is called among us [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.  For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone.

And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each,

and participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succors the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles

and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.

            The final claim is that the selection of books was forced by Constantine to paint an entirely new picture of Christ, not as a mere prophet, but as the Son of God so as to make Christianity more powerful.  But again, the core of the New Testament was settled 142 years before the Council of Nicaea, which had nothing to do with cataloging the New Testament anyway.  But the larger question is how could, and why would, Constantine have painted a new picture of Christ?  The power of the faith in pre-Constantine times is testified by the thousands and thousands of Christians who died rather than recant their faith, and died by being burned alive, by crucifixions, by being eaten by lions, by molten lead being poured down their throats, and by other devilish tortures.  Even when death by torture for not offering a pagan sacrifice was not the penalty, the punishment was “merely” to have the right eye removed with a sword and the tendons in the left foot maimed with a hot poker or sometimes to be castrated and used as slave labor in copper mines.  What on earth could one add to such a faith to make stronger believers?  There was all the conviction in the world in the Early Church; there was no need to invent a reason to make it more serious.  That conviction was not due to enthusiasm for Gnostic self help tracts about finding one’s inner self from Opraphelia’s scroll of the month club; that conviction was from the certainty that they were being reconciled to the only God through His only Son.

            That fierce conviction in the face of even torture and death would have carried on if Constantine had decided to hijack Christianity.  Is one supposed to take seriously the suggestion that Christians who had not recanted their faith in the face of persecution would…have all, en masse, recanted their faiths in the face of persecution?  Reviewers suggested that the whipping of Christ in the movie The Passion was unreal; on the contrary, it was tamed to avoid an X rating.  Christians were scourged until areas of skin had come off such that bones and internal organs were exposed…and they did not recant.  Red-hot irons were plunged deep into their bodies and they did not recant.  Machinery was invented to mangle body parts and they did not recant.  Who could suggest that one would willingly face persecution even to death for one’s faith instead of recanting for one’s freedom, but that the faith could be bought off by an offer to stop the persecution?  And even assuming that some would recant, why on earth would Constantine start a civil war within the church if he wanted to use the church to unify the empire?  They did not recant the faith because they wanted earthly power; they did not recant because they were in God’s power, next to which all earthly power is shamefully trivial.  Anyone who sees all of history in terms of earthly power is missing the point.    

            A controversy after Constantine’s Edict of Milan, which legalized all religions in the Roman Empire, was the Dontast controversy.  The Dontast controversy came about after the persecutions when Christians who had previously recanted the faith (out of fear of death) later repented and desired to rejoin the Church.  Some suggested that they be permanently excluded from the Church while some suggested that they be allowed to repent and return.  Ultimately they were allowed to rejoin.  This makes no sense in Dan Brown’s made-up history.  Why would those that had sided with Caesar be excluded by Caesar if Caser invented the Church?   Would it not be the other way around?   That the previously faithful would be not only excluded but also exterminated and the Quislings put in charge?  

On the subject of martyrdom, some Gnostics, according to historian Will Durant, were content with mass suicide in a fashion eerily reminiscent of the heaven’s gate cult (with the idea that once free of their evil bodies their spirits would be liberated.)  The recently unearthed “Gospel of Judas”, which was written in Coptic and was likely written more than two hundred years after Judas died, is typical Gnostic heresy in that it claimed that Christ wanted to die, so as to free his spirit from his evil body.  This was very different from the Christians who, although death did not scare them, did not seek out death as a means to an end.  Life was from God, and life was therefore good.  Ireneaus and later, St. Augustine, even went so far as to suggest that suicide was an unforgivable sin in any and all circumstances.  This is in stark contrast, not only to the Gnostics, but also to recent cults (e.g., Jim Jones, David Koresh) who killed themselves to avoid capture.  The Jewish and the Christian concept of all created things is that what God made was good.  The earth, and the animals and plants within, and humans as well, were all very good things as they were created, but were corrupted by the human rebellion against God; Christ reconciles humans with God and will restore the intended order.    

            To take advantage of an existing religion or philosophy, one would be better off, instead of trying to erase three hundred years of history and silencing forever thousands and thousands of devoted followers, instead to invent a new religion that supposedly builds upon the old one.  Instead of painstakingly deconstructing timber by timber and then rebuilding the old religion, just use it for the foundation of the new one.  “Yes, there was a lot of truth in that religion, but see, let’s not dwell on that; now there is a new religion from that same God that builds on that religion and makes it even better.”  Someone did just that: Mohammed, and it worked very well for him.  He did not live as a poor itinerate missionary only to die from torture in a foreign land.  He, in the end, had absolute power in his corner of the world and had a harem constantly refilled with young women.  He did not rewrite the gospels and try to erase history, he just said, “well, God gave that a try, and some of that Christian stuff was OK at the time, but God got tired of it, so here is religion version 2.0 for everyone now.  Did I tell you about the 70 virgins?  And none of this sissy stuff about turning the other cheek.  In this religion you get to earn your salvation too.  Oh, by the way, this is a theocracy where the ways and means of government and civil law are all in this book that I, the one and only prophet for keeps, had someone write down.”   The Ottoman Empire lasted for nearly a thousand years (and Mohammedan theocracies still exist, Iran being a case in point) and Mohammedanism nearly wiped out Christianity at a few points in history.  Everyone knows about the brief counter attack known as the Crusades, but few know the Mohammedan armies at one point occupied Spain, almost conquered France, and constantly probed Eastern Europe so far as Austria.  Constantine’s adoption of Christianity did not prevent the Western Empire from falling to the barbarians less than one hundred years later, nor did it ultimately prevent the Eastern Empire from mostly falling to the Mohammedans.  Of note, there are still Christians, second class citizens persecuted for over a thousand years, in Middle Eastern countries today.  They did not sell out to Caesar or to the Caliphate.  The purpose of this essay is not to bash the Mohammedans, but simply to point out what a man-made religion for power, the power of the inventor and the political power of the establishment, would look like, and how it would be effective at securing great earthly power. 

            The central problem of a state adopting Christianity to further the state is that tyrants rule by fear.  Tyrants could rule everyone with fear, everyone but those who worshiped something higher.  Caesar was supposed to be a god, therefore there was nothing higher than Caesar, and all subjects of Rome had to confess that belief in a sacrifice to him.   No dictator wants a religion that says that there is a power higher than the dictator.  If this world is not one’s home, then burning one’s home is an empty threat.   If their family is all the saints, violence against their family is impotent.  If they believe that the blessed are persecuted, then persecution will not intimidate them.   If they believe that to lose their life is to gain it, then murderous threats are met with laughter.  That was why the Caesars subjected Christians, who never dreamt of military rebellion against Caesar, to devilish tortures to try to make them sacrifice to Caesar.  Since the time of Nero being a Christian had been a capital offense.  Christians said “you have no power over me and you are not my Lord,” and Caesar howled in pain and slaughtered them by the thousands.  That is also why Communist dictatorships did and do suppress Christianity.  The Polish secret police at one time had 480 agents spying on Pope John Paul II, and one out of ten Roman Catholics in Poland in the 1980’s were government infiltrators.  That is also why Hitler tried to pervert the protestant churches in Germany into “churches of the Reich” where Mien Kampf was, by law, to replace the Bible³.  That is why non-state run churches in communist China today are under ground, that is why the legal churches in China have state-appointed clerics, and that is why Chinese Christians languish in prisons as you read this (remember that next time you buy something made in China).  The Chinese Communist Party is horrified of Christianity, as it should be.  If Christianity was a means to control the little people, such despots would try to make it mandatory.

            The cross was Caesar’s most feared weapon.  Rebels, insurrectionists, and political usurpers were kept in check by threatening them with that weapon.  Someone once said that when someone threatens you with something, they are probably threatening you with what they themselves fear the most.  It was the ultimate weapon in Caesar’s arsenal.  People today may not realize that crosses, that now adorn necklaces and such, were at one point the most feared torture device.  Only a bizazare sadist would have even entertained the notion of wearing a cross before the first century.  But something happened to the cross.  A would-be King was crucified, and, according to his followers, he did not stay crucified.  Those same followers, secure in their place in the kingdom of their King, saw the cross, not as a terrible symbol and tool of a tyrant’s iron grip over them, but saw it as the tool that, unwittingly, rusted that iron grip to dust.  A symbol of terror, oppression, and control was turned into the ultimate symbol of freedom, redemption, and hope.  The world of Caesar had been turned upside down. 

            Caesar could not have cared less about some people “looking inwards” for Gnostic secret knowledge about their silly little selves, and people looking inward who thought that all creation was bad anyway would have made the tribute to Caesar without a second thought.  Gnostics could have performed (although some Gnostic sects demanded absolute celibacy) what ever freakish sex rituals in Rome they wanted and they would have blended in perfectly.  Therefore, if the gospel according to Dan Brown is true, it makes no sense for the various persecutions against the Christians if they were good little Gnostics up until the fourth century.  But if Peter had perverted Christianity from the beginning then they were not Gnostics?  Why then did Constantine need to change anything?    

            According to Will Durant, “There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known.  Caesar and Christ met in the arena and Christ had won.”   Christ won; Caesar did not invent Christ.   Constantine may have stopped persecuting the church as it was obvious that the persecution was not working and there was no point in slaughtering thousands of peaceful and productive citizens every year, but invent the church he did not.  Historians debate how sincere a Christian Constantine was, and Will Durant suggested that Constantine was at least a true believer in later life—which would have been impossible if it was lie he cooked up.  Nearing the end of his life he called for a priest and asked for baptism—why would he do that just for show when his life was nearly over?  

Christianity is the most radical force ever to beat upon the fortresses of oppression, as oppression is the effort of man to be god over other men.  Equality of the human race is from Christianity (the Early Church, according to Justin Martyer, was comprised of all races—over a thousand years before racial harmony was popular), the inestimable value of each and every human is from Christianity, and a kingdom above all kingdoms is from Christianity.  (Christianity being the fulfillment of God’s covenant with the Jews; God previously having laid some of this groundwork with them.)  It is absolutely no accident whatsoever that sustained democratic governments came from Christian lands.  The American founding fathers stated that all were endowed inalienable rights by their Creator; it was not the Creator’s will for governments to decide those rights.   It is no accident at all that slavery was first abolished in Christian lands (by Christians like Wilberforce, Garrison, and Stowe), and it is no accident that Christian lands then abolished slavery the world entire.   Caesars hated Christianity, and had good reason to.  Why recognize it as a means to reduce the power Caesar?  And why invent a New Testament that gave no license to secular government?  If the winners rewrote history they must have had the wrong set of instructions on how it was to be rewritten.

What of the Nicene Council of 325?

            As for the Nicene Creed, if Constantine wanted to consolidate power, one would be hard pressed to find one single character of the document⁴ in support of that.  The Nicene Creed has no oaths to the state, or submission to civil authority, nor does it even endorse the Papacy (and indeed, if the Papacy existed at the time the council would have been mostly superfluous; and infact the Bishop of Rome did not even attend the council).  The Nicene Creed was the result of a meeting intended to work out some theological issues regarding the nature of the Trinity; with the lesser topics of how to establish the date of Easter (i.e., if it should be adjusted to always fall on a Sunday or be on the same day of the same month each year), and to establish some laws regarding the church (e.g., the question of whether or not bishops should be celibate or not came up, and was unanimously voted down).  The Trinity issue came from the Arian heresy.  The Arians did not suggest that Christ was a mere Rabbi, or “just a good man”, or even a good man that was possessed by a good spirit.  They too believed Him to be divine.  The issue was that to avoid polytheism, they suggested that Christ had been made by God, while still being the Son of God.  The orthodox position was that Christ was of the same substance of the Father and was “begotten but not made” and that He was fully co-eternal.  Most modern Christians would be hard pressed to even distinguish the two positions from each other and have probably never even given it much thought.  But it was taken very seriously in that day and age.   

            From the view of an outsider, the doctrine of the trinity is very confusing and, if anything, a reason not to believe.  Does one suggest that Constantine was out to make Christianity more confusing…to make it more popular?  Both sides already claimed that Christ was divine.  Nor was it a “close vote,” unless a margin of 316 to 2 counts as close.  If Constantine was out to hijack Christianity, then why not just issue an edict?  Why have a council at all?  And the council of Nicaea was never a contest between orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism anyway; the main issue surrounded the nature of the trinity, not whether or not the trinity existed.             

            The Western Roman Empire fell in 410AD, less than 100 years after the Nicene Creed was written in 325AD—a short life for some sort of power grab.   Gibbon suggested in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (albeit contradicted much earlier in St. Augustine’s The City of God), that Christianity sapped Rome’s vitality; is one saying that Constantine adapted Christianity to hasten the demise of the Roman Empire?  It will surprise most that Constantine did not outlaw non-Christian faiths (some public pagan rituals were later banned, but there was no persecution equal to that which had been used against the Christians), and the worship of the Roman gods remained popular with the senatorial class.   That is why temples for the Greek gods still stand today—they were not destroyed nor converted to churches (contrast this to the Mohammedans who built a mosque on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, turned the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople into a mosque, and destroyed Buddhist sculptures in Afghanistan; man-made religions for power tend to lack confidence).  St. Augustine, who lived to see the Roman Empire crumble, actually converted to Christianity (from Manichaeism) later in life; he was not persecuted while he was a heretic.  And again, the remnants of the Eastern Empire (i.e., Constantinople) fell after several more centuries…to a Mohammedan army that had no confusing trinity, no mysterious supper of transubstantiation, no multiple gospels, no love of enemies, only a self proclaimed prophet who was a flagrant polygamist, dictated his own holy book, and who had no pretensions of being the Son of God. 

What’s all this about Mary Magdalene?

            The tale of a bloodline of Christ moving to France is based on a story made up by a French con man and forger named Pierre Plantard.  This shady character was a frequent flier of the French legal system and was associated with anti-Semitic groups during WWII (he actually wrote hysterical letters to the Vichy government warning it of Jewish plots).  He had delusions of grandeur and constantly sought attention in his quest to be something more than a draftsman who was descended of peasants.   In the 1960’s he claimed that he was the rightful King of France after forging evidence to show that he was related to ancient kings.  One of his collaborators in the 1970’s exposed it as a hoax when Plantard did not pay him off.   The hoax should have died then and there, and indeed, it was universally recognized as a hoax in France in the 1980’s.  Plantard himself admitted to a judge that it was indeed a hoax in the 1990’s.  But, in 1982 the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail picked up the tale and claimed, which Plantard denied, that Plantard was actually a descendant of Christ himself.  Who would read a book, written in English, about some crank that claimed he was the heir to an ancient French king?  By making that king Christ, the authors suddenly had a best seller. 

            Incidentally, there were nephews of Jesus that lived after his death.   According to Eusebius, writing in the fourth century, they were last known to have farmed a small plot of land and were so simple that the Romans saw no point in bothering to execute them.  That bloodline was thought to be irrelevant in ancient time, and what ever that genealogy is it has been lost to history.  Christ was not to establish an earthly hereditary kingdom, and whatever relatives were left behind were of no special importance.  Christ’s heirs, the new sons and daughters of God, are those who do His will (John 1:12-13).   

            The Gnostic Gospels themselves do not claim that Christ was married to anyone.  The Gnostic Gospels, including those from Nag Hammadi, did mention Mary Magdalene, but stated neither that she was married to Christ nor that she bore a child from him.  The actual references to Mary Magdalene in the Gnostic Gospels sound like a bad drug trip (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas states that to be saved Mary Magdalene would have to be become a male—so much for women’s lib.) 

            But even if Mary Magdalene was really Christ’s girl friend, wife, or whatever, and fled for her life from Peter (and in that story, not one apostle stood by her side?  Brown’s Jesus was singularly incompetent at picking apostles; and for a proposed matriarchy, why have only one female apostle among twelve male apostles?), so that Peter could go about his power trip by being a poor itinerate missionary to be killed in Rome by being crucified upside down, then why was she simply not mentioned in the gospels that had yet to be written?  Why mention her at all?  And remember that Peter was one of the frist apostles to be killed; why would the other apostles, especicially John, keep up the lie years later, if it had indeed been a lie?  By that time the apostles, those still alive, if they had been after earthly power, would have realized that the scheme was not working at all—they were being tortured to death one by one; so why not fess up if indeed they were after earthly power?  Why instead make her the first witness of Christ after the crucifixion?  Search the New Testament cover to cover and there is no mention of her being a prostitute either; the Early Church did not invent that tale to discredit her.   Women were not considered worthy witnesses, or worthy of much of anything, in those times to begin with.  Why claim, while she would have still been alive, her as the first witness of the resurrection if she would have told a different story?  She could have blown the whole story if that was not indeed what happened.  Why not just not mention her at all?

            Not being married did not seem to be much of a bonus in convincing masses of long ago that they were indeed holy.  If celibacy was a bonus in finding followers back then, then why were Phillip and Peter married and listed as such in Bible and by the Church Fathers?  Is one saying that Christ was involved with Mary Magdalene, and had followers, but then had to look like he had not been involved with her to be attractive enough to attract followers?  Or was it the other way around, that all respectable Jews were married?  Then why did the apostles say he was not? Mohammed would not only have married Mary Magdalene, but any of her sisters he could find too.  Even more recently, charismatic leaders are often anything but celibate (e.g., Charles Manson, David Koresh).

            If Christ really had married in real life, what would that have been to Constantine?  The Greek Gods had a habit of consorting with humans, how better to tie in this new religion with the old?   If Mary Magdalene had borne offspring from Christ, then Constantine could have pulled a fast one by claiming that he was part of that.  After all, this was three hundred years later, and cannot the winners re-write history?  A claim that Constantine was the heir, and that Christ was not divine but a prophet of some sort (to be superseded by a new prophet in the blood line—him), would have been a good scheme to grab power as the ruler of all things.   To doctor a family genealogy would be child’s play for someone who, according to Brown, rewrote the whole New Testament and, presumably, perfectly forged thousands of documents to support it—some of which are still being discovered and are perfect examples of writings from centuries before Constantine; while destroying not only the true gospels, but also any scrap of a scroll that said “Hey! Constantine is pulling a fast one”?  If some heretical writings (Dan Brown’s texts) survived, then obviously Constantine’s supposed re-write of history was not completely effective.  Of note, any of Dan Brown’s “genuine” gospels that survived, or any documents even suggesting that Constantine dreamt up Christianity, in Arabia (beyond the fringes of Constantine’s power to begin with) would have been seized and published for the world by the Mohammedans a few centuries later to discredit Christianity.  As well, the unconverted Jews would have gladly published any discovered documents that contradicted Christianity. 

            Of women in general, Christianity and the Early Church was unprecedented in its treatment of women.  The idea that women were on par, legally or culturally speaking, with men in the first century world, until the big bad church showed up and oppressed them for the first time, is laughable.   First century Palestine and Rome, and everywhere else for that matter, were already male dominated societies.  No one would come up with wild tales of miracles and resurections to make a society male dominated when it was male dominated already.  The Church did not oppress women; the Church was the first entity that did anything to stop the oppression of women.  Widows were not thrown onto the funeral pyres of their husbands; women were not mutilated (e.g., foot binding, female circumcision);  women were not (as a later man-made religion dictated) corralled into harems, men were not instructed on how to beat them, and women were not forced to wear burkas in public.  At a time when women were treated like cattle, it was the church that took care of widows, denied men easy divorces (Matt 5:32), ended polygamy (I Cor 7:2), and had deaconesses⁵ (Romans 16:1-2).  In the Roman world at this time women were married off in arranged marriages around the ages of about 11, and were henceforth the property of their much older husbands.  In the Early Church, women tended to mary much later, around 18, and could turn down arranged marriages.  It was the church that did away with the common Roman practice of discarding any second born daughters (in pre-Christian times there were three males for every two females in Rome—a third of female infants being tossed out like trash; archeological digs have found ancient sewers full of infant remains).  The Early Church had so many women in it that it was scorned for that very reason. 

            The only modern complaints can be that women were not to instruct men in religious matters, and that they were to be submissive to their husbands.  But it was Paul, not Peter (who was supposed to be the woman hater according to Dan Brown), who said those things (I Cor 11:3, I Cor 14:35; although Peter echoed the submissive part in his first letter); and in return the husbands were to love their wives as Christ loved them (Eph 5:28; e.g., Christ washed his disciples feet; Christ even suffered an unjust trial, torture, and death to save them after they had abandoned and denied him—which placed an unprecedented responsibility on husbands).   For unmarried women the only prohibition was that they not serve men by instructing them in religious matters.  These positions may not be “politically correct” by today’s standards, the standards of some people in the post-modern West anyway (and those standards will surely change a generation from now), but they were radical by the standards of the first century.  To condemn any system of ethics because they do not perfectly coincide with the current culture is extremely arrogant, and the only systems of antiquity that will perfectly coincide with the current culture are those systems that the current culture invents.  To claim that the Church was invented to put down women by raising them up for the first time is beyond absurd.  That would be like claiming that Louis Pasteur (another one of those evil Roman Catholics) was out to kill the human race because he only cured some diseases. 

            Even the statement that women were second class because Eve was seen as the bringer of sin into the world does not agree with the Early Church.  A fragment of the writings of Irenaeus said “And if thou sayest that it [the snake] attacked her [Eve] as being the weaker of the two, on the contrary, she was the stronger, since she appears to have been the helper of the man in the transgression of the commandment. For she did by herself alone resist the serpent, and it was after holding out for a while and making opposition that she ate of the tree, being circumvented by craft; whereas Adam, making no fight whatever, nor refusal, partook of the fruit handed to him by the woman, which is an indication of the utmost imbecility and effeminacy of mind. And the woman indeed, having been vanquished in the contest by a demon, is deserving of pardon; but Adam shall deserve none, for he was worsted by a woman,—he who, in his own person, had received the command from God. But the woman, having heard of the command from Adam, treated it with contempt, either because she deemed it unworthy of God to speak by means of it, or because she had her doubts, perhaps even held the opinion that the command was given to her by Adam of his own accord.”  There is some dispute if this fragment is correctly attributed to Irenaeus, besides the fragment not making as much sense as it could; but regardless of that, Eve was not a puching bag for the Early Church.  The writing of the Church Fathers saw the fall of the human race as past history, and the good news of the redemption was the whole point going forward.

            Brown’s talk about the “divine feminine” is like a lecher who volunteers at a battered womens’ shelter.  Give lip service to feminism while trying to seduce the females.  Any woman taking this seriously is adopting the Playboy version of women’s lib where women are so wonderful and smart and interesting…that they should be shameless sex objects for men.  Brown’s idea of female divinity is their “sacred” ability to give men a quick thrill through sexual promiscuity.  That is to be the height of femininity?  Is this a joke?  The goddesses of old were worshiped either as the wives of greater gods, or as symbols of fertility (as in, you know, being fertile, i.e., giving birth to babies); they were not worshiped for breaking glass ceilings and marching for the vote.  The Early Church valued women, neither for promiscuity nor for procreation, but because they too were made in the image of God.  Whereas others seek to use women, the Early Church was of use to them by, for example, caring for widows whom, in that day and age, had the status of stray dogs.  Caring for widows gained them no power, no influence, and no status.   They cared for them because they were valuable just as they were.  Writing around 193AD, Clement of Alexandria said: “…understanding that the virtue of man and woman is the same. For if the God of both is one, the master of both is also one; one church, one temperance, one modesty; their food is common, marriage an equal yoke; respiration, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience, love all alike. And those whose life is common, have common graces and a common salvation; common to them are love and training.”      

             One of the complaints against the Roman Catholic Church by Dan Brown is that they are a bunch of woman haters.  Why then should the Roman Church be accused by Protestants of idolizing Mary and why also should the Roman Catholics pray to Mary?  You know, pray to a woman.  Why is Mary Magdalene recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholics?  Besides the Pope, what other Roman Catholic can any non-Roman Catholic think of except Mother Teresa, who is on the fast track for saint hood?  And regarding sex, it was Roman Catholic monk and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas in the early 1400’s who wrote in the Summa Theologica (page 2419) that sex was “a very great good” within the context of husband and wife.  Which should not be that surprising as that is what Paul said as well (I Cor 7:3).   And how bizarre to accuse a church that takes pride in large families as being against sex?  Where do these people think that Roman Catholic babies come from?  What all Christians are against is using and then discarding women.

            If Christ had been a mere rabbi, as Dan Brown suggests, what would that have been to His mother?  If, as the Gnostics suggested, Jesus was just a good man who was temporarily possessed by a spirit (before the spirit got him in trouble and then scampered off before the man was executed), what would that be to His mother?  Some Gnostics even claimed that he was never born at all, but was a phantasm that merely looked human.   But instead a woman was chosen to bring God into the world.  Which of Brown’s goddesses can claim such a feat?  When an angel appeared to Mary and told her that she was chosen to bear the Son of the Most High, she replied that she was the Lord’s servant.   She could have been divorced from Joseph, she could have been an outcast, she could have even been stoned to death, but she had faith.  Contrast that to the male apostles who, until Pentecost anyway, usually had all the grace of the three stooges.  The Son of God ministered to the world for two or three years.  It is likely that He ministered to Mary by supporting her with His physical labor for years after Joseph died. 

            Men without courage abandoned Christ, a man denied Christ three times, a man betrayed Christ for money (and more recently several more men have betrayed him for millions), men sought to have Christ killed to avoid trouble, a spineless man condemned Christ to death to appease a mob, cruel men tortured Christ for the only purpose of being cruel, and men who blindly obeyed orders crucified Christ and then gambled for His meager possessions.  Besides the woman who seduced Herod into killing John the Baptist, are there really any wicked women in the New Testament?  On the contrary, both Mary’s witnessed His torment and death while most of the apostles hid; the women cared for His dead body; and the women were chosen to be the very first witnesses of the empty tomb.  It was Mary Magdalene who was chosen to be the first person to meet Christ, and the only person to meet Him after he arose but before He went to His Father (John 20:11-18).  Note carefully that a couple of apostles went to look at the empty tomb that Mary had discovered, but that Christ only appeared to Mary after they had left.  Christ waited for the men to leave before first appearing to, what was in that day and age, a mere woman.   Gospel means “good news”; until the resurrection the news of Jesus was the very sad story of a rabbi who was killed by his own people.  The resurrection was where the sad news became the very good news, where a tragic story turned into the story of ultimate triumph: the good news for all time and for all people; the axis on which all history turned; the central event for all humans for all time.  And who did the apostles, in their gospels, say first received that good news: a woman.  Were women second rate in the gospels?  Not in the real ones.     

            In Dan Brown’s version of history, a new age rabbi, basically a first century John Lennon who issued quaint proverbs about finding one’s inner self, had an old lady he shacked up with.  One can easily see Brown’s Christ sitting under a palm tree with a lyre sining Imagine as though it were profound truth.  Woo-hoo.  That would not qualify for a foot note of a foot note in the appendix of an obscure history that no one would ever bother to write.  As usual, Dan Brown wants to trade the earth shattering truth of the women in the gospels for an alternative that is radical only in its numbing mediocrity. 

Were they tampered with? -- Summary

            That somehow Constantine adapted Christianity for power ranks as one of the greatest non sequitors of all time.  Not on the order of saying that one plus two equals four, but like saying that one plus two equals Cincinnati.  Not only does the evidence not support the allegations, but also common sense dictates that the alleged alterations of Christianity, should they have actually taken place, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the alleged motivations behind those supposed alterations.   In fact, the results would have been the opposite of the intentions.  History denies that power for anyone, up to and including Constantine came from Christianity.  Granted that there have been those to take advantage of the power of the Church after it was institutionalized…only because after it was institutionalized they had to take advantage of it to get away with anything.  But it was misused in spite of itself and with difficulty; it hardly enabled corrupt rulers for the first time.  The really corrupt dictators tried and try to eliminate it altogether.   Nero and Herod did quite well at being tyrants without recognizing the Christian church...so did Stalin and Pol Pot.  Corrupt people had to pervert it when it was already present (e.g., Kings of the middle ages kidnapping and installing new Popes, or making a crony a Bishop⁶—although that sometimes misfired, as in the case of Thomas Becket), but no corrupt person would set up the Christian Church by choice as it would then be a stumbling block to their evil plans.  In the middle ages the barbarians conquered Christian lands with the sword, and then the Christians converted blood thirsty beasts like the Vikings to peace.  Christianity does not empower states, Christianity makes no promises for rulers, and inventing hard to believe stories about religious leaders does not inspire belief, nor was greater faith needed when the faithful had been tortured to death for centuries in defense of that faith.  The idea that Constantine would have adapted Christianity, by changing only the parts that had nothing to do with secular government, by making it more difficult to believe by inventing miracles, and by imparting confusing doctrines of the trinity, is simply ludicrous.

Does Not the Bible have Errors, and does that not prove that it is not divine?

            It is sometimes smugly pointed out that this chronology and that chronology do not match, or that this genealogy and that genealogy do not match.  There is always some poor sap that thinks he is the first person to learn how to read.  Apparent conflicts in chronology and genealogy were discovered by, and discussed at length by, Early Church fathers (Clement, et al) well before the New Testament was compiled, and well after (St. Augustine).  Again, if they were doctoring the books, why would they not edit such apparent issues?  And why not simply combine the gospels into one, or just use the book of John, and avoid apparent conflicts all together? 

            As an analogy, in the history of WWII, General Eisenhower had a right hand man named Beadle Smith.  Some of the histories that mention him were written not ten years after WWII, while General Smith may have still been alive.  The problem is that different historians give his first name as Bettle, Beadle, or Beddle and one historian even gives him the first name of Walter.  Does the apparent conflict in names prove that it was all made up?  On the contrary, it merely proves that Beadle (or whatever) is a really hard name to spell right, and that parents should avoid giving it to their offspring.  

            By contrast, in the history of WWII, there was a person who was made up: his name was Major William Martin.  The British, to deceive the Germans, dropped a corpse, dead from pneumonia (which is supposed to look like drowning to a pathologist), into the sea off the coast of Spain just before D-Day.  The corpse was complete with fake ID cards, receipts, movie tickets, a love letter, and—the whole point—misleading documents regarding the impending invasion.  The hope was that the Nazi sympathizing Spanish government would turn over to the Germans what appeared to be a dead British courier who had been in a plane wreck at sea.  The Germans took the bait, and were led to believe that the Normandy invasion was only a deception campaign for a future invasion at the Pas de Calais region.  That resulted in Panzer divisions waiting and waiting for the fake invasion instead of repelling the real one.  Take note:  Major Martin was a complete phony, but every ID card, letter, even the fake obituary notice in the London Times, had the name spelled correctly.  But General Smith was the one that really did exist

            The Early Church fathers knew every single apparent contradiction in scripture and even discussed them amongst themselves.  They did not “fix” them, as they believed that they were holy writings and that any apparent contradictions may not have been accidental but on purpose and perhaps contained deeper meanings or were simply misunderstood.  No one out to invent the writings would have done that.

Conclusion

            The silly fabrications by Dan Brown are demonstrably false and simply do not stand up on their own if one follows them to their end.  Somehow Christianity was changed for evil ends, yet the changes did not support those ends.  Changes were made to scripture to enable this, but there is nothing about this in scripture…this makes sense how?  The true gospels were written in the first century and were widely quoted and discussed from the first century on, while Brown’s  “unaltered” gospels were written in the second and third centuries in Egypt and were quoted by no early Christians and were discussed by the early Christians only when they were pointing out heresies…what drug does one take for this to look reasonable?  Even if the winners rewrote history, that matters not as Brown’s history flatly contradicts itself.  This is not just an assault on the church; it is an assault on reason itself.   Following the modus operandi of Dan Brown one could prove or disprove absolutely anything.      

            Materialism, the heresy of the past two hundred years, made one error: that there was no supernatural.  But otherwise reason was carried out very well—that was really all materialism had to go on.  This new philosophy, when facts are to be made up in fiction and if an appealing story comes out then it must be true, can lead absolutely anywhere.   Some may claim that it is only a story; well the Turner Diaries (a tale of white supremacy that supposedly inspired the Oklahoma City bombing) is only a story too.  Should a slick writer punch up that novel (with some made up or half truths about history and locations and people) will it too take the land by storm?  Maybe materialism is being discarded for something else: not reason based on a faulty assumption, but the abandonment of reason altogether, where chaotic and contradictory beliefs are to be doled out by any charismatic charlatan.  G.K. Chesterton said that when one no longer believes in God, that they will believe anything.  This is no longer the age of reason, but the age of madness where the semi-literate and historically ignorant will mistake sophistry for scholarship and be awed with a veneer of pseudo-history sound bites in a dime store novel into being led, like a lamb to slaughter, by any deceiver into believing anything.

            The New Testament came from the apostles, and the works were carefully identified, proven, and guarded by the Early Church fathers who literally gave their lives, in return for no earthly rewards, to do so.  That history is not to be hidden, as there is nothing to hide.  It is, in fact, tremendously glorious and awe-inspiring.   The writings of the Church Fathers are much more edifying than modern apologetics.  The torture and persecution of them makes any demonic Hollywood horror film look like Mary Poppins, and yet that torture did not shake the faith of the Early Church—it made it stronger.   The saints were sent to the fire and not ashes but hardened steel came out.  Heresies are not new; a woefully lacking knowledge of history on the part of Christians is new, and that is why a silly book like The DaVinci Code is a best seller. 

            The New Testament is not what anyone would write if they were trying to invent a religion to empower a church hierarchy (the early bishops were hunted down and killed, and other than merely mentioning bishops, and deacons, no church hierarchy was mentioned) nor is it something that someone would write to empower a government (indeed, the first government to recognize the church died shortly thereafter, and present day dictatorships suppress the religion).  Nor was it written to give any sort of earthy benefit to those who wrote it (they were most often tortured to death, after warnings in the scripture that they would be).  This was not a “power grab” by anyone.  Nor was it a wish fulfillment.  The New Testament hardly mentions heaven, and what little is mentioned is vague, and at first glance not really even that appealing to everyone.  If Christianity was based on a wish-fulfillment lure, it was the worst job of salesmanship in the history of the world.   

            The debunkers, modern and old, never broke into tears upon “discovering” that Christianity was false.  Their wishes were not suddenly dashed.  On the contrary, they reveled in their new freedom and gloated over the silliness of those they left behind.   This is why people will ravenously devour any newly found “lost gospel” while never bothering to read one of the real ones.  What the New Testament offers is for one to be persecuted, down trodden, and poor—and that was often what the early members thereof received and what some members in some parts of the world receive today.  That is not the substance of wish fulfillment.  The great wish fulfillment of all history is that one could be their own god (“god is in us all—look at me! aren’t I wonderful!  I’m so special and important!  now I’m self actualized!  wow, I’m so proud of me!”); that the creator is not all that serious (Bonheoffer’s cheap grace, or, “well, my God would never do that, ” or “my God is a kind God, and if I do what I want to, then he’ll understand”); or that there simply is no God.  Such was the sin of Adam, and such is the sin of everyone since then.      

            G.K. Chesterton said that “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found hard and left untried.”  Instead of trying it, people look elsewhere.  A random Hindu mystic, stretching exercises, strange diets, rocks, pyramids, LSD, tree worship, the occult, a science fiction novelist, the worship of sex, shopping, a pulp novel, anything but Christianity and anyone but Christ.  No matter how silly or absurd, they look, and look, and look.  “Bolt the door and hide under the bed—Christ is on the loose!  Quick: lose all rationality or you may have no choice but to surrender⁷!”  Any straw in the wind is to be grasped instead.  And no longer able to invent new heresies, old ones are now recycled—Gnosticism being the case in point.  Who knows, maybe a hundred years from now the 1920’s “suppressed” spiritualism, complete with séances and spirit writings, will have to be debunked all over again.   

            One doubts that Brown suspected the popularity of his book, and therefore did not even bother to prevaricate very well in it.  The book is laden with verifiably false information, not just on religion, but on almost everything.  It was the product of lazy writing; a ten dollar an hour intern could have caught and fixed dozens of simple errors.  For example, the claim that the Dead Sea Scrolls contained “lost gospels” is nonsense: the Dead Sea Scrolls contained the known Old Testament writings (that was why it was a significant find: it proved that the Old Testament writings had been properly maintained in the two thousand years since that particular set of scrolls were hidden near the Dead Sea).   Incidentally, the Old Testament, and its Messianic prophecies, is discarded completely by the Gnostics—they believe that the God of the Old Testament was evil and is a lesser God to their god, and they have no need of a Messiah as they can save themselves.  Therefore the Dead Sea Scrolls, which support the veracity of the Old Testament, makes Dan Brown’s book a dead story.  He should have been more careful in dropping so many names and historical events.  Brown is painted into a corner, and can not admit even one falsehood or else the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

            One of Satan’s useful idiots spouting off is never a good thing (and never forget that Dan Brown, Double Day, Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and Sony Studies, unwitting or otherwise, have volunteered for the army of Satan).  The attack was effective, but a clumsy swing with a heavy club leaves one exposed for a counter attack.  This would not be the first time that Satan made his move only to regret it.  He has now popularized the idea that Christ actually lived, that Christ is important, and that gospels are important.  After that it is heresy straight from hell, but it does surrender ground fought over since the philosophy of materialism.  The enemy has fired his shot, and while fair weather Christians have fallen for it, the Church now has the opportunity to take advantage of that surrendered ground and rescue not only the wounded Christians, but also people who, due to Brown, may want to know about real Christianity for the first time.  But this can not be done by just chanting over and over again that scripture is to be an article of blind faith.  Let this be the generation that knows the history of Christianity and the Bible; that believes and knows why it believes too; and that rekindles the faith of the martyrs to be a light to the world.           

Notes:

¹  In reading one book on the origin of the New Testament, written by a restoration church university professor, the author failed to ever mention Irenaeus, Clement, Eusebius, Justin Martyr, et al; content instead with a boring discussion about the process of translation, how well the various ancient manuscripts agree with themselves, etc.  He could have written the same book about any ancient religious text, or about any ancient text for that mater.  His shocking conclusion was that it is indeed possible that really old books can be translated.   That sort of thing will only satisfy those who are not asking questions in the first place.  The issue could be that the history of the New Testament cannot be discussed apart from the history of the Early Church.  Is the New Testament a set of do-it-yourself church blue prints (presumably that professor’s position), or was it the history of a church that was built once?  The history of the Early Church can open a can of worms.   What was the doctrine of the Early Church, and how does that compare with contemporary churches?  Did the Early Church have a hierarchy?  Can a Church be extra-Biblical without being un-Biblical?  Failure to examine such issues is at the risk of leaving a gaping hole in one’s understanding of the Church.

²A copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or even a quick Google search would have saved Brown some embarrassment regarding art history, assuming he has any shame at all; he should have stuck to teaching high school English and left art and history to the experts.  For example:

·        “Da Vinci” refers to being of a small town in Italy, not a person (it would be as silly to refer to John Rockefeller of New York as “of New York” as it is to refer to Leonardo of Vinci as “da Vinci.”)  The very title of the book is confused and ignorant, and it does not get better once the book is actually opened.

·        The name “Mona Lisa” could not be an anagram as it is in the novel, as the “Mona Lisa” name was invented for that particular painting hundreds of years after Leonardo’s death.  Leonardo called it “La Giaconda.”

·        If the Last Supper was meant to be a code for future ages, then why did Leonardo use tempera paints that began to deteriorate not a decade after the painting was finished?

·        The Last Supper was painted in a monastery, and the monks would have surely protested any heretical content in the painting.

^·           No art historian suspects that John in the last supper painting was really supposed to be a woman.  The depiction of John as being clean-shaven and at Christ’s side occurred in other, earlier, works of art depicting the last supper.  The painting is significant in the use of perspective and the overall balance of the composition.  There was nothing new in the portrayal of the apostles. 

³Shrier, William L.   The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – A History of Nazi Germany.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.  Page 240.  Some people try to spin the history of the Nazis as though they were over zealous Catholics.  Just read Shrier’s work, the undisputed history of Nazi Germany.  After running against the Catholic Center Party in the 1930 elections, Hitler systematically persecuted all Christian Churches (murdering at least hundreds, and imprisoning thousands of priests and lay people) and began to establish a new paganism in Germany.  Hitler saw the church as a threat, as does all dictators.  For more information, visit:   http://www.oocities.org/thelawndaletimes/hitlersreligion.html 

⁴ The Nicene Creed was this (at the first Nicaea council):

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible or invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten not made, being of one essence with the Father, who for us men and our salvation came down and was made flesh, was made man, suffered, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and comes to judge the quick [living] and the dead.

            In later councils it was expanded to the following, as it is commonly said today:

We 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, and born of the Father before all ages. God of God, light of light, true God of true God. Begotten not made, consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried; and the third day rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, of whose Kingdom there shall be no end. And we believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who together with the Father and the Son is to be adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets. And one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We confess  one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.   

            “Catholic” refers to the “whole” church; not necessarily to the Roman Catholic Church. The Pontius Pilate reference was meant to date, more or less, the time of Christ’s death before there was a uniform dating system.  “The Scriptures” refers to the Old Testament prophecies.   For what it is worth, the Greek Orthodox Church does not agree that the Holy Ghost proceeds also from the Son, but suggests that It proceeds only from the Father.

⁵ Deaconesses were not, as some claim, simply a term for “the wives of deacons”.  Early canon law (Church rules) from the first few hundred years of the Church clearly state that it was a clerical order.  Their main task was to instruct and baptize women.  The order faded into history after the turn of the first millennium, probably after the Church had progressed such that there were few adult converts (and by that time the practice of infant baptisim had been established); basically they had no more work to do.  But the fact remains that the Early Church ordained women, and those women performed the sacrament of baptisim as well as instructing other women in religious matters. 

⁶Early canon law (Church rules) forbid bishops to have employment outside the church, forbid them to be appointed by secular authority, and required a waiting period between being ordained as a presbyter and being ordained as a bishop.  These were attempts, not always successful, to keep the secular world from taking over the Church.  Be it right or wrong, one of the reasons that the Roman Catholic church demanded that those receiving orders were to be celibate was to discourage people from seeking clerical orders for secular ends.

⁷In C.S. Lewis’s spiritual autobiography The Pilgrim’s Regress, he stated that there was a point where he, as one who had graduated with a degree in philosophy, either had to accept the truth (as a thirty year old atheist), although he loathed it at the time, about Christ, or that he would have denounced reason itself and embraced insanity.   He came to Christianity kicking and screaming.  Irrationality would have “saved” him from that. 

Suggested Readings and Sources:

            Not surprisingly, the writings of the church fathers are a bit out of copyright.  Irenaeus (who listed the gospels in 182AD and directly refuted Gnosticism) and the historian Eusebius (who gives a broad history of Christianity from the beginning up to the early 300’s) are of particular interest.  Eusebius takes a fairly orthodox postion, but is good for a general overview.  One can obtain them from free from this website:  http://ccel.org/fathers2/ or one can purchase them from http://www.christianbook.com .

            Books that were “suppressed” can be found at this site.  Strangely enough, some of the “suppressions” would have given support for some positions of the church.  Some, however, are simply heretical inventions that are obviously silly.  http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

            Foxe’s Book of Martyrs is a good summary of the early persecutions.

            A lot of people assume they are experts on Christianity without knowing anything about it.  For that matter, a lot of people assume they know the Bible without ever having read it.  The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, and Basic Christianity by John Stott, are very good Christian primers.  After that read Orthodoxy by Chesterton, The Pilgrims Regress by C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis, The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonheoffer, and God in the Dock by C.S. Lewis.  Lest this knowledge puff one up, read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis.  It is often sneeringly pointed out that this holiday or that aspect of Christianity is similar to some other ancient religion…but maybe it is the other way around.  See the appendix for some notes on this, and other topics, by G.K. Chesterton.  He is not that well known these days, and once you start reading him you will be hooked.

            This essay started as a two page affair and kept growing and growing.   This is not a complete history of the Church and it is not a complete history of the New Testament.  This essay only scratches the surface of this amazing history.  In retrospect, I feel very inadequate to have written it, as there are more intelligent and knowledgeable writers out there who are making mincemeat out of Dan Brown.  N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, one of the intellectual giants and great theologians of today, is writing a book on the subject, and there is no doubt that he will, metaphorically speaking, send Brown looking for a Potter’s Field by the time he is done with him.  But more importantly, Wright will turn the depressing tale of Brown into the magnificent glory which is the truth.

Until then, some of the better sites are: 

http://www.spu.edu/depts/uc/response/summer2k5/features/davincicode.asp  N.T. Wright’s opening salvo.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html Article in Christianity Today.

http://priory-of-sion.com/dvc/ Good articles on the book, and especially on the silly little man Pierre Plantard.

http://www.faithfulreader.com/features/0405davinci/davinci_code.asp  A round table of authors discuss what makes the book appealing to this age, the various distortions, etc.

http://www.davinciantidote.com/ The Da Vinci Code libels the Roman Catholic Church in particular, why not give the Roman Catholics a little equal time?   The Roman Catholic Church a powerful conspiracy running the world?  Give me a break.   They could not put down the Orthodox Church.   They could not suppress Martin Luther.   They could not reign in the Anglican Church.   They could not stop the French revolution.   They could not suppress the priest abuse scandals.  They could not influence Double Day not to publish a libelous and blasphemous cauldron of boiling sewage like The Da Vinci Code.   Some conspiracy.  Some power.  That the book is not an underground circulation of mimeographed pages, but is instead published by a major publishing house and is in the window of every book store, discount store, and grocery store like a bulk commodity, is evidence in and of itself that the premise of a hugely powerful dark church is a paranoid delusion…or maybe just a crass commercial effort to get rich off of the public’s thirst for conspiracy theories and the never ending hatred of a redeemer who dares remind them that need redemption.

http://go.family.org/davinci/content/A000000061.cfm  Focus on the Family takes off the gloves.

http://www.thetruthaboutdavinci.com  A well organized site.

http://www.tfp.org/davincicode/meet_the_real_dan_brown.htm  Humble novelist, or a man with a plan?

http://www.elca.org/jle/article.asp?k=568  If a Lutheran gets excited about anything, that is something to look into.

Appendix

Excerpts from Christianity and Rationalism

G.K. Chesterton, 1904

            The first of all the difficulities that I have in controverting Mr. Blatchford [an atheist Chesterton was debating] is simply this, that I shall be very largely going over his own ground.  My favourite text-book of theology is God and my Neighbour but I cannot repeat it in detail.  If I gave each of my reasons for being a Christian, a vast number of them would be Mr. Blachford’s reasons for not being one.

            For instance, Mr. Blatchford and his school point out that there are many myths parallel to the Christian story; that there were Pagan Christs, and Red Indian Incarnations, and Patagonian Crucifixions, for all I know or care.  But does not Mr. Blatchford see the other side of this fact?   If the Christian God really made the human race, would not the human race tend to rumours and perversions of the Christian God?   If the center of our life is a certain fact, would not people far from the center have a muddled version of that fact?  If we are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is it odd that Patagonians should dream of a Son of God?

            The Blatchfordian position really amounts to this—that because a certain thing has impressed millions of different people as likely or necessary therefore is connot be true.  And then this bashful being, veiling his own talents, convicts the wretched G.K.C. of paradox!  I like paradox, but I am not prepared to dance and dazzle to the extent of Nunquam, who points to humanity crying out to a thing, and pointing to it from immemorial ages, as a proof that it cannot be there.

            The story of a Christ is very common in legend and literature.  So is the story of two lovers parted by Fate.  So is the story of two friends killing each other for a woman.   But will it seriously be maintained that, because these two stories are common as legends, therefore not two friends were ever separated by love or no two lovers by circumstances?  It is tolerably plain, surely, that these two stories are common because the situation is an intensely probable and human one, because our nature is so built as to make them almost inevitable.  Why should it not be that our nature is so built as to make certain spiritual events inevitable?  In any case, it is clearly ridiculous to attempt to disprove Christianity by the number and variety of Pagan Christs.  You might as well take the number and variety of ideal schemes of society, from Plato’s Republic to Morris’ News from Nowhere, from More’s Utopia to Blatchford’s Merrie England, and then try and prove from them that mankind cannot ever reach a better social condition.  If anything, of course, they prove the opposite; they suggest a human tendency towards a better condition.  Thus, in this first instance, when learned skeptics come to me and say, “Are you aware that the Kaffirs have a story of Incarnation?” I should reply:  “Speaking as an unlearned person, I don’t know.  But speaking as a Christian, I should be very much astonished if they hadn’t.”

            Take a second instance.  The Secularist says that Christianity has been a gloomy and ascetic thing, and points to the procession of austere or ferocious saints who have given up home and happiness and macerated health and sex.  But it never seems to occur to him that the very oddity and completeness of the men’s surrender make it look very much as if there were really something actual and solid in the thing for which they sold themselves.  They gave up all human experiences for the sake on one superhuman experience.  They may have been wicked, but it looks as if there were such an experience.  It is perfectly tenable that this experience is as dangerous and selfish a thing as drink.  A man who goes ragged and homeless in order to see visions may be as repellent and immoral as a man who goes ragged and homeless in order to drink brandy.  That is a quite reasonable position.  But what is manifestly not a reasonable position what would be, in fact not far from being an insane position, would be to say that the raggedness of the man, and the homelessness of the man, and the stupefied degradation of the man proved that there was no such thing as brandy.

            That is precisely what the Secularist tries to say.  He tries to prove that there is no such think as supernatural experience by pointing at the people who have given up everything for it.  He tries to prove that there is no suich thing by proving that there are people who live on nothing else.  Again I may submissively ask:  “Whose is the paradox?” The frantic severity of these men may, of course, show that they were eccentric people who loved unhappiness for its own sake.  But is seems more in accordance with commonsense to suppose that they had really found the secret of some actual power or experience which was, like wine, a terrible consolation and a lonely joy.  Thus, then, in the second instance, when the learned sceptic says to me:  “Christian saints gave up love and liberty for this one rapture of Christianity, I should have been surprised if they hadn’t.” 

            Take a third instance.  The Secularist says that Christianity produced tumult and cruelty.  He seems to suppose that this proves it to be bad.  But it might prove it to be very good.  For men commit crimes not only for bad things, far more often for good things.  For no bad things can be desired quite so passionately and persistently as good things can be desired and only very exceptional men desire very bad and unnatural things.

            Most crime is committed because, owing to some peculiar complication, very beautiful or necessary things are in some danger.  For instance, if we wanted to abolish thieving and swindling at one blow, the best thing to do would be to abolish babies.  Babies, the most beautiful things on earth, have been the excuse and origin of almost all the business of brutality and financial infamy on earth.

            If we could abolish monogamic or romantic love, again the country would be dotted with Maiden Assizes.  And if anywhere in history masses of common and kindly men become cruel it almost certainly does not mean that they are serving something in itself tyrannical (for why should they?). It almost certainly does mean that something that they rightly value is in peril such as the food of their children, the chasity of their women, or the independence of their country.  And when something is set before them that is not only enormously valuable, but also quite new, the sudden vision, the chance of winning it, the chance of losing it, drive them mad.  It has the same effect in the moral world that the finding of gold has in the economic world.  It upsets values, and creates a kind of cruel rush.

            We need not go far for instances quite apart from the instances of religion.  When the modern doctrines of brotherhood and liberty were preached in France in the eighteenth century [i.e., the French Revolution] the time was ripe for them, the educated classes everywhere had been growing towards them, the world to a very considerable extend welcomed them.   And yet all that preparation and openness were unable to prevent the burst of anger and agony which greets anything good.  And if the slow and polite preaching of rational fraternity in a rational age ended in the massacres of September, what an a fortiori is here!   What would be likely to be the effect of the sudden dropping into a dreadfully evil century of a dreadfully perfect truth?   What would happen if a world baser than the world of Sade were confronted with a gospel purer than the gospel of Rousseau?

            The mere flinging of the polished pebble of Republican Indealism into the artificial lake of eighteenth century Europe produced a splash that seemed to splash the heavens, and a storm that drowned ten thousand men.  What would happen if a star from heaven really fell into the slimy and bloody pool of a hopless and decaying humanity?  Men swept a city with the guillotine, a continent with the sabre, because Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were too precious to be lost.  How if Christianity was yet more maddening because it was yet more precious?

            But why should we labour the point when One who knew human nature as it can really be learnt, from fishermen and women and natural people, saw from his quiet village the track of this truth across history, and, in saying that He came to bring not peace but a sword, set up eternally His colossal realism against the eternal sentimentality of the Secularist?  Thus, then, in the third instance, when the learned sceptic says:  “Christianiaity produced wars and persecutions,” we shall reply:   “Naturally.”

            And, lastly, let me take an example which leads me on directly to the general matter I wish to discuss for the remining space of the articles at my command.  The Secularist constantly points out that the Hebrew and Christian religions began as local things; that their god was a tribal god; that they gave him material form, and attached him to particular places.

            This is an excellent example of one of the things that if I were conducting a detailed campaign I should use as an argument for the validity of Biblical experience.  For if there really are some other and higher beings than ourselves, and if they in some strange ways, at some emotional crisis, really revealed themselves to rude poets or dreamers in very simple times, that the rude people should regard the revelation as local, and connect it with the particular hill or river where it happened, seems to me exactly what any reasonable human being would expect.

            It has a far more credible look than if they had talked cosmic philosophy from the beginning.  If they had, I should have suspected “priestcraft” and forgeries and third-century Gnosticism.  If there be such a being as God, and He can speak to a child, and if God spoke to a child in the garden the child would, of course, say that God lived in the garden.  I should not think it any less likely to be true for that.  If the child said:  “God is everywhere: an impalpable essence pervading and supporting all constituents of the Cosmos alike”—if, I say, the infant addressed me in the above terms, I should think he was much more likely to have been with the governess than with God.

            So if Moses had said God was an Infinite Energy, I should be certain he had seen nothing extraordinary.  As he said He was a Burning Bush, I think it very likely that he did see something extraordinary.  For whatever be the Divine Secret, and whether or no it has (as all people have believed) sometimes broken bounds and surged into our work, at least it lies on the side furthest away from pedants and their definitions, and nearest to the silver souls of quiet people, to the beauty of bushes, and the love of one’s native place.

            Thus, then in our last instance (out of hundreds that might be taken), we conclude in the same way.  When the learned sceptic says:  “The visions of the Old Testament were local, and rustic, and grotesque,” we shall answer:  “Of course.  They were genuine.”

            Thus, as I said at the beginning, I find myself, to start with, face to face with the difficulty that to mention the reasons that I have for believing in Christianity is, in very many cases, to repeat those arguments which Mr. Blatchford, in some strange way, seems to regard as arguments against it.  His book is really rich and powerful.  He has undoubtedly set up these four great guns of which I have spoken.

            I have nothing to say against the size and ammunition of the guns.  I only say that by some accident of arrangement he has set up those four pieces of artillery with the tails pointing at me and the mouths pointing at himself.  If I were not so humane, I should say:

“Gentlemen of the Secularist Guard, fire first.”

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