Alpha & Omega Ministries Apologetics Blog
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The Da Vinci Code XII
11/28/2005 - James White
We have already seen that Brown relies heavily upon a highly doubtful, uncritical, easily challenged view of extra-biblical sources such as the Nag Hammadi Library and various other gnostic-influenced works. Ironically, Brown contradicts himself once again in his statements immediately following the embarrassing "heretic" comment on page 234. Here Brown speaking as Teabing says that "some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive." And what does he refer to? First he mentions the Dead Sea Scrolls, which, of course, are Jewish in nature and origin, not Christian. Now, if he would like to argue that 7Q5 is, in fact, a fragment of the Gospel of Mark, making the DSS relevant, that's fine---that would only destroy his entire thesis once again, putting Mark's writing within a few years of the events themselves. But obviously, that is not his intention, so, even mentioning the DSS is utterly irrelevant. Next he lists the Nag Hammadi finds, which of course contain some of his favorite sources, all from the second century, of course. He claims that both the DSS and the Nag Hammadi library tell "the true Grail story." I'm sure those working on the Dead Sea Scrolls need to be informed of this, since they would not have any idea of that otherwise! And one thing can be said with all certainty regarding the Nag Hammadi Library: there is no single story, no single position, to be found in that collection of works. They were not "gospels" representing the early Christian religion amongst the "thousands" Brown has alleged: they are the works of those who sought to pervert and change the faith, joining elements of Christianity with foreign beliefs.Brown goes on to claim the DSS and Nag Hammadi finds "speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms" (234). Again, I would love to see where the DSS speak of Christ's ministry period, but be that as it may, in reality, once you leave the inspired text, you can find anything you want in second century writings about Christ. In fact, the deity of Christ is prominent in these works. The Docetics, for example, loved to speculate on what Christ would be like as a god (without a true physical body), and some of their myths and legends even ended up in the Qur'an! Surahs 3:49 and 5:110 both make reference to Jesus allegedly making birds of clay come alive, a story found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas: ...
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13:51:02 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
The Da Vinci Code XI
11/23/2005 - James White
After creating, out of whole cloth, the idea that Constantine was busy running about the Roman Empire looking for at least 996 "original" gospels while promoting his edited versions of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Brown decides there is simply too much credibility lingering in this story, so he decides to shoot the last of it dead immediately. Enter the fellow I assume Tom Hanks is going to be playing, Robert Langdon, to add yet another incredible example of a-historical silliness to the very core of the Da Vinci Code fable:"An interesting note," Langdon added. "Anyone who chose the forbidden gospels over Constantine's version was deemed a heretic. The word heretic derives from that moment in history. The Latin word haereticus means 'choice.' Those who 'chose' the original history of Christ were the world's first heretics." (234)First, once again, there is not the slightest bit of historical foundation to this claim. None. Next, this is not a Latin term: it is Greek. The Greek terms ai`retiko,j, ai`reti,zw, and ai[resij are all found in the New Testament, long before Constantine. The verbal form does indeed mean "to choose," but not in the context Brown suggests. The term means "to choose or select for the purpose of showing special favor to or concern for," and is used in such passages as 2 Thessalonians 2:13 in the context of God's choice of the elect: "But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth." It refers not to choosing to believe mythical gospels that never existed, but choosing someone so as to give to them favor or grace. From this verbal idea, then, it comes to indicate divisions based upon choice in its substantival/adjectival forms. In fact, the very term "heretic" appears, in Greek, in the New Testament, a simple fact that anyone with the slightest concern for truth could have determined rather easily (in fact, it even appears in Plato!). It appears in Titus 3:10, "Reject a factious (ai`retiko.n) man after a first and second warning."
But outside of these rather obvious facts, there is another little historical problem for Brown's claim. A quick scan of the ecclesiastical Latin writings that predate Constantine likewise demonstrate Brown's lie. Off the top of my head I recalled one rather obvious example of the use of this term before Constantine, and there are many others. Around the beginning of the third century (for those challenged historically like Mr. Brown, that would be around AD 200) Tertullian wrote a book titled "Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos," The Prescription Against Heretics. Once again, for fictional character Robert Langdon's benefit, the year 200 is, oh, about 125 years prior to AD 325, the date of the Council of Nicea. So, if, as we are told, the term "heretic" came from the time frame after Nicea where people were choosing to believe in gospels that never existed, how could Tertullian be using it in the title of his book? Yes, well, I'm sure Constantine is to blame for that as well.
16:25:28 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
The Da Vinci Code X
11/22/2005 - James White
After insisting that "educated" Christians know all about Constantine's hi-jacking the faith and inventing the deity of Christ, Teabing tries to say that Jesus was a good guy and did good things. That is very nice: defame the entirety of His own teaching about Himself, tell us that we actually can know abolutely nothing about Him or His teachings (if all we have left has been utterly changed how can we truly know anything about Him?) but make sure to throw in a few crumbs about what a nice guy Jesus was. The attempt is not worth the ink it takes to print it. He continues, "All we are saying is that Constantine took advantage of Christ's substantial influence and importance." No, that is not all Brown is saying.Teabing drones on,
Because Constantine upgraded Jesus' status almost four centuries after Jesus' death, thousands of documents alredy existed chronicling HIs life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke. From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history." Teabing paused, eyeing Sophie. "Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned."
Let's do a little math for Teabing aka Dan Brown. Christ's death is somewhere around AD 30 (33). 33 + 400 years = AD 433. Constantine died in AD 337. Evidently, great scholars like Teabing, or fiction writers like Brown, get confused about the fact that Nicea was in the "fourth century" but that doesn't mean four hundred years. He's off here by a full century. The Council of Nicea was less than three hundred years after the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we have seen, Constantine did no such thing, nor did he have the power to do so at all, as if the early Christians, having suffered horribly at the hands of Rome, would then turn around and allow Rome to introduce what would be, in fact, a gross blasphemy into the faith. If no Christians had believed in the deity of Christ, to all of a sudden introduce such an exaltation would have been indeed a blasphemy: but no such thing took place. ...
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01:00:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
The Da Vinci Code IX
11/19/2005 - James White
"It was all about power," Teabing continued. "Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power. I've written several books on the topic." (233)Dan Brown's utter incomprehension of biblical scholarship and history comes out here again, for he seems to think that "Christ as Messiah" and "Jesus as Son of God" are equivalent terms. Surely, the idea of Christ as the Jewish Messiah is as primitive as can be, and it would be even more absurd (if that is possible) to suggest that it was Constantine who came up with the idea of Jesus as the Messiah! Such is silly beyond words, and I know of now scholar at all who makes such a suggestion.
The early church was a loosely connected group of persecuted churches, racked by heresy and strife, despised by the world. The idea that the early church could be so organized, let alone so dishonest, as to 1) die by the thousands for a lie, 2) seek political power while being persecuted thereby, and 3) come up with such a grand scheme, is again absurd. So is Brown misusing terminology again, and not referring to the early Church at all, but instead to post-Constantinianism? Surely the growth of the church/state relationship began with Constantine, but there is simply no possible way of connecting Jesus as Messiah with post-Constantinianism. So, assuming, then, that Brown is simply incompetent as a historian, let's reconstruct his assertion. Let's say he's talking solely about the deity of Christ here, not Jesus as Messiah. So, the idea is that Jesus' deity was vital to the construction of a church/state relationship. Is there merit to this assertion?
Not historically, for once again, Brown ignores the Arian resurgence after the council of Nicea. Constantine didn't care if Jesus was deity or not: he only cared about political stability in his lifetime. He surely did not have some "big conspiracy picture" in his mind for future generations. This is pure historical revisionism masquerading as scholarship (note the "I've written several books on the topic"---and he will soon cite numerous actual books published over the past decades, again giving credence to the "fiction based on fact" concept). Who are these "many scholars"? Of course, we are not told. Of course, you could get a group of "scholars" to agree to anything if you have enough money and time, but that is hardly relevant to truth.
Ironically, this thesis, as absurd as it is historically, is exactly what I keep hearing from Islamic apologist Shabir Ally. The poor "original followers" of Jesus could not manage to proclaim his truth, and the mean nasty followers of Paul basically "took over." When you try to find these original followers, you find more and more assertion with less and less documentation---in fact, you find absolutely nothing more than mere assertion and speculation, but these days, assertion and speculation, as long as it is joined with a smile or "sincerity," is all you really need. Post-modernism flourishes.
Now having made an utter mockery of history itself, Brown now decides to mock the faith itself in these words. Having claimed to have written several books asserting Jesus was "hi-jacked" by the early church, we read,
"And I assume devout Christians send you hate mail on a daily basis?"This kind of rhetoric is simply disgusting. "Well, if you were really educated, you'd know what I'm saying is true." Such is especially reprehensible in light of the fact that it is Brown who is demonstrating his utter lack of education (or, worse, utter dishonesty) with this kind of ravaging of historical realities. The vast majority of educated Christians know the early church hi-jacked Jesus? This kind of absurdity can only be promulgated in this fashion: it can never survive actual debate and examination, so it must assert itself by repetition, or, in this case, through repetition on movie screens and in book stores all across the world.
"Why should they?" Teabing countered. "The vast majority of educated Christians know the history of their faith."
01:00:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
The Da Vinci Code VIII
11/15/2005 - James White
We have come to the examination of one of the key assertions made by Dan Brown in his attack upon the central elements of the Christian faith (so as to make room for his Magdalene-based conspiracy theory). We read:"My dear," Teabing declared, until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet...a great and powerful man, but man nonetheless. A mortal."
"Not the Son of God?"
"Right," Teabing said. "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea."
"Hold on. You're saying Jesus' divinity was the result of a vote?"
"A relatively close vote at that," Teabing added. (233)
We have seen that the assertion that no one believed in the deity of Christ prior to the days of Constantine is utter rubbish, historically speaking. We have provided just two of many sources that could be cited that prove, beyond any and all refutation, that in point of fact the deity of Christ was known and believed by Christians long before Constantine was a twinkle in his daddy's eye. Indeed, the earliest heresies were not denials of the deity of Christ, but imbalances based upon it! The gnostic Docetics denied not the divine nature of Christ, but His humanity! And the Sabellian heresy in the decades prior to the Council of Nicea once again was based upon an acceptance of the fact that Jesus was the Son of God and deity: it simply sought to work this out within a unitarian framework (which can never work). So history---when it is known---makes a mockery of Brown's claims at this point.
We likewise have seen that the description of Jesus Christ as "the Son of God" is found in Scripture, and that long before Constantine ruled as well. If the assertion is made that Constantine altered the biblical texts to insert the phrase, this founders upon the consideration that we possess biblical manuscripts that predate Constantine and that would have been far outside his grasp no matter how powerful one presumes him to have been, and these plainly identify Jesus Christ as "Son of God." It would be humorous if it were not so sad to note that one of the most popular terms for Jesus is "Son" in...the gnostic gospels that Brown, through his characters, will identify as the "earliest Christian records." In fact, Christ is identified as "Son of God" in the Nag Hammadi finds, the very ones Brown directs us to as the unadulterated, unchanged, pre-Constantinian "gospels," such as the Gospel of Philip, the Sophia of Jesus, and the Gospel of the Egyptians! ...
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01:00:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
Live Blogging the Dateline Program on the Birth of Jesus Christ
11/11/2005 - James White
I've decided I might as well live-blog while I watch this thing. Given that it will feature John Dominic Crossan and Scott Hahn...well, it will have to be interesting. Prediction: Hahn will be one of the most conservative on the program. We can hope, anyway. Remember, he was trained as a Presbyterian. :-)00: Ah, there's ol' Dr. Crossan, "Get over it. It didn't happen." Hey, Hahn's beard looks good trimmed tightly. :-)
01: The aim is not to challenge anyone's beliefs? What a wonderfully post-modern way of putting it. As if the Christian faith can stand without its historical moorings.
02: "It's a parable, dummy!" Hey, anyone who has been listening to the DL over this year, and has listened to the Crossan debate, is ready for this one.
05: Ben Witherington III is the conservative in the group? Well, lovely. "Guesswork." Great---too bad no one there to give a meaningful response.
07: Dom: why not wear a tie? :-)
08: Here's the url for the transcript: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10005045/
09: The nativity scenes ignore the historical context? Uh, why? Could someone explain the assertion? Crossan's statements sure didn't provide any basis for the statement.
10: One thing is for sure: I sure "hear" Crossan's words with a whole lot more clarity than a few years ago. Not sure how someone who hasn't read his works and dialogued with him could really follow him too well, though.
14: Ah, don't you love contrasting a little school play shot on an unsteady camera with the erudite scholars? Yeah, lovely.
16: Here comes the "it was common for folks to believe in men sired by gods" garbage, straight out of Crossan's works. Listen to the cross-examination from our debate for how well that flies in light of the uniqueness of Jewish monotheism.
17: Sure looks like the interviewer has little interest in challenging Crossan's position. ...
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17:59:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
The Da Vinci Code (Part VII)
11/11/2005 - James White
He was on his way to his death, and he knew it. The story of Ignatius, the great bishop of Antioch, one of the early Christian martyrs, is well known, at least to those with an interest in church history (which limits things a good bit these days). Unwilling to compromise, Ignatius happily, as an aged man, embraced his departure to be with Christ. As he traveled to Rome to face death, he wrote to individuals and churches, and those letters have come down to us over the intervening centuries in Greek and Latin versions. Evidently, Dan Brown's extensive "historical research" for TDVC missed his letters, written in 107 or 108 (that's 200+ years prior to the Council of Nicea). If he had bothered to read these works, he would have known that claiming Constantine "made up" the deity of Christ or His position as the Son of God would be a historical blunder on the level of saying Jimmy Carter ran against George Washington for the Presidency of the United States.Here is a selection from Ignatius' genuine writings (there is a body of pseudo-Ignatian literature as well) that testify to his view of the Lord Jesus Christ. For more information on this, and the apologetic relevance of Ignatius in light of a tremendously gross attempt to misrepresent him by the Watchtower Society a number of years ago, click here. His words to the Ephesians identifying Jesus as God were noted in our previous entry. [Which reminds me: the Yahoo! article rendered the inscription found in the ancient church as "the god, Jesus Christ," but in reality, the underlying Greek is probably almost identical to Ignatius' phrase here, and whether you render it "the god" or "God" is dependent upon the translator and the context. Hence, the inscription [without having seen the actual Greek as yet] could be rendered "to the God, Jesus Christ" just as in Ignatius. This is, in fact, how it is rendered here.]
My spirit is but an offscouring of the cross, which is a scandal to the unbelieving, but to us it is salvation and life eternal. Where is the wise man? Where is the disputer? Where is the boasting of those who are called understanding? For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to a dispensation of God, from the seed of David, yes, but of the Holy Spirit as well. (Ephesians 18)Notice not only the explicit affirmation of the deity of Christ, but likewise the very high view of Christ stated as well: Ignatius clearly viewed Jesus as the God-man, affirming both his humanity and his Deity, as we will see in another citation below. ...
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01:00:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
A Quick Aside on the Da Vinci Issue in Light of Current Events
11/07/2005 - James White
Yahoo! had a story yesterday on the finding of an ancient Christian church in Israel, one pre-dating Constantine (hat tip SafeHaven). And almost as if on cue, the story contains this paragraph:Two mosaics inside the church — one covered with fish, an ancient Christian symbol that predates the cross — tell the story of a Roman officer and a woman named Aketous who donated money to build the church in the memory "of the god, Jesus Christ."I don't know about you, but I sorta have to chuckle a bit that Dan Brown is making millions off lying about Constantine making up the deity of Christ right as the earth gives up an example of the ancient nature of belief in the deity of Christ, just as we see in Ignatius or Melito of Sardis. Must be a conspiracy or something.
01:30:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
The Da Vinci Code (Part V)
11/07/2005 - James White
Having endowed Constantine with a-historical super-powers and credited him with doing things he never did, would never have had any interest in doing, could never have accomplished, and in fact, would have worked against his actual historical interests, Dan Brown continues the demolition of his historical credibility, but at least for a moment he sounds like so many others who blandly throw out the "Christianity just borrowed paganism" line, especially when it involves "dying and rising Saviors." So at least when this old canard is thrown out, at least Brown isn't completely alone in repeating it. But, that only proves that at this point he is just as guilty as all the rest in ignoring the fundamental difference between pagan stories of dying/rising gods and the unique Christian teaching of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. As common as the allegation is, even a moment's reflection upon the vast difference between a polytheistic religion with the concept of anthropomorphic gods (gods with physical bodies) that are able to co-habit with human beings and the exalted monotheism of Judaism and Christianity shows one the absurdity of the parallel. Gods dying and rising may be common in polytheistic religions---but in the monotheism of Christianity and of the Jewish/Christian scriptures, the concept of incarnation and resurrection becomes utterly and completely unique. Just witness the Islamic revulsion at the concept of incarnation and you can see how tremendously unique is the idea. Further, you have the Jewish Scriptures and their prophetic witness to the life and ministry of Christ, something completely missing in any allegedly parallel pagan myth. Every time I hear someone casually throwing this alleged parallel out I have to shake my head in amazement at how facile and shallow such reasoning is.Brown then even tries his hand at the "Constantine changed the Sabbath" argument, ignoring the presence of the phrase "the day of the Lord" in the Christian Scriptures and the wide witness to the celebration of Christian worship on Sunday in the early Christian documents (which, for Brown, don't even seem to exist). Once again the anachronism in Brown's fanciful claims is so strong as to be humorous.
From here Brown moves into his unique description of the Council of Nicea itself. Here we begin to see the central anti-Christian thrust of TDVC:
"My dear," Teabing declared, until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet...a great and powerful man, but man nonetheless. A mortal."
"Not the Son of God?"
"Right," Teabing said. "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea." (233)
Here we see what is arguably the most absurd, ridiculous, easily refuted claim of TDVC: and yet, it is central to the entire thesis of the book's reconstruction of history itself. We could spend a great deal of time refuting this assertion, and will do so in the next installments. For now, I will allow two ancient witnesses to speak to prove that Dan Brown, Doubleday, and everyone associated with the upcoming film, are making their millions at the cost of truth itself:
From AD 108, Ignatius to the church at Ephesus: "Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to her who has been blessed in greatness through the fulness of God the Father, ordained before time to be always resulting in permanent glory, unchangeably united and chosen in true passion, by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ, our God, to the church which is in Ephesus of Asia, worthy of felicitation: abundant greetings in Jesus Christ and in blameless joy." (Ephesians 1)
Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
01:00:00 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
The Da Vinci Code (Part IV)
11/01/2005 - James White
I apologize for being behind in returning to our Da Vinci Code series. I spoke on the subject at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church this weekend, and will be speaking at various churches in the Phoenix area on it between now and next May. Sadly, in most churches, almost no one is aware of what is coming our way with this film as far as its "anti-evangelistic" impact.In our previous segment we began looking at the claims Brown makes concerning the alleged plot by Constantine to create an entirely new religion by fusing Christianity with paganism. To use a direct quote, "Historians still marvel at the brilliance with which Constantine converted the sun-worshipping pagans to Christianity. By fusing pagan symbols, dates, and rituals into the growing Christian tradition, he created a kind of hybrid religion that was acceptable to both parties." (232) He then adds this outrageous statement, "Nothing in Christianity is original."
Especially around the holidays we hear pretty much the same drumbeat. I had to chuckle as I checked my RSS feed just this evening and found Jason Engwer posting the beginning of what looks like a fascinating series on the issue of Christmas (link here). One of the points noted by Engwer is that while the Roman holiday was established in AD 274 (at the height of empire-wide persecution of Christianity) there are references to the date in Christian writings relevant to the birth of Christ that pre-date both the establishment of the celebration as well as Constantine himself. "Julius Africanus, however, argues in his Chronicle (A.D. 221) for a date in the winter, December 25." (in Everett Ferguson, editor, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, [New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999], p. 251) Engwer notes. No matter what else we might say, laying this one on Constantine once again flies in the face of all historical inquiry.
But beyond this, the fact of the matter is that Constantine simply never had this kind of power, and history does not give us any reason to believe Browns' fanciful claims. The idea that Christians would simply roll over and allow the Roman Emperor to completely re-vamp their entire faith, from their faith in the nature of Christ to their worship, etc., is beyond ridiculous. The fact of the matter is that while the Constantinian era had great and far-reaching ramifications down the line in church history (especially relating to the development of sacralism, the "state church" concept), those ramifications could not have been foreseen by anyone at the time of Nicea, let alone were they part of some massive conspiracy. Further, they took a great deal of time to develop. It wasn't as nice and simple as Brown would like to say: you don't make the kinds of changes Brown lays at Constantine's feet in the time frame Constantine had to make them. Things moved just a little bit slower back then.
But there is something else to remember here. If it was, in fact, Constantine's desire to create a new religion with a newly divine Savior (as we will see), he failed miserably. He died in AD 337, and during the twelve years after Nicea he surely not carry out all the fanciful things Brown suggests. What is more, the "Arian Resurgence" that took place after the Council of Nicea gives the lie to the entirety of Brown's thesis. As I noted a number of years ago in an article for the CRI Journal: ...
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21:36:35 - Category: General Apologetics - Link to this article -
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