Ian Boyne, Contributor
AFTER BECOMING the biggest-selling novel of all time, selling over 40 million copies and being translated into over 40 languages, The Da Vinci Code is already grossing one of the highest ever box-office ticket sales.
The Good News magazine, put out by the Armstrongite sect, United Church of God, fittingly sums up the Da Vinci Code's mass appeal by pointing out that it has something for murder-mystery fans, lovers of romance novels, history buffs, religious sceptics, conspiracy theorists, radical feminists and members of the intelligentsia attracted to alternative Christianities.
RIDING CURRENT WAVES
The May-June issue of the magazine goes on to make the insightful point that The Da Vinci Code is riding current waves in our culture: revelations of scandals in the Catholic Church and other churches; the growing interest in apocryphal and Gnostic writings claiming to be genuine accounts of the life of Jesus; the 'spirituality is good but religion is bad' mindset; the feminisation of Western society, the rage for New Age; biblical illiteracy; and while criticising most religions as politically incorrect, it is open season on Christianity."
Of course, what the Good News article does not go on to say is that sects like theirs have for many years fanned the flames of anti-Catholicism and have so attacked traditional Christianity and its central doctrines, charging orthodox Christianity with a conspiracy to suppress the Truth, that The Da Vinci Code is merely taking their scepticism to another, more disconcerting level. Dan Brown's novel, now turned into a blockbuster movie, will do more than rake in millions for its author: It will continue to spark intense discussion on the origins, legitimacy and future of Christianity.
SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST STOUT CONDEMNATION
It was interesting to read the stout condemnation of The Da Vinci Code by Seventh-day Adventist Communications Director Nigel Coke who told one Sunday newspaper that the book and movie were of the Devil and were an attempt to "confuse the mind." The Da Vinci Code charges that the Catholic Church has been using murder and other foul means to suppress the 'fact' that Jesus married Mary Magdalene that his bloodline leads us to France.
It was Emperor Constantine who is responsible for the perversion of original Christianity. This is the same charge which has been made by the Adventists, who say, like The Da Vinci Code, that he changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.
From the mid 1800s, Adventist preachers and prophecy buffs have told the world about the sinister plots that the Roman Catholic church has been involved in, and of the alleged murders which they have committed to suppress "God's truth."
CHARGING THE CATHOLICS
Not too long ago, Adventist preacher David Mould was on Jamaican television charging the Catholics with the murder of Abraham Lincoln and others opposed to Catholicism. Dan Brown has merely extended this centuries-long prejudice and suspicion about the Catholic Church, but in so doing he has raised questions which should be troubling not only for Adventists and Armstrongites, but also for all Protestants.
The overarching issue really is, how do we know which accounts of the life of Jesus are really authentic and which represent a true revelation from God? Of the many Gospels and so-called inspired writings which were circulating in the early centuries of Christian history, which represent the infallibility of Heaven and, more importantly, who decides? For centuries, the Protestants have behaved as though the collection of books we call the Bible dropped out from Heaven.
WHO DECIDES?
Who decided which books should be rejected and which accepted in Biblical canon? These books were accepted and rejected long before the founding of Protestantism and certainly long before the establishment of Adventism, Watchtowerism and Armstrongism. If the Catholic fathers corrupted Christianity and don't properly represent the Gospel, then can we trust them to put the canon together?
How do we know The Da Vinci Code is not right that the early church fathers suppressed writings such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Phillip and the Gospel of Mary because they wanted to maintain male domination of the church, suppress the feminine in Christianity and present Jesus as divine when He was simply a God-sent prophet who was fully human? How do we really know that some inspired, God-breathed Scriptures were not unjustifiably rejected by a Sabbath-rejecting, justification-by-faith-rejecting, Christmas-keeping, and immortality-of-the-soul-teaching Roman church?
The Da Vinci Code is not just an embarrassment to the Roman Catholic Church and a frontal attack on Catholicism. It is an attack on all forms of modern Christianity which accept the Biblical canon.
CAST SERIOUS DOUBTS
The Da Vinci Code is not the first to cast serious doubts about the Christianity which triumphed and which we have accepted in the West. In fact even the view that Jesus was married is not new. In 1970, William E. Phipps wrote his theological potboiler, Was Jesus Married? In 1982, the controversial non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail rolled off the Press, asserting that evidence exists that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children who now have descendants living in Southern France.
The other major view of the Code that Jesus was not really divine has a very long history and was most famously represented by Arius whose views were condemned by the Emperor Constantine-convened Council of Nicea in 325 AD. That the Gnostic Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas were suppressed by the early church for political reasons was made eloquently and famously was propounded by the accomplished scholar Professor Elaine Pagels in her 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels.
BIDDING FOR SUPREMACY
And that there were a number of Christianities bidding for supremacy in the early centuries has been heavily documented, most recently by Religious Studies Professor and former Evangelical now turned agnostic Professor Bart Ehrman in his 2003 acclaimed book, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faith We Never Knew. Ehrman has followed up with a 2005 bestseller titled, Misquoting Jesus: the Story Behind who Changed the Bible and Why. It's a fascinating read.
Says Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus: "The more I studied the manuscript of the New Testament the more I realised how just how radically the text had been altered over the years at the hands of the scribes who were not only conserving scripture but actually changing it. The New Testament as we actually have it (is) the product of human hands."
For years, Mutaburuka had been saying on his late-night 'Cutting Edge' programme that Christianity is a fraud perpetuated over centuries by tricksters who have pulled the wool over people's eyes. He has been dismissed as a stupid, ignorant bare-foot Rasta. I have told people over and over that many of Muta's seemingly hair-brained and outrageous ideas are held by some of the most respected biblical scholars at the finest universities in North America and Europe.
Scholars like Karen King of Harvard, the leading authority on Mary Magdalene, the famed feminist theologian, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, and Jane Schaberg (The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene) have all pointed to the conspiracy against women by the Roman Catholic fathers. Anne Brock in her book Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority advances the drama of the struggle for the definition of early Christianity.
The Da Vinci Code is profoundly unsettling not because it purports to be unvarnished historical truth: It is disturbing in the issues it raises and the questions which it leaves to nag the mind of the believer or the searcher for truth.
How does one really know that the sixty-six books in our Protestant Bible are the only ones which God inspired for our guidance and salvation? How doe we know which books to accept and which to reject? Whom can we trust? How can we really reconstruct early Christianity?
There were three primary groups batting for influence in the early centuries: the Ebionites, the Marcionites and the Gnostics. If either of them had won, the Christianity we know would be radically different. If the Ebionites had won the Christianity would seem closer to Armstrongism and the Sacred Names movement than the orthodox Christianity we know. (Though significantly, Armstrongism, unlike Ebionism, accepts that Jesus is God)
The Ebionites were Jewish Christians who followed the Old Testament Sabbath, Feast days, and dietary laws. They wanted Christianity to maintain Jewish roots. Historically they were radically opposed to Pauline Christianity.
A DIFFERENT NEW TESTAMENT
If the Ebionites won the early Christian ideological war, we would have a different New testament. Paul's writings would be out and very likely the only Gospel which would be accepted would be Matthew.
The Marcionites were the exact opposite. They were staunchly anti-Jewish and rejected the Old testament. They felt the Old Testament God was a different God from the New Testament God. Marcion, the founding father of Marcionism, bitterly opposed Jewish Sabbaths and feasts and felt every Jewish practice should be expunged from the church. He partially succeeded in a Roman Christianity, which severed the Jewish roots of Christianity, but if he had succeeded totally the Christian scriptures would have excluded the Old Testament.
HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL GNOSTICS
Then there were the highly influential Gnostics who believed in mystical knowledge and who were less ritualistic and more spiritual and intuitive. They believed in one Supreme God, but many divinities. (Some early Christians believes in as many as 30 different gods!) The true aim of life was to obtain secret knowledge, which would liberate the soul. The view about a man dying for our sins and a vicarious atonement was totally rejected. Every major doctrine of Christianity would be rejected if the Gnostics had won the ideological battle.
Were the victors the ones who were really on the side of God - or were they just the most clever and the most brutal - as The Da Vinci Code and others have maintained? The verdict is yours.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
