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Cracking The Anti-Catholic Code: The Council of Nicaea |
CRACKING THE ANTI-CATHOLIC CODE
Part 2 of a Special Planet Envoy Critique of The Da Vinci Code
"Christ, the Early Church, Constantine, and the Council of Nicaea"
By Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel
http://www.envoymagazine.com/PlanetEnvoy/Review-DaVinci-part2-Full.htm
Introduction
In Part 1 of "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code" we examined the
background of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, focusing on the Gnostic
ideas that author Dan Brown utilizes in his best-selling novel (now at
4.5 million copies sold and still selling strong). This second part of
Envoy magazine's special Planet Envoy critique of the best-selling
novel examines Brown's depictions of early Christianity, especially
his claims about Jesus Christ, the Emperor Constantine, the supposed
reliance of early Christianity on pagan beliefs and rituals, and the
Council of Nicaea. As we will see, Brown not only plays fast and loose
with the facts, he consistently makes statements that are inaccurate,
baseless, and even completely contrary to historical fact.
Constantine "Divinizes" Jesus?
Some of the most audacious and blatantly incorrect statements in The
Da Vinci Code have to do with early Church history and the person of
Jesus. In the course of Sophie and Langdon's lengthy conversation with
Teabing at the English historian's home, a dialogue takes place in
which the following claims are made:
The divinity of Jesus and his establishment as "the Son of God" were
created, proposed, and voted into existence (by a "relatively close
vote") at the Council of Nicaea in 325.
Prior to this event, nobody--including Jesus' followers--believed that
he was anything more than "a mortal prophet."
The Emperor Constantine established the divinity of Jesus for
political reasons and used the Catholic Church as a means of
solidifying his power. (The Da Vinci Code, 233)
Teabing does not personally reject the divinity of Jesus (many people
do reject it), or claim that certain modern day scholars deny that
Jesus was divine (many scholars do deny it), but states that the early
followers of Jesus--the Christians of the first three centuries
following Jesus' time on earth--believed that he was not divine at
all, but "a mortal" only. This undermines the credibility of Teabing's
character, for any decent historian, Christian or otherwise, knows
that the early Christians believed that Jesus of Nazareth was somehow
divine, being the "Son of God" and the resurrected Christ. In fact,
the central issue at the Council of Nicaea in 325 was not whether
Jesus was merely human or something more, but how exactly his
divinity--which even the heretic Arius acknowledged--was to be
understood: Was he fully divine? Was the Son equal to the Father? Was
he a lesser god? What did it mean to say that the Son was "begotten,"
as the Gospel of John states in several places (Jn 1:14, 18; 3:16,
18)?
The Testimony of the New Testament
There is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, dating back to
Jesus' time on earth, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was divine. In
his seminal study, Early Christian Doctrines, noted early Church
scholar J.N.D. Kelly writes that "the all but universal Christian
conviction in the [centuries prior to the Council of Nicaea] had been
that Jesus Christ was divine as well as human. The most primitive
confession had been 'Jesus is Lord' [Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11], and its
import had been elaborated and deepened in the apostolic age." (J.N.D.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1960;
revised edition, 1978], 138). Jesus was indeed a prophet, explains
German theologian Karl Adam, but the Gospels depict him uniquely more:
"There can be no doubt: the Canonical Gospels see in the person of
Jesus Jahve [Yahweh=God] himself. According to them, Jesus thinks,
feels, and acts in the clear consciousness that he is not simply one
called like the rest of the prophets, but rather the historical
manifestations and revelation of God himself" (Karl Adam, The Christ
of Faith, [Pantheon Books: New York, 1957), 59).
Explicit and implicit evidence that Jesus and his followers believed
he was more than a mere mortal is found throughout the New Testament.
The infancy narrative in Matthew's Gospel quotes from the Old
Testament prophet Isaiah: " 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear
a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel' (which means, God with
us)" (Matt 1:23). In that same Gospel there is an account of the
baptism of Jesus; as Jesus comes up out of the water "the heavens were
opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming
upon Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, 'This is My
beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.' " (Matt. 3:16-17).
John's Gospel contains some of the strongest statements about the
divinity of Jesus. The densely theological prologue proclaims: "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through
him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn1:1-3);
the Word is Jesus, the incarnate Son: "And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father" (Jn 1:14). Later, after
upsetting some of the Jewish authorities because of his activities on
the Sabbath, Jesus' life is threatened, "because he not only broke the
sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal with God"
(Jn 5:18).
The eighth chapter of John's Gospel contains another firm affirmation
of Jesus' divinity. After having a debate about Abraham with some of
the religious leaders, Jesus declares: "Your father Abraham rejoiced
to see My day, and he saw it and was glad" (Jn 8:56). Indignant, the
leaders respond, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen
Abraham?" (v. 57). "Truly, truly, I say to you," Jesus replies,
"before Abraham was born, I am" (v. 58). This is met with hostility;
the crowd attempts to kill Jesus, recognizing that he has applied to
himself the name of God--"Yahweh," or "I AM"--revealed to Moses in the
burning bush (Ex 3:14). After his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus
appears to the disciples (Jn 20:19-23), but "Thomas, one of the
twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came" (Jn 19:24).
Eight days later Jesus appears to the disciples again; this time
Thomas is among them. Upon seeing Jesus and touching his pierced hands
and side, "Thomas answered and said to Him, 'My Lord and my God!'" (Jn
20:28). Many other examples from the four Gospels could be given,
including over forty passages where Jesus is called the "Son of God"
(cf., Mt 11:27; Mk 12:6; 13:32; 14:61-62; Lk 10:22; 22:70; Jn 10:30;
14:9), is ascribed the power to forgive sins (Mk 2:5-12; Lk 24:45-47),
claims unity and oneness with the Father (Jn 10:30; 12:45; 14:8-10),
and performs many miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead
(Jn 11). Even if readers believe the disciples were mistaken or that
Jesus was a charlatan, there's little doubt that they believed he was
divine and was far more than a mortal prophet.
Similar affirmations of Jesus divinity are found throughout the
canonical writings of Paul and the other New Testament authors. In his
first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul declares that "no one can
say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3). In his
letter to the Philippians, he writes that "though [the Son] was in the
form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be
grasped" (Phil 2:6). The Son's willingness to become man will,
paradoxically, lead to the universal confession "that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:11). Paul's first letter
to his young son in the Christian faith, Timothy, contains the
emphatic declaration that the "Lord Jesus Christ . . . is the blessed
and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who alone
possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man
has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen" (1
Tim 6:15-16).
The final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation (or The
Apocalypse) presents Jesus as the eternal, conquering, and resurrected
King and Savior--another far cry from a "mortal prophet." When John
sees Jesus, he falls "as a dead man" at his feet. "And He laid His
right hand upon me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the
last" (Rev. 1:17). The title of "the First and the Last" is one of
titles used in the Old Testament to describe Yahweh, the one true God:
"Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel And his Redeemer, the LORD of
hosts: I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides
Me" (Isa 44:6; see Isa 41:4; 48:12). This title is applied to Jesus
two more times in the Book of Revelation, including 2:8 and 22:12-13.
The latter passage, at the conclusion of the book, identifies Jesus as
"the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and
the end" (Rev 22:13). This is the same language used by the Lord God
at the opening of the book (Rev 1:8), making an overt and purposeful
connection between God and the divinity of Jesus Christ.
The Testimony of Early Christian Writers
There is much testimony from numerous Christian writers between 100
A.D. and the fourth century to the Christian belief in Jesus'
divinity. In addition to proving what Christians really did believe
about Jesus in the first three centuries of Christianity, these
writings also provide invaluable context to the theological issues and
battles that would eventually be addressed, at least in part, by the
Council of Nicaea.
Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-c.107) was the bishop of Antioch; it has
been speculated that he, just like the apostle Paul, may have been a
persecutor of the Christians prior to his conversion (The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church [Oxford: New York, 1997. Third
edition], 817). Captured by the Roman army and en route to Rome to be
executed, he wrote a series of seven letters to churches at Ephesus,
Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, and one to Polycarp
(c. 69-c. 155), the bishop of Smyrna. In his letter to the Ephesians,
he writes:
"There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit;
both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death;
both of Mary and of God; first possible and then impossible, even
Jesus Christ our Lord." (Letter to the Ephesians, ch. 7).
Later, in the same letter, he tells his readers that they must "do
everything as if he [Jesus] were dwelling in us. Thus we shall be his
temples and he will be within us as our God--as he actually is"
(Letter to the Ephesians, 15). He then states, "For our God, Jesus
Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the
womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. He was born
and baptized, that by His passion He might purify the water" (par.
18). Further, in his letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius refers to
Jesus as "the Christ God" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 10).
Justin Martyr (c. 100-c.165) was born into a pagan family and became a
Christian around the age of thirty. He was a Christian philosopher who
taught in Ephesus, then later in Rome, where he had a school. Justin
was one of the leading apologists for the Christian faith in the
second century; he defended Christian teachings--including the belief
that Jesus was divine--against pagan philosophers. He and several of
his disciples were arrested, beaten, and then beheaded by the Romans
for their refusal to worship pagan gods. In his First Apology, he
writes, "Jesus Christ is the only proper Son who has been begotten by
God, being His Word and first-begotten, and power; and, becoming man
according to His will, He taught us these things for the conversion
and restoration of the human race . . ." (First Apology of Justin
Martyr, par. 23). In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin provides a
lengthier defense of his belief that Jesus is God:
"But if you knew, Trypho," continued I, "who He is that is called at
one time the Angel of great counsel, and a Man by Ezekiel, and like
the Son of man by Daniel, and a Child by Isaiah, and Christ and God to
be worshipped by David, and Christ and a Stone by many, and Wisdom by
Solomon, and Joseph and Judah and a Star by Moses, and the East by
Zechariah, and the Suffering One and Jacob and Israel by Isaiah again,
and a Rod, and Flower, and Corner-Stone, and Son of God, you would not
have blasphemer Him who has now come, and been born, and suffered, and
ascended to heaven; who shall also come again, and then your twelve
tribes shall mourn. For if you had understood what has been written by
the prophets, you would not have denied that He was God, Son of the
only, unbegotten, unutterable God." (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with
Trypho, ch. 126).
One of the most important of the pre-Nicaean Christian writers was
Irenaeus (c. 130-c. 200), the bishop of Lyons and an ardent opponent
of the Gnostic theologian Valentinus (d. c. 165). His major work was
Adversus omnes Haereses, commonly known as "Against Heresies." In
arguing against the Gnostic dualism of the Valentinians, Irenaeus
explain and defends the Christian belief that Jesus is God. This
includes lengthy statements such as this one, which condemns those who
believe that Jesus was a mortal only:
"But again, those who assert that He [Jesus] was simply a mere man,
begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience,
are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of
God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son . . . Now, the
Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like
others, He had been a mere man. But that He had, beyond all others, in
Himself that pre-eminent birth which is from the Most High Father, and
also experienced that pre-eminent generation which is from the Virgin,
the divine Scriptures do in both respects testify of Him: also, that
He was a man without comeliness, and liable to suffering; that He sat
upon the foal of an *****; that He received for drink, vinegar and gall;
that He was despised among the people, and humbled Himself even to
death and that He is the holy Lord, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the
Beautiful in appearance, and the Mighty God, coming on the clouds as
the Judge of all men;--all these things did the Scriptures prophesy of
Him." (Against Heresies, book 3, ch. 29:1, 2)
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 215) was a Greek theologian and the
author of several works, including "Exhortation to the Greeks." In
that work he teaches that "He [Jesus] alone is both God and man, and
the source of all our good things" (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1
[A.D. 190]); he also states: "Despised as to appearance but in reality
adored, [Jesus is] the expiator, the Savior, the soother, the divine
Word, he that is quite evidently true God, he that is put on a level
with the Lord of the universe because he was his Son" (ibid.,
10:110:1). Similar remarks were made by the great African Church
father, Tertullian (c. 160-c. 225). He wrote that "God alone is
without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is
also God" (The Soul 41:3 [A.D. 210]). In another work he discusses the
relationship of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ: "The
origins of both his substances display him as man and as God: from the
one, born, and from the other, not born" (The Flesh of Christ
5:6—7 [A.D. 210]). The Alexandrian scholar and theologian Origen
(c.185-c.254), who authored hundreds of books, stated around 225 that
"although [the Son] was God, he took flesh; and having been made man,
he remained what he was: God" (The Fundamental Doctrines 1:0:4).
Writing at nearly the same time, the theologian Hippolytus
(c.170-c.236) stated, "Only [God's] Word is from himself and is
therefore also God, becoming the substance of God" (Refutation of All
Heresies 10:33 [A.D. 228]).
The Gnostic Jesus
A serious question ignored by The Da Vinci Code is this: "Why should
the writings of the Gnostics be considered be more dependable than the
canonical writings, especially when they were written some fifty to
three hundred years later than the New Testament writings?" It's easy
for writers such as Brown, who are sympathetic to the Gnostics (or at
least to some of their ideas), to criticize the canonical Gospels and
call many of the stories and sayings contained in them into question.
But without the canonical Gospels there would be no historical Jesus
at all, no meaningful narrative of his life, and no decent sense of
what he did, how he acted, and how he related to others.
As we pointed out in Part 1 of this critique, the "gnostic gospels"
aren't gospels at all in the sense of the four canonical Gospels,
which are filled with narrative, concrete details, historical figures,
political activity, and details about social and religious life.
Contrary to the assertion that "the early Church literally stole
Jesus" and shrouded his "human message . . . in an impenetrable cloak
of divinity, and using it to expand their own power," the Church was
intent, from the very beginning, of holding on to the humanity and
divinity of Christ and of telling the story of his life on earth
without washing away the sorrow, pain, joy, and blood that so often
accompanied it. "It was the orthodox Christian Church that . . .
insisted on keeping the Christian religion rooted in historical
realities," writes Philip Jenkins, "rather than the random mythologies
reinvented at the whim of each rising Gnostic sage. The church was
struggling to retain the idea of Jesus as a historical human being who
lived and died in a specific place and time, not in a timeless
never-never land" (Hidden Gospels [Oxford University Press, 2001],
211).
The Jesus of the Gnostic writings is rarely recognizable as a Jewish
carpenter, teacher, and prophet dwelling in first century Palestine;
instead, he is often described as a phantom-like creature who lectures
at length about the "deficiency of aeons," "the mother," "the Arrogant
One," and "the archons"--all terms that only the Gnostic elite would
comprehend, hence their gnostic (gnosis = secret knowledge) character.
One strain of Gnosticism, known as Docetism, held that Jesus only
seemed, or appeared, to be a man (Gr., doceo = "I seem"); adherents
believed this because of their dislike for the physical body and the
material realm, a common trait among Gnostics. The tendency towards a
docetist understanding of Jesus--if not a fully formed docetist
Christology--existed in the first century and was addressed in some of
the writings of Paul (Colossians and the pastoral Epistles) and John
(cf. 1 Jn 4:2; 5:6; 2 Jn 7). In the second century, docetism became a
formed theology and made appearance in various Gnostic writings,
including the Acts of John, written in the late second century:
"Sometimes when I would lay hold on him, I met with a material and
solid body, and at other times, again, when I felt him, the substance
was immaterial and as if it existed not at all. And if at any time he
were bidden by some one of the Pharisees and went to the bidding, we
went with him, and there was set before each one of us a loaf by them
that had bidden us, and with us he also received one; and his own he
would bless and part it among us: and of that little every one was
filled, and our own loaves were saved whole, so that they which bade
him were amazed. And oftentimes when I walked with him, I desired to
see the print of his foot, whether it appeared on the earth; for I saw
him as it were lifting himself up from the earth: and I never saw it"
(Acts of John, 93.)
If the material realm was evil, as so many Gnostic groups and
movements believed, why would a being such as Christ have anything to
with it? And why should we be concerned at all with history and the
common life of ordinary people? The Gnostic Jesus is not interested in
earthly, historical events. "In the second-century Gnosticism
described by the Father," writes Ronald Nash, "Christ was one of the
higher aeons, or intermediary beings, who descended to earth for the
purpose of redeeming man. Christ came into the world, not in order to
suffer and die, but in order to release the divine spark of light
imprisoned in matter. The Gnostic Jesus was not a savior; he was a
revealer" (The Gospels and the Greeks [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R
Publishing, 2003. 2nd edition], 209).
Gnosticism was exclusive, elitist, and esoteric, open only to a few.
Christianity, on the other hand, is inclusive, open to all, and
exoteric, open to all those who acknowledge the beliefs of the Faith
handed down by Jesus and enter into a life-giving relationship with
him. The Jesus of the canonical Gospels is a breathing,
flesh-and-blood person; he gets hungry, weeps, eats and drinks with
common people, and dies. The Jesus of the Gnostic writings is a
phantom, a spirit who sometimes inhabits a body and sometimes doesn't,
and who talks in ways that very few could understand. Once again, The
Da Vinci Code has it backwards.
The novel's assertions about Jesus and his followers fail to make
sense of some daunting questions. If the first followers of Jesus
never believed he was divine (and thus never rose again from the
dead), why did so many of them willingly die as martyrs? Is it
reasonable to believe that thousands of people would face death by
lions, the sword, and fire for the sake of a "mortal prophet" who
himself remained dead? And why would these followers, who are so
clearly confused and distraught when Jesus is taken away to be
executed, reemerge a few weeks later and begin proclaiming boldly a
belief in their fallen leader? If Jesus had remained in the tomb where
he was placed after his death, couldn't the authorities have shown his
body and stopped once and for all the audacious teachings of the
suddenly confident Christians?
Put simply, if Jesus were merely mortal and was not considered
anything more until the fourth century, then it is impossible to make
any sense of Christianity and how it came into existence. Historian
Paul Johnson writes that "in order to explain Christianity we have to
postulate an extraordinary Christ who did extraordinary things. We
have to think back from a collective phenomenon to its agent. Men and
women began frantically and frenetically to preach Jesus' gospel
because they believed he had come back to them from the dead and given
them the authority and the power to do so." (Paul Johnson, A History
of Christianity [New York: Atheneum, 1976], 27).
An implicit assumption behind the remarks of Teabing and Langdon is
that Christians--whether of the first, fourth, or twenty-first
centuries--are mindless drones who simply believe what they are told
by their leaders. Thus, Constantine deified a man who no one ever
thought of as divine and none of the Christians were bothered by it.
And so the same people who often suffered and died for their beliefs
are now willing to accept a radical, wholesale change in doctrine
without so much as a peep? This is not only impossible to accept as
logical, it is contrary to history and fact.
Constantine's Childhood and Conversion
Included in the lengthy lecture given to Sophie by Teabing and Langdon
are several remarks about the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (d.
337). Most, if not all, of these statements are taken directly from
Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Dell Books, 1983. See pages 365-9); in some
cases the phrases and order of ideas used are identical.
Many of the claims made about Constantine are either falsehoods or
half-truths based on conjecture and material taken out of context.
Debate continues today in scholarly circles about Constantine, his
exact beliefs, his relationship with the Catholic Church, and his
influence upon Christianity. Most historians acknowledge that he was a
complex man, a powerful and sometimes cruel emperor (he executed a
wife and a son under mysterious circumstances) whose apparent passion
for Christianity was not always guided by theological knowledge or
godly wisdom. There is also no doubt that the course of Christianity
was influenced by Constantine.
Constantine's passion for religion was based, in part, "on his
political intuition that the unity of the empire restored by him could
be maintained only with the help of a Church united in belief and
government and subordinated to the state" (Hugo Rahner, Church and
State in Early Christianity [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992], 41). But
it would be incorrect to portray Constantine as simply a calculating
leader who merely used the Church for his political ends. Historian
Hugo Rahner writes that "the real religious motives behind
Constantine's efforts to achieve effective control of the Church ran
much deeper. These can be reduced to one theme. Even before he became
involved with the Church, Constantine was obsessed with a
superstitious religious conviction that revealed itself in his strange
personal cult of the invincible sun, in the worship, influenced by
Stoicism and Platonism, of the supreme Divinity, in a misty feeling
that 'Providence' had bestowed on him a mission as its herald and
miraculous instrument" (Rahner, 41-2).
In 313, Constantine and his fellow-emperor Licinius issued the Edict
of Milan, which recognized Christianity as a legal religion. It stated
that "Christians and all others should have the freedom to follow the
kind of religion they favored; so that the God who dwells in heaven
might be propitious to us and to all under our rule. . . . Moreover,
concerning the Christians, we before gave orders with respect to the
places set apart for their worship. It is now our pleasure that all
who have bought such places should restore them to the Christians,
without any demand for payment." (Edict of Milan, March 313. Par. 3,
7). The Edict, Paul Johnson writes, "was one of the decisive events in
world history. Yet the story behind it is complicated and in some ways
mysterious" (A History of Christianity, 67).
Historians will likely never know for certain what happened at the
Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, where "a most incredible sign
appeared to [Constantine] from heaven" (Eusebius, quoted by Johnson,
67). Having seen the Cross of Christ in the sky, Constantine underwent
a conversion. But, as Johnson notes, "there is a conflict of evidence
about the exact time, place and details of this vision, and there is
some doubt about the magnitude of Constantine's change of ideas. His
father had been pro-Christian. He himself appears to have been a
sun-worshipper, one of a number of late-pagan cults which had
observances in common with the Christians." (p. 67). Here Johnson
refers in part to the fact that the Christians had been celebrating
their weekly liturgy on Sunday, the first day of the week, since the
time of Paul and the other apostles. Sunday was also the feast day of
the Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun) cult, whose worship of the pagan sun
god had appeared in the Roman world around the middle of the second
century and had been strongly supported by the Emperor Aurelian (270-5
A.D) (Chas S. Clifton, Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics [New
York: Barnes & Noble, 1992], 121). It should also be noted that Rome's
official religion was not sun worship. "Rome's official religion"
states Dr. Margaret Mitchell, Associate Professor of New Testament and
Early Christian Literature in the Divinity School at the University of
Chicago, "was the cult of Roma--the goddess--and of her deified
emperors, and the Capitoline trio Jupiter, Juno and Minerva."
In The Da Vinci Code, the historian Teabing states that Constantine
"was a lifelong pagan who was baptized on his deathbed, too weak to
protest." He claims the official religion of Constantine's time was
"sun worship--the cult of Sol Invictus, or the Invincible Sun--and
Constantine was its head priest." He adds that in 325, Constantine
"decided to unify Rome under a single religion. Christianity." (p.
232)
This is a mixture of truth and error, most of it again drawn from Holy
Blood Holy Grail (see pages 365-8), although that book's account is
more accurate than what is found in Brown's novel. The existing
evidence indicates that Constantine did become a sincere and believing
Christian and sought to renounce his former worship of pagan gods. Yet
it is also evident that he did struggle with reconciling his
attachment to the Sol Invictus cult and his belief in the God of the
Christians. Part of this was due to his position as emperor, the fact
that the majority of the population was pagan, and likely his own
inner decision to be a ruler before being a Christian.
It would be a gross oversimplification to think that Constantine could
only benefit from becoming a Christian and publicly supporting the
Church. "The Christians were a tiny minority of the population,"
states A.H.M. Jones in Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, "and
they belonged for the most part to the classes of the population who
were politically and socially of the least importance, the middle and
lower classes of the towns. The senatorial aristocracy of Rome were
pagan almost to a man; the higher grades of the civil service were
mainly pagan; and above all the army officers and men, were
predominantly pagan. The goodwill of the Christians was hardly worth
gaining, and for what it was worth it could be gained by merely
granting them toleration" (Jones, 73).
From Paganism to Christianity
Constantine's move from paganism to Christianity was not immediate or
always consistent. But over the course of several years he increased
his support of the Church and implemented laws against certain pagan
practices and activities. Some scholars argue that the chasm between
the monotheism of Christianity and the cult of Sol Invictus was not as
wide as it might initially appear. The cult of Sol Invictus was not
polytheistic or even pantheistic, but monotheistic; it was "the
worship of the divine spirit by whom the whole universe was ruled, the
spirit whose symbol is the sun; a symbol in which this spirit in some
way specially manifests itself. . . . The whole cult is penetrated
with the idea of an overruling divine monarchy. Moreover, the cult was
in harmony with a philosophical religion steadily growing, in the high
places of the administration, throughout this same [fourth] century,
the cult of Summus Deus--the God who is supreme" (Philip Hughes, The
Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870 [New
York: Image, 1964], 29-30).
For Constantine--a man without much concern for theological
precision--there was probably little, if any, distinction between the
pagan and Christian notions of God (even though he surely recognized
the differences in worship and morality). "The transition from solar
monotheism (the most popular form of contemporary paganism) to
Christianity was not difficult," writes historian Henry Chadwick. "In
Old Testament prophecy Christ was entitled 'the sun of
righteousness'[Mal. 4:2]. Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 2000) speaks
of Christ driving his chariot across the sky like a Sun-god. . . .
Tertullian says that many pagans imagined the Christians worshiped the
sun because they met on Sundays and prayed towards the East" (Henry
Chadwick, The Early Church [Penguin Books, 1967, 1973], 126).
The Da Vinci Code implies that Constantine was baptized against his
wishes. Actually, the Emperor had desired to be baptized in the waters
of the Jordan River, where Jesus had been baptized, but it was not to
be. Not long after the Easter of 337 he called together some bishops,
removed his purple robe, and put on the white garments of a
catechumen, then was baptized by Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia
(Jones, 195-200). He died a few days later. It was common for
Christians at the time to put off baptism until their deathbed.
Serious sins committed after baptism would require severe penance, so
some considered it safer to wait until the end of life to be baptized.
(This practice was mentioned by Augustine in Confessions (Book 1, ch.
10.17 ). This approach to baptism would have fit Constantine's case
since he undoubtedly understood that many of his actions were
considered grave sins by the Church: "It was common at this time (and
continued so until about A.D. 400) to postpone baptism to the end of
one's life, especially if one's duty as an official included torture
and execution of criminals. Part of the reason for postponement lay in
the seriousness with which the responsibilities were taken" (Chadwick,
The Early Church, 127).
Constantine did see Christianity as a unifying force--and he was
correct in his assessment that Christianity, not paganism, had the
moral core and theological vision to change society for the better. He
was not a saint, but he didn't make choices without any concern for
moral goodness, as The Da Vinci Code portrays him. William Durant,
hardly friendly to the Church, writes, "His Christianity, beginning as
policy, appears to have graduated into sincere conviction. He became
the most persistent preacher in his realm, persecuted heretics
faithfully, and took God into partnership at every step. Wiser than
Diocletian, he gave new life to an aging Empire by associating it with
a young religion, a vigorous organization, a fresh morality" (Durant,
Christ and Caesar: The Story of Civilization, Part III [New York:
Simon and Schuster], 664). Nor was Constantine was not a life long
pagan or a cynical manipulator. "[Dan] Brown has turned him into a
cartoonish villain," states Dr. Mitchell. "That Constantine the
emperor had "political" motives (The Da Vinci Code, p. 234) is hardly
news to anyone! The question is how religion and politics (which
cannot be separated in the ancient world) were interrelated in him."
Pagan Roots or Modern Myths?
According to Teabing, the Church allowed Constantine to take pagan
symbols and create a "hybrid religion." But according to Langdon, the
Church never considered such a concession, but sought to eliminate by
force all vestiges of pagan worship and belief. So which was it?
Brown's confusion is possibly due to the sloppiness of his research,
or to a desire to have the best of both worlds: accuse the Church of
damning compromise and of equally damning intolerance.
Neither account does justice to the complex and difficult relationship
that Christianity had with the many varieties of paganism that existed
in the third and fourth centuries. One thing is clear: the early
Christians had proven that they were not willing to compromise with
paganism, which is why so many of them were persecuted and killed by
the Romans at various times in the first three centuries of the
Church's history. Why would Christians who had suffered just a few
years earlier under Diocletian for refusing to renounce their unique
beliefs about God, Jesus, and salvation, willingly compromise those
same beliefs without so much as a whimper?
Brown is following the popular, but long discredited, argument
developed in the late nineteenth-century by skeptics attempting to
undermine the historical claims of Christianity. As Ronald Nash
explains, "During a period of time running roughly from about 1890 to
1940, scholars often alleged that primitive Christianity had been
heavily influenced by Platonism, Stoicism, the pagan mystery
religions, or other movements in the Hellenistic world." A number of
scholarly books and papers were written rebutting those claims and
today, Nash notes, "most Bible scholars regard the question as a dead
issue" (Ronald H. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New
Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R
Publishing, 2003. 2nd edition], 1).
Secondly, the depiction of a "hybrid religion" that mixed together
Christian and pagan elements is a gross misrepresentation of how
Christians took certain symbols and feast days and Christianized
them--cleansing them of those elements not compatible with their
doctrines and practices, but keeping what could be used for good ends.
It misrepresents the actual sources for Christian beliefs such as the
Virgin Birth, the deity of Christ, and the Passion and Resurrection.
These beliefs are rooted in historical claims, not mythological
stories, and most--if not all--predate those pagan ideas that appear,
at least superficially, to have similar features.
The Da Vinci Code drags out several of the standard lines--many taken
nearly verbatim from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (see pages 367-8)--about
how everything in Christianity was taken from pagan sources. Langdon
makes mention of "transmogrification" and insists that "the vestiges
of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable." He states:
Egyptian sun disks became the halos of Catholic saints. Pictograms of
Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint
for our modern images of the Virgin Mary nursing Baby Jesus. And
virtually all the elements of the Catholic ritual--the miter, the
altar, the doxology, and communion, the act of 'God-eating'--were
taken directly from earlier pagan mystery religions." (p. 232)
Teabing adds, "Nothing in Christianity is original" and claims that
the ancient pre-Christian god Mithras was the inspiration for many of
the details surrounding Jesus' person and life: the titles "Son of
God" and "the Light of the World," his birth on December 25, his
death, his burial in a rocky tomb, and his resurrection three days
later. "By the way, December 25 is also the birthday of Osiris,
Adonis, and Dionysus," the historian remarks, "The newborn Krishna was
presented with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Even Christianity's
weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans." (p. 232).
There are a number of problems with these statements. Not only did the
Christians not borrow ideology or theology, there is little or no
evidence that most pagan mystery religions such as Egyptian cult of
Isis and Osiris or the cult of Mithras existed in the forms described
by The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail prior to the mid-first
century. This is a significant point, for much of the existing
evidence indicates that the third and fourth-century beliefs and
practices of certain pagan mystery religions are read back into the
first-century beliefs of Christians--without support for such a
presumptive act. Ronald Nash, whose book The Gospel and the Greeks
refutes these claims in detail, explains that the methods used to
arrive at the pagan-Christian connection are sloppy at best and
severely biased at worst:
"It is not until we come to the third century A.D. that we find
sufficient source material (i.e., information about the mystery
religions from the writings of the time) to permit a relatively
complete reconstruction of their content. Far too many writers use
this late source material (after A.D. 200) to form reconstructions of
the third-century mystery experience and then uncritically reason back
to what they think must have been the earlier nature of the cults.
This practice is exceptionally bad scholarship and should not be
allowed to stand without challenge. Information about a cult that
comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon
must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the
cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what
possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of
Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may
have had on the New Testament in the first century." (Ronald Nash,
"Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?" Christian
Research Journal, Winter 1994).
The answer to that latter question is simply, "None." In fact, there
is strong evidence that many of the pagan mystery religions may have
taken elements of Christian belief in the second and third centuries
to use as their own, especially as the strength and appeal of
Christianity continued to grow. "It must not be uncritically assumed,"
writes early Church historian Bruce Metzger, "that the Mysteries
always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but
probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite
direction" (Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and
Christian [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 11). The fact that many
authors won't even consider that there existed a two-way street
indicates that they are less interested in truth than they are in
attacking Christianity by any means possible.
A host of scholars, including Nash, E.O. James, Bruce Metzger, Günter
Wagner (Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries), and Hugo Rahner
(Greek Myths and Christian Mystery), point out in detail that the
pagan mystery religions were quite different from Christianity in
significant ways. Those religions were based on an annual vegetation
cycle, they stressed esoteric (hidden) knowledge, they emphasized
emotional ecstasy over doctrine and dogma, and their central goal was
mystical experience. They were also very syncretistic, taking elements
from other pagan movements and shedding beliefs with little regard for
any established teaching or belief system--completely contrary to the
apostolic tradition so intensely guarded by Christians (Nash, The
Gospel and the Greeks, 105-20). Perhaps most importantly, there is a
sharp contrast between the mythological character of pagan mystery
religions and the historical character of the Gospels and the New
Testament writings. "In the nature of the case a most profound
difference between Christianity and the Mysteries was involved in the
historical basis of the former and the mythological character of the
latter," writes Metzger in his classic study Historical and Literary
Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian. "Unlike the deities of the
Mysteries, who were nebulous figures of an imaginary past, the Divine
Being whom the Christian worshipped as Lord was known as a real Person
on earth only a short time before the earliest documents of the New
Testament were written. From the earliest times the Christian creed
included the affirmation that Jesus 'was crucified under Pontius
Pilate.' On the other hand, Plutarch thinks it necessary to warn the
priestess Clea against believing that 'any of these tales [concerning
Isis and Osiris] actually happened in the manner in which they are
related.'" (Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 13).
With this mind, here is a brief examination of some of the pagan
religions that The Da Vinci Code claims Constantine and the Church
borrowed or stole key beliefs from in the fourth century.
Walking The Mithraic Maze
The pagan religion of Mithraism was one of the most important of the
ancient mystery religions. Although there has been much scholarly
dispute over the exact origins of the Mithraic religion, it is
generally agreed that Mithra was originally a Persian god who was
depicted as a bucolic deity who watched over cattle. Mithraism was not
introduced to the West and the Mediterranean world until the first
century at the earliest, where it "emerged as one of the most striking
religious syntheses in antiquity: in the first four centuries of the
Christian era it swept across the Roman world, becoming the favoured
religion of the Roman legions and several Roman emperors" (Yuri
Stoyanov, The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the
Cathar Heresy [Yale University Press, 2000], 75). This second form,
contemporaneous with Christianity, was for males only--it has "often
been described as a type of Roman Freemasonry" (Stoyanov, 75). In the
early third century, this form would result in Mithras being elevated
to the status Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun). While scholars
distinguish between the earlier Iranian Mithraism and the later Roman
Mithraism, those straining to connect Mithras to Jesus usually do not.
This failure (purposeful or not) to distinguish between the two often
results in later beliefs being read back into the earlier,
pre-Christian form of Mithraism. But the Mithraic beliefs and
practices that Christianity is accused of "stealing" did not come into
vogue until the end of the first century at the earliest, far too late
to shape the Gospels and their depiction of Jesus. Although there are
numerous theories about how Mithraism moved from Persia to Rome and
how it changed along the way, the physical evidence indicates that
"the flowering of [Roman] Mithraism occurred after the close of the
New Testament canon, much too late for it to have influenced anything
that appears in the New Testament. Moreover, no monuments for the cult
can be dated earlier than A.D. 90-100, and even this dating requires
us to make some exceedingly generous assumptions." (Nash, "Was the New
Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?"). David Ulansey, author of
The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (Oxford University Press, 1991),
substantiates Nash's assessment: "The earliest physical remains of the
cult date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism
reached its height of popularity in the third century" ("The Cosmic
Mysteries of Mithras").
Mithraism was highly syncretistic, absorbing and borrowing an eclectic
range of beliefs and religious ideas. By the time it became popular in
the Roman Empire it had changed from a public religion for the many to
a mystery religion meant for a few elite. "Ultimately," Stoyanov
writes, "the novel and composite form of Mithra-worship that developed
and became widely diffused in the Roman world was virtually a new
mystery religion, in which the old Irano-Babylonian core seems to have
been refashioned and recast into a Graeco-Roman mould tinged with
astrological lore and Platonic speculation" (Stoyanov, 77-8).
Many serious differences exist between the myth of Mithras and the
Gospel accounts of Jesus' life. In some accounts, Mithras is "born" by
"being forced out of a rock as if by some hidden magic power. He is
shown naked save for the Phrygian cap, holding dagger and torch in his
uplifted hands" (Abstracted from Mithras, the Secret God, M.J.
Vermaseren [London, 1963]). In the Persian legends, he was born of a
virgin mother, Anahita (once worshipped as a fertility goddess), who
swam in Lake Hamun in the Persian province of Sistan where Zoroaster/
Zarathustra had left sperm four hundred years earlier. Christians
believe Jesus is born of a virgin Jewish girl, by the power of the
Holy Spirit.
The central feat of Mithras' life on earth was the capturing and
killing of a stolen bull at the command of the god Apollo, symbolizing
the annual spring renewal of life. While Mithras was subduing the
bull, other animals joined in the fray. After Mithras finished his
appointed task, he and Apollo quarreled, but eventually reconciled and
feasted together (Peter Clark, Zoroastrianism, An Introduction to an
Ancient Faith, 157-158). The central accomplishments of Jesus' life
were his death and resurrection, which Christians believe were
historical events that took place in first century Palestine--not in a
nebulous mythic netherworld. Other key differences include the
Gnostic-like dualism of the Mithraic belief system and a belief that
the human soul has fallen from its heavenly home and must now ascend,
after a time of testing here on earth, back to heaven.
Mithraism did not originally have a concept of a god who died and was
then resurrected (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 136-7; E.O. James,
Comparative Religion [New York: University Paperbacks, 1961], 246-9).
Despite the claims made in The Da Vinci Code, there is no ancient
account of Mithras dying, being buried "in a rock tomb, and then
resurrected in three days" (The Da Vinci Code, 232). That assertion
apparently is taken (either directly or from a second-generation
source) from Kersey Graves' The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors
(1875), a work of pseudo-scholarship and anti-Christian polemics that
is so shoddy that even atheists and agnostics disavow it. Graves
writes that several pagan deities, including " 'Mithra the Mediator'
of Persia did, according to their respective histories, rise from the
dead after three days' burial" (chapter 19). However, Graves provides
no documentation (his common practice). E.O. James, who was professor
of history and philosophy of religion at the University of London,
references an ancient work by Pseudo-Dionysus when he notes that "in
contrast to the other Graeco-Oriental Mystery divinities, the Persian
saviour-god [Mithras] did not himself pass through death to life,
though by his sacrificial act [killing a bull] he was a life-giver"
(E.O. James, Comparative Religion [New York: University Paperbacks,
1961], 247). James later observes that Mithraism--which was a strong
adversary of Christianity in the third and fourth centuries--was
overcome by Christianity, not by being absorbed, "but because the
Church was able to meet its adversary on the sure ground of historical
fact." Christianity went far beyond "the ancient seasonal drama with
its polytheistic background" and offered initiates a "renewal of
spiritual life and regeneration of outlook . . . to a degree unknown
and unattainable in any rival system. Therefore, Christianity
ultimately prevailed because it provided a different gift of life from
that bestowed in the pagan cults." (248-9).
Christmas Gifts, Halos, the Nursing Christ, and Other Details
The story of the Hindu deity Krishna's birth and the presents of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh also apparently comes from Graves and The
World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors. In the seventh chapter of that
work, Graves writes:
"Other Saviors at birth, we are told, were visited by both angels and
shepherds, also 'wise men,' at least great men. Chrishna, the eighth
avatar of India (1200 B.C.) (so it is related by the 'inspired penman'
of their pagan theocracy) was visited by angels, shepherds and
prophets (avatars). 'Immediately after his birth he was visited by a
chorus of devatas (angels), and surrounded by shepherds, all of whom
were impressed with the conviction of his future greatness.' We are
informed further that 'gold, frankincense and myrrh' were presented to
him as offerings." (chapter 7)
Graves conveniently provides no sources or citations, which is one of
many reasons his book has been long discredited by scholars working in
the field of comparative religion. But that doesn't keep this popular
idea from appearing on numerous websites--none providing sources or
citations (and rarely mentioning Graves' book). There's good reason
for this absence of evidence. The Bhagavad-Gita (first century A.D.)
doesn't mention Krishna's childhood, and the stories of Krishna's
childhood recorded in the Harivamsa Purana (c. 300 A.D.) and the
Bhagavata Purana (c. 800-900 A.D.) don't mention the gifts at all.
Even if they did, those works were written well after the birth of
Christ, making such a claim absurd.
The halo, or nimbus, used in Christian art was used by a number of
pre-Christian cultures, including Greek and Roman, to distinguish
figures who were gods or demigods (see Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church [Oxford University Press, Third edition, 1997], 732].
Roman emperors, for example, were depicted on coins with radiant
heads. This is a good example of Christians gradually appropriating a
cultural element and using it in a way totally in keeping with their
theology and practice. For Christians to take over this attribute is
about as scandalous as later artists depicting Jesus in philosopher's
robes or in the clothing of a later historical age. The use of a halo
would have been a natural choice for Christian art since both Moses
and Jesus are described in the Bible as having shining faces after
significant events. Moses face radiated light after he came down from
Mount Sinai and the presence of God (Ex 34:29-35) and at the
Transfiguration, Jesus' "face shone like the sun, and His garments
became as white as light" (Matt 17:2). The use of halos in Christian
iconography is simply a case of Christians recognizing the usefulness
of an artistic motif and appropriating it for their specific needs.
Langdon claims, "Pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived
son Horus became the blueprint for our modern images of the Virgin
Mary nursing Baby Jesus." It's a curious statement since any sensible
person recognizes that the image of a nursing mother is hardly unique
to one religion or culture. Christian artists undoubtedly copied the
poses of figure depicted in pagan art, including mothers (or
goddesses) nursing children. One of the earliest renderings of Mary is
a late second-century/early third-century fresco found on a wall of
the catacombs of Priscilla in Rome (Andre Grabar, La Premier Art
Chretien [Gallimard Editions, 1996], p. 99. Figure 95.], mentioned by
Pope John Paul II in a general audience on May 23, 1990. The Madonna
and Child have been depicted in numerous ways throughout history,
often reflecting the culture of the respective painters and sculptors
(see Herbert Haag, Caroline Ebertshauser, Joe H. Kirchberger, Dorothee
Solle, Peter Heinegg, Mary: Art, Culture, and Religion Through the
Ages [Crossroad/Herder & Herder, 1998]).
As Nash and others point out, the real issue is not of similarity, but
of dissimilarity. The Egyptian goddess Isis was part of a polytheistic
fertility cult. After her husband Osiris was assassinated and
dismembered, Isis searches and finds all the parts of his body and
then restores him--not to life on earth, but to life in the
underworld, as a "dead god" (E.O. James, The Cult of the
Mother-Goddess [New York: Barnes & Noble, 1994], 241ff). Originally,
Isis was one of several goddesses (e.g., Nut, Neith, etc.) and Horus,
her son, was one of the eight gods "of the Ennead" (James, Cult of the
Mother-Goddess,, 57). Worship of Isis was established in Greece around
the fourth century B.C., where she remained a goddess of fertility,
and became a popular deity whose temples were established in numerous
cities. In this Hellenistic form, the Isis cult was a pagan mystery
religion in which adherents underwent esoteric, occult rites [Nash,
The Gospel and the Greeks, 126-8. For more on Isis, see "Isis as
Saviour Goddess" by C.J. Bleeker, S.G.F. Brandon, ed., The Savior God:
Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation [Manchester University
Press, 1963], 1-16).
Langdon claims that "the miter, the altar, the doxology, and
communion, the act of 'God-eating'--were taken directly from earlier
pagan mystery religions." First, it should again be noted that
"mystery religions," strictly speaking, did not come into existence
until the end of the first century at the earliest, making it
impossible for the first Christians to take, borrow, or steal much of
anything from them. The word "miter," or "mitre," is derived from
mitra, a Greek word meaning "turban" or "headband." It is the
liturgical head-dress and part of the insignia of the bishop (Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1096). It didn't appear in the
West until the middle of the tenth century and was not used by bishops
in the East until after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In the
East it seems to have been derived the crowns worn by Byzantine
Emperors; in the West is appears to have been a variation of
unofficial hat, the camelaucum, worn by the Pope in processions. In
both cases, the mitre has no connections with pagan mystery religions.
Altars are a common element in most religions and there are over three
hundred references to altars in the Old Testament. Thus, the first
Christians, who were all Jewish, would hardly be new to the concept of
an altar, especially when the altar in the Temple was a focal point of
the Jewish religion. Not surprisingly, there are several references to
altars in the New Testament, including references in the Gospels to
the altar in the Temple (Matt 5:23-24; 23:18-20; Lk 1:11) and
references in The Apocalypse to the heavenly altar in the throne room
of God (Rev. 6:9; 8:3-5; 9:13; 11:1; 14:8; 16:7). There is also this
passage in the epistle to the Hebrews: "We have an altar, from which
those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat" (Heb 13:10). It
is likely a reference to the Eucharistic table of the Christians and a
similar use of language was common among the early Church Fathers. For
example, Ignatius of Antioch (d. c. 110), writing to the church at
Philadelphia, states, "Take care, then, to partake of one Eucharist;
for, one is the Flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and one the cup to
unite us with His Blood, and one altar, just as there is one bishop
assisted by the presbytery and the deacons, my fellow servants. Thus
you will conform in all your actions to the will of God" (Letter to
the Philadelphians, par. 4). Other references to a Christian altar
appear in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian.
A doxology is simply a hymn or ascription of praise and glory (doxa =
"glory"; logos = "word"). Almost all religions have statements about
the glory and power of a deity, reflecting the natural human desire to
recognize what is sacred and Other. Traditionally, in historic
Christianity, there are three types of doxology: the Great Doxology,
the Less Doxology, and the Metrical Forms. Langdon is probably
referring to the Great Doxology, which begins with these statements of
praise:
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.
We praise You; we bless You; we worship You; we glorify You; we thank
You, for Your great glory.
O Lord King, God in Heaven, the Father Almighty. O Lord, Only-Begotten
Son, Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit.
O Lord God, Lamb of God, the Son of the Father, Who takes away the sin
of the world, have mercy on us; You, Who takes away the sins of the
world;
Receive our prayers, You, Who sits at the right hand of the Father,
and have mercy on us .
For You alone are Holy; You alone are the Lord, Jesus Christ, to the
glory of God, the Father. Amen.
All of this language is taken directly from passages in the New
Testament; all of it reflects the unique beliefs of the Christians.
Such language did not, of course, come from pagans, who were mostly
polytheistic and did not believe in the Trinity or the divinity of
Jesus Christ.
Langdon's reference to "God-eating" is likely an appeal to Mithraism,
for it was the only mystery religion that celebrated anything
resembling Holy Communion (Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 148-9);
many of the mystery religions, such as the Orphic cult, had no sacred
meal at all. In his work on comparative religion, E.O. James writes
that the Christian's "sacramental outlook differed from that of the
pagan Mysteries in several important respects. So far as we know,
initiates in those cults were neither baptized into the name of the
saviour-god or goddess, nor were they the recipients of a pneumatic
gift as a result of lustration." Jones goes on to note that the
Christian Eucharist was strongly connected to a life of holiness and
purity, while "normally in a Mystery cult initiation was an end itself
irrespective of any ethical considerations." (Jones, Comparative
Religion, 239. See Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 14).
In the myth of Mithras, the god does not even die, but is a savior-god
by virtue of killing a bull. Initiates into the Mithraic cult would
dramatize this mythical event and the blood of a slain bull would be
ceremoniously poured over initiates. At the higher stages of the cult
members participated in a sacred meal of bread and water (or wine, but
that detail is still a matter of debate); there is no indication that
those participating believed they were engaging in "God-eating."
Little is known of that meal, so a fuller comparison with Christian
communion is difficult to make.
Regardless, the Jewish character and context of the Passover Meal, the
Last Supper, and the Christian Eucharist are the essential elements
that shape the Christian sacrament and ritual--not pagan rites. "[O]n
almost any view of this matter," Metzger writes, "the Jewishness of
the setting, character, and piety expressed in the rite is
overwhelmingly pervasive in all the accounts of the origin of the
Supper" (p. 16). The Jewish character is explored by Jean Danielou in
his important study, The Bible and the Liturgy (University of Notre
Dame Press, 1956), where he writes:
"[T]he Eucharist is the fulfillment of the meal of Jewish worship; It
signifies, then, as did these [Jewish communal] meals, participation
in the blessings of the Covenant. . . . In fact, the meal in the
course of which Christ instituted the Eucharist seems to have been a
ritual meal, a chaboura, such as was customarily celebrated by the
Jewish communities. . . It was, then, in this framework of a sacred
Jewish meal that Christ instituted the meal of the New Covenant, as it
as in the framework of the Jewish commemoration of the Pasch that He
died on the Cross." (p. 160; see 142-190).
Sunday and Christmas Day
Teabing states, "Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from
the pagans." (The Da Vinci Code, 232). This is false. Equally false is
Langdon's declaration that originally Christians worshipped on the
Jewish Sabbath (Saturday), but changed to Sunday under Constantine's
influence so that it would "coincide with the pagan's veneration day
of the sun" (p. 232-3).
The implication here is that for nearly three hundred years, until the
time of Constantine, the Christians worshipped on Saturday. But the
Christians of the New Testament era were already worshipping on
Sunday, or the "day of the Lord," as it is described in Revelation
1:10. This was to honor the day that Jesus rose from the dead; having
been crucified on a Friday, his resurrection occurred on the third day
(cf. Mk 16:2)--the day after Sabbath, or Sunday (Sabbath was the only
day of the week named by Jews; the other day were simply numbered:
"first day," "second day," etc.). This practice is referred to in Acts
20:7: "And on the first day of the week, when we were gathered
together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to
depart the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight." The
Apostle Paul mentions in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor
16:2) that tithes and offering should be set aside on the first day of
the week, another indication that the early Christians viewed the day
after the Jewish Sabbath as the most important day of the week.
There are numerous references by the early Church Fathers to
Christians worshipping on "the day of the Lord" (or Dies Dominica, as
it came to be known in the West). Ignatius of Antioch writes around
110 , "How, then, shall we be able to live apart from Him, seeing that
the prophets were His disciples in the Spirit and expected Him as
their Master, and that many who were brought up in the old order have
come to the newness of hope? They no longer observe the Jewish
Sabbaths, but keep holy the Lord's day, on which, through Him and
through His death, our life arose" (Epistle to the Magnesians, ch. 9).
The Epistle of Barnabas, which was probably written before the end of
the first century, states, "This is why we also observe the eighth day
with rejoicing, on which Jesus also rose from the dead, and having
shown himself ascended to heaven" (Epistle of Barnabas, ch. 15). There
are many references to the "eighth day" in the writings of the Church
Fathers, as Danielou details in The Bible and the Liturgy (see chapter
15, "The Lord's Day," [242-261] and chapter 16, "The Eighth Day"
[262-286]). Danielou also flatly states that "the Lord's Day is a
purely Christian institution; its origin is to be found solely in the
fact of the Resurrection of Christ on the day after the Sabbath" (p.
242). Another early, non-canonical reference to the Lord's Day is
found in The Didache: "And on the Lord's Day, after you have come
together, break bread and offer the Eucharist, having first confessed
your offences, so that your sacrifice may be pure" (14.1). Justin
Martyr, writing in the middle of the second century, makes the first
known reference by a Christian author to "Sunday"; all prior
references had been to the day of the Lord.
Brown apparently thinks that since the observance of Sunday as a day
of rest wasn't sanctioned by civil authorities until the fourth
century than it must not been observed prior to that time. But over
one hundred years earlier, around 200, Tertullian writes about Sunday
as a day of rest: "We, however (just as tradition has taught us), on
the day of the Lord's Resurrection ought to guard not only against
kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude, deferring even
our businesses lest we give any place to the devil" (De orat., xxiii;
cf. Ad nation., I, xiii; Apolog., xvi). The Council of Elvira, a local
Spanish council that convened around 303, decreed that Sunday was to
be a special day of worship and rest, stating, "If anyone in the city
neglects to come to church for three Sundays, let him be
excommunicated for a short time so that he may be corrected" (Canon
xxi). Two decades later, in 321., Constantine officially declared
Sunday a day of rest in the Roman Empire, "commanding abstention from
work, including legal business, for townspeople, though permitting
farm labour" (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1558). Since
Christians considered Jesus to be the "Sun of Righteousness" (Mal 4:2)
spoken of in the Old Testament and "the light of the world" (Jn 812;
9:5) in the New Testament, they thought it fitting that the true God
would supercede the old Roman Sun-god. St Jerome (c. 345-420) wrote,
"The Lord's day, the day of Resurrection, the day of Christians, is
our day. It is called the Lord's day because on it the Lord rose
victorious to the Father. If pagans call it the 'day of the sun,' we
willingly agree, for today the light of the world is raised, today is
revealed the sun of justice with healing in his rays" [St. Jerome,
Pasch.: CCL 78, 550. Quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church, par.
1166].
Did Christians take December 25, the "birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and
Dionysus," a use it for their celebration of the birth of Jesus? Many
Christians have essentially agreed with this statement and have argued
that the Christians appropriated this important pagan holy day as a
way of showing the superiority of the true God-man, Jesus. Recently,
however, some scholars have argued that December 25 was not taken from
pagans by Christians, but vice-versa.
In an article in Touchstone magazine titled "Calculating Christmas"
(Touchstone, December 2003), William J. Tighe, the Associate Professor
of History at Muhlenberg College, explains, "The idea that the date
was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a
German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ's
birth on December 25th was one of the many 'pagan-izations' of
Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of
many 'degenerations' that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into
Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that
the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes
without paganizing the gospel."
Tighe points out that none of the Roman cults had major celebrations
on December 25. It was the Emperor Aurelian (270-5 A.D.) who "appears
to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the 'Birth of
the Unconquered Sun' as a device to unify the various pagan cults of
the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual 'rebirth' of the
sun. . . . . In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of
the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening
of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for
'rebirth,' or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting
from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the
Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule."
Once Christianity had separated from Judaism (especially after the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D.) and emerged as a
unique religion, it sought to calculate the exact day of Jesus' death.
There was much confusion due to different calendars; after much debate
and difficulty, the Eastern Christians chose April 6 and the Western
Christians chose March 25 as the date of Jesus' crucifixion. At this
point the ancient and obscure notion of an "integral age" comes into
play; this was the belief that the Old Testament prophets died either
on the same date of their birth or conception. Most Christians
accepted April 6 or March 25 as the date of Jesus' conception, thus
arriving at January 6 (in the East) and December 25 (in the West) as
the date of his birth. Although these dates would not be made
"official" until the late fourth century, they were held long before
both Aurelian and Constantine. Thus, Tighe states, "the pagan feast
which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was
not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political
statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan
significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The
Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan
'Birth of the Unconquered Sun' to refer, on the occasion of the birth
of Christ, to the rising of the 'Sun of Salvation' or the 'Sun of
Justice.'"
There's no doubt that early Christians, who lived in a pagan culture,
were influenced by paganism and sometimes used the same terms and
motifs as their pagan neighbors in describing their beliefs. But the
success of the Christian faith was impossible for pagans to ignore,
and some of them sought to borrow Christian ideas, or at least
terminology, in their rituals and practices. Dr. Margaret Mitchell
writes:
"It is absolutely true that "The vestiges of pagan religion in
Christian symbology are undeniable" (p.232). But the conclusion drawn
from that --"Nothing in Christianity is original"-- is not, and, from
the point of view of the history of religions, an old,
long-disqualified claim. Even new arrangements of existing materials
are "original"! (and the Christian movements represent more than just
that). Current scholarship recognizes that the relationship between
the Christian cult and the world around it, and the ways in which it
was culturally embedded in that world -- sometimes unreflectively,
sometimes reflexively, sometimes in deliberate accommodation,
sometimes in deliberate cooptation -- are far more complicated than
noted here. Conspiracy theories sell books, but they do not explain
complex human phenomena which are both local and more wide-spread --
and hardly could have been instituted as a wide-spread, Stalinesque
program of cultural totalitarianism as Brown has conjured up for
Constantine." (Dr. Mitchell, LakeMagazine.com)
What Really Happened at the Council of Nicaea?
Brown makes several misleading statements about the Council of Nicaea,
including the assertion (made by the historian Teabing, who apparently
never studied ancient or Church history) that it was where Jesus was
first declared divine. A full history and background to the Council of
Nicaea, which convened in 325, is impossible here; there are a number
of popular and scholarly works that provide that information (Philip
Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils,
325-1870 [Image, 1964]; A.H.M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion
of Europe [University of Toronto Press, 1978]). But a brief overview
of the basic facts will show how egregious are the claims made in The
Da Vinci Code.
The Council of Nicaea was the first ecumenical of the Church, made
possible by the patronage of Constantine and his desire to end the
disunity and controversy being caused by the Arian heresy. Arius (b.
c. 260-80; d. 336) was a priest from Alexandria who was noted for his
preaching and ascetic lifestyle. Around 319 or so he began to gain
attention for his teaching that Jesus was not fully divine, but was
lesser than the Father. Arius held that the Son had not existed for
all of eternity past, but was a created being begotten by the Father
as an instrument of, first, creation and the, later, salvation. Put
another way, Arius believed that Jesus, the Son of God, was not God by
nature, but instead was a lesser god.
This belief was condemned by the bishop Alexander at a local synod
held in Alexandria around 320, with ninety-eight of a hundred bishops
voting against Arius's views. But the priest's teachings attracted
interest and spread quickly, partially due to Arius's clever use of
catchy songs proclaiming his doctrinal beliefs and also due to the
patronage of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea and one of the greatest
scholars of his time. Arius's beliefs were proving so popular and
disruptive that Constantine decided to bring together the bishops and
put an end to the controversy; his interest was most likely in unity
over theological clarity, but he realized the former would defend in
large part upon the latter.
On May 20, 325, a number of bishops, the vast majority of them from
the East, convened at Nicaea (modern day Iznik, north of
Constantinople); the council lasted until July 25 of the same year.
The number of bishops in attendance has traditionally been listed as
318, likely a symbolic number (cf., Gen. 14:14); the actual number was
probably around 220 to 250 (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,
1144). Due to poor health, the Pope did not attend, but sent two
deacons to represent him. "The great bulk of the Council came from the
Greek-speaking provinces of the Empire," writes A.H.M. Jones, "The
bulk of the gathering were simple pastors, who would naturally resent
any innovation on the faith which they had learned and would have
little sympathy with the intellectual paradoxes of Arius. Many could
boast of the proud title of confessor, having endured imprisonment,
torture, and penal servitude for the sake of their faith" ( Jones,
131).
This rugged and tried character of most of the bishops is completely
contrary to The Da Vinci Code's implication that the bishops meekly
accepted whatever the Emperor told them. Many of the bishops at Nicaea
were veterans of the persecution of Diocletian. Is it reasonable to
think that they would quietly allow Constantine to change the faith
for which they had already suffered and were willing to die?
Constantine, while actively involved in the Council, knew that his
place was not to be a theologian or scholar, but to help facilitate as
structured and productive gathering as possible. After all, one of the
strengths of Roman culture was organization; the Greeks, on the other
hand, were more attuned to theological nuance and detail.
In The Da Vinci Code, Teabing states that at the Council of Nicaea
Jesus was established as "the Son of God" (p. 233). This is false; it
is also taken from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which states, "Most
important of all, the Council of Nicaea decided, by vote, that Jesus
was a god, not a mortal prophet" (Holy Blood, Holy Grail,, 368. The
irony is that Arius believed that Jesus was a god, but not fully God).
As already noted, the Gospels alone refer to Jesus as the "Son of God"
over forty times and this description is used often by the early
Church fathers. Thus, the Council of Nicaea actually ratified, even
more clearly and definitively, the consistent belief of the Church. As
we have already seen, the belief in Jesus' divinity and Godhead goes
back to the earliest days of Christianity. The Council of Nicaea
focused on clarifying the unique relationship between the Father and
the Son and condemning those ideas of Arius that would imply, or
assert outright, that the Son was lesser than the Father, was a
created being, and was a lesser god. The Catechism of the Catholic
Church ably summarizes the basic issue: "The first ecumenical council
of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is
'begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the
Father', and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that the Son of God
'came to be from things that were not' and that he was 'from another
substance' than that of the Father" (CCC 465).
As for the "relatively close vote," it is a figment of Teabing and
Brown's imaginations. Only two bishops out of some 250 voted in favor
of Arius's position--over 99% of the bishops upheld the belief that
the Son was equal with the Father and of the same substance. Even Holy
Blood, Holy Grail, which apparently provided much of Brown's material
for his comments on this topic, gets it right, acknowledging in a
terse footnote: "218 for, 2 against" (Holy Blood, Holy Grail,, 473. It
also adds, "The Son was then pronounced identical with the Father."
Not quite. He was pronounced "one in substance"; he is a separate
Person). Once again, Brown's embellished version of the facts is not
only incorrect, it is completely contrary to the truth.
Teabing also states that at the Council there were "many aspects of
Christianity" that were "debated and voted" upon. The wording implies
that these "aspects" were somehow new and unique; they are listed as
"the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of
sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus." [p. 233; see Holy
Blood, Holy Grail, 368]. The twenty canons--or laws--of the Council
were actually rather mundane and were, "in great part, a repetition of
measures enacted eleven years earlier in the Latin council held at
Arles, in Gaul" (Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis: A History of the
General Councils, 325-1870 [New York: Image Books, 1964], 36]. Five of
the canons addressed the sensitive subject of those Christians who had
fallen away from the Church during the recent persecutions, providing
guidelines for penance, readmission to Holy Communion, and other
directives. Two other canons dealt with the readmission of heretical
schismatics: the Novatians and the followers of Pal of Samosata, the
former bishop of Anitoch who had been deposed in 268 for criminal
actions and teaching heresy. Some ten canons addressed issues having
to do with the clergy: "No one is to be ordained who has had himself
castrated, nor anyone only recently admitted to the faith. . . . No
clerics--bishops, priests, or deacons--are to move from one diocese to
another. Clerics are forbidden to take interest for money loans, and
for this offence they must be deposed" (Hughes, The Church in Crisis,
38). Other canons involved matters of jurisdiction pertaining to the
three most famous sees of the ancient Church: Alexandria, Antioch, and
Jerusalem.
The issue of Easter and its dating was quite complicated--it was
addressed at the Council because of the Emperor's desire for unity in
matters of religious observance. At the time, churches in different
regions celebrated Easter on different days; the confusion was
partially the result of the lunar calendar of Jews and of the
antagonism of some Christians towards the Jews--they refused to
celebrate Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover [for more
detailed history, see the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the
topic). The Council sought to enforce a uniform date, but the results
were mixed and the controversy would continue on for many centuries.
In this instance, and in the instances of the canons, there were no
issues of dogma addressed; all were matters of discipline, made
necessary by the real life issues and concrete pastoral problems faced
by the Church in the midst of confusion, rapidly changing conditions,
and cultural shifts.
Conclusion:
As we have researched and written these critiques, we are continually
amazed by the audacity of Brown's incorrect and often completely false
claims about nearly every historical event and figure he writes about.
It is not an exaggeration to say that finding a correct remark about
any of these topics is surprising--and quite rare. Although some might
wonder why anybody would be concerned by a work of fiction, Brown's
insistence that his novel is based on meticulous research and
historical fact, coupled with the overwhelming praise and positive
response The Da Vinci Code has received, makes such a rebuttal
necessary. This is especially the case since so many people, Catholic
and non-Catholic alike, are confused by the novel's representation of
Church history and many admit that their faith has been shaken by
reading the best-seller.
Websites and links to helpful materials:
Sandra Miesel's critique of The Da Vinci Code
http://www.crisismagazine.com/september2003/feature1.htm
appeared in the September 2003 issue of Crisis magazine. Sandra is a
medievalist and an authority on esoteric groups and beliefs.
Amy Welborn's too-the-point, take-no-prisoners review (originally
appearing in Our Sunday Visitor) can be viewed on her website
http://amywelborn.com/reviews/davinci.html
Cracking the Da Vinci Code"
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html
is a critique from the November 2003 issue of the Evangelical
Protestant magazine Christianity Today.
For a secular review of the novel, see Slate.com's "Jesus, Mary and Da
Vinci."
http://slate.msn.com/id/2090640/
On November 3, 2003, ABC aired a prime time news special, "Jesus, Mary
and Da Vinci," about Brown's claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were
married and had children. Carl Olson's analysis
http://carl-olson.com/articles/tdvc_abc_ncreg1.html
of that program was published in the National Catholic Register.
Further (more informal) remarks by Carl about the ABC special can be
found on Envoy's weblog, Envoy Encore
http://envoymagazine.com/envoyencore/Detail.asp?BlogID=1383
Dan Brown's reliance on Holy Blood, Holy Grail is readily apparent, as
this critique has shown. A fine review and refutation of that book,
written by Brian Onken, can be found on the Christian Research
Institute's website.
http://www.equip.org/free/DH028.htm
Brown's selected bibliography for The Da Vinci Code is available at
his website
http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/bibliography.html
and is worth checking out. It lists few scholarly works (Peter
Partner's The Knights Templar and their Myth being one exception,
although Brown ignores all of Partner's conclusions and research) and
a number of sensational books marked by conspiracy theories (Holy
Blood, Holy Grail and The Messianic Legacy), shoddy scholarship (The
Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ),,
feminist agendas (Margaret Starbird's The Woman With The Alabaster
Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail and The Goddess in the Gospels:
Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine), and antagonism towards the Catholic
Church (Their Kingdom Come: Inside the secret world of Opus Dei and
The Pope's Armada: Unlocking the Secrets of Mysterious and Powerful
New Sects in the Church).
Some helpful online articles about the paganism-Christianity
connection include "Mighty Mithraic Madness: Did The Mithraic
Mysteries Influence Christianity?"
http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_04_02_04_MMM.html
by apologist James Patrick Holding,
the excellent "Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?"
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0169a.html
by noted scholar and autho Ronald Nash, and "Easter: Myth,
Hallucination, or History?"
http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/yama.html
by Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi.
Additional material about the Mithras religion can be found at the
website of David Ulansey
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html
author of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (Oxford University
Press, 1991) and at the Farvardyn.com website
http://www.farvardyn.com/mithras.htm
"an illustrated reference portal about ancient Persia."
A comparison of Krishna and Christ can be found here
http://www.blackapologetics.com/bamanswerantiquity.html
and Holding has an article on the topic, "Did Hinduism Influence the
Christian Faith?,"
http://www.tektonics.org/krishna01.html
at the Tektonics.org website. Holding also compares the Osiris myth to
the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life in "Comparing Osiris, Horus, and
Jesus."
http://www.tektonics.org/osy.html
A full listing of Holding's essays on the "copy cat" theory is located
here
http://www.tektonics.org/tekton_04_02_04.html
For a scholarly and more technical article about the pagan mystery
religions and Christianity, see "Methodology in the Study of the
Mystery Religions and Early Christianity,"
http://www.geocities.com/intheword1/mystery_religions_early_christianity.htm
written by noted New Testament scholar Dr. Bruce M. Metzger.
Christian History magazine (a sister magazine of Christianity Today)
has some helpful articles on Constantine and the Council of Nicaea
located here
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/51h/
including "Finding the Truth:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/51h/51h026.html
How the earliest church decided Marcion and the Gnostics, among
others, were wrong" by Justo González, Jr, and "A Hammer Struck At
Heresy" by Robert Payne
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/51h/51h011.html
Plese send this to any of your friends, family, and colleagues that
you feel might find this interesting. Don't forget to visit our online
discussion forum as well, where you can sound off about this and a
wide variety of other interesting and engaging topics.
http://www.envoymagazine.com/forum/default.asp?CAT_ID=16
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Cracking The Anti-Catholic Code: The Council of Nicaea |
24 Nov 2004 03:40:32 PM |
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In our last episode <8ac4498e.0411240937.37ec2d30@posting.google.com>,
weiler214 lept out of the bushes shouting:
In Part 1 of "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code" we examined the background
of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, focusing on the Gnostic ideas that author
Dan Brown utilizes in his best-selling novel (now at 4.5 million copies
sold and still selling strong).
And you're helping promote the book.
You know I had no interest in buying the book until people like you
started spamming the crap out of alt.atheism bitching about the book?
I now have a copy.
Keep it up, I'll buy two more and give them away...
--
Mark K. Bilbo - a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
Alt-atheism website at: http://www.alt-atheism.org
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Being surprised at the fact that the universe
is fine tuned for life is akin to a puddle being
surprised at how well it fits its hole"
-- Douglas Adams
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| User: "Roger Pearse" |
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| Title: Re: Cracking The Anti-Catholic Code: The Council of Nicaea |
27 Nov 2004 09:09:16 AM |
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"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster> wrote in message news:<s6SdnS3yFbbWYjncRVn-oA@megapath.net>...
In our last episode <8ac4498e.0411240937.37ec2d30@posting.google.com>,
weiler214 lept out of the bushes shouting:
In Part 1 of "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code" we examined the background
of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, focusing on the Gnostic ideas that author
Dan Brown utilizes in his best-selling novel (now at 4.5 million copies
sold and still selling strong).
And you're helping promote the book.
You know I had no interest in buying the book until people like you
started spamming the crap out of alt.atheism bitching about the book?
I now have a copy.
You know, that is actually the most damning piece of self-condemnation
I have ever read! You actually *have* a copy?? <grin>
Keep it up, I'll buy two more and give them away...
<chuckle> But to whom? Atheists have this problem finding people
willing to listen to them, you see. You could leave them in a public
toilet..
I take it back: you've given me an even better example. We now have a
new definition of an atheist: someone who not only buys a copy of
this, thereby enriching a stranger for printing what he knows to be
nonsense; he actually *buys them to give away*, purely out of malice.
Could I interest you in some tosh I'm thinking of writing, how Winston
Churchill PM, leader of the Church of England, was actually black?
Based on getting all the latest research (and leaving it in a
carpark), and devoted to prove how church racism meant that all his
photos were retouched?
All the best,
Roger Pearse
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| User: "Martin Reboul" |
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| Title: Re: Cracking The Anti-Catholic Code: The Council of Nicaea |
27 Nov 2004 03:36:57 PM |
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"Roger Pearse" <roger_pearse@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3a88eeea.0411270709.44be4e9e@posting.google.com...
"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster> wrote in message
news:<s6SdnS3yFbbWYjncRVn-oA@megapath.net>...
In our last episode <8ac4498e.0411240937.37ec2d30@posting.google.com>,
weiler214 lept out of the bushes shouting:
In Part 1 of "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code" we examined the background
of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, focusing on the Gnostic ideas that author
Dan Brown utilizes in his best-selling novel (now at 4.5 million copies
sold and still selling strong).
And you're helping promote the book.
You know I had no interest in buying the book until people like you
started spamming the crap out of alt.atheism bitching about the book?
I now have a copy.
You know, that is actually the most damning piece of self-condemnation
I have ever read! You actually *have* a copy?? <grin>
Keep it up, I'll buy two more and give them away...
<chuckle> But to whom? Atheists have this problem finding people
willing to listen to them, you see. You could leave them in a public
toilet..
There is better stuff to read on the walls usually - non-secular stuff.
I take it back: you've given me an even better example. We now have a
new definition of an atheist: someone who not only buys a copy of
this, thereby enriching a stranger for printing what he knows to be
nonsense; he actually *buys them to give away*, purely out of malice.
You misjudge Atheists Roger. Obviously he gets them from a bargain bin, and
gives them away to give people he likes a laugh. Generous - I would have thought
any charitable Christian would approve?
I am not of the Atheist religion myself, but I can certainly see that they have
a number of very powerful points, which neutralise or blow away almost evrything
I have ever seen any Christian, Muslim or Jew come up with in debate. You are
not wise to mock when you stand on thin ice with your hands tied behind your
back, can't swim and have no life jacket?
Could I interest you in some tosh I'm thinking of writing, how Winston
Churchill PM, leader of the Church of England, was actually black?
Based on getting all the latest research (and leaving it in a
carpark), and devoted to prove how church racism meant that all his
photos were retouched?
The 'leader' of the CofE is of course white and female - and someone who is not
foolish enough to ever dream of indulging in theological debate. Church rascism
has been (and sadly still is) no myth, and I'd be careful about using words like
'retouched' if you are of the Catholic persuasion (or Anglican come to that),
lest the word be linked with choirboys...?
Thin ice... and it is well into Spring!
Cheers
Martin
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| User: "Roger Pearse" |
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| Title: Re: Cracking The Anti-Catholic Code: The Council of Nicaea |
01 Dec 2004 06:50:13 AM |
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"Martin Reboul" <martin.reboul@SPAMFUKvirgin.net> wrote in message news:<Zr6qd.210$Yc4.12@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net>...
"Roger Pearse" <roger_pearse@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3a88eeea.0411270709.44be4e9e@posting.google.com...
"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster> wrote in message
news:<s6SdnS3yFbbWYjncRVn-oA@megapath.net>...
In our last episode <8ac4498e.0411240937.37ec2d30@posting.google.com>,
weiler214 lept out of the bushes shouting:
In Part 1 of "Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code" we examined the background
of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, focusing on the Gnostic ideas that author
Dan Brown utilizes in his best-selling novel (now at 4.5 million copies
sold and still selling strong).
And you're helping promote the book.
You know I had no interest in buying the book until people like you
started spamming the crap out of alt.atheism bitching about the book?
I now have a copy.
You know, that is actually the most damning piece of self-condemnation
I have ever read! You actually *have* a copy?? <grin>
Keep it up, I'll buy two more and give them away...
<chuckle> But to whom? Atheists have this problem finding people
willing to listen to them, you see. You could leave them in a public
toilet..
There is better stuff to read on the walls usually - non-secular stuff.
I know I'd prefer 'graffiti 2' to the 'Da Vinci' code!
I take it back: you've given me an even better example. We now have a
new definition of an atheist: someone who not only buys a copy of
this, thereby enriching a stranger for printing what he knows to be
nonsense; he actually *buys them to give away*, purely out of malice.
You misjudge Atheists Roger. Obviously he gets them from a bargain bin, and
gives them away to give people he likes a laugh. Generous - I would
have thought any charitable Christian would approve?
You're absolutely right: my mistake!
I am not of the Atheist religion myself, but I can certainly see that
they have a number of very powerful points, which neutralise or blow
away almost evrything I have ever seen any Christian, Muslim or Jew
come up with in debate.
Perhaps, but why then do they not deploy them? All I ever see is
vituperation. If there were reasoned arguments to be made, why do
they make arguments that, if they prove anything, tend to prove that
history is bunk, or the like?
All the best,
Roger Pearse
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| User: "wbarwell" |
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| Title: Re: Cracking The Anti-Catholic Code: The Council of Nicaea |
01 Dec 2004 10:00:35 AM |
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Roger Pearse wrote:
"Martin Reboul" <martin.rebo of the Atheist religion myself, but I can certainly see that
they have a number of very powerful points, which neutralise or blow
away almost evrything I have ever seen any Christian, Muslim or Jew
come up with in debate.
Perhaps, but why then do they not deploy them? All I ever see is
vituperation. If there were reasoned arguments to be made, why do
they make arguments that, if they prove anything, tend to prove that
history is bunk, or the like?
They get made and get ignored.
God disproved.
By god here, I mean the Grand God of Grand Theology,
the god that is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient,
omnibenevolent. The god that is defined as the
most powerful thing that can be imagined, the creator
of all. This god is defined as being intelligent,
having conciousness,and will. I mean this in the general
overall sense that the word god means dogmatically
to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
1. Can god do the impossible, create a square circle or
a 4 sided triangle?
2. That really asks the question, does god create the rules,
the laws, the logic of the Universe at large? And thus
can change them at a whim, or for a reason?
3. Since god is supposedly omnipotent, let us try
answering yes.
4. If yes, god could easily create a world where man has
free will yet freely chooses only to do moral good.
5. But in this world we see that man often does moral
evil.
6. If god could create such a word since he creates the
Universe's rules, and does not do so,god is effectively
the creator of all evil, past, present and future.
Evil exists only because god allows it to when he could
easily end all evil by creating a Universe where indeed
man has free will and yet freely chooses only to do
moral good.
7. Thus god is the author and sustaining cause of all
evil and is himself evil, that is omni-malevolent,
rather than as claimed, omni-benevolent.
8. Since dogmatically, god is supposedly omni-benevolent
rather than omni-malevolent, this is obviously not
acceptable.
9. God therefore does not make the rules, the laws or
the logic of the Universe.
10. It should be noted, theologians have stated god himself
may not do evil, but that this does not mean god is not
omnipotent, because it is god's nature to be good.
Thus they do not account this inability to do evil
as limiting god's free will either. Thus the idea of
man being unable to do evil should likewise not be
allowed as an argument, if they refuse to apply the
same standards and reasoning to god, that would be
special pleading.
11. Free will in man is insisted upon as a dodge by
theology the absolve god of the charge of allowing
evil,evil is necessary to allow for free will,
but that dodge is not acceptale in a world where
man explicitly has free will and a nature where doing
moral evil is impossible. It can't be used here.
12. God is said to be the most pwerful thing that can
be imagined,the greatest thing that can exist.
But if god does not make teh laws and rules and logic
of the Universe, and cannot change them at whim,
then the Universe with its rules and laws and logic
are more powerful than god, and this dogmatic claim
is obviously not true.
13. This claim is used as a basis of ontological claims
such as Anselm's ontological proof and these are all
thus falsified.
14. God is supposedly omnipotent. But if he is limited
by the Universe with its rules and laws and logic,
obviously he is not omnipotent at all. This dogmatic
claim cannot be saved unless you accept a god that
is omni-malevolent as a basic dogma.
15. God is dogmatically claimed to have been the creator
of the Universe, of all that is. But if god does not
make the laws and rules and logic of the Universe,
they must be beyond him, outside him, and must either
preceed him or parallel god's existance, he cannot
have created it thusly, so the dogma that god created
all is false also.
16. One dodge here might be to claim god created the
Universe in the manner that limits him, but god,
being omniscient,superintelligent and omnibenevolent
would have known that by creating such a Universe, he
was creating a Uinverse tht contained evil only because
he chose to crteate a limited Universe, so we are back
to claiming god is omni-malevolent. Thus such a dodge
fails.
17. The idea of a perfect omni-everything god preceeds
Christianity, Epicurus noted the pronblem of evil
in 250 BCE. god is omnibenevolent and omnipotent,
yet evil exists. he either camnnot or will not end
evil thus must be either not omnibenevolent or
omnipotent.
18. Yet over 2,500 years, the theological methodolgy
used to erect the hypothetical Grand God of Grand
Theology which is now dogmatic in all major religous
traditions has failed to see this god as shown above,
cannot exist as claimed.
19. Thus not only is god as so defined impossible
and failed hypothesis, the theology methodology
used to create such a hypothetical god is a failed
methodology and its basic method, making overarching
assertions without evidence is a failed methodology.
20. Being failed, attempts to patch up the problems
pointed out here cannot be allowed to continue
using a failed methodology, making empty assertions,
special pleading, double standards and failing to
adequately test assertions rigorously, accepting
assertions not proven one way or another and in
the final anaylsis, often avoiding reason all
together with rhetorical questions "How can limited
man hope to understand an infinte god?". These
sorts of statments are simply indications that the
person in question is not going to be rational or
reasonable or change his or her mind faced with
facts.
21. By doing so, one loses the argument and all
expectations of respect for one's claims, that
person has abandoned reason and intellectual
honesty for obscurantism and superstition.
22. What are the laws and the rules and the logic of
the Universe? And what can we say about them?
23. As far as can be noted, we do have good, basic
understandings of the laws ofthe Universe. Things
are made up of matter and energy, operating in a
framework of time, and dimensions, with rules known
by science, phsycsm chemisty, astronomy and other
sciences.
24. There is no room in these laws and rules of
the Universe for dissembodied gods or entities
that have will and who act. Thinking beings
are made of matter and energy and subject to rules
of chemistry and physics.
25. If theology wishes to claim otherwise, theology
bears the burden of demonstrating with hard evidence
that a god or other supernatural entity can exist.
Much less the Grand God of theological tradition.
26. The failed theological methodology of making
unsupported assertions and deriving subclaims
is not an acceptable method for doing so, since
as demonstrated above, that is a failure as a
methodology.
27. At early times, man had no notion of a supernatural
versus a natural worl, but as the idea of a natural
world has evolved, the idea of a supernatual world
has faded away. All is seen to be a natural world
of matter, energy, physics, no sign of supernatural
worlds or entities can be found.
28. All claims thus based on the idea a supernatural
world or entities might exist are unproven, and
it is the burden of anyone making such a claim
to prove such a thing does in fact exist, before
attempting to use claims of the existance of a
supernatural realm as a theoretical bassis for
existance of god. And by prove, I mean to produce
good, hard evidencefor such a supernatural world,
not assertions that may or may not be true.
This is the failed theological methodology and is
no longer acceptable.
24. There is a difference between making theoretical
claims a god may exist, and actually showing hard
evidence a god exists. Claiming god exists based
on deeper unproven assertions, existance of a
supernatural world, is not acceptable as evidence.
One may not stack up mere assertions and claim it
is hard evidence. Arranging assertions in a manner
that proof or disproof is impossible because it
involves a general disproof of a negative is not
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