I dedicate this lengthy article to my lovely and intelligent wife
Pam, whose diligence in seeking God’s truth in Scripture has been a daily example
and source of inspiration for new revelations in my own personal study of the
Bible. My wife is a devoted book reader
and an endless source of knowledge and she has been persistent in her passion
for truth, to expose the haphazard misuse of words by Christian book authors,
such as ‘Lord’ and ‘son of God,’ as being representative of the alleged “Deity
of Christ.”
When I first learned of the Dan Brown novel the ‘DaVinci Code’ I thought
its popularity would fade in time, like most dime store novels do. The book itself is fictional and
historically inaccurate, evidenced in his portrayal of Mary Magdalene as the
covert lover of Jesus and pretend mother of his child. Together, Jesus and Mary are purported by
Brown to have started an imaginary offspring and generated an entire royal line
of humans somewhere in France. Of
course, no evidence for this wild claim from history is provided, but that is
due to the fact the book is fiction.
At the center of the controversy are parts of the book that have
been declared as official ‘blasphemy’ by modern Christian Evangelical church
leaders. The label of ‘blasphemy’
assigned to Brown’s novel is its portrayal of Jesus Christ that denies his ‘Deity.’ Also considered extremely offensive, but
not assigned the level of ‘blasphemy’ is how The DaVinci Code makes Jesus out
to be a ‘sinner.’ His so-called ‘sin’
is implied, say many who oppose the novel, because The DaVinci Code depicts
Jesus as having a clandestine affair with Mary Magdalene, in which they had
sexual intercourse shortly before his crucifixion. The book shows Mary Magdalene being pregnant when Jesus is
hanging upon the cross, and then she supposedly flees for her life.
Next, The DaVinci Code has some Jews, and various people hiding
Mary Magdalene, as she travels to escape and eventually ends up living
somewhere in Europe. The DaVinci Code’s
entire plot ending is based upon the Roman Catholic Church’s attempts to
cover-up an alleged offspring royal line of offspring in France somewhere
around the 1500’s that resulted from Mary Magdalene’s pregnancy with
Jesus. The papacy and higher ups in the
Roman Catholic Church are said to have been the only ones that had any
knowledge of Christ’s mysterious, royal offspring and that they were involved
in a multifarious cover-up to conceal their secret.
In Brown’s novel, the Roman Catholic Church leaders go to great
lengths to insure that the Deity of Christ would remain unchallenged, utilizing
their nefarious, secretive knowledge to form secret societies of brotherhood in
the Roman Catholic Church, and then covertly carrying out a plot to jockey
their way into positions of great political and ecclesiastic power.
Supposedly, to keep the elite few in Rome from having their church
authority challenged in any way or questioned by the people, they hid their
secrets by manipulating the Roman Emperor Constantine and having him declare
Christianity as the official Roman State religion. Thus, readers are led to conclude that the vast despotic rule of
the Roman Catholic Church for hundreds of years was initiated for one, primary
reason… to guard the papal secret of Jesus’ affair with Mary Magdalene and the
resulting offspring.
The plot of the book is disclosed and the Roman Catholic Church
secret divulged when years later, someone discovers the ‘code’ to unlock the
mystery in Leonardo DaVinci’s famous painting The Last Supper. In the painting, The DaVinci Code wrongly
assumes that one of the figures to Jesus’ right (which is left-side facing as
you view the painting) is alleged to be a woman, which Brown says is Mary
Magdalene. The DaVinci Code leads the
reader to believe that DaVinci painted this woman as a ‘code’ to divulge the
Roman Catholic Church’s secret.
He haphazardly mixes and matches events from the period of history
when the Athanasian Creed was developed and uses events such as the Council of
Nicea in 323-325 AD as examples of what great lengths the Roman Catholic Church
went to continue the cover-up about Mary Magdalene’s pregnancy and this pretend
royal lineage in France that Brown fabricated.
The DaVinci Code unfolds as a covert plot by the Roman Catholic
Church to make Jesus into a “Deity” so that his words in the New Testament Bible
are also considered to be infallible and equal to the words spoken by God
(Yahweh) in the Old Testament. In his
book, Brown weaves the Roman Catholic Church’s involvement in a complicated and
highly secretive plot to develop the doctrine of the Trinity, which would
incorporate Jesus Christ into a triad of “three Persons of God” and thereby
makes him into the officially sanctioned ‘God’ of Christianity at the Council
of Nicea in 323-325 AD.
During the various television programs, whenever Dan Brown appears
on screen, the segment bytes are cunningly staged by the programming director;
using special effects, strategically placed lighting, and antique-looking
stage-props to engender a familiar ambiance to make the author of the ‘DaVinci
Code’ appear as if he is an ‘expert’ in the field of ancient church history.
Greed and avarice proved too great a temptation for Brown to
resist during 2006 television interviews and programs that aired in 2006. His words spoken were guarded but
embellished to make himself appear more knowledgeable than he really is, and he
publicly portrayed his book as a literary work that is more believable than
mere fiction (only to an undiscerning television audience). Brown has written many books and is no
stranger to history either, so he is well aware that The DaVinci Code is 99% BS
and the other 1% a distortion of historical facts, a blatant misrepresentation
of what the Scriptures teach, and tailored to fit the plot of what he admits is
a fictitious writing. Knowing this, why
doesn’t Dan Brown set the record straight and make a clear point of distinction
between the contents of his fiction novel The DaVinci Code and historical fact?
The answer is quite simple: All of this media hype is great for book
sales because each time another program about The DaVinci Code airs, it is
tantamount to free advertising for his books and movie sequel. In his interviews, Brown couches his words,
using only a select few parts of his novel that have any degree of historical
accuracy as though representative of the truthfulness of the entire book.
The DaVinci Code book sales rode high and both novel and TV
influence stirred widespread controversy amongst Evangelicals, who found Dan
Brown’s denial of the Deity of Jesus Christ blasphemous and his other
descriptions of Christ too offensive for them to handle without protest. Numerous Christian Church ministries,
parachurch ministries, and several major Christian Publishers carried exposes
and articles to counter The DaVinci Code.
Since the first television program about The DaVinci Code was
broadcast, many others followed suit and DaVinci Code mania was all the buzz in
the entertainment world for a short season.
As the topic cooled off, the media began looking for other ways to milk
it for all the ratings they could get, and as of September 2006, there are now
programs that have scrutinized the historical accuracy of claims made in
Brown’s novel.
One revealing example I saw while watching a brief clip on TV
involved interviews with different art historians. It turns out to be the case that assumptions about the female
identity of the personage at the right side of Jesus in Leonardo DaVinci’s The
Last Supper painting turns out to be a young boy. Apparently, the baroque style of artistic impressions in the era
that DaVinci did his masterpiece commonly portrayed young men that had an
effeminate appearance, much lighter skin pigmentation, with ornate clothing
accessories, etc. Brown is no doubt
rethinking his embarrassing, apathetic amount of Renaissance research, which
should have been more thorough before he decided to make his entire book plot
centered around one lone feminine-looking figure in a DaVinci piece of artwork!
Granted, Dan Brown’s novel is fictional, but to anyone with an
educated background, it loses its appeal by forming the plot around something
so essentially incorrect. From both
historical and theological perspectives, his approach in The DaVinci Code
is fundamentally off-center. The book’s
premise implicates the Roman Catholic Church as being the first world religion
to incorporate the deification of human beings thru the hypostatic union of
Christ with Deity (hypostatic union = melding or blending of deity &
humanity into one being, essence, or existence). This insinuation is derived from how the novel assigns secretive
or clandestine motives and efforts on the part of the Roman Catholic Church to
make the ‘Deity of Christ’ a believable Christian teaching (doctrine) to the
widespread populace of the Roman Empire.
In reality, the TRUE Christians that were living and spreading the
gospel during the first three centuries of its inception were working
tirelessly and overtly proclaiming the man Jesus
Christ (oftentimes as martyrs for the faith) for one central reason… because
most of the Gentile population throughout the Roman Empire already
held deep-seated beliefs in pagan Roman deities that were oftentimes held to be
incarnations of this God, or that goddess.
Prior to the time of Christ and hundreds of years before the time
of Abraham, polytheistic pagan ideas about ‘god’ and ‘deity’ were formed,
becoming accepted wisdom throughout the East and Middle East. The ancient pagan worship included numerous
ideas about the ‘incarnations’ of their favorite ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ in
every aspect of life. The Babylonians,
and Sumerians had gods that watched over their crops, gods that caused the rain
to fall and the sun to shine; these were considered ‘good’ god and
goddesses. Oftentimes, pagan priests
and priestesses were revered as ‘deified’ incarnations of gods.
The historical records abound in the 1st thru the 5th
centuries AD, which give detailed descriptions of the overt, public, and
frequently hostile debates that took place in the Roman political church
before, during, and after it became the Roman Catholic Church; i.e. the
official religion of the Roman Empire thru the Edict issued by Emperor
Constantine. The Roman Catholic Church
fathers would have no problem gaining public acceptance for any ecclesiastic
view that deified Jesus. Simply
including Jesus Christ, as one more ‘god’ (of many in the Greco-Roman pantheon)
added to the litany of deities that already existed, would easily gain approval
by the Roman Empire’s masses.
Even though The DaVinci Code is a fictional novel, its
misrepresentation of the historical record concerning the development of the
doctrine of the Deity of Christ further contributes to the overall confusion
surrounding this issue. It is true that
the Roman Catholic Church was the amalgamating religious force behind
establishing a Roman State religion, which did more to corrupt the world’s
perception of Christ than probably any other single organization in church
history. However, two wrongs don’t make
one right, and The DaVinci Code is nothing more than one man’s greed exploiting
religion in the form of a book. In terms
of motive, Brown is no different than anyone else’s corrupted use of the name
of God to serve and worship the god of money.
What will Dan Brown say when one day he stands before the Judge of every
person?
By focusing all of its attention on the Roman Catholic Church, the
DaVinci Code fails to bring to bear earlier, more influential aspects related
to belief in the Deity of Christ. This
article will not address the details of these religious influences, but
included as the most widespread of all contributing factors is the Hellenization
of the Roman Empire. Hellenization
refers to the influences in culture, society, education, government, and
religion of the Greek Empire at its zenith under Alexander the Great. Hellenization includes things like
NeoPlatonic philosophy, the Greco-Roman pantheon (a large group of similar gods
& goddesses), and the mystic rabbinical teachings that abounded thru
Philonic Judaism (Jewish rabbis schooled under Philo in Alexandria).
In fact, Hellenization has been a continuous influence upon
mankind worldwide up until and including modern times. Pythagorean geometry is still in use today;
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers live vicariously thru
courses of so-called ‘higher learning’ (blech!) that are being surreptitiously
taught under the guise as ‘humanities’ in universities across the nation and
world. Western societies’ educational
elite, being devoid of the spirit, has turned its affections toward the Greek
philosophical views about ethics and morality.
The Greco-Roman pantheons were virtually identical, and the Greek
incarnations of its principal deities became the sole influence in the creation
of the Deity of Christ concept thru syncretism, dualism, hypostasis, the logos,
and other terms, concepts, and rhetoric borrowed directly from Greek
philosophical jargon.
So, what is the silver lining of Dan Brown’s fiction novel The
DaVinci Code? While true believers
should view Brown himself as a charlatan and false teacher, prior to publishing
The DaVinci Code his popularity never hit such a high mark. He had written a few other novels, but never
stood apart from any other fictional author until he touched upon two issues
that were like sleeping giants in people’s minds and hearts… the controlling
and devious ways of Catholicism and a core belief about the Deity of Christ
that rubbed people the wrong way.
I believe that if an independent poll were taken to ask people
that read The DaVinci Code about religious affiliations, the highest percentage
would be from Catholic backgrounds. The
remainder would either being from Christian churches or upbringing or those who
have had enough contact with Christian influences to have questions about the
veracity of the Trinity and Deity of Christ teachings. One thing is certain; people in America
don’t pay money to read books and watch programs that they don’t have a keen
interest about. Dan Brown is just
another greedy fiction author, who simply got lucky by touching upon an area of
vital importance to God the Father. God
is using The DaVinci Code as one among many tools that will activate and bring
to the forefront for ongoing discussion about the TRUE nature of His only
begotten son, the MAN Christ Jesus!
&
Wherefore, also Jesus — that
he might sanctify through [his] own blood the people… through him, then, we may
offer up a sacrifice of praise always to God; for with such sacrifices God is
well-pleased… Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great
Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our
Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is
pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ… Remember those who led you, who
spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct,
imitate their faith…
(Hebrews
13:12, 15-16, 20-21, 7-8 Young's Literal Translation Bible with New American
Standard Bible)
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