“CAN WE TRUST THE BIBLE?” 2 TIMOTHY 3:14-17; 2 PETER 1:20-21 MAY 21, 2006
INTRODUCTION Well, this past weekend a movie came out that is expected to cause quite a stir and make a lot of money! I’m speaking of course of The Da Vinci Code. Now, a lot of the publicity this movie has gotten from the Christian community has been quite negative to say the least. The book has been accused of seeking to undermine the very foundations of Christianity. Is this the first movie or book that contradicts our Christian faith? By no means… nor is it the first that as followers of Christ we ought to find objectionable. So why all the fuss about it? There are really two reasons:
1- It’s incredible popularity: The Da Vinci Code book has sold over 40 million copies and has been translated into over 40 different languages. Awhile back, USA Today had a two-page spread on how all of the churches, museums, and chateaus mentioned in the book have become major tourist attractions throughout Europe. People are talking about the book & the movie around water-coolers, offices, and back yards all across North America. I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of The Da Vinci Code.
2- We live in a culture that increasingly more interested in the appeal of something than the truth of it. (Share story of Gloria’s staff room conversation). In spite of numerous rebuttals- both Christian and secular- about the content of Dan Brown’s novel, he still presents the information it contains as being grounded in fact… and many people will believe him.
Now, we can stay in our church buildings and cry “Foul!” or we can turn a negative into a positive opportunity. The book has become a catalyst for all kinds of discussions about the Church, about Jesus Christ, about God. All of a sudden, Canadians are asking questions about the Bible, questions about the ancient Church councils, questions about other gospels of Jesus. As the church, we could simply say, “Well I know what I believe, so I don’t need to worry about this,” which would be tragic- We have been called to be light, salt, and defenders of truth in our world. The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 3:15-16a- “if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it… in a gentle and respectful way.” And so, what I’d like to do in this 2-part series is to answer some of the main questions raised by readers of the book.
THE STORYLINE To begin, let me give you a quick summary of the book if you haven’t read it: - The story opens with the curator of the Louvre found murdered in the museum.
- Meanwhile, Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor and expert in esoteric symbolism, is in Paris on business. The French police track Langdon down at his hotel, and ask him to interpret a strange cipher left on the floor around the body of the murder victim.
- Langdon is joined in his investigation by a young cryptologist named Sophie Neveu. When Sophie privately warns Robert that he is the prime suspect in the murder, they both flee.
- Now, prior to his death, the murder victim had left clues for them to follow and as they flee they decipher his coded instructions and in so doing Robert and Sophie quickly realize that the murder is linked to the legendary search for the Holy Grail. They end up working alongside a “Grail expert” named Sir Leigh Teabing, who enthusiastically instructs the pair on events of the New Testament including an alternate and very controversial understanding of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the “true” nature of the Holy Grail. Teabing cites the Gnostic Gospels, ancient documents that supposedly give a more reliable account of Christ’s life and teachings than the New Testament documents we know today.
- Robert, Sophie, and now Sir Leigh flee to London and later Scotland, hoping to find more evidence about the murder and its connection to the Holy Grail. The reader is kept in suspense as these smart and determined characters pierce the hidden world of mystery and conspiracy in an attempt to overcome centuries of deceit and secrecy.
- Perhaps the most intriguing part of the book—and lying at the heart of it—is the notion that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene—a marriage that produced a daughter. According to Brown’s book, after Jesus’ crucifixion, Mary and their daughter, Sarah, went to Gaul, where they established a line of French royalty. This dynasty, we are told, continues even today in the mysterious organization known as the Priory of Sion, a secret organization whose military wing was the Knights Templar. Members of this organization supposedly include Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Victor Hugo.
- And there’s more. The Da Vinci Code re-interprets the Holy Grail- traditionally understood to be the cup from the Last Supper- as none other than the remains of Jesus’ wife, Mary Magdalene. According to this novel she was the true “cup” of Christ. This novel claims that Jesus intended for Mary Magdalene to lead the church, but the Apostle Peter had a problem with that. So, to discredit her, Mary was declared a prostitute and cut out of the role of leadership. According to Brown’s book, the church did this because it wanted a celibate MALE savior which would keep women in their proper subservient place.
- Langdon and Teabing tell Sophie that this, the real story about Mary, has all been preserved in carefully hidden codes and symbols in order to avert the wrath of the Catholic Church. As part of the Priory of Sion, Leonardo da Vinci knew all this, and supposedly used his well-known painting, The Last Supper, to conceal many levels of meaning. In the painting John is sitting to the right of Jesus. But John’s features are feminine. And it turns out that, according to the book, the person to the right of Jesus is not John after all but rather Mary Magdalene.
- Well, while Robert, Sophie, and Sir Leigh continue their investigation, a powerful Catholic organization Opus Dei is ready to use whatever means necessary—including assassination—to keep a lid on this secret truth. Flush with church money, Opus Dei is determined to force the top officials of the Priory to reveal the map that leads to the Grail’s location, because if the secrets of the Priory were revealed, the church would be exposed as a fraud built on centuries of deceit.
Why did I take all this time to go over this? Again, because millions of readers and now moviegoers will know this story, which is presented to them as being based on fact. Some of these people will be your neighbors, coworkers, and family members. As you can imagine, this is a very exciting story, filled with mystery and intrigue. It’s a real page turner! But the story is still very disturbing, for as you can see, it teaches outright heresy… and whether we want to face it or not, many people are going to believe him. How will we respond? How do we know what is fact from fiction?
CAN WE TRUST THE BIBLE? Today, I want us to address the foundational issue that The Da Vinci Code, raises—the issue of whether the Bible is reliable or not. In his book, Brown calls into question the reliability of the New Testament. Let me quote from page 234 of the book:
From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history. Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made him god-like. The other gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.
Is this true? How can we know if it is true or not? 1- WHERE DOES THE BIBLE COME FROM? Now, in order to address this view, I think it’s important for me try to explain in a nutshell how we got the New Testament.
First of all, the New Testament is a collection of 27 books that were written between 50 and 90 A.D. And these books were written by people who were either direct followers (eye witnesses) of Jesus Christ, or were close friends of people who were eye witnesses. On that basis alone, according to historical research methodology, the Bible can be viewed as very reliable.
Now, The Da Vinci Code talks a lot about the “canon” of Scripture. What is that? Canon simply means standard. If I were to say to you that this is a meter (hold up a pen) and you were to respond, “Oh, no it’s not,” and I were to say, “Oh, yes, it is,” how would we resolve this issue? Well, you’d have to get hold of a meter stick and show me that I was wrong in declaring that this much is a meter. By comparing my meter with the standard, my meter would be shown to be wrong.
In a nutshell, that’s how the New Testament canon came about. Most church leaders were pretty well agreed quite early in the history of the Church on which books were to be considered Scripture and which were not. There were some self-appointed teachers, however, who were trying to get the early Christians to accept clearly heretical books as Scripture: This was nothing new, as false teachers had always been part of the religious landscape of both Judaism and Christianity. Paul and other NT writers warn about this in the NT itself. So Christian leaders came together to set a standard by which to judge whether a book is to be considered Scripture. The standard that was used asked three questions of any book that was being put forward as Scripture:
1. Was the book written by an Apostle (someone who was an eye witness to the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ) or someone close to an Apostle.
2. Was the book doctrinally sound? Did it agree with what Christ taught and the early disciples believed?
3. Did it have widespread acceptance and usage among the churches at that time?
2- IS THE BIBLE HISTORICALLY CREDIBLE? The New Testament is, by far, the most credible document of antiquity that we have. For example, there is more evidence for the historical reliability of the New Testament than the works of Plato. The time span between when Plato wrote and the earliest copies of those writings is 1,200 years... and we have only 7 copies. The NT was written between 50-90 AD and the earliest copy we have is from about 130AD, just 40-80 years after the first manuscripts were written. And how many manuscripts of the New Testament do we have? 5,600 full manuscripts and over 15,000 partial manuscripts. Simply put, if you’re not going to trust the New Testament documents, you can’t trust anything that was produced in the ancient world. Any reputable scholar would say that such a view is absurd.
In the Da Vinci Code, Brown argues that Constantine, the first so-called ‘Christian’ Emperor of Rome, brought together the Council of Nicea in 325AD to reinvent Christianity and as part of that process drastically changed the Bible, including removing the parts of the New Testament which spoke of Jesus as being human and added parts that emphasized his divinity. This is patently absurd. We have copies of the Gospels that pre-date Nicea and copies after Nicea. Guess what—they are virtually identical. The Council of Nicea did not even address the question of the canon of Scripture. The claim made of John in Revelation 1:2 can be made for all the biblical writers: John faithfully reported the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.
3- ARE THERE OTHER GOSPELS? The characters in the Da Vinci Code point to writings called the Gnostic gospels as being more accurate and reliable concerning the life of Christ and the early church. These writings actually do exist, but their credibility is more than questionable. Historical truth states that Gnosticism- which focused on secret knowledge as a way to get in touch with the divine or discover the spark of divinity within- was a religious or philosophical movement that came about 100 years after the Christian faith. Its works were written even later, some 100-200 years after the gospels and the letters of Paul were written. So, it does not have the historical context of a New Testament document. Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip were written 50-300 years after the supposed authors had died, which is why the early Church rejected them. The Apostle Paul warned of similar books when he wrote to the Thessalonians- Please don’t be so easily shaken and troubled by those who say that the day of the Lord has already begun. Even if they claim to have had a vision, a revelation, or a letter supposedly from us, don’t believe them. (2 Thess. 2:2). The truth is by the time these Gnostic Gospels were written, the canon of the NT was already settled.
4- WASN’T THE BIBLE JUST THE CREATION OF SOME MEN? Now—I want us to take a moment to look at one of the greatest proofs that this is indeed the word of God and it is this—God used different men to write our Bible. Let me explain how important this is by making a few points: - Most of these men never knew each other—yet their writings carried the same theme. - These books were written over a period of about 1500 years in places all the way from Babylon to Rome. - There were approximately 45 different authors ranging all the way from kings to poets, to prophets, a physician, farmers and shepherds, fishermen, a tax collector, apostles, a pastor, and other spiritual leaders. - Not one of these men knew that he was writing what would become a part of what we call the Holy Bible. Yet, when gathered together they tell a complete story. When properly understood no book of the Bible contradicts the others. And these things cannot be said about any other set of books.
How can this be? The only reasonable explanation of this is that they have a common author—God through His Holy Spirit. As we already read in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God.” Have you been on a committee that was assigned a task? It is almost always very difficult to get a group of people to agree about anything especially if there is any degree of variety in the committee’s make-up. I heard once that a camel is actually a horse designed by a committee! The fact that this “committee” of 45 vastly different people could write the words of this book, and produce a book characterized by unparalleled unity, is in itself a powerful testimony of the fact that it is God’s word! No group of people could even come close to doing this, unless they were inspired by the same source. This book does not just contain the word of God....this is the Word of God.
WRAP UP… Now I know that many people will still refuse to question the reliability of the claims Brown makes in his book and the movie. The truth is, many will find it easier to try to discredit the Bible because they then feel free from the truths it teaches about God, themselves, sin, and the need for salvation. But as followers of Jesus Christ, we need to be ready to lovingly and gently point the way to the truth, as found and presented to us in the Scriptures. One of the best ways to do this in our conversations with people is to tell them how the Bible has helped us know how to live. We can testify as to its power and authority as experienced in our lives. We can challenge them to openly look into the claims of the Da Vinci Code.
Perhaps just as important, we need to be sure that we are a people who are immersed in the Scriptures. It is pretty hard to seek to share the truth about the Bible if we don’t read it ourselves! On your sermon outline, I have printed a web-site that has resources enabling you to read through the Bible in a year. You can do it in a variety of ways: chronologically, historically, the Old and New Testament together, beginning to end, or blended. However you choose to do it, if you pick up and prayerfully read the Bible— this book that declares itself in Hebrews 4:12 to be, “living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, … penetrating even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” God will reveal Himself and the truthfullness of His Word to you, and you will be able to say, “Surely God has spoken.”
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