The Da Vinci Code

The Holy Grail. Is it real?

The Da Vinci Code: The Book or the Film, what do you think?

The Da Vinci Code From Dan Browns Fiction captivates its reader's attention and many have found that the story leaves them thinking in a new way about Christianity.

It questions the Bible leaving unanswered questions for Christians around the globe and may possibly have done more harm than good in regard to Christian Beliefs.

Did Jesus marry Mary Magdalene? Leaving her to carry his child raising the question ‘Did his blood-line carry on to the present day?’ if so, who or where are his descendants.? Are his family waiting until the End of Time to Reveal Themselves Saving those who are ready, but if so why is this not mentioned in the Bible?

The Holy Grail, the cup Christ drank from at The Last Supper, is it real and around to this day hidden away? If so, then Why? If the cup last held by Christ was around surely it would be something to honour instead of hide away? But would a cup, used by Christ all those years ago, be thought of as important enough to hide away.

What do you think, could this work of fiction actually be real?

Brown first grabbed the headlines and prime-time TV in 2003 with his theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene. But The DaVinci Code contains many more claims about Christianity's historic origins and theological development. It's left to the reader whether these theories belong to Brown's imagination or the skeleton of "facts" that supports the book.

A Little Bit of History

Brown claims "almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false." Why? Because of a single meeting of bishops in 325, at the city of Nicea in modern-day Turkey. Brown argues the church leaders who wanted to consolidate their power base (he calls this the Roman Catholic church) created a divine Christ and an infallible Scripture—both novelties that had never before existed among Christians.

In the course of Christian history, few events are more important than the Council of Nicea, held in 325. It was here that the Roman Emperor Constantine called bishops from around the world to what is now present-day Turkey.

Led by Arius, an Alexandrian theologian, one argument was that Jesus had been a remarkable leader, but he was not God in flesh. Arius proved an expert logician and master of extracting biblical proof that seemingly illustrated differences between Jesus and God, ie John 14:28: "the Father is greater than I." In essence, Arius argued that Jesus of Nazareth could not possibly share God the Father's unique divinity.

In The Da Vinci Code, Brown apparently adopts this theory using Arius as his representative for all pre-Nicene Christianity. Referring to the Council of Nicea, Brown claims that "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless."

In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshipped Jesus Christ as their risen Saviour and Lord.

The Council of Nicea did not entirely end the controversy, nor did the gathering impose a foreign doctrine of Christ's divinity on the church. The participating bishops merely affirmed the historic and standard Christian beliefs, erecting a united front against future efforts to dilute Christ's gift of salvation.

With the Bible playing a central role in Christianity, the question of Scripture's historic validity bears tremendous implications. Brown claims that Constantine bankrolled a staff to manipulate existing texts and thereby divinise the human Christ. Yet for a number of reasons, Brown's speculations fall flat. Brown overlooks the fact that the human process of canonization had progressed for centuries before Nicea, resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of Christianity in 313.

Ironically, the process was launched when a rival sect produced its own biblical canon. Around 140 a Gnostic leader named Marcion began spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn't share the same God. Marcion argued that the Old Testament's God represented law and wrath while the New Testament's God, represented by Christ, exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old Testament and the most overtly Jewish New Testament writings, including Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to downplay their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views heretical, Marcion's teaching sparked a new cult.

Another rival theology nudged the church toward consolidating the New Testament. During the mid- to late-second century, a man from Asia Minor named Montanus boasted of receiving a revelation from God about an impending apocalypse. The four Gospels and Paul's epistles achieved wide circulation and largely unquestioned authority within the early church but hadn't yet been collected in a single authoritative book. Montanus saw in this fact an opportunity to spread his message, by claiming authoritative status for his new revelation. Church leaders met the challenge around 190 and circulated a definitive list that is today called the Muratorian Canon. The Muratorian Canon bears striking resemblance to today's New Testament but includes two books, Revelation of Peter and Wisdom of Solomon, which were later excluded from the canon.

By the time of Nicea, church leaders debated the legitimacy of only a few books that we accept today, chief among them Hebrews and Revelation, because their authorship remained in doubt. To ensure a documents reliability early church leaders considered letters and eyewitness accounts authoritative and binding only if they were written by an apostle or close disciple of an apostle. As pastors and preachers, they also observed which books did in fact build up the church. The results speak for themselves: the books of today's Bible have allowed Christianity to  flourish worldwide.

The Da Vinci Code proves that some misguided theories never entirely fade away, they just reappear periodically in a different disguise. Brown's claims resemble those of Arius and have contradicted the united testimony of the apostles and the early church they built. Those witnesses have always attested that Jesus Christ was and remains God himself. The pseudohistorical claims of a modern novel can't make it false.

Have a look around this site and see if you can come up with an answer to the question ‘Is the Da Vinci Code True’

Many points would lead you to believe that it is, but is Da Vinci only out to discredit the belief in Jesus’ Resurrection?

“The Da-Vinci Code” is a book of fiction that proposes that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God described in the Bible but instead left a bloodline of descendants that survive today.

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Created by James forbes on June 1st 2006, last updated June 20th 2006

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