Mike Jones   -   Cracking the Da Vinci Code. Sermon APC Sunday 21/05/06. John 1:1-6

(audio version also available online click here)       Power Point Presentation that accompanies the sermon click here for download

INTRODUCTION
[S1 (S=slide)] Christmas’s best selling book was called the Da Vinci Code. After selling 40 million books worldwide, it is was released as a film on Friday. Some analysts expect the movie to break the $300 million box office barrier so placing the movie among the top 20 movies of all-time [based upon domestic box office gross revenue]. It is a thriller / chase / mystery story. The film starts with an albino religious fruitcake murdering the elderly curator of the Louvre. [S2] Near the body, police find a baffling riddle. Solving the mystery, symbologist Langdon played by Tom Hanks, discovers that it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci.

Why am I addressing the claims of this pretty tedious novel/ film today? I lasted 75 pages the first time I read it but said to myself that I would watch the film. The book sold 40/50 Million and plenty of people will be going to see it.

Let’s think about why we should consider the film at all?
Firstly it is a film that has been eagerly awaited and people are talking about it. It has outsold everything else in sight. [S3] Its been profiled on TV. It has attracted criticism as Rev Raniero Cantalamessa said in a homily at St Peter's Basilica. " Christ is still sold, but not any more for 30 coins, but to publishers and booksellers for billions of coins,"
Secondly while research by Barna in the USA found that 5% of people found their religious beliefs changing with respect to the book. If the movie has a similar level of influence on movie-goers as the book has had on adult readers, then a few people we know may be expected to change one or more of their religious beliefs based upon the movie’s content. The most significant impact, he noted, could well be on the young people who see the movie, since our belief systems when young are still in the process of development and are more susceptible to new teachings. Later when the DVD comes out, “young people frequently watch movies over and over, memorizing lines and absorbing ideas that they might not have caught during their first viewing.” (Barna, 2006)
Thirdly, while Tom Hanks, who stars as cryptologist Robert Langdon in the film, says "This is not a documentary. This is emotional fiction." The book claims that it is fact. I’ve known people influenced by the book and its claim that the novel is true. In the novel Dan Brown claims that "almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false." He dredges up a whole load of disproven theories about Jesus and the Bible that people will be asking questions about. [S] How much of the novel’s depiction of historical events, people, artwork, and institutions is correct.” The short answer is “very little.” In fact, one thing more remarkable than Brown’s twisting of fact to make a good story is the widespread acceptance of his claims, with both reviewers and readers praising the “research” and “knowledge” of his work. In contrast, response N T Wright gives this backhanded compliment “Brown's achievement, in fact, is so spectacular that it is hard to begrudge him his newfound millions. He has taken a set of ideas and speculative historical reconstructions, each of which is highly implausible in itself, and by weaving them together has not only created an exciting if ultra-fanciful plot, despite his wooden and stereotyped characterizations, but has made the several implausible elements appear for a moment as though they just might be true.” (1996, p4)

[S] Am I suggesting you go watch it?
No. I am not. That’s up to you. I am deliberately not showing clips tonight. The film is (1) two and a half hours long and a reviewer says it fails to live up to the hype. Another says, For people who insist that the movie is never as good as the book, your case just got stronger. (2) it has PG -13 rating for disturbing images, pagan sex scene, violence etc. (3) the film’s director Ron Howard says "My advice is not to see the film if you think it will upset you,". Given the likely conversations we will engage in at the pub, school gate or over a coffee at work, we do well to reflect on where the film/book are wrong and be ready to talk about it with people.
What is its relevance today?
The reading was John 1 which talks about who Jesus is – which is an underlying theme to the film. There are many passages in the New Testament that warn against false teaching about Christ and show why the teachings are wrong. I believe that film and the TV is one of the most powerful teachers we have today. In this country we used to have a shared faith. We now have a shared popular culture and to the extent that we reflect on it, we will be able to evangelise our culture.
Will I ruin the film?
Don’t worry I will not ruin the story. We will examine some questions that the film asks about Christianity. There will be some questions on your sheet. Don’t worry about making detailed notes. I will give you a handout as you leave and if you are listening to this on cassette or MP3 you can get more copies from me or download them from the website.
[S] THE MAIN QUESTIONS WE WILL CONSIDER TODAY
(1) Does the Bible teach that Jesus is God? The book says that Jesus’ divinity was first established in AD 325. I will show that the early Christians Believed that Jesus was God. Brown’s claim is incorrect
(2) Did Jesus marry Mary? Brown teaches that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and they had offspring, but it is clear that they did not.
(3) Are there lots of Gospels?
CLIP: THE CONSPIRACY GAME
{S] The clip makes its point. Brown in DVC: "almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false….." My response “everything the book teaches is wrong!”
[S]THE TRUTH
The book & film are fantasy
The Bible teaches that Jesus is God
Jesus did not marry Mary Magdalene
We can trust the Gospels.

(1) [S]the book / film are fantasy.
For instance
a. Brown claims that the architectural details of the places in the book are correct. Yet, as N T Wright points out, Brown gets these details which are easily checked wrong. If he gets these easy facts wrong, why should we trust anything else he says?
b. The Priory of Sion – the key group in the film - was a spoof reinvented by three zany Frenchmen in the seventies. I watched Tony Robinson’s Channel 4 documentary last year (repeated last week) when one of them happily admitted the forgery.
c. Brown claims that in Da Vinci’s Last Supper the person next to Jesus is a woman. That is just fantasy.
d. Brown claims that Sunday worship was invented by Constantine (despite 1 Cor 16:2, Acts 20:7). Constantine did not.
e. Brown suggests that Jesus wrote a book called Q and Mary Magdalene wrote the Magdalene diaries. That is daft.
f. Brown claims the Dead Sea Scrolls talk about Jesus. They do not.
g. As Tom Hanks says, "This is not a documentary. This is emotional fiction."

(2) [S] The Bible teaches that Jesus is God
There is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, dating back to Jesus’ time on earth, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was God. In his seminal study, Early Christian Doctrines, noted 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.”
The Council of Nicaea did not define that Jesus, the Son of God, was divine (since that was accepted by all Christians) but addressed the issue of the exact relationship between the Son and the Father: Are they equal? One in substance? Two Persons? The Council specifically addressed and condemned the popular heresy of that time, called Arianism, which insisted that the Son was a lesser god, created by the Father at some point in time and not eternally existent.
Why do I believe that Jesus is God? Well I have a favourite hobby. You may think me sad when I tell you, but I have an unusual experience once every six months or so. Generally this occurs mid morning or perhaps at tea time when two hapless strangers come knocking at my door. Others flee them I just love the time I spend when Jehovah’s witnesses knock on my door. Did you know that the Bible doesn’t teach that Jesus is God? I say no. Isn’t it great! God lets us work it out. Don’t you love John 20.28 I say when Thomas falls at Jesus feet and says “my Lord and my God”. Jesus doesn’t push him away like Peter and John do when people try and worship them in Acts. Jesus accepts this… and the conversation goes on. In location after location in the New Testament the Bible teaches that Jesus is God. Why do people stone Jesus for blasphemy? Because he claims to be God. In John 1:1-2 the logos=Jesus so – Jesus was with God and Jesus was God.

(3) [S] Jesus did not marry Mary Magdalene
The Da Vinci code breathes new life into long discredited claims that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife and that the Bible we have today can’t be trusted. However, any critics with any sense of history – whether they are Christians or not – have found these claims of the book laughable.
Notable NT scholar Darrell Bock says, “One of the few things on which a vast majority of liberal and conservative Jesus scholars agree is that Jesus is single” (p 33)
For example, there is no evidence that Jesus was married. Had Jesus been married, Paul would have certainly have mentioned such an important detail when he defended his right to have a wife (as in 1 Cor. 9:5). He mentioned that Peter and apostles had wives – if Jesus had been married then it would have clinched his argument.
The well-known liberal Jesus scholar Dominic Crossman was asked on beliefnet.com whether Jesus was married. He began his sarcastic reply this way:
There is an ancient and venerable principle of biblical exegesis [interpretation] which states that if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a camel in disguise. So let’s apply that to whether or not Jesus was married. There is no evidence that Jesus was married (looks like a duck, multiple indications that he was not (walks like a duck), and no early text suggesting wife or children (quacks like a duck)…. So he must be an incognito bridegroom (camel in disguise)

(4) [S] There are not lots of Gospels.
The central claim The Da Vinci Code makes about Christianity is that "almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false." In the book Teabing argues that there were “more than eighty gospels” considered for the NT in AD 325, but that only four were chosen.
Ironically, the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched when a rival sect produced its own quasi-biblical canon. Around AD 140 a chap called Marcion who was a leader of religious movements who loved knowledge, the Gnostics, began spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn't share the same God. Challenged by Marcion's threat, church leaders began to consider in more depth their own views on a definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New Testaments. What was clear was that by the end of the second century the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John held pre-eminent position. Why can we trust the Gospels?
The four Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke John, – contain eye witness testimony Luke 1:1-4; John 19:34-35.
The Gospels are biographies of Jesus and it was believed important at the time to get the details correct. Transmission of important traditions not written down in sacred Scripture often involved a substantial amount of flexibility in retelling these stories, in the inclusion or omission of certain incidental details, in the arrangement and sequence of episodes, and in paraphrasing and interpreting a person’s teaching, as long as the major events of the narrative and significance are not altered (Lord in Blomberg p32).
If the retellers had been changing the content surely they would have changed the hard says of Jesus. Biographies were often arranged thematically not chronologically which explains some of the differences between the Gospels. That reflects standard practice of the day.
The witness of the early church uniformly supports the belief that Matthew (the tax collector turned disciple, Mark (companion of Peter and Paul) and Luke (Paul’s beloved physician) penned the Gospels ascribed to them. Why would anybody ascribe the books to them if it were not true? Mark and Luke were not among Jesus’ twelve apostles, Mark abandoned Paul (Acts 13:13). In contrast the Gnostic Gospels were written much later and picked more exemplary figures as their fictitious authors e.g. Philip, Peter, Mary, James, Bartholomew, even Thomas (see Blomberg pp 28-29)
Evidence from within the Gospels. The strongest argument against the idea that Christians felt that they could make up the Gospels was that there were plenty of arguments and controversies after Jesus was resurrected. These could have been solved if the first Christians had simply read back into the Gospels solutions to the debates, but that never happens. Not once does Jesus address the tough issue of the day, Gentile circumcision, tongues, women’s ministry etc (Blomberg p32).
In contrast there were lots of documents written by Gnostics – people who loved secrets. When we read them we can see how they read their own agenda into Jesus’ teaching. There was a tradition of sticking someone important as the title to a book – for example calling this a “sermon by Rowan Williams.” You can pick up the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Mary Magdalene for under a fiver on Amazon (Ed. Alan Jacobs) but they are not written by those people, they are written centuries later and just get posh headings. As notable NT scholar Raymond Brown said, in rejecting those books the church was simply rejecting the rubbish of the second century. All the other documents are “still rubbish” he said.

[S] CONCLUSION
The book is fantasy. As Tom Hanks says, "This is not a documentary. This is emotional fiction."
The Bible teaches that Jesus is God
Jesus did not marry Mary Magdalene
We can trust the Gospels.
[S] If you watch the film, remember the facts.
Use the film as an opportunity for talking about the reasons for your faith. Don’t feel you ought to watch it – 2½ hours long and bad initial reviews. Don’t get angry with people who disagree with you.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barna, G (2006) Da Vinci Code Confirms Rather Than Changes People’s Religious Views . Source: http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrowPreview&BarnaUpdateID=238 accessed May 15, 2006,
Blomberg, C (1995) Where do we start studying Jesus? In Jesus Under Fire (Ed. M Wilkins and J Moreland), Carlisle: Paternoster, pp 17-50
Bock, D (2004) Breaking the Da Vinci Code Nashville: Nelson Books.
Wright N T (1996) Decoding Da Vinci, The Challenge of Historic Christianity and Fantasy, Cambridge: Grove Books
http://www.danbrown.com/
The Real Da Vinci Code (Channel 4) Broadcast 3 Feb 2005 rebroadcast 13 May 2006.

FURTHER READING
The PowerPoint to go with the talk will be available to download.
Nicky Gumbel and Mark Stibbe have both written short reviews of The Da Vinci Code. They would be worth reading. Nicky Gumbel’s books are valuable and popular. Mark Stibbe’s doctorate is in New Testament and his approach is readable. N T Wright’s book is interesting. Blomberg’s article is superb on understanding the reliability of the Gospels. Bock’s is much longer and goes into more detail and is recommended.