| IIIM Magazine Online, Volume 6, Number 10, March 24 to March 30, 2004 |
"...baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water." (ch 7)The Epistle to Diogenetus This anonymous works has been dated by most scholars around AD 130. Notice in the emphasis on Christ as the divine son of God, his coming return, and his followers willingness to die for their beliefs:
"As a king sends his son, who is also a king, so sent He Him; as God He sent Him; as to men He sent Him; as a Savior He sent Him, and as seeking to persuade, not to compel us; for violence has no place in the character of God. As calling us He sent Him, not as vengefully pursuing us; as loving us He sent Him, not as judging us. For He will yet send Him to judge us, and who shall endure His appearing? ... Do you not see them exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet not overcome? Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the greater becomes the number of the rest? This does not seem to be the work of man: this is the power of God; these are the evidences of His manifestation."Polycarp (AD 65-155) A disciple of John, Polycarp was one of the great martyrs for his faith in Christ. Eusebius, an early church historian, tells us that at his trial, offered clemency if he would merely deny that he was Polycarp, he instead offered to tutor the magistrate in Christian doctrine. In this quote from his first letter to the Philippians, he demonstrates a clear understanding of Jesus' death serving to atone for our sins:
"...our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered even unto death, [but] ‘whom God raised froth the dead, having loosed the bands of the grave.' ‘In whom, though now ye see Him not, ye believe, and believing, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory;' into which joy many desire to enter, knowing that ‘by grace ye are saved, not of works,' but by the will of God through Jesus Christ."Ignatius (AD 30-107) This prolific writer was another disciple of John. He was also martyred for his faith. Tradition says Ignatius was the child that Jesus held when saying "let the children come unto me and do not hinder them", but this cannot be verified. We have 7 verifiable letters of his. Here, we begin to see an emphasis on theology. In all the other documents we've discussed, the theology of Jesus is assumed. Now Ignatius is writing to correct errors in doctrine. As Ignatius describes his opponents, he describes them as believing that Jesus was divine, but that he was never truly human. Notice that this is exactly the opposite view that Brown claims for the early church in the Da Vinci Code. Notice the language here describing Jesus as eternally with the Father, spiritually existing before time began, and being born of a virgin.
"But our Physician is the only true God, the unbegotten and unapproachable, the Lord of all, the Father and Begetter of the only-begotten Son. We have also as a Physician the Lord our God, Jesus the Christ, the only-begotten Son and Word, before time began, but who afterwards became also man, of Mary the virgin. For ‘the Word was made flesh.'" (Epistle to Ephesians ch 7)Justin Martyr (AD 110-165) A Gentile convert to Christianity, most of Justin's writings engage Greek philosophy and persecution by the Roman empire. Interestingly, he does not engage with any belief that resembles what Brown describes as the true teaching of the early church. Already we see that what Dan Brown describes was not even on the radar of the early church.
"....were they condemned by Reason (or the Word, the Logos) Himself, who took shape, and became man, and was called Jesus Christ..." (First Apology, ch 5)Irenaeus (AD 120-202) Irenaeus was famous for his work Against Heresies where he defends early Christian orthodoxy against sects that were challenging orthodoxy. From Lyons, France (According to Brown's tale, this is supposedly where Mary Magdalene was to have been taken by Joseph of Arimathea), Irenaeus fled to Rome to escape the intense persecution that broke out against Christians during a pagan festival. His massive two volume work catalogs the intricacies and errors of the so called Gnostic sects. We will interact with Irenaeus in more detail when we talk about the reliability of the New Testament.
"Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third..." (First Apology ch 13)
"Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit, he wrote to you concerning himself, and Cephas, and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed among you." (ch 47)Ignatius (first century AD) We have 8 letters falsely attributed to Ignatius — two to apostle John and one to the Virgin Mary — these letters were rejected. These letters would have supported the Christian tradition as we have received it, but the early church was more concerned with authenticity than with doing what it takes to support their position. They declared these false letters if Ignatius to be unreliable. This early rejection demonstrates the real concern for authenticity of documents among the early church community.
"Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them." (ch 45)
"For neither by nature nor by human conception is it possible for men to know things so great and divine, but by the gift which then descended from above upon the holy men, who had no need of rhetorical art, nor of uttering anything in a contentious or quarrelsome manner, but to present themselves pure to the energy of the Divine Spirit, in order that the divine plectrum itself, descending from heaven, and using righteous men as an instrument like a harp or lyre, might reveal to us the knowledge of things divine and heavenly." (Hortatory address to the Greeks, Ch 8)Marcion (second century AD) — this second century heretic sparked a huge debate about what was acceptable by proposing his stripped down canon. Marcion's canon consisted of the gospel of Luke and selected letters of Paul. Everything else he rejects as being less than worthy. This demonstrates the tendency of early dissenters to not add to the existing consensus of scripture, but to challenge it by subtracting from it.
"And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things." (First Apology, ch 67).
"We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. For it is unlawful to assert that they preached before they possessed "perfect knowledge," as some do even venture to say, boasting themselves as improvers of the apostles. For, after our Lord rose from the dead, [the apostles] were invested with power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down [upon them], were filled from all [His gifts], and had perfect knowledge: they departed to the ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of the good things [sent] from God to us, and proclaiming the peace of heaven to men, who indeed do all equally and individually possess the Gospel of God. Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia." (Against Heresies, book 5, ch 1)Irenaeus shows that the early heretics were neither unified in their views and that they used the existing four gospels as their starting point (not these so called 80 other gospels that Brown references):
"So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that the very heretics themselves bear witness to them, and, starting from these [documents], each one of them endeavors to establish his own peculiar doctrine. For the Ebionites, who use Matthew's Gospel only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord. But Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from those [passages] which he still retains. Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified. Those, moreover, who follow Valentinus, making copious use of that according to John, to illustrate their conjunctions, shall be proved to be totally in error by means of this very Gospel, as I have shown in the first book. Since, then, our opponents do bear testimony to us, and make use of these [documents], our proof derived from them is firm and true." (Against Heresies, Book 3, ch 11)In addition to the gospels, Irenaeus indicates that the letters of Paul were already considered prophetically authoritative at this time too. Irenaeus' writings essentially destroy Brown's thesis.
"the ancients envisioned their world in two halves — masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a balance of power. Yin and yang. When male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos." "The pentangle is representitive of the female half of all things — a concept religious historians call the ‘sacred feminine' or the ‘divine goddess'" (36)Here is one of the more silly half truths in the book. Brown is right that most ancient religions were nature based and included both god and goddess worship. However it is reading new age thought back into the ancient world to say that they "worked to keep a balance of power." Most of the ancient gods and goddesses were pictured as struggling against one another to maintain their own power (consider the depiction of warring gods and goddesses in the Illiad and Oddysey).
"The pendulum had swung. Mother Earth had become a man's world, and the gods of destruction and war were taking their toll. The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its female counterpart. The Priory of Sion believed that it was this obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life that had caused what the Hopi Native Americans called koyanisquatsi — ‘life out of balance' — an unstable situation marked by testosterone-fueled wars, a plethora of misogynistic societies, and a growing disrespect for Mother Earth." (126)
"When you enter the land your Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices, the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you." (Deuteronomy 18:9-12)Did the Catholic Church really murder 5 million women goddess worshippers?
"...the priory's tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on the belief that powerful men in the early Christian church ‘conned' the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favor of the masculine....The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever." (124)Dan Brown says the church "... indoctrinated the world to ‘the dangers of freethinking women' and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and destroy them." (125) He describes a holocaust of destruction of female scholars, priestesses, midwives, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, and anyone attuned to nature. "During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women." (125).
"The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis — knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man's only bridge from earth to heaven "by communing with woman ... man could achieve a climactic instant when his mind was totally blank and he could see God." (309).We've already seen how Frazer debunks the idea that there is attainment mystic enlightenment going on in the widespread fertility rituals of the ancient world. Dan Brown then makes this extraordinary claim:
"...the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. in the temple no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple housed not only God but also his powerful female equal, Shekinaah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the temple to visit priestesses — or hierodules — with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union."Here Brown demonstrates a half truth — there was indeed nature worship and sexuality in the temple and tabernacle of ancient Israel — however the Old Testament scriptures pronounce God's judgment against such actions. I Samuel 2 tells the story of Hophni and Phineas, who among other things were engaging in ritual sexuality with the ladies who served in the tabernacle. Later in the same chapter, God pronounces his judgment against them.
"And he said to me ‘Son of man, do you see what they are doing — the utterly detestable things the house of Israel is doing here, things that will drive me far from my sanctuary?.... So I went in and looked, and I saw portrayed all kinds of crawling things and detestable animals and all the idols of the house of Israel.... He said to me ‘Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say ‘The Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land'.... Then he brought me to the north gate of the house of the Lord, and I saw women sitting there mourning for Tammuz.... He then brought me to the inner court of the house of the Lord, and there at the entrance of the temple... were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east. He said to me "Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a trivial matter for the house of Judah to do the detestable things they are doing here? Must they also fill the land with violence and continually provoke me to anger?" (From Ezekiel 8)In the midst of a passage of judgment, we see condemnation of the death/fertility cults in Israel. "In you are slanderous men bent on shedding blood; In you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and commit lewd acts." (Ezekiel 22:9)
"The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone, but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer."What is the opportunity in this book for Christians?