← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Texas Dissident
Thread ID: 12790 | Posts: 23 | Started: 2004-03-18
2004-03-18 22:17 | User Profile
Getting expedited to be hot on the heels of Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", last night I heard Lee Strobel mention the [url=http://www.cinemaeye.com/more/433_0_10_0_C]movie[/url] directed by Ron "Anti-White" Howard and written by (jew) Akiva Goldsman is headed for theatres next year. While the book is most assuredly a work of fiction, from the [u]Left Behind[/u] series we have seen what kind of impact fiction can make in real-world beliefs and policies.
Therefore, in order to discredit this abomination as early as possible, the following link is a comprehensive, detailed and thorough debunking of every "fact" in the fictional novel [u]The DaVinci Code[/u] by Dan Brown.
[url=http://answers.org/issues/davincicode.html]Not InDaVincible: A Review and Critique of The DaVinci Code[/url]
Brown is not the first to propose that Christianity is a vast conspiracy by the Vatican and/or others to hoodwink the world about the true Jesus. He will not be the last. What is surprising is not that he would boldly label 'FACT' what has been so totally refuted by the evidence. What is surprising is that our culture is so ill-equipped so as not to be able to discern fact from fiction, misinformed about Christianity, woefully ignorant of history, and clueless about the Bible - its origin, composition, preservation, and translation. This novel is based on such flimsy fabrication that if it used any other setting - an ethnic neighborhood, a police investigation, an environmental conservation movement, for example - no one would be able to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the story. That millions of people are not turned off by the lack of authenticity in The DaVinci Code is more than surprising--it is sad. That critics and even news media are so gullible is more than revealing about the state of our culture--it reveals the tragic truth that our culture is in need of rediscovering Truth.
Spread the truth about this thing far and wide and let's hope it bombs as bad as Howard's last anti-white effort, The Missing.
2004-03-18 23:41 | User Profile
Tex, I wouldn't go near "The DaVinci Code". I hear many people proclaiming this book as amazing, but I just say "haven't read it and probably won't".....that raises an eyebrow with most folks. Even though most people identify the book as fiction, I also hear them tell me, "well, how do you know Jesus wasn't married with kids? I think it could be true" What do you say to them?
2004-03-19 01:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead]Even though most people identify the book as fiction, I also hear them tell me, "well, how do you Jesus wasn't married with kids? I think it could be true" What do you say to them?[/QUOTE]
That's a good question, x, and a couple of points that need to be made come to mind. First, we need to realize that for men like Brown and his ilk that promote this nonsense, no amount of factual rebuttals are going to persuade them to retract any of their distortions. Quite simply, the truth does not matter to them. Their overriding agenda is simply anti-Christ and they know that consistently and doggedly throwing out distortions and outright lies will eventually create doubt in some and that is their sole intention at bottom. Authoritatively clear and repeated denounciations of the strongest sort are the only real and effective answers to these anti-Christs to my mind.
I believe folks like the ones you have encountered are correctible and being well-versed in proper apologetics like the one I linked to here should be sufficient in setting them back on the right course and clearing up their doubts. A basic problem that we do have is that the great majority of adults here in America at least are seemingly so incapable of critical thought and firm conviction built on the results of same. "I think it could be true" is really the slogan for our age and to my mind evangelizing to this kind of mindset is one the great challenges for Christians today. Post-modern moral relativism is a cancer on our people that is manifested throughout every aspect of our culture and body politic. But it is what it is and I am sure there are many learned men that have written on how best to approach and counter it. I think that at minimum we should be prepared to defend the Truth with facts when it is questioned or called into doubt, present the Gospel via the Scriptures and then get on our knees and turn it over to God in prayer - unceasing prayer. In this manner, our duty as believers to evangelize really hasn't changed and at the same time we must make sure that our own lives are above reproach. Skeptics and doubters won't hesitate to cry 'Hypocrite' at any believer who does not completely 'practice what he preaches.'
With regards to this movie, I hope all the hoopla over Gibson's "Passion" (which I still haven't seen) will have served to focus the Church's attention to the kind of real world impact things like movies can have on people and a culture. With God's help working through an aggressive and confrontational Church, perhaps we can prevent this film from ever seeing the inside of a movie theatre and thereby spreading its demonic message.
2004-03-20 07:54 | User Profile
I saw three different women reading the DaVinci Code on the subway ride to work yesterday. For the most part it's the fairer sex that seems to go for this sort of nonsense more than the men. TD you are right when you called the book's message demonic.
2004-03-21 03:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=martel] TD you are right when you called the book's message demonic.[/QUOTE]
Yes, and what proves the author a Luciferian rather than a mere kook is the deliberate under-handedness with which he is going about his business. You see, the poisonous message is not quite all over the place, but fed to the reader in tiny spoonfulls, half-hidden by the more spectacular parts of the story. The idea is to get the readers desensitized to a glorification of Pagan sex cults, and to anti-Christian hate, in small steps, like a psychologically designed programmed-learning lesson.
The DaVinci Code is actually 3 things in one: a murder story, a treasure hunt and a (fake) history lesson. The first two would, in themselves, be harmless, but they exist only as the sugar coating to make one swallow the fake history pill. Now the author employs a clever trick, which is unfortunately going to deceive many: Throughout most of the book we are led to think that the grisly murder has been committed by the Catholic Church, or at least renegade elements within the Church. However, at the end it turns out this was not the case, and the person responsible for the murder(s) is not a Christian. And that is what convinced me that the author is not just an annoying jerk, but truely and profoundly evil: Because this is designed to make those readers who are not blessed with the gift of sound thinking -and the book is aimed at such a market- believe that the message is not really anti-Christian hate, after all.
Which it, of course, is, and profoundly so, because the "history" involved, if true, would make totally impossible about 80% of the Christian Creed, including, but not limited to, the Resurrection. As if that was not enough, Pagan sex cultism, as in Eyes Wide Shut, is depicted as something harmless and/or beneficial! And, of course, Christ himself must have been a Pagan, because itôs His descendants, after all, who engage in the sex cult! And if Christ was a Paganizer, rather than the Messiah, then the Jews would have been right in crucifying Him. Most of this is not said explicitly, but all follows logically from the premise.
And, of course, Pagans in Britain and elsewhere did engage in human sacrifice, so piously absolving the Church in the murder case not only means nothing, it is, in this particular context, blatantly hypocritical. The danger of it all is that this is going to escape most readers, rather they will be left with the vague impression that Pagans are good guys, Satanic rituals are nothing to shy away from, and that Christian Churches are, perhaps, not always murderous, but certainly in the wrong and outdated. A major anti-Christian propaganda effort, and many of the critics are certainly "in the know", because, if the implications escape many casual readers, they can surely not escape a professional critic (unless he is mentally unfit for his job). :angry:
2004-04-29 18:09 | User Profile
Update with more resources:
[url=http://www.coralridge.org/CRMMinResDetail.asp?ID=ttt&pc=3AKG&op=15&ec=I1296]The Da Vinci Deception[/url] by Dr. Erwin Lutzer
Was Jesus really married to Mary Magdalene? Did their children intermarry with the French royal family? Has the Church been hiding the truth for centuries? Those claims (and more) masquerade as historical fact in fiction writer Dan Brown's bestselling novel The DaVinci Code--giving the impression that Christianity is based on a lie. Renowned theologian and pastor of the world-famous Moody Church in Chicago, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, devastates the fabricated Church history advanced by Brown and others. With logic and documentation, he provides a book that will help every Christian defend his faith.
[url=http://www.leaderu.com/focus/davincicode.html]Articles and Evidence Challenging The Da Vinci Code from Leadership U[/url]
[url=http://www.family.org/married/growth/a0029682.cfm]The Da Vinci Code: Exciting New Novel, Tired Old Conspiracy Theories (Focus on the Family)[/url]
2004-05-05 22:34 | User Profile
A few more Da Vinci Debunkers:
[url=http://www.irr.org/da-vinci-code.html]Cracks in the Da Vinci Code[/url] by Dr. Ronald Huggins
[url=http://icq.beliefnet.com/story/135/story_13519.html]The DaVinci Code's Shaky Foundation: Gnostic Texts[/url] by Dr. James Hitchcock
[url=http://www.crosswalk.com/fun/1212187.html]Deciphering the Da Vinci Code[/url] by Dr. Albert Mohler
2004-05-06 04:44 | User Profile
Its just another media Jew mechanism, and I must say I am very dissapointed that the same man who was Richie Cunnigham could film such an atrocity. All you have to do is watch the Disney network channels to see how they want to profane the Word of Life. Gospel of Philip. What a joke. The real Philip was over 200 years dead when it was written, written by Arianists ! History - there was a group called the Arianists who denied the divinity of Christ. They fought bitter battles with the burgeoning Church before Constantine and were crushed totally, but now it seems 1800 years after, hmm, some want to believe the Arianists were right ! yea ok.. a political group looking for control .. hmm... sound familiar ? The saddest fact is that all who participate in this crap are truly commiting a cardinal sin, one which unless the confess and in their hearts feel it through Grace can never be forgiven. This is not a game, and life and death are not games. Control over the silver strand between God and Man who is Jesus Christ is not a game. I feel bad for these people, I really do. They are not equal to us, nor a part of us, nor has YHWH granted them to be so. It is so horrible that they spew such jibber and have the power to bring it into the media and influence young minds. Thats the saddest thing of all. But I can only trust in the Holy Spirit that the youth of this world will not be swayed by such blashphemy. I know it is written that God in the end times will hand over the last generation to a reprobate mind. Proud of itself. That is what these devils want to do with productions such as these, and those who propagate such drivel are victims of Satan. Satan can do a lot, make a lot happen for you, take you to the highest points of pleasure and wealth and all that the physical world can offer.. so let these poor bastards do what they wilt, and the fruits of their labor which are scorn, isolation, suffering and insanity can rend their minds blank for the rest of their days until they rot in Hell for All Eternity. Who do they think they are, rising above the Throne of God. The damned are indeed the damned.
2004-05-16 13:52 | User Profile
Tex, I just wanted to thank you again for compiling these resources. My sister-in-law, my great aunt, my stepmother, and my mother-in-law have all been reading this book, and they were all surprised when I expressed my dislike for it. These pages give me a lot of tools to use to show them how wrong the book is.
2004-05-16 16:39 | User Profile
Quantrill, if you are interested on a thorough Catholic put-down of this esoteric-yet-mediocre, demonic crap, check here:
[url]http://www.culturewars.com/2004/DaVinci.html[/url]
A review from Michael Jones' "Culture Wars". [COLOR=Navy][COLOR=DarkRed]
[SIZE=5]Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003), $24.95, 454 pp.
Reviewed by Anne Barbeau Gardiner [/SIZE]
For those of us who remember the Doubleday Image books, which were a series of solidly Catholic works, it's sad to reflect on what has happened to this publisher. We have in The Da Vinci Code, God help us, a best-seller which is not only deeply anti-Catholic – indeed one could reasonably call it "hate speech" – but also profoundly corrupt, worse than pornography. Why? Because it is propaganda for what was rightly called in the Old Testament an abomination – ritual orgiastic sex with a "priestess" in front of a chanting crowd. The great Hebrew prophets thundered against this use of sex as a religious rite, and with good reason. Those who got addicted to it were virtually beyond reclaiming. They were not likely to repent when they deluded themselves into thinking that this sin exalted rather than defiled them. Sad that a book advocating such a monstrous perversion should come out of Doubleday.
But why should this novel have made it to the best-seller list? The answer is that Dan Brown has produced here an ingenious thriller. But that is only the packaging of the story. What he has placed on the inside, under the wrappers, is an indoctrination into Gnosticism. The reader is intended to swallow the Gnostic poison while enjoying the murder mystery. The reader is also meant to imbibe many lies about Christian history which appear as factual declarations in the mouths of two well-educated characters who reinforce each other. Outrageous lies are given as indubitable facts – for example, that the medieval Church killed five million women in 300 years, that Christians were constantly making war on Pagans before 325 A.D. (in fact they endured ten great persecutions without ever lifting a sword against the Pagan Romans), and that the Crusades were launched to destroy information about Mary Magdalene's having been the wife of Jesus (125, 232, 254). We are told in dogmatic tones that Original Sin was an idea devised to counter the "sacred feminine" and that Christians regarded Jesus Christ as a mere mortal until "the great deception" of His divinity was imposed by Constantine on the Nicene Council (238, 295). All this would be laughable, were it not meant to entrap young and uneducated readers.
The author pretends to be on the side of the true Jesus and presents him as "the original feminist" who "intended for the future of His Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene," but Peter foiled his plan. (248). Everything from Genesis to the modern Church is presented in this book as a struggle against the only religion that really counts for Brown – goddess-worship, which turns out in the end to be Magdalene worship.
In this book there is a secret society whose members share a fascination with "goddess iconology, paganism, feminine deities, and contempt for the Church" (113). Only gradually is it made clear that this society practices the abomination of ritual sex. The three monotheistic religions are all dismissed as women-hating because they dared to "recast as a shameful act" the ritual sex by which "holy men" used to become one with their "female counterparts" (125). Note the use of holy for men engaged in this perversion. The book is chock full of references to pentacles, roses, pyramids, blades and chalices, all of which are obsessively connected with sex and goddess worship. A great many images found in literature, art and architecture are twisted here into symbols of sexual union – including the square cross and the star of David. Such obsessiveness of association is deviant and could well be a symptom of mental disorder. One can only hope it's not contagious for the millions of readers expecting to enjoy a thriller.
Brown's Mary Magdalene is not the Catholic saint we know. She stands here for the goddess of sex once called Isis, Astarte or Venus. The secret society in Brown's story "worships Mary Magdalene as the Goddess, the Holy Grail, the Rose, and the Divine Mother" (255). It sees Our Lord as the equivalent of the horned gods of Paganism, such as Baal. We have witnessed many sacrileges in recent years, such as a Crucifix dipped in urine and a Madonna adorned with elephant dung. But this book may be worse. It is the equivalent of Belshazzar's feast, where the sacred cup belonging to the Holy of Holies was monstrously profaned. Brown takes the Holy Grail, the cup in which Christ is thought to have consecrated the Blessed Sacrament at the Last Supper, and tramples it by reducing it to something carnal. He tries to persuade the reader that the Holy Grail had nothing to do with the Eucharist, but was only about Mary Magdalene's procreative organs. Christians were deluded, and the "blood of Christ" resided all along only in this particular woman and her physical descendants, nowhere else. The descendants of Magdalene have been guarded down the ages by the secret society because their existence is supposed to prove that the Church foisted a deception on the world. Thus, once the murder-mystery wrapper is removed, Browns book turns out to be hate-speech, blasphemy and sacrilege all rolled into one.
On the last page, the Harvard professor finds Magdalene's grave but decides against publicizing what's in it, the documentary proof that the Church is a fraud. Why? Because it wouldn't do for the hoi polloi to know the "Truth." Here Brown preaches Gnostic doctrine: that the stupid many, unlike the superior few, cannot live without lies. He shows the Bible as a web of lies, too, for he quotes Da Vinci saying, "Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude," and adds that this is in reference to the Bible (231).
The Da Vinci Code is full of anagrams, puzzles, riddles and codes. This highlights what is most seductive about Gnosticism, its appeal to superficial cleverness. For the Gnostic, truth is an esoteric code that only the very clever can decipher. Brown treats his readers as if they belonged to this exclusive club of code-breakers. Trouble is, when all the puzzles are solved – and he solves them by his mouthpiece the Harvard professor so the reader doesn't have to take any trouble – what is left is banal and sordid. In contrast to the infinite depth and holiness of the Christian mysteries, the Gnostic mysteries turn out to be dull and dirty, like an expanse of foul-smelling mud. Or like coming to the last of several nesting boxes and finding that instead of a rare gift, you have only a pornographic image.
It's no accident that the professor who speaks for Brown ends up sounding like an atheist. He tells the naive girl that "every faith in the world is based on fabrication," and every religion uses "metaphors," but foolish ordinary people believe these stories "literally," while those "who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical" (341-2). In other words, clever people are atheists because they regard every religion as made up. Well where does that leave Brown's goddess worship by ritual sex? This too must be a fabrication. How insubstantial this is, like a weird incoherent dream. Yet such a view of reality has tragic and eternal consequences, and one rightly fears for the young, unwary reader.
Brown's constant use of flattery to inveigle women reminds one of a comic routine that Elaine May and Mike Nichols used to perform. In a brief seduction scene, May would protest, "I want you to respect me," and Nichols would exclaim enthusiastically as he pawed her, "I respect you, I respect you!" In the same way, Brown uses women as if they consisted only of sexual organs and at the same time exclaims with enthusiasm, "you're sacred, you're sacred!"
In chapter 74, Brown finally gives a lengthy description of ritual sex. By this point he imagines that the reader has fallen under his Gnostic spell, so it is safe for the professor tell the ingenue about a ceremony that only looks "like a sex ritual," but is actually "a spiritual act" meant to "achieve gnosis." When the girl wonders how "orgasm" can be called "prayer," the professor assures her that ritual sex "is not a perversion" but a "deeply sacrosanct ceremony." (And Brooklyn Bridge is for sale, too.) He declares that ancient Jews and "priestesses" engaged in these rituals in Solomon's Temple and worshiped a Goddess called Shekinah. He even dares to decipher the sacred Tetragrammaton, the name of the biblical God, as meaning the same as Yin/Yang. Using a "soft voice," he tells the girl how "mankind's use of sex to commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base," and this is why the Church had to "demonize sex" (309). These are all lies. One may ask if he is not the one demonizing sex by reducing it, as he does, to a single monstrous perversion.
In the last lines of the Da Vinci Code (454), after Mary Magdalene's grave has been found, the professor kneels in reverence and seems to hear a voice speaking to him from the abyss below: "For a moment, he thought he heard a woman's voice ... the wisdom of the ages ... whispering up from the chasms of the earth." One cannot help here but be reminded of Dante, the greatest Catholic poet, in whose Inferno the deep chasms of the earth are teeming with wicked demons and damned souls. By Brown's own admission here, the pretended "wisdom" that has inspired his book is lodged in the underworld. This is the voice, then, not of Mary Magdalene, but of a demon. Indeed this whole book, while superficially clever, comes straight out of hell. It is especially wicked to use the name of Mary Magdalene to cover the gross abominations of Gnosticism, which include goddess worship and ritual sex.
This review was published in the February, 2004 issue of Culture Wars. [/COLOR]
Petr
2004-05-16 17:53 | User Profile
My pastor gave part 2 of a 6 part series on "Debunking the Davinci Code"
The word is out, it's being discussed properly in churches, and I feel the response by organized Christianity has been good so far. If only more people ATTENDED church and heard the word regularly, they wouldn't be susceptible to scams.
Apparently, this Dan Brown stated to Matt Lauer he is "a believer" Yeah, nice bold-faced lie.
J
2004-05-17 01:42 | User Profile
[url]http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=126765[/url]
Check out this thread.
2004-06-15 15:43 | User Profile
A few hopefully useful replies:
[QUOTE]Even though most people identify the book as fiction, I also hear them tell me, "well, how do you know Jesus wasn't married with kids? I think it could be true" What do you say to them?[/QUOTE] Point out that if He was married with kids, it would make Him a polygamist. His bride is the Church.
And regarding other works which debunk this sort of nonsense, Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is a good one. Cured me of any interest whatsoever in "sangreal" junk. My dad said Eco was on a teevee special about the Brown book where he said that there's no end of "literature" about such conspiracies, and that they're all absurd.
Gabrielle's comment on that other thread that Brown wrote the books to appeal to women (who are more likely than men to purchase the book) is spot-on.
2004-06-15 17:00 | User Profile
I am ever disappointed in the lack of critical thinking faculties my fellow Americans express. The fact is, anything you can imagine MIGHT be true (for instance we might all be brains floating in jars with sensory input provided by an ultra-mega-supercomputer from the planet Blagggoulackatth). But MIGHT BE is no reason at all to believe in something. That people can actually lend credence to the scenarios behind the DaVinci Code and The Day After Tomorrow (which is based on pseudo-science by New Age authors Whitley Strieber and Art Bell [url]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671041908/qid=1087318289/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-5506329-9516901?v=glance&s=books[/url] ) and etc, etc, etc, makes me wonder how society has the brain power to function at all. Did Jaws keep you from going to the beach? Why?
PS I read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. A very difficult read, I thought, but not bad. It's an encyclopedia of pseudo-Christian heresies (and kinda reads like one as well).
2004-06-15 19:08 | User Profile
In order to pass a proper judgment, on anything, you must learn all the facts of a case, weather you like it or not.
The above is one of the reasons as to why I read also what the Jews themselves print. If the world were to be a book and you only read page one that would mean that you never left your country.
Read only that wich you like and you may as well look at yourself in a mirror all the time.
Embrace the lies as you do the truth and only then will you find, in balance, what's behind it.
2004-06-15 19:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=jay]Apparently, this Dan Brown stated to Matt Lauer he is "a believer" Yeah, nice bold-faced lie. [/QUOTE]
Perhaps he didnôt say a believer in WHAT. :whstl:
2004-06-15 19:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Ponce]Embrace the lies as you do the truth and only then will you find, in balance, what's behind it.[/QUOTE]
So I would need to embrace, say, a homo pedophile before I can find what's behind him or motivates him?
That strikes me as a pretty flabby moral code, Ponce.
2004-06-15 20:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]So I would need to embrace, say, a homo pedophile before I can find what's behind him or motivates him?
That strikes me as a pretty flabby moral code, Ponce.[/QUOTE]
You don't have to be rich in order to decide that you like a Rolls-Royce, or that you like that house,,,,,,, you can always test drive a car or take a look at a house without buying them,,,,,,,,, same way that you don't have to be a pedophile in order to know what makes him tick.
2004-06-15 21:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=martel]I saw three different women reading the DaVinci Code on the subway ride to work yesterday. For the most part it's the fairer sex that seems to go for this sort of nonsense more than the men. TD you are right when you called the book's message demonic.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.cs.unc.edu/~taylorr/davincicode.html[/url]
"The Priory's tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on a 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 of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever." (p. 124)"
2004-06-15 21:21 | User Profile
[url]http://tektonics.org/davincicrude.htm[/url]
"Chapter 55 of The DaVinci Code, then, is laden with error and represents the poorest scholarship one will find between two covers. To put these sorts of statements into the mouth of a historian is an insult to the profession."
[url]http://www.crisismagazine.com/septe...03/feature1.htm[/url]
"But despite Brownââ¬â¢s scholarly airs, a writer who thinks the Merovingians founded Paris and forgets that the popes once lived in Avignon is hardly a model researcher. And for him to state that the Church burned five million women as witches shows a willfulââ¬âand maliciousââ¬âignorance of the historical record. The latest figures for deaths during the European witch craze are between 30,000 to 50,000 victims. Not all were executed by the Church, not all were women, and not all were burned. Brownââ¬â¢s claim that educated women, priestesses, and midwives were singled out by witch-hunters is not only false, it betrays his goddess-friendly sources."
"A Multitude of Errors
So error-laden is The Da Vinci Code that the educated reader actually applauds those rare occasions where Brown stumbles (despite himself) into the truth. A few examples of his ââ¬Åimpeccableââ¬Â research: He claims that the motions of the planet Venus trace a pentacle (the so-called Ishtar pentagram) symbolizing the goddess. But it isnââ¬â¢t a perfect figure and has nothing to do with the length of the Olympiad. The ancient Olympic games were celebrated in honor of Zeus Olympias, not Aphrodite, and occurred every four years."
"For the last five weeks, I have often felt, without any illusions of grandeur, that in writing this popular book that may well be read by all kinds of people, we were doing what Irenaeus was doing eighteen hundred years ago. He was facing the seductive power of the Gnostic texts when they first appeared. Those same texts have recently been discovered and translated into English. They are now being used by apostate biblical scholars, especially those associated with The Jesus Seminar, by radical feminist theologians and now by Dan Brown's clever yarn to undermine the very historicity of the New Testament."
[url]http://www.christianity.com/partner...1755586,00.html[/url]
"Brown does two things which we have sought to counter in our book: (1) negatively, he seeks to undermine the Bible, the Canon and the Gospel, using the "findings" of modern New Testament "science"; (2) "positively," he proposes a "new" spiritual agenda (more on this next time).
On the Internet, one can read many postings declaring that Dan Brown's novel "gives permission" to abandon biblical Christianity. One sixteen-year-old girl said to a woman who was attempting to share the gospel: "The Da Vinci Code shows the Bible is a fake. Besides, I feel very comfortable with the spirituality I have discovered there. It fits me fine." This young woman has been affected by both elements of the novel. She dismisses the Bible as bogus history, and she is a convert to this "new spirituality"ââ¬âthe sad result of a powerful, double whammy!"
2004-06-17 20:59 | User Profile
[url=http://tcrnews2.com/Capone.html]Cracking Da Vinci's Code -- A Review of a Critique[/url]
Review of [u]Cracking Da Vinci's Code[/u] By James L. Garlow and Peter Jones Cook Communications Ministries, 2004
Reviewed by Frank J. Capone
As our culture becomes a more decadent Rome, our struggle for truth resembles that of the early churches, we, too, face those who call themselves believers in Christ but are really Gnostics. After two thousand years, the conflict over spiritual truth remains.(1)
There are world-views competing for ascendancy in this present day, differing paradigms vying for attention in spiritual and academic circles. The writings of Matthew Fox and Joseph Campbell, for example, call for a new nature-centered spiritual paradigm with an emphasis on the feminine. Native American spirituality has garnered much attention as a world-view that many believe may one day save our planet. One can find neo-pagan magazines at any Barnes & Nobles or Borders bookstores calling for a return to worship of the goddess or the earth mother. Most of these call for either a supplanting or a radical changing of the "patriarchal" forms of worship, such as Christianity. They believe that traditional Christianity is detrimental to the further development of humanity.
Much of this has trickled down to popular culture. Much popular music espouses this view. Science fiction novels often present scenarios that either attempt to destroy traditional Christianity or drastically alter it. Movie franchises such as Star Wars and The Matrix present an arguably pantheistic-Gnostic point of view. The movie Sleepy Hollow is about restoring an earth-centered femininity into spirituality.
But with the advent of The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, the trickle down may well become a torrent. In his best-selling book Brown takes many of the ideas in the above-named sources and presents them in the format of a murder mystery novel. As a novel it is rather good. I found it was easy to read with a fast-paced storylin that didn't get bogged down. In reading this book I did not come across anything I haven't seen before. I became, rather, reacquainted with concepts I explored years ago in the above mentioned works of Fox and other Neo-Pagan sources. I got a feeling akin to bumping into old acquaintances.
But unlike these sources, The DaVinci Code is a runaway best seller that has become a pop culture phenomenon. Brown has been on talk shows on television in support of his book on which he states the historicity of the ideas he presents. He has taken the debate out of the halls of academia, cult literature, movies and brought it to the general public. He states outright what others in popular forms of entertainment only imply. Ideas once obscure in mainstream culture are now making the rounds.
According to the storyline, the curator of the Louvre Museum has been murdered. He was apparently the head of a secret society, the Priory of Sion, that was charged with keeping a very important Secret. Before he died, the curator left signs that pointed to clues found in art for his granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, and Professor Robert Langdon, clues which would help them learn what the Secret is, where and what the Holy Grail is. Along the way Sophie learns these "facts."
In short, everything we believe about Jesus in traditional Christianity was a lie (p. 235)
Jesus' divinity was "voted on" by the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century AD. In order to consolidate its power.(p. 233)
The Church suppressed all evidence of the real teachings of Jesus in the gnostic gospels(233-235)
Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and sired a royal bloodline(p. 253)
There are secret documents testifying to the above(p. 249, 253-259)
The Church did away with the sacred sex act and suppressed "goddess" worship in order to assert itself as the only way to God (p.309)
It recast the sex act as disgusting, only necessary to procreate.(p. 125, 309)
That Mary Magdalene is in fact the Holy Grail, representing the sacred feminine in worship.(p.238-239, 253)
These are tedious, but serious charges. Brown, in the person of Robert Langdon, calls for a return to the "sacred feminine" in spirituality, which Mary Magdalene represents. According to Langdon, Christianity, as believed in for two thousand years is a sham. Again, these ideas are nothing new, but Brown has brought them out again in the open. My own daughter has encountered these concepts with students in her seventh grade class. This is a blatant attack on the faith of millions, which, if written about other religions, would cause Dan Brown to be raked over the coals in this politically correct age.
But this could be a blessing in disguise. It gives us an opportunity to respond in the open, this time with more people listening. If the ideas of the skeptics are now in the mainstream, this can open the door for traditional Christianity to also re-garner central attention again, much as Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, has done in a more positive way.
But in our response we must be careful not to assign a sinister motive to Brown and other New Age believers. To paraphrase Brown himself, the modern day gnostics' scenario comes from a sincere belief in their view of history, a worldview. The New Age in fact is made up of deeply spiritual people who truly believe that the testimony of the gnostic " gospels" and the ideas disseminated in The DaVinci Code can only be the truth.(2)
What Brown is doing is "Making a case for an old form of spirituality that is reappearing in the twenty- first century."(3) But what he presents is merely a New Age interpretation of history and that mindset has to be taken into consideration. After all ,"Historians know that there is a distinct difference between history (the product of their investigations) and the past (traces and artifacts that remain historical data, if you will) "(4). It is this interpretation which must be responded to calmly and rationally.
This is where Cracking the DaVinci Code comes in.
What James L. Garlow and Peter Jones have done here is present a simple response to the main theses presented in The DaVinci Code. The DaVinci Code is a simple novel geared for the masses and thus calls for a response that is equally popular, direct, and geared for the general reader ( my daughter comes immediately to mind).
The authors deftly undermine the intellectual foundations of Brown's world-view and put it in the context of the academic debate that is now engulfing the masses. The Garlow / Jones arguments are simple to follow, yet devastating and to the point . One gets the impression that the authors were determined to cut loose and pile on fact after fact with a view to burying Brown's arguments; to make, however, a scholarly book 5-600 pages long filled with all the technical terms would not appeal to the general reader and thus be ineffectual, while Brown's book will rack up the sales and find an increasing readership, to say nothing of the buzz a well made movie might create.
Garlow and Jones don't get into every detail of what Brown presents but they don't have to. They give plenty that will undermine the foundations of Brown's world-view. The lay person can easily understand the points brought out and will be equipped with ample responses to answer any challenges he or she may come across from The DaVinci Code.
It begins with a synopsis of the ideas that The DaVinci Code presents and places the debate in the context of the increasing influence of neo-pagan-gnostic thought in Western culture and the current controversy over the question of who Jesus really is and why that question is so important to humanity.
Each chapter then begins with a list of the theses found in Brown's book. Garlow and Jones respond to them point by point. They start each chapter with a list of the assumptions Brown highlights and then proceed to demolish them. This makes their response compelling, one wants to keep reading to find out more, just like The DaVinci Code itself. In addition, they intersperse the book with a narrative of their own about a young girl on a spiritual journey of her own, dealing with the very issues brought out in The DaVinci Code . I, too, related to the character on some levels as her journey in many ways mirrored my own.
Earliest Data Regarding Jesus
They simply and effectively blast the notion that the Jesus was considered a mortal prophet and not considered divine until His divinity was "officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea."(5). The authors of this critique of Brown point out that St. Paul's epistles were in fact the earliest Christian writings, dated around the 50s and 60's AD and are considered by scholars to be reliable history: "the most historically dependable window into the faith of the earliest disciples of Jesus."(6). They also show that St. Paul received his teaching from the Apostles. They write that " Paul said that he depended on those who were apostles before him, and specifically named Peter, John, and James, Jesus' brother (1 Corinthians 9:5; Galations 1:19; 2:8-9)"(7). All that remains is to "nail down what Paul said about Jesus- which is not dependent on speculative theories but on solid history."(8)
With that they go on to show from scripture that Paul certainly believed Jesus to be divine citing the abundant data. They also point out that the Gospel writers themselves undeniably believed Jesus to be Divine and demonstrate that also from scripture. They point out that the gospel record was likely written much earlier than believed by skeptical scholars. Therefore the divinity of Christ was believed in from day one. (See also Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today at TCR)
The authors focus on the example of Marcion, who lived during the second century AD. Even at this early date he disputed the canon, much as some scholars are now doing. They make the point that "he confirms that a canon very close to our New Testament was already circulating in the latter part of the second century."(9)
They additionally go on to list the Church fathers who believed in the divinity of Christ much earlier than the Council of Nicaea, as the record shows. These facts alone are enough to destroy the foundation of much of Brown's ideas (and by extension the New Age's) which are nothing more than the ideas skeptics have been peddling since Spinoza's time.
In Chapter 7 they attack another pillar of Brown's argument, the Hammadi Texts. These are Coptic texts found near the Egyptian village of Hammadi. They are purported to be early examples of Christian writing, containing ,among other things, 5 gnostic gospels. Garlow and Brown bring out that these have been an inspiration to liberal scholars such as Elaine Pagels and some religious feminists, as well as scholars of the notorious Jesus Seminar. These are used by such scholars to support their skeptical beliefs ,as well as their belief in a more prominent role for Mary Magdalene, beliefs now found in The DaVinci Code. These texts include The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Phillip, The Gospel of Truth, and other gnostic texts.
Garlow and Jones point out that these writings represent the hollow foundation for skeptical belief in a Gnostic Jesus. They write:
"The early case for a gnostic Jesus stands or falls with the gospel of Thomas. All the books of the New Testament can be plausibly dated prior to A.D.70. The earliest likely date for the Nag Hammadi scrolls is around A.D. 150 and later, when Gnosticism as a system began to flourish. This date is accepted for the Gospel of Phillip, which has Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene on the lips, and for the Gospel of Mary, which claims a leading role for Mary Magdalene."(10) (Cf also (2 Cor 11:4f)
This blows a hole in the claims of Brown and, by extension, the claims of the proponents of the Jesus Seminar and other liberal skeptics, that Constantine "turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the human world"(11) in order to establish the Catholic Church as the only established channel to God; and that the Council of Nicaea "stole" Jesus from the gnostics. Garlow and Jones have demonstrated that traditional Christian belief was firmly established after the Resurrection, not the beliefs of the Gnostics. They effectively destroy the foundation of Brown's assertions and have given the general reader tools with which to dismantle the edifices set up by the skeptics and demonstrate that the faith proclaimed in the Bible and Sacred Tradition and still believed in by millions is the real message of Christ, not the teachings of the Gnostics.
Sex
Another point worth mentioning is that they start their critique with a discussion of the Christian idea of sex. It may seem strange to some but in this day and age it makes sense to do so. One of the most effective weapons used against traditional faith is the straw-man that Christianity is "against" sex except as a means to procreate, thus making it seem that Christianity is detrimental to human happiness. In 18th century France there was a flood of literature that combined philosophy and metaphysics with eroticism. Libertines in those days represented "a combination of free thinking and free living, which challenged religious doctrines as well as sexual mores."(12) It is not so different in the present day. Erotic literature, science fiction, and other forms of "art" all obsess on the supposed oppressiveness of Christian morality. What Garlow and Jones do in Chapter two is give an excellent presentation of the Christian idea of sex, about which many critics simply appear to have have no real clue. Jim Garlow writes that "sex is God's idea, and, second to salvation, it's the best idea He ever had"(13). This alone will be enough to startle many critics of Christian morality and weaken much of their critique. Garlow and Jones further state that
"Our sexuality and our spirit are inexplicably and profoundly intertwined. We are-at our core-spirit beings, created in God's image. So our sexuality is likewise at the same core- it must be, because we are more than animals in our nature(If sexuality were merely physical, then God should have included male and female animals as created in His image.) That is why sexuality cannot be perceived as some mere tangent for us humans, as if it were something removed from our spirit"(14)
From this principle the author's go on to make an excellent defense of the Judeo-Christian outlook on sex within the sanctity of marriage based on biblical principles and Christian tradition. Their presentation completely eviscerates much of that libertine criticism and will resonate with many. Many, many people today---ignored by much of the intelligentsia --- are uncomfortable with loose sexual mores and are disgusted with much of the eroticism of modern culture. In many TV sitcoms we are beginning to see a return to a more traditional view of morality. (It is noteworthy that the overly sexual sitcom Coupling was a ratings disaster and was pulled after only 2-3 weeks!) This is not surprising considering that Christian morality is God's creation-truth and as such cannot be suppressed for long. Garlow and Jones, establishing the foundation for a true dialogue on the Christian outlook on sexuality, will blunt much of the criticism directed against it and perhaps be the basis for further dialogue for many.
There is one caveat for Catholics. Garlow and Jones are Evangelicals and are writing from the Protestant position of Sola Scriptura. They believe that the "church established the Canon only in the sense of identifying publicly those books that from the earliest times had already imposed themselves on the faith of believers as intrinsically canonical."(15) We Catholics, on the other hand, believe that this canon was recognized by the authority of Sacred Tradition as handed down by the apostolic authority of the Apostles. Also there is no real emphasis on the sacramental life in their work. But on these points Evangelicals and Catholics agree to disagree and dialogue is ongoing. The point is that Catholics and Evangelicals and others who hold to traditional faith and morality have a common stake in the coming debate that The DaVinci Code will stir up. We can and should cooperate in the debate regarding which paradigm is more compatible with the ontological reality of human existence. .This book is a valuable contribution in this direction .
If there is one good thing about the growing influence of gnostic thought it is that people know the inadequacy of basing human existence merely on humanist reason. The growth of Gnosticism is a continuation of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment during the 19th century. Increasing numbers of people today want more than just cold, dry reason in the humanist-Enlightenment sense and have explored Christian and pagan world-views in order to find fulfillment. Most devotees of the New Age likely don't swallow all the conclusions of moral relativism. When they are off duty as pagans they do believe in right and wrong, good and evil. It is also likely that most do not go in for casual sex to the degree presented in present day erotica. But it is easy for many to think otherwise because nature is a weak base for such moral belief. A cursory reading of Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae is enough to show the folly of basing morality on nature understood as the jungle. How can one watch Animal Planet and see lions and other predators kill or steal, kill their own kind in competition for mates, and conclude that jungle nature is a basis for human morality? From this view of fallen nature we get the idea that it is right to steal or kill because it is how the "stronger survive and perpetuate the species," ... individuals don't count. From natural disasters we also see that nature doesn't give a damn about us, frankly. Wherever the human tendency to morality comes from, it does not come from the "romantic" view of "nature."
Conclusion
Which brings us to the ending. The question before humanity today is whether God is just nature or the Creator of nature. The authors state that most people know that something in us is broken, something that needs fixing. They go on to state that "All of us were made for the purpose of enjoying a wonderful relationship with the creator God Himself. But something devastated that relationship."(16) This sense of loss is the result of sin that came into the world. But the "sins we commit and for which we feel more or less guilt are the symptoms of the real problem- being separated from God. That was the original sin of Eden, where the gap was introduced -where we first became our own gods(Genesis 3:4)"(17) Once again they blast a caricature of Christianity and present a Christian concept of the sense of alienation that cuts to the heart of what people are feeling at the core of their being.
It was this concept that ultimately led me back to the Christ of the New Testament. When I used to look into the writings of, say, Matthew Fox and other Neo-Pagan writings years ago I tried to find common ground between nature-based spirituality and the Judeo Christian outlook with its transcendent moral law. There isn't any. After all, if nature is amoral why can't we be amoreal also? But we look at death and suffering and other problems of existence and feel that there is something awry, that these are not a natural part of existence but an unwanted intrusion. Our tendency to morality transcends nature. Nature worship has no plausible answer for this. Like Carrie in Cracking the DaVinci Code I felt the conviction that the Gnostic world-view wasn't sufficient to deal with the ultimate questions of existence.
The beauty of Cracking DaVinci Code's is that it does more than just intellectually respond to the influence of the Neo-pagan, Gnostic, pantheistic and whatever other world-views are mixed up in The DaVinci Code. It opens the eyes to the spiritual debate going on in our time and presents the reader with the choices to be made in showing the nature of this competition for people's minds and hearts; it shows how the message of the Gospel fits the longings of humanity. This critique deals with more than just the mind, it also deals with the soul. James Garlow and Peter Jones show that it is the Revelation of God in Christ which has the answers the questions put by human existence and which satisfies the thirst of the human spirit.
2004-06-21 16:12 | User Profile
There really is no source for Marcion 90 AD(?)-150AD(?), because none of Marcion's writings survive.
The only two sources about Marcion are Tertullian 160AD-220's AD, and, the early church historian and heretic Eusebius 260AD-339AD.
Tertullian wrote an attack on Marcion, many years after Marcion's death.
Tertullian became a Christian as an adult, whereas Marcion came from a Christian family, and, Marcion was a wealthy ship owner at Rome and promoter of Christianity. I'm not sure about this, but, Tertullian may have cut his own balls off in the fashion of some early Christian aesthetics. Some might even consider Tertullian a heretic on the nature of Christ.
Marcion, even by his surviving critics, Tertullian and Eusebius is not called a gnostic...
2004-06-29 17:23 | User Profile
[url=http://www.equip.org/store/details.asp?sku=B775]The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction?[/url]
Product Description: (84 Pages). People are talking. The DaVinci Code has been on the New York Times best-seller list for almost a year and is raising a variety of responses from Christians and non-Christians alike. Some are outraged and upset by the claims of Dan Brown, while others are left utterly confused and don't know what to believe. The DaVinci Code: Fact or Fiction? explodes the myths of the book and shows the reliability of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, as well as the historical facts for the Priory of Zion and the Knights Templar. This is the only hands-on accessible reference guide. The DaVinci Code: Fact or Fiction? helps you turn debate about the book into an evangelistic opportunity.
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About Author: Dr. Paul Maier is professor of Ancient History and former Lutheran campus pastor at Western Michigan University. He is a graduate of Harvard University, and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis; plus a Fullbright Scholar at Universities of Heidelberg, Germany, and Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Maier is the author of 15 books