Monday, May 22, 2006
I saw the DaVinci Code Friday night and I did like it; as it rated a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Tom Hanks did not play his character as perfectly as he played other characters and the chemistry with the female lead was not too good. The thriller was predictable and the supposedly shocking ending, I figured out within the first half hour of this extremely long movie.
What I did like about it was the history it presented about the First Council at Nicaea and the mention of the other Gospels excluded from the Bible. Even though this story is fictional certain aspects of the story have truths behind them. This Council did exist and they did exclude certain Gospels from the Bible because they did not glorify Christ’s divinity as well as the chosen Gospels.
No one will ever know if the Gospel of Phillip or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was more accurate than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. What you choose to believe is your Faith. It is possible that any or all of these Gospels are either fictional or factual.
The reason some Christians are angry about this story is because in their mind like the First Council at Nicaea discovered, these other Gospels do not portray Christ’s divinity within their scope of what constitutes a divine being. I guess the possibility of Christ being married and producing children takes away from His ability to be God.
Was the Council at Nicaea flawed in its approach? Well to begin with it was overseen the dictator Constantine who was more worried about Rome becoming split because of different flavors of Christianity than he was with uncovering the truth behind Christ. So it is possible factual data was purposely excluded from the Bible in order to compromise and please everybody. If we were to get a group of different Christian Faiths together today we would have similar difficulties discovering the true Christ.
It is also important to realize the Gospels were written many years after Christ’s death from stories handed down from generation to generation. I think we all know what happens to stories when they are retold. While it is evident Christ existed, it is difficult to discover what He actually said because His message was probably censored and changed by man to fit man’s narrow minded scope of reality. A reality that two thousand years ago, was even worse than it is today.
Yet today, many theologians focus on the exact wording of the Gospels as if those exact words actually flowed from the mouth of Christ. This exact wording could never be known. It is more important to realize that Christ actually existed than is it to try to imagine what he actually said. Do you realize how many people have been killed over the exact wording of sentences in the Bible? Probably millions.
The most disturbing aspect of the story is the negative treatment of women by Christian men; this condescending treatment is not fiction and still exists today. Christianity treats women as second class citizens by not allowing them to obtain power. In most Christian Churches only men are allowed to preach or to become an Elder. Why is this? Are women a threat to the Church? Why would Christ want women treated as inferiors?
The most important thing is to follow both your heart and your brain to make sure the stories you are told adhere to the ring of truth. The ring of truth is a logical meter we all have which alerts us to deception. Like a judge questions a suspect, you should also be able to ask questions and judge the responses you receive from religious leaders and judge the documents you read. Failure to question things which seem unbelievable is failure to use the brain that God gave us. If He did not expect us to question things, He would not have given us this gift of a sophisticated brain. So failing to use this gift would be sin itself.
Revision
After reading this post I wanted my readers to understand that I am NOT saying the DaVinci Code or the other unaccepted Gospels are true. I am only trying to raise questions about this issue for discussion purposes only.
What I did like about it was the history it presented about the First Council at Nicaea and the mention of the other Gospels excluded from the Bible. Even though this story is fictional certain aspects of the story have truths behind them. This Council did exist and they did exclude certain Gospels from the Bible because they did not glorify Christ’s divinity as well as the chosen Gospels.
No one will ever know if the Gospel of Phillip or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene was more accurate than the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. What you choose to believe is your Faith. It is possible that any or all of these Gospels are either fictional or factual.
The reason some Christians are angry about this story is because in their mind like the First Council at Nicaea discovered, these other Gospels do not portray Christ’s divinity within their scope of what constitutes a divine being. I guess the possibility of Christ being married and producing children takes away from His ability to be God.
Was the Council at Nicaea flawed in its approach? Well to begin with it was overseen the dictator Constantine who was more worried about Rome becoming split because of different flavors of Christianity than he was with uncovering the truth behind Christ. So it is possible factual data was purposely excluded from the Bible in order to compromise and please everybody. If we were to get a group of different Christian Faiths together today we would have similar difficulties discovering the true Christ.
It is also important to realize the Gospels were written many years after Christ’s death from stories handed down from generation to generation. I think we all know what happens to stories when they are retold. While it is evident Christ existed, it is difficult to discover what He actually said because His message was probably censored and changed by man to fit man’s narrow minded scope of reality. A reality that two thousand years ago, was even worse than it is today.
Yet today, many theologians focus on the exact wording of the Gospels as if those exact words actually flowed from the mouth of Christ. This exact wording could never be known. It is more important to realize that Christ actually existed than is it to try to imagine what he actually said. Do you realize how many people have been killed over the exact wording of sentences in the Bible? Probably millions.
The most disturbing aspect of the story is the negative treatment of women by Christian men; this condescending treatment is not fiction and still exists today. Christianity treats women as second class citizens by not allowing them to obtain power. In most Christian Churches only men are allowed to preach or to become an Elder. Why is this? Are women a threat to the Church? Why would Christ want women treated as inferiors?
The most important thing is to follow both your heart and your brain to make sure the stories you are told adhere to the ring of truth. The ring of truth is a logical meter we all have which alerts us to deception. Like a judge questions a suspect, you should also be able to ask questions and judge the responses you receive from religious leaders and judge the documents you read. Failure to question things which seem unbelievable is failure to use the brain that God gave us. If He did not expect us to question things, He would not have given us this gift of a sophisticated brain. So failing to use this gift would be sin itself.
Revision
After reading this post I wanted my readers to understand that I am NOT saying the DaVinci Code or the other unaccepted Gospels are true. I am only trying to raise questions about this issue for discussion purposes only.
Labels: Movie Review, Religion
posted by DarthImmortal at 12:49 PM
9 Comments:
Found you by accident, wanted to respond, since apologetics and history are things that really interest me.
1) the Council at Nicaea was actually not about the divinity of Christ, but about his humanity. The early Church fathers were trying to reconcile how Christ - whom they believed to be God - could also be human, not the other way around. The vote about Christ being both 100% human and 100% God, by the way, was something like 300-2 for.
2) Neither the Gospel of Phillip, Mary Magdalene, Thomas, nor Judas were written/compiled earlier than 200AD. The four accepted gospels were written no later than 90AD. Therefore, it is much more logical to accept what is written in them as being more accurate, since they take place much more closer to the time with which they are all concerned.
3) Your assertions regarding the status of women within Christianity are misinformed. First, let us clarify that there are many people who call themselves "Christians" who are no more a follower of Christ than I am a tree just because I claim to be one. Now, if a conflict occurs in most Christian churches between a man and a woman, it is not a foregone conclusion that people will take the man's side. Further, women are not "second class citizens" as you suggest. The majority of Christian organisations may have limitations as to the role women and men play, but this is not a matter of impotance or value for either gender. Very clearly, both men and women are identified as being created in the image of God, equal heirs of salvation as Christians.
Finally, it is fortunate that Dan Brown identifies his work as fiction, because even his grasp of history is fairly loose. Wrong dates, wrong people, identifying people living in entirely the wrong centuries, etc.
Great post, darth. As someone who was raised fundamentalist and is now Episcopalian, church history fascinates me. As a fundamentalist teen our view of church history was extremely curtailed and limited, and your characterization of women as second-class citizens certainly comports with my experience in the fundamentalist church. As much as people (men and women, too, who are interested in upholding the status quo) try to argue that "different" doesn't mean "unequal" (hmmm... I thought the Supreme Court did away with that notion back in the fifties...), it sure is tough to see women's "different role" in the church as "equal" when men call the shots one hundred percent of the time. Input is not the same as decision-making authority.
I much prefer the subtle, reasoned (but not rationalistic) mentality of the Espicopal church. For me it has the perfect balance of generally conservative theology (i.e., Jesus is divine and there is only one true God) and a refreshing lack of dogmatism. The churches I've been to demonstrate an ability to take the church's history at face value -- the church is far from perfect, but God can nonetheless work through imperfect vessels. When I first attended an Episcopal church and there was a woman (gasp!) delivering the sermon, it was pretty jarring. Nowadays I can't imagine going to a church where women are relegated to the, er, "different" roles.
Visiting my family this weekend, my dad made a comment that made me sad -- even though he is confirmed in the Episcopal church (along with me and Mom) he still holds some pretty fundamentalist values. He said that while he was fine with women being equal in business, etc. (how charitable of him) he didn't think it was "right" for them to hold positions of authority in the church. It sucked to hear that from my own father and, even more sadly, didn't particularly surprise me to hear him say.
Anyway, sorry to ramble in your comments and thanks again for the thought-provoking post!
Law Fairy,
I grew up a Lutheran and, although I'm more of a pure agnostic than anything (meaning that I don't feel that I have enough information to make a decision about existence and uniqueness of God), I have a deep respect and high regard for the Episcopal and more liberal sects of the Lutheran churches like ELCA.
Never once did I feel inferior or incapable of holding a position in the church because of my gender, ethnicity, financial status, or family situation. In fact, one of the pastors at the church that I used to attend is an unmarried woman, whom I deeply respect. I have also encountered female church leaders in the Episcopal churches also. I met a lot of women in the church who were self-sufficient independent women, which is something I never found in other churches. Most of the women I met in more conservative congregations were marriage and kid oriented, which wasn't for me at all.
It is refeshing to see, even if I don't necessarily share the belief, religious institutions finally recognizing that women are not a threat to religion. It is strange to me that many religious groups, including a vast majority of modern christian churches, still don't allow equal treatment for women in authority. I don't understand the justification for it at all.
Good post and comments!
Chris,
You are probably right about the function of the Council at Nicaea. I am not a theologian and my history of theology is not as strong as other areas. But I work at a Seminary and many of my friends are career theologians. I have heard them say multiple times certain Gospels were excluded because their portrayal of Jesus as a divine being was flawed, especially the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Phillip. Now there were other reasons too; each Gospel has multiple reasons for the exclusion.
You are also correct about the accepted Gospels being written much earlier than the others. I believe one of the four accepted Gospels was written as early as 70AD but I cannot remember which one. The time after Jesus’ death was tumultuous for Christians as they were persecuted; their writings were destroyed if they were found. So the ideas passed from generation to generation might have been destroyed but it is difficult to tell when the ideas for such Gospels matured. But let’s assume the date of 200AD was another reason the Council discarded these Gospels; the Council of Nicea met in 325AD.
I completely disagree with you regarding the status of women. Certainly there are more liberal Churches in society today but in the earlier days of Christianity and in mostly all conservative Churches women are second class citizens. They are only allowed to be a supporter and not a decision-maker.
As far as Dan Brown’s novel, I agree with you that many of his dates and facts are inaccurate. For more information regarding this topic click here . And then click on "The DaVinci Code Fact or Fiction" to play the SemCast (Do NOT click on the play button).
Thanks you for your comments and come back often.
Lawfairy,
I am sorry your dad feels that way about women. My father is also very prejudice about such things. I think the older generation has a tougher time with gender than our generation. Thanks for your comments they are appreciated; you can write as much as you want here.
Also thanks to Mimi and Liz for two more awesome comments.
Did any of you like the book? I read it because a good friend was just raving about it (she also loved Angels and Demons) but did not particularly enjoy it. It's not terribly well written, even by generic pop culture standards. Additionally, as someone who already had some knowledge of the cults of Mary Magdalene and the controversies over what exactly constitutes *THE* Bible, the purportedly provocative portions weren't even that intriguing. Are so many Christians that ignorant of history that they were unaware of the selection process and controversies? All you have to do is compare the Bible I was given in 2nd grade by my ELCA church with the one my Catholic friends read from. I'm down about 15 books on them.
Did you read the book beforehand? My parents saw it - one read it and said she didn't like it because it was too similar, my dad said that he couldn't follow it because it wasn't long enough to fully understand ...
I did not read the book yet and I don't think I will now. I would rather read more about the Council at Nicaea or learn more about the Gospel of Phillip and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
I read about 200 pages of the book and was thoroughly disappointed by it and put it down after that.
I wrote my own movie review on my blog, darth. I finally went to see it last night and got a good laugh. :)
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