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Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is no ordinary work of fiction—but it is fiction. The hardcover edition of the book alone has sold 50 million copies, with a paperback version released just recently.1 Sony Pictures is slated to release a major motion film on May 19, 2006, that is certain to be a blockbuster.

The central theme of The Da Vinci Code is historically inaccurate. That claim, now widely known, asserts that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and sired a child. The Church (which Brown casually associates with “Roman Catholic”) supposedly covered up this fact for almost 2,000 years and apparently remains desperate to do so.

There is no reliable historical evidence to prove this thesis. It is not even close. Many unwitting readers of The Da Vinci Code naively accept the book’s claims at face value. Considering themselves to be urbane and sophisticated, they have been taken in by a cleverly written hoax.

The popularity of The Da Vinci Code shows us that people are quite willing to accept incredible hypotheses such as the ones contained in Dan Brown’s outlandish tale. While people may be open to faith, it remains to be seen whether or not they will be open to the Faith. That Faith, of course, makes claims on people’s lives. Those claims are rooted in the historical fact that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, was crucified, died, and buried; He rose again in the body on the third day and ascended into heaven, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

Footnotes :

1 This is the claim made by Dan Brown on his personal website. See http://www.danbrown.com/meet_dan/. At the time of this writing, the book has spent 160 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.

22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Hebrews 12:22-24 (ESV)

The classic medieval romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is a legend of adventure and temptation. It begins with Sir Gawain bravely guarding the court of King Arthur against the mysterious Green Knight. It ends with his resisting the seducements of the Green Knight’s alluring wife: “[O]ften with guile she questioned [Sir Gawain] that she might win him to woo her, but he defended himself so fairly that none might in any wise blame him . . . ”1 Sir Gawain resisted temptation—he persevered in holiness—because he was motivated by what was most valuable to the fourteenth-century Englishman: chivalry. What inspires Christians to persevere in holiness? The answer is found in an even more ancient text.

The letter to the Hebrews was written to a group of Jewish Christians tempted to renounce their faith. Due to intense Roman persecution they seriously considered returning to the Old Testament law. Throughout the book they were exhorted to hold fast and even warned of the danger of falling away (Heb. 10:32). However, in 12:22-24 they were not warned but rather inspired into holiness as the author presented them with the greatest motive to persevere: the promise of God’s presence in Mt. Zion, the city of the living God.

In Hebrews 12:18-21, the author used the image of Mt. Sinai (Exod. 19) to clarify the impotence of the Old Testament law; it can make one aware of sin but cannot solve the problem of alienation from God. God’s presence is available only to those who have come through the blood of Christ to Mt. Zion. It is truly a glorious city! Angels rejoice there along with the “firstborn” of God, who are His people, the crown princes and princesses who have inherited the kingdom of God. Their place is secure, because they are “enrolled in heaven” (v. 23). This glorious Church is known as “the spirits of the righteous made perfect,” because in heaven all those who were only counted righteous on earth are now made wholly righteous. This is not possible because of the law but because of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Whereas Moses was a mediator who brought a law that condemns, Jesus is a mediator whose own blood promises eternal life to lawbreakers. Unlike Abel’s blood that brought down a curse against Cain, Christ’s blood speaks the good news of forgiveness (v. 24).

This description of heaven shows that it is not discontinuous with Church life on earth. Angels minister in the world as well as in heaven (Heb. 1:13-14). The Lord is ever present, even in humble circumstances where only two or three are gathered together (Matt. 18:20). The pews hold assemblies of “the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.” In Bible study, saints study with other “spirits of the righteous” being made “perfect,” though not yet perfected. All the while, the Savior “mediates” for them on high (Heb. 7:25). In other words, Christians can have a taste of heaven on earth.

The exposition of heaven passages should be commonplace in the pulpit. Furthermore, what could be more encouraging to those in the midst of struggle than to see, in advance, the victory won? If God had given the D-Day invaders a preview of their parade through the streets of Paris, it would have only strengthened their resolve on the beaches of Normandy. Hope of triumph and peace breeds fortitude. And as good as the promise of chivalry might be, it is nothing compared to the hope born of Calvary.

Footnotes :

1 “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” in English Literature: A Period Anthology (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc. 1954), 98.

Late last week, the National Geographic Society heralded the release of a 4th century document discovered in Egypt and written in Coptic as a major insight into historical Christianity. Dubbed “The Gospel of Judas,” those marketing the manuscript have claimed that it gives new insights into “the disciple who betrayed Jesus.” The text provocatively suggests a “conversation” between Jesus and Judas in which the now infamous disciple learned a “secret mystery”: Jesus must abandon his physical body to accomplish his true spiritual mission. “You will exceed all of them,” Jesus supposedly tells Judas. “For you will sacrifice the man who clothes me.” In other words, this newly discovered “gospel” is nothing more than one of many propaganda pieces produced by Gnostics—a group of people who were desperate to undermine the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Despite this background about the spurious provenance of this recent discovery, the mass media have been in frenzy about the phenomenon. After all, it’s good for business during the week leading up to Easter to take a cheap shot at historic Christianity. But the claims being made for the “Gospel of Judas” are nothing short of ridiculous. The New York Times ran an op-ed saying that historians had uncovered “proof that Judas might have been part of a divine plan.” In reality, as New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton observed in The New York Sun, “no scholar associated with the find argues this is a first century document or that it derives from Judas.” It is not in any way, shape, or form a historical writing that tells us anything reliable about either the real Jesus or Judas. Even those who say that this is the same text that the Church father Irenaeus condemned as heresy are hard pressed to prove that the Coptic version of “Judas” is the same one that the 2nd century bishop described (e.g., Irenaeus mentions a “Gospel of Judas” that has mythological material not included in the recently touted Coptic/National Geographic version).

“The Gospel of Judas” is little more than a forged pseudo-gospel probably written by some 4th century heretics. Elaine Pagels, a Princeton University religion professor and paid consultant for the National Geographic Project, is quick to point out that these people didn’t consider themselves heretics. But then again, when do heretics admit that what they believe is, in fact, heresy? Whether one is talking about the 4th century or the 21st century, there has been no shortage of desperate and unscrupulous people trying to discredit the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.”

At the top of St Mary’s Church in Krakow, Poland, where I stood just a couple of weeks ago, a lone herald sounds the trumpet. These days it simply marks the passing of another hour, but in previous centuries, it was played by the city guard to warn people of fires and other dangers, such as the arrival of hostile armies. It was a steel-tipped arrow from one such army that pierced the throat of the herald in 1257, but not before he had sounded the alarm: the city gates were closed and many lives were saved. You can still hear the tune played every hour, on the hour, but it is deliberately and abruptly cut short, to commemorate the death of Krakow’s brave herald.

As I gazed up at St. Mary’s balcony, considering how important it was for the trumpeter to sound the alarm, I couldn’t help but think about the Church’s need to herald the message of Christ. The reason of such heralding is greater than civic safety; it is God’s appointed means for saving the world, one that is motivated by the fire of one’s heart, as Peter Akinola explains.

Archbishop Peter Akinola (1944 – ), Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, is the most prominent name in a burgeoning movement of African, Asian, and Latin American Anglican leaders. He was recently appointed chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa, with more than 37 million believers.
Akinola sees Christian ministry as Bible-based and mission-minded:

“We in Nigeria believe very strongly in the priority of Scripture. We want to see ourselves as a church that seeks to live in obedience to the dictates of the Scripture, regardless of whether that is convenient or inconvenient . . . If a fire is not burning, then it is no longer fire. If the Church is not evangelizing, then it is like a dead fire.1?

Footnotes :

1 Peter J. Akinola, interview with Philip Jenkins, “Defender of the Faith,” The Atlantic Monthly 292, no. 4, November 2003, http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/11/jenkins.htm (accessed December 12, 2003).

Thanks to those of you who prayed for me while I traveled to Europe last week. My friend Doug Reynolds and I visited three countries in five days: Ireland, Poland, and England. For certain, the highlight was the interaction with IFES workers (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) in which they shared accounts of what God is doing in their respective ministries. I will say this, Europe might be a spiritual wasteland, but God is not through with it.

As I reflect on the need for gospel ministry in Europe, I find myself musing on the words of the late Dorothy Sayers. Sayers (1893 – 1957) as you may know was an Oxford educated playwright, novelist, and Christian apologist. She communicated with keen insight the cultural trends in England that supported and opposed the gospel. Following is her assessment during the 1940’s. With prophetic accuracy, she has described our day too (not only in Europe, but also here in the USA).

“It is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ.”1

I fully concur with Sayers. Our generation needs churches that think clearly about Christian theology as the doxological, epistemic, historiographical, spiritual, doctrinal, moral, social, and missional basis of life. In other words, we must properly understand and live according to the Lordship of Christ.

Footnotes :

1 Dorothy Sayers, “Creed or Chaos?” in The Whimsical Christian (New York: Collier Books, 1987), 34-36.