What About The DaVinci Code?

What About The DaVinci Code?

Besides becoming a blockbuster best-seller, Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code has generated a sizable library of alarmed responses and protests from the Church and Christian apologists, as well as a fresh crop of bogus “Jesus” gospels. Many fear that the foundations of the Christian faith are under attack and that the believers’ confidence is undermined by the book’s claims. How comforting to recall that Jesus anticipated assaults on His work and promised: “I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Mt. 16:18 NIV ).

It’s Fiction
Let’s begin by reading The DaVinci Code’s copyright page, which quickly answers the frequently-asked fact-or-fiction question by stating: “This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.”

Though the author himself may profess to believe his made-up “facts,” his book officially confesses to be completely fictional, including the fact that its Emperor Constantine is the author’s invention, though he may seem to resemble the Constantine of history. And DaVinci’s Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene are also figments of the author’s imagination, loosely modeled on but wholly unrelated to the Jesus and Mary Magdalene of the Bible. All are invented to carry the author’s imaginary tale. Nothing in the book is true. Nothing.

A Fictionalized Constantine
The DaVinci Constantine’s order to collect and destroy all outstanding “original” gospels, which portrayed a merely human Jesus, and to re-write them to deify Him for Constantine’s personal and military advantage, is fiction, not history. Nor could it be.

While DaVinci’s Constantine was to have convened the council of Nicea in 325 AD to officialize his “new” New Testament, in actual fact archeologists and Bible scholars know that the gospel writings as we have them today have been in continuous use since the first century; that’s more than two centuries before Constantine and the real Council of Nicea certified their authenticity.

Subsequent discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls, far from requiring a revision of those writings, firmly corroborate them. Additionally, numerous outstanding writings of second-century Church leaders declare and affirm unequivocally that Christians have always believed Jesus to be God from His lifetime onward, affirming His own claims and those of the New Testament.1

Jesus’ identity and deity, of course, rest not only on the evidence of four gospels. They are woven into the whole fabric of both Old and New Testament Scriptures. This unique Book, the Bible, is and always has been a miracle of internal harmony and unity, and its central, fundamental focus is the glorious Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.2 Not Dan Brown, nor Constantine, nor the devil himself can change that – much as he would like to.

Do Not Be Deceived
In light of these facts, there’s no question that The DaVinci Code is what its cover and copyright page say it is: fiction. And fiction that presents itself as truth, and wants to be taken seriously as truth, must be recognized for what it is: lies – the mother tongue of their true author, the Devil, the arch-enemy of truth. “When he lies, he speaks his native language,” said Jesus, “for he is a liar and the father of lies.” With what must have been a heavy heart, Jesus continued: “Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me! ... He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God” (Jn. 8:44-47).

Tragically, with little thought and less verification, many are more eager to believe fiction than God’s proven, enduring truth; they are more willing to believe the devil’s lie than the Truth Himself, in person – Jesus Christ. But such is human nature in its alienation from God. “You do not belong to God,” Jesus said; “he who belongs to God hears what God says”; while those who do not belong to God give up the truth of God in favor of a lie (Rom. 1:25).

People who know God, His Word and a few basic facts of history will not be deceived by what might seem to be The DaVinci Code’s valid premises. The Bible’s claim to be the inspired Word of God – ultimate truth, authorized and confirmed in heaven – has never been refuted nor disproven. Nor will it be. Our best protection and defense against all deceptions is to know that Word thoroughly – by repeated reading of and meditation upon the whole Bible – and to have absolute confidence in the God who will never deceive us. Jesus said, “If you hold to My teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8:31-32).

A Fictionalized Mary Magdalene
Another sinister feature of the DaVinci fiction is that, along with its false Jesus, it prominently promotes pagan beliefs and practices, including sexually immoral pagan rituals. Its doctrine of “the divine feminine” is a direct assault on the God who reveals Himself in the Bible as Father, and our Savior Jesus Christ as His eternal Son. In the process of this lie, eroticism is exalted to the level of the spiritual, and makes sexual union – not necessarily with one’s own spouse – the key to spiritual enlightenment and the pinnacle of spiritual experience.

Coinciding with this teaching, Mary Magdalene becomes integral to Jesus’ ultimate significance, since, as His wife, her womb becomes the means of propagating the divine blood line. The mythical Holy Grail becomes, not the cup Jesus used as He instituted the communion supper, but the actual “vessel” of Mary Magdalene’s (supposed) holy-seed-bearing womb. There is no proof to support any of these frauds, nor the contention that the Church suppressed this imaginary “truth” about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, nor that a secret society of supposed champions of truth is sworn to bring this “truth” to light.

We will not further explain nor explore any more of this blasphemous web of unfounded lies. Remember, Jesus’ arch-enemy, Satan, never relaxes his campaign to corrupt Jesus – as if that were possible – nor to corrupt and malign His name and image. The “father of lies” seems obsessed with making Mary Magdalene the central figure in Jesus’ reduction to mere human sinner status, repeatedly casting her as an object of His lust (witness the film, “The Last Temptation of Christ”). In actual fact, He knew no sinful lust.3

No doubt Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ closest, most devoted disciples. But Jesus would not be sinless had their relationship been anything but pure and holy. And if He were not sinless, we have no Savior. The depraved human mind (Rom. 1:28) invents stories without reference to nor respect for the Holy Scriptures, but rather disparages and casts suspicion on them so as to facilitate the assault on Jesus, God’s Son.

Descendants Of The Real Jesus
The real New Testament, which survives intact from the first century, teaches a Jesus Christ who is the great I AM, the Almighty “God with us,” virgin-born, celibate, crucified, dead, buried and risen again. His only bloodline on earth is the family of those redeemed by His blood shed on Calvary; His only descendants are the many children He has begotten for God through His passion, death and resurrection.4 Any other Jesus is an anti-Christ.

END NOTES
1. Mt. 1:23; 3:17; 17:5; Lk. 22:66-70; Jn. 1:1-3,14,34; 20:30-31; Rom. 1:4; 9:5; Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:12-20; 2:9; Heb. 1:8-9 with Ps. 45:6-7; Heb. 1:10-12 with Ps. 102:25-27.
2. Gen. 3:14-15; 12:1-3; Dt. 18:15-19 with Acts 3:22-23; 7:37-38; Ps. 2 with Acts 4:23-26; Ps. 16:8-11 with Acts 2:22-36; Ps. 22 with Mt. 27:45-46; Jn. 19:24; Ps. 34:20 with Jn. 19:36; Ps. 40:6-8 with Heb. 10:5-7; Ps. 69:9 with Jn. 2:17 and Rom. 15:3; Ps. 110:1 with Mt. 22:44 and Acts 2:34-35; Heb. 5:5-10; 6:20-7:22; Ps. 118:22-23 with Mt. 21:42; Isa. 7:14 with Mt. 1:22-23; Isa. 9:1-2 with Mt. 4:15-16; Isa. 28:16 with 1 Pet. 2:5-6; Isa. 40:3-5 with Lk. 3:4-6 and Mt. 3:3; Isa. 42:1-4 with Mt. 12:17-21; Isa. 53:4 with Mt. 8:16-17; Isa. 53:7-9 with Acts 8:32-33; Isa. 55:3 with Acts 13:34; Mic. 5:2 with Mt. 2:3-6; Zech. 9:9 with Mt. 21:4-5; Zech. 12:10 with Jn. 19:37; Zech. 13:7 with Mt. 26:31; Mal. 3:1 with Mt. 11:10; Heb. 1-2; 10:1-18; 1 Pet. 2:21-24; 3:18; 1 Jn. 1:1–2:2; Rev. 1:1-2, 12-18; 5; 19:10-16; 22:16-21.
3. Jesus’ sinlessness: 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:21-22 with Isa. 53:9; 1 Jn. 3:5.
4. Eph. 5:1-2,8; Col. 1:20; Heb. 2:9-15; 1 Jn. 1:7; Rev. 5:5-10.

By Bill Van Ryn

Many more detailed responses to and critiques of The DaVinci Code are available in print. See: Christian Book Distributors (keyword "DaVinci"); Radio Bible Class Ministries and Christianity Today Magazine

Also, Christian Courses offers a free online course examining The DaVinci Code, and more than 40 other free online Bible courses.