Christians try to debunk the "DaVinci Code"

After reading "The Da Vinci Code," Holly Jespersen wondered if Jesus Christ did in fact wed Mary Magdalene and father her child, as the novel claims.

"It definitely made me question all that I have been brought up to believe," said Jespersen, a Presbyterian who lives in Chicago.

Glen Gracia of Boston, a former practicing Catholic, had a similar reaction, questioning the validity of the Bible if, in fact, it was commissioned and manipulated by the Roman emperor Constantine for political purposes, as the book asserts. "I was basically floored," Gracia said.

Alarmed by reactions like these, defenders of traditional Christianity have launched a counteroffensive against author Dan Brown's fast-paced thriller, which is in its 48th week on The New York Times' fiction best-seller list. It has sold more than 6 million copies, is being translated into more than 40 languages and will be made into a Columbia Pictures film directed by Ron Howard.

Brown has stopped giving interviews. But on the book's first page, he makes an assertion that galls his critics: "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

Books and articles with titles like "Dismantling the Da Vinci Code" and "The Da Vinci Deception" have been or are about to be published. Preachers are giving sermons to church members who ask why they were never told there was a Mrs. Jesus. Web sites and discussion groups are humming over the book's "heresies."

In Seattle, about 500 people turned out Thursday night to hear the Rev. Michael Raschko, a theology professor at Seattle University, "help us separate fantasy from truth" about the book, according to a brochure circulated by parishioners from St. James Cathedral. The discussion was scheduled to be held at St. James but was moved across the street to a larger venue.

On Wednesday night, a similar forum on "the reality behind the fiction" has been scheduled at First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue.

Some of the country's most influential clerics are joining in a collective Christian outcry.

In The Catholic New World, the Archdiocese of Chicago's newspaper, Cardinal Francis George calls the book "a work of bizarre religious imaginings" based on "a facade of scholarship" that exploits "gullibility for conspiracy."

When "The Da Vinci Code" was released last March, church leaders paid little attention. Brown was an obscure author, this wasn't the first time a novel had taken shots at Christianity — and it was, after all, fiction.

But as the book became a publishing phenomenon, religious leaders noticed that readers were taking the novel's historical claims as fact. "Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci," a November ABC special that seriously explored Brown's themes, made clear that this was a cultural force to be reckoned with.

The book has sparked interest in early Christian history, with public fascination of topics like the Council of Nicea in 325.

"It's only a threat if people read this fictional book naively, don't think critically about it and don't pursue truth," said the Rev. Mark Roberts, pastor of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Irvine, Calif. The plot centers on the search for the "Holy Grail" by a brilliant Harvard symbologist and a French cryptologist, who follow clues in the work of Leonardo Da Vinci.

For example, the feminine-looking person on Christ's right in Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is supposedly not the apostle John, as is conventionally assumed, but Magdalene, described in the New Testament as a woman who had seven demons cast out of her, followed Christ and was the first to see him after his resurrection.

As the clues lead them through the museums and cathedrals of Europe, Brown's protagonists discover a centuries-old conspiracy, advanced by a patriarchal Roman Catholic Church bent on covering up the truth about the feminine roots of Christianity and the formative effect of its predecessor, pagan goddess worship.

Opus Dei, a Catholic organization based in New York, is portrayed as particularly sinister, with a corrupt bishop directing a devout albino assassin to do his dirty work.

George and other Catholics have accused Brown of prejudicially tapping into the public's suspicion of the Catholic hierarchy after the church's sex-abuse scandal.

"If someone were to say this is just a cute story, that would be fine," said Brian Finnerty, communications director for Opus Dei. "But to present this book as historical is fundamentally dishonest."

The greatest protest has been over the negative portrayal of central Christian beliefs, including:

• Christ's divinity. Brown writes that Constantine collated the Bible, omitting some 80 gospels emphasizing Christ's human traits in favor of four that made him God. This was supposedly done at the Council of Nicea, "in a relatively close vote."

But the actual vote was 300-2, said Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, and it did not determine Christ's divinity. That was attested to much earlier "by many New Testament passages, as well as by the earliest Christians and all the church fathers, even if there was some disagreement as to the precise nature of that deity," Maier said.

The Council of Nicea "did not debate over whether Jesus was only mortal or divine, but whether he was created or eternal."

• The Bible's inerrancy. Peter Jones, co-author of "Cracking the Da Vinci Code," says that in trying to establish that the Bible was cooked by Constantine and his cronies, Brown overlooks the fact that four-fifths of what is now called the New Testament was deemed divinely inspired in the first century — two centuries before Constantine and the Council of Nicea.

• Christ's celibacy. Even feminist scholars such as Karen King, a Harvard professor and leading authority on early non-biblical texts about Magdalene, have said there is no evidence Christ was married to Magdalene or to anyone else.

George and other traditionalists treat the claim as absurd. "All those martyrs the first 300 years, they were covering up the fact that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene? Why in heaven's name would someone go to their death to protect that secret? It's absurd."

The controversy leaves Jespersen confused. She is "still absolutely convinced that Christ is God," but thought Brown made a compelling argument that Jesus was married. Jespersen plans to attend an upcoming discussion on the book.

Regardless of what she learns, she's glad she read it, calling it a conversation piece that "has encouraged me to question what I have always accepted, just because it is what I was taught."

In 325 AD, Constintine became a Christian and adopted Christianity as the state religion--the origin of the Roman Church.

Well, no, in fact, that's not what happened. Christianity didn't become the state religion of the Empire until the Emperor Theodosius made it so in AD 380.

The Council of Nicea was a political exercise--resulting in adoption of a number of the bureaucrats and practices of the pagen religion in exchange for agreement to the Roman Church and supremacy of the Bishop of Rome who also became the Pontinus Maximus, a title the Pope still holds.

The title is "Pontifex Maximus," and the Council of Nicaea didn't award it to anyone. It was taken by the Popes when the aforementioned Theodosius made Catholic Christianity the state religion, because it had always been the title of the chief religious authority in Rome.

And you'll search for a long time before you find a single "pagen" bureaucrat or practice that was endorsed by Nicaea. You don't even mention the chief reason why Nicaea was called in the first place, and its main order of business: to fully and completely affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Your version of "church history" is completely bogus.

"Pontifex Maximus" On that narrow point I stand corrected--I typed it in a hurry--that does not excuse the lack of care.

As to the rest, there may be room for a little construction but by and large, the Empire became Christian at the time of the Council of Nicea--and accommodated a number of the pagan practices, many of which are still with us today, the Roman organization or the Protestants.

However I am not certain you construe my view of the scripture correctly. There is in my mind no doubt that the text of the New Testament, and for that matter the Old Testament, stand on solid ground, not only as to authenticity of the current textual material we have but as evidence of the events and statements they record--Jesus Christ was executed, died, and rose alive from the dead on the third day. And the records of His testimony and ministry set forth actual sermons and events as they occurred.

Any criticism of intervening positions of the Roman Church is not addressed to the validity of the text but to positions such as supercessionalism; papal supremacy; priestly authority; and other doctrines which are not found anywhere in the scripture.

Further, none of this is directed to the Roman Church and its adherents of today. John Paul II is one of the giant figures in the history of the Church. And although I do not see the actors of today as having any real responsibility for actions and events of the Roman Church and its managers historically, John Paul has repudiated a number of what I view as the most grievous errors (the inquisition; the role of the Jews in God's Plan; and soforth) although I would not have argued there was any substantive need for him to do so. We are not judges of the position of our fellow believers ("judge not that you should be not judged; for by the same manner as you judge, so also will I judge you . . . "). And certainly, no one today would be judged, properly or not, on the basis of acts and decisions taken hundreds of years ago by actors long gone from the scene.

Finally, the whole point of the discussion is about the underlying premise of this book (the DeVinci code). The argument is that the descendants of Jesus have some particular role in upcoming affairs because they are His descendants. I think the completeness of the Biblical record tends to refute the possibility--and to the extent the proponents of the book want to take the position that concealed documents that are inconsistent with the Bible have some validity, I simply reject it. Because I think the Bible itself has such a sound evidentiary foundation.

Was Jesus married? I don't think the Bible conclusively resolves the question one way or the other. Although it seems likely that would have been an important fact that the Bible might have recorded had it been so. But maybe not. As an imperfect man myself, I tend to think it would be difficult to be a perfect man and not be married. But that issue is simply one God does not address--like a number of other things.

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