I SAW THE DA VINCI CODE MOVIE!

Well we finally went to see the movie THE DA VINCI CODE. We both read the book some time ago and enjoyed the book because it was fast paced, interesting and had you going till the end.

The movie by director Ron Howard was made “true to the book”. It followed the book exactly and I think for that reason, we were both very bored. My wife nearly fell asleep.

For people that have not read the book, the movie may prove quite exiting but for us quite the opposite.

It did though, give me a chance to revisit some of the premises the book and movie were based on. It has been, after all, some time ago and has spawned and continues to spawn much debate and quite a number of books. It certainly has hit a nerve in Christian circles.

The whole thing about the PRIORY OF SCION has been pretty much debunked. Even “60 Minutes” had a story about it and how some nut case in the near past invented the whole thing – this was a FICTION after all.

The book and the movie did posit some ideas in the guise of factual history that I found quite interesting. The first one was about the Emperor Constantine (272-337 CE /AD).

To say he was instrumental in the rise of Christianity is an understatement; he was THE MAN even though the importance of his role in the whole scheme of things has not been really promoted as I feel it should have been.

Let me put it this way, Christianity as a religion, would probably have died out if it was not for Constantine. I am not saying ole’ Constantine was such a great Christian. Let us just say he was an astute ruler / politician who saw the value in Christianity as a tool of governance. Once he backed Christianity, it became the de facto religion of the empire, people converted in droves and money started flowing into churches and to the leaders of those churches – whoa-la!

The movie made a big deal about the war between the pagans and the Christians and Constantine’s role in that conflict. Wee that was not really true. Pagans and Christians did not actually fight each other as in battles, etc. Paganism is not really a religion; there is no theology or religious philosophy. Pagans had state gods that they serviced (festivals, temples, sacrifices, etc.).  Pagans did not care who the Christians worshipped or how they conducted their lives, as long as they did their state duty by sacrificing to the state gods on the official days designated by the state as state god sacrificing days – that’s all.

When the Christians refused to do their state duty, they were called unpatriotic and spat upon (my words).

Constantine did not bring peace between the pagans and Christians. He just allowed freedom of religious practice in the empire through his Edict of Milan (edict of toleration) 313 C.E.

Constantine tried to bring peace among the Christians because for him to use a unified religion to rule an empire, he had to unify that religion. What a lot of people do not realize and have never been taught was that Christianity and Christians were anything but unified – they were at each others throats! The reasons for their disunity are many and profound. Christianity today is a result of that battle between Christians. The winners wanted us to believe that there was never any dissention and did a great job of hiding that fact, even to this very day. For this reason I am not surprised that Christians know so little about the history of their religion.

There is a great book about this very struggle called “When Jesus became GOD; the struggle to define Christianity during the last days of Rome” by Richard E. Rubenstein (1999).

Anyway, the movie emphasizes the COUNCIL OF NICEA (325 C.E.) as a gathering of some 300 church leaders convened by Constantine in the town of Nicaea for the express purpose of uniting all the divergent Christian beliefs. Yes they were voting on which beliefs to adopt and which to throw away and yes, one of the votes was to decide once and for all, Jesus’ divinity.

Actually, the movie made you think that the council voted on whether Jesus was divine or not but that was not exactly correct. Most Christians (not all – another blog?) at that time believed Jesus was divine. The problem was in defining “divine”.

This may be a minor point to some but the movie would have us believe that Jesus’ divinity was a matter of a majority vote and therefore somehow artificially determined. This gave the story in the movie a lot of credence about Jesus as a human with a wife and children and therefore a line of descendants. Hey, that may be possible but I don’t like people manipulating history to fit their suppositions or in this case, their story line.

The Council of Nicaea was called to define Jesus’ divinity among other questions. By the way, the council did not resolve everything and the battles between Christians continued with future emperors taking one side or the other.

Since I started this theme, I may as well explain it to some kind of conclusion. OK, most Christians believed Jesus to be divine and the son of God but he also was human. How can He be human and divine? If there is only one God how can he be the son of God and a God also?

I would like to point out a timeline here because it is easy to get confused with all these dates. I usually use a general years (not exact or historical) to keep track of the time here. I use “0” C.E. as the date Jesus was born (historians say 5 B.C.E.), 30 C.E. as the date he died. Paul’s letters were ~ 50-60 C.E. and the first Gospel (Mark) was ~ 70 C.E. and the last (John) was ~ 110 C.E. The actual Bible (Canon) was not agreed on till 367 C.E so Christians used a variety of so called holy “scriptures”.

As you can see, a lot of Christian beliefs had developed before the Council of Nicaea was called in 325 C.E. – we are talking hundreds of years. During these years, many Christianities developed usually following the beliefs of a charismatic church leader. Eventually, hundreds of Christianities coalesced into a few definitive camps with their specific belief structures and this is where in 325 C.E. we find ourselves.

Please keep in mind that the struggles between competing Christian camps were also between competing church leaders who also had big egos. These leaders had followers who would kill for their heroes and some did. I don’t have room or time to discuss ALL the different Christianities so I will concentrate on the major ones.

Arius of Alexandria, Egypt believed God the Father created God the Son (Jesus). Jesus was divine but subordinate to the Father and he became human. In this belief Jesus was not truly GOD but was divine.

Athanasius, also of Alexandria, believed that Jesus had always existed and was of the same essence as God the Father?

Well, we all know now what happened. We received this gem of logic from the winners of this debate: the Trinity. This belief maintains that there are three (3) divine beings that make up the one God. All three are equal and co-eternal but the three do not make three (3) Gods. God is one, manifest in three (3) beings.

I can just imagine being at this council and listening to the debate. Actually I really wish someone took notes because to come up with the Trinity explanation one would have to be pretty high on something.

More notes on the movie in later blogs.


Janusz