I'm proud that MBS has produced an author of this calibre :) Alexa told me about this article in The Star, it would reach more people than all our road-show combined! Hope that I can shake hands with him and say Kudos! Dun Miss this informative forum by Kairos!Thomas Lee Seng Hock has been a journalist and editor for more than 30 years. He did his undergraduate theological studies in Singapore and Australia, and obtained his Master in Ministry from the Malaysia Bible Seminary.... On the Bible, The Da Vinci Code states: "The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God? The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great" (Page 250).
The claim is definitely false. The Bible was not collated or compiled at one particular time, and Emperor Constantine had nothing to do with the process, either before or after he converted to Christianity.
The Old Testament, for example, had been forming for centuries. Jesus and the apostles already recognised the authority of the Old Testament that existed in their time (Luke 24:27, John 5:39, Acts 17:2-3, 2 Tim 3:15).
In the first century, the apostles and their associates wrote the books of the New Testament, which were passed down to succeeding generations of Christians and read in the churches. In the second and third centuries, Gnostic heretics began to manufacture writings that falsely claimed to be from the apostles, but since they had not been passed down in the churches from the beginning, they were rejected. In response to these new, false writings the churches drew up lists of the authentic books that had been handed down from the apostles. A famous list of the sacred writings from the mid-second century is known as the Muratorian Canon.
The process by which the canon of the Bible was established was largely complete by the time of Constantine in the early fourth century, and the emperor definitely made no contribution to it, except perhaps to permit its circulation. There were a few Old Testament books, known as the deuterocanonical books or "apocrypha", that continued to be discussed after Constantine's time, into the late fourth century – further illustrating that he did not collate the composition of the Bible. No Bible scholar holds that Constantine played such a role in the development and canonization of the Bible. Dan Brown is obviously and simply wrong.
The Da Vinci Code makes a sweeping claim regarding the early Church's recognition of Jesus Christ's divinity. Referring to the first ecumenical council at Nicaea in AD325, it states: “Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet ... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal ... By officially endorsing Jesus as the Son of God, Constantine turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the human world, an entity whose power was unchallengeable” (Page 253).
It is true that Emperor Constantine, following his conversion to Christinity, convened and presided over the Council of Nicaea, but it is surely not true to say that that he "turned Jesus into a deity" at the conclusion of the council meeting or that Christians had not viewed or believed the Lord Jesus Christ as God prior to this event.
The ecumenical council was called to settle over what has been known in church history as the infamous Arian controversy. The dispute that had arisen when a pastor from Alexandria in Egypt named Arius promoted the teaching that Jesus Christ was not divine, thus causing a scandal by repudiating the faith of Christians everywhere.
Arius was apparently influential in his teaching and had many followers called Arians. The controversy between the Arians and orthodox Christians grew so sharp that Emperor Constantine called the council to settle the matter. Constantine is believed have personally supported the Arian position, but he recognised the authority of the bishops in articulating the faith and its doctrines. The bishops meeting at the council subsequently reaffirmed the traditional Christian position that Jesus Christ was fully divine, endorsing the historic Christian doctrine against Arius and his followers. Constantine obviously had no choice but to recognise the bishops’ authority and decision to do so although he would have preferred the Arian position.
What was the position of the believers prior to this definitive Council of Nicaea? What evidence is there that they regarded Jesus Christ as God before Nicaea?
First of all, it is common knowledge that the deity of Jesus Christ is taught and emphasised in the New Testament. (See, for example, Matthew 1:23, John 1:1, John 5:18, John 6:69, John 8:58,59, John 20:28, Phil 2:5-11, Colossians 2:9). Any casual reading of the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s letters, the book of Hebrews, the general letters of James, John, and Jude, and the book of Revelation will show that the belief in the deity of Jesus Christ is central theme of the New Testament.
And this is the teaching of the apostles and the early church more than three hundred years before Emperor Constantine and his Nicaea meeting. To claim that it was only at Nicaea that Constantine “upgraded” Jesus Christ to the divine status is a blatant lie.
Secondly, the early church fathers had been teaching and preaching about the deity of Jesus Christ for decades prior to the ecumenical meeting at Nicaea. Listen to what some of them said:
– Justin Martyr (AD150): "(Jesus is) the first begotten Word of God, is even God.”
– Tatian the Syrian (AD170): "We are not playing the fool, you Greeks, nor do we talk nonsense, when we report that God was born in the form of a man."
– Irenaeus (AD185): "Jesus of Nazareth ... is our Lord and God and Saviour and King.”
– Clement of Alexandria (AD200): "The Word, then, the Christ, is the cause both of our ancient beginning – or he was in God – and of our well-being. And now this same Word has appeared as man. He alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things."
– Tertullian (AD210): "God alone is without sin. The only man who is without sin is Christ; for Christ is also God."
– Origen (AD225): "Although he was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was: God."
So to allege that the deity of Jesus Christ was the creation of Constantine and the bishops meeting at Nicaea is sheer nonsense, and intellectually dishonest.
... Brown in the "fact" page at the beginning of his novel has asserted historicity for several claims on the Priory of Sion, the Opus Dei, and the descriptions of art, architecture, and rituals found in the book. Brown writes his book in such a way that gives the impression that its claims about the Priory of Sion, the Catholic Church, and the institutions and societies associated with the Church are to be taken seriously. Obviously, many of the claims need to be taken with a tonne of salt.
