Monthly Archives: May 2006

It’s not all bad

26 Friday May 2006

Posted by in eschatology, Theodicy

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The last line of one of my favorite movies, Grand Canyon, says, “It’s not all bad.”

That’s how I felt when I got to see the Da Vinci Code last week. Not all bad, and certainly not all good. Not nearly as bad as the reviewers said, not nearly as good as I would have expected (from a cinematic perspective) from one of my favorite director/writer teams.

As a Christian, I found the threadbare arguments attempting to present Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife almost humorous. The plot twists were likewise very thin and I had to suspend disbelief at every turn.

What I see as valuable in the movie, though, is the way it points a finger at the oppressive, paternalistic activities of the Church. These are things that should never be forgotten. They should be explored, revealed, and the institutiion which hides them should be held to account. Indeed, that accountablility and ultimate recompense are exactly what the Scriptures foretell in some of the most lurid language of holy writ.

I write about this in a new website I’m developing, called www.davinciicnivad.com

Let’s look at one of the historical INaccuracies of the moviee: the claim that Constantine, a pagan, decided what would be in the Bible. That would have been in 325 C.E., during the Council of Nicea. What most folks don’t know, and what apparently most higher critical school scholars are too dishonest to admit, is that for the last 70 years we have had in our possession nearly complete Papyrus’s of most of the New Testament, dating back to between 200 and 250 AD, well before Constantine. These are called the Beatty Papyri, after the collector who assembled them and made them available for scholars to study. They include parts of the 4 Gospels and Acts, with John’s Gospel 2nd in order. THey contain almost the entire book of Revelation, and the Epistles of Paul, including Hebrews after Romans, proving that at that time it was attributed to Paul. 86% of those letters are preserved in these remarkable Papyrus scrolls.

What’s also noteworthy is what these Papyri do NOT contain. None of the “Gnostic Gospels”, such as Thomas, Judas, etc. Only the same 4 Gospels we read and study today, with textual accuracy and agreement with the other 24,0000 New Testament manuscripts.

The Bible is a firm foundation, and the more we learn about how it was preserved, the more it becomes apparent that God wrought a miracle in helping human beings speak his word faithfully, and preserve it adequately for confidence, without a requirement that every scribe or every preacher be accurate or even well-intentioned. The variety of textual fragments that survive reveal the evolution of many attempts to add to or delete portions of the Word.

For example, the Revelation manuscript of the Beatty Papyri contains the versess that refer to the Diadem and Dragon symbols pointing to Roman Imperial authority…. even though those terms were not in use at the time the manuscript was copied, let alone when John first penned it. Just as with the remarkable prophecies of the book of Daniel, the book of Revelation was clearly a prophetic work, with amazing insights into the historic development of “Christian” apostasy.

Tom Hanks said it: Lots of Hooey

20 Saturday May 2006

Posted by in gnosticism

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I am not going to criticize the movie until I see it, or the book until I read it.
I’m speaking of course, of .

What I am going to do, for the few folks who might be inclined to take the Gnostic concepts and supposed history of the DaVinci Code franchise seriously, is to share what I’ve learned from my own personal study in the Biblical books of 1st and 2nd Timothy.

Today let’s look at the first few verses of 1 Timothy. Paul probably wrote it to Timothy after he and Timothy had been released from prison, in 64 or 65 AD. See Matthew McGee’s reconstruction of events) Paul was so eager for Timothy to remain in Ephesus for a long time that he apparently “begged” him to in person before they went their separate ways, and again implored him to by letter in 1 Timothy 1:3.

Why was Paul so interested for Timothy to go to and remain in Ephesus? So that he might confront, charge, challenge, “certain persons” that they no longer teach some things that were destructive to faith and the truths of the Gospel.

John MacArthur has some good deductions to draw from these words. He points out that the fact Paul didn’t name them, probably indicates they were right there in the Church, and Paul didn’t want to include some, and ignore others.

I think there is another reason, though: Paul expected the book to be written aloud, and he wanted to teach the principle in a way that was less personal and more focused on the idea. He knoew that folks in the audience would be able to decide “if the shoe fits”. He also knew that this would be a good way to strengthen Timothy’s authority in the eyes of the entire congregation. Paul was challenging some very strong doctrinal errors, yet he was committeed to resisting the spirit of division and separatiaon. Paul knew that once the Christian church bought into the idea of “maintainng purity of doctrine through division” that its witness in the world would end. I submit that, in hindsight , the vast majority of the true Church’s impact for good upon human society was spent by the time of the Nicene council in 325. From then on, the church began spending its energy policing itself, killing and exiling those who thought differently from the leaders. If “this is how men will know you are my disciples” — that they love one another, thhen, we can be equally sure that “this is how you will know they are not my disciples — that they do not love each other.”

The love Paul advocated to Timothy was the willingness that tough love be used by good leaders like Timothy — by talking about the differences, challenging those who have bought into error in a way that is confrontational but civil.

In today’s world, and really since about 300 A.D., the approach has been to simply hammer out a list of the “right words” — a creed — and then kick out anyone who doesn’t agree with it. It’s much tougher to follow Paul’s example, of having dialog on points of doctrine that threaten the integrity of the Gospel. Christianity is a relationship that is forged around a message. Allow the message to become corrupt, and the relationships are damaged or destroyed. So to keep the relationships whole, it is necessary to spend the time and agony it takes to keep clarifying, studying, and explaining the Message.

What were the essential elements of the teachings of these fellows? First Paul calls it “heterodidaskalia” – a different kind of teaching. What was different about it? in verse 4 he mentions two features: fables and endless genealogies.

Now, it is inconceivable that a Jewish scholar such as Paul would be critiquing anyone for studying the historical record of genealogies that we find in the Old Testament, or in the beginning of Luke and Matthew to establish the genealogy of Jesus. (here is what some scholars say on that point). He must be referring to a kind of myth or fable that was being taught to those early Christians at Ephesus, which relied upon speculative and lengthy genealogical reasoning. When we study the ideas prevalent in the 1st Century, it becomes quickly obvious that one of the leading categories of thought that he must have meant was called “Gnosticism”.

Gnosticism draws its name from Gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge. Jumping ahead to Paul’s warning to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:20, Paul uses this word as part of the name of Timothy’s oponents: “O Timothy, guard that which is committed to you, turning away from the empty chatter and oppositions of the knowledge which is falsely so called.” My posts the next few days will be looking at various aspects of “Gnosis” — knowledge — which is not really knowledge at all ….

The challenge of the golden middle

20 Saturday May 2006

Posted by in christianity

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It’s so difficult to be balanced. In fact, I’ll say it’s impossible to BE balanced, and difficult to strive for balance. We keep overshooting the mark each time. Life becomes a series of corrections, first to one side, then to the other.

Hopefully somehow we can manage to go along without falling into the ditch of extremity on one side or the other.

The balance I’m thinking of right now is the difficulty of definding Christianity from attacks by atheism, humanism, Gnosticism, mysticism or whatever else, and at the same time calling my Christian brethren to account for their extremes.

So, if you’re a Christian and you find my comments loathsome at times, try to remember that my intent in this blog is to speak (hopefully in a balanced way) to both you and another entirely different audience who doesn’t share your assumptions, and who have a secular, humanistic mindset.

Back with a vengeance – Ya gotta like Dan Brown

15 Monday May 2006

Posted by in christianity, eschatology, gnosticism

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In the best Garrison Keillor tradition, an English teacher strikes it rich.
I haven’t read the book yet, and the movie isn’t out yet, but I already know what interests me about this latest pop sensation. It is the contortions my Christian brethren whose roots are deeply mired in Gnosticism go through as they attack Dan Brown and his fictional DaVinci Code for his resurrection of other Gnostic concepts.

My first quarter was filled with tentmaking activity; hopefully now I can slice out enough time to share what I’ve learned about Gnosticism in the New Testament.

My first installment will start, (DV) tomorrow.

In the meantime, a brief reflection on what good can come of all this fury, in the religious world, that is.

Isaiah records the prophecy of Messiah, coming to mystical Edom with garments spattered with bloodstains. In the picture of Isaiah 63 and Isaiah 34, the great controversy which God sends the messiah to avenge is “the controversy of Zion”.He has been trampling a winepress of lambs and goats. Hmmm… Lambs and goats. What are lambs in the parlance of Bible usage? Baby Christians, innocent little young believers. And what are goats? Self-willed, head-strong, pseudo-believers.

Naturally, the mainstream commentators such as Matthew Henry and John Wesley think this is about the enemies of “the church”. I am certain they are wrong.

In my judgment, these prophecies, like the ones in Revelation which speak of the “winepress” of God’s judgment, are about God’s judicial anger WITH THE CHURCH.

In the Isaiah texts, the prophet speaks of a time for those who have been associated with “Israel” but who really are out of harmony with God’s plans and ways in spirit and truth, to be exposed and debunked.

Just as the lambs are symbols and the goats are symbols, the “killing” that is going on is not literal either; I think it means to cease to have any claims of faith — to die as to faith in Christianity.

Across the world, that sort of killing, loss of faith, has been going on since the beginning of the 20th century. We are well into what is now acknowledged as “the post-Christian era”. Baby Christians, and those who associate with “Christianity” because of the selfish benefits that accrue to those who attend church, have been leaving the church in droves. If they remain seekers, they may end up in a smaller church, a house church, or a mega-church — but the mainstream denominations have experienced major drops in both attendance and contributions.

Works like Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, with its speculations and fantasiies, aren’t speaking the truth, mind you… but these are strange times, and oddly enough these sorts of smokescreens and shows of “knowledge” do a work that accomplishes God’s will as described in those prophecies. It’s God’s will for the Christian church to be tested to the max, shaken to the foundations. Even if that means the lambs and goats are going to get shed from the fold.

So for me, reflecting on my lifetitme spent bristling at the “systematic theology” that smart but I believe misguided brothers have pulled out of their imaginations and their seminary coffee shops instead of from the pure words of God, it’s almost fun to read the anti-DavinciCode articles, as they awkwardly try to defend orthodox tradition. I get amused when I read erstwhile Protestants, defending Roman Catholic belief system, filled as it is with Gnostic concepts, from Gnosticism! (Example, Christianity Today). What am I talking about, Gnosticism in the “orthodox” church? Well, Catholicism harbors concepts such as mariolatry, the Immaculate Conception, hindering of marriage, (see 1 Timothy 4:1-4) restrictions on food, asceticism (monkism and nunneries), and a very negative Augustinian view of both the flesh and marriage. Their apocrypha are hardly any different than the “Gnostic Gospels” in credibility.

Orthodox Protestants have preserved intact the other Gnostic-borrowed or Gnostic-adapted concepts from Catholicism such as a concept of God who has been more informed by Babylon and Greece than Israel; not to mention straight Platonic (smart but nevertheless Pagan) ideas like the immortal soul, eternal hell, etc. It’s funny to read, say, Christianity Today’s article that attempts to poke holes in Brown’s research, while attempting to uphold aspects of Christ’s history and personality that are equally unbiblical! It’s funny to read Collin Hansen’s revisionist view of Arius and Athanasias. At least, it would be funny if I didn’t know something about the thousands of believers in the One God and His Son, Jesus Christ, who were killed for not accepting the official dogma. It’s evan funnier to see CT attempting to defend Roman Catholicism while at the same time distancing themselves from an institution that any sober student of history realizes was a suppressor, not an upholder of truth throughout its corrupt and sordid past.

God’s the One who views the mainstream Churches with a vengeance. I just hope to be useful in showing how the Bible reveals what God is now doing in human affairs to even the great balances of justice. I’m confident the good folks will come through the ringer… but the institutions are getting squeezed by all this pressure.

I’ll start presenting my proofs for this little rant tomorrow.