“There be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:7)

The latest piece of presumed “superior scholarship” defaming God, His Christ, and the Bible, is a movie released last summer called the Da Vinci Code. The book version has been on the New York Times best-seller list since its release in 2003. The reception of such heresy in our society is revealing—it is also a best-seller in 150 other countries. The book defames Jesus’ character and says Mary Magdalene bore children to Him. It says Jesus never intended to be God and accuses the disciples of cover-up plots to make Jesus look divine. The Bible is accused of having “glaring historical discrepancies and fabrications.” The book is fiction but conveys an aura of factuality. A statement in the beginning of the book says, “Fact: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

That is not saying much. The pertinent fact is that the conjecture, inferences, and bold statements made are falsehoods. A character in the book refers to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic Gospels as the earliest Christian documents. He says, “Troublingly they do not match up with the Gospels in the Bible.”

Perversions from False Sources

First of all, the Dead Sea Scrolls are not Christian documents. The Essenes were a Jewish sect that overlapped the time of Christ. Their writings do not refer to Jesus or Christians. They are, however, amazing confirmations that our Old Testament is accurate. They include parts of all the Old Testament books except Esther. These documents contained only minor spelling and punctuation differences from our Bible today.

The Gnostic gospels (the gospel according to Philip, Thomas, and so forth) come from the Nag Hammadi texts found by an Egyptian peasant in 1945. Authorities date them at 350 A.D., 250 years after the New Testament Gospels. None of the New Testament books are quoted. The Gnostic heresy was a mystic paganism that claimed to have secret superior knowledge (gnosis). They tried to reinterpret Jesus Christ. They denied His deity and said that Mary Magdalene was His companion.

From such materials, author Dan Brown weaves his novel, giving spurious documents more authority than the Gospels. Rather, the Gospels and Jesus’ deity are confirmed by believers and non-believers (Roman soldiers at the cross and tomb, etc.), a multitude of church fathers, archaeological findings, and secular sources. The life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ is one of the best-documented facts of history (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)

The Trail and Traits of Heresy

In the 1600s, a period of “enlightenment” called “the Age of Reason” arose. Francis Bacon introduced the experimental method as the science of understanding our world. He believed that by freeing the mind of prejudice, man by knowledge could gain sovereignty over nature. This advanced an objective rather than a subjective view of the universe (drawing conclusions from experiments, observations, evidence, and facts rather than preconceived opinions such as evolution). Objectivity acknowledges the fixed laws, complexity, order, and design of a creator. Many schools, scientific societies, and encyclopedias of knowledge originated in this era. Yale and Harvard were begun as church schools with a creation/flood view of earth history. However, in the mid-1800s, with Darwin’s Origin of the Species many armchair philosophers began to bend and select evidence to fit an evolutionary worldview.

The age of reason also produced the school of “higher criticism” which challenged orthodox Christianity. A typical attitude of “higher criticism” is seen in Spinoza (latter 17th century). He wrote a book supposing to prove that Ezra wrote the Pentateuch instead of Moses. Julius Wilhousen called the Old Testament a fraud. With an aloof flourish, they sweep the facts of archaeology and the testimony of history away. In their pride of heart they hold that authority in religion is in man’s own conscience rather than objectively in the Bible as the revelation of God and the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

Modernism and postmodernism followed, resting their trust on “the assured results of critical scholarship.” These errors of human wisdom can be traced in every century since the Gnostic heresy of the first century after Christ. The traits are monotonously the same, even to the New Age movement of our day.

1. They claim to have a supe rior view of Christianity.
2. They reject the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
3. They imagine that belief in oneself is belief in God.
4. They teach that Christ delivers man by His coming, not by His atonement.
5. They rejected the Virgin Birth.
6. They ridicule orthodoxy.
7. They claim that salvation is by illumination.

Paul’s warning is fitting here. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

Heresy’s Source

It is said that, at the start of a humanist convention, a standing round of applause was given for Eve (although they don’t believe the literal account), because she stepped out from under God’s authority to realize her own potential. This is the spirit of radical feminism today.

The origin of these heresies has its roots in the garden with Satan’s question to Eve (Genesis 3:1). “Yea—” He opens with a disarming affirmative and assumes a superior critic’s position. “Hath God said—” a cleverly expressed doubt in question form negating the affirmative. “Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” He falsifies God’s command that “Ye shall not eat of it” (Genesis 3:3).

This anarchist spirit has manifested itself down through history in men like Voltaire. Voltaire was a Frenchman who denied God and ridiculed Christianity. These “higher critics” rejected any authority but their own. In politics they influenced the bloody French Revolution. In religion they assumed the skeptics’ position. These critics denied the authority of the Scriptures and judged the Bible wrong until proved right. It is as Paul said, “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7).

Discerning Spirits

Today we see much of the same tactics of Satan. Professing scholarly superiority, evolutionists and their theistic religious sympathizers sideline those who believe God’s Word with ridicule and verbal defamation. Thus they avoid the facts of the real world that falsify their philosophy.

We must always discern the difference between facts and their interpretation. Some typical statements the public is bombarded with are: “In ten years we may find life in outer space” (a newspaper headline). Why? What did they see? They concluded all this from discovering a star with a wobble, indicating it may have a planet, and perhaps life!

Another newspaper headline says, “This dinosaur was a dwarf.” They seem to know why. “It shrank over time from living on an island when seas rose in Europe millions of years ago.” You would think the evolutionists were there to see it. Surely no one can go back to disprove their speculation.

In more conservative times, people were more careful of what they said about what they didn’t know. But today many are ready to believe the “spin” (a fancy name for falsehoods in the current vernacular) of the Da Vinci Code. They go far beyond the facts they have in hand to speculate on what they want to believe. Like Darwin, beginning with assumptions, by much talk, they work improbability up to possibility, and possibility to probability, and end with what they claim are certainties.

The simple humility of the Christian life is rejected. The “create your own reality” or “you are your only god” beliefs of new-age thinkers are evident. They take to themselves the prerogative of being right until proved wrong. Yet they will not accept the plain truth of “a more sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19).

We have Peter’s testimony, “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

Resources: Heresies Exposed—Wm. C. Irvine
The Da Vinci Effect — Craig Parshall
Israel My Glory — Jan.-Feb. 2006
World Book Encyclopedia

-by Elvin Stauffer