Rest and Reflect

Permit me to discuss a glaring contradiction in Dan Brown’s popular fictional story (I know there are better things to do with my time):

We are led to believe that the Catholic church is the villain because it seeks to suppress the “truth” that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married and intended to start a religion based on the ’sacred feminine’.

We are also led to believe that Teabing is a villain because he was willing to go to “immoral” lengths (including murder) to reveal this “truth” of a “holy bloodline”, so that Mary may once again be revered as she should have been.

This is an incredible contradiction. Perhaps considering who the heroes are would clarify the matter.

The heroes are supposedly the Priory of Sion – including Saunière – and Sophie Neveu and Robert Langdon who “continue” that line of keepers of the “grail” secret. Hold on, did you say “secret”? I thought the whole point was for the world to know this truth and revere Mary as she ought to be? Where is Mary’s body? Hidden. By who? Oh, yes. The Priory. And why would they desire to keep this secret… secret? Beats me.

So as I see it, why would Catholic church seek to destroy the Priory? The Priory seems to be doing a great job of keeping the “truth” suppresed as it is.

Fact: The Priory of Sion never existed, and is a hoax created by Pierre Plantard for personal gain. Plantard later said:

On a France-Inter radio interview dated 18 February 1982, Pierre Plantard to Jacques Pradel: “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a good book, but one must say that there is a part that owes more to fiction than to fact, especially in the part that deals with the lineage of Jesus. How can you prove a lineage of four centuries from Jesus to the Merovingians? I have never put myself forward as a descendant of Jesus Christ”.

Fact: there is no evidence whether in the bible or extra-biblical writings (including the Nag Hammadi) that Jesus and Mary Magdelene had any children together. The 4 mainstream gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) suggest that Jesus and Mary shared a special (but there is no suggestion of a sexual) relationship. Neither Gnosticism, Marcionism, Ebionitism, Montanism or any other early Christian sect suggest a theological role for Mary Magdelene (other than being a disciple). That is a modern emphasis on an old story. Gnosticism is heterogenous group of beliefs based on transcendence from ’secret wisdom’ and is highly mystical. Marcoinism is based on the belief that Jesus was a divine being sent from Monad (the spiritual source – highest God) to expose the evil Jewish God and the deceptive old-testament teachings (perhaps an extreme interpretation of the Pauline epistles). Ebionitism is more inclined to Judiasm than Christianity (perhaps an extreme interpretation of James-Peter-John), seeing Jesus as a man who was chosen by God to be the last prophet and the Messianic king-priest; it is thought to have some influence on Islam. Montanism considered itself directly led and inspired by the Holy Spirit into new, progressive truths through prophets and prophetesses (superceding the writings of the apostles and the Old Testament; Tertullian, an early defender of Christian orthodoxy later joined the Montanists. The balance between a Pauline and a Jamesian approach to Christianity continues to be an issue to this day.

Fact: It is known that the early Christian churches were locally-organised, and there was significant diversity of opinion. However, early writings, including the New Testament and the writings of Ignatius of Antioch (AD98-117) suggest that despite the presence of many ‘false teachers’ there was a semblance of ‘orthodox teaching’ which Christians were advised not to stray from and an established heirarchy as early as the first-century AD.

Fact: the Nicaea council (convoked by Constantine – the first effort to reach a consensus among the many churches throughout Europe, N. Africa and W. Asia) did not centre around whether Jesus was human – that was unanimously accepted. The debate was about Jesus’ divinity – whether he was of the same “substance” as God the Father. Arius of Alexandria who was the spokesperson for the losing side in this debate believed that Jesus was a divine-being (before he became human) created by God the Father. God the Father later created the Holy Spirit and the universe through Jesus.

Fact: Theodosius I, not Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine merely made Christianity legal (Edict of Milan AD313) and ended government-sanctioned persecution of Christians. This was simply a natural continuation of the political policy of his predecessor, Galerius, who issued several edicts of tolerance from AD303-311.

Fact: Constantine did not change the day of Christian worship from a Jewish Sabbath to Pagan Sunday. Christians initially kept Sabbath rest just as Jesus did, but by the early 100’s AD, the majority of Christians began to worship (but not rest) on Sunday as distinct from the Jews (see the writings of Ignatius for example). Three of many contributory reasons are (1) the introduction of a malediction (Birkat ha-Minim) reflecting an anti-Christian climate in Jewish synagogues circa AD85, (2) predominance of Gentile converts with no reason for Old Testament loyalty, and (3) anti-Jewish government policy in Vespasian, Domitian and Hadrian’s Rome — culminating in the Simon Bar Kokhba revolt (AD132-135), which Christians refused to support because Bar Kokhba claimed to be the Messiah. After Hadrian quashed the rebellion he tried to destroy Judaism by outlawing the Torah and the Jewish calendar (including the 7th day Sabbath) and turned Jerusalem and the temple into a pagan centre of worship (effectively ceasing the Korban forever). Constantine simply made Sunday (at that time venerated by both Christians and Pagans — but not Jews) a civic holiday (national day of rest) in AD321. Various Christian groups continued to rest on Sabbath or worship on Sunday or Both until the Council of Laodicea (AD364) firmly stated that Christians should not rest (but rather work) on Sabbath (Canon 29). Yet Canon 16 of that same council, by stating that the Gospels should be read on Saturday, indicates that the holiness of the 7th day Sabbath was still recognised. That the 7th day was understood to be holy, despite the widespread observance of Sunday in addition or instead, is supported by 4th century comments by Augustine of Hippo, Sozomen, Socrates Scholasticus, John Cassian, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius of Alexandria and others. For a detailed scholarly analysis of this change see Dr Samuele Bacchiocchi’s research.

Why did God allow the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to be in the garden of Eden? So that we could get to know what good is, and what evil is. Does that mean Adam and Eve had to take the fruit to understand the sinfulness of sin? No. It was there to raise the questions, and God would provide the answers. Too often we defend what we think is “truth” by rejecting all other possibilities without consideration. God doesn’t want us to do that, he doesn’t want us to be naive. Moreover, such an approach could lead us to reject the truth simply because we are too blind or to proud to admit to ourselves we could be wrong. He wants us to be mindful of the possibilities, ask the right questions, and He will make sure we reach the right answers. That is what sincere religion is all about.

I believe a sincere Christian (or any sincere religious person for that matter) is one who is humble enough to realise he/she could be wrong, he/she doesn’t have all the right answers, he/she cannot trust his/her own logic. We need each other’s advice. We need God’s guidance. We need to seek God’s mind.

Study guides:
http://ssnet.org/
http://absg.adventist.org/

Doug Batchelor – Central Study Hour, Amazing Facts Ministry
http://feeds.feedburner.com/CentralStudyHour
http://audio.search.yahoo.com/search/audio?p=central+study+hour&stype=pod
http://www.amazingfacts.org/media/lesson_study/lesson_study.asp

Ken Hart, Loma Linda University
http://sabbathschool.blip.tv
https://www.theox.org/index.cfm/pageid/631/index.html

Bruce N. Cameron, Go Bible
http://www.cameronlaw.com/

Jonathan Gallagher, Pineknoll
http://www.pineknoll.org/sabbath-school-lessons
http://www.sabbathschoolstudy.org/

Collegiate Quarterly
http://www.cqbiblestudy.org/index.php

Places to get more commentaries on the SS Lesson:
http://www.sabbathschoolstudy.org/
http://www.spectrummagazine.org/onlinecommunity/sabbathschool/index.html
http://www.atoday.com/index.php
http://www.cafesda.blogspot.com/ (so called progressive adventism)

Conversations About God
Volume 9, Issue 143 — Wednesday, May 31, 2006

7) Minimum Requirement for Heaven
from David Borecky

Alan said:

“Personally I don’t think it’s a salvation issue if somebody believes the earth took millions of years to be created. What if, however, their educational background means their “intellectual integrity” requires they don’t believe God created at all? Or requires they don’t believe in any of the miracles in the Bible? At some point don’t their enlightened beliefs conflict with believing in (or trusting) Jesus?”

Alan, you raise a very valid caution. I was mainly talking about the minimum requirement for heaven with the understanding that God desperately wants us to be there and will bring to heaven anyone that is safe to save. To me, the minimum requirement is to accept Gods grace through faith. Now, having said that, I agree with you that this is not a single life event (once saved always saved) but, rather, represents a change in the life toward trusting God. It is a relationship and a lifelong process. I agree that we should be cautious in saying that “anything goes” with our beliefs because some of them could put us on dangerous ground and lead us away from God. But, who is to say what is dangerous ground? And is the dangerous
ground always dangerous for all individuals? The Bible, of course, should be our standard for determining doctrine. But, as pointed out in my last post, there are some doctrines and lines of thought that probably should be left open to questions and debate.

I guess that is why we need a community of faith that we love and trust to work through the tough questions. I am always saddened when doctrinal issues cause some to leave the church completely.

David

“…believing in a God who we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him ‘good’ and worshipping him is still a greater danger… the ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.” — C.S. Lewis

Source: July 3, 1963, letter from C.S. Lewis to John Beversluis. Letter quoted in full in John Beversluis, C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985)