Breaking the Da Vinci Code by Darrell L. Brock PH.D

Author:Darrell L. Brock PH.D.
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2009-12-26T18:56:10+00:00

There is an agenda here. It is the rejection of Christian faith as a historically unified set of core beliefs held over the cen­turies starting from the earliest period. Pagels's appeal ignores early traditional Christianity and how in the church's emerg­ing Scripture there was a core belief expressed in the ancient creeds that themselves reflected the most major and central points of the New Testament. This core is orthodoxy in the best sense of that term. It is a Christianity with very distinct emphases that differ from the Gnostic texts or the collection of "secret" gospels we have just surveyed.

Pagels's claims and appeals reflect an agenda whose goal is to revise that orthodox faith. That effort is rooted in these ancient so-called secret documents that historically operated on the fringe of Christianity.

Interestingly and ironically perhaps this view is asking for something that neither of the early Christian alternatives in its time would have accepted as a viable option. The lesson of his­tory is that these two approaches to Christianity were so very different from each other as to be incompatible from the view of each school.

Some variation among the four Gospels could be accepted within what we shall call traditional or orthodox Christianity (and these differences have been well documented for cen­turies). Yet there was never a persuasive combination that attempted to fuse all of these traditional expressions together with the more Gnostic-like ones in a manner that affirmed both views. So neither group could regard both expressions as Christian. One was claiming its roots in the past for under-standing the faith in the apostolic testimony and tradition, while the other was claiming access now to a direct kind of revelation that was of more significance than past revelation. This mutual acceptance that the other view was not Christian is something some modern historians in examining the move­ments seem unwilling to appreciate sufficiently. It is a point worth remembering as some extol the secrets of this redis­covered variant of Christian faith.

Again, I will let the ancient writers speak for themselves. Writing at the turn of the third century, Tertullian reacted to the work of Marcion, who gave his own "scripture" to defend his ideas in the second century. In Against Marcion, book 4, chapter 4, Tertullian wrote,

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