AAARRRGGGG! There is too much of this stuff to keep up with! I feel like Sisyphus rolling that bolder up the hill only to have roll to the bottom once more. Ack. Well, enough about me. Onto the oozing omnibus of Da Vinci Code material out there.First up, it’s official: The Da Vinci Code was not plagiarized. Well, there you go.
Okay, now that that’s settled, let’s move onto the good stuff. (If you think that’s the bizarre and eye-rolling stuff, you’ll have to skip to the end of this post.) The Da Vinci Dialogue has posted two more essays. In Was Jesus Really Human?" Mark D. Roberts (pastor, author and adjunct prof at Fuller Theological Seminary) gives us a timely piece on the Jesus of the Gospels versus the Jesus of Gnosticism. You can see an indepth look at that essay here.
The other Da Vinci Dialogue post is by Patrick Henry Reardon (a pastor, author and senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity). In "What really happened at the Council of Nicaea?" Reardon dismisses Dan Brown’s “notion that the bishops at Nicaea in 325 actually debated and voted on the divinity of Jesus Christ and that the ‘ayes’ carried the day by only a slim majority” and gives us the real history:
In fact, nothing of the sort happened at Nicaea. There was no debate about—or vote on—the divinity of Christ at that council, because the council Fathers recognized that the divinity of Christ was already established in the pages of the New Testament. What the Father of Nicaea voted on was not the divinity of Christ but the teaching of the priest Arius, who had recently promulgated the idea that God’s Son, who assumed our humanity in Jesus, had not been God’s Son from all eternity.The end result of Nicaea? The Nicene Creed, of course:
To express their condemnation of Arius on this point, the Fathers at Nicaea formulated a new expression, saying that the Father and the Son are not two different beings. They are not separable. They are “of the same being”—homoousios in the Greek language that they used at the council. There can be no God the Father without God the Son; otherwise He is not really the Father.Okay, another worthy note in the omnibus comes from Christian News Wire: Focus on the Family has set up it’s own web site “offering resources by top Christian scholars.” It includes the likes of Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel and Erin Lutzer. If you want more resources, check out the end of this Agape Press article . Also, as a kind of worthy footnote, Americans aren’t alone in debating how Christians should respond to the film. Some Christians are calling for a boycott of the film in the Philippines.
The Fathers at Nicaea enshrined this new expression—“of the same being”—into the standard Creed, or formula of belief, used in Christian worship. That Nicene Creed, most of which dates back to Nicaea itself, has been norm of faith among Christian in the world ever since.
Now onto the rest. First up, Christian Science Monitor suggests the novel has spawned a whole new genre of fiction and offers reviews of Da-Vinci-Code-like novels. In an interesting little piece 'Da Vinci Code' breeds followers and cries of foul, Bob Hoover of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette compares the success of The Da Vinci Code to Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: "The popularity of The Da Vinci Code can be traced to the same quality that makes Sherlock Holmes so enduring - the illusion of reality."
Now onto the eye-rolling stuff. First up, the merchandizing. There’s ‘Da Vinci Code’ Cryptex Revealed, which tells us we can now buy that turny, twisty puzzle thingy in the novel. Oh, and the next time you’re thinking of vacation, how about Regent Seven Seas’ Premiere Da Vinci Code Cruise Program: “From the halls of the famed Louver Museum to a junior suite at the Hôtel du Louvre, guests of the Seven Seas Voyager and Seven Seas Navigator can explore Paris, the city that had Robert Langdon on the run, with The Da Vinci Code pre- and post-cruise land program.” If not that, what about a "Da Vinci Code inspired adventure" in Italy though New Crystal Adventure? Or, want to go it on your own?!? Well, then check out the brand new Da Vinci Code tour guide book from Fodors.
Sigh. That is definitely enough for now.
(Image: Sony Pictures SoDarktheConofMan.com)