Girl, 2, Gives Birth While Skydiving

A nationwide survey by The Barna Group on Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code shows that the book has impacted millions of lives – but changes few beliefs. One out of every five adults has read the book but only 5% - which represents about two million adults – said that they changed any of the pre-existing beliefs or religious perspectives because of the book’s content. The survey finds that the people most likely to have altered their religious views in response to the book’s content were Hispanics (who comprise 17% of the book’s readers), women (three times more likely than male readers to do so), and liberals (twice as likely as conservatives).

Recommended The Da Vinci Deception by Erwin W. Lutzer

“Believers are touting [The Da Vinci Code movie] as an 'opportunity for evangelism' and even an incentive to bolster our own faith. Baloney,” says Barbara Nicolosi, founder and director of the Christian screenwriter training program Act One. “This film is based on a book that wears its heresy and blasphemy as a badge of honor, and I intend to stay far away from it.”

Recommended The Da Vinci Deception by Erwin W. Lutzer

It is no secret that Christianity in the USA, UK and other nations is increasingly under fierce attack in the media, in schools, in the courts and, all too often, even in churches. In a culture that systematically seeks to discredit Christ and His Word, theologian (and Chicago-area pastor) Dr. Erwin Lutzer has made this observation: “The Da Vinci Code is the most serious assault against Christianity that I have ever witnessed.”

[. . .]

The assault

Is Pastor Lutzer, then, correct to label The Da Vinci Code as “the most serious assault against Christianity” of our time? In a sense he has come close to the truth, for the greatest attack against Christianity and Jesus Christ is, and has always been, the purposeful assault against His Word. However, in this war, The Da Vinci Code is only a small cog in a much greater wheel. How many theologians and Christian leaders find themselves up in arms against a mediocre work of fiction, while continuing to teach that God’s Word can’t be trusted in all 66 books, especially Genesis? The Da Vinci Code will someday go quietly out of vogue, while generations of Christians continue down that slippery slope of unbelief that begins with compromise. It is on this battleground that the real war is being waged.

Whether or not a believer chooses (with discretion) to read The Da Vinci Code or watch the upcoming movie, it remains imperative to be informed of all aspects of the assault against the Word of God—whatever form it takes—and to “be prepared to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15) in order to gently and intelligently overcome any obstacle to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Gnostic character of the text is immediately evident. In his supposed conversations with Judas, Jesus speaks in Gnostic categories such as “aeons” and an “eternal realm.” Judas is identified as the “thirteenth spirit” who was appointed by God to be the agent of releasing Jesus from the physical body in which He was trapped in the incarnation.

When Judas speaks of a vision and asks for its interpretation, Jesus answers: “Judas, your star has led you astray.” Jesus continues: “No person of mortal birth is worthy to enter the house you have seen, for that place is reserved for the holy. Neither the sun nor the moon will rule there, nor the day, but the holy will abide there always, in the eternal realm with the holy angels. Look, I have explained to you the mysteries of the kingdom and I have taught you about the error of the stars; and . . . sent it . . . on the twelve aeons.”

The concept of secret and mysterious knowledge was central to Gnostic sects. The Gospel of Judas purports to reveal conversations between Jesus and Judas that had been kept secret from the rest of humanity. The Gnostics prized their secret knowledge, and taught a profound dualism between the material and spiritual worlds. They understood the material world, including the entire cosmos, to be a trap for the spiritual world. In essence, the Gnostics sought to escape the material world and to enter the world of spirit.

Accordingly, the most revealing statement in the entire text of The Gospel of Judas records Jesus saying to Judas, “But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

In other words, Judas would perform a service to Jesus by betraying Him to those who would then crucify Him, liberating Jesus from the physical body and freeing Him as spirit. As the editors of The Gospel of Judas indicate in a footnote, “The death of Jesus, with the assistance of Judas, is taken to be the liberation of the spiritual person within.”

Needless to say, this is in direct conflict with the Christian gospel and the New Testament. The consistent witness of the New Testament is that Jesus came in order to die for sinners--willingly accepting the cross and dying as the substitutionary sacrifice for sin.

This redemptive action is completely missing from The Gospel of Judas. For that reason, the text was rejected by early Christian leaders. Writing about the year 180, Irenaeus, a major figure among the early church fathers, identified the text now known as The Gospel of Judas as heretical. In his foreword to The Lost Gospel, Bart Ehrman, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explains, “This gospel was about the relationship between Jesus and Judas, and indicated that Judas didn't actually betray Jesus, but did what Jesus wanted him to do, because Judas was the one who really knew the truth, as Jesus wanted it communicated.”

The truth of the Gospel stands, and Christians will retain firm confidence in the authenticity of the New Testament and, in particular, of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Nevertheless, old Gnosticisms are continually repackaged and “rediscovered” even as new forms of Gnostic thought emerge in our postmodern culture.

Informed Christians will be watchful and aware when confronting churches or institutions that present spurious writings, rejected as heretical by the early church, on the same plane as the New Testament.