Dialogue with The Da Vinci Code: Is the New Testament Reliable?
Don Bromley
Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Series
The Da Vinci Code is an opportunity to engage the popular culture in a conversation about Jesus. It also makes claims (portrayed as fact) which are contrary to Christian faith. Therefore we should enter the conversation and respond to these claims.
a couple things for you before I begin. First off, in the lobby, we're selling copies of the divine hours for summertime. We have these soft cover paperback versions, which are $12, normally they're 19, so it's a really good deal if you get them here. A great way to get started if you've been interested in doing fixed hour prayer, which is at regular intervals through the day, taking time and praying some prayers that the church has been using for centuries. They're just in a wonderful format. You've probably heard of the divine hours if you've been here for a week or more, but really a great way to get started. This runs from June through September, so if you thought about it, now would be a really good time to get started. You can pick this up out in the lobby. There's a little table with some books there. To give you a little update on Mike and Philly Brooks. Mike is the worship leader we've hired. They're back in England now. They're time here ended, but we are hoping to get them back very soon. Their current visa application, we'll find out the results of that by June 14th. We're still very hopeful of getting approved on this current visa application. We do have a Plan B if this one fails. We've rented a speedboat, and we're going to bring them up. No, I'm just kidding. We actually, there is a Plan B, so even if this one doesn't go through, we have some other options for getting them here, but we're really hoping we don't have to do that. So please keep them in your prayers, and we hope to hear by June 14th on that. If you'd like to sign up, we're doing a prayer watch called Let My People Come. You can sign up on the events table to pray throughout your week for them. I received a wonderful letter from Pastor Paljour, who is a pastor at one of our sister churches in northern India, the Kashmir region, which is, as you know, if you've followed the news at all, it's a very tense place. It's right on the border between India and Pakistan, a country that's gone to war. There are three major religions represented there, the smallest of which is Christianity. The majority are either Hindu or Muslim. We've got a wonderful letter from them that I want to read to you. Keep in mind that English isn't Pastor Paljour's first language, so I'll try to fill in some gaps here as we go. Dear friend, it's been some time since we've had news from your side. We, the Kashmir Fellowship and the Ghari Christian Fellowship are doing well by God's grace, although some members have had to face opposition from their community and relatives, but by God's grace, almost everything is passed as gone smoothly. The danger isn't completely gone, you know, very well that among Muslims anything can happen at any time. Therefore, you requested to continue praying for these two fellowship organizations. Here's wonderful news. This is neat. Just a week ago, a Hindu gentleman fell sick and was taken for treatment at Jammu Medical College Hospital. The treatment lasted a few days, but he didn't survive. The doctors declared him dead. Therefore, he should be taken back home and performed the last rites before burial. When the dead body of the person was brought for cremation in his village, a lady Christian believer stood up and said that she'd pray. As she prayed, the dead man woke up and stood up. The whole village, yeah, that's incredible. The whole village people were surprised to see the dead man come for life. They were very surprised at that as anyone would be. About 15 families in that village accepted Jesus as their Savior and true God. Isn't that wonderful? Yes, yes. I'm intending to go down to meet the person and to share his wonderful experience. So from June 14 to 16, there'll be some Christian conventions at mere village and I'll be there and hope to spend a few days with them. Not every day you get a report like that or know someone who's a first-hand witness or something like that, so quite remarkable. Segueing here into the Da Vinci Code. We're beginning a three-part series this weekend dealing with some of the questions raised by the Da Vinci Code. Now, I'm sort of assuming you've heard of the Da Vinci Code, that that has, you've heard, is it a book? Is it what is that? You might be asking, well, of course, Dan Brown's book, the Da Vinci Code, it's already sold over 46 million copies worldwide. Now, in my book, if you sell over 30 million, that's like a blockbuster. So this is really, that was a joke, but this is a really hot book. It's been translated into 44 different languages. It's earned Dan Brown the author something like 400 million dollars so far, so he's doing pretty well. The Da Vinci Code movie directed by Ron Howard, starring Tom Hanks and Ian McKellen, has so far grossed over 250 million worldwide. That was like, as of a few days ago, it's doing pretty well. Four of the three or four remaining people on this planet who have neither read the book nor seen the movie, I want to share with you the basic plot of the book. Now, if you're planning to read this novel this summer and you don't want to spoil it, or you're planning to go see the movie and you hate to know what's going to happen, please don't pay attention to what I'm going to say for about the next minute. Put your fingers in your ears or, you know, maybe now's a good time. You can go get the sermon outline off the soundboard area there in the back and don't pay attention because I'm going to give you the basic plot outline of the book. The Da Vinci Code begins with the murder of the Louvre's fictional curator whose body is found about 30 yards from Leonardo Da Vinci's painting called "The Mona Lisa," so they're in that museum. Clever codes and clues lead a Harvard professor whose name is Robert Langdon, he's played by Tom Hanks in the movie, and the curator's granddaughter on a whirlwind adventure of discovery through France and England. We find out that they are searching for the Holy Grail. Now, the Holy Grail is what was always believed to be the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper, but it turns out that Mary Magdalene, who's mentioned several times in the Gospels, is, according to Dan's Brown novel, the true Holy Grail. According to the Da Vinci Code, Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and she bore him a child so that his bloodline, in fact, continues to today. The novel claims that Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene was known to an ancient group known as the Gnostics who wrote the Gnostic Gospels, but that their Gospels were systematically suppressed and destroyed by the Emperor Constantine. The secret of this bloodline was kept alive by a secret society known as the Priory of Zion, which included over the years such members as Leonardo Da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton and Victor Hugo. These men had clues about the secret bloodline of Jesus in their art and writings. Okay, you can unplug your ears now. Now, this book is a page turner. I didn't read the book. I listened to it actually on audio. You can get books on audio and download them to your MP3 player and I listened to it. It was a lot of fun. You know, it's one of those books that it's always got a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter and you always find it out that so-and-so is actually so-and-so. Now, sometimes that can be annoying because you find out that so-and-so's grandmother actually was the one who, you know, did this and so-and-so's dog is actually his father and all these amazing, you know, coincidences and there's a little bit of that, but it's actually a pretty entertaining book. So what's all the fuss about it? Why are, you know, so many people doing series on the Da Vinci Code, while all these books come out to refute it, and why is everybody having a tizzy fit about it? Well, the Da Vinci Code asserts that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. That's one of the historical assertions that's put forward in the book. Rather, he was deified. He was made out to be God by the Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, you know, like four centuries later in a very close vote of the bishops. The Da Vinci Code further states that Jesus wanted his wife Mary Magdalene who bore Jesus' child to lead his church, but she was forced out by some power-hungry men who conspired and sealed their own power by choosing four gospels which were very male-centered and were totally inaccurate to what was actually-had actually happened. Okay, so, okay, so the book makes some fantastic claims and it's got some really interesting conspiracies, but so what? After all, it's a novel. It's a work of fiction. You know, it's not meant to be taken seriously, right? Now, when Dan Brown is challenged about the book, he says basically the same thing. You know, it'll lighten up. It's a novel. It's a story. There are lots of books and movies and things out there that claim all kinds of crazy things. You don't see everybody getting into such a fit about it. I think one of the reasons, one of the-one of the problems has been that if you open the book, one of the very first pages in the book at the beginning says fact. Right there, fact. All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate. So, right from the very beginning, there's an assertion that, you know, when we're talking about all these secret documents and stuff, these are accurate. These are things that really exist. Numerous different book reviews that are done on this book, note how smart and how intelligent and how well researched this book is, how excellent historical research is on it. The New York Daily News said, "Dan Brown's research is impeccable." I mean, he's really studied this stuff. Movie advertisements that you've probably seen are just to seek the truth, seek the truth. So, you have all the ingredients here of mass confusion between what is fact and what is fiction. Many people who've read the book believe that the basic claims of the Da Vinci Code that it makes regarding history and Christianity are true, that these are true claims. A survey was done in Canada recently of people who read the book and a full one-third of them, after reading the book, believed that there are still descendants of Jesus alive today, that the claims of the book are true. Now, we live in a time where the line between fact and fiction is constantly being blurred. N.T. Wright, who is one of the world's foremost New Testament scholars, he wrote a piece for Seattle Pacific University titled Decoding the Da Vinci Code. You can find it online if you're interested. Telling fact from fiction, it's a well-known feature of today's culture that some people can't tell fact from fiction. Stories abound of people who believe the characters in soap operas to be real, including tales of thousands of baby clothes being sent to TV stations after one of the fictitious characters has given birth, and of actors being attacked on the street by people angry about the bad behavior of their screen character. Within a would-be Christian subculture, the same thing becomes sinister, as when millions who read the Left Behind series really do believe not only in the rapture as the central element of their theology, but in the socio-political ideologies powerfully reinforced by that series. In a sense, Dan Brown represents the mere image of Lahain Jenkins, reproducing in fictionalized forms some of the mids of the post-modern world as Lahain Jenkins reproduces in fictionalized forms some of the mids of the fundamentalist right. So it's not surprising at all that many people read the Da Vinci Code would find Dan Brown's theories about the origins of Christianity to be pretty convincing. That's not really too surprising. After a lot of people who read the book really don't know much about how the Bible came to be or how Christianity was started. Not only do people not know a lot about the Bible, but how many people are experts in first-century Judaism? How many people are experts in early Christian history or religious art or the architecture of churches? So when an expert in a book like the Da Vinci Code starts quoting documents that many people have never even heard of or began spouting out off about scholarly theories about how there were more than 80 different gospels and only a few were chosen or declaring that Christ's marriage to Mary Magdalene is a matter of historical record and virtually all the experts know that or tells you that there's no evidence in the first three centuries of Christians believing that Jesus is God. Most average readers will say well what do I know? Maybe he's right. Maybe Dan Brown's right especially since the book backs up its claims by continually stating through its characters that historians and educated Christians have always known this stuff. They've always known this to be true. Now I do believe that the movie in the book are opportunities or divine opportunities for Christians to intelligently share their faith and their belief with those who maybe are reading the book or going to the movie. I do believe there are opportunities there. I have a friend who recently was in a bookstore looking for a book on the Gnostic Gospels and the bookseller started saying oh well you're checking out that book on the Gnostic Gospels yeah I've heard about that. It's really interesting that there are all these gospels that nobody knows about and my friend got in a conversation with him and shared his perspective a little bit, told him about the church and it was actually a really neat encounter and I've heard other people in the church who've gotten into conversations about Jesus and the gospels with friends who maybe never would have even paid much attention to it. So there are some good opportunities that can come from this but I do think there are those some in the popular culture who maybe already have a little bit of a grudge against Christianity or particularly against the Catholic Church which is really what Dan Brown goes after in this book. I think for those who maybe already have a grudge the Da Vinci Code is you know further ammunition to you know justify opposition to Christianity that it's just fake that the portrayal of Jesus and the gospels isn't true and what about maybe for those who are kind of sitting on the fence don't really know what to believe about Jesus. Maybe they have some Christian background or they know a little bit about it but they're not really too sure. I think the book might provide at least a reason why somebody wouldn't want to be a Christian or wouldn't want to follow Jesus. I mean after all if there are so many different versions of what Jesus did and said I mean how can just one of them be right who can really know the truth when it's all so murky and confusing and maybe for those who are already committed Christians for those who are already followers of Jesus but maybe aren't that deeply grounded in their faith. For those who aren't that really conversant with how Christianity came about or how the Bible came about. I know that there are people who were Christians who read the book and found that their faith was shaken because they didn't know well this seems to really point out some serious flaws in what I believe and how do I know if anything's true and this is so confusing. Some say that the book has planted you know seeds of doubt in their mind that's very unsettling so maybe Christianity is a big hoax maybe the church did invent all of these things about Jesus. So while on the one hand it does have wonderful potential to be something used by the church and engaging people in dialogue it's really important that we do dialogue with it and we do engage and respond to some of the claims that are made. So here are the two claims I want to address that are made in the book. The first is that the Bible as we have it has evolved through countless translations additions and revisions that we've never had a definitive version of the Bible that's the first claim. The second is that there were more than 80 different gospels which were considered for the New Testament and that it wasn't until Constantine codified them he he chose them basically what would make up the New Testament and that that it was voted on at a very close vote at the Council of Nicene 325. So those are the two things I want to tackle and these are a little bit technical so some of the stuff I'm going to talk about is a little bit technical not terribly exciting but I think I think it's really helpful when we address this. Now in the book regarding the first question I want to address which is are the New Testament documents historically reliable. What I want to talk about is can we have any sort of confidence that what we have in our New Testament today is what was actually written by the followers of Jesus. How do we know it didn't all just get changed and made up that's what I want to address. In the book Lee T. Bing who's the Oxford intellectual Bible scholar guy he says he says this the Bible is a product of man my dear not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times and it has evolved through countless translations additions and revisions history has never had a definitive version of the book. So to address this first question have we ever had a definitive version or was the Bible always in flux are the documents historically reliable. First I want to point out something correct that is said and that is this the Bible didn't fall out of the sky. The Bible as you have it did not just poof appear it would it would be wonderful if it did right if it just appeared and we've got you know God just came and handed it to me it was that simple it came in the English version and it was you know footnotes and study notes and fantastic but the Bible did not come about that way it was a work of human beings human beings actually wrote it human beings actually at some point put pen to paper and wrote it down human beings. So in it it is a work of men I wouldn't say though that therefore it's not a work of God. I wouldn't therefore say it's not a work of God I believe it's both is both a work of man and a work of God. You know sometimes the process of God working through humans is messy and confusing and frankly you know we just wish he had just done it himself instead of doing it through people. You can see this all throughout the church and throughout history where Christians have just done it poorly or done it and they messed it up and it's like God why did you entrust us with doing such important stuff and sometimes when we look at this process of how the Bible came together we're like God why didn't you just dictate it to somebody and put it on gold plates and seal it so they could just be so easy to know exactly what you wanted us to have you know that's a question to wrestle with but for whatever reason that's how God is always worked he's always worked through people as they are as he finds them it's part of God's in carnational methodology he works in and with the world as it is that doesn't mean however that the New Testament isn't trustworthy it doesn't mean therefore there well everything has to be just get thrown out and we don't know what's what the point I want to make is that while the Bible didn't just poof come into existence magically while it didn't do that it was part of a divinely inspired process and that the books we have in our New Testament are there because they contain the testimony of Jesus the books we have in our New Testament are there because they contain eyewitness accounts of Jesus in his works and those who followed him and they are trustworthy accounts of Jesus that's what I want to address see when Lee Tving in the book makes this claim that the Bible has evolved to countless translations additions and revisions what he's basically saying is look you shouldn't have any confidence that what you have now is what was originally written I mean come on it's been changed and revised so many times I mean have you ever played that game where you whisper into your friends here and then they whisper into their friends here and it goes around and by the time it comes back it's completely different from what it started well that's exactly what happened to the Bible see some people wrote some things but then the guy who copied it forgot a section and and he added something because he wanted to say this and then the church got it and they wanted to make Jesus out to be different so they added different and it's just it I mean who knows what was originally read that's that's really what what is being insinuated but isn't it interesting you know if you it is true we don't have the originals that were handwritten by the apostles you know we don't have the originals of any ancient sources because you know what paper falls apart it's just the nature of how books were made that people hand copied them in hand reproduce them and paper doesn't last forever we didn't have printing presses where we could you know spit out a thousand at a time but let's compare just to be fair let's compare the New Testament with other ancient documents and talk about are they reliable any of you familiar with the encyclopedia Britannica's great books of the western world these are the ancient classics these are the works of I'm sure most of you read though the some of these this morning when you got up and you're working through them and they're on your reading list for the summer but they've got works from authors like Homer and Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Archimedes, Virgil I mean the great ancient works these are the works that classical scholars study now classical scholars like biblical studies like biblical scholars when they want to study one of these works they have to work with the documents that we have and in none of these cases do we have the original original document what we have are copies of copies of copies of copies because like I said that is the only way books got made is you hand copied them so we have copies of copies when it comes to these ancient documents how do we know what we have is actually what was originally written that's the subject that is tackled in something called textual criticism there are basically two criteria for determining if what you have is what was originally written one the closer your document is in when it was written to when it was originally written or when it was copied to when it was originally written the more accurate it is in other words if there was a 20 year gap between the original and the copy that's pretty good that's a lot better than a 200 year gap because a lot of things can happen as the time gets bigger so there's that criteria and second the more copies you have of something the better confidence you can have that it all reflects what was in the original because it's a lot easier to make a change in one copy than a thousand copies okay now let's look at these two criteria when it comes to some ancient documents in terms of the proximity of when they were written to when they were copied try not to fall asleep there's coffee out in the lobby if you want to go get a Starbucks come back you know I'm totally okay with that none of these documents we don't have copies of it we don't have originals of any of them none of them none of the copies we have are actually even anywhere close to when the original was written let's look at the case of Herodotus and Thucydides you guys are all familiar with these two authors like I said you it's probably on your reading list for the summer now for these two ancient Greek writers the originals were written somewhere in the early fifth century BC before Christ in the earliest manuscript we have of these comes from around 900 AD that is a span of about 1300 years or let's take the Roman historian Tacitus who was one of the prominent historians in the first century he wrote about 100 AD basically and not far from when the New Testament documents were written the earliest manuscripts we have of his works are from 1100 AD a span of a thousand years between the original and the copies or Julius Caesar's work the Gallic Wars is a span of about 950 years from when they were written to when we have the copies and yet no classical scholar would doubt the authenticity of any of these works the classical scholars aren't out there saying we don't know what Caesar wrote we have no idea because you know it's a copy of a copy or Tacitus these are these are taken for as accurate representations of what was written now let's compare this to the New Testament scholars agree that the books of the New Testament are all written between about 40 and 100 AD we have complete manuscripts of the entire New Testament at about 350 AD so not a thousand years later but about 300 years later and we have fragments of the New Testament not the entire New Testament but pieces of it dated as early as 130 AD and if you look at this fragment this is the earliest fragment we have the New Testament this is the John Ryland's fragment this is a portion a very small portion as you can tell of the gospel of John and it's dated at about 130 AD which is only about 40 years after the original is what written I mean in terms of the scale of most ancient documents that is minuscule that is minuscule let's look at the second criteria as I said there's two criteria one is that the closeness of dates the other is the number of copies for Herodotus and Thucydides we have about eight copies we only have about eight copies of each of the of the document for Tacitus we have about 20 copies we have about 10 copies of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars in the case of the New Testament we have over 5,000 manuscripts in the Greek alone just in the Greek we have over 5,000 manuscripts we have 10,000 in the Latin we have 9,300 in various other languages you know within just a few hundred years after after Christ you could reassemble the entire New Testament just using people's quotations of it in various other works in other words you know when scholars are you know discussing the Bible the quote a little section of it if you took all those different quotes and put them together you'd have a whole new testament it was so widely distributed and broadly distributed if you wanted to change something in the New Testament it would be impossible because you'd have to go and round up 15,000 copies of it and change among all of them I mean the more copies you have the more assurance you can have that they reflect what was in the original no other ancient documents have a pedigree like the New Testament compared to other ancient documents we can be more sure that the New Testament reflects the original than any other ancient document there exists FF Bruce who was a classical scholar before becoming a biblical scholar he wrote if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond doubt we have a pure and reliable text in our New Testament so this claim in the Da Vinci code that the Bible has evolved through countless translations additions and revisions is false we have essentially 99% exactly what was in the original and if you look in your Bibles they'll have footnotes and they'll say in this manuscript it's a little different in none of those cases does it affect what we believe historically happened in none of those cases does it affect what we believe about who Jesus was or anything about the central doctrines of Christianity so even in this in the minute cases where there is some uncertainty it doesn't affect what we believe let's look at the second question I want to address which is how and when did the books in the New Testament get chosen I mean who decided that these books and no others were going to be included you ever asked that I mean it's certainly at some point someone had to decide but who did it and why did they do it in the Da Vinci code Liti being claims more than 80 gospels were considered the New Testament and yet only a relatively few of them were chosen for inclusion Matthew Mark Luke and John among them the Bible as we know it today was collated by the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine the Great okay so there were 80 different gospels out there and he just picked four of them out of there okay that's that's one thing well why did he do that what was Constantine's motive and getting involved well many scholars claim that the early church literally stole Jesus from his original followers hijacking his human message shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity and using it to expand their own power so it was a conspiracy it was a conspiracy by Constantine in the early church to portray Jesus the way we have them and we love conspiracies I mean come on what is better when it comes to a thriller than a conspiracy that some massive organization is conspired to trick and fool us and and confuse us for its own means I mean that just makes for great thriller reading and it makes for a great novel but is it correct is it actually what happened so let's talk about the New Testament canon maybe you've heard of that term canon when I first heard it you know I picture this huge canon I'm like a gunpowder back then in the New Testament time it's amazing the New Testament canon okay canon means literally measuring stick or ruler it means a standard in other words these books are the canon of our they are the standard for our faith and practice these books and not other books are what we use to determine what did Jesus teach what does it mean to follow Jesus so who made the decision what was going to be included in the New Testament could it have been a power play by Constantine and the early Catholic church how was the decision made which gospels to include why these four and no others was it arbitrary I'm going to argue that it was not just arbitrary it wasn't part of a power play but these books were included because they had apostolic authority one of the criteria I want to talk about is apostolicity in other words were they from an apostle or a close associate of an apostle was it written by someone who was an eyewitness why is that so important why is it so important to the apostles wrote it because they were the eyewitnesses they were the eyewitnesses they were the people who actually saw Jesus they were the ones who actually heard him and that was so extremely important in these first few centuries I mean let's look at what some of the apostles have to say about their own testimony this is the apostle John from the book of 1 John the very first verse in 1 John that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked at and our hands have touched this we proclaim concerning the word of life this isn't just some you know story I heard from my cousin Bob he read it on the internet this is I mean I saw it I touched Jesus with my hands after he rose from the dead I mean it doesn't get any more real than that let's look at any starts his book that way let's look at Luke the very first chapter the very first verse in Luke many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word that is so important to Luke that he begins his book that way look I am what I am writing down is I witness testimony I witness testimony people who from the first were there and heard it inside about Peter the apostle Peter in his book second Peter 1 16 he sums it up for we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty I mean he knew already look people when they hear something fantastic the first thing you say is oh come on did that really happen did that really happen that is pretty I mean that's pretty fantastic he's saying look we're not just you know sacrificing ourselves and spending our lives you know teaching something that was just this clever story that my cousin George thought up I mean look we were eyewitnesses to this we saw it happen you know in a court of law what makes testimony valid what makes testimony valid according it's it's were you and I witness to it did you see it happen everything else is hearsay everything else is well I heard this from somebody you want someone who saw it you want someone who heard it the testimony of an eyewitness so whether or not a book was written by an eyewitness or is the testimony of an eyewitness is extremely important all four of the books that we have in our New Testament all four of the gospels that we have in our New Testament and actually the other books too were written by eyewitnesses or close associates of eyewitnesses the early church fathers the leaders in the early church were unanimous that the gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew one of the twelve apostles in fact that's why you know as they copied it they put at the top the gospel according to Matthew because that's who they believed it wrote it I mean they were unanimous in that the early church was unanimous at the gospel of Mark was written by John Mark who was a close associate of Peter who was a close associate of Peter who was one of the twelve apostles who was an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus in as this text shows in some of Peter's writings he refers to Mark the early church was unanimous at the gospel of Luke who was also the author of Acts was a close associate of the apostle Paul who was an eyewitness to the risen Lord Jesus and on three occasions Paul refers to Luke as one of his close associates as you can see from these texts go and put the next slide up thanks as you can see from these texts Paul is you know regularly referring to Luke as one of his associates so the early church was unanimous that the gospel of John was written by the apostle John the disciple whom Jesus loved he refers to himself that way in several places in the books of John so all four of our canonical gospels were believed were unanimously believed to have been written by eyewitnesses or very close associates of those eyewitnesses now maybe you've heard of the Gnostic gospels and Ken's going to talk about these next week none of the so-called other gospels of the Gnostic gospels were believed to have been written by an apostle or a close associate of an apostle they were they were made up by somebody who attached a significant name to them to try to gain credibility but the early church did not believe that they were actually written by eyewitnesses of Jesus the second thing that's so important in terms of the authority these texts is the apostles who wrote these books that we have in our New Testament wrote with authority they knew they had authority sometimes we you might wonder well how do we know that Paul really intended what he wrote to be included in the New Testament I mean these are just letters to certain churches or to certain individuals and wouldn't he be shocked if he knew that we were using these as scripture well let's look how let's look how Paul speaks about what he he testifies about in first Corinthians he says if anything that they are prophets or otherwise gifted in the spirit let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command what what I am writing to you in these letters is the Lord's command this isn't just me Paul knows that he speaks with authority he writes in Galatians I want you to know brothers and sisters that the gospel I preach is not of human origin somebody didn't just make it up I didn't receive it from any human source nor was I taught it rather I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ saying I'm not just someone who heard it I received it directly from the source because that is so important in other in other scriptures I'm not going to put the one up in second Peter Peter refers to Paul's writings so already within the first century you can see that this process of determining what has authority and what doesn't is happening not three hundred years later in Nicaea with Constantine F.F. Bruce the scholar I referred to earlier points this out one thing must be emphatically stated that books of the New Testament did not become authoritative for the church because they were formally included in a canonical list but on the contrary the church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired in other words we didn't just hand pick a few and say well these are authoritative but people knew what was authoritative and that's why they got included in the list so it's you know the chicken before the egg syndrome and if we look let's look outside of the New Testament let's look at some of the earliest writings outside of the New Testament Ignatius of Antioch Ignatius who was the Bishop of Antioch which is one of the significant cities in the early church he lived from 35 to 110 A.D. he was born you know just a few years after Jesus and he lived during the time when most of the stuff in the New Testament was happening and being written he was a Bishop of Antioch he had a lot of authority he writes in his writings I issue you know commands like Peter and Paul they were apostles he acknowledges look I have a lot of authority I'm very close to the source but I'm not an apostle I made a big difference already by that by the beginning of the second century there's a clear distinction between the writings and authority of the apostles and the non-apostles the ones who saw and write witnesses of Jesus all of the church fathers all of the leaders in the early church who wrote in the first and second century realized that what they wrote was not on the same plane as the text that we now have in our New Testament they realize yes they're they're helpful works they're some you know shepherd of hermice is a you know great work you might want to check out written by one of the church fathers but it is not it does not have the level of authority of the books we have in our New Testament so when was this decision made because that's really the crux of the right when was this decision made in the book it says well it was made in the fourth century 325 at the council and I see it by Constantine but what what are the evidence actually say well one of the very earliest documents which has a list of the books of the Bible is known as the Muratorian fragment it's a fragment of ancient literature dated or out around 170 that lists the books which are considered authoritative so this is a hundred and fifty years before Constantine and Nicaea and what is it list in its in this fragment it includes the four gospels that we use and includes almost all of the other New Testament text the exceptions are Hebrews James 2nd Peter 2nd 3rd John they're still discussion among the church leaders and whether or not those should be included in the canon it doesn't include any other books that we don't have in our New Testament it doesn't include any of these so-called 80 other gospels there was no question whether or not these other 80 gospels which Ken's going to talk about next week is actually distortion but there wasn't any question about which ones to include and which ones not to include by that time so by the end of the 2nd century most of it was already settled there weren't 80 gospels vying for contention so what what am I what's my conclusion we don't want to leave you with we can have confidence in the New Testament as we have it we can have confidence that what we have in Matthew Mark Luke and John or eyewitness accounts who were written by either the eyewitnesses or their associates of what Jesus did and what he taught and what his disciples did we can have confidence that this is actually what happened you know when the early church was being persecuted when at various times in the early centuries there would be you know purges and soldiers to be sent out to collect and burn the Christian books and they send these soldiers out and they'd go to where they believe the Christians were and they said give me your holy books and they'd take them and they burn them well these soldiers they didn't know what was what I mean they didn't know what was considered holy scripture or not and so all the Christians knew which of the books you could give them the burn and which one of the ones you protected I mean they knew they knew well okay I can I can part with this so they come to the door and say well here's my Bible see you later but they also knew which books you do not give up and those are the books we have in our New Testament that you protect these with your life because these are valuable these contain the life and the testimony of Jesus these are these are these are vital for our knowledge of who Jesus was and what he taught already in those early centuries they knew that that you don't let go of these things let me end with a couple passages I already quoted for we didn't follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus in power but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty that which is from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked at and our hands have touched this we proclaim concerning the word of life have you ever struggled with you know how do I know this stuff really happened how do I know that what's in the Bible is really historically accurate or I mean couldn't somebody at some point just completely made up all this stuff about Jesus I mean those are questions to wrestle with how do I know it's really true and I know some of us are wrestling with that now like you know you heard the story I read at the very beginning of a guy who got up and boy that's that's a tough one how do I really know that happened well all has to do the trustworthiness of your sources and that's what I just wanted to leave you this morning that we have a trust worthy source when it comes to our new testament in terms of what we believe so I want to invite the band to come back up we're going to end with communion and a couple songs of worship and I want to I want to make available after you get communion if you've been just struggling with any kinds of doubt lately it doesn't have to be with because you read the da Vinci code and you're wondering you know is this true or not but if you've just really been struggling with faith and you know is Christianity really true did this stuff really happened did Jesus really you know die and then rise again I mean could that really be true first I just want to encourage you that God gave us brains to think and ask questions with it is not wrong to question things God does not upset or offended when we ask questions like that sometimes you know I think we can feel like gosh it's I shouldn't even have that doubt I shouldn't even be asking that question God gave us brains to think and ponder and questioning so that is okay he also wants us to bring our questions to him you know to go to him say God I'm really struggling with whether or not this is true or not so that's what I want to invite you to do is you come forward for communion you know taking the body and blood of Christ I want you also to you know take some time if you're really struggling with doubt just ask the prayer minister just to pray a blessing over you that God would reveal the truth you know I want to affirm the movie poster seek the truth that is that is really really good advice so I just want to ask the premonitors just bless those who are seeking the truth because they're really struggling with doubts right now so Lord Jesus we thank you that you've given us minds to consider that you have given us minds to decide and to seek things out it's Lord Jesus I just pray that the light of your spirit would shine into our minds as we search these things out as we wrestle with these questions and the things that are being raised I pray that we wouldn't see them as Lord God threats to our own faith or or Christianity but Lord God see them as divine opportunities to dialogue to explore to search our own faith to discern why we believe what we believe God I just pray that that really would happen and that you just make that fruitful so I bless this bread in this grape juice Lord God to be your body and blood as we come forward and receive it in Jesus name and amen so I'll go ahead and stand and if you would please begin.
