But Pliny said...

There is something bothering me about the DaVinci Code. The book claims two things. First, that Jesus was voted divine at Nicea, 300 years after his death. Prior to this no one, including Jesus, thought he was God. The second point is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child that founded a royal line of French kings. Here is my problem. If Jesus wasn’t God, then what made his kid so special? Why does anyone care about the offspring of a crazy itinerant preacher who was condemned a heretic?

I should have read the book instead of waiting for the movie. But it irked me to deal with Brown’s Nicene premise when history tells us the controversy dates back to the earliest decades of the church. Pliny, a ruler not sympathetic to the Christian movement, wrote the Roman Emperor Trajan in AD 110 how adherents of the “superstition” met before daybreak and recited “a hymn to Christ, as God.” One of these hymns is quoted in Paul’s Philippian letter and shows how very early on the church had a very high view of Jesus’ divine nature.

Even early heretics like the Docetists made divine claims for Christ. They believed the divinity of Christ was a settled point. Where they had difficulties was with his humanity, which they believed was a put on. Ignatius refuted these ideas about the same year.

I would mention biblical witnesses like Isaiah, the Four gospels, Paul’s letters, Jesus many claims, and the charges of blasphemy for his claims. But these sources are under suspicion for the very fact they made it into the Bible. What do we believe though, that the documents preserved by the early church were the ones they found to be true, or that the Church Fathers concocted them to squash the truth? I know conspiracies happen, but I also know they fall apart on closer examination.

So I guess I’m going to the movie, examining both, and keeping the one that stands up. Why do I think I already know which one that will be?