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GA06040
Media Mission speaker "decodes" The Da Vinci Code
by Eva Stimson
BIRMINGHAM, June 17 * Christians have no reason to fear The Da Vinci Code, according to New Testament scholar the Rev. Kenneth E. Bailey. In fact, he said the phenomenally successful book and recently released film have created an opening for the church to engage the secular culture.
Bailey, who spent 40 years teaching at seminaries and research institutes in the Middle East, spent about 45 minutes "decoding The Da Vinci Code" Saturday at a General Assembly luncheon sponsored by Presbyterian Media Mission and Presbyterian Communicators Network.
Ordinarily, Bailey said, it might be hard for pastors to get their members interested in studying a topic such as, "Where did the Gospels come from?"
"The advantage here is that we have people's attention," he noted.
People have been confused by Dan Brown's novel, Bailey observed, because "we live in an age in which it's hard to separate fact from fiction." For many of us, the truth consists of "the last powerful television image we've seen."
Bailey contrasted the worldview of Gnosticism, an ancient heresy popularized by Brown's novel, with the testimony of the New Testament. While the Gnostics offered keys to a secret knowledge, available only to a select few, "the Christian faith does not deal in secrets," he said.
"The tomb is empty; the Scriptures are in print. All are welcome to enter and adore."
The four Gospels were accepted as authoritative by the church before the end of the first century, Bailey said. By the end of the second century, the entire canon of the New Testament had been endorsed by Christian leaders.
But later, Christians who did not like the Jesus of the Gospels "created a Gnostic Jesus who told them what they wanted to hear," Bailey said.
Bailey said the non-canonical Gnostic gospels are characterized by rejection of the body and a flight from history. There is no cross or resurrection, no call for justice, and the sayings of Jesus are "stripped of their narrative framework." Though Brown touts the pro-female nature of these writings, Bailey cited examples of anti-feminine thought in the Gnostic gospels.
Christian martyrs died defending the truth of the Gospels, Bailey said, but "the Gnostics were not thrown to the lions. Caesar didn't care about people trying to figure out their gooey inner feelings."
The Bible is more than a match for Brown's book and for the ancient heresies it promotes, Bailey concluded. "There's nothing threatening in any of them," he said.
Presbyterian Media Mission, based in Pittsburgh, PA, produces the award-winning radio program "Passages" and other features, and helped develop a faith-based media literacy program, "The Electronic Great Awakening."
The Presbyterian Communicators Network was formally organized last summer to link communicators in congregations, presbyteries and synods to better tell the church's story.
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