Theological Illiteracy, Part Two

The last week has brought considerable discussion on the topic of Christian scripture. Unfortunately the vast majority of it is worthless for anyone actually trying to learn anything about the Bible. Using the twin vehicles of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (TDC) and the newly translated (but not lost) Gospel of Judas (GoJ), popular media has played up the questioning of the foundations of Christian belief. Unfortunately, most Christians know so little about what they claim to believe that they either look foolish when questioned or have shamefully bought into some if not all of the claims. So, in an effort to provide a little free education, let's take a look at some of the issues raised and what, according to scholars, do we know and what is speculation.

In this first posting, we'll begin with the process of canonization. Both TDC and those hyping the GoJ try to raise doubts on the message recorded in the Bible. The basic charge is that there was "secret information" deliberately kept out for (usually) political reasons. That early Christians hide this information to make their "product" the most attractive (or the only one available). But was this really the situation?

Canonization is the process by which the Bible was received in its final form. The word canon comes from the Greek kanon meaning "a rod or ruler" and literally is the measuring rod against which claims are compared. The Bible has 66 recoginzed books in the combined Old and New Testaments. The big question is "Why these 66 and why not xxx?" In determining which texts are considered part of the canon, the early Church applied five basic criteria:

• Is the book authoritative, that is, does it claim to be from God?
  
• Was it written by a prophet or a declared servant of God?
  
• Is the book factual, that is, does it relay true information?
  
• Does the book have a life-transforming impact upon the reader?
  
• Did the early groups of Christians for whom the book was written
  recognize the book as the word of God?
  

Now why was there a need to create such an assembly of writing? There were at least two reasons that combined in the early years of the Church for such a process to happen:

• Political: Events such as the Dioletian persecutions around AD 302 - 305, ordering for the buring of all Christian writings prompted a need for a collection and distribution of the "true" writings.
  
• Theological: First, which writings were to be acceptable for public readings during worship? Second, as early as AD 140 different listings of canonical writings were being circulated, some by leaders of questionable theology.
  

Now initially, not all of the books of the Bible were accepted without question as belonging to the cannon. From here out we'll focus just on the New Testament since that is the focus of TDC and the GoJ. The basic groups that various writings fell into were:

• Homologoumena: The books accepted by all of the early Church Fathers.
  
• Pseudepigrapha ("false writings"): Books rejected by all of the Church Fathers.
  
• Antilegomena: Books disputed (according to Eusebius [about AD 260 - 340] there were seven: Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation).
  

So, where do we focus? If we accept Eusebius the text such as the GoJ is not part of the antilegomena, and obviously did not make it into the homologoumena (else we would be reading it in our ol' KJV/ESV/NIV already), so it would seem to fall into the class of "false writings", the pseudopigrapha. This was a HUGE class including the repeated brought up Gospel of Thomas. There were several so-called gospels in this list including Gospel of the Ebionites, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of the Egyptians, and Protoevangelium of James to list just a few. Virtually no Church Father or council pronounced any of these books canonical. Not to say everything in them is false, but their interest is at best historical and not factual. What these books seemed to have in common was their contents consisted of Gnostic, Docetic, or ascetic errors of doctrine. This gets to a very important point... both TDC and GoJ rely heavily on a Gnostic "understanding" of the Bible (and that is being gracious to TDC). Briefly, the Gnostics were a sect claiming special knowledge into the divine mysteries, often denying the physical for the spiritual (and most of their writings denied the Incarnation since the "ultimate spiritual" could not be part of the physical) while the Docetists believed in the deity of Christ but denied his humanity. The ascetic Monophysites denied the dual nature of Christ and said that He was a fusion of the two into one nature. At best there books were revered by some cult, but never considered essential to the Christian faith except by those in the club who had the special "spiritual decoder ring".

Okay, now that your eyes are glazed over and I see that little bit of drool slipping out of the corner of your mouth, I'll rest for tonight. Tomorrow we will return to the canonical process, then march into the fun topics of examining TDC and GoJ directly.