Coming Attractions

Would I be remiss if I didn't give The DaVinci Code more free publicity? Probably not. Though King of Peace could go farther and do what Episcopal Churches in Augusta and Waynesboro are doing and take groups to the movie. Instead, folks ask me daily what I think and so I had the column in last week's Tribune & Georgian, The DaVinci Disclaimer on the book itself and its sources.

This Friday I will have a column The Good News beyond the Code in the Tribune & Georgian which you may preview here. The column looks briefly at a couple of problems with the myth of Christian origins which underlies not just The DaVinci Code but other current writings on Christianity. As I say in the column

The myth states that the Church suppressed hundreds of documents about Jesus. In this view, Christianity as we know it was not the result of the life and ministry a first century Palestinian Rabbi named Jesus. Instead, Christianity is said to be the brainchild of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who in the 320s made Christianity the religion of the empire for political reasons...

The new myth of Christian origins says that the real Jesus was lost to time and the faith as we know it was a self-serving invention of a clever emperor and a self-serving hierarchy of priests. This view ignores the solid historical data we have on the early Christian movement which was persecuted by Rome up until Constantine. Furthermore, if Christians had believed for centuries that Jesus was merely a great human teacher, then no vote by the emperor’s council would suddenly convince them that Jesus was God.

More importantly, the New Testament is far from the sort of text any emperor would choose to shore up support of the kingdom. At its heart, the good news is that Jesus is Lord and therefore Caesar and any other person is not. Jesus was no friend of the emperor. Rather he was put to death as a revolutionary. Jesus’ teaching found in the Bible turns the world on its head making the first, last. This story of Jesus is not exactly congenial to any emperor.

The full text of the column is online here: The Good News beyond the Code.

Yes, all of this writing is overkill for a movie, but people ask and I try to respond. As to the movie itself, this BBC review says you'll like it if you like that sort of thing, but finds it an "unwieldy, bloated puzzle."

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church