D.D. 05/07/06

There are so many refutations of the gross amount of errors in Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code - among the stuff he claims is fact - that I'm not even going to add my perspective to the mix. Suffice it to say, that the book is so full of errors its intentions could very well be questioned. Not that I expect fiction writers to put out good books these days - but because educational methods are what they are the real shame is that I hear some people are actually taking this fictional novel to be gospel.

Gospel - that brings up a good point to take from all this DaVinci slop. Dan Brown's assertion - from what I hear is that there was an organized conspiracy within the Church to supress the Gnostic "gospels." I'll agree with Brown on this point - yeah, there probably was a desire to supress these "gospels" because they are contrary to the teachings of the gospels deemed worthy all Christian communities - that is, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In short the Gnostic gospels could not exist alongside the canonized gospels. In his first letter to Timothy, St. Paul closes by saying:

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane novelties of words, and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called. Which some promising, have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.

Here we have an apostle's admonishment to avoid the those who claim to have "novelties of words...and knowledge," but "have erred concerning the faith." In fact, St. Chrysostom tells us St. Paul is here referring to the Gnostics, who take their name from the Greek word for knowledge "gnosis." Gnostic Christians claimed to have special 'knowledge' of Christ, which convinced them among other things that marriage was a grave sin and that it was a grave sin to eat meat. Which, of course is contrary to the Church's teaching that marriage is not only commendable, but a sacrament and that meat was okay - as long as it wasn't eaten on the prescribed fast days. See also I Timothy 4:3 for an earlier condemnation of this position.

I should note that this is just one point where the teachings of the Church and the teachings of Gnostic "Christians" part ways. There are many, many more - and I suspect that if you examine some Gnostic teachings you'll see how weird they really are. But the point is - there are legitimate differences between Gnostic "Christians" and all other Christian communities in the 1st century, using the gospels familiar to us.

Since this is an either/or proposition, I think I'll side with the Holy Ghost and the authority of the Church in believing that the canon of the New Testament is properly set. The infalliability of the Church in setting the canon is so clearly in issue here - and the subject of the gnostic gospels should bring up interesting conversations between Catholics and Protestants with regard to the origin of the Bible and who has the authority to determine what's in the authoritative version.