Resources > Ask Jeff Is Christianity on shaky historical ground? Posted by CCC CyberMinistries on May 10, 2006, 08:54

Is The Da Vinci Code good history?

In other words, is Christianity on shaky historical ground?

Let’s say this about the book: The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction to be enjoyed as such

Part of what that means is that there are no footnotes; it doesn’t have to go through the process of peer review; there is no apparatus created for accountability to a scholarly community.

And that means that, as history, there are a lot of problems.

The Da Vinci Code got a lot of people talking, and that’s a real good thing. It got a lot of people reading, and I think that’s a real good thing. It got a lot of people thinking about God and faith, and I think that’s a real good thing.

Again, I’m not qualified to be a literary critic, but I think that as a page-turner, as a mystery, it’s engaged a lot of people;

BUT, as history, “It’s the only book I know that after you’ve read it, you’re dumber than you were when you started.”

The reason it matters is this: Our faith—the Christian faith—is rooted in history.

The reason we take this time … the reason I ask you to wade through all this material … is because we believe that the Christian faith is not just a pretty story that can add some nice metaphorical understanding to life, but that God actually acted in history, in flesh and blood.

The apostle John put it like this in 1 John: “From the very first day, we were there taking it all in. We heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. We saw it, we heard it, now we’re telling you so that you can experience it along with us—this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.” John in essence says, “This really happened. This is not a myth. It is not a pretty story. I was there. I saw him. I heard him. I touched him. I knew him. And I’m willing to rot in prison and die for him.”

So you check it out. You investigate it thoroughly.

You decide one way or the other.

Go ahead and do that, but don’t say it claims only to be another pretty story.

Don’t say that all faiths are simply fabrications and everybody understands that, and that they all say the same thing and don’t really relate to anything that happened at some point in time.

Don’t say that. John says, “I was there. I saw him. I followed him. I watched him. I know him. And I write these things so that you can know him too.”

I’ll tell you one more way that you can know about the authority of the New Testament Gospels. Read them, and see what happens to you.