I have not written one word on the Da Vinci Code or on gnostic writings like the Gospel of Judas or Thomas (or anything written by Elaine Pagels). I probably will not write any others after this post.
My forte is not apologetics and so I leave it to others so gifted to stand against these distractions. I call them “distractions” because they stir up a dust cloud around the signposts pointing to Truth, and even re-erect false signposts that lead to nowhere. For those who flaunt these distractions, they draw our attention away from and ignore some very important and basic historical facts about the beginning of Christianity. The following two quotes illustrate that none of these “distractions” satisfactorily explain these events.
Michael at Singing In The Reign found this quote by N.T. Wright:
Those who were thrown to the lions were not reading “Thomas” or Q or the “Gospel of Mary.” They were reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the rest, and being sustained thereby in a subversive mode of faith and life which, growing out of apocalyptic Judaism, posed a far greater threat to Roman empire and pagan worldviews than Cynic philosophy or Gnostic spirituality ever could. Why would Caesar worry about people rearranging their private spiritualities?
This reminded me of something I wrote a couple years ago:
The Apostles were a group of uneducated men that followed Jesus for the last two or three years of His life. They lived and traveled closely with Him. They witnessed their friend tortured and killed. They themselves went into hiding for nearly two months after His crucifixion. They could have easily gone back to their former lives, but instead, they began spreading the Good News about Jesus. They faced hardships and risked their own lives to do it, at no personal gain for themselves. In fact, tradition says that all but one of them eventually met horrible and painful deaths. And the Message continued to spread. Something had to have happened immediately after the death of Jesus. Something very special had to have happened to motivate those men to do what they did. I do not think they risked their lives for just an idea or a philosophy. There had to be more, much more to it.