Da Vinci #1 - Nicea & Christ's Divinitiy
The Council at Nicea (AD325) - Christ’s Divinity
One of the most ridiculous claims by one of the characters in The Da Vinci Code is that it was at the Council at Nicea in AD325 where Christ’s divinity was “voted on.” He says, “Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet…. A great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.” (pg. 233)
This particular issue is really not worth spending a lot of time on. While critics today might argue whether or not Jesus was actually divine, there aren't hardly any worth listening to who would argue whether or not the earliest believers thought so.
In The Da Vinci Hoax we read:
There is plenty of evidence that the early Christians, dating back to Jesus’ time on earth, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was divine. In his seminal study, Early Christian Doctrines, noted scholar J.N.D. Kelly writes that “the all but universal Christian conviction in the [centuries prior to the Council of Nicaea] had been that Jesus Christ was divine as well as human. The most primitive confession had been ‘Jesus is Lord’ [Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11], and its import had been elaborated and deepened in the apostolic age."Christianity Today says:
The Council of Nicea did not define that Jesus, the Son of God, was divine (since that was accepted by all Christians) but addressed the issue of the exact relationship between the Son and the Father: Are they equal? One in substance? Two Persons? The Council specifically addressed and condemned the popular heresy of that time, called Arianism, which insisted that the Son was a lesser god, created by the Father at some point in time and not eternally existent.
In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshiped Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of instructional summaries of belief, termed the "Rule" or "Canon" of Faith, which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: "Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ."In conclusion, Ben Witherington III, in a lecture says the following:
The term used here—Lord, Kyrios—deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the Greeks to denote divinity (though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for "Jahweh," the holy name of God. The Romans also used it to denote the divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: only God himself was kyrios.
The Christians took over this usage of kyrios and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of the church. They did so not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after Nicea), but in the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, which scholars agree was written no later than the late 100s. In this book, the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord.
ERROR NO. 2-- Jesus was portrayed as simply a man or a great prophet in the earliest historical sources, but was later divinized at the Council of Nicea. (pp. 231-34) This is patently false. Jesus is called THEOS some seven times in the NT including in the Gospel of John, and he is called Lord in the divine sense numerous times as well. No historian I know of argues that these texts postdate the Nicean council. It is the documents written in the first century about Jesus and his movement that suggest he was the divine Son of God. The Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon merely formalized these beliefs.
4 Comments:
Sean,
Thanks for your post. However, I have trouble trusting your sources. Both of your sources would be considered moderate to conservative.
Do you have a more balanced approach to the Davinchi Code. I found the author's argument very appealing.
There are some who would advocate a conspiracy theory in regard to divinity of Christ.
I'm just a simple man, trying to understand more - this whole God/Man thing seems so difficult to comprehend.
Sincerely,
Butrose
Butrose,
Welcome to Alitheia Dialegomai.
Get used to seeing conservative sources on this site. As for this particular topic, I have two things to say about "sources": 1. The character in the book is not conservative, so it makes sense that if we are going to debate it's going to require someone who is conservative; 2. Brown's character doesn't even tell us who is "sources" are in making these particular claims. It is asserted that the claims he is making are "a matter of historical record" (pg. 244), and yet there is no proof of this assertion. Like I said, I don't think there is an authoritative source that would suggest that the earliest Christians didn't think Christ was divine.
With that said, who can really argue that documents from the first and second centuries don't indicate the earliest beliefs of Christians were that Jesus was divine? I think we all have to agree that the idea that Jesus is divine was not created in the fourth century. To suggest otherwise is bad history. I think that once we all admit that early documents exist that show that believers thought Jesus was divine then the next logical discussion will be on the question of canonization. This will be the next topic of discussion this week.
I hope this answers your questions. Your name sounds strikingly familiar. I know I've heard that name very recently....
Butrose, just because a source is conservative does not mean that it is wrong. In fact, in this case, conservative should mean "looks at history in the proper, orthodox manner." Do you want "balance" in that you want to hear revisionist blathering from out-of-the-mainstream, left-wing, pseudo historians like Brown and Pagels? I would rather have a "one-sided" and correct version any day.
Butrose,
Having said that, here is a website that I found through infidels.org-- an admittedly secular, even atheistic online group. They too seem to think the Da Vinci Code is bunk.
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/dvhoax.htm
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