How does Dan Brown know?

Dear SS (Sincere Seeker):

Let me pick up our recent debates about why your version of early Christianity is distorted. ( Because you got your information mostly from secular media, magazines and from Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown and his like mind fellows full of biases against Christianity. How can your assumptions be right, I wonder?  Just think about a few Questions down below, you will find why your assumptions are wrong. 

Consider, If the deity of Christ was an idea invented by Constantine and completely foreign to Christ’s followers who viewed him as a mere mortal, what explains the “relatively close vote” at Nicaea as Brown claimed? ( actually, it was a landslide victory for traditional belief from the Apostles and Jesus' earliest followers, only 2 out of 318 bishops voted along Arius' errant view. It was not close at all)

 If the early records of Jesus’ life are so corrupted and compromised with “countless translations, additions, and revisions,” as Brown claimed, and if “history has never had a definitive version of the book,” from where does Brown derive his reliable, authentic, unimpeachable biographical information about Jesus? How does Brown know that thousands of Jesus’ followers wrote accounts of his life if the great bulk of these records were destroyed? This is the classic problem for conspiracy theorists. 

If all evidence was eradicated, how do they know it was there in the first place? How is it physically possible for Constantine to gather up all of the handwritten copies from every nook and cranny of the Roman empire by the fourth century and destroy the vast majority of them? 

Now that you ponder the above Qs carefully, let's consider the historical facts below.

The Council of Nicaea was not an obscure event in history. We have extensive records of the proceedings written by those who were actually there: Eusebius of Caesarea and Athanasius, deacon of Alexandria.( And they held two opposite views, Eusebius was in Arius side. So their writings should give us the whole historical picture of  the Council of Nicaea) Two things stand out in those accounts that pertain to Brown’s claims. 

First, no one at Nicaea considered Jesus to be a “mere mortal ,” not even Arius, whose errant views made the council necessary.

 Second, Christ’s deity was the reason for the council, not merely the result of it .After a pitched debate, the orthodox party prevailed. The vote wasn’t close at all; it was a landslide. Of 318 bishops, only the Egyptians Theonas and Secundus refused to concur.  The council affirmed what had been taught since the beginning. Jesus was not a mere man; He was God the Son.

 Regarding the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, (the first scrolls were discovered in the 1940s, not the 1950s as Brown claimed). Brown claimed that The Dead Sea Scrolls say nothing of Jesus. There were no Gospels in Qumran. Not one shred or shard mentions his name. This is a complete fabrication from Brown.

If you like, you can check the introduction to Dead Sea Scrolls out for yourself.( I have a few books about them even with vivid pictures. We visited the display at Deyang museum and see the intact Isaiah 53 which foretold the coming of Jesus Christ to suffer on the cross for all our sins.

I hope with an open and fair mind, after you consider all these historical facts, you won't claim to me again that it was all Constantine's credits to establish Jesus' God status. Contrary to what you think, Constantine was the one who flip-flaped and went back to support Arius' view after the council as we've already discussed in previous emails. 

I pray earnestly that you may shake off your deep bias about these issues.

May God open your eyes to see His Truth!

P.S. I've got so many insight from this book TACTICs.

Jesus' human nature not His God nature was in dispute in church history

Dear SS ( sincere seeker ):

You are trying to prove that Jesus' status as God/man had been debated for hundred years before finally being settled down that He is indeed a God/man with dual natures.

You seemed to conclude because of those centennial long debates, Jesus being God is just man-made.  You do have a good point, and I guess we do need to be concerned if Jesus was man-made or man promoted God.

I did give it a deep thought and I do have more insights than before, thanks for raising this Q.

Let me share with you what my current insight is.

Let's go back to the time when Jesus was walking on this earth as a human being.

His disciples and other believers followed Him for 3 yrs, the most. They saw Him performed many miracles, but basically, most of them thought He was only a human being endowed of special abilities like many prophets before Him. Once in a while, someone like Peter did get revelation from Heaven and realized that Jesus is Christ and the promised Messiah. 

But not until Jesus' resurrection and reappearances to them for 40 days and Jesus' ascension to Heaven, that they started to realize that Jesus is also God. For this realization, they became bold to spread the Gospel at the risk of losing their own lives; they are reliable witnesses. As this generation who eye witnessed Jesus' miracles and resurrection passed away, since people were further away from the time when Jesus walked on earth, many of them started to regard Jesus as only God; some of them eliminated Him being a human being out of total respect and admiration. That caused Jesus to be regarded as God only without being God the incarnate since they now had relationship with God the Son but no longer had the human Jesus walking alongside with them on earth.

Therefore, a debate becomes necessarily to decide whether Jesus did have a human nature, whether He is God incarnate. So you see it is His human nature in dispute, not the God nature. Namely, Jesus being God has been proved by His after resurrection appearances and the blood of martyrs but His human nature has been neglected by early pious Christians. So the debates were to confirm that Jesus as God had truly come to this earth to take on human body and human nature. It was not the God nature of Jesus being in dispute. If His God nature were the issue, then your concern to raise the Q would be really having a strong reason.

Trust me , it is not His God nature being in dispute but the dual natures of God/man are in dispute because of our own limits in 3 dimensions, we are not able to comprehend how Jesus could be simultaneously being God and being man. It took 100 yrs for believers to come to the conclusion that Jesus is really God/man.

I hope this clear up the issue you raised.. Indeed, Jesus' human nature not His God nature was in dispute in church history

The hills are alive...

Dear SS(sincere seeker):  

The hills are alive with the song of music... as the famous song goes.

Yet there are many people who don't hear the music in the air, right?

That is the problem with the fingerprints of God you claim you don't see at all.

Yes, there is music in the air waves, yet we need to have a right receiver like radio, TV...etc. to receive the music. Of course, our ears can pick up music in nature, like the birds' singing...etc. But some people are not lucky enough to have a functioning ear, especially as they age.

Likewise, those who want to look for the fingerprints of God need to assume God exists.( Assuming God exists will certainly make more senses than assuming Nothing creates this wonderful universe.) This is not my invention but it is from God's Word. So you need to have right kind of mentality to find God's fingerprints. Your magic show mentality certainly will block your view of God's fingerprints. That is why I hope you can put aside your magic show mentality even if for a short period of time. As my young granddaughter who struggled to learn swimming,  understood the fish out of water will gasp for air, so we gasp for understanding when we get into the spiritual realm.

I find another good example of positive self directing test 自導自演 in OT Bible,( better than Abraham's test which after all the main character was mostly Abraham, obeying God's order; only the Angel of the Lord stopped him at last minute to prevent him from killing his son Isaac.) 

That is the test Joseph gave his brothers to test if they had changed, if they cared about their half brother Benjamin.( Joseph's same mom brother) So Joseph asked his servants to put money back to their sacks of food, then accused them as spies and detained one of them in jail until they brought their youngest brother Ben, when they brought Ben, Joseph asked his servants to hide his precious cup in Ben's sack ; after they left, the servants chased them and searched for the cup, then found Ben was guilty of stealing Joseph's cup.( 栽贓, 自導自演 ) Not until he found out his half brothers did care about their old father and youngest half brother, Joseph didn't let them know that he was their long lost half brother they sold to the Egyptian. The whole test stretched out at least many months.  And it looked like a cheating scheme of Joseph, yet at the end, the brothers passed the test.( the climax is Genesis 45, and Genesis 44) If you are not familiar with the story, it should be interesting to read a few chapters there.

Many thanks to you, now I can think of some other positive tests of  自導自演 with good purposes.

God bless!

BH