Dr Paul Allen

Unless you’ve been on an extended vacation from popular culture, you know there’s been a discussion about how we got the New Testament. Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel  The Da Vinci Code  based its conspiratorial plot in part on the notion that other gospels had been eradicated by spiteful church authorities and an emperor openly partial to orthodoxy. The success of the novel prompted many churchgoers to ask whether or not all the books that should be included in the New Testament actually were. To be sure, Dan Brown took a lot of liberties with the facts in his story. But what if we’re not dealing with fiction? The New Testament itself tells us that there were books written by apostles that didn’t make it into in the Bible. Surprised? Let’s take a look. 1 Corinthians 5:9 In 1 Corinthians, Paul himself mentions an earlier letter he wrote to this same church: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people” (1 Cor 5:9). While some interpre...

Postmodern ideas about history challenge any authoritative version of the past given by the Bible as suspicious and founded in power play. Yet interestingly, the Bible is then compared to flimsy challenges of whacky alternative theories. For instance, the Gospel of Judas has been heralded by the Western media as a serious challenge to the Bible. Upon reading it, the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, noted, “It’s actually a fairly conventional book of its kind—and there were dozens like it around in the early centuries of the Church. People who weren’t satisfied with the sort of thing the New Testament had to say spent quite a lot of energy trying to produce something which suited them better. They wanted Christian teaching to be a matter of exotic and mystical information, shared only with an in-group.” According to The Da Vinci Code, the church suppressed the real version of events that can be found in so-called gnostic gospels like the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thom...

English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Ask your average Muslim, Unitarian, Jehovah’s Witness, or just about any non-Christian skeptic who has read (or watched)   The Da Vinci Code ,  and they’ll try to convince you the answer is  no .  From such sources we are told that the deity of Christ was a doctrine invented centuries after Jesus’ death – a result of pagan influences on the church in the fourth century when the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion. Emperor Constantine , in particular, is blamed for being the guy who promoted Jesus to the level of deity, a feat of cosmic proportions that he managed to pull off at the Council of Nicaea in 325. As Dan Brown put it (through the lips of one of his literary characters): “Jesus’ establishment as ‘the Son of God ’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea. . . . By officially endorsing J...

English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) (John Piper) Jesus’s uniqueness and beauty is on display if his followers respond with grace when he is reviled. When adherents of Islam counter the mocking of their central figure with outrage and violence, they provide another vivid depiction of the difference between Muhammad and Christ , and what it means to follow each. Not all Muslims approve the violence, but the work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery. A Deep Difference Between Jesus and Muhammad Jesus is unique. And Christians believe there is a divine beauty in the mocking that he willingly subjects himself to by becoming man — because it’s a mocking and reviling and bruising and dying that is for us and for our salvation. If Christ had not been insulted, there would be no salvation. This was his saving work: to be insulted and die to rescue sinners...

Cover via Amazon Oil painting of a young John Calvin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) One of the most pressing but invisible threats to Christian thinking at the present time is that of fallacious history. Like carbon monoxide, it can kill; you just do not notice it is happening until it is too late. Fallacious history comes in numerous forms. The most obvious and influential are those pushed by popular culture. Movies are the primary culprits here. So powerful are the aesthetics of modern cinema that the stories the movies tell can be compelling for no other reason than that they seem so real. Thus, if there is a movie in which Americans crack the Enigma code in the Second World War , then the common assumption is, well, the Americans cracked the Enigma Code. (It was actually the British who did so.) Books, too, have an influence, especially those that are combined with a glossy movie. Take The Da Vinci Code , for example. Dan Brown tells us therein that the church only agreed to affi...