"Da Vinci Code" roundtable highlights conference
From contributed reports
WAKE FOREST - More than 1,000 people ranging from high school and college students to seminary students, faculty and curious visitors gathered at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Feb. 3-4 to hear scholars discuss Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and the issues it raises regarding the reliability of the New Testament.
The roundtable discussion highlighted Southeastern's second annual 20/20 Collegiate Conference, an event designed to help students explore the implications of a Christian worldview and equip them to handle the difficult questions they will face on a college campus.
Featured in the panel discussion were Norman Geisler, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary; University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill professor Bart Ehrman, the chairman of the school's Department of Religious Studies; Duke University Divinity School associate professor of New Testament Richard Hays; and Southeastern professor of New Testament Andreas Kostenberger.
Southeastern President Daniel Akin said he believes this year's 20/20 Conference hit its mark in challenging students to know and defend their faith.
In addition to the roundtable discussion, the conference featured three elective seminars taught by members of the Southeastern faculty and local pastors, four plenary sessions taught by Akin and Geisler, and a fifth that featured Akin and Southeastern professors David Nelson and Bruce Little responding to students' questions.
During the roundtable discussion, the four panelists, though they did not find consensus on many issues - most notably regarding biblical inerrancy and the role of women in the church - did agree that The Da Vinci Code does not represent accurate history.
The book makes many claims that panelists noted are simply historically inaccurate and untenable, among them the assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a secret marriage relationship that produced a child. The book also claims that Jesus was not regarded as God until the 4th-century Council of Nicaea.
"We all four, I'm sure, are going to agree that there are egregious errors," Ehrman said, noting numerous inaccuracies that Brown espouses such as the claim that the Roman emperor Constantine had a say in the canonization of the New Testament or that there were 80 gospels in circulation in the church's early history.
"The myth perpetrated by The Da Vinci Code may make good storytelling ...but it is just that, a myth," Kostenberger said, adding that someone must "hold Dan Brown accountable for selling fiction as historical fact."
Hays was even less complimentary of the book.
Calling The Da Vinci Code "dreadful literature," "full of egregious historical errors," "a teeth-grinding experience," and "deeply confused theologically," Hays noted that it also has a readily observable anti-Catholic bias.
"It is characterized from start to finish by a virulent anti-Catholicism, a terrible bias against the Catholic church as an institution," said Hays, who belongs to the United Methodist denomination. "I find this a deeply morally offensive view on these grounds, and I should make clear that I'm not a Roman Catholic."
"What does the runaway popularity of this novel say about our culture? Everybody loves a conspiracy. Many people in the U.S. would like to believe Christianity is a myth that was cooked up."
Geisler, who admitted that he was "dragged kicking and screaming" into reading the novel for the purpose of the roundtable discussion, said that the novel, while terribly inaccurate, does raise "the fundamental issue of the historicity of the New Testament."
"If the New Testament is an authentic book, historically reliable and giving us the truth, then, of course, this book is a bunch of hogwash," Geisler said. He also cautioned, "If you can't trust the New Testament...then you can't trust anything from ancient history."
With regard to the question of whether Christianity devalues the feminine, the panelists diverged in their opinions.
"I myself don't think traditional Christianity has celebrated the feminine," Ehrman said. "I absolutely agree that The Da Vinci Code gets most of this wrong, but not because the church has been a liberating experience for women. If men and women are not allowed equal roles, that implies superiority and inferiority."
Kostenberger disagreed, arguing from a complementarian perspective that men and women have an equal value and intrinsic worth that is not related to their position because they are made in God's image. Additionally, sinful abuse in the past does not invalidate Scripture's model for male headship, he said.
"It is true that many of the church fathers and the institutional church have devalued the contributions of women, but we should not judge Christianity by these shortcomings but by what the Bible teaches," Kostenberger said, adding that "we should stop putting men against women and follow the apostle Paul's formula in Ephesians 5 of men loving their wives as Christ loved the church."
Perhaps the most contested question for panelists involved the New Testament as it relates to history and reliability. While Kostenberger and Geisler contended strongly for biblical inerrancy, both Hays and Ehrman found that explanation wanting.
"While the New Testament gospels do bear witness to the historical record of Jesus, they bring a theological witness, not a historical witness, to record," Hays said, adding that the New Testament contains "factual discrepancies that cannot be swept under the rug by any honest reader."
Ehrman, an agnostic who said that he formerly held to scriptural inerrancy while a student at Moody Bible College, told listeners that he changed his position during his studies at Princeton University, realizing that "God did not want me to throw away my mind." He urged students to read the New Testament to judge for themselves whether it contains errors.
Geisler, who spoke after Hays, vehemently debated his contention that the New Testament contains factual discrepancies.
"I couldn't disagree more," Geisler said. "The gospels might not be history, but they are historical."
He added that in his many years of study, he had yet to be met with an insoluble contradiction such as Hays and Ehrman were alleging. Furthermore, to speak of Scripture's errors is to impugn the character of the God who gave them, he said.
"To say that there is a mistake in the gospels is to me a very arrogant thing for human beings to say," Geisler said. "Let God be found true and every man be found a liar. To say there are errors is to charge God almighty with any error, and I don't think anyone wants to do that."
Many of the students in attendance, like Megan McConnell, said that the 20/20 Conference was a beneficial experience.
"I came to 20/20 because I go to Providence Baptist Church (in Raleigh) and they strongly suggested that we come to get a better idea of a biblical worldview and to get a lot of truth explained," said McConnell, a 22-year-old North Carolina State University student. "I think a really important thing that (moderator David Nelson) said at the end was that you learn that you have a lot left to learn. So I definitely have realized that there's a lot out there and a lot of things to be examined and to continue learning."
McConnell said that she thought the Da Vinci Code roundtable discussion will be helpful in giving her opportunities to discuss her faith with those who have read the book and have questions about its content.
Likewise Clark Leonard, a 19-year-old N.C. State student, said that he encounters people with a different worldview on his campus every day.
"I work at the newspaper, so just hearing people talk - there's a lot of stuff that you can tell is not from the same worldview," said Leonard, who added that he hopes that what he learned at the conference will be useful in relating to these people.
