reflections on the weekend with dr. scott caroll

Our time with historcial antiquities professor and archeologist Dr. Scott Caroll this weekend was priceless. There are very few people who could hold a couple of thousand people spellbound for hours at a time, Scott is such a man. His command of historical data from around 1,000 B.C. to about 400 A.D. is nothing short of astounding. I certainly wish our entire congregation could have made all 7 sessions we had with him.

Of course, his props weren't bad either. Dr. Caroll lectured (up and down the aisles of our worship center) with a large display of ancient manuscripts and priceless biblical texts laid out behind him on long tables across the front of the auditorium. We did not just benefit from his dynamic lectures, but were able to personally interact with ancient biblical materials. In making points about how biblical material was preserved, he would simply run to the table and pick up a artifact as an example. I have never been a part of a learning experience quite like it.

I do not think any of us will soon forget what we experienced. My 15 year old son remarked plainly when we said goodbye to Scott and his crew on Sunday night, "I am sad to see him go..." A remarkable statement from a teenager about an antiquities professor!

Here are just a few nuggets I picked up from this weekend:

1. The "Da Vinci Code" is not just a gross misrepresentation of actual historical Christian history, it also grossly misrepresents Gnosticism. The Gnostics, for instance, did not have a high view of women (despite the claims of Da Vinci Code).

2. The historicity and wide acceptance of the four gospels (and no other accounts) were already ancient history by the time of the 325 Council of Nicea. Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp who was the disciple of John the beloved wrote, "There are four gospels as sure as there are four winds".

3. The deity and humanity of Jesus was already accepted doctrine and therefore only affirmed by the 325 Council of Nicea.

4. Brown claims in Da Vinci Code that around 400 A.D., "thousands of documents chronicled Jesus life as mortal man." He also claims that because Constantine wanted to change the religion, he had documents destroyed; and that before that time, Jesus followers saw him not as deity but as a mortal prophet. There is ABSOLUTELY no proof of this in history. In fact, the earliest followers of Jesus are well documented on this and their historical veracity is unquestioned. Polycarp, Irenaeus, Turtellian, Eusibius all never questioned either Jesus' deity or His humanity (they championed the Christian docrtine that Jesus is all-God and all-man). There are NO documents that predate the early Christian documents that make the incredible claim that early Christians thought of Jesus as merely a mortal prophet.

5. The actual heresy (Arianism) dealt with at the Council questioned the humanity of Jesus, not His deity! His deity was a given. Further, Gnostics believed that anything material was evil, so they could not perceive that Jesus had ever been a man!

6. By the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., the makeup of the New Testament was already a foregone conclusion. The Council merely gathered to confirm what had been accepted for hundreds of years.

7. The so called evidence from earlier followers who did not believe Jesus was deity came from the Gnostic gospels. These documents were discovered in Nag Hammadi in central Egypt (thousands of miles from Jerusalem) in 1946. They were written in Coptic (not Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic). They date to 250-350 A.D.

8. When you challenge someone who believes this wild theory about the early church as to why there has not been a single document found before the 3rd or 4th century, they will typically respond "you Christians destroyed them all". Caroll's response, "I was too busy trying not to be fed to the lions to hunt you down and destroy your evidence!" At this time in church history, Christians were weak politically; poor, despised and marginalized by the Roman empire. How convenient to be able to say that my lack of evidence is evidence. Dr. Caroll makes this observation, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". It is not evidence of anything.

9. The fact that most of this stuff was made up by Dan Brown and presented as historical conspiracy in his popular novel has not stopped many Christians from believing it. 40% of evangelicals who have read this book have said that they were influenced by it. Great line from Caroll, "Christians are so gullable, you don't see Buddhist WWF or Hindu Nascar. It's only Christians who do that kind of stuff."

10. The church is in worse shape today than at any time in history to deal with this kind of heresy.