The DaVinci Myth vs. The Gospel Truth - Online Christian Library

ERRORS IN THE DA VINCI CODE
sides. There were no church buildings in those days or
Christian broadcasting or publishing. Christianity was
completely underground. The only creeds were very general.
They only summarized the key doctrines, like the
Apostles’ Creed, reported to be from the second century.
The canon of the New Testament wasn’t even officially
complete—although there was a de facto canon in
operation that consisted of about 80 percent of the
New Testament.
Then, in 313, when the Church was made legal
under Emperor Constantine, doctrinal conflicts that had
been simmering all along began to come to the forefront.
The first key conflict revolved around the deity of
Jesus Christ and, therefore, the triune nature of God. Was
Jesus inferior to the Father? Was He “made” as opposed
to “begotten”? In one sense, we could say the conflict
was over the eternality (not deity) of Jesus Christ. That is,
was He a created being, even if He was in some way
divine? Was there “a time when He was not”? Those very
words come from Arius (d. 336), presbyter of
Alexandria, who believed that to be the case. (We can see
the gist of the Arian views of Jesus’ inferior divinity in the
modern cult of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.)
Although the understanding of the Trinity and the
divine nature of Jesus is virtually universally accepted
today by Christians of all denominations (not counting
cult groups on the fringe), this acceptance didn’t come
easily, even after the Nicene Council. For half a century
(from 325 to 381), a strong battle raged between
Athanasius, who championed the Trinity (as we know
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