Did the Roman emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity after he had a vision of a cross before going into a battle, orchestrate and compile the New Testament canon?  So said someone at my atheist discussion group last night.  It's a common claim, one that has been tossed around for centuries but which has become more prominent recently with the work of the so-called Jesus Seminar.  Unfortunately, it flies in the face of much historical evidence.
     We have numerous almost complete canons, the Muratorian, Syriac, and Latin, among others, dated, in some cases, nearly two hundred years before Constantine took the throne.  In addition, we have many portions of the New Testament that date to almost the beginning of the second century A.D.  Moreover, the council at which Constantine supposedly "finalized" the canon, the Council of Nicaea in 323 A.D., was not convened to develop a New Testament canon.  It was convened to settle, once and for all, the question of the divinity of Jesus (by the way, it decided that, given all the biblical and historical evidence, he was--and still is).
     Hence, when I hear such arguments, which were also made famous by Dan Brown in his best selling Da Vinci Code, I feel compelled to ask those making them this:  what's your evidence?  Although we can discuss almost ad infinitum whether we ought to construct our lives around the claims of the New Testament, we should at least do so with a proper view of the New Testament's origins and setting in history.  It's only fair.
     Besides, if the New Testament is indeed historically accurate and true, the answer to the question of how we should respond to it becomes patently obvious.  Now the history we know becomes the basis for the God we can, through Jesus Christ (see John 14:6), know as well.