Da Vinci Code review

Well, I was prepared for the attempted debunking of the New Testament witness to Jesus.

I was not ready for what Dan Brown replaces it with: pagan, fertility goddess worship. And literal worship, too. Secret societies peforming the same kinds of sex rites the Canaanites did long ago, for which God destroyed them and Israel when Israel followed suit. On the last page, the main character kneels reverently in thought of the "sacred feminine." This was wacky stuff, which Brown tries his level best to make plausible and authentic. These things aren't included peripherally. They are part of the main plot, and the worshipers are dear, loving, grandfatherly relatives.

Dan Brown tries his best to make paganism attractive and to make the orthodox faith repulsive. Not to overdo the point, but at many points I had to stop, turn to the back inside jacket photo of the author and just ponder: how possessed by Satan is this man? Perhaps a bit sensational, but no one can outdo Dan Brown himself for breathless sensationalism.

There is a lot of half-truth mixed in with the lies, to make it plausible to a certain kind of person. This book incarnates the cliche: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. On the half-truth side, he does give lots of historical information that has some explanatory value for things we live with today. The source of the 4 suits in playing cards, numerical patterns in creation based on the PHI number 1.618. Things got really interesting when he came to Da Vinci's The Last Supper painting. Is John, seated to Jesus' right, with no beard, a feminine appearance and long red hair, actually Mary Magdalene? I have a copy hanging in my home study, so I went to look. Huh. Plausible, but not convincing.

Sorry if I'm running ahead of myself here. The basic assertion of the book is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and they had children with a family tree that continues today. Jesus wanted Mary to lead His church after His death, but those woman-hating apostles took over (note Peter's threatening gestures toward "Mary" in The Last Supper). The church has been suppressing the truth ever since, to preserve its own power, stamping out other texts like gospels of Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, etc. Secret societies retain knowledge of the truth, and their members - like Leonardo Da Vinci - drop clues to the truth in their art work.

But doesn't it make just as much sense that the New Testament Gospels were copied and circulated because they were more true to the apostles' experience of Jesus than the wacko stories you find in Thomas and others? Dan Brown pooh-poohs conspiracy theories, but his whole argument is based on one: the church intentionally covered up the truth about Jesus with a propaganda machine involving a list of approved books (our New Testament), Nicea's statment of Christ's divinity, Constantine merging Christianity with pagan holidays, etc.

There is more crazy stuff than I've got time to write about, and it really wasn't worth the time it took to read the book, either, although I'd rather face the disturbing fact that so many people are reading such dark stuff. I'm not sure what to make of the book's popularity. Are people looking for an excuse to stay away from the Church? It has to be more than that it's a page-turner; there are lots of those. Is there a resurgence of paganism under all this? Possibly. If so, this book will go down in history as a significant vehicle to paganism's popular revival. I take it as yet another indication that we're becoming more and more like the ancient, pagan Roman empire: pleasure-loving, pluralistic religion, anything-goes spirituality. May God grant us more Augustines to see beyond our kingdom's decline and fall to our priority of living in the city of God, in whatever sort of culture we find ourselves.

I might be back with more on this after reading May's Tabletalk. Its title is "The Da Vinci Hoax." For now, I'll leave you with a quote that, apart from strong anti-Catholic and orthodox Christian themes, sums up the book religiously: "Rosslyn Chapel was a shrine to all faiths... to all traditions... and, above all, to nature and the goddess." My basic response: yeah, right.