The Da Vinci Code

I have (finally) read the controversial bestseller. I felt compelled toward this for a couple reasons. One, I’m highly skeptical of many Christian book reviewers. They lack subtlety. Two, I felt that if I wanted to consider myself cultured, I ought to know about one of culture’s most recent and beloved firestorms. If nothing else, it gives one something better to discuss than the weather. On that note, I give you my own review. [Fair warning: It’s longish. And there's a fair-to-good chance I'll tick someone off. :)]

As a Story
This is the easiest bit, so I put it first. The story is a standard adventure story: many implausibilities, non-stop action, puzzles, and plot twists. It certainly made for a quick and pleasant read. The puzzles were actually rather fun – they were pretty decent and added a different element to the reading experience. The characters were somewhat endearing, though not very distinct and rather stupid. There was more than once that I wanted to whack them over the head to tell them to hurry up and figure things out already. The plot kept up a racing pace and didn’t drop any of its threads… which is about all you could ask of it, considering the genre :).

But that’s obviously not why people are talking about this book… It is the book’s themes that have set off the current reaction. People are interested in its underlying assumptions and factual basis (or lack thereof). So, what’s all the fuss about?

Factual Difficulties
Yes, Brown’s got trouble with some of his facts – or, rather, the book contains many factual errors that people have decided to take as truth (since technically the book does not claim that these things are true… not that it claims they’re not either). The Council of Nicea did not make the first declaration of Jesus’ divinity. The Gnostic gospels are not lost Christian writings friendly to women (Gospel of Thomas, anyone?). Jesus and Mary Magdalene were not married. But y’all are educated folk and I don’t need to tell you these things. What I find more interesting than the factual errors themselves are the themes they are used to support. What is it that Brown really cares about?

Themes
1. The Sacred Feminine
Brown posits that the Church has destroyed the sacred feminine. In order to understand this statement, we first need to understand what he means by “sacred feminine.” He means feminine deity – or at least the communicated attributes of the Feminine and the Divine. His idea of the Feminine, however, contains echoes of Freud. Woman is summed up in her sexuality alone and is defined by what she offers to men. He says all cultures used to have goddesses (and their various rites) to fill this need, but that the Church saw this as a threat to its power and destroyed it.

This is a tangly little mess. He’s on the right track… but headed in the wrong direction. Too many Christians, when they hear “sacred feminine” think “evil” and run away in the other direction… playing right into the hands of Brown, et al. What we need to realize is that we have a concept of the sacred feminine and that ours is more complete than theirs. While a woman’s sexuality is an important part of who she is, it is not her end and be all. Man and woman are both created in the image of God and each one shows forth His essence in different ways. We hear about God’s feminine attributes often, but don’t call them out for what they are: beauty, life-bringing, wisdom, mystery, nurture, and protection. Perhaps, if we did refer to them for what they are, there would be less room for mistaken accusation from people like Brown.

2. Christian Symbology
Brown also makes the accusation that the Church’s symbology is nothing more than retreaded pagan symbology. (That is, the Church isn’t doing anything new, it’s just borrowing from old religions.)

I’m not here to argue that the Church’s symbology is wholly new to it and has no roots in previous pagan worship practices. The thing is, I don’t see any problem with this – I’m all for “plundering the Egyptians.” If Plato had some really awesome things to say that can be made Christian by Augustine, if the Celtic cross contains elements that were at one time pagan, if Baldr makes a good Christ figure – why shouldn’t we appropriate what is good and right from other peoples’ myths and symbols? Of course, it’s always best to do this knowingly, so that we have a reasoned response for those who, like Brown, do not understand. Too few Christians care about symbols at all these days and too many would be frightened by Brown’s claim that their symbols were formerly pagans’.

3. The Nature of Religion
Brown’s final contention is that all religions, Christianity included, are just the work of men seeking to understand the incomprehensible. From our intrepid hero: “…every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith – acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.” They are, in a sense, noble lies that help us (or, at least, those of us not “in the know”) get through life.

Oh, the potential… Sure, his definition of faith is off by a hair… and his idea of Christianity as metaphor is warped… but hidden there in that statement is also an excellent argument for the via negativa (an item that gets little publicity even within the Church, no wonder that Brown doesn’t get it). We call God “Father” and “King” and, for that matter, “He.” But we must also remember that these descriptions fall short. Sunday school, rightly done, ought not to be like the religion of the ancient Egyptians, because it is not really about religion at all. It is about a relationship with the Indescribable.

In the end, whether he meant to or not, Brown has done good through his book – he has made people think. He has made non-Christians curious about Christian things. He has challenged Christians to study why they believe what they believe. The Da Vinci Code has raised a lot of questions in a lot of minds. Now it is our joy to use the gifts of knowledge that we’ve been given to help answer them.