The Da Vinci Code, Part 1


If you've heard about the book and the stir it's made, then the fact that a movie is coming out in December shouldn't suprise you. The Da Vinci Code, a New York Times bestseller, is a mystery novel written by Dan Brown. It continues the escapades of Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of symbology and a very mild version of Indiana Jones. Langdon's adventures are told in other Dan Brown novels like Angels and Demons. In each case, Langdon finds himself unwittingly persuaded to help find the answers to varous riddles and codes, dogding bullets and henchmen, in order to unlock the key to some profound mystery of the world and foil the schemes of diabolical groups. What makes Langdon's adventures interesting is the historicity and complexity involved in unraveling clues and ancient codes. What makes the story even more interesting, however, is the controversial nature of its inferences and conclusions. Though Brown's novels are fictional, many readers have taken some of his ideas as fact, especially concerning his views on Christianity and the Catholic Church.

The Da Vinci Code has created the biggest waves of late in Dan Brown's novelizing. No small stir has it incited in the ranks of the Catholic Church, which has ample warrant to protest. Brown's seemingly historical and intellectual conclusions (i.e. Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene had sexual relations) go beyond historical redaction to heresy and blasphemy. Yet, as I said, many readers have digested Brown's ideas with ease. Soon, I fear, many movie-goers will as well. Now, whether or not people will buy wholeheartedly into Brown's advocation of feminine goddess worship and the like is doubtful. Still, the theories purported by Brown and his subtle commentary on topics like religion and science meld pretty seemlessly with what contemporary culture is already heralding as grounded fact. The Da Vinci Code may be one more nail in the coffin of the postmodern mind, which has traded its grounding in the historic realities of God's Word for a flight of fancy into intellectual, moral, and spiritual suidcide.

Needless to say, this subject is worth our thinking about.