FREE ADVERTISING FOR THE EVIL ONE: THE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO THE DA VINCI CODES

By V. Rev. Fr. George Morelli, Ph.D. A simple glance at the Christian press and internet sites surrounding the opening of the Da Vinci Code movie makes quite evident Hollywood and the book author Dan Brown have probably nothing in their budget expenses. The various Christian denominations are providing them with all the advertising they need. If you ask me what other movies have been released in the past few months I do not think I can think of one. But I sure know about the Da Vinci Codes. A survey in one of my local television stations the day before the movie release indicated a whopping 80% of the respondents were planning on viewing this film. On a national news broadcast that same day I heard that among Americans polled the majority believed the contents of this so called ‘fictitious’ book were true. It was also reported in increasingly atheistic Great Britain the ‘belief’ in the veracity of the book and film was even greater. I do not know one national or local newspaper or Television newscast that has not broadcast the Christian outrage over the book and film. The lure of the forbidden fruit. What is banned is enticing. There have been many reputable scholarly responses to the content of the book and movie. This reflection is not to restate what is readily available. (http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/GOAJudas.php). My purpose is to lament that those who call themselves Christian would rise to the occasion and respond to challenge and keep this book and movie at the forefront of the news. One important psychological lesson: the greatest way to disrespect something or someone is to completely disregard its or their existence. In actuality this is exactly what secular society wants to do with Christ: disregard and ignore Him. Movie and TV actors and actresses are pictured eating, drinking, driving cars, fornicating, committing adultery, murder, theft laughing, hugging, expressing political opinions etc. When was the last time going to church, saying mealtime or bedtime prayer was incorporated into the average primetime script? Except for politically correct ‘new age’ beliefs or ever popular Islam, anything Christian is eschewed except something that in most modernist anti-Christian society will attack and bring down Christianity more directly. Hence the popularity of the so called ‘Gospel of Judas,” “Gnostic gospels” and the Da Vinci Codes. The Holy Spirit can bring good out of what is seemingly evil. As of this writing the critic and audience response to this film has been less than spectacular. Is it possible in a stunning turn around secular anti-Christian audiences will unknowingly do the work of God and bring down the work of the evil one? It is possible the blatant falsity of such books, films and pseudo-gospels and will have an opposite effect and somehow through God’s grace viewers will see the real Christ and his church. I pray it is so. In a previous article on Making the Orthodox Church Smaller? (Morelli, 2006, http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliChurch.php.) I cited the words of St. John Chrysostom: For it is better to offer our accustomed prayers with two or three who keep the laws of God than to sweep together a multitude of transgressors and corruptors of others . . . For there is not, nay there is not, another life we may find free from all evils, but this alone. And you are witnesses who know the plots in king's courts and the troubles in the houses for the rich. But there was not among the apostles any such thing. Contrast Chrysostom’s ‘complaint’ with the account of the early years of the Church: “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And fear came upon every soul; and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need. And day-by-day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved" (Acts 2: 41-47) . There are sharp declines in people who identity themselves as “Christian” yet alone “Orthodox Christians”. It is possible the Holy Spirit want ‘genuine committed Christians to make up the body of Christ and do His work and not be enticed and fooled by the fictitious history and heresy like “Da Vinci and the so called Gospel of Judas.” The prophet Zephaniah tells us that in times of shameful deeds and rebellion even in the worst of times God will have " a faithful remnant" among us: "On that day you shall not be put to shame because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me; for then I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord, those who are left in Israel; they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue. For they shall pasture and lie down, and none shall make them afraid." (Zeph. 3:11-13) God's Remnant will reject the values and treasures of the secular world, and remain His people. This faithful remnant, the Anawim, guarantees the future survival of the Orthodox Church, by committing themselves to his word in, thought deed and action. In today’s terminology they may makeup a counterculture. The Orthodox Church and faithful Christians may find themselves among this zealous few, who maintain and witness Christ in this world beyond the secularist mainstream. Thus in the words of St. John Chrysostom it may be better to have 2 or 3 than the multitudes (even those who call themselves Orthodox Christians. This will take great commitment, founded on deep prayer and connection with our spiritual church fathers, being united to the mind of the church, (http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliOrthodoxPsychology.php) a heart and mind enlightened and illumined and focused on Christ, fed by the spiritual food of the Holy Mysteries. To be part of the Anawim of Christ will require by grace the great gift of Strength and Fortitude from the Holy Spirit. In Christ all the Da Vinci Codes and so called gospel of Judases in the world have no meaning. Let us aim to be Christ’s committed remnant.

CONSPIRACY AND MYSTERY - The Da Vinci Code and the Truth of Jesus Christ

By John Stamps +++
This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 27 No. 4, Winter 2005.

http://www.conciliarpress.com/

If you like conspiracy stories, you’ll love The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which has sold over 17 million copies. That’s a lot of conspiracy theory being consumed by readers all over the world. Sony Pictures will release a movie version in May 2006, with Ron Howard directing, Tom Hanks playing the internationally renowned Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon, and Audrey Tautou as Langdon’s sidekick, Sophie Neveu.

If The Da Vinci Code were just one more paranoid-but-entertaining tale of individuals terrified by clandestine multinational institutions masking their evil intentions, it’d be hardly worth mentioning. But its overwhelming popularity and strong anti-Christian message have shaped the perceptions of many people about Christianity, presumably including some who should know better but don’t. An angry and suspicious public seems fascinated by, and hungering for, anything anti-Roman Catholic.

I confess, I liked The Da Vinci Code as a detective story. I fully expected to detest it, but was hooked by the second page. Other than the story being set in Paris rather than Memphis, The Da Vinci Code reminded me of a rip-snorting John Grisham thriller. If you’re into mysteries, what’s not to like about one secret society viciously murdering members of another secret society that is threatening to expose the biggest secret the world has ever known?

But here’s the rub. Dan Brown's revisionist "history" of early Christianity is blasphemous to Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox alike. The premise is that one mysterious cabal, Opus Dei, is trying to keep another, the Priory of Sion, from revealing that Mary Magdalene wasn’t just a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth but His wife. The legendary Holy Grail is not a chalice but her secret tomb. And Sophie Neveu ends up being not just Robert Langdon’s sidekick. She’s really the great-great-great-granddaughter of Mary Magdalene. Oh yes, and also of Jesus.

The Da Vinci Code and the Humanity of Jesus

I found the sheer silliness of The Da Vinci Code exasperating. For instance, the use of the word “symbologist” to describe the profession of Robert Langdon reminds me of the Tin Man’s honorary degree of Th.D., “Doctor of Thinkology,” conferred by the Universitatus Committiartum E Pluribus Unum in The Wizard of Oz. I have an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary and studied at Yale Divinity School, and I have never heard of a “symbologist.” Is Brown pulling our leg? Why can’t Robert Langdon just be a professor of comparative religion, or perhaps semiotics?

For all Dan Brown’s claims to historicity and attention to detail (the opening of the book proclaims that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate”), The Da Vinci Code is sloppy and ultimately disingenuous. Brown clearly relishes the shock value of informing readers that everything we thought we knew about Jesus and the Bible is actually the result of a chilling conspiracy.

But Brown’s distaste for the Roman Catholic Church has caused him to play fast and loose with historical detail. For example, Sir Leigh Teabing, a character in the novel who I thought at first was a good guy but who later turns out to be a very bad guy, intones solemnly these dubious claims about Nicea and the New Testament:

The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not magically fall from the clouds. The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great. In 325 AD, he decided to unify Rome under a single religion: Christianity. Constantine needed to strengthen the new Christian tradition and held a famous gathering known as the Council of Nicea. Until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by his followers as a mortal prophet . . . a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal. Jesus’ establishment as the Son of God was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicea. A relatively close vote at that. Nonetheless, establishing Christ’s divinity was critical to the further unification of the Roman Empire and to the new Vatican power base.

Brown’s paranoia about “the secret the Vatican was trying to bury in the fourth century” is a bizarre anachronism. He makes the New Testament canon and the divinity of Jesus sound like the insidious result of dark papal intrigue, when the Vatican as we know it wouldn’t exist for many more centuries. By obsessing about Vatican machinations, Brown creates an account of early Christianity that is weirdly skewed. The Council of Nicea in 325 was largely an Eastern Ecumenical Council, with very limited Western representation—over 300 of the 318 bishops represented the Eastern Church.

Dan Brown displays considerable chutzpah in his garbled mixture of truths (“the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven”), half-truths (the vote at Nicea was not close: 316 bishops against two, Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia), and outrageous disinformation (“Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote”). Suffice it to say that historic Christianity answers Jesus’ fundamental question, “Who do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27), without lapsing into two equal-but-opposite errors:

• “He’s a man, he’s just a man,” as a sexually frustrated Mary Magdalene sings in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. 
•  He’s a god disguised as a man. He only seemed to be human.

Teabing characterizes Nicea as the first time the Church ever thought about divinizing Jesus. This assertion is simply wrong. Jesus of Nazareth is confessed as Lord and God in the first-century pages of the New Testament itself (for example, in John 1:1; John 20:28; Philippians 2:5–6). If anything, Jesus was such a godlike figure in early Christianity that the real question posed by orthodox and heretic alike was: Just how human is Jesus?

Many Christians through the ages could not fathom how God could suffer and die on the Cross. One solution that the Church rejected quite early—the heresy of Docetism—was that Jesus only “seemed” to die. To this very day, while denying His divinity, Islam still refuses to accept that Jesus actually died on the Cross. In an extended harangue against the People of the Book, the Qu’ran states that the Jews only deceived themselves when they thought they had killed Jesus—“they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them” (Surah 4).

But mainstream Christianity, Latin and Greek, consistently refused such a superficial resolution to the paradox that God the Son died on the Cross. Jesus’ humanity was so real that His death could be dated in space and time. Adapting the language of St. Luke and St. Paul (Acts 4:27; 1 Timothy 6:13), early Christian creeds confessed that Jesus died “under Pontius Pilate.” In a letter to his friend Cledonius, St. Gregory Nazianzus in 382 summarized the orthodox response to doubts about Jesus’ true humanity in an elegant formula that has become axiomatic for orthodox christology: “What is not assumed is not healed, but what is united with God is also being saved.”

Jesus’ divinity did not swallow up His humanity, as though His human nature were a drop of water falling into the infinite sea of deity. God the Word Incarnate assumed a fully human body, soul, mind, and will. St. Gregory cogently argues that any human dimensions Jesus did not actually possess would not be healed in us. After all, human beings are not angels. We’re “amphibians,” so to speak, composed of flesh and spirit. Our redemption is less than complete if God does not heal us at precisely those points where sin has gravely injured us. If the whole person is wounded, the whole person needs healing.

During the next four centuries or so, the Church consistently applied the axiom of St. Gregory Nazianzus to clarify just how human Jesus was in the Incarnation. If there is any human dimension—flesh, soul, mind, will, or energy—that God did not assume in the Incarnation when He became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, then our salvation becomes a tragic fiction. If God the Son is not fully human, then we are less than fully saved.

The twin mysteries of Incarnation and Resurrection reveal to us that salvation is not from the body—the central tenet of all religions and philosophies that doubt or deny the goodness of the material creation—but God’s salvation of the body. We Christians don’t long for the immortality of the soul, a hope owing more to Plato or Plotinus than to Jesus Christ, but as St. Paul confesses: “Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” ().

If Jesus of Nazareth is not God incarnate, the confession that He is somehow “Savior” is not just presumptuous but blasphemous. Only God can save us (Isaiah 63:8 LXX). And He wills to save us by partaking of our flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:14). God saves humans where sin has injured us by becoming human Himself. God became what I am, that I might become what God is. We call this mystery “divinization,” or in its Greek form, theosis.

Theosis possesses its own fearful symmetry with Incarnation, what St. Maximus the Confessor describes as God’s “blessed inversion.” Our own deification is the flip side of the Incarnation of God the Word. St. Gregory proclaimed this marvelous exchange in one of his famous theological orations: “He remained what He was; what He was not, He assumed.” He remained God but became Man. And as God became human without ceasing to be God, so mere mortals are deified without ceasing to be creatures. God created us to be His glorious reflection, in body, soul, and spirit. He wants to give us by grace everything that He is by nature. Without change, God became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). And without ceasing to be creatures, humans are made divine.

Dan Brown’s alter ego, Sir Leigh Teabing, breathlessly asserts there were over 80 gospels purged from the historical record. Church historians offer various criteria for a book to be included among the 27 of the New Testament canon: Was it publicly read in worship? Was it apostolic? Was it part of an approved list? Did it conform to the rule of faith? But there’s one truly compelling reason why pseudo-gospels like the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip, or the Dialogue of the Savior were excluded from the Church’s canon of Scripture—they undermined her experience of the fullness of the mystery of Jesus Christ. The spurious gospels collapsed that perfect tension between His divinity and His humanity into wishy-washy compromise.

To do justice to the Jesus worshipped by the Church, both East and West, we must confess that He is fully God and fully human. We cannot dissolve this paradox without grave injustice to the mystery of Jesus Christ. The “Jesus” depicted in the rejected gospels might be a fair-to-middling gnostic enlightener. But he’s not the Savior who saves us where we need it the most. Our shattered humanity desperately needs God’s healing touch, right down to our very toenails.

Decoding Symbols but Not Perceiving the Mystery

The Da Vinci Code is as much an intellectual challenge as it is a good thriller. With Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu tracking down clues all over Paris and London, I was spellbound as I too tried to piece the clues together so I could also solve the mystery of the Holy Grail.

Some mysteries are easier to solve than others. You simply need to gather all the clues you can find in order to solve the crime. But other mysteries require considerably more effort. Robert and Sophie had all the pieces of the puzzle they needed to open the locked box at the heart of the story right under their noses the entire time. They just didn’t know how to fit the pieces together: “[Her grandfather’s] final password—those five letters that unlocked the Priory’s ultimate secret—would prove to be not only symbolically fitting but crystal clear. If this solution were anything like the others, it would be painfully obvious once it dawned.”

Figuring out the exact combination of letters that opens the cryptex but doesn’t destroy the papyrus map that leads to the Holy Grail is essentially an exercise in advanced problem solving. If you figure out the code, you figure out the mystery. Once we discover that “APPLE” is the password, any nitwit can unlock the cryptex. It’s not a mystery any more. In the conventional sense of the word, mysteries are no longer mysteries when we have solved them.

At a conservative estimate, my wife Shelly reads over 100 mysteries per year. She’s so clever that she can typically figure out who the villain is by the time she reaches the middle of the book. But some “whodunits” she can’t figure out until the last page, or sometimes even the last paragraph. For any story worthy of the mystery genre, dogged persistence isn’t enough. We must also exercise considerable ingenuity to solve them. If you’re exceptionally clever, you’re worthy to solve the mystery. As Robert tells Sophie: “If you’re smart enough to read [the code], you’re permitted to know what is being said.”

The Da Vinci Code shares here the conventional view of mystery shared by most people in the world. But when Christians say that God is a mystery, we don’t mean a code that we can crack or a secret that we can discover. There are no sleuthing techniques we can perfect. Figuring out the mystery of God isn’t like hacking into someone’s computer. When it comes to knowing God, the skill set required to solve, for example, the Murder on the Orient Express counts for very little. When Christians insist that God is a mystery, we mean something entirely different.

God is mystery in the deepest theological sense of the word. For even when God has revealed Himself, He still remains hidden. If the Pharisees had snapped a digital photo of Jesus dying on the Cross, they still would not have seen what the Roman centurion saw when he confessed, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!” (9). On the plane of human history, God is veiled from our view. Everywhere we look in the very human life of Jesus—His birth, miracles, crucifixion and Resurrection—God remains shrouded from human scrutiny.

God’s revelation is not as if He has blurted out a secret that He can’t take back. When God reveals the deep truths of redemption, the mysteries do not stop being mysteries. In fact, they become even more intensely mysterious. St. Dionysius the Areopagite’s letter to Gaius describes this paradox of revelation:

The Transcendent has put aside its own hiddenness and has revealed itself to us by being a human being. But He is hidden even after this revelation and is hidden even amid the revelation. For this mystery of Jesus remains hidden and can be drawn out by no word or mind. What is to be said of it remains ineffable; what is to be understood of it remains unknowable.

When we behold the Lord of Glory lifted high upon the precious and life-giving Cross, we contrast the faith of the Roman centurion with the complete and utter incomprehension of Pontius Pilate. Pilate does not recognize the kingship of Jesus; it is a mystery veiled right before his very eyes. When God reveals Himself most clearly, He still remains hidden.

Believe it or not, the historical evidence for the New Testament as we know it today is remarkably good. But no matter how thorough his research, with no stone or page left unturned, no amount of historical or archeological evidence would reveal to the historian that the man Jesus of Nazareth is actually God Incarnate. With great wonder, Isaiah exclaims his own inability to understand what the Holy God is doing in Israel’s history: “Truly You are God, who hide Yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior!” ()

The Triune God as revealed to us in grace and love is a mystery over whom we have no control. Not even the highest ranks of the seraphim and cherubim can understand God in His essence. We can only know God in His revelation. But even then, God remains inscrutable, His judgments unsearchable, and His ways past finding out (Romans 11:33).

In the anticlimax that is The Da Vinci Code, the leads in Robert and Sophie’s quest for the Holy Grail peter out. They don’t find the relics of Mary Magdalene buried in the chapel vault. The cache of Holy Grail documents they hoped would once and for all expose the lies and fabrications of the Roman Catholic Church is nowhere to be found. Their quest hits a dead end. Blinded to any alternative view of the evidence—i.e. what the Church, both West and East, has believed everywhere, always, and by all—Robert Langdon, world-renowned Harvard “symbologist,” ends up with a faith no more credible than that of the wildest Appalachian snake-handler. Obsessed with symbols, he cannot perceive realities.

Dan Brown’s treatment of the Christian Faith is stunningly obtuse. His disregard for historical detail and his rabid anti-Catholic prejudice blind him to the deep mysteries right under his very nose. The Incarnation of God the Word is mystery par excellence. But God is certainly not a mystery we can solve. We cannot reduce the mystery of God to mere decryption. But if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, mystery—genuine mystery!—surrounds us. Only God can reveal God, and in His light we can see light.

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John Stamps is currently Senior Technical Writer at BMC Software in Sunnyvale, California. He holds a BA in Greek from Abilene Christian University, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and did work towards an STM in philosophy of religion at Yale University. He is married to Shelly Stamps and attends St. Stephen Orthodox Church in Campbell, California.

This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 27 No. 4, Winter 2005.