The Da Vinci Code

A friend of mine strongly encouraged me to read this book. Let me rephrase that: he kept asking me if I'd read it, until I finally relented and reserved it at the library. It was a good book and I'd recommend reading it, but here are some things you might want to know:

1. There is no such thing as a "professor of symbology."

2. There is no Robert Langdon.

3. There are no monks in Opus Dei.

So that was my first major reaction to this book: it is a work of fiction and yet there is a lot of stuff woven through it to make it seem very real and convincing. I didn't know, for example, that there are no monks in Opus Dei, until I talked to someone who used to be a nun and who has friends in Opus Dei. And then I watched him weave through other things and there was this weird feeling of: "Is this true? Because the last thing I read wasn't, but that could be true."

But my second reaction was this: the novel really makes use of a lot of the stuff I learned in Divinity school. The Bible, for example, was not sent to us by fax from heaven. There is a gospel of Mary, and the Catholic Christianity that Constantine eventually adopted was one of many competing strains before Constantine converted. When I learned about these things, though, they seemed a little technical, and kind of dry. So what surprises me is this: people are fascinated by the Da Vinci Code! All this old Biblical and Christian history (and a healthy dose of conspiracy theory, as well as some earnest feminist undertones) and people are recruiting each other to read it!

I think sometimes it's easy for me to be inside a church and have this feeling that God only moves in worship, or even that God is only speaking to people who go to church. But I don't think that's true. This book moves people, and I think that if it's not God speaking to the readers, then it is God speaking to the church. We don't need to hold onto theologies that are "safe," when safe means familiar and anti-feminist, for example. Many people can accept these ideas, and even find them refreshing and enlightening. But what is more important, this book says to churches: God is speaking, and not only to us.