Worship Articles by Stephen M. Newman Pastor of Worship and Arts September 14, 2005

As I write this, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has spent over eight months on the New York Times best-seller List, much of that time at No. 1. The book is a fast-paced piece of fiction, and it's fun to read. It says some startling things about Christianity, and that often sells.

The novel describes the murder of Jaques Saunière, curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris. His nude body is found at midnight in the Louvre's Grand Salon. He's positioned his body to resemble Leonardo Da Vinci's sketch, The Vitruvian Man. In his lifeless hand he holds a black light pen, and written on the floor beside his body is a message that is obviously in code.

Harvard's Professor of Religious Symbology, Robert Langdon, is called, primarily because the message mentions his name. Even though he's the immediate suspect, he's Brown's hero, described as "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed" (Brown, 9). The next character to appear is Sophie Neveu, a lovely young cryptologist with the DCPJ, France's answer to the FBI. Since she's Saunière's granddaughter, the message is aimed at her.

The reader is told who the murderer is. He is Silas, an albino hit man who works for Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group. He's been hard at work, murdering the four men who know the location of the Holy Grail. Saunière is the fourth and last, and his encoded message is meant to lead his granddaughter and Robert Langdon to the Grail. The rest of the book is spent with Robert Langdon and Sophie running around France and England, with Silas and the French police hot on their trail.

Why would such a book elicit so much interest in the Christian community? Subtly packaged in the plot is a completely renovated history of Christianity. For example, several of the characters assert that Christianity, as we know it, is a complete fraud. Jesus was not divine and never claimed to be. His elevation to godhood was the result of political maneuvering in the fourth century. Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and the two had a daughter, Sarah. The apostles rewrote history to preserve their own power, repackaging Mary as a harlot. The descendants of Jesus and Mary are still alive, and the Holy Grail is currently under their protection. And last but not least, Mary Magdalene is the Holy Grail.

Admittedly, that's a lot of baggage for a work of fiction. His shallow argumentation is irritating, and by the end of the book the studied intellectualism gets laborious. But it's not a bad read, and it has a lot of people talking about Jesus. They're working with a great deal of misinformation, but they're talking about Jesus, and that's a plus.

What follows is a brief description of the arguments against Christianity, as offered by Brown's characters. What are they actually saying, what evidence is cited, and does it hold water? If you're a Christian, you may have friends who have read the book or heard about it, and they're interested in this. If someone wants to talk about Jesus, I want to be able to interact with him in an intelligent way. And that's the thinking behind what follows.

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