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Question 108 from TLJ, United Kingdom
Is the Christian response to the Da Vinci Code actually detrimental in that it’s giving extra publicity to it?

Question 109, from JG, United Kingdom
In The Da Vinci Code the author says that Jesus married Mary Magdalene. My question is not did he marry, but if he had, would it theologically have affected our salvation. I was wondering what you think about this question. My church is up in arms about this. Please help.

Whatever one’s views on The Da Vinci Code, it seems as if the controversy around it will not die down, despite the poor critical reception for the film version released this summer. Further controversy has been stirred by the court case in which the author, Dan Brown, was accused of plagiarising a number of ideas (Brown was later acquitted).

Opinion within Christian circles seems to be mixed. There are those who dismiss the whole controversy as irrelevant, others who regard it as a positive sign of ‘spiritual hunger’, and still others who condemn it outright as ‘blasphemous’. Previous articles on freelance theology have highlighted the numerous historical inaccuracies as well as other significant plot omissions. But certainly, as with the campaign by some Christian groups against Jerry Springer – the Opera, it would seem that the more extreme reaction to The Da Vinci Code have increased its notoriety and given it more free publicity than its really due.

In a way, perhaps Christians do have something to be worried about in the success of The Da Vinci Code. Certainly, the National Secular Society thought so, when it publicised an opinion poll conducted by the Roman Catholic Church. Obviously, the NSS take a particular stance on religion, hence the way the following quote is phrased, but it does make interesting reading:

“But does the Catholic Church have cause to be concerned that its own fantasies are being superseded by someone else’s? Yes it does, according to a new poll published by the Church this week. The poll shows that people who have read Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code believe its version of events rather than the official Christian version. Two thirds of Britons who have read the book believe that Jesus fathered a child with Mary Magdalene, a claim rejected as “baseless” by religious historians.

Fans of the book are also four times as likely to think that Opus Dei, whose members include the Cabinet minister Ruth Kelly, is a murderous sect. Seventeen per cent of readers are convinced that the lay group, whose founder was canonised by the late Pope John Paul II, has ordered or carried out a murder, compared with four per cent of those who have not read the book.

The poll found that more than one in five British adults have read the book, which has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and that a large proportion believe its central claims. Sixty per cent of the adults polled said after reading the book that they believed there was truth in the suggestion that Jesus had children and that his bloodline survives, compared with 30 per cent of those who have not read it.

Just under a third, 27 per cent, think that the Catholic Church is covering up the truth about Jesus, and the figure rises to 36 per cent among those who have read Brown’s novel.”

[Taken from the National Secular Society’s email newsletter Newsline in June 2006 – for more information see www.secularism.org.uk]

In the USA, the Barna research group have also been assessing the impoact of The Da Vinci Code. According to their research, roughly 45 million adults in the U.S. – that’s one out of every five adults (20%) – have read the book “cover to cover”. Barna claim: “That makes it the most widely read book with a spiritual theme, other than the Bible, to have penetrated American homes.”

Barna also note that critical responses form church leaders seem to have the opposite effect to that intended:

“The audience profile of the book is intriguing. Despite critical comments and warnings from the Catholic hierarchy, American Catholics are more likely than Protestants to have read it (24% versus 15%, respectively). Among Protestants, those associated with a mainline church are almost three times more likely than those associated with non-mainline Protestant congregations to have read the book.”

Additionally, Barna asked people about the perceived spiritual value of the book:

“Among the adults who have read the entire book, one out of every four (24%) said the book was either “extremely,” “very,” or “somewhat” helpful in relation to their “personal spiritual growth or understanding.” That translates to about 11 million adults who consider The Da Vinci Code to have been a helpful spiritual document.”

So, does that have an impact on what people actually believe? Among the 45 million who have read The Da Vinci Code , only 5% – about two million adults – said that they changed any of the beliefs or religious perspectives because of the book’s content.

“Before reading The Da Vinci Code people had a full complement of beliefs already in place, some firmly held and others loosely held,” explained George Barna, the author of numerous books about faith and culture. “Upon reading the book, many people encountered information that confirmed what they already believed. Many readers found information that served to connect some of their beliefs in new ways. But few people changed their pre-existing beliefs because of what they read in the novel. And even fewer people approached the book with a truly open mind regarding the controversial matters in question, and emerged with a new theological perspective. The book generates controversy and discussions, but it has not revolutionized the way that Americans think about Jesus, the Church or the Bible.”

But George Barna does add the following salient point: “On the other hand, any book that alters one or more theological views among two million people is not to be dismissed lightly. That’s more people than will change any of their beliefs as a result of exposure to the teaching offered at all of the nation’s Christian churches combined during a typical week.” [All quotes and research taken from www.barna.org]

The big question that Christians need to address is why a novel would have any effect on what people believe. One explanation, for which credit must go to Brother Bruno Clifton OP, is that books, by their very nature, carry a certain authoritative weight. There is a power in the written word, which isn’t present in cinema or television. It may be that the recent big screen version proves to be the book’s undoing, as the film was generally held to be unconvincing nonsense.

However, something that is written down is deemed to be more important and trustworthy. Dan Brown plays on this, as Stephen Tomkins pointed out in Third Way magazine: “…the very first word of the book is ‘FACT’, and Brown explicitly claims that the historical background is true.” No wonder then, that Tomkins goes on to say: “I have heard an appalling number of people talk about what they have learnt about the history of Christianity from The Da Vinci Code.” His explanation is that: “In truth, we know that all fiction contains fact, and we learn from it. Our knowledge of Victorian London is Dickensian (and less happily so is our version of the French revolution); we know about heroin from Irvine Welsh, Asperger’s from Mark Haddon, regency manners from Jane Austen, police procedure from The Bill. It is perfectly possible for fiction to tell the truth and for fiction to lie.” [Third Way, Summer 2006, p.30]

That last comment of Tomkins’ is crucial. While it does not benefit Christians to be ‘outraged’ by a fictional work that borders on ‘blasphemy’, it is also important that Christians stand up for truth, even in fiction. The Constantinian era of church history is well-documented. The canons of of the Council of Nicaea have been preserved, not just in ‘official’ records, but by opponents of the Nicene Creed as well. The central premise of The Da Vinci Code – that Jesus’ divinity was decided at a vote at Nicaea – is either unfathomable ignorance or a deliberate lie. Perhaps Christians should give Dan Brown the benefit of the doubt, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be corrected for his mistakes.

However, moving on to the question regarding the theological significance of Jesus being married, this is one of those ‘if’ questions that is interesting as a ‘thought experiment’, even if it has little practical value. One would assume that if Jesus had been married, then that would have been part of God’s pre-ordained plan of salvation and our theology would be slightly different accordingly. Certainly there wouldn’t have been the emphasis on celibacy in the early church, which then influenced the adoption of celibacy by the medieval catholic priesthood.

Alternatively if Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were not predestined, then maybe marriage was a possibility. Again, how much of a difference it would make is a bit of a moot point. It would be interesting, if Jesus truly did experience every human experience, to know how he would have reacted to possible domestic disharmony and marital conflict. The gospel accounts do record at least one instance of Jesus resolving a domestic dispute (see Luke chapter 10, verses 38-42) – so presumably, he knew how to handle familial arguments.

One other knock-on effect would be that, if Jesus had been married, it would eliminate the ‘church is the bride of Christ’ metaphor that seems very popular in some churches at the moment. It’s up to the individual Christian to decide whether that would be a bad thing, or not.

Thanks for your questions TLJ and JG.

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Some of my favourite films are the Star Wars series. As a story stretching over a number of films it’s quite famous and it has its fanatical adherents. The reason for that is because it taps into the big issues of life – the conflict between technology and the force mirrors the conflict in our world between science and the soul. There are themes of redemption, self-sacrifice and risking everything for the sake of someone or something else. In a world devoid of heroes, it’s nice to enter into a galaxy far, far away where the good guys somehow always get through and win.

A few years ago George Lucas decided it would be a good idea to release some prequel films. The main storyline of the prequels would centre on a young boy called Anakin Skywalker. Now, I don’t want to give anything away, if you haven’t seen the films, but I think it’s fairly common knowledge that Anakin grows up to become the evil Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader.

The first film, The Phantom Menace, introduces us to Anakin. The film itself isn’t that great, but it did have one of my favourite ever Star Wars film posters. It’s a picture of Anakin, walking along, looking at his feet the way all 8 year-old boys do, with a backpack slung over his shoulder. The sun is shining down on him and on the wall behind him it’s casting a shadow. The outline of the shadow is not that of a young boy, it is the instantly recognisable outline of the looming shape of the helmeted and caped Darth Vader.

It’s a very simple image and very arresting. Of course, from our vantage point, we know what it means. This kid is going to grow up and become a super villain. This shadow that is being cast is a shadow of the future, of what is going to happen, what we from our observation point absolutely 100% know is going to happen.

This story of David and Goliath casts similar shadows. It’s a tale that’s perhaps rendered slightly meaningless because we know it so well. It’s a story that casts shadows into the future because in it we see some of the key things that are going to be hallmarks of David’s life.

David’s Zeal for the Lord
The first thing that struck me about this story is David’s motivation. This is something we do need to be aware of when we are reading the Biblical stories because it is something we need to be aware of when we are assessing our own life following Jesus.

David could have been motivated by lots of things. He could have wanted to become the famous giant-killer. We are sometimes motivated like that. ‘If only I could read Power Evangelism and then start doing it and see lots of people become Christians and lots of people healed and drive out spiritual enemies, everybody would look at me and go, ‘Wow, he’s such a man of God!’

Does nobody else think like that? Well, I have to admit sometimes I do. And we have to be honest about that. It can be easy to love preaching more than you love the God you are effectively speaking for. There is a cult of Christian celebrity. We build people up as preachers or evangelists or worship leaders and that becomes the label we give them. And, along the way, there is the danger that a label like that is something we are hankering after as well. There is no easier way for our enemy to neutralise our effectiveness than to make us desperate to win affirmation from other human beings and, when we do that, we degrade ourselves to please the crowd.

Or, David could have been out there trying to prove himself. In the chapter immediately before this one, the prophet Samuel visits David’s family and he anoints David as King of Israel, prophesying the end to King Saul’s rule. David could have reacted to that word in his life and become arrogant. He could have decided ‘Hey, one day I’m going to be King, so I ought to show these people what I can do.’ There is nothing wrong with wanting to prove yourself as a man or woman of God, but again it can come back to the issue of how we are perceived by other people.

Then there is the possibility that David could have been merely motivated by the reward. The prospect of marrying into the royal family and a tax-free existence wouldn’t be that bad a reward today. (Of course, it would depend on who you were marrying in the royal family!) The thing is that this reward was offered to everyone, yet nobody took the King up on it. The risk was regarded as far too great. But, the air of David’s questions implies the reward wasn’t the big thing. He wanted to know what it was, but he was more concerned with what the giant is saying than with what the King is offering.

David’s motivation is selfless; it’s a zeal for what he knows is right – a zeal for the living God of Israel. What ticks him off is the fact that “this pagan Philistine” is dissing his God, Yahweh, the LORD. David has a sense of righteous anger. For him, Yahweh is real. Yahweh is the God who reveals himself in mighty acts – the God who brought the Israelites safely out of Egypt and who led them to the Promised Land. The Philistines are pagans, worshipping inanimate statues or blocks of wood. How dare this Philistine – this pagan – show contempt for Israel’s God, for Yahweh. David’s zeal for the LORD is why he starts asking questions.

It’s almost comical the response he gets. You can nearly picture it. David says: “Who does this guy think he is insulting our God?” and the other Israelites say: “Shhhh, he’ll hear you!” “Look at the size of him,” they say. There’s an undercurrent of fear running throughout the Israelite battle line. His brothers tell him to shut up – understandably! They don’t want to have to go home and tell their Dad that they failed to look after their youngest brother who has now been killed gruesomely by a hideous giant. That sort of thing doesn’t go down too well with the folks.

But David won’t shut up and soon the King gets to hear about it and sends for him.

David’s Audacity
The next thing that struck me about this story is David’s sheer audacity. He seems to have been the only person around to consider taking Goliath on and when Saul asks him about it he just says ‘Yeah, I’ll do it, I’ll kill him.’

Everybody’s a bit taken aback. They think it’s ridiculous, there’s no way he can win. But once David shows that he won’t be dissuaded, they get behind him – kind of. Saul offers him his bronze armour, which would be the best armour available. They offer him the help they can, but David knows it’s not the help he needs. He isn’t to put his faith in the things that look like they could help him. If he trots out in Saul’s armour, trying to outdo the armoured man-mountain that is Goliath, then he is doing what Goliath is doing – trusting in his own strength and the strength of his armour. David decides that isn’t the way for him.

David’s Courage
David doesn’t see Goliath’s size. He’s aware of it, but the first thing he sees is that Goliath is setting himself up as the enemy of Yahweh. That’s his motivation, that’s the well-spring of his audacity and that is what gives him courage. When he goes out to face Goliath, he takes the things that Yahweh has given him in his previous battles and trusts that, as in his previous battles, it will be Yahweh who keeps him safe and wins the fight for him.

He says as much when the giant taunts him. Goliath says that he will give David’s flesh to the wild animals, David responds by saying “Yahweh will give the flesh of you and your men to the wild beasts“. David’s courage here is immense, because his faith isn’t in his own strength, it isn’t in his experience as a warrior and it isn’t in anything else other than the strength of Yahweh that is taking him into that confrontation.

I think the lesson is obvious, but let’s hear it anyway. Our boldness as followers of Jesus stems from the fact that we are followers of Jesus – not how long we have been following him or the learning we have acquired along the way. The professional soldiers in the army were looking at the strengths of Goliath, not at his weaknesses. It’s an old saying – Everybody’s looking at Goliath and thinking ‘How can I hit him?’, but David looks at him and thinks ‘How can I miss?’

Keeping the Head
A ‘David-and-Goliath struggle’ has entered the English language for any meeting of unequal opponents. Usually, of course, the Goliaths win, but I had the privilege of seeing a modern day victory of a David over a Goliath in January 2003.

It was FA Cup third round day and Shrewsbury Town were playing Everton. In front of a packed full-house at Gay Meadow, the unlikeliest thing happened: Shrewsbury scored. They led at half time, then Everton scored and we all thought ‘Ah, that’s it. Well, it’s been fun.’ But then a few minutes from full time, up popped Nigel Jemson with a bullet header that carried him into Shrewsbury Town legend and knocked their Premiership opponents out of the cup.

I think that is what is must have been like for the Israelites watching that day. First Goliath goes down, then David scurries over to finish him off and then he holds up the head. Euphoria! Disbelief! That unique head-rush you get from jumping up and down repeatedly. In an intense moment a huge fat guy with no shirt takes you in his arms and kisses you passionately. It’s a great victory, so you kiss him back! You know that right there and then, in that moment, in that place, you are a witness to history. A momentous thing has happened and you have seen it with your own eyes.

Of course Shrewsbury then lost 4-0 to Chelsea in the next round.

And then got relegated from the football league at the end of the season.

But the analogy still works.

And David cuts off Goliath’s head as a souvenir. Now, when I was a kid I had a comic book about the life of David called something like David: Warrior King. I remember the picture of David winning against Goliath, with him holding up the giant’s head and all the blood and gunk dribbling out the bloody neck-stump and there’s a huge cheer from the Israelites who then rush the Philistines and slaughter them.

David then takes the head home as a souvenir. You can imagine that, can’t you? David gets home, with a big sack on his back, and his Mum and Dad say ‘Aw, you’re back are you, did you have a good time?’

David says ‘It was great. I got you a present from the Valley of Elah’

His Dad goes ‘Tidy, what did you get us.’

‘A giant’s head!’

‘Er, Ok, well best put it in the fridge then isn’t it, before it goes off.’

We are allowed to take pride in our achievements. We are allowed to celebrate our successes over the Goliaths we face in our day-to-day Christian life. Too often we talk about our struggles, the temptations, the difficulties, the missed opportunities and the times we have failed God, our loved ones, our friends, the church, or even ourselves. We need to start keeping souvenirs of our victories and stop hanging onto the failures and beating ourselves up with guilt.

In our spiritual kitchen our fridge ought to be full of giant’s heads, not bitter leftovers that we reheat every time we want to wallow in self-pity. David takes Goliath’s head home to remind himself of what he has done. He would need reminding of that over the next few years. He would shortly be an outcast in the wilderness, constantly on the run from the insanely jealous Saul. Later he would even end up working for the Philistines in their outpost of Ziklag. He would need the memories of his successes to sustain him through the difficult times to come.

Shadows of the future
So, what shadows are we casting into the future? What are we doing now that, if seen by an outside observer, would be recognised as a theme in our life? Or what have we done in the past that, looking back, has influenced our life now? The things we do now impact on our future, just like the things we did then impact on us now. The way we do things now, our motivation, our guiding principles, betray the kind of life we are going to lead and where we are going to be years down the line. Why are we going to buy that? Or spend time doing this? We need to be aware, when we make decisions that might seem irrelevant, that the things we do and say can sometimes come back and bite us. That is why getting our motivation right is all-important.

David’s famous triumph over Goliath casts a number of future shadows. David’s zeal for the LORD and on being on the right side of God comes through time-and-time again in his Psalms and in the stories. God is the setter-right-of-wrongs who will account for his enemies. He refuses to kill Saul because God chose Saul first and he is not going to be the guy who ‘knows better than God’. He repents of the times he fails – when he fails to trust the LORD and orders a census be taken of the army or when he fails to be righteous and takes Bathsheba and does away with her husband. He is aware that his strength is in Yahweh alone and that theme dominates the story of what happened in the Valley of Elah.

David is audacious throughout his life. When he is working for the Philistines he uses his base in Ziklag to strike against Israel’s enemies, but then lies to his boss and says he’s been attacking Israel. He walks into the sanctuary of Yahweh and takes the sacramental ‘holy bread’ to share with his hungry men. He sneaks up to Saul in a cave in the Judean wilderness and cuts off part of Saul’s kingly robe, then confronts Saul with it. ‘I could have killed you,’ he says. There is boldness in his actions, unpredictability. Nobody really knows what he is going to do next, because he is waiting to hear what God would have him do next.

Throughout his later life, when he is an outcast, a traitor and then king over Israel, he displays tremendous courage. He has the strength to keep on going, when it all looks so hopeless. He shows the courage to forgive those who opposed him – to let the LORD deal with them. He is brave in the fight and brave enough to own up to his mistakes. And he does make some serious mistakes.

His greatest feat of courage, though, is to time-and-again rely on another person’s strength. The supremely strong personal God who’s name and honour he risks all for when he walks out to meet Goliath.

This talk was given in the context of my faith community. If you would like to ask a question about it, or any other theological query, then please email freelance theology using the ‘mail me’ button.

The first thing that has to be noted is that as a film, it is a very good piece of work. The acting is excellent, the scripting is dramatic and it is very moving. If there are flaws in the film-making, I am not enough of a film critic to recognise them.

From a theological point of view though, there are one or two areas that are worth picking up and pointing out. Some of the imagery and conceptual use of dramatic licence are excellent. The encounter between Satan and Jesus in the garden of Gethsemene, with the introduction of a serpent as an ‘easy way out’ is particularly clever. Keen-eyed theologians will realise that Jesus’ stamp on the snake is an echo of God’s statement to the serpent recorded in Genesis – “I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman [Eve] and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3 v15)

However, elsewhere the dramatic licence is less so inspired. Much has been made that this is an accurate portrayal of events in the gospel accounts. That is true, but there is more in the film than the gospels bear witness to. Mel Gibson has made no secret of his strong Catholic faith and that faith is marked throughout the film. So, halfway through the journey to Golgotha we see Saint Veronica, holding a cloth to Jesus’ face and being left with a miraculous imprint.

For those interested in this sort of thing, the story of Veronica is “A late Latin insertion into the Gospel of Nicodemus” (JCJ Metford, Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend, Thames & Hudson, 1983, pp 252-3). The ‘sudarium’ cloth bearing ‘the features of Jesus’ has been in Rome since the eighth century and is kept in a crypt in St Peter’s with two other top-drawer holy relics – the spear used to test whether Jesus was dead and a fragment of the cross itself.

The Catholic edge to the film is evidenced in other ways too. Jesus asking for “this chalice” to be taken from him in Gethsemene (although this is just a matter of subtitling); the seven ‘stages of the cross’ as Jesus travels to Golgotha, the use of Latin and the fact that Jesus carries an entire cross while the two thieves crucified with him merely carry the cross-pieces. It’s a minor quirk that the two thieves are a more historically accurate depiction of ‘carrying a cross’.

Listing the use of Latin might surprise some people. However, it seems very unlikely that Latin would have been used by Pilate in discussions with anyone outside his own household. The ‘lingua franca’ of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in those days was not Latin, but Greek. The majority of soldiers would have spoken Greek, especially if they hailed from the Greek-speaking ‘Roman’ cities in that area. The Jewish leadership would not have learned Latin (one or two of them might have known it), while Pilate would probably not have stooped low enough to learn the backwater peasant language of Aramaic. Of course the great lines from the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible, including ‘Ecce Homo’ would have been lost if Pilate spoke Greek in the film, so again dogma seems to have gotten ahead of historical reality.

Putting aside those minor interpolations of Catholic lore and dogma, the rest is pretty much good script-writing. Judas is hounded to his death by children who may, or may not, be demon-possessed, or he might see them as such because betraying Jesus has tipped him over the edge psychologically. The thief that abuses Jesus on the cross has a particularly nasty encounter with a crow. Again, this is a nod to later traditions, although attacks by carrion birds on those not yet dead can happen at outdoor executions. The sad thing is that one or two crucial aspects of the story are left out.

Perhaps for fear of accusations of anti-Semitism, the claim by the mob to “Let his blood be upon us and on our children” (Matthew 27 v25) was dropped from the screenplay. Quite how this is any more anti-Semitic than any of the other scenes featuring the Jewish religious leaders of the day, or the mob scenes that made the final cut, is unclear. In fact, there is not really an anti-Jewish feel to the film at all. The protests by some members of the ‘Sanhedrin’ ruling council about the treatment of Jesus are included. The wild claims of anti-Semitism seem to have more to do with some people wanting to discredit the film. In that respect, the label ‘anti-Semitic’ is becoming the catch-all damnation of the twenty-first century. Nobody wants to be lumped in with neo-Nazis or the kind of lunatics who believe in the Zionist Secret Protocols.

It should be pointed out that in Matthew, the ‘entire crowd’ shout “Let his blood be upon us…” Everybody is guilty – just as every human being has sinned and is therefore in some way responsible for Christ’s death. This is a key point that has been under-emphasised. Mel Gibson does make the point later, however. The hands shown hammering the nails are those of the director. In a subtle way he is saying that we are all guilty, himself included.

The second phrase dropped out of the gospel accounts is the centurion’s confession, made famous by John Wayne in an earlier film. After the final scene on Golgotha we see Satan screaming in Hell and the Jewish Temple shattered by an earthquake. Surely the centurion should have said ‘Surely this man was the Son of God’. It’s a three-fold victory – over spiritual forces, religious opponents and military might. But Gibson misses it out, maybe because there was nobody to deliver it in an American drawl.

So, that’s the freelance theology take on The Passion of the Christ. It is an excellent film, well-worth seeing. It is not for the faint-hearted, however. Although, if as Christians we are called to take up our own crosses daily, perhaps our faith is not for the faint-hearted either.