No Matter What You Have Read
No Matter What You Believe
This is what the film trailer entices us with. The filming has not even begun, and the trailer is already running in theaters across the country. Produced by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, The Da Vinci Code promises to be a major blockbuster when it is released in May of 2006.
If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend that you do in time to be prepared before all of your friends and family go se the movie. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give too much away because it really is a page-turner of a murder mystery, especially if you like a good conspiracy story. But the issue that makes this such an important story to be up on is that it directly attacks the historical and biblical basis of the Church.
There is no historical basis for any of the claims that Dan Brown makes against the Church. However, Brown can weave an awfully good story and make fiction sound believable. This is what makes the book so potentially damaging. In the hands of someone who does not have a good grounding in the history of the Church and the basis for trusting the authority of the Bible, The Da Vinci Code can seriously undermine the case for historic Christianity.
Once you read the novel, I suggest getting a copy of The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction?, which works through the historical inaccuracies of The Da Vinci Code, point by point. This will prepare you for when your friends, family, and neighbors go see the movie and are presented with this material that tells them that you have been duped into believing a lie.
Saturday night while you were probably watching Faith Under Fire, NBC Dateline did a special on the The Da Vinci Code and totally debunked it. I was surprised that they sought to dispel the gray areas of the book as true fiction instead of trying to prove the conspiracy of the Priory of Sion. Go Stone Phillips!
From http://www.Danbrown.com, I pulled this quote from the common questions page…
IS THIS BOOK ANTI-CHRISTIAN?
No. This book is not anti-anything. It’s a novel. I wrote this story in an effort to explore certain aspects of Christian history that interest me. The vast majority of devout Christians understand this fact and consider The Da Vinci Code an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate.
Just more info for the coming discourse surrounding the movie.
I wish I had seen that.
Brown wants to have it both ways. He is also reported to have said that as to the historical aspects of the book, he wouldn’t have changed anything if it were a nonfiction work. That is, he maintains that the historical claims are true. Reading his site now, he seems to have backed off some. But there is this…
So, he says, indirectly, that he believes the book is historically accurate (i.e., he disagree with those who disagree with it).
“Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason each one will dissolve into its earliest origin. But those who are exalted above the world are indissoluble, eternal.” -The Gospel of Phillip
“Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The last statement of The Gospel of Thomas.
It is unfortunate that we will no longer evaluate primary sources. We have become a culture that trusts in blind leaders who have given us an excuse to interpret the world around us according to the God-hating state of our hearts. It would seem that many would rather take Dan Brown’s word for it than actually seek truth.
Why? I believe it is because he has given them an excuse to keep doing what they so love to do- reject God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and in the Word.