The Church is the ultimate enemy. Its message is intentionally deceptive. The truth is “out there” – but it is hidden in a vast web of conspiracies, secret societies, and buried documents.

This is the world that Robert Langford, the protagonist of Angels & Demons and its sequel, The Da Vinci Code, inhabits. It is an adventurous world of fast-paced action, mind-boggling riddles, and thrilling mysteries. Both books share the same formula: surrounded by danger at every step, symbologist Robert Langford is led to discover ancient secrets by solving a series of arcane puzzles.

In Robert Langford’s world conspiracy theories are “substantial” and public consensus is riddled with deception. Almost everything has a double meaning – pyramids, circles, roses, playing cards, etc. For example, in The Da Vinci Code, Langford points out how the four suits of playing cards – spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds – are all “Grail-related symbols” (391). Troubadours are “traveling servants or ‘ministers’ of the Church of Mary Magdalene, using music to disseminate the story of the sacred feminine among the common folk” (390). Apparently, there is nothing “common” or “ordinary” about a friendly game of cards or a group of traveling musicians. Or most anything else, for that matter! After awhile, the connections become so commonplace that one wonders if anything exists which does not contain a hidden meaning.

The Ultimate Antagonist: The Church

Uncovering conspiratorial connections would be harmless fun if not for Langford’s target: the Church (specifically, the Roman Catholic Church, but his critiques certainly encompass more than this tradition). The Church is the ultimate antagonist in both Langford adventures.

In The Da Vinci Code Langford makes harsh accusations against the Church. The Church wages an “age-old war to rewrite history” (268). The “Church’s purpose” is to further “the great deception” (295). The Church is not a faithful witness of Jesus, but rather, intentionally deceives its adherents: “Since the days of Constantine, the Church has successfully hidden the truth about Mary Magdalene and Jesus” (407). Langford concludes that the influence of the Church is nothing less than “insidious”: “The Church may no longer employ crusaders to slaughter non-believers, but their influence is no less persuasive. No less insidious” (407). Sinister, dangerous, deceptive, and menacing – the Church lurks in the shadows of Robert Langford’s adventures as an evil villain that must be stopped.

Conspiratorial History

Obviously, The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. Therefore, we must not get too worked up concerning its content. However, the Church that Langford accuses is not a fictional character. Dan Brown certainly knew that his blanket condemnations against the Church would ruffle feathers – especially when the alternative “truth” he proposes involves a complete rewrite of Christian orthodoxy and history.

What is his alternative? Chapter 55 of the book provides the most extensive development of Langford’s revisionism. It goes something like this:

The Roman Emperor Constantine – “a lifelong pagan” according to Langford – faked conversion to Christianity as a power-play to maintain the unity of Rome. He gave into the rise of Christianity and declared it the official Roman religion – but not without fusing it with pagan elements in the process.

In order to unify the Roman Empire and the Church as an entity with unchallengeable power, it was crucial to regard Jesus as divine. This was a completely new step in church history – one that had no clear basis in early Christian tradition. Before Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century, nobody viewed Jesus as divine: “until that moment in history [the Council of Nicaea] Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet… a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal” (233). To assure the deification of Jesus, “Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike” (234).

At the Council of Nicaea, Jesus was declared deity by a majority vote of power-hungry church leaders, forever obscuring Jesus’ original message. Why did Constantine do this? According to Langford, “It was all about the power… Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power” (223).

And what was the original message? Jesus was simply a mere mortal who married Mary Magdalene – who is herself the Holy Grail – and fathered a royal bloodline: “Mary Magdalene was the womb that carried His royal lineage” (255). The reason this message was suppressed by the Church was to perpetuate the myth of Jesus’ deity: “The Church, in order to defend itself against the Magdalene’s power, perpetuated her image as a whore and buried evidence of Christ’s marriage to her, thereby defusing any potential claims that Christ had a surviving bloodline and was a mortal prophet” (254).

The shocking truth is that Jesus’ deity is a work of fiction – the product of a human vote – while Mary Magdalene’s “Goddessness” is a fact, even though suppressed. For centuries, the Church has done everything in its power to hide the truth about Jesus and Mary. Meanwhile, the secret society, the Priory of Sion, has preserved the truth of Mary’s divinity. “The Priory of Sion, to this day, still worships Mary Magdalene as the Goddess, the Holy Grail, the Rose, and the Divine Mother” (255).

The reason that the Church has intentionally suppressed the truth about Mary is that, as a male-run institution, it has no place for the “sacred feminine”: “The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever” (124).

Ultimately, Jesus is not God, but Mary most certainly is the Goddess. One day the Priory of Sion will release this shocking truth to the world, and the Church will come crashing down – once and for all exposed as the fraud that it truly is.

Langford concludes his historical revisionism with this bold statement: “the historical evidence supporting this is substantial” (254).

Revisionism Addressed

Langford simplifies and misrepresents history at every turn. His revisionism is so extensive that it would take a great amount of time to address every problem. I simply offer a few brief responses:

Certainly, politics were involved in the early Church Councils, but not exclusively. Simply writing off the fruit of the Councils as political power-plays misrepresents the deep issues of faith that were debated and addressed.

The early Church was well aware of numerous “Gospels” but chose through general consensus – a consensus established by their use in ecclesiastical worship – the four Gospels found in the New Testament. Contrary to Langford’s simplification, the Gospels clearly relate the humanity of Jesus. In them, he cries, hungers, thirsts, is surprised, frustrated, angered, ignorant of certain facts, etc. The testimony of the early Church is that Jesus truly was mortal – truly a man – and yet, more than a man. The full humanity of Jesus is a stable fixture of orthodox Christian doctrine, as is his full deity. It is the mystery of the incarnation – God made flesh – that is at the heart of the Church’s message of grace, truth, life, and love.

As odd as it may seem to orthodox believers steeped in the stories of the Gospels, Jesus’ full humanity and deity would not be compromised if he had married and fathered children. Contrary to Langford’s claim, this would not cause the entire Church to crumble to the ground.

It is certainly not true that no early Christians held Jesus to be divine until the vote at the Nicaean Council. The earliest letters of the New Testament contain hymns sung to Jesus as Yahweh (e.g., Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:15-20). Though the primitive Church existed in a wide variety of expressions, an early consensus on Jesus’ deity quickly developed and was formally established and preserved by the earliest Church Councils.

Langford claims that the “[e]arly Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah” (309). This is unheard of in Hebrew literature.[1] If any one thing defined the Jewish religion in contrast to surrounding religions, it was its strict adherence to monotheism. The shema – prayed daily by faithful Jews – confesses the oneness of God (Deuteronomy 6:4-6). The early Church would have fundamentally denied its Jewish heritage if it had embraced polytheism. Instead of rejecting monotheism or embracing polytheism, the early Church reshaped its monotheism to facilitate its understanding of Jesus and his unique relationship to the Father and the Spirit. The full conceptual fruit of this is established as public consensus at the early Church Councils, but the seed of this is found in the revelation of Jesus in the Gospels and Epistles.

Contrary to Langford’s claim, the historical evidence for his reconstruction is not “substantial” but strained in every possible way. One is tempted to say: a complete work of fiction.

Reflections on the Popularity of The Da Vinci Code

The popularity of The Da Vinci Code certainly goes beyond the fact that it is a well-told, engaging – even thrilling – story. It demonstrates that the general public is still fascinated by the person of Jesus – even when he is detached from orthodoxy!

Jesus is a compelling, mysterious, and provocative figure. Even the Gospel writers recognize that there is more to Jesus than they can proclaim (see especially John 21:24-25). Thus, it makes sense that Dan Brown would feature Jesus in a novel about puzzles, mysteries, and profound secrets. We should not fault him for this. In fact, we should take a step back and ask ourselves if our presentations of Jesus are equally provocative – or simply, dull. Even if Brown gets everything else wrong, at least his Jesus is not dull!

What about the recovery of the “sacred feminine”? It takes little effort to prove that the Church is guilty of patriarchalism, but the solution is not to run to the other extreme. In The Da Vinci Code, the sacred feminine is recovered through public sex rituals. In the story, Sophie Neveu secretly stumbles upon an ancient sex ritual where her grandfather copulates while surrounded by robed worshippers. She is deeply offended and doesn’t speak to her grandfather for ten years. Robert Langford convinces her that she should not be shocked by something so “natural”. He argues that her inhibitions are largely due to the extensive influence of the patriarchal Church. If not for this, people would be less likely to be offended by ritual sex. Surprisingly, this explanation seems to be enough to turn her thinking.

Apparently, if the sacred feminine had not been suppressed by the patriarchal Church, the “holy communion” of the divine feminine would involve ritual sex along with the corporate meal of the Eucharist. I wondered as I read this: Is this appealing to feminists? Is this appealing to anybody? Isn’t there more to femininity than sexual intercourse?

One thing evangelicals need to wrestle with in the wake of the popularity of The Da Vinci Code is this: Why is the Church such an easy target for suspicion and blame? Why is it so easy to imagine that the Church fosters deception rather than illuminates truth; that its ultimate intentions are evil rather than good; that it is not a friend of humanity but exists for its own self-interests? I am sure that the harsh railing of some Christians against The Da Vinci Code book and movie will do nothing to correct this negative perception, and indeed, may even backfire and simply exacerbate this problem in the public’s eye.

Another thing to think about: Why is The Da Vinci Code so threatening to evangelicals? Ultimately, Dan Brown has said nothing that has not been said before. He has simply packaged it in a new and novel form. I believe that evangelicals are threatened because we are ignorant of our own tradition. We simply don’t know the history of the Church well enough to know whether Robert Langford’s story is true to the facts or not.

A healthy dose of Church history would do us good in this regard. We need a more robust view of the Church and its tradition. We need a clearer view of the development of Christian orthodoxy. The Bible alone cannot stand against revisionist history. It needs the support and context of history and tradition to speak most clearly and truly.

Perhaps, this is another reason evangelicals are suspicious of The Da Vinci Code: it reminds us that we, too, are often suspicious of the Church. We simply do not trust that God guided the path of the early Christians in such a way that the truth was carefully preserved and faithfully passed on.

If Dan Brown is guilty of anything it is that he makes connections where none really exist. However, before we are too hard on him, we should examine our own evangelical best seller – the Left Behind series. I would contend that almost everything in these novels is mistaken, misleading, and untrue. Yes, Jesus is coming back, but that is about the only thing that LaHaye and Jenkins get right – and it takes them twelve books to finally get there! We have unleashed our own share of speculation, fantasy, and drawing connections where none exist. We should notice the log in our own eye before we complain about the speck in Dan’s. (In one sense, both books – Left Behind and The Da Vinci Code share something in common: both are deeply suspicious of the institution of the Church.)

A World of Meaningless Mystery

The truly tragic thing about the character of Robert Langdon is this: Even though he lives in a world filled with secrets, clues, codes, double meanings, and profound mystery, he has no place for religion. In the end, religion – even the pagan religion of Mary Magdalene – is of limited value to Robert Langdon. In The Da Vinci Code, he tells his partner, “Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith – acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove” (341).

The only God that Langdon allows is a God of metaphor. He accepts that religion helps people, but it is not because religion is necessarily true. “Religious allegory has become a part of the fabric of reality. And living in that reality helps millions of people cope and be better people.” (342)

It is interesting that Dan Brown spends so much time devastating something that, in the end, has no more value than providing an illusionary coping mechanism for those unable to see the hidden meaning in things – a hidden meaning that, itself, ultimately has no meaning.

Put simply: In The Da Vinci Code religion is central to the story, but ultimately, irrelevant. It is my fear that this may all-too-clearly reflect the sentiments of many of its readers. A religion of codes and puzzles is infinitely flexible. With no fixed meaning, it can appeal to everyone’s tastes – and still mean nothing in the end.

Quotes excerpted from The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Review © Richard J. Vincent, 2006