Top selling thriller challenges Christianity
by Doris Fleck

The Da Vinci Code

Many Christian scholars and book reviewers alike regard The Da Vinci Code as a wake up call to the Christian church. They see this novel’s rampant success as an opportunity for believers to learn more about their historical faith and become equipped to refute false ideas. With more than 10 million copies in print, The Da Vinci Code’s influence cannot be underestimated. Since it was published last spring, this novel has inspired thousands of pilgrims to travel to key landmarks in the story, retracing the steps of the central character’s quest. With the film rights for the book recently sold to Sony Pictures and Oscar-winning director Ron Howard at the helm, the ideas presented by the book are not just going to vanish. So, what is The Da Vinci Code about and how should Christians respond to it?While conspiracy theories are popular fare, Dan Brown writes this one skillfully. The Da Vinci Code traps its readers in a web of intrigue from the very first sentence.

As the book begins, the elderly curator of Paris’ world-renowned Louvre is shot in the stomach. His mysterious albino killer believes he has found the last man who carries covert information that could completely dismantle Christianity. He leaves the 76-year-old custodian writhing in pain, knowing no one will reach him before he dies.

The tenacious curator is depicted as the head of a European secret society that boasts Leonardo da Vinci as one of its illustrious members. He is the only person alive who knows the location of the famed Holy Grail. If he dies, this information will be lost forever.

With his own blood, the curator leaves a series of remarkable clues that can only be deciphered by religious symbologist Robert Langdon and the curator’s granddaughter, a cryptographer working with the Judicial Police in France.

The characters begin a whirlwind chase through France and England filled with anagrams, codes, pagan rituals, goddess worship, symbols in art and architecture as well as references to the Gnostic gospels, all of which combine to reveal the truth behind the Holy Grail.


Popular legend has it that the Grail is the chalice Christ drank from during the Last Supper. But Brown dazzles his readers with the idea that it’s really a collection of documents written by Mary Magdalene. These journals chronicle her marriage to Christ and the birth of their daughter. The surviving bloodline, Brown challenges, would prove Jesus was a mortal prophet and effectively destroy Christianity.

Using a plethora of scholarly errors, Brown proposes there were eighty gospels considered for the New Testament and the inclusion of only four was dictated by Constantine the Great at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. It was also at this council that the divinity of Christ was voted upon and, by the narrowest of margins, He became the Son of God.

By Brown’s hypothesis, Constantine made Christ a deity, a false one that the Grail documents would disclose.

But if documents truly exist proving Christ was mortal and Christianity is based on falsehood, why keep them a secret? Wouldn’t it be better to turn this evidence over to scholars to be studied and dated? These questions are never satisfactorily answered and the book ends with the secrets of the Grail still intact.

Many Christians don’t want to concern themselves with Brown’s fanciful tale. It is, after all, a work of fiction. Or is it?

Online reviews at Amazon.com  and BarnesandNoble.com feature testimonies of people who claim they have given up their Christian faith because of this novel.

"Although this story is fiction, Brown believes that he has based his story on scholarly fact," explained visiting scholar Dr. Craig Evans in early November.

The distinguished professor of New Testament from Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia continued, "It is Brown’s descriptions of certain religious hypotheses as fact that lies behind the remarkable response, including more than 10 books that have appeared in the last year that challenge and try to refute Brown’s book."

Evans, who was in Calgary at the invitation of Dr. Doug Shantz, the Chair of Christian Thought at the University of Calgary, said that Brown encourages his readers to believe the truth of his fiction by placing a page entitled "FACT" at the beginning of the novel. It assures readers that, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

Ward Gasque, Christian historian and co-founder of Vancouver’s Regent College wrote, "A lot of people have assumed that Brown’s historical insinuations are true. The fact is, however, that most of his allegations would be regarded as bogus by any professor of history, art history or religious studies.

"Many churches have tended to spoon-feed attendees," Gasque continued in a recent issue of Mission Fields magazine. "Thus, most Christians know little about how their faith got from the 1st Century to the 21st and even less about opposing ideas."

In his book, The Gospel Code, Ben Witherington III offers a reasoned, factual rebuttal to Brown’s main theories. But Witherington warned, "It appears we are in an age where New Testament prophecy has come true – ‘For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.’" (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

"These seem to be such times," Witherington stated, "when people believe things that are beyond belief."

As John Tintera of St. Martin’s Press aptly wrote, "What could the Christian community do with the awesome strangeness of the Gospel in a culture like this? It is simply false that our truth isn’t as compelling as such fabrication."

A list of books and authors that give a rebuttal to The Da Vinci Code can be found on the web at www.faithfulreader.com/features/0405davinci/davinci_code.asp .