Barry's Blog

Last week's publication of Dan Brown's, "The Lost Symbol," is arguably the biggest publishing story sinnce J. K. Rowling's final "Harry Potter" installment went public in July of 2007. And during the first week of publication, it has already sold over two million copies. With U. S. sales of hardcover books down 18% for the year, retailers such as Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. and Borders Group Inc are heavily discounting the book, leaving a lot of money on the table in hopes of luring customers (Amazon has cut the 509-page novel's $29.95 price by 46% to $16.17). Few have more riding on Brown's new book than Bertelsmann, the closely held German media company. Its Random House division figures to earn $30-35 million, pretax, if the North American print run of five million copies sells out (by comparison, the world-wide Random House publishing group generated operating profit of just $29 million for the for six months of the fiscal year ended June 30).

No novel in recent times has outsold Brown's last work, "The Da Vinci Code," which has more than 81 million copies in print worldwide. And Sony Corporation's Columbia Pictures, which has the film rights to the new book, has already turned two of his books into movies, "The Da Vinci Code" (2006) and "Angels & Demons" (2009), has grossed over $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide.

The plots revolves around Langdon, the brainy Harvard protagonist first featured in "Angels & Demons" and then "The Da Vinci Code," who is summoned to Washington to deliver a lecture at the U.S. Capitol. When he arrives, he finds, instead of his lecture audience, the severed hand of his good friend Peter Solomon, the scion of a wealthy, Rothschild-like dynasty and a prominent Mason. The hand, found by Langdon in the Capitol Rotunda, is wearing Solomon's Masonic ring, pointing at the ceiling, and has Masonic symbols tattooed on its palm and fingers. As it turns out, Langdon has been lured to Washington to use his symbol-decoding skills to locate a mysterious "pyramid of the Ancient Mysteries" that is said to contain the Masonic secret to unlocking human potential. The CIA, as it happens, is looking for the pyramid, too, for its own reasons.  

Brown in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal observes: "Washington has all the intrigue of Rome, Paris, or London, but we don't think of it that way. There are temples, crypts, cathedrals and underground tunnels. I wanted people to see the city differently."

Many people agree that Brown can spin a thriller of a novel, but the problem lies with his shaky assumptions and outright untruths about Christianity, and in particular, the Catholic Church.  In "The Da Vinci Code," he smuggled in the assumption that early Church leaders were misogynists, and literally pulled a power play in formulating the canon of the Bible, especially the Gospels, over and above other worthy Gnostic sources (which even liberal scholars don't agree with Brown about). And in his latest offering he shows the same disdain for orthodox Christianity. While in "The Da Vinci Code" it was Holy Grail expert Leigh Teabing, here it is Langdon himself, along with Colin Galloway, an ultra-liberal priest at the Washington National Cathedral who has jettisoned orthodox Christian belief.

Here is the Reverend Galloway, musing on why he, along with his fellow clergy, no longer take their faith seriously: "From the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to American politics, the name Jesus had been hijacked as an ally in all kinds of power struggles...Now, after all these years, mankind had finally managed to utterly erode everything that had been so beautiful about Jesus." Reportedly, toward the end of the book, after Langdon has solved the mystery, the preachy discourse drones on about following the"Masonic lead" in moving beyond traditional religion so as to "harness our true power."

As I read these reviews, and hear of the contempt Brown has for Christianity, it confirms why so few evangelicals would consider purchasing one of his books. Yet, I am reminded that the books sales of "The Da Vinci Code," and probably "The Lost Symbol," are in some ways influencing our culture in terms of the way people think about faith and religion (Remember, over $1 billion dollars in ticket sales worldwide). I would submit that we should at least have a "working knowledge" of Brown's views on faith and Christianity, so that we can enter into dialogue with people about these significant issues.

The apostle Paul displays a similar attitude of "cultural bridge-building" in his speech at Mars Hill in cosmopolitan Greece, as recorded by Luke the physician in the New Testament (Acts 17). He shows himself adept and familiar with the times of his day, quoting pagan poets to build a bridge to his audience. In a similar light, he says in his first letter to the Corinthians, "I have become all things to all men, that by that I might win more" (chapter 9).

In his outstanding book, "Foolishness to the Greeks," scholar Leslie Newbigin employs the conversion and transformation of Saul of Tarsus into the apostle Paul as a case in point. His trial before King Agrippa, as recorded in Acts 26, illustrates this "cultural dialogue."

As Paul shares the story of his conversion with King Agrippa, he speaks the language of the Roman Empire, Koine Greek, and not his native Hebrew. Yet earlier, when he was blinded by "a light from heaven, brighter than the sun" and he heard a voice from heaven, it was not in the predominant Greek language. Paul tells Agrippa: "I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?'" (Acts 26:14). Paul then asked who was speaking to him, and the voice answered, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting" (Acts 26:15). Newbigin suggests that this passage provides a means by which we can understand the opportunities for gospel "translation" from within our own culture. Just as Paul hears the as yet unnamed voice from heaven in his native tongue, the "voice" of the gospel must be offered in the language of the culture into which it is spoken. The gospel must be presented in such a way that in some capacity can be understood and experienced in a particular culture.

I don't know how that plays out precisely with the popular, though spurious works, of people like Dan Brown (you could also add Bart Ehrman to that list). But I do know that for the most part, Christians are just talking to ourselves....

"To be ignorant and simple now-not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground-would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered."

-C. S. Lewis, from "Learning in War-Time," in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses