Everyone loves a conspiracy theory. These are the fitting words of a Kings College librarian regarding the protagonists in this bestselling book, which has sent a ripple through the Christian community because of its Pagan, Gnostic and Cabalistic views. Not since the movie The Last Temptation of Christ has the church been so affected by a work of fiction. Today's society is often more stimulated by a work of fiction mentioned in the religion section of Time magazine than by any scholarly work dealing with the same topic. Now with this opportunity to rewrite Christian history, the author has given the public what it loves.

The Da Vinci Code is the story of Robert Langdon, a symbologist, called into the police investigation of a murder at the Louvre museum in Paris. What he discovers is a web of intrigue between two secret societies: The Priory of Sion, and the Roman Catholic group of traditionalists known as Opus Dei. As with any good novel, historical events are intertwined with fiction to create the world the author desires. Both of the groups exist today. The author even gives the Web site of www.Odan.org, which discusses some of the rather unflattering aspects of Opus Dei.

One of the villains in this book is a large albino man named Silas. The traditionalists of the Roman Catholic Church are in a fight to the death for the Holy Grail; the Priory have it secreted away and others want it. The chief interest of the book for Christians lies in its conception of church history.

The book tells the story through the lens of Da Vinci's painting "The Last Supper". It tells how Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and through her his royal line of kings has been preserved. However, the mean folks of the Christian church, through the agency of Constantine, changed the matriarchal Paganism to patriarchal Christianity by demonizing the goddess worship. In The Da Vinci Code, Jesus is just a man who many years later was raised to the status of divinity by the church. Interestingly, Brown uses a quote from the Gospel of Mary, found in the Gnostic writings from the Nag Hammadi scrolls, to show us that Mary was married or sexually "knowing" of Jesus ("the Savior knows her very well").

Unlike the pseudoscientific Bible Code (Drosnin 1997) technique, known as 'Equidistance Letter Sequences' (Eliyahu Rips), The Da Vinci Code does not offer a method to see the hidden secret messages in the Bible. The 'code' of the book is simply the hidden symbolic messages found in certain works of the Italian genius. The face of one of the figures in the Last Supper painting looks remarkably like that of a woman, and symbolically there are shapes that the author analyzes as symbols for the masculine and feminine, with hands in the painting making gestures that symbolize the removal of Mary Magdalene from her rightful place of the 'sacred feminine'. The author uses 'sacred feminine' several times, but never once uses 'sacred masculine'. As with any good puzzler, the book makes use of anagrams, mirror images and interesting word puzzles that take the intrepid protagonists further toward their goal.

It is this emphasis upon the pseudepigrapha and other early Christian texts discarded by consensus of the church during the first 400 to 500 years of Christianity that has sparked so much interest. Recently, Time magazine included references to The Da Vinci Code in a recent article (Dec. 22, 2003, "The Lost Gospels") on the extra-biblical writings of early Christianity. While many Christians know that there was some controversy with Martin Luther over what he thought should be included in the sacred canon, most Christians know nothing about how the Bible actually was put together. Their lack of knowledge makes it easy for some critics to protest the exclusion of certain works such as the Gospel of Thomas from the canon.

However, while Christian and non-Christian scholars have intensely examined the New Testament books, including their dates of composition, such examinations are often not considered by those who propose support for the so-called 'lost Gospels'. The early Christians had to examine the writings of many different theological schools of thought. We know from statements in the New Testament that there were Gnostic beliefs which the early church fought against, so it should not be surprising that many groups tried to capitalize upon the name of Jesus for their particular theological perspective. Some of the early variations include the following:

Docetism: This taught that Jesus only appeared to have a human body, but did not really have one.

Apollinarianism: This held that Christ had a human body and human soul but no human rational mind, only the Divine mind.

Alogi: Because of their rejection of the writings of John and citing John's use of Logos as against the rest of the New Testament, followers of this belief regarded Jesus as mere man, though miraculously born of a virgin. They taught that Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism, giving Jesus supernatural power.

The Ebionites, in the interest of representing monotheism, denied the deity of Christ and regarded him as the son of Joseph and Mary, a mere man who was qualified at his baptism to be the Messiah.

Gnosticism and Jewish Cabalism cover a lot of territory and may be summed up imprecisely as emancipation by acquiring hidden knowledge. While many of the other views have completely died out, Gnosticism and Jewish Cabala as well as Christian Cabala have had a resurgence in adherents.

Determining which writings to include as genuine and which to reject as spurious became a long-studied task of the early church. One can often find early church fathers making reference to books which a few hundred years later were not respected by any Christians. It would be an oversimplification to say, as the book does, that Constantine by his influence at a council chose the Christian canon. The Da Vinci Code uses this simplification of church history, along with Paganism, Gnostic writings and Jewish Cabalistic thought, to create the image of goddess worship. This was drawn from primitive fertility rituals and cults of ancient times, emphasizing the female deities.

What The Da Vinci Code provides us is an opportunity to reexamine our Bible. The time has come in America when people will not be satisfied simply to hear, "This is what the Bible says". Critics may ask, "Which Bible?" In many ways we Christians have become lazy, not caring to know how we arrived at our own Holy Scriptures. Often we have taken traditions as if they are God-given instructions, but when pressed by critics we would not know how to explain how these support our faith. Christians have often ignored or downplayed reason, even though it is to reason that we must appeal when we say how we arrived at our sacred canon. Hopefully informed Christians can step up and defend their religion, not only to skeptics but to those who are looking for spirituality in previously less well known philosophies. Education may be the key to our witness for God.