“NRO’s” Michael Novak doesn’t like it, so much:
All that matters, Tom Hanks tells the only living descendant of Christ, is what you believe. Not truth, not reality, but whatever you believe. That’s what matters. You make up reality as you go. The professor Hanks plays makes plain that he believes that Jesus is only a man
“love of illusion in what being secular means”
Isn’t love of illusion a propensity to take things on faith? Calling that secular is loopy, I’d say.
I have not seen yet Da Vinci Code film. I read the book, and it was funny. Funny in the sense that I have some nice time reading it, but nothing else. It is not such a good story. But Dan Brown made a great marketing operation, and now everybody knows about the whole stuff. If the Opus Dei guys wanted to take the stuff away, the best they should have done was stop critizism. That way, there would be probably not film, not polemic, and not 500 million dollars for the author.
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Hiya, Gary – Novak did caveat that to the makers of the film. So they might have a reason to be offended, maybe.
And I think we all have our own cherished illusions. If you take nothing on faith, the world can be a cramped and agitated place.
Grrr….movie and book based on premises that were debunked centuries ago. Other than to use the information gained to be used as salt and light to the world, I wouldn’t waste my dime.
Lex – you can’t possibly be referring to moi?
Actually I have no comment (stop coughing). I plan to see it because I’ve always wanted to see the movie version of the book (negative reviews notwithstanding). I have my own beliefs (no eggshells here darlin’) and see it for what it is – pure fiction.
Now, that was good, wasn’t it?
These books bear the same relationship to Catholic theology that Tom Clancy novels bear to military operations. They’re thrillers, you’re supposed to enjoy the who-dunit and the chase (I didn’t. Too may “meanwhile, back at the ranch” moments for my taste) and not worry too much about the frame used to support the story.
Could it be true? Sure. It could also be false. The simple fact of the matter is there’s no evidence either way. You can’t prove anything and so must rely on faith.
Novak’s primary criticism is way off. There exist truths independent of the messenger. If Jesus’ teachings are true they’re true regardless of if Jesus was the Son of God or some nut talking to the clouds.
I’ve only read the book but unless the movie is somewhat different I can’t see where they’d be ‘mocking’ Christians and Jews.
Sim – mainline Christian churches, especially liturgical rites, tend to take their received knowledge of the church’s doctrine seriously. The main books and epistles which make up the new testament were universally approved two millenia ago, while those whose provenance could not be assured were filed as apocrypha. There was a third branch of writing – heresy – that was suppressed, for good reason.
The Gnostic heresy, upon which Brown’s book was loosely based – I say loosely, because the idea of “sacred feminine” he pushes is not found in the Gnostic texts, Gnosticism was instead ruthlessly chauvinist – was only the first in a series.
So some Christians no doubt feel mocked to have the corpus of their faith teased at by novelists who insist that their sacred texts are incomplete because they cannot be reconciled with later works written by near-pagan syncretists. All this before the author imputes murderous bad faith to Catholic religious organizations like Opus Dei in the 21st century.
As for the Jews, Gnostics confused Y-hweh with Satan, believing the Old Testament God to be a lesser, maleficient deity. Which, not being Jewish, I would imagine an off-putting interpretation.
Lex, you know your heresies! As a fellow mackeral snapper, I would also like to point out a couple among the many other huge whopping factual errors on DB’s part, Opus Dei never existed until 1928 and in 325 Anno Domini, neither did the “Vatican”. My kid brother joined Opus a few years back but I can’t get him to show me the secret handshake. He told me if he did he would be on “double secret probation” .
As for the Da Vinci thing, DB and anyone connected with the film, if the main premise is an attack on the Faith of hundreds of millions (which I believe it is), that Jesus was only a man, why not trash mere facts. Bottom line: not a brass farthing from my pocket for that garbage.
The problem with the DaVinci Code is that Dan Brown is stating things as “Fact” that simply aren’t true.
But not enough people know the true history to keep those who don’t from doubting…
Mark Steyn astutely observed, after reading the first word of the book, that Brown is “unusually partial” to the “anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier.” That just killed the book for me.