The more faith, the more doubt: Dan Brown’s imbecilic scenarios exist precisely because the Catholic Church has become the dominant Christian denomination in the United States, displacing the mainline Protestants. Think of it as religious pornography. Anyone who believes in supernatural occurrences as a matter of faith cannot help but wonder whether it is all a monstrous delusion. Doubt, as Benedict XVI wrote many years ago, is the handmaiden of faith. Americans, for example, venerate Jack Kennedy, which is why salacious books about Kennedy’s love life sell all the more.
That’s a very different take than that of Ross Douthat in today’s New York Times. Ross sees Brown as representing the vague, drippy, homogenized “religiousness detached from any major faith tradition:
Brown’s message has been called anti-Catholic, but that’s only part of the story…. Brown doesn’t have the soul of a true-believing Enemy of the Faith. Deep down, he has a fondness for the ordinary, well-meaning sort of Catholic, his libels against their ancestors notwithstanding. He’s even sympathetic to the religious yearnings of his Catholic villains — including, yes, the murderous albino monks…Having dismissed Catholicism’s truth claims and demonized its most sincere defenders, Brown pats believers on the head and bids them go on fingering their rosary beads.
In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.
It’s an intelligent thought that has only one defect, namely that of being wrong. Brown really is a malignant, anti-religious peddler of intellectual smut — and that is precisely why people of real but poorly-informed faith devour his dreadful prose.
In a “Spengler” essay three years ago, I explained Brown’s appeal as follows:
The danger that Dan Brown’s prose style might be contagious discouraged me from reading The Da Vinci Code, and I decline to see the film. In 1982, I read the same asinine story in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail presented as fact, and do not gladly dive twice into the same sewer. Why this rubbish became the world’s best-selling work of fiction, though, paradoxically confirms the strength of America’s Christian faith.
Why should an American novel depicting Christianity as a hoax command such a readership while Christian faith is resurgent? Americans are migrating en masse to evangelical denominations who preach Christ crucified and eternal salvation, abandoning the blancmange beliefs of mainline Protestantism. Americans, to be sure, also watch pornography. One might dismiss Brown’s oeuvre as ecclesiastical pornography, but there is something more to it.
To make sense of the Christian fascination with The Da Vinci Code, compare Christian and Muslim reactions to fictional
assaults on the foundation of faith. In English fiction, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is the nearest Muslim equivalent to Brown’s book. More than 60 million copies of the latter have been printed, and a large plurality of American Christians either will read the book or see the film. But very few Muslims have read Rushdie’s book. Rushdie still lives in danger of his life, but no Christian fundamentalist has invoked violence against Dan Brown.
Inconceivable, for that matter, is a Jewish counterpart to The Da Vinci Code, for Judaism is short on mysteries and long on history. Jews quibble, to be sure, about whether Moses received the Pentateuch from God at Mount Sinai, or whether later redactors compiled earlier tales into the canonical version, but it does not much matter.If 8th century BC scribes wrote the Torah instead, who is to say they were less inspired than Moses? Once I asked a Jewish child, “How do you know that God brought you out of Egypt?” Before I could end the sentence she countered, “If God didn’t bring me out of Egypt, than what am I doing here talking to you?”
But if Jesus did not die on the cross, but instead married Mary Magdalene and begat a bloodline of French aristocrats, Christianity’s promise means nothing. Precisely because Christianity is a promise, the promise of eternal life, it always is subject to doubt. To be Christian means to get out of one’s skin, that is, to relinquish one’s sinful, Gentile nature and to be reborn into the People of God.
Unlike the Jews, who consider themselves God’s people, warts and all, no Christian can see the People of God, or be sure whether he himself belongs to it, or whether the mystical transformation of his flesh actually has taken place. It is not certainty that Jesus offered – except to the few who saw him after the Resurrection – but rather the possibility of faith. If the Christian did not have to wrestle with doubt, like Jacob with the angel on the riverbank, faith would have no redeeming power.
Brown, in short, is a parasite who sucks blood from the faith of his readers. One wishes that American Catholics were better informed; then we might get a better quality of ecclesiastical pornography, something on the level perhaps of Kazantsakis. For pure fun, ignore Brown and read my all-time favorite Jesuit conspiracy book, Friedrich Schiller’s The Apparationist.
May 19th, 2009 |
Spengler, brilliant!
I will read Schiller’s book. I’m reading G.E.M. Anscombes “Human Life, Action, and Ethics.” She’s brilliant!
May 19th, 2009 |
Robert, thanks for the spur — I have never read Anscombes and it is gap in my knowledge. Must correct that.
May 19th, 2009 |
“If God didn’t bring me out of Egypt, than what am I doing here talking to you?” – The answer is only right since the question is false: we all know none of you personally were slaves in Egypt. The true question is “How do you know you’re part of the people of God?” and this cannot be answered by mere identification with someone who is.
“But if Jesus did not die on the cross, but instead married Mary Magdalene and begat a bloodline of French aristocrats, Christianity’s promise means nothing.” The Bible in my view anticipates such worries in many verses, and includes an interesting view: “But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them: ‘Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men’.”(Acts 5,34-35)”‘Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God’.”(Acts 5, 38-39) So, I’m not worried the promise is false, I worry we can fail to live up to it (and there would be a new New Testament with some other guys ;).
Finally, about this one “Unlike the Jews, who consider themselves God’s people, warts and all, no Christian can see the People of God, or be sure whether he himself belongs to it, or whether the mystical transformation of his flesh actually has taken place.” Well, I always thought a biblical Christian is quite certain he or she belongs to the People of God and underwent a transformation, albeit one of spirit, not flesh.
What do you think? :) Which of us has to read more on Christian theology? ;) (guess I should, as a Christian)
May 19th, 2009 |
For fun you can also enjoy this modestly amusing review of Dan Brown’s earlier cerebral flatulence.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/29/060529crci_cinema
May 20th, 2009 |
Anonymous,
I was trying to explain why ecclesiastical pornography is not pitched to Muslims or Jews. In the case of Muslims, we had “Satanic Verses,” but for obvious reasons other writers were discouraged from emulating this. Freud, to be sure, wrote “Moses and Monotheism,” to refute the Bible, but no-one concocts silly scenarios about the secret frauds underlying Jewish religion. The Jews are a kinship community; Christians seek adoption into Israel through water and the Holy Spirit. One needs a different kind of faith to be a Christian than to be a Jew, which is why the sort of doubts that Dan Brown plays with become relevant. To put it another way: Jews believe that the Indwelling of God on earth (the Shekhinah) is in the Jewish people itself, and there is no doubt of the existence of the Jewish people. We are still here in large numbers. One has to have faith of a different kind in Jesus Christ to believe in the Incarnation. I do not say that it is better or worse, but it surely is different.
May 20th, 2009 |
Last weekend I watched a History Channel special about the movie and what I found sadly odd was that (and I could be completely wrong here)the movie is apparently about the Illuminati versus the Catholic Church. From what I picked up, for years of oppression the Illuminati want to ‘Nuke’ Rome with their startrek™ Cern device. When I think of what the real situation in Europe is, as I see it, the Illuminati (rational peace loving secularists that they are) have actually won the culture battle. It just comes off as a gratuitous attack on Religion in my view.
It was also funny to see Obi-wan Kanobi in the Catholic church but that’s a separate trauma caused by george lucas™.
May 20th, 2009 |
David, circumstances forced me to read The Da Vinci Code a few years ago. Having known in advance that the contents was not digestible for me, I was not prepared for Dan Brown’s substandard prose. So, yes it’s not just spiritual but literary pornography at its worst. On the other hand, I have been a fan of your Nabokov-esque pieces since I stumbled by accident on to the Spengler column in Asia Times Online. The only times your tailoring of brilliant thoughts into stylish sentences does not fit is when you rationalize the personal experience of Christian faith. Can I, a woman, make an authoritative statement on why a happily married man spends hours on computer porn? Just like love reduced to sex for hire, spiritual garbage is universally appealing. Neither Muslims or Jews are innocent of spiritual fornication. And while I will refrain from analyzing the former, for Christians, it is not the doubt of faith or uncertainty of mystical transformation but the old-fashioned rebellion of the flesh/mind against the transformed spirit. In the end, this is the root of the original sin, isn’t it?
May 20th, 2009 |
I completely agree with the premise of this post vis-a-vis Dan Brown’s religion as pornography, and it’s appeal to legions of uncritical or naive sojourners. Including those who might be either Catholic or “Christian”. [Yes, I believe many Catholics are also Christians, so the latter term is only used here to denote non-Catholic believers]. But I, too, in addition to Anonymous, sense a tiny bit of understandable confusion deep within Spengler’s psyche confusing some spects of the two beliefs.
That minor dichotomy detracts not at all from this post, thus could have been left unsaid. Never-the-less, since it has been raised Herr Spengler needs to understand that this humble “dirty rotten pagan” disputes his opinion
as being mere speculation based on DPG’s personal creed and belief. No offense taken or intended.
May 20th, 2009 |
Franklyn,
No offense taken. It’s not my idea in the first place. I’m paraphrasing Rosenzweig.
May 20th, 2009 |
Spengler,
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Once again, as I pointed out in response to your above-cited essay on your Asia Times Online forum three years ago:
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Dan Brown, in Da Vinci Code does NOT repeat NOT suggest that Jesus did not die on the cross, or that he was not resurrected. One can father children and subsequently die on a cross; countless first-century Jews did both. Moreover, Brown’s novel, far from discounting the divinity of Jesus, ascribes woundrous healing power even to one of his distant descendants. Brown’s agenda in DVC is rather to relaunch Robert Graves’ old “White Godess” argument in thriller form: Brown suggests that the Judeo-Christian understanding of God is overly patriarchal, and needs feminising in a way less chaste than that offered by Marian devotions.
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Brown’s novel addresses the role of women and of reproduction in the Church by suggesting femininity and sexuality in the Godhead. The novel was wildly popular not only because it was a well-written thriller, but also because it addressed an issue of intense contemporary concern (the role of women and of reproduction in the Church) in a way both ancient and powerful, but novel to moderns. The case for worshipping the Great Mother as part of the Godhead is old and strong, and missing it does not help to refute it.
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How does the effort of Graves and Brown to revive fertility religion relate to our contemporary infertility, which Shaw foresaw so clearly even before Graves? That, it seems to me, is the interesting question posed by the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, and to address it, you might best read Graves and Brown, unpleasant though it may be for you. Meanwhile, reviewing books one has not read, and movies one has not seen, is a habit that I again urge you to break. It leads to errors and is detrimental to your service.
May 20th, 2009 |
Franklyn states: “Yes, I believe many Catholics are also Christians…” And after such a theologically and historically ignorant an offensive statement – implying that Catholics in the main are not really “Christian” – you wish to give Spengler lessons in theology?
May 20th, 2009 |
I found his novels to be entertaining, and while “pornography” may be intended as an epithet, it is accurate in the more clinical definition of prurient interest.
In much the same way, plenty of sane people find the antics of “Jackass” amusing, without any compunction to attempt to replicate their folly.
May 20th, 2009 |
Collingwood,
Wondrous healing power to one of Jesus’ descendants? I did see the film in the meantime and didn’t notice that. The old “Holy Blood Holy Grail” book did in fact deny Jesus’ divinity as well as the Resurrection. It isn’t a book review, but a discussion of the cultural phenom.
May 20th, 2009 |
Spengler,
In Brown’s DVC novel, the female protagonist, supposedly a descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, cures the male protagonist (her rescuer) of something like a migraine by touching him. I don’t recall that being in the film version, however.
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I have not read “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” and am unsure how its agenda resembles or differs from Brown’s in DVC. What I can vouch for is that DVC denies neither Jesus’ divinity nor his resurrection; I think I should have noticed that.
May 21st, 2009 |
DPG,
Thank you for clarifying my sourcing error. Mea culpa.
Dennis,
No offense was intended. I was speaking from a religious viewpoint, not cultural. Imo just as some members of “Christian” congregations are not truly believers, but merely social or cultural attenders, [thus should be unqualified to be classified as religious adherents of that faith] – so in the Roman church there exist nominal Catholics who are not really “believers” in the sense of believing Christ is their Savior and Chief Intermediary with G-D the Father. So I choose to classify that lot as “Catholics” but not “Christians”. The same way I call folk in similar situations in other congregations “Baptists” or “Methodists”, or you name it. There was no attempt by me to say Catholics “in the main” were not Christians. I know better than that. I apologize for being less than clear in the earlier comment.
May 21st, 2009 |
Once again, a great essay Spengler, I would like to take the discussion on a tangent, if I may. Here is a quotation from Angels & Demons director Ron Howard who appeared on the Charlie Rose show on 5/13/09. “The deeper you delve into the mysteries of creation, the more you’re denying the importance of God the Creator.”
Director, Ron Howard apparently has not researched Cosmology. At present, the scientific community reluctantly supports the Big-Bang theory. He simply adopts the materialistic creed that everything arises from chance, because this is what the intelligentsia believes. But his reaction begs the question, why does the idea that the cosmos have a beginning be such a nightmare to the Ron Howard’s of the world? Because, the Big-Bang implies a creator, and there’s nothing more frightening to the secular world than this theory. So they are ready to grab onto any explanation they can find.
Here is a short list of theories that are available about the origins of the cosmos.
1. The universe was uncaused and came into existence
2. The universe is a baby-universe or bubble outgrowth from another universe
3. The universe was created by an existing intelligence that transcends space and time.
So what can we make out of options 1 and 2? For simplicity, I will treat option 1 as a subset of case 2 and I will examine the multi-verse hypothesis. For life to have developed on Earth, dozens of physical properties must be fine-tuned. The problem of creating the primordial soup where amino acids can transform into a simple cell is mind boggling. Molecular biophysicist Harold Morowitz calculated the gulf for this transformation. With ideal natural conditions the chances of a single cell forming from chaos is 1 in 10^100,000,000,000. With odds like these, what does it matter if the Earth was around for ten billion years or ten trillion years? The age and size of the universe is of no consequence either. If all the matter in the visible universe were converted into building blocks of life, and if assembly was attempted every microsecond for the age of the universe (roughly 14 billion years) then the probability drops to 1 in 10^99,999,999,916. This isn’t much of an improvement on Morowitz number. Even James Bond can’t win at this casino.
Secular scientists know that these odds preclude the possibility of life forming in the universe by pure chance. Therefore, some cosmologist speculate about the existence of an infinite number of universes. Given, an infinite number of universes, they rationalize that at least one could develop an earth-like world. Thus random fluctuations in some kind of primeval soup, seems to them a plausible explanation for life without a God to bring the universe about.
The following is a direct quote from Dr. Hugh Ross: “The question remains, however, Where do the infinite number of universes come from? If from some kind of primeval field, then where does the primeval field come from? If “nothingness” represents an instability, and “nothing” must, therefore, give rise to “something,” why has no one ever observed something coming from nothing? Can any physical process deliver an infinity of products? Must infinite variety be the outcome? Asking enough questions ultimately leads to an all-powerful, uncaused Causer.”
We know our universe exist, however, one does not know whether more than one universe exist. In addition, there is no way to discover such a universe. Thus the number of universes we came observe is one – and only one.
I will sum up this essay with an epitaph from astronomer Robert Jastrow from his book God and the Astronomers:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Ron Howard and Dan Brown are sitting in the restraint at the end of the galaxy, and they lost all of their chips.
May 21st, 2009 |
Robert, good segue into my next post. Check in a bit later.
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