Biblical Views: In the Know

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“I like knowing more about what’s going on than most people,” brags Katharine Hepburn in her role as a political journalist to Spencer Tracy’s sportswriter in the film Woman of the Year. All of us, I expect, can identify with the allure of this sort of knowledge and, more important, the sense of empowerment that comes with being “in the know.” We believe that the more we know, the better our chances of making sense of what is going on in our increasingly chaotic world. Psychologists tell us humans abhor chaos and determinedly resist notions of a random universe. As instinctive “meaning-makers” we prefer to look for an agent or mechanism at work behind the scenes.

It is hardly surprising, then, that conspiracy theories are so popular¹: Aliens landed at Roswell, New Mexico; TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a missile. 9/11 was a CIA plot. Conspiracy Web sites² and conventions³ feed the perpetual hunger for meaningfulness. And to get back to the Hepburn character’s passion, a basic tenet of conspiracy-theory adherents is that they represent the elite in the vanguard of knowledge. While the gullible majority flounders in ignorance, conspiracists know the real truth behind disasters and disorder. Generally this truth rests on the premise that a powerful entity (the U.S. government, say) is engaged, usually secretly, in plots and/or elaborate cover-ups. All this is by way of introducing some thoughts I have had regarding the enormous popularity of The Da Vinci Code.

Forget the historical Mary Magdalene or whether Jesus of Nazareth could have been married. What I find intriguing is an outlook The Da Vinci Code shares with certain early Christian documents, including those from which author Dan Brown claims to draw inspiration. My comparison begins, on a superficial level, with heresy. Brown’s bestseller and the ancient texts contain revelations that reframe Christian dogma as it has stood since the fourth century. Just as some contemporary church leaders across denominations have condemned Brown’s novel as heretical, so also some early Christian groups rejected the second-century Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the third-century Gospel of Philip and other texts that modern scholars characterize as Gnostic or heterodox; in fact, by the fourth century the Church had suppressed them.⁴ Not unlike The Da Vinci Code, many of these ancient texts reflect startling through-the-looking-glass perspectives on God and the Church. Their attraction, as in the case of conspiracy theories, comes in part from what I call the flatteringly seductive “but actually” syndrome; for example, The Da Vinci Code “works” by suggesting that everyone else may think Jesus was a virgin, but actually, its enlightened readers are privy to the truth: He was married!

However, even though the 2003 bestseller drew on “heretical” Christian sources for its plot, nevertheless The Da Vinci Code’s heresy—that a misogynist Roman Catholic Church has willfully misrepresented Christ’s life and teachings for centuries—is a 21st-century novelist’s invention. The early Christian texts arguably offer stranger “but actually” views of Christianity. For example, Christians believe the Creator in Genesis 1 is all-powerful and good, but actually, according to the Gospel of Philip, “[t]he world came into being through an error. For he who created it intended to create it imperishable and immortal. He failed to attain his hope” and, even worse, “God is a man eater.” Unfortunately, “folk do not know the right meaning; rather they know the wrong meaning [unless] they have come to know the right meaning.”⁵ Jesus’ mission includes undeceiving gullible Christians who erroneously believe a good God could have created such an imperfect world. In the same vein, Matthew 16:18 may insist that Jesus hand-picked Peter as the leader of “my church,” but actually, in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Peter comes across as a petty hothead; instead, Mary, the wisest apostle, shares truths with the other apostles that Jesus made known to her alone.⁶

The Da Vinci Code appeared just when the Roman Catholic priestly abuse scandal was making headlines. The novel’s portrait of a paranoid institution whose very foundations rested on lies about sexuality could not have been timelier in its appeal to a confused and newly suspicious laity. Nevertheless (although I cringe at according such a negligible work even this much credit) in the tradition of the earlier works, the novel suggests the church can be redeemed by change, not that it should dissolve.

Whatever the problem—how to reconcile a cruel world with a good creator; how to understand Jesus’ death, disputes over what sort of person merits authority in the church—the early Christians’ adjustments to, and (re)interpretations of, pre-existing beliefs speak to the basic human instinct to find meaning and purpose in our lives. If we can only learn the Truth, we reason, all will be well.

“I like knowing more about what’s going on than most people,” brags Katharine Hepburn in her role as a political journalist to Spencer Tracy’s sportswriter in the film Woman of the Year. All of us, I expect, can identify with the allure of this sort of knowledge and, more important, the sense of empowerment that comes with being “in the know.” We believe that the more we know, the better our chances of making sense of what is going on in our increasingly chaotic world. Psychologists tell us humans abhor chaos and determinedly resist notions of a random universe. […]