Dan Brown's latest work is pretty good. For the most part I thought it was a good thriller that was hard to put down. There are those moments when it becomes a bit encyclopedic but otherwise it's fairly entertaining. In all I only had a few gripes with it, which I think are interesting enough to warrant a post on.
In the book Brown promotes that the Bible is true. In fact he goes so far as to essentially say that anyone who believes the Bible is historical fiction is stupid. In addition he is in favor that all the various religions in the world share some fundamental truths. But then he goes and belittles the parts of those religions that make them unique. Typically he belittles some of the practices in Christianity, probably because that's his reader base and they know the most about this religion. Specifcally praying infront of the god-man hanging on the Cross (Catholic-centric), and eating his 'figurative' body and drinking his blood (probably not Catholic-centric as we see nothing 'figurative' about it). Brown likes to show how pagen these practices are. So I want to clear this up a bit. Even though Brown doesn't make this claim, I want to clarify that we do not pray to Jesus on the Cross. Rather we pray to Jesus in Heaven, and use the icon of the Cross for meditation and reflection. Catholics typically like to focus on the sacrifice Jesus made, and use it to inspire our own actions. Many of the other denominations focus on the empty Cross (possibly because of 'faith alone') which signifies Jesus' victory. Both approaches are fine, and it's not like one is better than the other. In fact we should probably focus on both, if Jesus didn't die on the Cross we wouldn't be saved, and if He didn't get off that Cross we wouldn't care. As for the bit about figuratively eating God, alright that one sounds crazy. If I was an outsider looking in I would probably be getting away from those people right quick. But at the same time if Brown is promoting the Bible as truth, then Jesus is God and we should probably do what He says. And so if He says we need to eat Him, then that's what we need to do crazy sounding or not.
But that's just a minor gripe. The next thing I want to talk about isn't so much of a gripe as I just thought it was interesting having been in Theology. During the last 5 pages of the book, Brown presents his Theology. He claims that we are made in God's image, but puts the 'twist' on it that it's not our physical bodies that are in the image of God but our mind. I found it amusing that his 'twist' was the physical body, because that's certainly not the Catholic understanding of being made in His image. Actually, it would be closer to our minds, but not quite. God is the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. By very definition, God is relational. We too, being made in His image are made for relations, with each other and with God. There's other things too, but my point is that it's certainly not something so basic as just our minds that is made in the image of God.
The other bit of Theology Brown wanted to push is the word 'Elohim' which is the Old Testament word for God. The special thing about that word is that it's plural. Brown's point is that in essence it meant that all of us are god, and we just haven't taped into our full potential yet. In reality we need to remember that during the Old Testament, God was revealing Himself to humanity. And much of humanity believed in many gods. The God of Israel, wasn't the only god around according to the citizens back then. In fact He wasn't even very high on the totem-pole. But also the plural, as found in Genesis during the creation (check it out, you'll find the language has God as plural), points to the reality of the Trinity which was later introduced by Jesus.
Anyway, I'm not writing this to make a big case here, or to change your convictions. I just thought Brown's ideas were amusing and it'll be interesting to hear how people react once they get a hold of the book.
0 comments:
Post a Comment