(12:41 PM) | Anonymous:

The DaVinci Code: An Opportunity for Radical Theology

Friends,

I believe that we are now being presented with a golden opportunity that is most unlikely soon to recur, and that is the furor occurring over the movie, The DaVinci Code, apparently all established film critics have harshly rejected it, but let me limit myself to the mild review in Time. It speaks of the book as the publishing phenomenon of the decade, but I gather that it is far more insofar as it has apparently sold more copies than any book apart from the Bible. The review also speaks of the movie as being politically brave, and politically brave simply in making a movie of the book, although this is guaranteed to make a vast fortune. Perhaps I am one of the few theologians who has actually read the book, a gift of my son-in-law, and it gave me great fun, although I must confess that I love conspiracy books of this kind. But even if we acknowledge that this is just fun, the fun is being had at the expense of all Christian establishments, and they are being accused of committing murder and mayhem over two millennia to preserve a false Christ and a false Christianity, having wholly inverted an original Christianity and an original Christ. Yes, we are here being offered a rather crude Gnosticism, and certainly one that would be wholly foreign to virtually everyone. But why such an intense response?

Vast numbers of people are responding to a rather intense and dramatic accusation that our established Christianities have been duping the world for two thousand years, and even employing violence and a comprehensive propaganda to enforce that duping, so that our religious establishments are guilty of heinous crime and deception, indeed, the greatest deception in history. Now one cannot here limit that deception to the Catholic Church, for it must have occurred in all Christian orthodoxies, all of whom have inverted the original Christ, even if they have done no more than accepting a Constantinian orthodoxy that embodies an inversion of an original Christianity and an original Christ. Pause! Think about how so many millions of people have become absorbed in this, and how the theological world has wholly ignored this obsession or only attacked it. Then consider how Heidegger himself makes a comparable even if far less dramatic point, and how these words of Heidegger have been ignored by both our philosophical and our theological establishments. Of course, I am referring to his remark in Parmenides (#3) when he says that “Latinization” is the passage of Greek alethia into Roman imperium, wherein the domination of command passes into the very essence of ecclesiastical dogma. So, too, one could call upon both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche who deeply understood and proclaimed that historical Christianity has wholly transformed and inverted the original Christ. Even if this has little resonance in our contemporary religious and theological worlds, it clearly is effecting an enormous response in the public itself and so much so that this is one of the major events of our time.

I am enjoying reading accounts of how the Catholic establishment is apparently making a decision to be silent about all of his, fearing that an open assault would do more harm than good, which itself is a most revealing decision. So, too, I am enjoying reading accounts of how established religious authority is wholly unthreatened by this scandal if only because the book employs obvious and demonstrable historical fictions. Yes, these are such fictions, but they can easily stand for profound historical transformations of Christianity which in fact have occurred, and it is fully possible that millions of people are not only sensing that, but responding intensively to it. Now this may well be of little concern to our religious establishments, but I presume that few of us have any confidence in them. Yet we should approach this scandal in the context of a new and powerful political conservatism that derives much of it’s power from its alliance with a new and reactionary religious establishment. I think that the majority of people are well aware of this alliance, and even suspect that such a rebellion against our religious establishment is also and inevitably a rebellion against our political establishment, too, and that it is not wholly coincidental that this scandal has occurred at a time of collapse of public confidence in the Bush administration.

Of course, this takes me back to the days of the public controversy over the death of God, and to public sermons proclaiming that the God of our established Christianities is the very reversal of the self-emptying and self-annihilating God of Christ, and it is this alien God who has died and brought us ultimate liberation. Recently I was sent a DVD of a NET television program of forty years ago on Altizer and the death of God that contained clips of my preaching then, many of you have seen this, and are there not genuine parallels between that world and the world of this scandal occurring today. One deep difference, however, is that our religious establishments were not then so reactionary, as witness in this tape the Archbishop of Atlanta defending me. Indeed, would it be possible for The Davinci Code to be so enormously successful in a world not dominated by reactionary religious and political establishments? Just as at the time of the death of God controversy a critical consensus arose to the effect that the controversy could only have arisen on such a large scale as a consequence of a general loss of confidence in established religious authority, so, too such a loss of confidence is apparently being revealed by the Code.

Surely this is an enormous opportunity for us, just such an opportunity arose for conservative Christians with the release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion, but it was not news then that there are millions of conservative Christians in this country, whereas it is certainly news if there are millions rebelling against conservative Christianity, or millions who intensively respond to a violent attack upon it. I wonder how the publishing industry will respond to this, surely the publishers of The Davinci Code are reaping what could well be or become the greatest publishing royalties in history, and the movie is receiving more attention and publicity than any I know of before, even at BJ’s there is a large table devoted to it. Now don’t misunderstand me, I certainly don’t admire Don Brown as a novelist, but I do admire how he has realized such an enormous effect, and I wonder if we don’t have a deep lesson to learn from this. Could radical Christianity become a mass movement or even a movement at all? Why not? Now that is an ultimate question to ponder.

Joyfully,

Tom

I have just been to our local movie theatre, two blocks away, to see The DaVinci Code, and I was impressed, while this may have been because this was the first time I had been in a movie theatre for perhaps thirty years, and only now encountered a contemporary projector with its dazzling technology, I think that more is involved. This is certainly the best thriller that I have seen, perhaps because it is a theological thriller, and its hero and chief villain are theologians, even as its language is largely theological, although theologically heterodox. Critics have complained that it is too loyal to the book, thus making its plot too complex for a movie, and there is truth in that, but nonetheless something comes through although it may demand a prior reading of the book. And while I wish that a radical theologian had been consulted by Dan Brown, he does a great deal with what appears to be so little theologically, and this is certainly enhanced by contemporary film technology, and the great question to me is what will be the theological effect of this movie? The audience today appeared to be an ordinary one, none left before it was over, and I heard only complimentary comments.

There are predictions that this will be the most popular movie in history, but how could that be with such a heavily theological movie, and one that is theologically so purely heterodox? The villainy here is perpetuated by the Catholic Hierarchy, just as the Church as such has here imprisoned humanity, and this beginning with the Constantinian Establishment, just as it includes a sensible discussion of Constantine. Leonardo and Newton are gods here, and there is a fascinating scene when “The Last Super” is theologically unlocked and the Holy
Grail unveiled, could this have an effect upon contemporary feminism? How could one see this without becoming all too suspicious of our religious hierarchies? And is that a deeper purpose here, and one that is ingeniously intended to hit the jackpot, as though someone understands that this is a decisive way to vast amounts of money? Are we radical theologians incredibly naive? Have we been posed to triumph for a long time and was I too stupid to realize this in the days of the death of God frenzy? Let me urge you to see the movie and ask yourself these questions.

A puzzled,

Tom

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