Gnosticism And The Da Vinci Code
Part 2
By RL Forrest
"Woe unto them that call evil good,and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" Isaiah 5:20-21
The essence of Gnosticism is the exchange of good for evil. We have seen this throughout human history. We have seen this from the beginning, in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve exchanged what God had revealed to them as truth, for the lie of Satan. There was no arm-twisting, no force, no violence. Satan simply presented God as the liar, the deceiver, the evil force in the world. He deceived Eve into believing that humans were really gods. She chose to believe Satan, as did Adam, and rebellion was born into every human heart since that time.
"Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to th eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."
Genesis 3:1-6
Gnosticism presents God as the creator of the world and the deceiver of mankind. Gnosticism presents God as a being who would keep the world in bondage by hiding the inherent divinity of humanity from every human born into the world. This is the lie that is presented in The Da Vinci Code.
Adam and Eve freely discarded God's word and rebelled against God's command to obey it. As a result of Adam and Eve's choice, sin entered the world with far-reaching consequences. Sin took humanity captive, and death became our inheritance.
Carefully scripted, The Da Vinci Code reads like the mystery novels that have entertained us all. There are heroes, and there are villains. There are clues to be found and deciphered. There is also an underlying truth that has yet to be discovered. We are taken along on this adventure in order to discover Dan Brown's truth - that the true Gospels are the Gnostic gospels.
Brown portrays the Catholic Church as the embodiment of Christianity on the earth. He cleverly draws on the Catholic church's history to remind us of the Catholic church's secretive and sometimes violent past. He then focuses on the modern day Catholic hierarchy with its secret organizations, specifically Opus Dei. He presents a great and sweeping cover-up by the Catholic church of the great spiritual truth which will be revealed gradually through the story. The great villain in The Da Vinci Code is the Catholic church. There is no doubt that Brown will find many in his audience that would agree with this contention. Others would not.
Brown takes us further on this spiritual journey by presenting the Gospels as fabrications of the Catholic church. By casting doubt on the truth of the Gospels, Brown is undermining faith in the Gospels as God's divinely inspired word. If we lose our faith in the truth of the Gospels, we begin to question the basic tenets of Christianity, including the divinity of Christ. Those in Brown's audience who are intrigued by those thoughts, would then want to know what the truth really is.
Brown then puts forth Gnosticism as this hidden spiritual truth, which is the basis of his story. Christ was merely a spiritually enlightened human, who tried to liberate humanity with the knowledge that all humans are inherently divine. Brown claims that the Catholic church has done everything in its power to keep this great spiritual truth hidden so that the Catholic organization could retain its spiritual control of the spiritually ignorant masses of this world.
Leonardo DaVinci's famous painting, The Last Supper, is presented by Brown as an important clue, and a spiritual document that portrays Jesus and a hidden Mary Magdalene next to him, in the chief seat amongst his disciples. Gnostics contend that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered a lineage that Brown calls the real "Holy Grail". We know that the Catholic church claims direct lineage through the Apostle Peter. Brown further polishes his story by telling how the Catholic church hunted and persecuted not only Mary Magdalene, but all in her lineage in an attempt to wipe them off the face of the earth. The modern day heroine of Brown's tale is the sole survivor of this royal lineage. She, along with the intellectual hero, fight off the villains and unravel the mysteries showing us all the Gnostic path to divinity.
In the ending scenes of The Da Vinci Code movie, the hero, portrayed by Tom Hanks, declares his past reliance on a divine Jesus Christ when he was a child, but now believes as an adult that the divine resides in us all. Dramatically, on his own, he then discovers the final mystery of the story, the location of the tomb of Mary Magdalene. At Mary's tomb, he bows down and worships at the altar of human divinity.