Madam, - According to Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code (DVC), Jesus Christ proclaimed the "sacred feminine" or "goddess worship". Yet witness the vehement opposition of the Old and New Testaments to all idols, including Ashtoreth, the queen of heaven, Diana of the Ephesians and the goddesses of Greece and Rome.
In the DVC, Jesus married Mary Magdalene (a descendant of King Saul!) and fathered a daughter, Sarah, from whom sprang the Merovingians, a medieval French royal dynasty, and ultimately Sophie Neveu, the book's heroine. Christ intended Mary Magdalene to be the head of His church after His crucifixion. The sacred feminine, Mary Magdalene - her bones and secret documents - is the holy grail!
In support of this world of virtual reality, the DVC contains numerous gross historical blunders concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi, the New Testament canon, the early church, Constantine, the Council of Nicea, etc.
Instead of the four biblical gospel accounts, the DVC would substitute the Gnostic gospels which are fragmentary, much later, largely uninterested in events in Christ's life and often bizarre (eg, "every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven" - Gospel of Thomas, 114). The Gnostics were dualists, believing the spirit to be good and matter to be evil. The world was created by the demiurge, a derivative and evil god.
For most Gnostics, Jesus only seemed to be human (docetism). The heavenly Christ did not suffer on the cross; His earthly substitute was crucified. Salvation lies in secret knowledge (gnosis) providing the elite with passwords enabling them to ascend past the planets.
No wonder Sir Ian McKellen, who acts Sir Leigh Teabing, the "expert historian", in the DVC movie, admitted Dan Brown's book was "codswallop". Don't be deceived into thinking that the DVC is "fiction based on fact". Anti-Christian conspiracy theories, and the religious controversies they spawn, sell books and fill cinemas but The Da Vinci Code ought not to prejudice one against the truth of the incarnate, crucified and risen Christ of the Bible. - Yours, etc,
Rev ANGUS STEWART, Covenant Protestant Reformed Fellowship, Kells, Ballymena, Co Antrim.