staring into the distance::as far as our eyes can see

Novels by the pool

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. During the summer holiday I turn into a complete slob. It needs to be hot. I need to have lots of novels to read. I need a constant supply of cool beer and then I stay mostly static, occasionally dragging myself between pool, food-source and armchair.

This year, however, I jumped the gun, having picked up The Da Vinci Code just before sitting around waiting for one of my kids to be picked up in the car one day. From page one, I was hooked. I finished it in about 48 hours. A brilliant page-turner. Theological bullshit.

In fairness to the author, he makes clear at the outset that the factual basis for the book is miniscule, the vast majority being fantasy. However, that hasn’t stopped many people taking its theological claims seriously, viz. that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalen, who then gave birth to a line of children. That Mary Magdalen was the personification of the goddess. That all this was open knowledge in the early Church until the Council of Nicaea, and that it was thereafter hushed-up and suppressed by the nasty Roman Catholic Church.

The way this is justified is by piling speculation on speculation, often in contradiction to known historical sources, so that an enormous conspiracy theory is developed. Anyone who has studied history beyond secondary school level knows that all historical claims need to be subjected to a rigorous critical evaluative process, otherwise the whole concept of ‘history’ is unsustainable since it is indistinguishable from speculative fantasy. Traditionally, these disciplines were honed and preserved within the academic structures, which had their own, intra-disciplinary codes of methodology. This, of course, didn’t prevent the occasional conspiracy-theorist from making a lot of money publishing speculations which didn’t accord with these kind of scholarly canons. The work of Erich Von Daniken comes to mind. Good stuff for naive schoolboys and the feeble-minded, but not serious history founded on a critical reading of evidence and subject to peer review.

Theology also has a similar approach – but struggles to maintain it against two forces which often come into an unlikely allegiance. The first is the fear of the ultra-orthodox that critical approaches to religious historical texts will undermine faith. The second is from what might be called the ‘occult’ influence, of which the theory of The Da Vinci Code is but one example. (Other examples include the works of people like Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley, or even worse, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.) This ‘occult’ stream refuse the insight of critical scholarship because they wish to construct an alternative reality based on daisy-chaining supposedly special revelation together to suit their own particular theories.

Umberto Eco brilliantly showed that in a postmodern context, the conspiracy theorists and the occultists have the cultural upper-hand, since the canons of rational authority are no longer trusted, along with the academies which preserved the concept of ‘specialism’ within modernity. In his often under-estimated novel, Foucault’s Pendulum he pursues the story of what happens when someone removes all critical processes from a line of enquiry, and traces a path which ultimately leads to madness and death. In the book he is quietly showing the logical outworking of postmodern approaches to ‘facticity’, including that of the 20th century Foucault. All quality control systems which sift knowledge into varying degrees of plausibility are removed, and a fast-tracked, non-heirarchical system of data-delivery takes its place. The book could almost be a parable of the World Wide Web, where all information sources are presented as equally authoritative. Such an environment is inherently occultic.

To return to The Da Vinci Code: the Roman Catholic Church is extremely exercised by the cultural influence that the book is having. In a post-Christian culture, where ignorance of the Bible, basic theology and Church history is almost universal, conspiracy theories and occult approaches to tradition are easily digestible and are swallowed quickly. In places like the blogosphere and the web, the Church can no longer expect a reverent and privileged hearing alongside all the other competing voices. The situation is similar to practitioners of medical science finding, with horror, that they are being taken with equal seriousness alongside the voices of quacks – even by funding bodies. My guess is that nothing can now be done about this from the point of view of changing culture in the near future. Instead, the Church needs to invest again in its teaching role, preserving the tradition of rigorous, critical thinking about historical texts, particularly as they pertain to Christian identity and belief. This work may not bear immediate fruit, but in the longer-term it will be the only way that the Christian story and identity will be preserved from sinking into a forgetful swamp made up of the worst kind of mythology, masquerading as ‘history’. Or to put it another way, when something is a load of pure tripe the Church politely needs to say so, and point out why, even if nobody much listens. I find myself wondering whether future generations might see the 21st century as the scholarly equivalent of the sack of Rome, with the vandals putting the libraries to the torch. If so, then the places where fact still managed to be distinguished from fantasy would be regarded as equivalent to those monastic islands of learning, where ancient wisdom was preserved on illuminated codices of vellum. Again, Eco’s work is perhaps prophetic: in the closing scenes of The Name of the Rose the monastery, holding the largest collection of manuscripts in Europe, burns to the ground. The fire begins in the library.

All that said, The Da Vinci Code is a must for reading beside the pool this summer. Just make sure you put your head under cool water at regular intervals. See you in a couple of weeks.

Posted on Friday, 22 July 2005 by Paul | Posted in theology | 4 comments