October 24, 2010 at 9:14 A.M. Two letters were altered in essays, other "errors" may have been inserted in writings with the goal of maximizing "frustration-inducement." I have done my best to correct all inserted "errors," often the identical corrections have been made dozens of times in this work.
July 28, 2010 at 4:17 P.M. I am shocked to discover "errors" inserted by hackers in a number of my essays. I can only hope to have made all necessary corrections.
August 24, 2009 at 10:43 A.M. This essay has received more than the usual number of attacks, defacements, and blocking of images. This may have to do with hatred of the Church. The Pope would say: "Pray for them." I will revise this work to correct errors inserted in it. I will attempt to attach an image to this essay-review, once again, then I will await further tampering and alterations, so as to make the same corrections once more. I am blocking:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N4359.MSN/B218937... (NJ)
New errors have, indeed, been discovered which were not found in my earlier versions of this essay. I will make the corrections again.
November 30, 2007 at 11:39 A.M. I received a call from 303-395-2345 and blocked:
http://view.atcmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90xWBCBRB00110msn/direct;wi.728;hi.90/01 (NJ, OAE?)
More "errors" added and corrections made. November 2, 2008 at 9:38 P.M. This is actually better than I expected. I will wait overnight to re-post the essay, since several essays were vandalized today. More will probably be damaged tonight. My daughter is also experiencing difficulties with her lap top, for some reason. She complains of stomach pains. I am sure this is coincidental. I will continue to struggle.
People who hate Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and those who love it have had their say. No minds have been changed. Even a movie starring Tom Hanks -- who is upstaged by the city of Paris -- is now part of the Code experience. Mr. Brown's reviews have not been great, especially among scholars. Mr. Brown is making a lot of money and probably does not care very much what university professors think. I don't blame him.
The novel is standard pop entertainment which does not merit much commentary. Mr. Brown has laced his potboiler with allusions to scholarly works, bizarre criticisms of the Catholic Church, allegations of a conspiracy to suppress the "truth" about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, woven an allegory concerning the quest for the Holy Grail into his plot and made a number of controversial historical and philosophical claims, not to mention allegations concerning the "meaning" of several great works of art by Leonardo and others. All of this literary game-playing is just kind of thrown into a very thin text and mixed together. It is difficult to know where to begin to impose order on Brown's chaos. When it comes to the history of art, "Leonardo" is kind of like Elvis in Las Vegas -- you only need a first name.
I will first summarize the plot and Brown's most important symbolism, without giving away too much, in case someone has not yet read his book. Then I will examine some of Brown's theological claims and charges against the Church (which are mostly ludicrous); next, I will focus on Brown's interpretive claims concerning famous works of art and various texts; finally, I will say a word or two about the role of Mary Magdalene and women in Christianity.
Dan Brown is no theologian. He is not a historian, mythologist, nor a philosopher. Brown's book is pulp fiction and no more. Do NOT take it seriously. Incidentally, the name Mary the Magdalene or Magdelen is a subject of dispute among historians. If you are interested in the themes inadequately or incompetently explored in The Da Vinci Code -- which are certainly important and fascinating to me -- then there are many fine novels available where you will find them better discussed and more accurately analyzed.
My suggestions for those who are interested in the feminine principle or "sacred feminine" and in literary explorations of this theme today, is to read A.S. Byatt's novels, especially The Game (New York: Vintage, 1992). Also, Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding (London: Picador, 1990). Gore Vidal's Julian (New York: Random House, 1962) will guide you through the first centuries of Christianity, so will Anthony Burgess in The Kingdom of the Wicked (New York: Arbor House, 1985). I strongly recommend a book that I have read only in parts because it is difficult to find: Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Random House, 1976) and Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In The Wake of the Goddess: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformations of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 32-44 (women-goddesses as the collective source of intellectual and artistic life).
Those who are more philosophically inclined should consult Robert C. Solomon, Love, Emotion, Myth and Metaphor (New York: Prometheus, 1990) and Robert C. Solomon & Kathleen M. Higgins, The Philosophy of Erotic Love (Kansas: University of Kansas, 1991). On the Grail myth, see Emma Jung & Marie-Louise Von Franz, The Grail Legend (Coventure, 1986); and compare Anne Barring & Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess (London: Viking, 1991), with Robert Graves, The White Goddess (which I can not find on my shelves), also Lindsay Clarke's retelling of Parzival (London: Thorsons, 2001).
For historians, you can not do better than Professor Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988) on the gnostic texts and women's role(s) in early Christianity. Also, take a look at Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Notice A.S. Byatt's use of "serpents" as phallic (evil?) metaphors, then Iris Murdoch and Mircea Eliade on "Sacred and Profane Loves." (See also Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited.) Finally, Louis Mackey's "Eros Into Logos: The Rhetoric of Courtly Love," in The Philosophy of Erotic Love, p. 336 is a must. Irving Singer's second volume in his massive work The Nature of Love should be compared with Denis De Rougemont's Love in the Western World.
Woman or the feminine principle in Jungian analytical psychology is the "other self" that opens the door to the personal and collective subconscious, equally, usually one woman or a duality of women perform this role and not just for individuals, also for entire cultures. Maria Luisa Von Franz, "The Anima: The Woman Within," in Carl Jung: Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell, 1964), pp. 195-196, then Walter Pater, "Mona Lisa" in Harold Bloom, ed., Selected Writings of Walter Pater (New York: New American Library, 1974), pp. 31-52 (Mona Lisa is "our muse ... mistress of unity in being") and Kenneth Clark, "Mona Lisa," in Leonardo da Vinci (London: Penguin, 1963), pp. 110-113. ( "Mona Lisa is one of those works of art which each generation must reinterpret.") Please see my essay, "Arthur Schopenhauer and The Metaphysics of Art."
For an ironic destruction of Brown's claims, see Sigmund Freud's Leonardo Da Vinci (New York: Vintage, 1947), pp. 76-77 suggesting that Mona Lisa captures the duality of women when, as now appears likely, the work is partly a self-portrait of the artist. Freud's difficulties with Leonardo's "androgynous nature" and the impossibility of fitting this awesome genius within Freud's homophobic and sexist view of life was a source of perplexity for the good Viennese doctor who misperceived the duality that Leonardo wished to depict. Maybe Freud could have used some therapy. Sherwin B. Nuland, Leonardo Da Vinci (London: Phoenix, 2000), pp. 59-81 (The lowdown on "The Last Supper.") Still the standard work, according to Mr. Nuland, on Leonardo's mind is Edward McCurdy's The Mind of Leonardo Da Vinci (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928) and I am currently completing Robert Payne's Leonardo (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1978), pp. 194-204 ("The Importunities of Isabella De Este").
Mythologically and psychologically, Joseph Campbell's "The Mythology of Love," in Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam, 1972), at p. 152 is a work to which I will refer later in this essay. Augustine and Plato are the classic sources in this area, then Shakespeare and (sadly) Freud's essay, again, on Leonardo Da Vinci should be looked at, though Jung is much better on these issues. Hans Urs Von Balthazar in Love Alone is Credible (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1961), p. 56 speaks of "absolute love," which is represented in feminine terms in the form of the Holy Spirit (one symbolic meaning of spread wings as embrace is clear):
"The plausibility of God's love does not become apparent through any comparative reduction to what man has always already understood as love; rather, it is illuminated only by the self-interpreting revelation-form of love itself. And this form is so majestic that we are led to adore it from a reverent distance whenever we perceive it, [like a "great lady,"] even if it does not explicitly command us to do so."
The association of perfect love with the distant lady of Platonic adoration in courtly romances is not difficult to trace, neither is the emergence in the twelfth century of the cult of the Virgin Mary. To get a full blast of the power of feminine love and the "sacred feminine" in Christianity, I suggest that you stand, as I did, before the rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I promise you that, as the sun shines through the centuries-old stained glass, very early in the morning, you will understand the centrality of feminine as well as masculine representations of divine love in Christianity. Augustine, then Pico Della Mirandola, and the Florentine Neo-Platonists at the home of Lorenzo de Medici ("Il Magnifico") -- where the young Michelangelo absorbed this Platonism -- should be mentioned. Hence, Michelangelo's "Pieta" (both the early high Renaissance and late Mannerist version of this image) are works shaped by Platonism. Michelangelo's "Mary" is Woman, the ancient goddess of the Mediterrenean world, who remains ageless and eternally loving. (My short story "Pieta" touches on many of these themes.)
I. The Da Vinci Code: Rose and Cross.
A. The Plot.
"Robert Langdon" is a "symbologist" (there is no such thing, by the way) at Harvard University, who is lecturing in Paris. He is brought to the Louvre to find that a colleague "Jack Sauniere" is murdered, but has left a number of clues to a mystery which the novel will seek to unravel. The murder victim has arranged himself in the form of Leonardo's drawing of "The Vitruvian Man," which is mistakenly described as a representation of the masculine subjection to the feminine, as a clue to goddess worship, or some such nonsense. (See pp. 38-39.)
Sauniere has also found time to write invisible clues on a number of Leonardo's masterpieces, while bleeding to death very painfully. Brown's discussion of the meaning of Leonardo's naming of the "Mona Lisa," incidentally, is rendered ludicrous by the fact that this was not Leonardo's name for the painting, but Vasari's much later title for the work. (See pp. 129-131.) For Leonardo, the portrait was called "La Gioconda." No, this is not to be confused with Ponchielli's Opera, Gioconda. (Like "Enzo," I am now singing "Ciello e' Mar.")
It is doubtful that Leonardo would have called this partial self-portrait "Mona Lisa," since the work is much more obviously a religious work and a form of veiled autobiography as well as a philosophical essay. For Leonardo, the distant lady of Platonic adoration was a young man called "Salai" and (sometimes) Saleri, but not Mozart's nemesis, "Salieri." Emil Moller, "Salai und Leonardo Da Vinci," in Jarbuch der kunst historichen Sammlungen in Wien (1928), pp. 139-161. This work is avaliable in German and French. For those who prefer to have others do the legwork, try Charles Nicholl's recent massive biography that explores this crucial relationship. Salai is Mary/Mary Magdalene for Leonardo Da Vinci. Any person who earns that sort of love is welcome, since it is the love itself that is "holy." Next, try Shakespeare's Sonnets. (Look at the face of Leonardo's "Bacchus" and then at the smile of Mona Lisa.)
Narrative plausibility has been lost in The Da Vinci Code for the sake of allegory. And the allegory is not so hot either. The five pointed star has any number of symbolic interpretations, usually having to do with universal harmony. It is a distant cousin of China's Ying/Yang symbol. The deeper meaning of Leonardo's drawing I will leave for later in this review.
"Sophie Neveu" is a grandaughter of the murdered man. She is the intended recipient of several of his clues, also serving as the "Babe" found in every guy's action novel, which is strange in a supposedly feminist work. I would have preferred Irene Jacob in the movie, but that's just me. Mr. Brown obviously wants to make some money and has a little fantasy of his own going on. He clearly loves the idea of teaching a beautiful French ingenue all about the Grail myth by displaying his own vast erudition, which is (regrettably) non-existent.
"Oh, Dan ... You are sooo smart." These words, when spoken by -- let us, say, Juliet Binoche or Julie Delpy, maybe Irene Jacob or Emmanuelle Beart -- definitely can make your evening special. I am with you on that, Dan. Unfortunately, it is the kind of thing that rarely happened to me when I was very young. Women I met in discos rarely wished to discuss, say, Kant's derivation of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The reference here is to the Grail quest of legend: Sauniere is "Amfortas" (dead this time, not just wounded), Sophie is "La Belle Dame" of courtly romance, and Robert is the "knight of sound heart," who proves as much in answering his teacher's ("Philemon's"?) questions. By answering these questions, Robert finds a path through the forest. The result of all this madness is the alleged association of the Grail with the historical person of Mary Magdalene, strangely identified as the feminine principle and inheritor of the goddess myth (what happened to the Virgin Mary?), wife of Jesus and source of woman's power, neglected by the, allegedly, "evil" Catholic Church. ("Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")
The two Marys are actually aspects of a single set of relations associated with femininity that are always in balance or interaction. See again Marina Warner's work on "transformations" and her book, Alone of All of Her Sex. Compare Leonardo's drawing of "The Virgin with St. Anne" with Vidal's Two Sisters. Da Vinci returned to the theme of the Virgin and St. Anne on several occasions, not only in his painting of the "Virgin of the Rocks," but also in numerous drawings where the image of the Virgin and young Christ/Apollo/Bacchus are overlaid. The central image of Christ in the last supper may be superimposed on Leonardo's drawings of the Virgin with surprising results, a point not seen or noted by Mr. Brown. (See Kenneth Clark above, also Charles Nichols' recent biography of Leonardo, again, which I enjoyed at the cafe at Barnes and Noble just before returning the book to the shelf.)
Instructive in pursuing this discussion concerning feminine duality or ambiguity is A.S. Byatt's transformation of "Melusina" in Possession for obvious feminist purposes and (less obvious, but much more interesting) erotic goals. The myth of the "serpent"-woman dates, at least, from the seventeenth century. For those who are curious, you cannot do better than Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blond: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), pp. 4-9.
Opus Dei's albino monk (there is no order of Opus Dei monks, folks, so you can relax!) is running around assassinating people in the novel. Supposedly, this is because the Church does not wish this information about Mary Magdalene to get out. Meanwhile, the Church has made these texts available to scholars for years and will be placing many of them on line, free of charge, for students. Others are available in libraries around the world, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, who happens to be Saint Mary Magdalene, whether or not she was a prostitute.
Was she a prostitute or wasn't she? "Only her hairdresser knows for sure," as an old t.v. commercial used to say. I have news for you: It is irrelevant to her status as a Saint in Catholicism. Jesus felt great love for this woman, who is described in any number of the gnostic texts as "the beloved Apostle," and placed his trust in her. Magdalene played a leading role in the early years of the Church, as explained by Elaine Pagels and others. Jesus has rightly been called the first great feminist, though "Eve" deserves that honor. Mary Magdalene, along with many women, discharged priestly functions in the first years of Christianity, a point which is made by Professor Pagels. We even had a "Pope Joan." Some scholars describe Mary Magdalene as the first Pope.
Many of the women posing for nudes and as saints in Renaissance pantings and in later epochs, especially in Venice, happened to be prostitutes. It is entirely possible that worshippers in many of the great churches in Europe have been admiring and adoring some of the best whores of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy. I don't blame them at all. Titian is having a chuckle right about now. ("'The American': A Movie Review.")
I am confident that women will return to leadership roles in the Church soon, probably in less than a century. I may even live to see another woman sit on the Thrown of Peter. See Nancy M. Malone, Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003), pp. 149-179. Ms. Malone led me to Elizabeth Johnson's theological writings -- which I have only glanced at, since her book is not cheap at $27.00! -- but her works are recommended, especially to those with some training in philosophy and theology. For a discussion of the feminine in our understanding of divinity, see Professor Johnson's She Who Is.
I believe that Professor Johnson (Fordham) is a religious person. She is highly talented and learned, exceptionally philosophically adept -- based on what I have seen and read of her book -- providing readers with an exploration of divinity, as feminine, within the Catholic tradition and beyond. Peter Stanford, The Legend of Pope Joan: In Search of the Truth (New York: Berkeley Books, 2000), pp. 84-98. (Eroticism and homosexual love in the Church of the Middle Ages.) Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992). (Why your mother was right.)
Robert and Sophie figure out all of these clues, discover Mary's final resting place and (in the movie, anyway, over a three minute "close up") find "the" Grail. I figured out how the plot would unfold around page 90. This novel is, to use medieval Latin, shlock. In the words of St. Woody of Allen, "Yes, but they'll definitely sell a lot of books!" True, Woody, unfortunately there are people who will take this novel seriously. Don't, boys and girls, it's just fun and games. There is not a shred of evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married, had children, or ever lived in Connecticut while driving a station wagon to bingo games on Saturday night. ("'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")
Despite the angry resistance to this assertion, there is no such thing as "symbology." The Da Vinci Deception (Pennsylvania: Ascension Press, 2006), p. 17 points out: "... there is no academic discipline known as symbology." There are semiotics and semiology. Symbols are only one kind of sign, so that a discipline called "semiotics" includes what Langdon calls "symbology." These terms and academic fields are confused by Mr. Brown, who also is not too clear on the meaning of "hermeneutics." Try Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and A Theory of Semiotics.
Next, the issue of characters' names is always important in reading literature. Robert "Langdon" may refer to "langue d'oc" or the southern French kingdom (anybody seen the "Merovingian?") where troubadors invented the twelfth century courtly romances "inspiring" this novel. Lancelot and Parzifal hover in the background of this character's persona. While you're at it, look up the "Carolingian" dynasty and the "Cathars." Forget Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Try this baby: Leopold Von Ranke, History of the Popes: Their Church and State, Three Volumes (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966), Volumes I & II, up to Leo X. (Lots of gay sex in the Medieval clergy.) Either "Parsifal" or "Parsival" is hunky-dory.
"Sophie Neveu" is the "New Wisdom" meant to replace the "Good News" of the Canonical Gospels. The Da Vinci Code is supposed to be a new Gospel? Lots of luck, Dan. There are so many historical errors that a quite lengthy essay might be devoted merely to listing them. Why bother? I plan to concentrate on two colossal blunders of substantive interpretation or understanding that undermine this work as anything other than pop entertainment. This method of criticism is hermeneutic in the true meaning of the word.
First, I examine the antihistorical blunder of interpreting ancient texts and symbols -- dating from the first century of the Christian era (or earlier) -- in terms of themes, meanings and canons of construction associated with the courtly romances of the late medieval era, around the thirteenth century. Second, I point to Brown's failure to appreciate the theological significance or meaning of the Grail myth in terms of a Christian universe of metaphors and theological principles communicated to a mostly illiterate population, by means of symbols, just as the first stirrings of the Renaissance began to be felt. Brown fails to grasp both the theological purposes of the Grail story and its historical significance. The crucial work at this point is Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages.
Finally, a return to Brown's sources is wise for serious students, Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 64-67 notes the difference between the Gnostic texts and later Gospels concerning the role of women. Jesus is represented in the earliest texts of Christianity as speaking most closely and respectfully to Mary Magdalene, something which the other apostles could not accept: "But if the saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed, to reject her?" (Gospel of Thomas)
This selection of Magdalene as the "beloved apostle" and Peter as "fisher of men" has been interpreted as a division of power between masculine and feminine personas, as EQUALS, in the governance of the Christian Church. Later institutional judgments and political calculations -- especially, in the 4th century Council of Nicea -- altered this dynamic by disempowering women, who immediately regained power, indirectly, both in the medieval world when women were among the few educated "thinkers" (Hildegard of Bherens) and power-brokers, as well as in the early Renaissance when women were tough negotiators for kingdoms and wealth.
The Medici women ruled through their men, until dispensing with them by means of a little poison now and then. Some things never change. After all, it was "Catharina" of the Medici clan (at age fifteen) who developed an amorous interest in Michelangelo, insisting to the skeptics that the young man had some talent. History seems to confirm her opinions as sound.
B. Rose and Cross.
Mr. Brown also fails to understand the protean quality of great symbols. Like great art, symbols have different meanings in alternative chronological and cultural settings. In fact, symbols are found in most great art. These symbols resonate with meanings that multiply down through the centuries. They are not a treasure map or a police report pointing to one specific meaning or location, but explosions of associations delivering archetypal wisdom to the human psyche. Among the richest such symbols -- for me, the very richest -- are the "cross and rose," which are connected to Hebrew theology (rose is a distant cousin of the five pointed star) and also to pagan mythology and Mithraic mysteries. Symbolic communication, again, was vital in the medieval world since the bulk of the population was illiterate:
"God gave man two sources of knowledge, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Behind each are hidden meanings to be searched out; the universe is a vast cryptogram to be decoded. The history of Job's sufferings, for example, has, on the surface, a value as a great human story; secondly, it prefigures Christ's death; and thirdly, it represents the trials of the Christian soul. All that is red reminds artist and writer of the blood of Jesus, every stream brings a remembrance of rebirth through baptism, fishermen lowering their nets remind men of their redemption, the crab walking sideways makes one think of the fraudulent, and the Pelican, which was supposed to nourish its young with its own blood, was the analogue of Christ. There was no end to this type of symbolism inside the mind of the Middle Ages."
Frederick B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages: An Historical Survey A.D. 200-1500 (Chicago: Phoenix, 1980), p. 377; and C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (New York: Oxford, 1958), pp. 112-157 ("The Romance of the Rose"). One of the great errors by commentators and a myth among contemporary "educated" persons is the so-called body-hating and antierotic quality of Catholicism. There is a turning away from the flesh in one Catholic interpretation of Platonism, but there is also a spiritualized eroticism which is expressed through the body. Reservations concerning lust are not relevant to the celebration of eros, as in Bernini's depiction of "St. Teresa in Ecstasy," which has always been identified with the approach to God.
The great British scholar and writer Desmond Stewart in The Foreigner: A Search for the First Century Jesus, traces Jesus (at least in terms of myth) to Africa, specifically, Egypt, and connects the "myth of the Christ" to Platonism. Anthony Burgess, "Christography," in But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986), pp. 30-32. ("Desmond Stewart" will be changed to "Desmond Morris" by hackers on a regular basis -- knock yourselves out.)
The letters of Abelard and Heloise may be helpful on this matter of Christ and Platonic "Eros." Many mystics describe the approach to divinity as akin to orgasmic bliss -- for instance, St. John of the Cross or St. Teresa of Avila, whose pre-Freudian imagery concerning the angel who visited her "with a long golden spear which penetrated her" is pretty explicit. St. John of the Cross is unaware of writing highly erotic literature in describing his ascent from the "dark night of the soul." Some of the filthiest imagery is found in the unconsciously erotic writings of Christian celibates. The erotic power and hidden images in the letters of Heloise to Abelard are as devastating as the highly charged prose of the most lurid and explicit writers of the twentieth century:
"You know, my beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you." (Heloise to Abelard!)
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (London; Penguin, 1974), p. 113.
Symbolizing becomes a prominent feature of Western literature, once again, in the nineteenth century with Romanticism and French symbolist poetry, see Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (London: Routledge, 1957) and Michael Roberts, T.E. Hulme (Manchester: Carcanet, 1982). Symbols operate at a deeper than conscious level and feature in all great cinema. Spielberg's A.I. is a mythic text that deserves to be included with the great religious narratives of our history. To do justice to that film you will need to spend weeks studying the history of art, mythology, political philosophy, psychology of children, fairy tales and much more. In addition to Hinduism, A.I. is Spielberg's Catholic masterpiece. I am aware that Steven Spielberg is Jewish.
The influence of this form of symbolic thinking and communication can be found in the great surrealists, from Salvador Dali to Jean Cocteau. "Transmogrification" or "syncretism" points to the universality of religious themes or concerns. It does not undermine religious faith. A reading of Joseph Campbell would have helped Brown to write a better book. There is a wealth of scholarship concerning Cuban and Brazilian "Santeria" that is also relevant to these issues. The blending of pagan and Christian themes ("love/death") is one obvious example of "layering" in mythic narratives. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
Science lovers should note that this concern on the part of Catholic monks, mostly, to "read the book of nature" during the late medieval period led to the methods and interests of the Italian Quatrocentro and to the rebirth of humanism, a new secularism, and the scientific revolution, not to mention a little thing called "Capitalism." The Grail is only very superficially interpreted as concerned with any single woman or historical figure, since it is too powerful a myth in Western Civilization for such a reading to be plausible. It is about much more complex and profound themes of a theological and philosophical nature rooted in Christianity and Judaism, also older than both of those religions. Africa gave birth to many of these themes. For example, the myths of feminine divinity are found in ancient Egypt, where Isis holds the dying Osiris (as Mary will hold Jesus), also in many works of art that have survived from antiquity. I regret that racists may be upset to learn this historical fact. Actually, I don't mind upsetting racists. You may wish to insert another "error" right about now.
These images and archetypes form the background for "seminal" discussions of love among ancient philosophers, such as the dialectic in Plato's Symposium. There is a lineage from Isis to Socrates' philosophical partner "Diotima," but also from this Greek figure's theory of love to the Virgin Mary by way of Pauline Christianity, then Augustine and Neo-Platonism. A multi-year conversation about love and civilization beginning with the ancients and culminating with the so-called "death of eros" in our time is a complete education in the humanities and human sciences. These themes recur not only in later Christianity, also in Judaism, notably in Cabala (Campbell's spelling). Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Middlemore, 1944), then John Hall, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: MacMillan , 1994). (Harold Bloom's essay on kaballah is highly recommended to Jews and non-Jews.)
The "Jewish Jesus" is the interpretation of Jesus in light of the Jewish people's hope and idealization -- in a later post-exilic setting -- of an Annointed one or Messiah, who appeared or was sought as "symbol of unity and fulfillment of Scriptures," to compensate for the many sufferings and tragedies of Israel. Jaroslav Pelikan states bluntly, in Jesus Through the Centuries (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 11: "... Jesus was a Jew." Those who are under the impression that Jesus was, say, Belgian, are simply mistaken. I always recommend reading the books of theologians who get in trouble with the Catholic Church. Inevitably, these are the reigning theologians a generation after their troubles. For example, on Cristology, see Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World (London: SCM, 1980) and Hans Kung, Christianity: Its Essence and History (London: SCM, 1995). Joseph Campbell explains a more interesting difficulty:
"In Christian hermeneutics the crucifixion of the Savior had always presented a great problem; for Jesus according to Christian belief, accepted death voluntarily. Why? In Abelard's view ... it was an act of willing self-immolation in love, intended to invoke in response the return of mankind's love from worldly concerns to God. ... " ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
This leads to a startling claim:
"Indeed, the very idea of a descent of God into the world in love to invoke, in return, man's love to God, ... [leads to the insight that] as mankind yearns for the grace of God, so God [yearns] for the hommage [or love] of mankind, the two yearnings being reciprocal." ("Pieta.")
Myths to Live By, p. 158. ("Is this atheism's moment?")
The union of Christ with his "bride," the Church -- of the Holy Spirit with Her suffering children, humanity -- is symbolized by the Grail. The Grail is the place of transcendence, beyond opposites: male or female, young or old, good or evil. The Grail is the "unity of the Holy Spirit." This worship of the feminine -- as unity or nurturing care in the form of the Virgin Mary -- is a Medieval idea, based on Hellenistic Platonism, which would have seemed strange to Jesus. Jesus was closer to the mystics of Judaism and classical thinkers for whom sex was not a source of guilt or "displaced." The worship of the feminine in most other cultures is explicitly erotic. Catholicism makes eros a symbolic feature of feminine images of the Virgin Mary who is usually represented as youthful as well as maternal.
There are similar figures to Jesus in the history of Judaism, i.e., the Bel Shemtov and other distinguished mystical rabbis who taught by example, mostly figures emerging in the Hebrew Enlightenment of the eighteenth century among Ashkenazi jewry. If you do not like the fact that Jesus was certainly a Jew, too bad.
This key phrase with crucial "loving" overtones ("in the unity of the Holy Spirit") is still spoken in celebrating the Catholic mass. The phrase points to the homecoming of humanity in, with, and to God, which is ultimate self-realization. Integration of feminine and masculine, human and divine with love is "Being." This is the so-called "Christianizing of Eros." To be is to be with others in a loving manner of self-realization. Now take another look at Da Vinci's drawing of "The Vitruvian Man." What do you think the drawing is saying about the UNITY of human and divine? You have forty minutes. The real title of Da Vinci's drawing is "in the unity of the Holy Spirit."
The "meaning" of the great Christian symbols is the unity of the rose (feminine) and cross (masculine) in the person or Being of Christ, who transcends all opposites. God is beyond gender. Such a transcendence is LOVE, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus tells his puzzled Apostles: "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you ... and you do not see it."
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of being with God which is symbolized by the Grail. Loving someone is that state of being with God. Biologists tell us that all human embryos begin as both masculine and feminine in posse. (Potentiality) One theological interpretation of this fact is that we return to a state beyond gender in coming home to God/Love. Please read my essay "Judith Butler and Gender Theory" and "Pieta." Both of those works have been subjected to a great deal of vandalism, along with this essay. Judith Butler will be astonished to learn that she is one of our best Catholic theologians. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
"The Grail finds you," Sophie says, echoing Wolfram Von Eschenbach medieval author of "Parzival." Unfortunately, neither Dan Brown nor his character, Sophie, understands what this means. It means that you already have the Grail. You had it from birth. It is within you. It is called LOVE. Von Eschenbach's purpose, as Campbell explains, was to dramatize the fulfillment of human nature for which we hope: "... the achievement of that supreme spiritual goal of which the grail [sic.] was the medieval symbol."
To search outside of yourself for the Grail, as an object or person, is a doomed venture. The Grail is your love directed towards others. By finding love within yourself, you will discover (by creating) love in the world. This finding of love within yourself is your encounter with what you may call "God."
II. Defending the Catholic Church.
It has become fashionable to attack Catholic institutions and the Vatican as evil. The Vatican is a human institution, which readily admits to fallibility -- as does the Pope -- on all earthly or political matters. I am not claiming to be a good Catholic, by the way. I am not in any official capacity with any Catholic organization. Yet I find these attacks on Catholicism as well as the Church increasingly irrational and annoying. The Pope -- no Pope -- condones child molestation by anyone.
It is in terms of the Vatican's attitudes to women and outdated notions of gender that criticism should be taken seriously by this Pope and his successors. To deem "instant excommunication" appropriate for anyone who ordains a woman as a priest is to seek to excommunicate Christ who clearly held Mary Magdalene in this priestly regard. Given the hesitation in excommunicating priests charged with child molestation this official harshness towards women is offensive and absurd.
The "doctrine of infallibility" has to do with narrow issues of faith in Catholic theology, which is rarely invoked, and never about political or administrative matters in which Church officials may be involved. There are some bad priests. There are some bad anything you like -- dentists, cab drivers, plumbers, all have been known to be both good and not-so-good. Only lawyers are universally admired for their moral beauties.
The Vatican is an institution doing charitable work in many places in the world, caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, serving and educating children and young people who, otherwise, may not be educated. I am one of the recipients of Catholic schooling. However, the Pope certainly should not be held responsible for my disturbing opinions. In many instances, the Church is doing these valuable services free of charge. The Vatican is not the source of evil in the world. The Pope's recent visit to Auschwitz (where many Christians also died) is part of a continuing effort at reconciliation and love directed at the Jewish people, whose suffering and history must be shared. Priests can be mistaken about moral issues, like any of us. There are some vicious and bizarre anti-Catholic attacks in this novel and contemporary society:
"What about those who look at the cruelty in the world and say, where is God today? Those who look at the Church scandals and ask, who ARE these men who claim to speak the truth about Christ and yet lie to cover-up the sexual abuse of children by their own priests? ... What happens ... if persuasive scientific evidence comes out that the church's version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and that the greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever SOLD." (p. 288.)
These words are spoken by Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, but they clearly meet with Mr. Brown's approval. Similar comments are scattered throughout the text. To refer in these terms to the leadership of any religious group in America would be shocking. Somehow it is permissible to refer to Catholics or the Vatican in these terms, which disproves many of these allegations, since the Church has not ordered a fatwa against Dan Brown. The Church only points out that Brown is mistaken and that his book is not exactly Shakespeare. I agree on both counts. Scriptures are not an accountant's statement of assets and liabilities. "Accuracy" in discerning the message contained in these sacred texts is a more subtle and profound process of interpretation. ("Incoherence in 'The New Yorker'" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
I wish to deal with these charges in detail. First, "where is God today?" This is an issue debated, at length by Catholic theologians, by Christians and non-Christians. As Kierkegaard noted, when you ask this question, you are already revealing an obsession and concern with God suggesting that you cannot avoid the problem of faith. If you reject God, then you are making a theological judgment. You are involved with God, even in rejecting Him. If you despair, says Kierkegaard, that is excellent because it means you are very close to Him. "Why despair? Are you missing something or someone?" Kierkegaard poses these annoying questions. Guess who it might be that you are missing? We love other human beings, in Catholic teaching, because we see God within them. (See again my story "Pieta.") What do you think Holy Communion symbolizes?
Yes, some priests have committed sexual offenses and the Church has disciplined them and cooperated with the authorities in seeing them punished. Also, millions have been paid for compensation of injured persons in civil suits, often (tragically) at the cost of the Church's charitable work. You have said NOTHING about Catholicism by pointing to individuals who are flawed in the Church. There are no "unflawed" persons, not even in radical political movements where atheism is a trendy opinion and people munch on tofu at lunch time as they peruse The Village Voice.
If only New Jersey's Supreme Court and legal system were as concerned to do the ethically and legally correct thing as the Vatican, I might receive recognition of my injuries and appropriate apologies. Instead, I am afraid that we can expect more vandalism of these writings and censorship. I believe the number of hits at these blogs has now passed 100,000. MSN has not closed, mysteriously enough, although I still cannot reach my sites. How curious?
I am an agnostic, in the sense of not believing in a personal God with a white beard floating around in heaven. I am also a democratic socialist (so are many Catholics). I do not read Scriptures as literal accounts of anything. To do that, to read religious texts as police reports, is to diminish those texts. Not all religious persons are fundamentalists. Not everyone who recognizes the importance of human spirituality is ignorant or foolish. I think it is foolish to deny human spirituality. What the word and imagery associated with the concept of "God" points to is the awesome mystery of love. The ambiguity in great religious texts is deliberate in many cases because they are invitations to interpret that are respectful of human freedom.
There is no possible evidence that can show that religious stories are false because categories of empirical, historical, literal truth and falsehood are irrelevant to religious texts. Such texts are concerned with meaning and moral truth, as well as life-wisdom. Religion is a symbolic language-structure connected to the release of universal archetypal wisdom, which (if denied in ancient forms and texts) will reveal itself in science or commerce, in all other aspects of life, because it is fundamental to humans, like the morality to which it is allied. You cannot eradicate religion, which "re-connects" (re ligare) people with their nation, species, universe and (for believers) with God.
Now I am going to shock Catholics. It makes no difference if Jesus "married" (how do you define "marriage"?) Mary Magdalene, whom he obviously loved. The truth that Jesus intended to communicate, I believe, he succeeded in communicating. That truth is concerned with love and meaning for everyone. It is deeply rooted in Hebrew culture and history. The Christian Scriptures tell us, in every line, that Jesus is a Jew. If you see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," the Aramaic word for God is "Abba," which means "father" and links "Jeshua" (Jesus) to an ancient Hebrew tradition associating God with a loving (but stern) father. Yes, I know the Freudians are salivating. Ignore them. Hence, anti-semitism is hatred of Jesus. None of this precludes us from sending Bernie Madoff to prison for theft by deception.
Religious truth is so powerful, psychologically, that it can only be conveyed by means of symbols. Pay attention to the symbols in the scriptures. Read them as important and meaningful poetry. The best I can do to approximate the ethical and spiritual truth at the center of Christianity is to recall the image of the Grail, as individuation or moral self-realization in unity with others, or full humanity. Now take another look at Spielberg's A.I.
In "The Spirit of Christianity," Hegel concludes that "love heals all wounds [because it] is the only solution to the severing of the human being into warring aspects." Most of us are fragmented, divided against ourselves and from one another, body from soul or spirit, masculine from feminine, material striving from happiness, desire from consumption, sex from love. We yearn for integration and meaning through purposefulness. That meaning and purpose that we desire is, and can only be, love. It is love which reconciles us to one another -- even to our enemies -- by not allowing us to do to them what they have done to us. I don't want to deface anyone's writings nor to rape or steal from others. I leave such things to members of the bar in New Jersey. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
It is only love that allows us to embrace the alienated parts of ourselves, or others who are similarly alienated -- poor people, AIDS victims, old and mentally ill people, our own baser selves. Love allows all that is lost in life -- every person we love who is separated from us -- to be recovered, or returned to us. It is love alone which restores life to itself. With love, fate is reconciled. The Christian ethics of love I know is true and important. I find a similar message in Judaism and Islam, also in other world religions and in secular ethics. The message is that, with love, "everything we look upon is blessed." ("Beauty and the Beast.") Hegel says:
"... the stings of conscience are blunted and the evil spirit is expelled from the deed." This reconciliation is Holderlin's "rose in the cross." Hyperion (1797-91). Furthermore: "Love which becomes Spirit makes all members of a living whole [community,] the life that animates that whole must have a wider definition, -- it must be a life which comprehends even death itself. Pain, disharmony, evil, must be seen to be incapable of breaking through the all-embracing unity, and even to be themselves the means of realizing it. Unreason itself must find a place, were it only a place to annihilate itself, under the universal rule of reason, which impartially rains its fertilising showers upon the evil and the good, and stimulates each in turn to show what is in it; since just in this impartiality lies the security for the triumph of good." (Hegel, Das Leben Jesu.)
With the appearance of the awesome scholarship displayed by Yale University's Professor John Boswell, it is very difficult for anyone (including the Vatican) to argue that sexual-orientation has any bearing on this message of love or that "marriage" is a sacrament that should be denied to same-sex couples by persons claiming to remain faithful to the Christian texts. Marriage is the community of erotic love. "Eros" is an aspect of divinity and its expression, for example, in the sentimental representation of "an older Christ and youthful St. John [that] is strongly evocative of the tradition of passionate friendship common among the monastic clergy of the Middle Ages" -- to say nothing of the various gay Popes in our history -- "and romanticized earlier by writers like Saint Aelred of Rievaulx." John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago & London: University of Chicago, 1980), p. 202. (If Mr. Rubio in Miami is, in fact, a homosexual -- as so many people say -- then he should be free to come out of the closet without being affected in his political ambitions by his sexual-orientation, or even to marry the person of his choice.)
From the iconography of St. Sebastian to Christ and St. John, to many other representations, it becomes clear to art historians and theologians that same-sex love and all love is not only "o.k." in terms of religious teachings in Christianity, but (I suggest) love is what Christianity is all about. Inserting "errors" in this essay will not change this reality. Ultimate self-realization is only possible in community, through love, where each PERSON becomes him- or herself, through self-discovery in the Other. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" and "Is there a gay marriage right?")
You cannot deny the erotic nature of a person at one moment, then exchange the sign of peace and recognition that we are taught the Catholic mass is concerned to establish. Recognition and the sign of peace means that we must welcome our gay and lesbian "brothers and sisters" to the Community of the Faith. St. John teaches us: "You must see and love God in your brother and sister ..." Please welcome gay and lesbian Catholics to the St. Patrick's Day festivities, in your families and friendships, not to mention in parades down Fifth Avenue. None of this precludes us from sending a lesbian who steals public funds to prison. ("Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'')
This message of inclusion and unity is symbolized in the shared absorption of "the Body of Christ." The Church is no prude, but it rightly dismisses pagan sex cults (Brown messes up his discussion of "Hieros Gamos") because they limit their focus to the sexual act, allegedly, as opposed to its spiritual meaning. Sex is not always love-making. Love-making is always a spiritual act. This is true regardless of sexual-orientation. Love-making is reverential, a kind of prayer. Sex is very nice; love-making is much greater. Love is finding the Grail. You do not need to decipher a bizarre code. You do not need to fly to Paris. Although it sure would be nice to do so! You do not have to worry about albino monks. The Kingdom of Heaven is right here and now. The Grail is looking for you. All you have to do is to be. I hope that you will be.
