Focus on the Family has put together a website called Decoding the DaVinci Code, which is a good starting point if you want to prepare yourself to have helpful conversations with people who read the book. Especially with the movie coming out soon, it’s not a bad idea to brush up on some of the actual historical evidence that The DaVinci Code handles so recklessly. There are already over a dozen books published, some of them quite good, that do this job in greter detail. But if you want a quick, free, internet overview, go dot family dot org.

Melissa Schubert, one of the faculty members at the Torrey Honors Institute, has a thoughtful article there entitled What Women Want: The Sacred Feminine and the Forgiveness of Sins.

And I also have an article on the site explaining why The DaVinci Code is bad for art appreciation:

As an amateur art historian, I should be thrilled that a major movie is putting Renaissance masterpieces in front of mass audiences. I’ve been studying Leonardo and the art of the Renaissance for years, and I constantly find new layers of meaning and significance in these beautiful, powerful paintings. You’d think I’d be happy that millions of people will be pondering the mysteries of Leonardo da Vinci’s art because of Dan Brown’s use of them in The Da Vinci Code.

Yet I find myself having the opposite reaction. Like most art history buffs I know, I think that The Da Vinci Code, whether as book or as film, will hurt rather than help me introduce people to the art of Leonardo. The reason is simple: Dan Brown treats all of these works of art as containers for secret messages rather than things worth studying for their own sakes.

Read the whole article here.

In 1539 when John Calvin was 30, his friend Farel wrote to him with the suggestion that he had found a woman who would be perfect for Calvin to marry. Calvin wrote back, explaining that he was not especially the marrying type, and that only a certain kind of woman could possibly suit him:

“Remember what I especially desire to meet with in a wife. I am not, you know, of the number of those inconsiderate lovers who adore even the faults of the woman who charms them. I could only be pleased with a lady who is sweet, chaste, modest, economical, patient, and careful of her husband’s health. Has she of whom you have spoken to me these qualities? Come with her. If not, let us say no more.”

The next year, Calvin married that woman, Idelette de Bure. Here is a sonnet for them and for my own Idelette.

The only kind of lady who could please
A theologian, and could share his life
And dare to be a theologian’s wife
Must boast (but never boast!) these qualities:
Sweet, chaste and modest (just like Calvin wrote),
With patience, careful for her husband’s health,
Economy in managing his wealth,
And many other features I could note.
Some lovers are bewitched and charmed in ways
That make them think bad character is good.
They bow before their wives with idol praise!
But even if I worshiped all your flaws,
The hymnal would be short, you could expect:
And thus I’ve chosen you, sweet spouse elect!

From 1927 to 1928, G. Campbell Morgan taught at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. In May of 1928, every student in residence was given a copy of his lecture entitled The Romance of the Bible. By “Romance,” Morgan did not mean “love story,” but . . . well, he explains immediately what he meant:

“Romance,” according to his desktop dictionary, could mean “a work of fiction, or adventure. To invent and tell fictitious stories; exaggerate, lie.” But it could also mean “A blending of the heroic, the marvellous, the mysterious, and the imaginative, in actions, manner, ideas, language, or literature.” This caught his eye.

This second definition permits my use of the word, for the history of the Bible is a romance. It is a blending of the heroic, the marvellous, the mysterious, the full significance of which only the imagination can grasp. It is wonderful in its history. It transcends the ordinary. So it is a romance.

Readers familiar with C.S. Lewis’ use of the idea of “myth” will notice a similarity, I think. Lewis thought of the Christian religion as built on the true myth, arguing that “myth” need not imply “untrue.” Myth could be true, could even be something so concrete as fact, and yet retain its character as a delivery system that gets reality into the imagination in the fullest way possible for humans. “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.”

Morgan was a defender of all the conservative truth claims for the historical accuracy of the Bible, in an age when they were under attack by overweening critics in the flush of academic victory. But he didn’t become defensive or restrict his appeal to the factual and historical. While defending those in theory (his doctrine of scripture is impeccable) and in practice (his expositions of Bible texts are not skewed by skeptical criticism), he also reached out beyond those things to claim something more for the Bible. It is God’s self-revelation in a history “the full significance of which only the imagination can grasp.”

This significance evoked the word “myth” from Lewis, as it had drawn the word “romance” from Morgan. Can the Bible be confessed as the word of God in any other way? Won’t we always have to seek a word for our encounter with this miraculous “something more” that blows where it wills and carries scripture along with it? The confession is not for those who have already given up prematurely on the truth claims, historical and otherwise, of the scriptures. They forfeit myth and romance by defecting from fact. But it is also not for the apologist who lets the tiresome carping of the critics scare him from the turf of the fantastic. God makes himself known in “a blending of the heroic, the marvellous, the mysterious, and the imaginative,” and the book bears the marks of all of these. “So,” as G. Campbell Morgan said, “it is a romance.”

George Campbell Morgan (1863-1945) used to be more famous than he is now. Best known as the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, he also worked in the United States with Dwight L. Moody’s many projects, and taught widely in Bible Institutes. One contemporary called him “the hardest working preacher in Christendom.”

Morgan could make himself at home in many denominational settings: his father was a Baptist pastor, while Morgan sought (but was refused) ordination from the Methodists, and eventually was ordained as a Congregationalist, though he later pastored in a Presbyterian church.

As a pastor and teacher in troubled times, Morgan faced many complicated situations. His answer to every problem was the same: teach more Bible, teach it better. At the founding of a Bible conference, he announced his “platform, plan, and purpose:”

Our platform is that of the authority of Holy Scripture. Our plan is to study its teaching in itself and its application to life and service. Our purpose is the perfecting of the children of God in order to serve.

On this foundation he ministered for decades internationally, teaching the whole Bible with all his might. Wherever he taught, he drew crowds. And in an age of increasing polarization between liberals and fundamentalists, he fought hard to keep the main thing the main thing:

I have tried to remember that a phase of truth is not the whole of Truth. I do think that is important. I need not stay to stress it, but so many men I have known have squinted at one thing, and seen nothing else! There are some men who think that if you do not say something about the premillenial Coming every time you preach, you are unsound!

I think I will take my courage in both hands, and tell you a story. A good brother, a Baptist, gave out his text one morning — “Adam, where art thou?” and then said, “There are three lines we shall follow. First, where Adam was; secondly, how he was to be got from where he was; thirdly and lastly, a few words about baptism” !

Some of the worst heresies in the history of the Christian Church have been truth, distorted out of proper proportion and balance and relationship. I have striven, therefore, to remember that a phase of truth is not the whole truth.

File this under “Evangelicalism 100 years ago.” Morgan’s ministry gives a glimpse of an evangelicalism that was humble, confident, ecumenical, Bible based, and influential.

Last month I got to teach Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights to a group of students. I had never read the book before, so I put in some serious time reading and re-reading it (impossible structure!), watching the Fiennes/Binoche movie version (too smoochy), and reading some scholarly articles (archetypal quests, doppelgangers, King Lear, lesbianism, vampires, and about a half dozen articles on the role of dogs in this novel).

The hardest thing for me to figure out is the religious vision of the novel. It’s not just my tendency to read God into everything that makes me say that there’s something spiritual going on here. Emily Bronte’s imagination is of the visionary variety. But I think I found a shortcut to the main thing.
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