Dan Brown's assertions about
sex and Christianity
In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown makes several assertions about the relationship between sex and religion and specifically Christianity. In this article I address these assertions, quoting the actual dialogs in his book and providing the page number where it is found. I also include the chapter number in case the text appears on different page numbers in future editions. Second, I give brief answers to each assertion to show how it is wrong. I know that many people are only seeking a brief answer and will be satisfied. For those desiring more explanation I provide links to other resources that give more detailed background information to support my answers.
The assertions are: (1) early Christians used ritualistic sex to attain gnosis and to commune with God, (2) a woman became a goddess when she became pregnant and (3) early Christian leaders demonized sex in order to control access to God. With this article I will show that these assertions are completely wrong.
Assertion 1: Religious sex rites are how we should experience God.
The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man's only bridge from earth to heaven. "By communing with woman," Langdon said, "man could achieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God." (Chapter 74, p. 308-309)
Brief Answer
His underlying assertion here is that Christianity derailed true religion. Ancient religions had it right and Christianity got it wrong.
To respond to this I'd like to go into a little background about what he is talking about. In the ancient world polytheistic religions had both male and female gods. Therefore, to put it in Dan Brown's terms, they believed in the "sacred masculine" and the "sacred feminine." In these religions gods came in pairs, the goddess being the consort of the male god. Some female goddesses were goddesses of fertility-for crops, animals and humans. People believed that the gods had to have sex like humans in order to have good crops and animal and human offspring. If they did not, then failed crops and infertility would result.
These religions even dedicated prostitutes to the service of these goddesses and actually performed their services in special areas of their temples. These religions taught that if you had sex with one of these temple prostitutes you would be symbolically having sex with the goddess or be acting out sex between the male and female god. This would ensure good crops and fertility for your animals and family. Brown uses a variety of terms for this: sacred sex, a sex ritual, the rite of sex, etc.
Ritualistic sex was very common to ancient Neareastern religions. Dan Brown refers to it by the Greek "heiros gamos," which he says means "sacred marriage." This term is not found in the Greek New Testament and so comes from pagan religion. He doesn't make it clear if he thinks that sex with a temple prostitute is heiros gamos or sex with your wife or girlfriend is heiros gamos.
At any rate, is Dan Brown suggesting that we set up a temple with temple prostitutes so we can "know" the sacred feminine?" What does his wife think about this? This was and would again be today a very chauvinistic system. The men could have sex with female prostitutes to suppossedly connect with the sacred feminine, but his wife could not go to a male prostitute to connect with the sacred masculine. The radical feminists say they don't need to because they are already in touch with the divine. Yeah, right!
There is another problem, and it is with what Dan Brown says is the association of sacred sex with gnosis or Gnosticism. He simply does not know what he is talking about. In the second century C.E. (A.D.) and beyond Gnosticism repudiated the practice of temple prostitution and even sex between a husband and wife but for a different reason than did Judaism and orthodox Christianity. They believed in a simple dualistic distinction between the spirit and the material universe that made all physical matter evil and spirit good. They got this from Greek philosophers like Plato and from Persian religions not from the Old or New Testament Scriptures.
In other words, they believed the human body is evil. It is where a spark of divine spirit fell from a spiritual realm and is trapped until released in death. Bodily activities, necessities and pleasures like sex were seen as evil. As a result, they embraced the philosophy of asceticism. They renounced all that is pleasurable and lived a rigorously disciplined life. They rejected the Christian doctrine of salvation by grace. The thought that a god would have sex with a human even symbolically would have been repugnant. For this reason, they denounced Jesus coming into the world through being born from a woman. Why would a god touch a mere mortal?
The ideas of God impregnating a woman (Mary), the act of being born and the strategy of God merging with human flesh were all abhorant to the Gnostics. So too was the idea of a god in flesh dying—and to save humans at that! The Gnostics wanted nothing to do with the idea that Jesus died for our sins. While Gnostics believed in gender specific gods called "Aeons" these gods were not one and the same with the material world as the other religions taught. We frankly don't know if any Gnostic husbands and wives had sexual intercourse in order to have children, but they certainly would have rejected the idea that sex was in any way sacred. They were the first "Christians" to view sex as evil. But sex is not how they believed they would achieve gnosis, and given their theological understandings they were Christian in name only.
This turned out to be a rather long answer, but it is important to see how Dan Brown mixes together, in an eclectic fashion, the mutually exclusive ideas of pagan religions, Gnosticism and biblical Christianity. They don't really mix—like oil and water.
Assertion 2: A woman becomes sacred through childbearing.
(After talking about the male orgasm and Nirvana, Langdon goes on: )
"Sophie," Langdon said quietly, "it's important to remember that the ancient's view of sex was entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life-the ultimate miracle-and miracles could be performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. A god.
Brief Answer
This is just New Age wishful thinking. Ancient religions, including Gnosticism, did not view human life as sacred. Bearing a child did not make a woman sacred, and it certainly did not make her a goddess! Only a Pharoah or king or Roman emperor could become a god, and only after death at that. Some ancient Neareastern religions even taught that mankind was simply created by the lazy gods to do their work for them. There was nothing sacred, nothing inherantly valuable about human life as human life. Judaism and Christianity stood in stark contrast to the other surrounding religions in that they were the only religions that affirmed that God valued human beings. Christianity teaches that we are so valuable to God that Jesus died for us, to save us from destruction. This is why Christians take a stand against abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. Human life is valuable, more valuable than any other life in the universe. It is not sacred as in divine but sacred as in set apart for God's glorious purposes. No other religion besides Orthodox Judaism or Christianity affirms this. Hinduism, Buddhism and their New Age perversions certainly do not. These statements by Robert Langdon only show Dan Brown's ignorance when it comes to religion.
Assertion 3: Religions demonize sex.
"For the early Church, mankind's use of sex to commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of the loop, undermining their self-proclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other major religions did the same. .... Is it surprising we feel conflicted about sex? Our ancient heritage and our very physiologies tell us sex is natural-a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment-and yet modern religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the hand of the devil."
Brief answer
Brown has too simplistic a view about sex, religion and the history of the two. According to his view, all people in the ancient world thought that sex was a way to connect with God, but then the early Church leaders (as well as the Church to the present day) took away all the fun and demonized it in order to have more control over the people. This is not a fair assessment. There is no indication that early orthodox Church leaders demonized sex. The Gnostics did, but the orthodox did not. The Gnostics tried to hijack the true teachings of Christianity by syncretizing it with Greek philosophy. As I explained above, the Greek philosophy part made sex evil.. The Gnostics are the first so-called Christians to see sex as evil, not the Roman Catholic or Protestant Churches. And Dan Brown eulogizes the Gnostics! In all fairness relatively few Roman Catholics or Protestants ever demonized sex. The majority of Christians, for the majority of time, have seen sex as a gift of God to be used within the boundary of a heterosexual marriage. It is the misuse of God's gift of sex that is evil.
I do want to be clear here that I am not naively defending the Roman Catholic Church. It is guilty of being a self-proclaimed sole conduit to God. That is a perversion of biblical teaching. The Bible teaches that the sole conduit to God is the person of Jesus Christ, not a human institution or a sex ritual. If a person such as Dan Brown does not like the Bible's condemnation of sex outside of a heterosexual marriage relationship, then he should be fair and honest and say, "I disagree," rather than trying to make the Bible or the Gnostics say something they don't say or portraying the Church inaccurately.
Conclusion
I have shown each of Dan Brown's assertions about sex and religion to be wrong. Early Christians did not use ritualistic sex to attain gnosis and to commune with God. Ancient religions did not believe that a woman became a goddess when she became pregnant and early Christian leaders did not demonize sex in order to control access to God. When we check the facts we find out that he seems to either make up things or parrot what he has heard from other uninformed people. In my humble opinion if he is going to write historical fiction he should at least make the historical part accurate.
I really wonder about where Dan Brown is coming from. What is it that he wants? Does he really want to resurrect religious prostitution? That would be degrading to women and spread STDs. Does he want to justify having his own form of "sacred sex" with a consenting adult partner that sees it the same way he does? He and everyone else can do whatever they want to do in their private lives between consenting adults. But why distort history to justify it? Does he want to to be free from some kind of anti-sex conscience he got as a child from some church? Maybe he has done things for which he is, and ought to be, ashamed. He should come to God for forgiveness and a new life instead of dragging the unsuspecting public down with him.
He wrote,
Is it surprising we feel conflicted about sex? Our ancient heritage and our very physiologies tell us sex is natural—a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment—and yet modern religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the hand of the devil."
Someone needs to inform Dan Brown that the sexual revolution did not work. The results have been disastrous for countless people, especially for the millions of unborn children that have been sacrificed on the altar of sexual freedom and the millions of people who have died from AIDS.
Copyright 2005. Gary C. Burger and New Media Ministries. This article may be reproduced and distributed freely as long as it is done so in its entirety. If quoted it must be properly cited as a reference.
