Heart issue:

“those who have searched the scriptures (and who, reading the Joseph Smith Translation’s rendering of John 20’s “touch me not!” injunction could fail to wonder?) and studied out mysteries for themselves have come to know sacred truths and also come to know when these things need to be “kept” and “pondered in [their] heart[s].”

Don’t you see the problem with publishing a book on this? Of course, another bit from the Gospels is Jesus always telling people to go and tell no one, but the more he forbad them, the more they published it.

My point about New York is that it does not exist for a purpose other than to exist. So it’s a bit like a Kierkegaard essay, in city form. Remember what we were saying a while back about community as ordinance? Anyway, I don’t know much about Japan. I just remember a book a few years back about culture taking as symbolic of Japanese meta-culture the availability of trikets depicting Santa Claus nailed to a cross.

Re: Davince Code. One of the phrases I hit a couple of times in my speed read of the post-Christmas, pre-easter Gospels is “If they are not against us, they are for us.” (Christ responding to the disciples concerns of off-brand healers). I do think Dan Brown is against us, though.

It seems odd to me that the sex ritual part of the Da Vinci Code is so seldom mentioned in critiques of it. I guess it’s embarassing, and I want my objections to seem born of reason and not prudishness, but I really do think that is what puts it past the pale for me. (pail? pall? I don’t know how that expression goes.) Yes, it’s blasphemy to say Jesus was only a man, and that there is another who is the true manifestation of God’s power on earth. I suppose we often say that is enough to condemn the Da Vinci code, but I just want to go on record saying the sex rituals squick me out. I know that would seem obvious to a lot of people, but there are tracts that accuse Mormons of such things so I think it needs to be said.

Is is bad form for the author to respond to a blog comment? I’m new at this, in fact I just did my second blog to Todd Wood the Baptist minister from Idaho Falls. He quotes me extensively, of course the juicy parts on wedge issues, like those on the chapter beginning on page 85.

While everything we do is a matter of testimony, my book is not “my beliefs” but rather “my research” that has led me to think that Jesus was married. I know that Minister Wood does not like the idea of a married Jesus, but I would assume that he would agree that if I happen to be right and Jesus was, in fact, married he would have not problem with that. Of course, I doubt that he would even countenance the possibility that this is the case. Is Holy Matrimony not quite holy enough? If Jesus was married, would Protestants cease to believe in Him? No they would accept the reality, just as I would readily accept that idea that he was not married if that was the way it turned out.

We believe in Jesus and Him crucified and resurrected. Many people have persecuted others for things about Jesus they did not believe. Yet our faith is in Jesus, not the color of his hair, which side the spear went into, what day he was crucified. Let us be united in what we all know to be true…Jesus is the Christ.

Vern

My respect for Swanson is that he is bold, not swamped in uncertainty about his Mormon orthodoxy.

But saying that, my main heart issue is his view on the nature of God, which hence flow his views on sexuality. But please don’t label me either neo-platonic or gnostic as I categorically reject what Swanson defends as truth. Far from it.

And I really had no idea that Margaret Toscano referenced in the book carried such beliefs about God.

I am behind the times.

My point is simply that, as Brown’s book goes, I find (and I believe Brown has as well, judging by many of his interviews), that it has suffered from people classifying it as something that it is not. Even Brown admits that it is a work of fiction, and yet there has been an absolute firestorm of books published in response to it, including many available on the LDS bookshelves.

I remember encountering the same problem Anneke did on my mission, only the work in question was the film “Witness.” Of course, I believe “Witness” to be a great film and merely a speed bump to the millenial eventuality of the worldwide gospel. I also remember that anything… ANYTHING… that would get people to talk to us was good. If “The Da Vinci Code” starts any kind of dialogue, I think that’s a great thing. Otherwise, we start down a path that makes us perhaps too critical of anything Christian related that doesn’t line up exactly with our beliefs (see “The Passion of the Christ”). Perhaps enlightening people is not only a doctrinal goal, but a mass media one as well.

I suppose something that I didn’t clarify about the tone of my review is that whether or not I believe the assertions Swanson tries to prove is neither here nor there. I admire the work greatly, primarily on the basis of what it IS, and how it’s presented. My jury’s still out on what it actually says.