'Da Vinci Code mysteries are no match for Gospel truth' - Britain - Times Online

Die Aartsbiskop van Kantelberg - die hoof van die Anglikaanse Kerk - Dr Rowan Williams, se reaksie op die Evangelie van Judas en Dan Brown se The Da Vinci Code.

t had become customary, he said, to mark Christian festivals with “a little flurry of newspaper articles and television programmes raking over the coals of controversies about the historical basis of faith”. He added that the Church’s position within the Establishment meant that it was mistrusted.

Modern society was fascinated by conspiracies and cover-ups, he said. Biblical texts were treated “as if they were unconvincing press releases from some official source, whose intention is to conceal the real story; and that real story waits for the intrepid investigator to share it with the waiting world.

“Anything that looks like the official version is automatically suspect. Someone is trying to stop you finding out what really happened, because what really happened could upset or challenge the power of officialdom. It evokes Watergate and All the President’s Men.

The truth, Dr Williams said, was more prosaic. “The Bible is not the authorised code of a society managed by priests and preachers for their private purposes but the set of human words through which the call of God is still uniquely immediate to human beings today, human words with divine energy behind them.”