The author, a pastor, examines the interpretation of Jesus Christ's life and the beginnings of Christianity in Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code," attempting to discern fact from fiction.

A thrilling novel that pits Scotland Yard against a mastermind of art forgery.

'The Da Vinci Deception' is a powerful antidote to the spiritual poison found in 'The Da Vinci Code'. This easy-to-read, question-and-answer book tackles the key errors in this devastating cultural phenomenon.

As millions of readers worldwide react to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, so do many scholars. The novel has become a proxy debate for two compelling scholarly and social issues of our time: the feminist/post-feminist challenge to patriarchal authority; and the textual construction of meaning and value. Presenting the feminine as both dominant and sacred brings attention to every text which argues for dominance or divinity. Traditional scholars are being challenged to defend their disciplines and practices, to reassert the authority of their knowledge base. Postmodern scholars are finding an opportunity to explain to the world at large how texts construct meaning and maintain power structures. These essays examine resistance to the sacred feminine in religious, cultural, and literary histories. Robert Davis explores the return of the goddess to academic and popular discussions. Deanna Thompson examines the apocryphal evidence brought into the debate by the novel. Rachel Wagner looks at the larger issue of postmodern textual authority, and how Brown’s novel has brought Biblical interpretation to popular awareness. Arlette Poland reviews current feminist and academic thinking on textual versus spiritual authority regarding the feminine divine. Other essays identify the elusive and misunderstood sacred feminine in religion and literature; in church teachings and practices; in the variant Grail stories; in the mystery genre itself. Together, these essays place the reaction to these issues into broader social and contemporary contexts.

Get the facts behind the sensational fiction! Dan Brown's novel, The DaVinci Code, has stormed the bestseller charts and both the book and upcoming film claim to be based on truth- a truth shocking enough to rock the foundations of Christianity. What is the truth? Could you defend your faith if challenged by those who believe Brown's fiction? Use this brief, practical book as a tool to begin conversations, to explain your beliefs, or to get the facts straight.

"Using their knowledge of how stories work, Dunn and Bubeck compare the gospel stories of the Bible to Brown's myths. They show that the two worldwiews are worlds apart."--Inside jacket cover.

A vital and timely reminder that modern life owes as much to outlandish thinking as to dominant ideologies What do the Nag Hammadi library, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, speculative feminist historiography, Marcus Garvey’s finances, and maps drawn by asylum patients have in common? Jonathan P. Eburne explores this question as never before in Outsider Theory, a timely book about outlandish ideas. Eburne brings readers on an adventure in intellectual history that stresses the urgency of taking seriously—especially in an era of fake news—ideas that might otherwise be discarded or regarded as errant, unfashionable, or even unreasonable. Examining the role of such thinking in contemporary intellectual history, Eburne challenges the categorical demarcation of good ideas from flawed, wild, or bad ones, addressing the surprising extent to which speculative inquiry extends beyond the work of professional intellectuals to include that of nonprofessionals as well, whether amateurs, unfashionable observers, or the clinically insane. Considering the work of a variety of such figures—from popular occult writers and gnostics to so-called outsider artists and pseudoscientists—Eburne argues that an understanding of its circulation and recirculation is indispensable to the history of ideas. He devotes close attention to ideas and texts usually omitted from or marginalized within orthodox histories of literary modernism, critical theory, and continental philosophy, yet which have long garnered the critical attention of specialists in religion, science studies, critical race theory, and the history of the occult. In doing so he not only sheds new light on a fascinating body of creative thought but also proposes new approaches for situating contemporary humanities scholarship within the history of ideas. However important it might be to protect ourselves from “bad” ideas, Outsider Theory shows how crucial it is for us to know how and why such ideas have left their impression on modern-day thinking and continue to shape its evolution.

This book explains the basic tenets of Christology that a college student would encounter in a basic Christology class. The book is written in three different sections. The first section focuses upon primary Christological passages, which include a limited survey of Christology in the New Testament. The second section reviews the Christological Councils, limited to the first four ecumenical councils (i.e., Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon). The third section deals with the application of Christology, correlating the biblical witness with the councils, preaching Christology to a contemporary church, and summarizing the Christological content for the contemporary church. The book is a textbook for an introductory Christology class. As such, it will meet the needs of professors who are trying to find an introductory work that surveys the many aspects of teaching Christology. It will also be a valuable tool for pastors as an easy-to-read reference for sermon building and Sunday school lessons, and youth directors as an accessible tool to teach basic foundational Christological truths to their youth group.

This book explores the Biblical prophecies concerning "the Last Days". It looks at scriptures about the rapture of the church, the time of tribulation, the anti-christ, Armageddon, and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. It argues for a literal interpretation of the Bible, and opposes the Amillennialist view of the end times. It looks at the signs that Jesus said would indicate His coming is near, including the fact that Israel is again a nation. It is the author's conclusion that the Lord will return for His believers very soon. William Bergsma was born in the Netherlands in 1927. He immigrated to Canada in 1953 when he was 25 years old, with his mother and 5 siblings. He met Jenny, who would later become his wife, on board the ship to Canada. They settled in Ontario where they raised 3 children. In 1977 Bill and his wife moved to Nanaimo, British Columbia, where he is now enjoying his retirement. Bill was raised in the Christian faith. He has been a devout member of the Christian Reformed Church all of his life. In recent years he has become especially interested in end time prophesies, many of which had always been unclear in the CRC. He has a passion for the Word of God. Bill takes pleasure in a simple life with his wife and family. He is an avid gardener and finds inspiration in nature, long walks along the seashore being a favorite pastime. He is deeply concerned by the growing presence of evil in today's world.

The rise of the Christian Right took many writers and literary critics by surprise, trained as we were to think that religions waned as societies became modern. In If God Meant to Interfere, Christopher Douglas shows that American writers struggled to understand and respond to this new social and political force. Religiously inflected literature since the 1970s must be understood in the context of this unforeseen resurgence of conservative Christianity, he argues, a resurgence that realigned the literary and cultural fields. Among the writers Douglas considers are Marilynne Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, N. Scott Momaday, Gloria Anzaldúa, Philip Roth, Carl Sagan, and Dan Brown. Their fictions engaged a wide range of topics: religious conspiracies, faith and wonder, slavery and imperialism, evolution and extraterrestrial contact, alternate histories and ancestral spiritualities. But this is only part of the story. Liberal-leaning literary writers responding to the resurgence were sometimes confused by the Christian Right’s strange entanglement with the contemporary paradigms of multiculturalism and postmodernism —leading to complex emergent phenomena that Douglas terms "Christian multiculturalism" and "Christian postmodernism." Ultimately, If God Meant to Interfere shows the value of listening to our literature for its sometimes subterranean attention to the religious and social upheavals going on around it.