Via Matt, I see that Ross Douthat is going after Dan Brown's books for being anti-Catholic, both on a superficial level and then more broadly in Brown's sort of glossy modern religiousity. Far be it from me to defend Brown, an awful writer and ridiculous theologian (if that's what he considers himself) who apparently thought that Foucault's Pendulum would be a much better book if someone just dumbed it down a little. But Matt doesn't even go as far as he can in his observation that the Catholic Church is well-suited to conspiracy theories. He forgets that the Catholic Church very recently participated in a wide-spread, systematic effort to cover up numerous instances of priests sexually abusing children, so one shouldn't be surprised that people don't find other such theories, however implausible, worthy of fictional consideration. (Lest I'm accused of being anti-Catholic for bringing up that point, let me note that I'm a regular Mass-attender myself.)
More broadly, Douthat's column is a broadside against religion-lite folks who prefer their faith to be one of simple goodwill and broad-minded tolerance rather than one that engages with the myriad complexities, contradictions, and downright unpleasantness that are a part of any authentic faith tradition. I'm not inclined to judge those folks, or even the dread atheists, and this blog post isn't really the place to debate Catholic soteriology with Douthat, so I'll leave his ideas about exclusive truth alone.
But in that context, this sentence made me raise my eyebrows a little: "The Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — jealous, demanding, apocalyptic — may not be congenial to contemporary sensibilities, but he's the only historically-plausible Jesus there is." Indeed, the Jesus of the canonical gospels is a pretty wild dude, even a radical, and is extremely difficult to reconcile with almost any present day sensibility. Given that Douthat seems to be suggesting that we should choose this Jesus over Dan Brown's (as if there were no other valid interpretations), it surprises me that, in my admittedly non-extensive reading of Douthat's work, I have never seen him grapple with the implications of Christ's extremely non-contemporary sensibilities, particularly the political ones. Can anyone point me to Douthat's efforts to do what he is, apparently, advocating?
-- Tim Fernholz
