Ok Dan Brown, let's talk!

I just finished "The Lost Symbol" and I want to read it again, because I did get a little lost myself. I liked it of course, as I did all your other ones, all nail-biting, wild rides until the end! But in all your hoopla about "Apotheosis", man becoming like god, divine, and reaching his full potential, are you just pushing humanism again, that when man reaches his highest self-actualization, he is like A god? Because Katherine's Noetics is so much about the possibilities of the mind of man, the power of thought, man the ultimate creator? Or do I deduce too much by thinking you are touching on something else, the doctrine Christ taught in Matthew 5:48, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect", becoming like THE God? You quote a lot of biblical scripture around this theme, but left that one out. Maybe I'm extrapolating from my Mormon cosmology again.

But you bring in the idea of "Elohim", not just the name of one God but a plurality of Gods, as in "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness..."(Gen1:26). Who is "us" and "our"? Who were the creator Gods? If Jesus was with God in the Beginning and said he was foreordained BEFORE the foundations of the world, God's Firstborn in the spirit, could he have been there with his Father, God, making the world, or at least doing it under his Father's direction? Two gods? So Joseph Smith's vision of two gods, the Father and the Son, isn't so far- fetched after all, but actually a confirmation of what the New Testament's Apostle Paul says so many ties in his journeys? He's always talking about the Father and the Son, yet that simple concept got so screwed up after the Council of Nicea, as you so ably implied in "The DaVinci Code." Good on you!

But then, in Genesis 1:27, "So God made man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, MALE and FEMALE (my caps) created he them." So is God male and female then? Androgynous? Or does God have a female partner, an eternal creator companion, a wife, after whom all women are created, who is also part of that pantheon plurality of gods known as Elohim? And the other one you quoted, "Know ye not that ye are gods? (Isaiah?) Can't that mean we are all gods in embryo, like earthly children can become like their earthly parents, as eternal spirit children of God(Heb 12:9) can become like their eternal Father/Mother Gods who have perfect, exalted bodies? Could it not be that as their spirit children, we had to come to earth to obtain physical bodies to become like them eternally, made in their image on earth, perfected in their image forever? So, sorry Katherine, I'm not buying being made in just in God's mind image.

I go back to when I was working at a CES show, showing karaoke for a company I worked for. With our staff was a preacher with his own church, also a biker we called Biker Bob - and a beautiful Latino lady hired to market to the Hispanic market. They were both Protestant Christians and had issues with me because I was a Mormon Christian, which they thought was a mutual exclusion. I asked Bob, as we were there working on a Sunday, "Does Jesus have a body?" "Yes, he was resurrected." "Ok then, does God have a body?" "No, God is a spirit". "Ok then, is Jesus the same as God?" "Yes, Jesus and God are one." "So Jesus has a body but God doesn't?" Silence. Bob had no answer, nor did the other lady. They walked away mumbling. But my answer is - yes, there is a plurality of gods.

Jesus was in the beginning with his Father. They are both Gods who created the earth and intiated a great plan of salvation in the heavens before Jesus came, so he could do his appointed and foreordained work of salvation for us as our Savior. And Satan was there too as Lucifer, wanting to be like God and a savior too, but proposing to save us all by force rather than through our choice. His egotistic and self-serving plan was rejected and who with a numerous host of his spirit siblings, some of God's spirit children, was cast out of heaven upon the earth, and who all are allowed to tempt and try us today so that our eternal free agency can be in effect and valid, so that we can make choices that show our love for God and man - or reject him and take the consequences.(Rev.12:7-9, 20:1-10) Sounds a little like Solomon's wayward son you created, who gave himself over to evil in so many awful ways.

So Dan Brown, I am expanding upon your theme somewhat in hopes that you might see how far you could have taken it if you knew what I and other Mormons know - and to quote a man whom I accept as a latter-day prophet, Lorenzo Snow, "As man is, God once was - and as God is, man may become." That's how far I am taking your ideas, good ideas all, just stopping short of what is for me in my Mormon theology the logical extension of "Laus Deo" inscribed on top of the Washington monument. I was born in DC and grew up around there - your amazing book has made me want to return with more insight into its fascinating history.

Growing up in Silver Spring, MD, just seven miles from the White House, we had a framed copy on our dining room wall of a famous painting of Pierre L'Enfant looking over the land that was soon to be Washington, showing his vision of how he would lay it out and how it would look. I've been downtown many times in my young life, never realizing all that went into the creation of such a marvelous city, built with so many symbols and references to principles and ideas that remain so important to the free society we enjoy today. Thanks for a great read, DB, and I will continue to study and understand better the unique history you have brought out in the open, the powerful confluence of ideas and connections you have made - it's an exciting tapestry to unravel and to ferret out God's truths from man's - forgive the presumption.