Cult of Dan Brown: Should Langdon Forgive Teabing?

I don't think the issue here is whether Teabing was "a loving character", but rather whether his actions were forgivable. He masterminded the killings of a few people (and committed one murder himself), and set up Aringarosa and Silas to take the fall for it. Are there any circumstances under which these actions could be justified? That's the heart of the question, here, really.

If we knew nothing more than I've just outlined here, a knee-jerk response of "no" would probably come naturally. Murder = Bad, after all, and framing others for it only compounds the offense. It speaks of malicious intent, a contempt for the victims in question.

On the other hand, suppose for a moment that we were talking instead about a politically-motivated assassin in a nation being run by a tyrannical despot. With the evil tyrant in power, oppressing the citizens, millions live diminished lives. One man--our hypothetical assassin--finally gets up the courage to do what he sees as his patriotic duty, and devises a plot to assassinate the tyrant, for the good of his country. A few people stand in the way of his plot, however--misguided souls who wittingly or otherwise aid and abet the tyrant's regime--and he has to make the difficult decision to eliminate these obstacles in order to save millions of his fellow citizens. It takes great strength of conviction and courage to follow through with such a repugnant plan, and in spite of the sacrifices made along the way, the assassin would likely be viewed as a hero in the end--if he was successful.

Teabing saw himself as the patriotic assassin in that analogy, with the Church as the tyrant. Putting a stop to that tyrant was his goal. In addition to the more commonly-known historic abuses of power by the Church (e.g. corrupt popes, indulgences, sex scandals, etc.), Teabing's research had uncovered a deeper conspiracy of deception. Incensed and outraged by what he'd uncovered, he was finally imbued with enough courage to do something about it. He carefully formulated his plot and set it in motion, doing what seemed very much like the "right" thing.

In the end, it's all about perspective, though, and since the DVC was written from Langdon's point of view we see it through his eyes and with the filter of his morality. From the perspective of a scholar just as knowledgeable but not so emotionally involved in the subject as Teabing, Teabing comes off looking like the Bad Guy. Had the book been written from Teabing's perspective, of course, Langdon would have looked like the Bad Guy, an obstructionist defender of an indefensible regime. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter

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