Passion of the Christ

"The promised land"

Of course those lands belonged to Israel AFTER the Lord God ordered Moses and Joshua to take the land by conquest from the Canaanites who lived there - the justification for this conquest was that the territory was the "promised land" (lebensraum?) for the Jewish people, and that those who were conquered and driven out were idolators and unworthy of God's grace. The story goes on and on and on....

 

No feathers ruffled. I have read the same things said about the Jews in Nazi Germany. Germany for the Aryan Race, not Jews who had come later to Germany.
Hitler also believed in conquering principle. Conquer the people, depopulate it by exterminating the conquered and then repopulate it with Aryan people. He also believed it was a divine mission. The people there were unworthy.
It is not a principle I think I can support. Thieving and murdering in the name of God is not a novel principle but I don't think I can support that. Too many of my family fought against it. People are giving God a bad name

Now that may ruffle some feathers.

 

My understanding is that the film revives the form of Medieval and Reniassance Passion Plays for contemporary audiences - depicting Christ's sacrafice for mankind's sin, proferring in our place the promise of "life everlasting." Individual sacrafice is thereby transmuted and universalized.

However, the flashback scenes are essential if we are to grasp the telescoped life of Jesus. If we reduce Gibson's film to just "pornographic violence," as many leftist reviewers do (Roger Ebert being the most estimable exception), then this says more about one's theological blinders than it does any messages in the movie.

"Where is the God of love?" we keep hearing! Which misses both doctrine and scripture. As Princeton philosopher Walter Kaufmann says of Jesus' most famous pronouncement - The Sermon on The Mount - far from being about wooly sentiments of love, Jesus emphasizes threats of God's coming soon in judgement, and the promise of the Heaven hereafter. This view of Christ simply cannot be conflated with simplistic liberal parroting about the missing "God of love." God judges, too (as they utterly forget).

But because these false conceptions held by liberal people conflict with the facts, Gibson's vision must be flogged instead! Roman persecutors never go away. Tolerance and understanding must be jetisoned by the most "piously" tolerant. Under the reign of Political Correctness, Christianity must get the boot most of all.

This film, together with gay marriage, and other sundry issues like character, may well make the current election year less about jobs and pocket-book issues - which would be typical - and perhaps more about cultural issues and clashes - which would be exceptional.

But unless the hypocricies and double standards of the establishment - our media, our talking heads and scribes - are exposed and honestly confronted, who will grasp the different kind of election year that appears to be at hand?

--Orson

 

My question was simple: The film devotes great attention to depictng Jesus' suffering in graphic detail. Presumably that communicates something to the movie's target audience. What does it communicate? What does Christ's suffering mean?

I speculated in an earlier post that Jesus' suffering might serve as an ideal exemplar, a paradigm of some sort, for meaningful suffering in our own lives. So when individuals encounter apparently random and capricious suffering (all of us suffer, all of us die) that personal suffering can be made meaningful by treating it as an instance, a reflection, a participation in, Christ's meaningful suffering. The early Christians idealized and actively courted martyrdom. Even today one often hears the phrase "we all have our cross to bear".

Pugbelly told me that a non-Christian might think that, but a real Christian knows otherwise. But none of the highly educated scholars and clergymen on this board are willing to comment on what the central core of this film means to them, preferring instead either stony silence or overt hostility.

I'm not a theologian, I'm just some clown who is interested in religion. I know nothing of "theological blinders", though no doubt I'm wearing them. We all are.

And I'm quite willing to entertain the idea that this film is far more than "pornographic violence". But that raises the inevitable question: what precisely is it?

If you (or Christ) really believe that love is just a "wooly sentiment", then I pity you.

I don't want to get into a political discussion with you, Orson. Perhaps you are trying to make Jesus into a paradigm of conservatism or something, but I'm not going there.

I'm interested in what Jesus' pain signifies to those who respond to the film and who understand Mel Gibson's intention. I intuitively feel down in my gut that this is a core aspect of Christianity that I don't understand.

In fact, it's something that seems to extend beyond Christianity. The Shi'ite's Ashura festival has just taken place, where it is traditional for devout men to whip themselves bloody in memory of their martyred Imams. In Iran and Iraq, scenes at least superficially like those in 'The Passion of the Christ', in which excruciating pain and bleeding progress slowly down the streets before the crowds, took place in real life in the last few days.

Apparently it speaks to something fundamental in us, but I don't understand it.

 

===

How is this stony silence or overt hostility?

 

I will make a stab at answering this question -- though I am not one of the learned.

------ The film devotes great attention to depictng Jesus' suffering in graphic detail. Presumably that communicates something to the movie's target audience. What does it communicate? What does Christ's suffering mean?

There a numerous books, articles, and studies done concerning the suffering of Christ. I have been able to boil them down to four simple points that hopefully will help you understand why the movie (or any portrayal of the The Passion) is moving for devoted Christians and what it communicates.

Christ suffered for:

1) The atonement of sin (or the permanent solution for sin) -- Big solution carries big cost.

2) subtituion of penality (He suffered INSTEAD of me)

3) To end the seperation of man and God (Read the book of Isaiah and you will see the suffering of Christ was ordained and foretold) -- A simpler way to say this is God said so.

4) To end the consequence of death

The reason His suffering means so much to me (and what the movie communicates) is that:

1) He did it willingly
2) He did it knowingly
3) MOST IMPORTANT: He would have done if ONLY for me

IMHO, the movie was not evangelical or theological, it was an opporunity to visually "experience" what was done so I can better appreciate what was accomplished.

Just one person's view.
God Bless,
Mike

 

Bill-

"If you (or Christ) really believe that love is just a "wooly sentiment", then I pity you."

Bill - you are welcome to pity me. But if you want to go there and engage the subject, then do read Antony Flew's "Theology and Falsification," originally penned 1949/50, and since, the most republished essay in academic philosophy on religion.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/theologyandfalsification.html

But otherwise I'm in large agreement with you're thoughts and observations.

--Orson

 

Bill Dayson states:

Bill, you set the bar so high I'm not sure that any of us can comment since most of us are not "highly educated." Anyone who spends a great deal of time in theology learns that it is incredibly vast and difficult.

Saying that, it is hard to comment on this when it appears you already have your theological commitments. Bill's comment is smart because you opt for a theology of correlation, attempting to correlate the "core" of Christianity with a kind of general human experience. Of course, evangelical Christianity resists this. Bill does not wish to debate this issue with you. I don't either.

I stated earlier in a post that Gibson presents his film in terms that are "self-descriptive." What this means to me is that Gibson's concerns are exactly the opposite of yours. That is, you are trying to figure out what part of Christianity you can go on a date with without getting married. Gibson's movie, I would propose, is a kind of Anselmian argument, which insists that the method of enquiry begins with the object being observed: Jesus. The discourse you appropriate in order to approach Jesus must conform to the object being investigated, at least, I think in Gibson's mind. He probably wouldn't say it this way. And of course, I could be totally wrong.

My point is, Bill, you seem to approach Jesus like a salad that you want to pick through. "I'd like this, and I don't really like this..." and then, "Can somebody out there who is a Christian scholar help me fiddle with this salad???"

Sorry sir. Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me."

Chris

 

Hi Bill Dayson: Better a fresh salad than the rancid meat of a Bavarian mystic crawling with the maggots of hatred.

Pat (Mr Tolerance) Buchanan* had a panel of major league base ball players, one of whom opined that anybody that disliked this movie is a persecutor of Christ, a sentiment amended by another ballistic luminary to mean that Christians are being persecuted for seeing this movie. I have rarely felt so privileged, damned liberal that I am, to be denounced as a Christ hater. When I say Mass on Sunday, I shall have to talk to Him about this.

Neal Gabler (some talking head on TV) was right: "Gibson made a movie. Evangelicals have made that movie into a sacrament" (a test of faith and a test of fellowship--not, of course, a means of grace. That would be "popish," after all).

The pastor of the neighboring parish went to see the movie. While he was not disturbed by the anti-Semitism issue, he did notice its preference for later legendary embroidery over a strict adherence to the gospel narrative, and made the comment: "Why is it that ministers who are horrified at the idea of having a crucifix in their churches are demanding that all this violence be visually imposed on their people?" Beats me.

I may rent "Last Temptation of Christ," which I've never seen. Everybody on that movie was clear that they were filming a novel. Word is that Nikos Kazantzakis was a better author of fiction than Anna Maria Emmerich.


*Exposed as an anti-Semite years ago, with great personal grief, by that filthy pinko Catholic-hater William F. Buckley, Jr., in a book entitled "In Search of Anti-Semitism."

 

Hi Bill Dayson: Better a fresh salad than the rancid meat of a Bavarian mystic crawling with the maggots of hatred.

Pat (Mr Tolerance) Buchanan* had a panel of major league base ball players, one of whom opined that anybody that disliked this movie is a persecutor of Christ, a sentiment amended by another ballistic luminary to mean that Christians are being persecuted for seeing this movie. I have rarely felt so privileged, damned liberal that I am, to be denounced as a Christ hater. When I say Mass on Sunday, I shall have to talk to Him about this.

Neal Gabler (some talking head on TV) was right: "Gibson made a movie. Evangelicals have made that movie into a sacrament" (a test of faith and a test of fellowship--not, of course, a means of grace. That would be "popish," after all).

The pastor of the neighboring parish went to see the movie. While he was not disturbed by the anti-Semitism issue, he did notice its preference for later legendary embroidery over a strict adherence to the gospel narrative, and made the comment: "Why is it that ministers who are horrified at the idea of having a crucifix in their churches are demanding that all this violence be visually imposed on their people?" Beats me.

I may rent "Last Temptation of Christ," which I've never seen. Everybody on that movie was clear that they were filming a novel. Word is that Nikos Kazantzakis was a better author of fiction than Anna Maria Emmerich.


*Exposed as an anti-Semite years ago, with great personal grief, by that filthy pinko Catholic-hater William F. Buckley, Jr., in a book entitled "In Search of Anti-Semitism."

 

Good movie.

As far as the violence goes.....have a look at what kids (as young as 3) are playing on video games.

B.

 

Besser a louse in kraut als kein fleisch.

I read that somewhere.

People - just a movie.

Perhaps someone can point out a historical drama that is more accurate.

I don't recall reading Mel's name in the credits of the book from which the screenplay was adapted.

 

Actually, yes. It's called "The Visual Bible" and it includes filmed versions of the Gospel of Matthew and the Book of Acts (Luke's sequel to the gospels about the early church). It is available on videotape and DVD at most Christian book stores. It follows virtually word-for-word the text of the New International Version translation of the Bible.

 

Does this standard apply across the board, or only to this movie?

Is a movie like Faces of Death acceptable, simply because some irresonsible parents allow young children to play violent video games?

If not, what, exactly, is your point?

 

I agree. Let children remain children. Leave the horrific violence of this world to adults.

 

Re: Carl Reginstein

Carl,

You wrote, "One of my next research topics in my own grad school program will be to ask the question "what historical evidence exists (other than the New Testament) of the humanity and actual existence of Jesus Christ".

You might find Gary Habermas' _The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ_ to be a useful resource in your research. It directly addresses your question from a scholarly Christian viewpoint.

Best wishes,

Dave G., who believes that the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are historical, too.

 

Re: Re: Carl Reginstein

Thank you kindly, Dave G.!

 

Sigh......Jeff the point is that some of these people knocking the violence, buy violent video games for their kids (at least that is what I have noticed) and I am not saying all people do that.

There is a distinct line between the movie you mention and the Passion. The violence is meant to be confronting because of the documented evidence that lies behind the movie.

If you do not like it, then don't go and see it.

B.