I hardly like to raise this here. It doesn’t seem polite, somehow. But my own blog is still broke and I have to write this somewhere!
Blogs4God put me on to The Prayerbook Society News who have been taking issue with criticism of Mel Gibson’s celluloid theology
Those critics of the Passion — especially those self-identified as Christians — who lament its supposed fixation on Christ’s physical suffering rather than the nice, unbloody, purely spiritual significance of his life (”Where’s its spirituality?”) hearken back to the early Gnostic heresy of Docetism. The Docetists (from the Greek dokein, “to seem” or “to appear”) believed that Christ didn’t have a human body at all, but only appeared to. Consequently, he never really suffered physically during his Passion, instead putting on a grand act for those assembled at Calvary. … Neither the Jewish nor the Greek mind of Jesus’ day could wrap itself around the concept of a God who truly became human; the very idea was scandalous both to Hebrew monotheism and Hellenic idealism. Docetism provided relief from the scandal. The Word didn’t really become flesh; he was just made to look as if he had. God didn’t really suffer unspeakably at the hands of his creatures; it was all a grand illusion put on for us by a divine Wizard of Oz.
This charge is, I’m afraid to say, a huge pile of foetid dingoes kidneys. To claim that criticism of the violence of Gibson’s gorefest amounts to heresy is the worst kind of partisan propaganda. Far from docetism, my criticism of the violence of this film is precisely that it fails to present Jesus as fully human. Jesus in this film is not a man. He is a superman, who can be whipped and beaten to any extent - and still get up and carry a cross. I’d hesitate to call it heresy - a vile charge that should not be made lightly - but it has more to do with cinematic convention than theological orthodoxy to have the hero suffer physically more than anyone has ever endured before. I can’t see any scriptural warrant for the suggestion that “his suffering was not only real and physical but more profound in every way than any human suffering before or since, being in some way proportionate to the sin expiated by it”, and that seems to this poor Methodist to represent a very deep misunderstanding of the Atonement.
Published 4 years, 4 months ago
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I don’t hate that you raised it at all Richard.
Fire at will.
I had to look up docetism.:^)
I just finished reading some criticism of the Left Behind series. I live in the boonies, and the bookstore already has the latest book. Frightening. People suck up heresy for truth just cause it’s marketed nicely.
The Mel Gibson movie hasn’t shown up here yet.
Blog on!
I wonder why so many reviewers/commenters are overreacting to this movie. In this case overcriticizing the critics on one side and calling the movie a gorefest on the other side.
I think the film does present Jesus as fully human. He does suffer a lot and definitely does need the help in carrying the cross for example. His human-ness is also shown in the relationship to his mother.
From our sheltered perspective the violence may seem extreme, but it is my impression that people who experience war and other kinds of violence in their own environment are not all that impressed with the amount of violence shown.
Richard- Thank you. Thoughtful and important post. This is one of the things I have been afraid to blog about, but will probably link to this and give my amen and thoughts to it as well. Thanks for the courage to resist the tidal wave of Gibson movie worship. Why is it that just because a movie is about Jesus, we all have to like it?
Swan - I think that some of the “over reaction’ of critics is in response to the adulation that has been heaped upon Mel Gibson for this film. We’re going to have to “agree to disagree” over the way Jesus is presented.
PM - thanks for your kind words.
Interesting comments Richard. I hadn’t really looked at it that way before.
I wonder if the violence was excessive to the point of being unrealistic, simply because Gibson understands cinema so well? To an audience already aclimatised to graphic violence, the extra step had to be taken to hammer home just what Jesus did by suffering the crucifiction. Otherwise it might not have provoked the emotional resonse Gibson was looking for…
Whether this was justified or not is another discussion… other people have taken the gospel and “polished” it to impact a specific audience- Eugene Peterson’s “The Message” springs to mind. And I think Peterson takes a lot of liberties in his post-modern interpretation of scripture… more so than Gibson does in his own “polishing” of the passion to a cinema audience.
I agree, to a point.
No normal human being could take that kind of torture and live that long.
But then again, this was Jesus Christ. He wasn’t just another Joe Average human being. I think it’s just as irrational to say he COULDN’T have survived such a terrible experience before being nailed to the cross itself. After all, the Bible does say that “He was so disfigured, he was barely recognizable as a human being.”