Don Williams’ Blog

Don November 23rd, 2009

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY ANNUAL MEETING, new Orleans, LA, November 18-20, 2009: a REPORT

It was a pleasant (as far as the weather went) half-mile walk from my affordable hotel to the main one where the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting was held in New Orleans, about a quarter mile of it down Bourbon Street. This was an interesting, er, cross-cultural experience, especially when returning in the evening. For then the tourists were milling about trying to “earn their beads” (flung down from the out-jutting balconies above as a reward for people who “flash” publicly various body parts intended to be shared only privately in intimate moments), and the clubs were sending their exotic dancers out into the street to entice passers by into their establishments by, shall we say, displaying their wares. As is my wont in such situations, I waxed objective and scientific, yea, clinical, as an observer, regarding my own reactions with the same cool and detached eye as I was using for the phenomena to which I was being “exposed” (what a fortuitous choice of words!). I was not tempted (at all) nor even disgusted (very much), but saddened (mostly), thinking what a poor substitute all these shenanigans were for a real relationship, such as two people who had known True Love might enjoy with one another.

The conference itself I make bold to pronounce a success. My paper (on the validity of Lewis’s “Trilemma” argument) was well attended and enthusiastically received, the response including two editors (Global Journal of Classical Theology and Southwest Theological Journal) fighting over the right to publish it. I had to say that Touchstone had beaten them to that privilege (scheduled for spring of 2010), but that if Touchstone required sufficient cutting to make a more scholarly version justifiable, and then agreed to it, I would be in touch with them. And so I departed with their cards safely tucked away in my pocket.

Several of the other papers were worth hearing. A young Indian scholar, Ashish Varma, spoke of Calvin on Virtue: Forensic Justification and Imputed Righteousness seem like a mere legal fiction leading to license to those who do not realize that Calvin goes out of his way to tie them to Union with Christ. When they are seen as flowing from that Union, then rather than hindering Virtue they become the only things that make it truly possible for fallen men, since the only Virtue that matters flows to us from Him. We can only be joined to Christ if we are righteous, and the only righteousness that makes this possible is His imputed to us, since, if we waited until we had attained our own, not an eternity in Purgatory would suffice. But it is imputed to the end that, being joined to Him, we may be conformed to his image as His Spirit brings His life into our own. It was encouraging to hear such things being said so well in clipped Indian English.

Gene Fant explicated the sacrament of Communion by means of the biological concept of Homeostasis. Our bodies cannot exist without exchange with things outside of us. It is a picture of Sola Gratia, a reminder of our total dependence on that which is other, turned into a synechdoche for the things of the Spirit.

While Michael Travers was expounding the use of anthropomorphic imagery as a way of revealing the nature of God (one fourth of all the references to ears and eyes in the OT are to God’s!), I suddenly found himself cross-referencing this discussion with the absolute prohibition of images in Yahweh worship, which is grounded in the observation that on Sinai Israel saw no form. If visual images are verboten, why are verbal ones OK? There is certainly a kind of tension there, from which some great fruit of understanding ought to be born. Then I realized that all the verbal images are anthropomorphic. God brings Israel to Himself on eagles’ wings, but He himself has no wings; He gathers us like a Hen, but it is always a simile, not a metaphor when the comparison is to an animal. Only when the images are human is full metaphor allowed; and then only to one part at a time, not to the whole image of a Man, lest we think God a man that he should lie. Whence all this if not to prepare us for (and shut us up to) the Incarnation, the only adequate Image? That was the tangent I hurtled off on, more interesting perhaps than the paper itself.

Dorian Coover-Cox quoted Walter Eichrodt to the effect that all the other NE religions are nature religions; that is, the god is a personification of the natural powers of a given land and its people whose power flows from below, i.e., from them; but Yahweh is the opposite. He is wholly from above, the Suzerain from another country who elects Israel as his vassal. She noted the many OT passages that use the form of the ancient NE suzerainty treaty to convey what it means to be in covenant with God; the Covenant is precisely a suzerainty treaty. But what a difference! Suzerainty treaties are imposed by a conquering overlord, while Yahweh invites men into covenant with Himself; normal suzerains rule from a distance, but Yahweh comes to dwell with his people in the Tabernacle; other suzerains exact tribute to support their rule, but the Tabernacle is built with freewill offerings; other suzerains rule for their own benefit, or at most that of their own people (the angels in God’s case?), not that of the vassal people; but Yahweh feeds his people with manna and then with milk and honey Therefore, instead of resenting this Suzerain and rebelling against Him when we get the chance, as we would with any earthly one, we ought to realize that He deserves our obedience and devotion because of His grace.

I don’t want to be unfair to New Orleans. Just a few blocks from Bourbon Street the French Quarter is delightful, with wonderful little restaurants and Dixieland bands. The locals say that they never go to Bourbon Street; it is too “trashy” (their word) and only for tourists, and the better food and music is elsewhere. They are right. There is nothing but Rock and Country on Bourbon Street itself; no Dixieland, no Cajun! What would Pete Fountain and Al Hirt say? But off Bourbon it gets interesting. The beignet at the Café du Monde are the snacks of the gods. And Old Man River rolls on toward the sea, reminding one of history as well as nature, two endless topics of fruitful rumination.

If anyone would like a copy of my paper, write me at dtw@tfc.edu and just ask.

Toccoa Falls College, Georgia

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Don October 1st, 2009

A correspondent on a philosophy forum that I frequent notes accurately that “many people on this board agree that certain aspects of Christianity require faith, and faith alone, since our human mind cannot grasp it.”

I am not one of those people. The phrase “faith alone” applies strictly to soteriology (how we are saved), not to epistemology (what and how we know). That is, we are justified by faith in Christ alone, not by faith plus works or human merit. But there is nothing that we believe by faith alone, i.e., by faith divorced from experience, reason, and evidence. People who say they do are simply too unaware of their own mental processes to realize that their experience and their personality are contributing tons to what they believe and why.

I personally try to believe in true things for good reasons in so far as I can. Whether I succeed or fail, faith and reason are working hand in hand at every point of the process.

 It’s all in Augustine, it’s all in Augustine.  What do they teach in those schools?

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Don September 25th, 2009

REVIEW:  “REVENGE OF THE SITH” 

[This review was originally published as “Film: Strider’s Screening Room, Star Wars Episode III” (review), Mythprint 42:6 (June 2005): 4-5.]

“Star Wars Episode III” is indeed much better than I or II; and that is what makes it much worse.

            In explaining my paradoxical judgment, I forebear to nit pick.  I will not ask why Jedi can apparently use their light sabers to deflect an infinite number of blaster bolts coming at them from every conceivable direction until order 66 is given, whereupon it suddenly becomes relatively easy for clone warriors to pick them off.  I will not ask how, if Padme dies right after childbirth, Leia can remember her mother as “beautiful and sad.”  (The conversation when Luke asks her about her memories in its own context always seemed to me to be about her real mother, not her adoptive one, because Luke is trying to establish some connection with his own, whom he now knows to be the same person).  I will not ask why, since the first Death Star is already well under way by the end of Episode III, and an entire galaxy of slave labor is available, it is only just being finished twenty years later at the time of Episode IV.  All this I omit, being studious of brevity and disposed to charity.

            O.K., then, on to the good part.  The first two movies did an inadequate job of building up Anakin’s nobility so that his fall could be from a sufficient height.  He was a cute kid and a bratty teenager, but when was he really noble?  But the first half of Episode III significantly ameliorated that problem.  We see a more mature Anakin with a better relationship to Obi Wan, who insists on saving Obi Wan during the rescue of Palpatine, and who is feeling a real loyalty to the Jedi order for the first time just as that loyalty is coming into conflict with the lies he has been fed by Palpatine.  I think we do see the Jedi he could have become, just in time for that destiny to be sacrificed on the altar of his misguided but natural and understandable ”attachment” to Padme.  This irony heightens the sense of tragedy, as does the horrible irony that the death he turns aside from the path to prevent is caused by that very turning aside from the path to prevent it.  That is an irony worthy of Oedipus.  At that moment the film rises to the archetypal and made me want to forget all the inconsistencies and plot-holes and grant that it had achieved in spite of them a grandeur rivaling that of the original trilogy.

            But  . . .  it all came crashing down into an incoherent mess because of one horrible, intolerable, and inexcusable line.  When Obi Wan confronts the newly fallen Anakin, he is convinced that the fall is real when he hears Anakin declaring that if Obi Wan is not with him, he is his enemy.  Obi Wan’s response is, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”  Well, I guess we see where that places Lewis and Tolkien’s Christianity, or any other traditional view that takes certain verities as unchangeable and non-negotiable! 

But let those of us who are believers bracket for a moment our personal disappointment and offense as Christians, and think of the line only as it functions in the context of Lucas’s mythology.  I wearily ask if you do not smell something fishy, not about the content of Obi Wan’s statement (which is bad enough), but its form.  It is an absolute statement!  Only a Sith deals in absolutes.  Therefore, if Obi Wan’s statement is true, then he, having just dealt in an absolute, is a Sith Lord too.  And if that is the case–and logically it follows inexorably–then what is the fight about?  What is the difference between the Light and Dark sides of the Force? 

A moment in the original series foreshadows this fall into shallow relativism.  Luke thinks he has been deceived about his father, whom Obi Wan had claimed to be dead—“from a certain point of view.”  Luke finds this rationalization incredible.  “You’re going to have to realize,” Obi Wan responds, “that a lot of the truths we hold depend greatly upon our point of view.”  Oh, really?  Then how do we respond to Anakin saying, “From my point of view, you’re evil”? 

Our ability to perceive truth depends on our point of view, of course.  It may powerfully influence what truths we are able or willing to accept.  But truth itself does not and cannot depend on our point of view.  If it does, Anakin’s “point of view” is simply unassailable and no basis is left for distinguishing between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force or for claiming that the choice between them is anything more than an arbitrary personal preference.  If only the Sith deal in absolutes, the whole Star Wars ethos collapses into nonsense so nonsensical that Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief that constitutes poetic faith” becomes simply impossible.  And the worst part is that it taints the whole mythos, three episodes of which I loved.  

Star Wars is more than just “escapist entertainment.”  It connects with some very basic and universal truths that our technological age tends to forget, and they, rather than great special effects, are why we care about it.  Many of them are consistent with the world view we get in Lewis and Tolkien, though in Lucas’s world they lack its biblical basis.  Self sacrifice in a good cause is noble and powerful (Obi Wan in Episode IV; cf. Gandalf at Moria, Frodo).  Choices have consequences, and you cannot use evil for good and get away with it (Yoda and the clones, Anakin wanting to use the Dark Side to save Padme; cf. Saruman, Denethor).  There is something inside us more powerful than technology (though Lucas’s new-age mysticism is vastly inferior to the Christian doctrine of the imago Dei as an explanation of what it is).  Little people, even flawed people, can make a big difference for good (Ewoks, an obscure, whiny orphan from the back side of a desert planet, a ne’er do well smuggler; cf. hobbits).  Evil is real and does great damage, but no one is beyond redemption (Vader in Episode VI; cf. Boromir, almost Gollum).  These truths are profound and important–and that is why I wish Lucas had worked a little harder to get his secondary creation right, rather than creating a mishmash of truth, error, and contradiction that is sometimes so flimsy that I can’t keep on believing in it even as fiction.  He should have paid less attention to Joseph Campbell and a little more to Tolkien’s “Essay on Fairie Stories.”  In other words, Star Wars could have been almost another Lord of the Rings, a work (the book supremely, the movies a little less so) that has all the same virtues (and more) without the same flaws.

            So then, you see why I say that “’Star Wars Episode III’ is indeed much better than I or II; and that is what makes it much worse.”  Because it does at times rise to the mythic power of the original trilogy, the message that “Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” that, in other words, anyone who believes in absolute truth is evil, will be disseminated far and wide, and disseminated effectively to an audience with whom it will powerfully resonate.  Logic has little power with a generation that has been taught to “trust its feelings.”  But my message to them is this paraphrase of one of Obi Wan’s better moments:  “Be mindful of your thoughts, Master Lucas; they betray you.”

 Reviewed by Donald T. WilliamsToccoa Falls College

• Apologetics , Art/Aesthetics , Inklings
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Don September 15th, 2009

One challenge to the argument from desire (see the post of 9/14/09) is people who deny having any unsatisfiable desires. One person I read admitted that certain desires of his had never been satisfied perfectly, but maintained that they could be in theory, or that the satisfactions he could find in this life were good enough. How does one respond to this line? It’s rather like trying to convince the dwarfs in The Last Battle that they aren’t in a stable!

One conclusion might be that the argument from desire just doesn’t work with a certain type of person. Some of us are just too emotionally undeveloped–or jaded–to be susceptible to it. But I would suggest that we make a mistake by taking such people’s statements at face value. Solomon tells us that “God has set eternity in their hearts.” Either Scripture is wrong or the denial of transcendant desire is a smokescreen, a defense mechanism to protect dwarfish atheists from reality.

A person who is still human is not in fact satisfied by the temporal and physical, however hard he tries to convince himself that he is. But you probably can’t argue him out of his position. You can only try to arouse the desire, to fan it to the point where he cannot ignore it any more. And the best way to do that might be to talk about the foretastes of fulfillment we have already been granted in Christ, or just to live a life of transcendant openness to Joy before him.

If you can get him to read Thomas Traherne’s Five Centuries of Meditations, it wouldn’t hurt. “Things unknown have a secret influence on the soul, and like the center of the earth unseen violently attract it. We love we know not what, and therefore everything allures us. . . . Do you not feel yourself drawn by the expectation of some Great Thing? . . . You never enjoy the world aright till you see how a [grain of] sand exhibiteth the wisdom and power of God. . . . You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars. . . . Infinite wants satisfied produce infinite joys. . . . You must want like a God that you may be satisfied like God. Were you not made in his image?”

Lewis learned the argument from desire from Augustine’s Trinity-shaped vacuum and his heart that was “restless until it rest in Thee,” as developed by  writers like Traherne and MacDonald. It will have a certain logical cogency–which Victor Reppert well analyzes (http://dangerouside a.blogspot. com/2006/ 09/bayesian- argument- from-desire. html)
–to those in whom Desire has been sufficiently aroused. The best service those earlier writers–and Lewis himself–may do us is to fan that flame. In it, let us burn.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

• Apologetics , Inklings
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Don September 14th, 2009

One of C. S. Lewis’s many interesting contributions to Christian Apologetics is the “Argument from Desire,” which appears in Mere Christianity.  Nature does not create desires that have no fulfillment.  A duck wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water.  People get hungry; well, there is such a thing as food.  So if I find myself with desires that nothing in this world can fulfill, then I must have been made for another world.

Is this argument valid?  Maybe.  My hunger does not prove that I will get any bread, or that any given loaf exists; but it does prove I was designed to need nourishment.  John Beversluis contends that the argument fails as a syllogistic proof and refuses to consider it as anything else.  I’m not sure he is right on either count, but I’m pretty sure he’s wrong on the latter.   

There are more conclusive proofs for the existence of God than the Argument from Desire; but I do think that the argument has value. It points to a critical difference between human beings and other animals. A cat which is full and warm is perfectly contented. It just curls up and goes to sleep. A human being is mighty ill at ease if he is not full and warm, but when he has satisfied those desires he will pretty soon start asking, “Is that all there is? What’s next?”

I think we can say at minimum that the existence of beings who cannot ever be completely contented by the fulfillment of their physical wants is consistent with Christian Theism and less consistent with Naturalism. By itself it might not be a “proof” in any rigorous sense, but it is an important indicator and helps to confirm the conclusion we are led to by the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, by Lewis’s Argument from Reason, and by the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Christ.

One of Lewis’s forerunners in the Theology of Desire, George Herbert, described the human condition well in his poem “The Pulley.” The Argument from Desire in Mere Christianity can at least serve to focus our attention on the reality Herbert describes:

When God at first made Man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “poure on him all we can;
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisedome, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For If I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both would losers be.”

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness.
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.”

If like Lewis we examine our own history of desires and their fulfillment or lack thereof, I believe we will find that the results are consistent with Herbert’s perspective, and are less well explained by Naturalism. The Argument from Desire may not be a proof, then, but it is an indicator and a confirmation.

Longing but not (yet) satisfied,

Donald T. Williams, PhD

• Apologetics , Poems , Poets
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Don September 10th, 2009

LXXVIII Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

Cassandra was a character from Greek legend, a prophetess who carried the curse that she would always tell the truth but never be believed.  As what was once a Christian civilization slips back toward barbarism with seeming inevitability, one cannot help but identify with her.  What would she say if she were with us today?

 Epistle from the Limbo of the Righteous Pagans

(Cassandra Speaks)

We were very ignorant, but there were some things we knew.

We knew that life is a narrow Bridge of time,

That both ends lie beyond the sight of men,

And the fathomless abyss lies before, and behind, and beneath.

The rails on the Bridge are Morality and Custom,

And they are all that stand between us and Chaos.

Freedom is found only on the Bridge,

For there is no freedom in chaos and destruction.

We also tried to find the thing that you call freedom.

On the other side of the rails there is Nothing.

Would you also be free from earth, and sea, and sky?     

Would you walk without the earth beneath your feet,

Breathe without air, swim without water?

Breath apart from air is suffocation:

Such is freedom from morality and custom.

So I say to you, get married and have children,

And teach them that doing right is the only thing that matters,

But that all the right they do will be insufficient

To cover all the wrong.  This is why

The sacrificial blood must always flow.

We did not know from Whom it had to flow,

But the blood that splashed our altars was far wiser in its way

Than your sky-topping prayer-towers of glass and steel and concrete

Dedicated to the praise of perfectible Man.

Raise your children, then, and teach them,

Carefully and painfully,

By precept and example that freedom cannot be found

Elsewhere than in the man who does his duty,

Who is faithful unto death, though it be hard,

And then that even this is insufficient.

That was all the freedom we knew how to find.

I will not say that there is nothing better than this

(You perhaps have heard strange stories of a Hope we did not have),

But we tried also all the gods that you are looking to

And found them nothing, Nothing, dust

And ashes,

Dust and ashes.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

• Apologetics , Poetry , Theology
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Don August 20th, 2009

 REVIEW:

“The Passion of the Christ”

Directed by Mel Gibson

This review appeared on ChronWatch, March 26, 2005. URL is http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=13698; rpt. in Free Republic, March 27, 2005, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1371955/posts.

“I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” – Jesus of Nazareth

            It is one of the chief ironies of history that the person who taught us to turn the other cheek and to return good for evil has been one of the most divisive characters we have ever seen.  That he remains so to this day is clearly shown by many of the reactions to Mel Gibson’s controversial portrait of his suffering and death, “The Passion of the Christ,” recently released on DVD.  Apart from the polarizing impact of the person of Christ himself, it is hard to understand the intensity of those reactions, both positive and negative. It is especially hard to understand the attacks on Gibson and on the film, and the passion with which they have been pursued.

            The two main raps against the movie are that it is anti-semitic and that it presents a skewed and unbalanced portrait of Christ marked by gratuitous violence.  It requires an astounding level of inattention both to the story and to Gibson’s treatment of it to maintain either thesis.  The outcry on both points has to be explained by something other than the merits or even plausibility of the complaints themselves.

            The film is allegedly anti-Semitic because it shows Jewish religious leaders finagling, and a mob of the Jewish people clamoring, for the execution of an innocent man.  One wonders how this particular bit of history is to be portrayed at all apart from the recognition that this was exactly what happened.  The incident in fact took place in the first-century Roman province of Judea.  Who else was there to do these things?   

Only the regrettable history of persecution of Jews by so-called Christians taking advantage of these facts can explain the level of denial in those elements of the Jewish community who object to any recognition of what actually happened.  It is almost like a kind of reverse Holocaust Denial.  For in the film as in the Gospels, Jews are portrayed as both good and evil.  Gibson even goes out of his way to emphasize this balanced portrait.  Bracketing Jesus himself (a Jew) for the moment, the most admired people in the film are Mary and Mary Magdalene (Jews).  And Gibson adds to the Gospel accounts a scene in which Simon of Cyrene (a Jew) risks his own life to take a stand against the cruelty of the Roman soldiers on the Via Dolorosa.  The most selfless act of nobility in the film aside from the passion itself comes from . . . a Jew.  And the most despicable characters in the film are surely neither Caiaphas the devotee of realpolitik, nor the clueless mob, but rather the Roman soldiers below the rank of centurion who enjoy the brutality of their job for its own sake.

            The film itself simply refuses to cooperate with the theory that it is anti-semitic.  And Gibson’s own statements in interviews have been equally telling. Asked point-blank by Diane Sawyer who killed Christ, Gibson’s reply—delivered with apparently spontaneous and heartfelt emotion—was, “I did.”  We all did.  It was our sins.  And he joined a long confessional tradition in Christian art of expressing that sentiment that goes back to Michelangelo and Rembrandt, who portrayed themselves participating in the crucifixion, when his own hand was shown driving the nail.  One finally gets the impression that it does not matter what Gibson says or what he puts in his movie.  Certain people are going to use it as an excuse to advance their own agenda regardless of what the evidence shows. 

Christians must realize that their own history of persecuting the Jewish community is partly to blame for helping to create the blind emotions that now seem to some Jews to justify this reverse Holocaust Denial.  And for this, Christians must be profoundly sorry.  But that history does not excuse the character assassination to which Gibson has been subject on this issue.   Nor does it excuse a refusal to deal with facts, the facts about Gibson’s film or the full facts about Christian history. Not all Christians can validly be implicated in the truly evil actions of some of their ancestors.  Nor can those ancestors be fairly portrayed as ever having been legitimately speaking for the Christian faith.  It is quite true that the Jews in the mob asked for Jesus’ blood to be held against them and their descendants.  It is also true that those Jews did not have the last word on the subject.  The last word on that subject belongs to Christ himself:  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Anyone who claims Jesus as Lord must adopt the same attitude on the subject of Jewish guilt for the crucifixion that He did.  And no one who does not adopt that attitude can claim to be speaking for Christ, no matter what ecclesiastical organization he represents. 

The second criticism tends to come from liberal Christians in mainline denominations:  that Gibson presents a skewed and unbalanced portrait of Christ marked by gratuitous violence and thus perpetuates a naïve and unsophisticated view of Christian faith.  This criticism has a bit more credibility than the charge of anti-semitism, for the film does indeed immerse us relentlessly in the full brutality of a Roman crucifixion.  It is at times hard to watch, even for people raised on the graphic violence of much modern cinema.  But this criticism also ultimately fails to convince, mainly because again of its inattention to the actual details of the film itself.  It breaks the most basic rule of interpretation, which was given to us by Alexander Pope long ago:  “A perfect judge will read each work of wit / In that same spirit that its author writ.”   For this movie does not attempt nor claim to attempt a balanced portrait of the life of Christ.  It is not about the life of Christ; it is about his passion, his sacrificial death to atone for human sin.  Its stated purpose in Gibson’s own words is to reveal to us the “enormity” of that sacrifice.  These critics are guilty of one of the worst and most common sins of critics, whether of movies or of books.  They say nothing about how well the work succeeds at what it is trying to do, which they have never bothered to try to understand, but rather criticize it for not being the treatment they would have preferred to attempt.  It is no valid criticism to say that an artist or a work of art fails at doing something which was never its purpose in the first place.

Only two questions are really pertinent:  is the work’s purpose worth attempting, and, if so, does it do a good job of achieving it?  For Christian believers, gaining a deeper understanding of the enormity of Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf is central to their very concept of the purpose of life.  And even for non-Christians, being given an opportunity to understand what lies at the emotional heart of so many people’s faith can hardly be considered an unworthy goal. 

Gibson’s purpose, then, is a worthy one.  Does he succeed at it?  I think that, for most people who are open to that purpose, the answer is a resounding yes.  There is room for some discussion about the issue of gratuitous violence, not from those who have ruled out blood sacrifice in advance as being potentially relevant to Christian faith through a kind of theological question-begging, but from those who are willing to admit the necessity of some accurate presentation of the cruelty of Jesus’ death as essential to Gibson’s purpose.  For some, the film may present more reality than they can bear.  The question of whether the film might have benefited from some application of the “less is more” principle is worth pursuing.  But ultimately I think we will have to conclude that the violence is not gratuitous per se.  Even in the most controversial scene, the flogging, the camera often pulls back from the actual blows to record the reactions of those standing around.  The film audience is protected, as the actual audience was not, from the full reality.  But we definitely get enough of it to get the point.

And what is the point that we get?  I think it is often exactly the one Gibson wanted us to get.  This film is about Jesus’ passion–and it is about how that passion relates to us.  Jim Caviezel is the first actor ever to convince me that Christ might actually have looked—and behaved—like he does.  And I have yet to meet anyone who came out of the film hating Jews.  The most common reactions I have heard are either utter bewilderment or, more often, a profound emotional bonding with the character of Christ.  “Oh!  He did that for me?  How can I not love him?”

Others can talk about Gibson’s masterful use of cinematic technique.  My purpose here has mainly been to remove the stumbling blocks which unsympathetic critics have tried to put in the way of our appreciation of this film.  When those stumbling blocks are removed and the criteria of worthy purpose and powerful fulfillment remain, I must conclude that even if I were not a Christian I would have to give this film an A+.           

 Donald T. Williams, PhD, is Professor of English and Director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in the hills of Northeast Georgia.    

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Don August 5th, 2009

I am probably the last person in America to see the new Harry Potter movie.  I don’t have that much to say about “Half Blood Prince: The Movie.”   I suspect that anyone who had not read the books would find it disjointed and hard to follow.  But that is just one more reason to read the books!  But it did remind me of what I have to say about the books, so I copy here my review of the whole (written) series:

HARRY POTTER AND THE MEANING OF IT ALL   This review appears online at the website of Modern Reformation magazine.  The URL is:

 http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var1=ArtRead&var2=596&var3=main&var4=Home

   Now that the Harry Potter series has finally been completed, we can look back on the whole Potter legendarium and draw some conclusions. Despite the hysterical rants of some Christians, the books are not occultic.  None of J. K. Rowling’s magicians, not even the dark ones, has an attendant spirit or anything like that.  Their “magic” is simply an alternative set of natural laws to which Muggles do not have access. Nor are the books an advertisement for Wicca.  There is no neopaganism in the Potter universe, no worship of the Goddess or of Nature. Real-life Wiccans and other New-Age “witches” are nothing like J. K. Rowling’s magicians, which are a loose compendium of folklore, literary precedent, and her own imagination.  What religion does intrude into the story is Christian as far as it can be identified.  Biblical quotations are part of the plot of Book VII and are treated as expressing universal truths; Harry puts the sign of the cross over Dobby’s grave.

Rowling did make a tactical blunder for Christian readers in using the word witch as if it were morally neutral, in contrast to writers like C. S. Lewis, in whose Narnia books witches, reflecting biblical usage of the word, are always on the wrong side. It is curious that the word wizard (though not warlock) can be used neutrally much more easily than witch.  For a warlock is simply a male witch. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gandalf (good) and Saruman (evil) are both called wizards, but you could only call one of them a warlock and get away with it.  Less sensitive to these connotations, Rowling erects unnecessary barriers for Christian readers who remember the way the word witch is used in Scripture (though some Christians object even to Lewis and Tolkien). But this lack of semantic sensitivity is more a reflection of increasing theological illiteracy in Western society as a whole than it is of nefarious intent by Rowling.  It is certainly something to be criticized in the books, and biblical reality about real witchcraft is something to be taught to Christian children and contrasted with the diction of the Potter world; but the unfortunate nomenclature is hardly a justification for rejecting the series outright.              

In reaction to those who want to burn J. K. Rowling as a witch (after all, she probably weighs the same as a duck!), we have people trying to read the Potter books as Christian works. I think these folks are over-reaching a bit, but they have more of a leg to stand on than the witch-hunters do. There are indeed themes in the books which reflect Christian teachings, but they fall short of the clear and powerful representation of the Gospel or of the full Christian world view that one finds in Narnia or Middle Earth.

Evil in the Potter universe is associated with a Nietzschean drive for power. “There is no good and evil,” says Lord Voldemort in the very first volume, “only power and those without the courage to use it.” It is a rare moment of honesty. Usually the Death Eaters pursue power while rationalizing the moral evils they commit in order to grasp and hold it by appeals to the greater “common good” which sound downright Orwellian. We see the same basic philosophy played out in all the villains, ranging from Voldemort himself, who does not stoop to justifying the imposition of his will, to Percy, who puts a little too much stock in being Prefect and ends up a tool of the Dark Lord until his repentance near the very end. On the other side we have Dumbledore, who turns down the post of Minister of Magic, being more interested in “love, friendship, truth, and loyalty” than in power. There are good insights here into the nature of evil and how it plays itself out in our own society.

The supreme theme of the whole series is one as old at least as Chaucer’s Prioresse: Amor vincit omnia, “Love conquers all.”  It is love, not superior magical power, which conquers Lord Voldemort in the end. The central embodiment of this theme turns out to be, of all people, Severus Snape. Despite all appearances, he has actually been true to Dumbledore, killing him at the end of Book VI by Dumbledore’s own command to prevent the destruction of whatever chance for innocence remains in Draco Malfoy’s soul, and giving Harry the key to understanding everything toward the end of Book VII through the gift of his dying memories. Why? Because he has always been in love with Lily Evans, an unrequited love with the added indignity that she marries his chief rival and tormenter, James Potter, and becomes Harry’s mother. Though Snape is by ancestry and inclination a servant of the Dark Lord, his love for Lily causes him to end up on the side of good in the end–for love is the one thing that Voldemort cannot understand.           

The centrality of love is strengthened by the theme of sacrifice. Lily sacrificing her life to save her son sets in motion the powerful forces that eventually lead to Harry’s triumph and Voldemort’s fall, and the willing self sacrifice of others along the way, including Dumbledore and even Harry himself (who thinks he is giving up his own life to save his friends but actually survives), contributes to the wonderful way in which this theme is worked out.  Snape’s choice is in some ways the most impressive of all.  He allows his whole life to be ruled by sacrificial love for a dead woman who did not requite it in life, knowing all along that he has no hope in this life of any reward for his self-denying acts save love itself. To sacrifice oneself for love is the very opposite of the Nietzschean drive for power which is the essence of evil in the series, and though at first love seems much weaker, it proves stronger in the end.

          The central ideas of the series then resonate powerfully with central doctrines of the Christian faith, and I do not believe Rowling could have developed them as profoundly as she did without being influenced by Christian teaching. But they do not quite rise to a Christian view of the world. For love as it comes from fallen human hearts does not conquer all. Love conquers all only because God is love and because He has sacrificed himself in His Son. The good Potter characters seem to find this all-conquering love by somehow looking within themselves, not by looking up and outward to the Source of it, which is Christ.  One is left with the impression that it could be just love itself, love in the abstract, which conquers all, rather than the scandalously specific Love which comes only from the heart of God in the sacrifice of Christ.  And only the sacrifice of that divine and innocent Victim could provide the propitiation which is necessary to the conquest of the evil which is found at the core of our own hearts.  We as believers follow Christ in taking up our own crosses, in recapitulating his loving sacrifice in our own lives, indeed.  The Hogwarts heroes could be read as exemplars of this truth.  But only as our acts flow from that supreme Act do they participate in its power.  Do Harry’s, Snape’s, and Dumbledore’s?  It is, alas, unclear.  To separate love and sacrifice from their Source, as if they could operate independently of it on their own, is to risk losing them as the Gospel evaporates into a bloodless humanism.  J. K. Rowling’s story never denies this more explicitly Christian view of love, but neither does it demand it.    She comes awfully close to the biblical view, and she communicates much profound truth in falling just short of it. But she does fall short. She could have provided clearer hints and clues to the idea that in order to defeat evil we must look, not to love in the abstract, but outside of ourselves to the Source of love, which is Christ. A great Christian mythmaker like Lewis or Tolkien would have done just that (without making it too obvious).  In the Stone Table of Narnia it is inescapable.  But even in the more subtle Lord of the Rings, especially when clarified by the creation story in The Silmarillion, meaning and victory and hope come ultimately from “beyond the circles of the world.”  For what Rowling has accomplished in the Harry Potter series we should have a profound appreciation, but we should also have an awareness of what is missing–for that is, quite literally, crucial. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD, is Director of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at Toccoa Falls College.  His most recent books include Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition (Broadman, 2006) Credo: Meditations on the Nicene Creed (Chalice Press, 2007), and The Devil’s Dictionary of the Christian Faith (Chalice, 2008).  His website is www.doulomen.tripod.com. 

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Don July 15th, 2009

MOVIE REVIEW: “I AM LEGEND,” Directed by Francis Lawrence 

This review was originally published in Modern Reformation (online version): http://www.modernreformation.org/.

This is not a flick to see lightly for entertainment. 

A genetically engineered virus that was supposed to cure cancer wipes out 90% of the human race instead, and turns most of the rest into mutated, rabid, aggressive, vicious, and very hungry monsters who only come out at night.  Will Smith is a medical researcher who (with his faithful German Shepherd, Samantha) is the only survivor left in New York City and, for all he knows, the world.  He is trying to build a vaccine and cure from his own immune blood–but it may already be too late.

There are a couple of philosophical issues of interest to Christians that are central to this story.  First is the ethics of genetic engineering and “playing God.”  Scientific hubris definitely takes a hit–and yet science, which is the cause of the problem, may also be its only solution.  But will it be science alone?  No.  And thereby hangs a tale–which brings us to the second issue.

Very important also to the plot is theodicy, the problem of evil (think of C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain).  Smith’s character eventually meets another survivor.  She is a believer who is looking for a colony of survivors.   She believes it is out there because “God told her” it was.  How, Smith wants to know.  “The world is so silent, now,” she replies.  “If you listen, you can hear Him.”  Smith has lost his faith because of the devastating plague, and they have a short but intense argument about theodicy.  He seems to win on points, but it turns out that the colony does exist and his meeting her is the only way his cure can reach it with hope for the future of humanity.  They are attacked by the mutants and Smith sacrifices himself so that she can reach the colony with the cure.  “What are you doing?” she asks him at that point.  “Listening,” he replies.  And so she does find the colony and the human race is presumably saved.  The role of faith and the means of its validation remind one somewhat of that Mel Gibson film of a few years ago, “Signs.” 

I have both a positive and a negative reaction to all of this.  On the negative side, the woman’s faith is in a very vague God who apparently speaks only subjectively.  It may not even be the Christian God; if it is, it is a very subjective Pentecostal or Charismatic version of Him where revelation comes not objectively through Scripture but only subjectively through an inner voice.  People in the real world who “listen” to that inner voice often hear all kinds of idiocy from it, much of it contradictory to Scripture.  So let’s not get too excited about “Christian” themes in this movie.  Some of us are too eager to read explicit Christian content that may not be there into any film that isn’t positively hostile to faith.  A work of art does not have to be explicitly Christian to be appreciated for raising in a helpful way issues worth thinking about.

On the positive side, faith in God is shown not to be bogus.  There are many positive insights either made or suggested.  Even Smith (in his atheist period) says, “God didn’t do this [evil]; we did.”  He means at that point partly that only we humans, specifically scientists, specifically himself, can fix it.  The optimistic humanist hope that “I can fix this!” echoes throughout the picture, only to be shown to be a false hope.  It turns out that Smith’s efforts would have been in vain without what looks an awful lot like Providential intervention. 

Most interesting of all then is the idea that Religion and Science need each other.  Either alone would have failed to save humanity.  The believer couldn’t have done it without Smith’s science; he couldn’t have done it without her faith.  Each comes to understand and appreciate a need for the other.  A more interesting and possibly helpful way of thinking about how Religion and Science ought to relate than those one sometimes hears from either side is then suggested by the story, one potentially consistent with reformed themes such as common grace and the cultural mandate.    

Of the films I have seen this year, this one should be one of the more interesting to Christian thinkers.  Its answers are not without flaws, but it raises good questions in a helpful way.  But seriously, don’t see it unless you are prepared to have your nose rubbed in some pretty tough realities.  It breaks one of the most basic rules of “feel good” movies (which “I am Legend” manifestly is not):  The dog dies.  And, yes, that part is hard to take.  But she doesn’t die in vain.  It hurts, but it is a pain worth having.  Just don’t say you weren’t warned!         

Donald T. Williams, PhD, is Professor of English and Director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in the hills of NE Georgia.  His most recent books are Mere Humanity: G. G. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006), Credo: Meditations on the Nicene Creed (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2007), and The Devil’s Dictionary of the Christian Faith (Chalice, 2008).  His website is www.doulomen.tripod.com.   

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Don July 13th, 2009

REVIEW: “KINGDOM OF HEAVEN” 

“Kingdom of Heaven,” the 2005 film based on the era of the crusades, is closer to history than Hollywood usually gets, close enough to make the gaps that remain especially annoying.  The depiction of medieval siege warfare is fairly accurate if one allows for the fact that Greek fire didn’t really blow up quite that dramatically when it hit.  Saladin and Balian actually existed, they did make a pact that allowed for the surrender of Jerusalem on condition of safe passage for the Christians back to Christian lands, and this was indeed an impressive military and diplomatic achievement on Balian’s part, for the realistic expectation (given what the Crusaders had done when they took the city a century earlier) was that every last man woman and child would be put to the sword.  So far, so good. 

            You knew the “but” paragraph was coming.  But . . . there are patches of 21st century dialog that stick out like sore thumbs, patches of new cloth rather clumsily woven into this allegedly 12th century tapestry.  And their overall tendency is to create a subtle, sometimes not so subtle, message:  people who take religion–any religion–seriously are a problem.  The two noblest people in the film turn out to be the two most secular-minded, one on each side.  The sheiks, for example, are going on about how they are going to win because it is Allah’s will.  Saladin asks cynically, “How often was it Allah’s will for you to win before I came along?”  Embarrassed silence.  “You don’t win because it is Allah’s will; you win because you are better prepared than your opponent” is Saladin’s conclusion.  Very powerful because it is of course half true.  The Christians are if anything even more idiotic in their belief that God is on their side.  All religions are equally bad, the film implies in other words, but some are more equal than others.  Balian actually saved the lives of the Christians by threatening to destroy the Dome of the Rock unless Saladin agreed to his terms for surrender, with the implication, “OK, you can slaughter us all, but then you can also explain to the rest of the Muslim world how you let that happen.”  In the movie he threatens to destroy all the shrines of all three religions–and Saladin replies, “Perhaps it would be better if you did.”  No commentary necessary to discern the message there!

            What we can learn from this film is a little about the 12th century and a lot about the 21st.  It confronts us with the way an awfully large and rapidly growing number of our contemporaries feel about religion, plus a view of history read in the light of those feelings.  And if we were looking at the phenomenon of religion from the outside, we would probably feel the same way.  If people would just be secular, or keep their religion safely bottled up in their private lives, all war and conflict would cease!  History–especially half understood history, like what this film offers–presents a huge amount of data that makes those feelings plausible and understandable. 

Unfortunately, the presentation of that data by secular-minded and liberal scholars often ignores an equally impressive number of facts that present a different picture indeed.  Tragically, the  attitude engendered by this tendentious scholarship and the popular entertainment that parrots it cuts us off from our own Founding Fathers and makes it impossible for us to understand what motivated them or what they meant by their own statements about religion.  If Christians and other conservatives are going to counteract such views, it will take good arguments and better lives. 

 Donald T. Williams, PhD

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