You Are Safe From Harm on the Grid Saturday, March 06, 2004

Yeesh, many days since a post. What goes on?

Job fear, job work, writing work. My only good excuse for not blogging is that I've been posting on another forum like it was going out of style. More religious mishegais. Speaking of which, the latest issue of the New Criterion, everybody's favorite stuffy arts journal, contains an essay that's a real pleasure to read, about the future of religion in America. Content aside, the language is just spectacular: unabashedly erudite and anti-modern. Grumpy and conservative, of course, but the language drips blood. A sample:

Ultimately, however, our strident secularity may triumph, and with it all the pathologies of cultural exhaustion. Perhaps not only will the courts, and educational establishment, and ACLU, and all the other other leal servants of a constitutional principle that does not actually exist, succeed in purging the last traces of Christian belief from our licit social grammar, but we may all finally, by forces of persuasion impossible to foresee, be conducted out of the darkness of our immemorial superstitions, nationalisms, moral prejudices and retrograde loyalties into the radiant and pure universe of the International Criminal Court, reproductive choice, and the Turner Prize.

Zing!

@ 11:37:00 PM, ,

Take Me to the Pilate Wednesday, March 03, 2004

A nifty observation from the NRO blog:

I have to say, I found Caiaphas entirely sympathetic: he dismisses charges that cannot be substantiated, asks Christ a direct question, hears an answer that he must take to be blasphemy, and then sets himself irrevocably upon the blasphemer's destruction. Pilate, by contrast, is a contemptible bureaucrat, agonizing over the possible consequences for himself of either executing or releasing Christ, and finally condemning a man he believes innocent to death as the most prudent course. It says something about our age. Of course we cannot understand Caiaphas: he is a religious "extremist," he acts on principle, he seeks to preserve the purity of his faith and his people from a heretic, he is uncompromising. But Pilate is much to our taste: he is indecisive and relativist, we feel the profundity of his "quid est veritas?", he has "issues" to work out, he is moved by emotion, and we can see that he feels bad about what he is doing (and what you feel, after all, is what is important). Feckless and contemptible and relativistic is what we are, and our very image of the ethical person; we know that resolute religious conviction is intolerant and wicked and evil. And thus the irony of it all: it is because the people that make such complaints are the sort who understand Pilate but hate Caiaphas that they are also disposed to despise Mel Gibson so passionately.

@ 3:32:00 PM, ,

More Passion! Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Interesting thoughts in an NRO essay:

What the critics miss is that this account makes Pilate a far worse villain than Caiaphas. After all, Caiaphas believed that Christ had committed the ultimate sin of blasphemy by claiming to be the Son of God. As a leading representative of religious laws that condemned adulterers to death by stoning, he was almost bound to call for His execution. Caiaphas is making a terrible mistake. He may also have corrupt political motives for his actions. But he is plainly sincere in believing that, however conveniently, he has the law of God on his side.

Pilate is on much weaker ground. He condemns to death a man he believes to be innocent — and he does so, moreover, in a shifty manner that seeks to fix all guilt for the murder on Caiaphas and the mob and to exculpate himself.

@ 4:03:00 PM, ,

Another Way to Look at It Monday, March 01, 2004

My Catholic/existentialist hero Walker Percy might put it this way: The world we have now is the kind you end up with when everybody decides it doesn't matter if Jesus was divine or not. Do you know what I mean? Morally tentative, if not morally kooky, and absolutely crapped out and unhappy. We stopped believing in the one thing that can explain human existence and have been scurrying around looking for substitutes. Nothing cuts the mustard.

@ 5:42:00 PM, ,

Other Voices, Other Rooms

Two intriguing reviews of Passion. One thumbs-up (with reservations) from our Straussian friends at the Claremont Institute:

People will respond differently to this unique film. I believe that Gibson could have taken, at times, a somewhat more restrained, subtle, poetic approach, to move the imagination. For example, at the end of the crucifixion, Mary embraces Jesus's nailed feet and we see her face smeared with His blood. This shot might have made a greater impact—as a representation of the entire horrible scene, much like the figure of the Crucifix or the role of the cross in the Good Friday service—had Gibson not been so direct, detailed and lengthy in showing Jesus's torment on the cross. As a result, the shot comes as one in a succession of awful pictures that, for this viewer at least, overwhelmed the senses. Aristotle wrote that poetry is universal; here a poetic treatment could have tempered the film and enhanced its impact.

Gibson does not appear to have a strong poetic sensibility; his blunt, indeed, pounding direction here basically has the same sensibility he demonstrated in "Braveheart" (1995). His unyielding tempo as a director might have benefited from some inflection: for example, when Jesus utters his fatal words before the Sanhedrin inquisitors—"I am: and you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven"—the direction does not give the famous words any special distinction as the climax of the scene. This could have been done, say, with a pause by Jesus, or by changing the camera angle, as a director like John Ford might have done; in fact, Gibson could have made the impact stronger by not breaking the lines into two shots, as he does. Second, the direct visualization of Satan as a sort of Gothic temptress (although the precise sexuality is a bit ambiguous), and its recurring appearance in the film, can be seen as rather heavy-handed; an allusive, symbolic treatment might have been more effective. Third, the one scene where Gibson's approach is weakest is the Resurrection; obviously, this calls for some poetic suggestion because it goes beyond the reality we know. But, from an aesthetic viewpoint, it is a bit earthbound.

And a deeply spiritual take from columnist David Warren:

But the Gospel has its own deep "irony" -- for the mob was Jewish, and could only be Jewish, not only for its place and time, but for its liturgical purpose in a Passion drama choreographed not by Mel Gibson, but by God. In this drama of dramas, the Man who is the director is the same who is hanging on the cross. God had sent himself as Messiah, not randomly to wherever, but to his own chosen people, the Jews, and in the fullest possible knowledge that He would be rejected and crucified, even by them. He then rose from the dead, opening the portals of salvation for all men.

It is hard even to begin to understand an event that happened in "real time" , which also stands outside time, and which redeems time itself. The Jews were chosen and will always be chosen; and the redeemed are redeemed not only since Christ. "The Jews" were them, but are also us, for that Jewish mob is Adam, and all men, including all Christians. St. Peter, "the rock", denied Christ thrice; and we ourselves have denied him, in every act of infidelity since the world began.

Has this turned into a Catholic blog? Oy vey.

@ 4:11:00 PM, ,

Cold Enough to Cross

I'm supposed to be thinking big thoughts about how laser guns work for Secret Thing #1. But my friend Bill's question about Jesus is a lot more compelling. Bill asks, very sensibly,

Would it be so bad really if Jesus was just a man? I don't think his impact on the world would be any less important really. Discuss.

I've been cogitating on this for a few days, and here's my best argument. First and foremost, based on the textual evidence, you can't extricate the God stuff from Jesus's philosophy. Throughout the gospels, time and again, he makes the explicit connection between himself and God--you can't reduce him to Aristotle or a first-century Abbie Hoffman. He didn't say that he was speaking the truth; he said he was the truth. That's a hugely important distinction.

And it leads to any number of consequences. Western political tradition, and many of the reform movements that have swept it, were built upon explicitly Judeo-Christian values. Take the Declaration of Independence, for example: "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Or look at the constant use of New Testament language in the abolitionist and civil-rights movements.

Jesus's divinity is hugely important to those movements. Look: Slavery has existed for thousands of years. It still does exist, in certain areas of the world. What made people stop tolerating it was the idea that God came to Earth as a human being and said "Treat everybody the same." Yes, the bible was used at some points, tragically, to justify slavery. But the fact remains that the abolitionists were animated by their faith that God said slavery was wrong. Not some smart, but otherwise ordinary guy. Not Aristotle. Not Abbie Hoffman. God.

The same logic runs through so many areas of politics. All men are created equal [and]...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights means something completely different than All men are equal and have certain unalienable rights. The former statement relies on God as an authority; violating somebody else's rights means you're treading on God's own designs; you can't rewrite a law that came from above. The latter statement relies on no authority but itself--and is therefore easier to break. Joe is equal to Jerry because this piece of paper says he is. But maybe we'll rewrite that paper tomorrow and change that.

The same holds true in thousands of tiny everyday actions. There have been thousands of philosophers since the beginning of time. In our everyday lives, why do we largely ignore everything they wrote and said and live by the Golden Rule instead? Not just because it "makes sense." All sorts of philosophies "make sense." We remember it, and we cling to it, because it was spoken with divine authority. That's why your grandparents taught it to your parents, and your parents taught it to you.

What I'm saying is, if Jesus was just a very smart guy, or just a rabble-rouser, two things happen. For one thing, he was nuts, because he went around telling people he was the son of God. But even if you set that aside, and assume that Jesus was "just a guy," and his teachings are "just philosophy," then what he said is no more authoritative or valuable than a zillion other theories of the world that other people have thought up. Yet the society we live in, and the ground rules we observe every day, are all rooted in that same philosophy. And the the only reason they're rooted in that philosophy because generation after generation thought he was divine and followed his teachings to the letter. So were all those people wrong? And if so, what basis should we use for civil society and government? (Maybe communism. After all, it only killed 100 million people--in under a century. Just wait till next year!)

Even with all that, though, you still can't separate Jesus's "basic philosophy" from the God stuff. "Blessed are the meek" doesn't mean "be a wimp." It means "be humble before God." "Love your enemies" isn't a call to be a blissed-out hippie but to see things in God's terms--that God created everyone and loves them equally as his own imperfect creations.

Anyhow, my two cents.

@ 3:26:00 PM, ,

But Enough About Jesus

Found this comment--in, of all places, Commentary--Noel Coward on "Death of a Salesman":

Went to Death of a Salesman. I personally found it boring and embarrassing. . . . Lee Cobb overacted and roared and ranted. . . . The play is a glorification of mediocrity. The hero . . . is a cracking bore and a liar and a fool and a failure; the sons are idiots. To me these ingredients do not add up to entertainment in the theater.

@ 8:31:00 AM, ,