AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Son of Passion

When Prof. Margaret Mitchell distributed her take on The Passion of the Christ through the Martin Marty Center yesterday, I was relieved to observe that her perspective largely aligned with what I’d already written. It’s a relief when the eminent scholars swoop in to back you up. I’d quibble with some of the details of her review, and with the its unambiguously negative key, but I’m inclined to agree with the specifics she cites.

But her column reminds me that I haven’t said anything yet about another problem relative to The Passion: its theology of the atonement. Now, one of my favorite aspects of atonement theology is that the atonement has never been the subject of an ecumenical consensus. People advocate one or another theory loudly, they anathematize people who don’t agree with them, but there’s no creedal formula, no Chalcedonian definition of the atonement. In other words, although specific Christian groups may adhere exclusively to one or another version of the atonement, the ecumenical church has never adopted a single articulation of the doctrine.

Mel Gibson’s approach to the atonement — one which has met with great enthusiasm among evangelicals — seems to involve the premise that in order to redeem the sins of humanity, foul and bitter though they be, Jesus had to suffer the most intense possible physical agony.

That theology involves a variety of problems. At the trivial level, it simply invites comparison of agonies: “Well, you think that’s bad? I had a root canal from an amateur dentist who didn’t use enough anesthesia, and. . . .” and so on. More seriously, it suggests a mechanical connection between physical pain and spiritual purity that falls short of sound theological reasoning. Most gravely problematic of all, if Jesus was obliged to suffer what we’ll grant, for the purposes of argument, the world’s all-time most grievous suffering, who instituted that requirement? If we suggest that God’s judgment on sin can only be assuaged by perfect innocence undergoing unjust suffering (the suffering itself being the requisite element), we imply a God who’s subject to some extrinsic requirement (“God doesn’t like suffering, but golly, God had to subject Jesus to that last round of floggings or the really bad sinners wouldn’t have been redeemed.” Had to? Sez who?). That’s dangerous terrain. It’s especially dangerous when Gibson foregrounds that misery, that utter abjection, with an over-the-top amplification of Jesus’ physical suffering, portrayed with all the most dramatic special effects and makeup.

Here’s the catch: a middle-clas-ified Christianity sanitizes Jesus’ real suffering and grim death in a way that insulates such cultural Christianity from the real suffering and grim mortality that Jesus’ sisters and brothers endure all over the world. Gibson does well to confront his American audience with a shocking picture of what pious souls are talking about Sunday morning. But Gibson didn’t stop there, nor did he stop a little ways beyond there, or even a little further than that — opening a justifiable critique that The Passion of the Christ constitutes the ultimate exploitative horror movie. The Passion provides all the gore and torment that a depraved voyeur (or teenaged boy) might want, with the protective justification that it’s really about Jesus.

Posted by AKMA at March 12, 2004 09:04 AM | TrackBack