Passion Fruit
Reflections on Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ"
Dave Crofts, 16th April 2004
Introduction
"But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed."
Isaiah 53:5
It is with these words from the prophet Isaiah, dated around 700BC, that Mel Gibson's powerful and controversial film The Passion of the Christ opens. This, Gibson would have us believe, is his agenda. This is his mission statement. This is what the next two hours are - in theory, at least - all about. But, as the critics spill ink over the project at a rate rivalled only by the spillage of fake blood in the course of the movie, this has rarely been the focus. So here the aim is to redress the balance and evaluate Mel's self-confessed "personal meditation" on the last hours of Jesus' life in the light of the most searching critic of all Scripture.
The Bible in The Passion
The very fact that Gibson has chosen to open his film with a quote from Isaiah demonstrates at the very least Biblical familiarity. The question is whereabouts The Passion of the Christ sits on the spectrum from Biblical familiarity to Biblical fidelity.
There is much in the film to indicate that Gibson understands his Bible pretty well - from the excellent literal "serpent-crushing" of the opening scene in Gethsemane (compare Genesis 3:15) to the use of dialogue from the gospels shown in flashback to interpret the events of the crucifixion. Gibson's attention to detail descends even to the unmistakable dog-like barking of the Roman soldiers as they flog Jesus - a knowing nod in the direction of Psalm 22:16. Indeed, a close comparison of that psalm with the film reveals it to be a primary source for much of the suffering Gibson so graphically depicts.
And that's the interesting thing. While The Passion of the Christ dwells on the suffering and violence to an arguably gratuitous degree, the gospel writers scarcely give it more than the most matter-of-fact description. It seems that Gibson wants the historical realism of a brutal Roman crucifixion in spite of the fact that the gospels focus rather more on what is said and signified at the cross. This is a film that makes widespread and often astute use of the Bible, but it is not the Bible in cinematic form. We must be under no illusions about that.
Indeed, large portions of the movie's action are based on extra-biblical material, most significantly Sister Anne Emmerich's 19th century Catholic devotional work The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Times' Ruth Gledhill, in an article strikingly entitled "Powerful, unbiblical film" [1], identifies several such incidents, and Andrew J. Webb, writing for the Banner of Truth Trust, even goes so far as to say that "For Evangelicals, who would feel very uncomfortable with a version of the Bible that put words into the mouth of Christ that he never spoke, to endorse a movie that does the very same thing seems hopelessly inconsistent" [2]. Webb perhaps overstates the case - after all, no one is suggesting that Gibson's script be tacked on to the canon - but there are nevertheless issues to be considered about the deceptively loose approach to Scripture in The Passion of the Christ.
The Violence of The Passion
When John in his gospel (reputedly the primary basis for Gibson's screenplay) wants to tell us about the physical torture the Romans could exact, he simply says: "Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him." (John 19:1) In place of this verse, Gibson inserts 20 of the most excruciating and uncomfortable minutes of cinema you could possibly hope to sit through. The "wounds" of Isaiah 53 are shown in slow-motion and in close-up, as chunks of Jesus' flesh are ripped out of his torso before the audience's eyes. At the end of what has already become a notorious scene, it is almost as incredible that the viewer has survived as it is that Jesus has. This is not entertainment - it is an experience. More than that, it is an ordeal, and certainly not one for the faint-hearted.
There are arguments in favour of this graphic portrayal. Most of John's first readers would have known first-hand what a Roman flogging and execution looked like - we in the 21st century cannot, and perhaps we need to be told. Moreover, in Western culture (and even Western Christianity), the cross has been sanitised to the extent of becoming a fashion accessory. There is something to be said for being reminded of the horror of what Jesus went through, and for the believer reflecting on the film it is profoundly humbling to think that he went through it for me. Gibson well understands that cinema is an emotive medium, and makes no apologies for exploiting the fact.
But the film's overwhelming preoccupation with violence and the physicality of Christ's sufferings has major negative implications. For one, it renders the movie a traumatising experience that has been vilified in sections of the press as tantamount to sadomasochism. More important, however, is the theological consequence of this emphasis, and it is to the film's theology that we now turn.
The Theology of The Passion
Whilst the relentless violence of The Passion of the Christ has been widely condemned as gratuitous, there is a case for saying that the film does not even come close to accurately depicting the horror of what Jesus suffered on the cross. The Bible is clear that Jesus' physical suffering paled in comparison to the anguish that led him to cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The severance of the eternal and incomprehensibly intimate relationship between Father and Son in the Trinity was an ordeal so cataclysmic we cannot hope to grasp it, let alone depict it on celluloid, and the fact that the Son of God died is more astonishing than any amount of suffering he endured beforehand.
Gibson's film therefore betrays a dangerous mis-emphasis. We would do well to remember that Paul wrote that "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), not crucifixion. The Passion of the Christ would seem to argue the latter. This seems to stem from Gibson's background in traditional Catholicism, which stresses the visual and physical elements of the Passion story. Interviews with Gibson have seen him highlight the importance of meditating on Jesus' sufferings as a healing process, but the Bible's viewpoint is that we are cured by Jesus' death, not by our own reflections on it, however profoundly helpful we may find them.
Moreover, the film's Catholic origins mean that Jesus' separation from his earthly mother could be seen as far more tragic than his separation from his Heavenly Father. Indeed, the Father is largely reduced to the background - a few references in the dialogue and the "God's-eye view" from which we see Calvary at the end of the film. In one of Gibson's characteristic visual flourishes, a giant teardrop seemingly falls from the camera and falls to earth as Jesus dies. His Father is watching and weeping - but the omnipresent observer in the film has not been God the Father but instead Mary. And the brief mention the film makes of Jesus submitting to his Father's will is largely lost in his forced submission to the Jewish and Roman authorities. Boris Johnson MP astutely commented that "Gibson misses the central mystery of the New Testament. It is not the Jews, nor the Romans, but God who ultimately sacrifices Jesus. He causes the death of his own Son for our salvation" [3].
The Prejudice of The Passion?
As well as identifying the theological inadequacy of the film, Johnson has also highlighted one of the Bible's primary apologetics against the charge of anti-Semitism - a charge that has been vituperatively levelled at Mel Gibson for months, and at Scripture for centuries.
Vocal opposition to the film from organisations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADM) and other Jewish think-tanks has centred on an alleged stereotyping of the Jews in the film as a bloodthirsty mob baying for the crucifixion of an innocent man. It is true that a predominantly Jewish crowd does cry for Jesus to be crucified - but this is no more than the gospels recount as fact. Those who would brand The Passion of the Christ anti-Semitic overlook the many positive Jewish characters in the film - the disciples, several of the women (most prominently Jesus' mother), Simon of Cyrene who carries Jesus' cross and finds respect for him despite his pitiful appearance. Indeed, even the hypocritical Jewish leaders display distaste for the flogging Jesus suffers at the hands of the Roman soldiers, who, if the truth be told, come out of the film with far more blood on their hands.
The allegations of anti-Semitism may even in some cases spring as much from a desire to discredit a film that stands for Christian absolutes as anything else. To accuse Gibson of placing the blame on the Jews is an effective strategy for avoiding having to answer the question of whether the viewer is being charged with the death of Christ. As John Stott [4] has said:
The way to avoid anti-Semitic prejudice, however, is not to pretend that the Jews were innocent, but, having admitted their guilt, to add that others shared it. This was how the apostles saw it. Herod and Pilate, Gentiles and Jews, they said, had together "conspired" against Jesus (Acts 4:27). More importantly, we ourselves are also guilty. If we were in their place, we would have done what they did. Indeed, we have done it. For whenever we turn away from Christ, we "are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace" (Hebrews 6:6)
The cross was both the will of God and the responsibility of all humanity, and both points are present in the film. The latter is made in powerful and ingenious terms to those in the know: it is Mel Gibson's own hand that we see nailing Jesus to the cross. He is reported to have told a group of Chicago religious leaders in July 2003: "For culpability look to yourself. I look to myself" [5]. Gibson lays the blame for the death of Christ at his own feet - and by implication at the feet of the film's every viewer - a powerful and necessary message indeed.
Evangelism and The Passion
Despite this understanding of the universal culpability of humanity, the film is not as explicit as one would hope in explaining the cross in terms of atonement, penal substitution and propitiation, or even the layman's equivalents! For the Christian viewer, there are hints - Satan taunts Jesus in Gethsemane about the implausibility of one man bearing the sins of the whole world; there are flashbacks to the dialogue at the Last Supper where Jesus says "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends". But to expect the unbeliever to understand from the film alone what is going on at the cross is rather fanciful.
Cosmo Landesman of The Times exemplifies this [6], writing that:
Gibson's film has nothing to say except: see what he suffered for you. No, actually, I don't. What was the deal exactly - God lets his only son die so we can be free from sin? The Devil's question at the start of the film - "Can one man carry the burden of all sin?" - is a good one. Too bad Gibson never answers it in a way that people who do not share his faith can understand.
Andrew Webb voices his concern that "if Evangelicals intend to use this as a Gospel teaching tool, they must understand that at best they are teaching only half a gospel, and that the half they are teaching is defectively presented" [7]. The film assumes a large amount of knowledge on the part of the viewer, meaning that there is much in it that the unchurched audience simply will not get. Indeed, for many it will result in bemusement rather than belief and provide rather more questions than answers.
This means that claims that the global cinematic release of The Passion of the Christ is "the best evangelisation opportunity we've had since the actual death of Jesus" - claims that will no doubt be reiterated when the film is released on DVD and video - are utter rubbish. There is much in the film we can make use of to provoke thought and discussion, and we should not squander the chance to do so, but let's not get carried away. When Paul told the Galatians that "It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified" (Galatians 3:1), he was not speaking prophetically about Jim Caviezel's acting - he was reminding them of what had been preached to them, namely a gospel of salvation through Jesus' sacrificial death.
What the Bible consistently gives us is events plus explanation. Mel Gibson has given us an unforgettable portrayal of the events, but has done so at the expense of the explanation. There is much in the film that is well-executed and even helpful, but we need to make sure, especially in talking about it with non-Christians, that we look to the Bible to explain what we have seen. In short, read the book. It's better.
References
- The Times, 27th February 2004
- Five Reasons Not to Go See 'The Passion of The Christ', Andrew J. Webb, http://www.banneroftruth/org/pages/articles/article_print.php?567
- The Daily Telegraph, 4th March 2004
- The Cross of Christ, John R W Stott (IVP, 1986)
- Quoted from 'The Passion of Mel Gibson', David Neff (Christianity Today, March 2004)