Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy
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Some of the Church Fathers who took this view, such as Origen (184–254) and Gregory of Nyssa (335–398), even saw Christ as a ransom paid to Satan. The life of Christ was the payment God made to win the release of captive humans. This debt was thought to be owed to Satan since he had won the right to control the human race by successfully tempting them to evil and disobedience. However, Satan was utterly foiled in this transaction because he did not see how things would finally turn out. In a famous metaphor, Saint Augustine (354–430) pictured the cross as a mousetrap, baited with the blood of Christ! Satan took the bait, not realizing that death could not defeat Christ.
The Christ as Victor View, sometimes also called the “Dramatic View,” is, appropriately enough, portrayed in dramatic fashion in Gibson’s film. The opening scene with Satan in the garden is only the first of several eerie scenes where the devil and other demonic figures play prominent roles. With striking artistic flair, Gibson foreshadows Satan’s defeat when a serpent crawls out of his garment and slithers up to Christ as he kneels on the ground in prayer. After showing his resolve to do his Father’s will, however difficult, Christ emphatically crushes the serpent’s head with his heel, recalling the first prophecy of redemption in Genesis 3:15.
Satan’s sinister presence is also evident when Christ is being scourged and crucified. He mills around in the watching crowd, and in one scene, holds a monster child who smiles maliciously. This hints at the notion of Christ as ransom since Satan appears to take pleasure in Christ’s suffering and death, perhaps believing that will be the end of him. But Christ’s ultimate victory is not merely in his perfect obedience, vital as that is, but in his resurrection. Although the resurrection is depicted only briefly in the film, it is crucial to the atonement since death was the original penalty for sin. Only when the power of death is broken can the power of sin be broken. Christ’s resurrection demonstrated that in overcoming death, he had also decisively defeated sin and freed us from its power over us. This is foreshadowed when Satan is shown to be frustrated and enraged immediately after the death of Christ, perhaps indicating his awareness that he had not defeated Christ after all.
Another significant scene depicting Christ as the triumphant victor occurs in the brief allusion to the Jewish Passover meal, a meal that celebrated God’s action to liberate the Jews from their bondage to Egypt. During the meal, a child asks the traditional question, “Why is this night different from other nights?” The answer given is that “we were slaves, but we are slaves no longer.” In the film this is alluded to when Mary, the mother of Jesus, is shown suddenly waking up on the night Christ was arrested. She asks Mary Magdalene why this night is different, and Mary Magdalene answers that they are slaves no longer. This clearly suggests that just as God, through Moses, delivered his children from slavery to Pharaoh, so now through Christ he is breaking the bonds of slavery to sin and Satan, a more desperate form of bondage to an even more ruthless oppressor.
A second prominent view of the atonement, famously defended by the great medieval philosopher and theologian Saint Anselm (1033–1109), is the Satisfaction Theory. This view differs significantly from that of those Church Fathers who saw the death of Christ as a ransom paid to Satan. On the Satisfaction Theory, God himself is owed a debt because of human sin. As a being of infinite worth and goodness, God deserves total obedience and honor from his creatures. Consequently, sin is infinitely serious and racks up an infinite debt, a debt that humans do not begin to have the resources to repay. Moreover, Anselm argued, God cannot simply forgive our sins without requiring some sort of satisfaction. He cannot rightly compromise his dignity and honor. If we are to be forgiven and restored to God, someone must pay, on humanity’s behalf, the infinite debt of honor that is owed to him.
This is why God became man according to Anselm. As man he was able to satisfy the debt humanity owed to God. As God, he had something of infinite worth to offer. His life of perfect obedience was offered as a sacrifice to God, thereby allowing God to forgive us while also vindicating his honor.
In a subtle variation, the Satisfaction Theory has also been understood in terms of divine justice, as distinct from honor. Sin deserves punishment, the argument goes, and as a perfectly just being, God cannot simply forgo this punishment. On this interpretation of the theory, Christ bore the punishment for human sin, so human beings can be forgiven without God compromising his perfect justice. This understanding is sometimes also referred to as the “Penal Substitution View” of the atonement, indicating that Christ was our substitute, who took our deserved penalty when he died on the cross. The notorious criminal Barabbas, who was released instead of Christ, would be a symbol for all of us, on this view. While we are guilty and Christ is innocent, he died in our place.
It is worth distinguishing, at this point, the difference between atonement and retribution. Whereas the point of retribution is essentially to punish a guilty offender with an appropriate punishment, this notion of atonement involves an innocent person willingly accepting punishment so that the truly guilty can be spared. The ultimate aim of retribution is justice, but the ultimate aim of atonement is mercy and reconciliation.
This is perhaps the most familiar view of atonement and some variation of it has been widely embraced in western theology, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. It is also the understanding of atonement most prevalent in popular preaching and devotion. Not surprisingly, this account of Christ’s death is clearly featured in The Passion of the Christ. Indeed, an article in Time magazine discussing the movie said that “its graphic depiction of how Christ was killed is dramatic testimony of the director’s fervent belief in this theory of atonement.” This is particularly suggested by the most intense scene in the film, namely, the scourging, a prolonged scene that many viewers have found especially difficult to watch. The scene provides a shocking visual for the well known words of the prophet Isaiah with which Gibson’s film begins, a favorite text, moreover, of those who advocate the penal substitution view of atonement: “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was punished for our iniquities, by his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
Furthermore, the director subtly suggests this view in a scene full of symbolic significance, the only one in the movie where Gibson himself appears, albeit rather indirectly. When Christ is being crucified, Gibson’s hand holds the nail that is driven into Christ’s hand. Thereby, Gibson depicts the conviction that we—all of us—are responsible for putting Christ to death. It is our sins that he bore, it is in our stead that he died, and because of that we can be forgiven and escape the penalty that we deserve.
The third influential theory of atonement, known as the Moral Influence Theory, comes from another famous medieval philosopher and theologian, Peter Abelard (1079–1142). The core of Abelard’s view is that the passion of Christ was a powerful exhibition of God’s overwhelming love for us designed to elicit our love in return. So long as the fear of God’s wrath hangs over us, this view insists, we are not free to love him. The cross is a stunning display of God’s heart of love that lifts the fear of wrath and enables us to love him and experience moral and spiritual transformation in the process.
This theory of atonement is suggested by the characters in the film who are transformed by the power of Christ’s love. Four that come readily to mind are Mary Magdalene, the thief on the cross who died alongside Christ, Simon of Cyrene who was forced to help carry the cross, and the Roman soldier who fell to his knees when he pierced Christ with his spear and the blood flowed from his side.
Mary’s transformation is suggested as she is mopping up Christ’s blood after his scourging and there is a flashback to the incident where a group of Jewish leaders wanted to stone her for adultery. Christ intervenes with the challenge that the one who is without sin should cast the first stone. (Apparently Gibson identifies Mary with the woman taken in adultery in John’s Gospel). Instead of wrath, she is offered forgiveness and love, and as she mops up Christ’s blood, she is returning that love.
Similarly, the scene with the thief on the cross is a striking statement that the death of Christ is a stunning revelation of God’s love for all who have eyes to see. As the Jewish leaders mock Christ by telling him to come down that they might see and believe, he prays to the Father for their forgiveness. While one of the thieves joins in the mockery, the other rebukes him, pointing out that Christ was praying for him. Christ would be just in condemning him, he recognizes, but instead Christ prays for his forgiveness. As the scene concludes, the first thief has his eyes plucked out by birds, symbolizing the spiritual blindness of any who could not see the love of God so obviously blazing forth in their midst. It was not in coming down from the cross, but in willingly staying on it that God’s love was so unmistakably displayed.
Likewise, Simon is changed by his encounter with Christ. At first he protests against having to carry the cross, saying he is an innocent man forced to carry the cross of a criminal. But as he and Christ carry the cross together and he observes how Christ bears his suffering, Simon’s attitude turns around completely. He becomes angry with the soldiers for their cruelty and begins to defend Christ. By the end of the walk, it is clear he has come to admire Christ, if not love him. He leaves regretfully only after being chased away by the Roman soldiers. Finally, one of these soldiers is compelled to fall to his knees in an apparent act of worship.
But Does It Really Make Sense?
The doctrine of atonement is rife with philosophical implications and obviously raises numerous questions. Just as each of the three theories presented above can claim illustrious advocates in the history of philosophy and theology, so each of them has notable critics. Indeed, the debate is very much alive in our time, and The Passion has done much to bring these issues to the attention of the broader culture. Fortunately, for those interested in further exploration, the doctrine of atonement has received considerable attention from contemporary philosophers of religion, and each of the main theories has been defended in recent literature by one or more respected philosophers. Next, I identify one of the central issues raised by each of the theories, and briefly indicate how it might be addressed.
First, the Christ as Victor view has been often criticized insofar as it includes the idea that Christ was a ransom given to the devil. It is morally absurd, critics charge, to think that Satan might have some sort of moral claim on human beings, and that God would respect his wishes by giving him Christ. Charles Taliaferro, a contemporary defender of the ransom theory, notes that there are several replies that can be offered to such criticisms:
One is that paying Satan the requested ransom is an almost fortuitous event, for Satan was requesting the very thing that would destroy him. . . . Early Church fathers went on to note the irony of this overcoming of Satan for it seemed to bring out the ultimate absurdity and self-destructive nature of evil. The fool digs a ditch to capture another and falls into it himself. There is irony especially as Christ gains our freedom precisely by the means by which the devil was seeking our final destruction. (Taliaferro 1988, pp. 86–87)
Here it is important to emphasize the self-destructiveness of evil, a central theme in philosophy and theology. Taliaferro illustrates this with the example of a captor who demands gold kryptonite in exchange for the lives of his captives, not suspecting the gold kryptonite will rob him of his power. There is much more to his argument than this brief quote can convey, but the point for now is that even the more difficult aspects of this theory of atonement are not without interesting and plausible lines of defense.
Next, let us turn to the Satisfaction Theory. A common objection to it, as represented by the quote from Kant above, is that belief in atonement is a means to evade moral responsibility, a dubious attempt to avoid the requirement to become truly righteous. This sort of criticism is especially aimed at penal substitution theories, whose adherents sometimes suggest that Christ’s sacrificial obedience to God exempts them from the need to be obedient and holy themselves.
In response to this, it can be pointed out that thoughtful defenders of satisfaction theories of atonement, represented by such contemporary thinkers as Philip Quinn and Richard Swinburne, construe the atonement in such a way that faith in it is not a matter of mere intellectual assent that is morally indifferent. Rather, it is a response of genuine gratitude that involves sincere repentance of our sins. Swinburne, who defends what he calls the sacrifice version of this theory, holds that Christ, by giving up his perfect life, makes available the sacrifice, but it is we who must offer it if that sacrifice is be effective. He explains this as follows: “Christ’s laid-down life is there made available for sacrifice, like a ram caught in a thicket. Any man who is humble and serious enough about his sin to recognize what is the proper reparation and penance for it may use the costly gift which another has made available for him to offer as his sacrifice” (Swinburne 1989, p. 153).
To plead the atonement in this fashion is obviously not a matter of being flippant about one’s sins. On Swinburne’s account, atonement requires repentance and apology on our end. Christ has done the costly work of reparation by offering to God the perfect obedience and worship we owed him. He has done the necessary repair work, as it were, in response to the damage we have done with our sins. But this work of reparation is not personally effective in our lives until we sincerely acknowledge our wrong and distance ourselves from it. We cannot simultaneously plead the atonement of Christ and be content to be the kind of persons whose sins required such a costly sacrifice.
It is worth reflecting, in this connection, on the remarkable phenomenon of how so many viewers of The Passion of the Christ have been affected in their personal lives. There are numerous accounts of persons seeking forgiveness for various wrongs, restoring marriages and other relationships, and even confessing to crimes. Some of these stories have been told in a television documentary called “Miracles of the Passion.” Jody Eldred, the executive producer of this program, visited websites where such stories were reported and found over 70,000 such accounts of lives who were touched by the film. This is an interesting piece of data from the information age confirming that genuine faith in the atonement is a morally transforming reality, not an alternative to moral transformation.
That brings us to the Moral Influence Theory. The strength of this view is that it provides a psychologically intelligible account of how the death of Christ transforms us and changes us in such a way that we can be restored to a loving relationship with God. Its weakness, however, is that it does not so easily account for how the death of Christ removes the guilt of our past sins. Indeed, critics charge that this view does not really grasp either God’s holy demands or the seriousness of our failure to meet them. It suggests that all we need is spiritual illumination and inspiration, and if this is so, any sufficiently impressive martyr could have provided it. There is no obvious need for the Son of God Himself to become incarnate and die for us. To put it another way, this theory focuses entirely on the subjective elements of how the atonement changes us personally, to the neglect of the traditional emphases on the objective elements, in particular Christ’s work to pay the penalty for our sin and secure our forgiveness.
Philip Quinn, who has recently defended a version of penal substitution, has also taken up the mantle of defending the Moral Influence Theory of Peter Abelard. He contends that in fact Abelard endorses penal substitution, although this was not his primary emphasis. As he puts it, Abelard was a “hierarchical pluralist” who offered an account of the atonement that has a “dominant motif to which others are subordinated” (Quinn 1993, p. 291). This suggests that many criticisms of the Moral Influence Theory are misguided insofar as they pit that theory against the Satisfaction Theory, as if they were competing accounts or were somehow incompatible.
The larger lesson here is that perhaps any satisfactory account of the atonement will include elements of all three of these major theories. The debates will no doubt continue as to which theory should be dominant, but any proposal that does
not address both the objective and the subjective aspects of the atonement will not capture the vital dimensions of what faith in the atonement involves. This is not to deny that some claims of the different theories may be incompatible with claims of other theories. For instance, some ways of construing the ransom theory may be inconsistent with some accounts of penal substitution. But the point remains that there are ways of including central concerns of all three theories that are mutually compatible and enriching. What Gibson has done with artistic creativity can also be done with theological coherence and integrity.
All of this shows how The Passion of the Christ has stimulated our minds as it has stirred our hearts. In doing so, it has demonstrated afresh that philosophy at its best is reflection on matters that matter. What moves us to care is what moves us to seek understanding. And for that we should all be grateful.
SOURCES
Colin Gunton. 1992. The Sacrifice and the Sacrifices: From Metaphor to Transcendental? In Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., eds., Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press).