The atonement here takes on a meaning different from the first dance. The atonement is no longer Christus victor but a subjective view championed in the twelfth century by Peter Abelard. According to this position, Christ’s death reveals God’s love for us. Christ’s dying out of love inspires us to show love to others; his suffering and death show how we can be transformed to live authentic lives for others. If Jesus, as fully human, could voluntarily die for others, so can we.
From the moment Simon takes up Jesus’s cross, Jesus’s only communication with Simon is nonverbal. Not words, but Jesus’s resilience to the beatings, his hanging in there under the burdens of the journey, gradually overcomes the hardness of Simon’s suspicions. The Simon who reluctantly leaves the crucifixion site is a different Simon from the one who protested his conscription. He is beginning to be transformed by the sheer resilience of Jesus. The dying of Christ is a motivating example.
Gibson misses, however, that a moral transformation theory of atonement requires more than a resilient death, more than the example of one irrepressible convict. A transformation atonement theory requires that it be love, not fortitude, that transforms. Simon is not changed by the loving Jesus; Simon’s gaze into Jesus’s eyes shows a Jesus who will not quit, not a Jesus who has compassion. Simon already has departed down the hill before we hear Jesus forgiving his torturers and caring for Mary. Gibson’s story of redemption omits the love manifested in the sacrificial death.
The Dance with Mary
Simon’s dance comes to a tortured end when he disappears beneath the brow of the hill just when Gibson has the trio of Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and John approach the crucifixion site over the same brow. With their appearance Gibson continues their dance begun at the beginning of the film, when John stumbles into a home to inform the Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene of the arrest of their son and friend. Gibson envisions their connection with the passion in a light different from that of Satan and Simon. For this trio the atonement involves sharing in the agony of the suffering and the shedding of the blood.
The dance with each of the two Marys and John runs through the film. We will focus on Jesus’s pas de deux with his mother. From the time of Jesus’s arrest, she partners with Jesus, assuming several roles. Gibson’s portrayal of Mary’s presence at the Sanhedrin trial inaugurates the significance of the Jesus’s death for Mary. She is to suffer alongside of Jesus. When Mary senses Jesus’s presence beneath the Sanhedrin, she presses her ear to the floor in sympathetic communication with her suffering son, while Jesus, shackled in the cell below, looks up, in turn sensing her presence. Mary’s presence lends him strength.
Thus fortified, Jesus is brought to the flogging pillar: “My heart is ready, Father.” Mary witnesses the flogging, suffering with each stroke. Though beaten down, Jesus again senses his partner suffering with him. He sees her and with every ounce of strength pulls himself upright, to the amazement and anger of the exhausted floggers. Mary gives Jesus the strength, the will to continue. When Jesus cries out, Mary with incomprehension turns, crying, “My son, when, where, how will you choose to be delivered of this?”
Mary soaks up the blood of her beaten son with Claudia’s gift of burial linens. Gibson has in view the sacredness of the life-bestowing blood that oozed from the flogging given her son. In Catholic theology, nothing is more precious than the Blood of Christ (I Peter 1:18). This emphasis on the suffering and the blood, connected to the Stages of the Cross, begins somewhere around the fourteenth century and represents a departure from the Christus victor motif of regal conquest advocated by the Fathers. According to Dominican theology and following the Council of Trent, Christ’s blood is deemed not an accidental feature but an essential part of his humanity. Except for that which became part of the relics (witness Veronica’s possession of the bloodied towel), the blood would be returned to Christ in the resurrection. The blood is essential to the humanity of Jesus, and Mary does her best to reclaim what was lost.
The pas de deux between Jesus and Mary becomes more pronounced on the Via Dolorosa. The figure is not a circle dance (as with Satan at the Roman beating), nor a partnered dance (as with Simon), but a parallel dance where their movements mirror each other—although this time with an intruder, Satan. The agony of the one is mirrored in the agony of the other, until their parallel lines briefly meet and Mary touches the head of her son. Mary announces her presence: “I am here,” to which Jesus responds, “See, mother, I make all things new.” This is Heidegger’s “moment of vision,” “the resolute rapture with which the Self is carried away to whatever possibilities and circumstances are encountered in the Situation as objects of concern, but a rapture which is held in resoluteness. [It is] a phenomenon which in principle cannot be clarified in terms of the ‘now’” (Heidegger 1996, pp. 387–88). Renewed by Mary’s presence, Jesus rises and again takes up the cross. Again irony prevails, for Satan’s earlier statement in the Garden rings true; the cross is too heavy for only one to bear. But instead of preventing Jesus from bearing the cross, as Satan would have it, Mary assists in the process in the only way possible for her, inspiring him with her own strength. Simon is not the only one who assists in cross bearing.
Once on the hill, Mary again plays a role in the dance of death. Seeing his mother, Jesus gathers the strength to stand as the soldiers strip off his clothes. Mary and the others suffer through the agony of the actual crucifixion, and in the end Mary approaches the cross, touches and kisses Jesus’s feet, getting bloody in the process. The blood again becomes symbolic as Mary takes on herself the blood of her dying son. His life extends to her; she participates in the bloody event. The denouement is a re-enactment of the pietà portrayed in many religious works of art, where Mary, still unable to understand, cradles her dead son as her agony reaches its height.
Christ’s atonement in the case of Mary does not connect with traditional themes, for from the Roman Catholic perspective from which Gibson made the film, Mary was sinless and hence not in need of atonement. So a penal substitution theory or moral transformation theory of the atonement would be out of place for her. Her dance with her son must take on a different character and significance. For Mary the significance of the event is not only that she participates in the agony of her son, but also that she provides the assistance of her strength throughout the process. If Jesus’s main characteristic is fortitude, it is surely assisted by the indomitable spirit of Mary. No atonement emerges here; rather, the dance of death is the breaking of the heart of the mother who participates in the agony from the outset.
Gibson’s Mary thus appears in the role of a co-redemptrix. As Jesus’s cross is raised, Mary rises from the ground: “Let me die with you,” she utters. Gibson thus reaffirms Pope Benedict XV’s pronouncement that Mary not only suffered with Christ, but with him she redeemed the human race: “When her Son suffered and died, she so to say suffered and died with Him, renouncing for the salvation of men and the appeasement of the justice of God her maternal rights over her Son—and immolating her Son, as much as in her lay, so that we are entitled to say that she, with Christ, has redeemed the human race.” At the foot of the cross Mary, united in her maternal agonies with those of her son, participates in a subordinate role in the mystery of Christ’s passion.
Strangely, then, the self-sacrifice of Jesus has been transmuted into the sacrifice of Mary in giving up the one she loves. Although Mary cannot quite understand the events (she wonders when Jesus will end them), she engages in self-sacrifice, even to the point of being willing to die with him. Gibson views Mary as part of the salvation process when she sacrifices to torture and death the son she voluntarily bore. Here the doctrine of Christ’s atonement takes a strange turn.
Self-Sacrifice and Healing
Gibson opens the film with a passage from Isaiah, where by his stripes the Suffering Servant assumes the infirmities and sins of the afflicted and effects a cure for the human predicament. Although Gibson uses the Isaiah passage to lay th
e groundwork for the violence and blood that characterizes the film, he makes little attempt to create a pas de deux of healing. Jesus’s healing ministry is completely ignored.
The healing atonement model recalls that traditional societies connect sickness with moral lapse, the influence of other persons and things, or supernatural causes. One practice of traditional healers involves the alleged extraction from the body of the cause of the illness. Healers suck out the illness either directly or through removing from the body what appear to be foreign objects or fluids. The illness is then transferred to the healers, who for a time take the illness upon themselves until they can dispose of it. The process is risky for the healer, full of anxiety, since assuming another’s illness can bring about the healer’s own death. But even where death does not result, by assuming the illness the healers sacrifice their good for the other. Applied to the atonement, in Christ’s suffering and death God addresses not merely the symptoms but also the root causes of the human predicament, initiating and implementing the atonement healing. Christ takes on the illness of sin in his own beating and death, which are curative in that they address our fundamental human predicament of sin by removing it from us, and they are restorative in returning persons to personal wholeness and to a relation with God. The difference from the traditional view of healing is that Christ’s atonement provides more than temporary reprieve; his self-sacrifice is curative and finally restorative. Resurrection finally overcomes death.
Compensatory Atonement
In Gibson’s rich series of dances what is missing is almost as interesting as what is present. It is somewhat puzzling that in a Catholic film about the sacrifice and death of Jesus, Gibson ignores the traditional Catholic view of atonement, developed by Anselm in the eleventh century. Anselm held that Christ restores us to God by voluntarily substituting for the reparations we owe but cannot pay God.
In a recent philosophical treatment of this view, Richard Swinburne argues that a person who has done something wrong is under obligation to atone for the action. Atonement involves four features: repentance, apology, reparations, and penance. As Anselm noted, humans cannot supply the reparations, since no matter what humans repay, the payment already belongs to God as his normal due. Some greater compensation for sin is required, which is supplied by God himself. However, since God cannot make reparations to himself, it must be supplied by someone who is both divine and human. Hence, the voluntary incarnation and death of Christ are necessary to provide genuine satisfaction for the sins committed. The atonement has significance in that it satisfies what we owe to God, giving us freedom and life.
In Gibson’s emphasis on violence, blood, and fortitude, the substitution theme is lost. The film contains nothing of sin, repentance, apology, reparations, or penance. Gibson’s dances, variously hellish, gory and violent, and ennobling, point to great truths about the meaning of the suffering and death of one person for another. But no dance captures the substitutionary, compensatory motif.
Yet real life provides noteworthy examples of substitutionary, supererogatory self-sacrifice. Probably one of the most well-known cases of a life-bestowing act occurred in 1941 in the Auschwitz concentration camp. According to the camp rule, if one person escaped, ten others would be executed. After one attempted escape (the escapee later was found dead in a latrine) the commandant demanded that ten men be selected to starve to death. Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest, stepped forward and requested to die in the place of one of the chosen. Surprisingly, the commandant granted his request, and Kolbe starved while ministering to the other condemned men. Kolbe’s sacrificial act challenged the demonic powers that sought to dehumanize all who were compelled to enter those hellish gates.
Our Dance
It’s one thing to try to find meaning in anticipating one’s own death. Mitch Albom writes in Tuesdays with Morrie, “We don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?” (1997, p. 65). But even more profound is the discovery of meaning in the sacrificial suffering and death of another for us. Gibson consciously assumes this task. By its pas de deux structure The Passion draws the viewers into the atonement drama, reminding us that Christ’s passion is neither abstract nor general, but cosmic and individually transforming. What remains is our response to the invitation to dance.
SOURCES
Mitch Albom. 1997. Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson. New York: Doubleday.
Anselm. 1998. Cur Deus Homo. In Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited by Brian Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Gustav Aulén. 1931. Christus Victor. New York: Macmillan.
Margaret Cormack. 2001. Sacrificing the Self: Perspectives on Martyrdom and Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martin Heidegger. 1996. Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Richard Swinburne. 1989. Responsibility and Atonement. Oxford: Clarendon.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. In what ways might one find meaning in one’s own death?
2. What is the difference between finding meaning in one’s own death and the meaning that another’s death might have for someone? How is this illustrated in the film?
3. What theories of atonement are suggested by the film? How do they differ?
4. What characteristics distinguish martyrdom from suicide? How might this distinction be applied to the Jesus portrayed in the film?
5. What significance, if any, might Jesus’s suffering and death have for us in the twenty-first century? Why did Gibson make the film? How might this significance connect to why Gibson made the film?
17
The Crisis of the Cross: God as Scandalous
PAUL K. MOSER
The Passion of the Christ suggests that the God and Father of Jesus Christ is scandalous. How could an all-loving God allow His innocent Son and Prophet to undergo barbaric torture and death by Roman crucifixion? Surely, accordingly to many philosophers and other people, this could not be part of an all-loving God’s plan. The torture and the death of Jesus by Roman soldiers are, we hear, incompatible with God’s loving intentions. Likewise, according to many people, The Passion portrays “needless violence” and “misrepresents” the person and mission of Jesus—recall the seemingly endless scourging of Jesus and its bloody aftermath. These objections come from philosophers and others of widely divergent perspectives, including many Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, and atheists. Are such objections answerable? If so, how?
This chapter uses the movie to address two philosophical questions. First, could an all-loving God have purposes served by the scandalous death of Jesus? Second, how could one come to know the reality of such a God? These questions require that we begin with two other questions: Who is this “Jesus Christ,” and what is his avowed purpose in undergoing crucifixion? We will understand the crucifixion of Jesus only if we understand the one who was crucified. Perhaps we will understand ourselves only if we understand Jesus and our role in his crucifixion.
“Who Do You Say I Am?”
Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say I am?” (Mark 8:29). The disciples were puzzled by this question, as are many people today, even Christians. Jesus responds by talking about his impending death and subsequent resurrection, thus suggesting that we must understand him in terms of those events. He could have pointed to his teachings, his healings, or his influence on his followers, but he did not. Why not? We need some background. It is fitting, we shall see, that The Passion begins with the prophecy from Isaiah 53 that God’s servant would be “crushed because of our iniquities.”
Jesus claims that he is the unique Son and sole revealer of God as Father (Matthew 11:25-26; Luke 10:21-22). Such a claim would seem delusional on the lips of any other human. In making this claim, Jesus portrays his Father as hiding His plans from “the wise and the intelligent.” This fits with the Biblical idea that God is elusive,
and it should caution us against easily presuming that we adequately understand God’s purposes. A recurring Biblical theme is that God’s ways are not our ways and God destroys the wisdom of the wise (Isaiah 29:14, 55:8–9; 1 Corinthians 1:19; Hebrews 3:10). The Passion vividly portrays God’s Son as being mocked, beaten up, clad in rags, and even tortured and murdered. How could this be? How could it be part of God’s loving purposes? Is God’s love hidden somehow in the cross of Jesus?
The earthly life of Jesus exhibited authority and power unique among humans. According to the New Testament, Jesus has unsurpassed authority and power in human history. The movie portrays his disarming authority in a flashback where Jesus rescues the woman caught in adultery. Jesus remarks that acceptance (or rejection) of him amounts to acceptance (or rejection) of God (Matthew 10:40; 1 John 2:23). In addition, Jesus claims authority to forgive sins apart from God’s Temple (Mark 2:1–12) and to oversee the final judgment as God’s king (Luke 22:29–30). Likewise, Jesus symbolically presents himself as the everlasting king of Israel, after Zechariah 9:9, in his humble entry into Jerusalem on a colt (Mark 11:1–10). The Passion captures this with the scene of a crowd celebrating Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. The celebration is actually ironic, since Jesus was going not to a throne but to his scandalous death.
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