Current thoughts
The movie opened on Wednesday, February 25, 2004. People at my church will be attending a special showing tonight. When the opportunity to do so was first announced, I was ready to jump on it. Tickets were quickly sold out. Then when 40 more tickets became available (because the church got a bigger room, apparently), I decided that I was no longer up for seeing the movie -- at least tonight (with a busy week).
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Followup discussion at FirstPresBerkeley.
Some reviews/links
I'm responding to LloydNebres: DailyNotes/2004/02/27/ResponseToLloyd
I've been reading reviews. A discussion on PBS -- last night's News Hour was very helpful.
The Importance of the Passion (National Review):
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And that, for Christians, is precisely the point. The Passion is supposed to be punishing; the death of Christ on the cross is, for Christians, supposed to leave "a deep, abiding aftertaste." It is supposed to remind us of the intense physical pain which Christ suffered on our behalf, the price he paid for our sins. It is not simply that Christ became man and died, but that He died in an extraordinarily painful and gruesome fashion. That was the price necessary to redeem God's prodigal children.
This physical realism is the spiritual truth. "We preach Christ crucified," wrote Paul to the Corinthians, "unto the Jews a stumbling block, unto the Greeks, foolishness." A real sense of the suffering endured by Christ in the hours leading up to His death on the cross is the key to understanding the mystery of the Incarnation. St. Thomas Aquinas quotes St. Gregory on the matter: "There would have been no advantage in His having been born for us unless we had profited by His Redemption." The gulf we place between ourselves and God through sin is bridged only by that intense physical agony Gibson depicts and is taken to task for depicting.
Will Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ help save Christianity?
GTU event on March 8
Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union is hosting a forum on Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 8. It will be co-chaired by GTU Dean Arthur Holder and Center for Jewish Studies Director Naomi Seidman.
Monday, March 8 7pm : http://www.gtu.edu/news_events.php
Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”: A Jewish – Christian Conversation New Location! PSR Chapel, 1798 Scenic ave., Berkeley 7 pm. Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ" film has generated Jewish-Christian controversy as well as internal Christian debate about its depiction of the role of the Jews in the Crucifixion, Christian anti-Semitism, and Jewish-Christian relations today. Join us for a discussion with David Biale, Emmanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at UC Davis; Margaret Miles, GTU Emerita Dean and Professor of Historical Theology; and Michael Morris, Professor of Religion and the Arts, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. Co-chaired by GTU Dean Arthur Holder and CJS Director Naomi Seidman. Presented by the Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies and the Graduate Theological Union. All welcome; admission free. For more information call 510/649-2482 or e-mail CJS.
