Mel Gibson tries to use brief flashbacks to unify the life and ministry of Jesus with his agonizing death. But he so emphasizes the final suffering of Christ that the flashback to, for example, the Sermon on the Mount, becomes ironical rather than unifying. Even the resurrection of Christ, which is at the heart of Christian theology, becomes little more than a cameo appearance in the film. And so we are left with very little sense of how the gruesome agony of Christ’s last day can be a test of the authenticity of the life that has gone before.
Plato tried to portray Socrates in a way that might help us deal with our own mortality, perhaps, as in the Phaedo, by coming to appreciate his arguments for immortality, but more likely, as in the Apology, by appreciating his reasons for being agnostic about death. Most importantly, he tried to show us in the Phaedo how one’s life might have sufficient integrity that what is important to one at the hour of death is no different from what had been important throughout one’s life.
A filmmaker could, no doubt, use materials from the Gospel stories of the passion and death of Christ to help us face our own death. Mel Gibson has not done that. No doubt it was not his intention to do that. What he has done instead is to give us a brutal account of the suffering and death of Christ that might inspire our devotion to someone who has done something for us that we could not possibly do for ourselves. But even if The Passion of the Christ is a splendid attempt to do that, we should not suppose that there are no other important ways to read the Passion story, ways that make Jesus less remote from you and me, and more relevant to what we may face at the hour of our own death.
SOURCES
Rudolf Bultmann. 1966. Faith and Understanding. London: SCM Press.
Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith. 1989. Socrates on Trial. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Oscar Cullmann, et al. 1965. Immortality and Resurrection. Edited by K. Stendahl. New York: Macmillan.
Plato. 1981. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett.
C.C.W. Taylor. 1998. Socrates: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What was your reaction to the abuse to which Christ is subjected in Gibson’s film?
2. To judge simply from Gibson’s film, what would you say was the point of the suffering and death of Christ?
3. Can you compare the suffering and death of Christ to the suffering or death of anyone else you know or have heard about?
4. What was the chief message you got from seeing Gibson’s film?
5. Are there ways in which Mel Gibson’s film helps you think about death? If so, what are they?
16
Dances of Death: Self-Sacrifice and Atonement
BRUCE R. REICHENBACH
Figures move, weaving, watching, reaching to each other in structured patterns. At times they connect at a distance, eyes meeting with an intense gaze of horror, uncertainty, distrust, or conquest. At other times in close proximity they dance in slow motion with the reach of a supporting hand, an intimate look, or a sensitive caressing touch. In The Passion of the Christ director Mel Gibson creates elaborate and carefully choreographed dances between the main characters. Each extended dance might be seen as a pas de deux, a dance between two persons with steps that form figures or patterns.
The figures and patterns formed between Jesus and his partners provide insight not only into the character of the dancers but, more relevant for our purpose, into their struggle to come to grips with the suffering and looming death of the Christ. By depicting individual encounters of people with Jesus, the dances provide a medium for Gibson to tell his own version of Jesus’s passion story and present his understanding of its significance. In particular, he visually has something to say about Christ’s atonement, that is, how Christ in his suffering and death reconciled humans to God.
Death and the Meaning of Life
The dances portrayed in the film form patterns that address the question of the meaning of death. The significance of death is an old philosophical problem, going back at least to Socrates, who questioned what significance his life might hold in the face of his impending death. If he took the offer of his friends, donned a disguise, and escaped from the prison where he awaited execution, would his life and calling to awaken the citizens of Athens to questions of knowledge and virtue (character) have any meaning? Citizens of the cities to which he would flee would see him as merchandizing his principles merely to live on a few more years in old age.
Recent philosophers also address the question of how we should face our own death. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), for example, contends that persons become truly authentic when they come face to face with their own potential for death. We find ourselves thrown into a world not of our own making. We did not choose to be born, where to be born, or to whom to be born, yet here we are in the world. And we are in the world essentially in relation to others. Our connections with others help define who we are and how we understand ourselves. Heidegger notes that often we act unthinkingly, accepting what others say about who we are or what we will become without seeking to determine what we might desire as our own authentic existence. We choose conformity to society and culture that yields mediocrity. In not claiming our uniqueness we become alienated from real possibilities that might shape what we could become. Part of that destiny is that we will die. For Heidegger, death provides not only a temporal limit to our earthly existence, but more importantly it provides a boundary against which we conceive our identity and what we are about in life. A quick scan of the obituary page shows how people’s lives are routinely summarized. Often, more attention is paid to naming past or surviving kin than to the accomplishments and character of the deceased. In a brief paragraph, others define the significance of our lives, continuing a pattern that occurs during life itself.
Often we deny our mortality; death happens to others, not to us. For Heidegger, affirming that my death belongs uniquely to me and is inevitable frees us to give meaning to our existence here and now. Instead of death simply happening to us, we should address it purposively by living in light of its certainty. Not that we should morbidly seek or constantly dwell on death. Rather, acceptance of the limits to our life opens us up to living in the present in a way that incorporates our past and present into a future of our own making. We need to create a meaningful, authentic existence by affirming our finiteness as an essential feature of living and to define our life’s goals in light of that finiteness. We should not await but anticipate the future, and in its anticipation create it. Since the future has priority, we have a basis for hope regardless of our past and present states.
Self-Sacrifice and the Meaning of Life
The Jesus of The Passion of the Christ, in a style reminiscent of Heidegger, grasps his death authentically from the outset. Although he struggles with death, Jesus does not seek to evade, obscure, or conceal it. Neither does he merely await death, but rather approaches it with what Heidegger calls anticipatory resolve. True, Jesus has anxiety over his death. Yet he understands his death as that which gives meaning to all his other possibilities, to everything he has done (note the flashbacks to his Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper). From the outset, both Satan and Jesus understand the cosmic significance of the choices Jesus makes. At the same time, Jesus departs from the Heideggerian motif in seeking to actualize his death, not as an act of suicide but as an act of self-sacrifice. Whereas our death provides the limit to our existence, Jesus’s death is central to his project, the goal that gives his life its ultimate meaning. His project defines who he is and the mission he assumed. In that mission Jesus dies not for himself but for the Other, for Simon and the thief on the cross, for tormented Judas, and even for us.
Since Jesus’s death is meant not for himself, it is relational, displaying what Heidegger terms “solicitude,” that is, a deep concern for the Other. For example, Jesus does not bear a cross for Simon, but rather in
bearing the cross together Jesus allows Simon to come to a realization of himself. Simon is freed to understand himself and to be himself authentically because he participates with Jesus in the dance of his death.
So the question of The Passion of the Christ is not how we can find meaning in our own death, but how the death of another can give us meaning. As Jesus crawls onto the cross, Gibson flashes back to the Last Supper that preceded the Passion. Looking at his disciples, Jesus says, “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” The Passion unfolds that saying. From the opening struggle in the Garden with the embodied Satan to the final “It is finished,” the audience witnesses a man determined to carry his mission to its end, not for himself but for others.
Self-sacrifice exemplifies the highest moral ideal. It is generally not thought to be obligatory, although some Jewish literature prescribes one accept death rather than commit adultery, incest, or murder. The Talmud, for example, tells the story of Raba who, ordered by the governor to kill another, refused, offering himself instead. Self-sacrifice is supererogatory in that it is especially morally praiseworthy.
Whether a particular act is self-sacrifice (martyrdom) or suicide can be a matter of dispute, and sometimes fundamentally a matter of perspective. A different judgment might be rendered by the one who dies than by the ones affected by the death. Assessment of the deeds of the 9/11 hijackers illustrates the point; how they viewed their actions differs immensely from those trapped in the burning towers. In their study, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity, Arthur Droge and James Tabor note five characteristics of martyrs: they reflect situations of opposition and persecution, their choice to die is viewed as necessary or noble, they are often eager to die, a presumed vicarious benefit results from their suffering and death, and their death is vindicated beyond their death. The Passion of the Christ evinces all of these characteristics in portraying Jesus as a martyr, not as determinedly suicidal.
So what might be the significance of someone’s sacrifice for another? Here let us return to the motif of the dance to see how Gibson portrays the significance of Jesus’s self-sacrifice.
The Dance with Satan
The film opens with an anxious Jesus in the Garden. “I don’t want them to see me like this,” he moans as he approaches his sleeping disciples. He agonizes over his impending death, seeking to avoid it while struggling with what appears to be the inevitable should he accept his role—“Save me from the temptations they set for me.” Into the midst of this personal struggle Gibson introduces a choreographed pas de deux with Satan, a dance whose steps here form a pattern of a conquest struggle. Satan appears as a hooded, androgynous, attractive yet sinister figure who verbally counters the moves of Jesus, even to the point of taking on the role of Jesus’s counter-ego. “Do you really believe that one man can bear the burden of sin?” Jesus replies, “Shelter me, oh Lord.” Satan takes up the refrain, “No one man can carry the burden. It is far too heavy.” Jesus replies, “Father, you can do all things. If possible, let this chalice pass from me. Yet not my will but yours be done.” The dance continues as Satan tempts Jesus to question the one who demanded the role of agony foretold of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, the scripture that opens the film. The camera moves between the two, the one prostrate in agony over his anticipated role, the other a tempter offering what appears to be release from the fated suffering. “Who is your father? Who are you?” Who will conquer whom in this deadly dance?
In Jesus’s weakest moment, Gibson visually recalls the Garden of Eden story in Genesis, where the crafty serpent successfully tempted the first parents with a series of provocative questions and half-truths. The battle resumes in the Garden of Gethsemane, where a serpent emerges from between the legs of Satan, poised to strike the weakened Jesus lying prostrate from his agony. In the first movement of this dance sequence, Jesus gathers his strength (as Gibson has him do repeatedly in the film) and, raising himself up from his despair, crushes the head of the serpent with his foot. The violent destruction of the serpent fulfills Genesis 3:15, which prophesies that the man’s offspring would crush its head. Jesus’s strong will produces the first victory.
Satan reappears in his conquest dance during the endless flogging of Jesus. Passing through the on-looking religious elite, Satan circles the agonizing Jesus, perhaps again recalling Genesis 3:15 as Satan bruises Jesus’s heel by means of the sadistic acts of the Roman henchmen who whip both upper and lower body. Staring at the suffering Christ and carrying a deformed, adult-faced child (the illusion of innocence) dressed in black, he wears the look of “you could have escaped all this if.” The second movement of conquest belongs to Satan.
The dance continues on the path to the cross (the Via Dolorosa, the way of suffering), as both Satan and Mary parallel Jesus on the agonizing last journey. The one tempts, the other strengthens since no one can bear the cross singly.
In the crucifixion scene Gibson brings ultimacy to the pas de deux between Jesus and Satan, creating a pattern by moving the camera’s vantage-point from the horizontal to the vertical. Gibson uses a pair of reverse photographic scenes. In the first, the crucifixion is photographed from above. A descending drop of water symbolizes the agony of the crying Father as he from high above surveys the crucifixion. The camera descends from the heights overlooking the three crosses to the human witnesses struggling to process the death. In a subsequent scene, the camera commences with an up-close focus on Satan, who tears off his wig and lets out a primal scream as the camera ascends to view him from above. The scene shows Satan in a caked, cracked desert, trapped within his own circle of hell. The dance is completed: by sheer courage and determination Christ has conquered his tempter.
For Gibson, the significance of Jesus’s sacrificial death for the conquest dance between Christ and Satan is that it signals the defeat of the demonic. Historically, this theme is embodied in the Christus victor view of the atonement, versions of which were advocated by Church Fathers such as Irenaeus (who died in A.D. 202), Origen (185–254), Gregory of Nyssa (died after 385), and Augustine (354–430). The doctrine of atonement, central to Christian theology, describes what is required to end the estrangement between humans and their creator brought on by the fall. According to the Christus victor view, a great cosmic drama rages between the forces of good and those of evil. Satan, because of human sin, conquered or gained possession of humanity and controls it, bringing both evil and death. Sin pays off in death, Paul teaches. Christ’s death and subsequent resurrection destroy the power of the demonic. With Christ’s suffering and crucifixion the hold of sin and death has begun to weaken. As noted in Jesus’s response to Pilate, atonement is not accomplished by the power of divine conquest; no great angelic or human battles are envisioned. Rather, our reconciliation with God comes through Christ’s humanity and his obedience to the will of God. Death is not the final word. Its conquest fulfills what the film signified at its outset with the crushing of the serpent’s head and finalizes by the resurrection of Jesus, who strolls naked, scarred but healed, from the tomb.
Gibson, in his visualization of Satan, suggests a realist view of good and evil. Evil is not merely the privation of the good, as Augustine taught, but itself a force, powerful, cunning, tempting, alluring, even killing (Gibson has Satan present at the final torment of Judas). Since evil has reality, its conquest must itself be real.
The puzzle of the Christus victor view of atonement has always been precisely how this conquest occurs. Since God does not use force, some Church Fathers such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa suggested that God deceived Satan in Christ’s sacrifice. This was viewed as appropriate, since Satan had taken possession of humans by a series of half-truths. Yet this fails to accord both with moral standards (the end—the redemption of humans—does not justify the means) and the character of God. So Gibson, like his patristic predecessors, does not tell us how this conquest occurs, only that the dramatic death of Christ accomplish
es this feat. But perhaps, as the Church Father Gregory Nazianzenus (born about 330) observed, one cannot push metaphor into definiteness.
The Dance with Simon
The second pas de deux occurs in the striking encounter between Jesus and Simon of Cyrene. As Gibson portrays the scene, Simon is passing through Jerusalem with his daughter when he is conscripted by the drunken Roman soldiers to carry the cross of the beaten, staggering, failing Jesus. (Although Gibson does not flashback to the Sermon on the Mount at this point, one hears its message—if someone conscripts you to go one mile, go two instead.) Simon wants nothing to do with Jesus. “What do you want from me? I can’t do that. It is none of my business.” He then proclaims to the surrounding crowd his complete disassociation with this convicted criminal. “I am an innocent man forced to carry the cross of a condemned man.” As Simon hoists the cross, he looks with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion at his newly acquired partner.
Gibson departs from the text of Luke, which has Simon following Jesus, to show Simon partnering to carry the cross with the convicted criminal. The dance is a paired dance, with each partner bearing his own weight. The dance steps lack rhythm and harmony as the two struggle unequally on the journey. As the procession continues, Simon becomes more protective of his fellow bearer. When Jesus falls and the crowd begins to pummel him, Simon steps in to protect the fallen. He even refuses to go on: “If you don’t stop, I won’t carry the cross one step further.” Eventually, when Jesus falls again Simon not only lends his hand to lower and then lift his partner, but even carries his partner along with the cross. In the dance Simon bears the weakened Jesus up the hill. “We’re nearly there. Almost done.” Ironically, Simon carries to the hill both the instrument of death and the man who is to die and in his death carry the sins of the world. The irony is compounded when Gibson makes the Satan of the Garden a truth teller in the same way that the serpent in Eden proposed half-truths. Gibson’s Satan proposed to Jesus that no one man could bear the burden of the cross, which is precisely how Gibson portrays the bearing of the cross. Simon becomes the bearer both of the cross and of the crucified, rather than the other way around. The dance ends after an eye-to-eye encounter between the exhausted cross bearers. The horror of the crucifixion both attracts and repels Simon, who is forced to flee the crucifixion, not of his own will, but by the same Roman soldiers who conducted the death march.
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