IT'S AN INTERVIEW WITH TELFORD WORK! excerpts: "...I don't know whether ['The Passion of the Christ'] will have helped or hindered knowledge of Christ in the wider culture. I have no idea what unchurched Christians' long-term reactions will be. However, within evangelicalism I am a little worried about it. After the film I spent a good deal of time explaining Catholic soteriology to some very confused and distressed Protestant students. Evangelical theology is a poor theological grid for interpreting passion plays, because passion plays presuppose a participatory rather than substitutionary doctrine of atonement. Evangelical students were liable to take the hypersuffering in the film (e.g., the traditional three falls of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross rather than the single fall in the gospels) as underlining their own guilt at making Jesus suffer instead of them.

"A friend of mine put his reaction to The Passion of the Christ beautifully: 'For the first third of the film I was mad at the Romans for inflicting all that punishment. For the second third, I was mad at myself for doing the sinning that had to be paid back this way. For the last third, I was mad at the Father.' This is a natural, if unusually candid, evangelical interpretation of the film. It was traumatic for my friend, and also for many of my students. They were greatly relieved to learn that Catholic soteriology reads the cross as human suffering appropriated by Jesus in solidarity with us, rather than as Calvin reads it. ...

# posted by Squach : 3:18 PM   |