Everyone knows the type of theological criticism that consists in finding “Christ figures.” A high-school aged friend of mine uses this kind of theological criticism to convince his parents to let him go to R-rated movies. All he’s got to do is find an appropriate Christ figure in the story somewhere. If someone dies for someone else (or even just suffers a bit for ‘em), or really if anyone vaguely protagonistic dies at all, or better yet appears to die and then shows up later — we have a Christ figure! I for one am just a bit sick of Christ figures. Not because I deny the human need for saviors and examples but because I feel there is more to be said about films than whether this or that character is a Christ figure — though part of what I will propose involves a method extending the methodology behind this kind of thematic comparison.

Another common kind of theological criticism involves noting all Christian paraphanelia and “symbolism.” Did you notice the pigeons (which are kind of like doves) around the church in Mary Poppins? Doesn’t Tatooine remind you of Galilee (from a review in Christianity Today, which combined both this stunning insight and the revolutionary idea that maybe Luke Skywalker is a Christ-figure). When Ricky Bobby runs around in his underwear slapping imaginary flames, were you reminded of Christ’s nakedness and agony on the cross? OK, strike the last example. You know what I’m talking about.

Finally, a particularly objectionable kind of theological criticism attempts to discover the “underlying worldview” of a film — which would be a good insight, if such critiquers could only recognize that narrative is prior to the theoretical system they take “worldview” to mean. That’s one of the reasons Ross Douthat’s recent critique of Avatar was so lame. For him, the real meaning of Avatar was that it was an exposition of Cameron’s “Hollywood pantheism.” It seemed like a review based on previews rather than on an actual watching of the film. (Query: did Douthat in fact see the film? Or did he just watch previews and read a wikipedia summary? Show us the ticket! This is at least as important as Obama’s birth certificate.) Everything is oh-so-cleverly squared away according to a pre-existing typology of religious perspectives, and the pigeon-holed objects can then be deployed polemically as ammunition in the “culture war.” Surely theologians have better things to do.

If I were to speculate on which kind of common theological criticism is most valuable, I would probably go with Christ-figure-hunting. This kind of comparison at least implies the belief that theology can speak to popular narratives, because it originally has to do with a narrative itself. It seems to me that what is “theological” about stories is the way they function in faith and then, accordingly, their content; consequently, these two aspects of stories are what theologians as theologians can most directly talk about. Let me flesh this out with some help from Hauerwas and Bruegemann.

Hauerwas’s essay, “A Story Formed Community: Reflections on Watership Down,” involves one of his most entertaining arguments for the centrality of narrative to moral and political life. (By the way, he’s talking about the book Watership Down rather than the movie; but I think his example is still applicable because theological criticism of films is usually theological criticism of stories.) He argues that the differing rabbit societies involved in the story — Sandleford, an unnamed warren, Efrafa, and Watership Down — are distinguished and formed by their approach to the stories they tell of El-ahrairah, the first rabbit. Watership Down emerges as the best, and most successful, community because it successfully appropriates the traditional stories of El-ahrairah, using them in a way open to innovation yet definitive for its experience of the world. Ultimately, Hauerwas’s reflections use Watership Down as an excuse to discuss his theories about the formative nature of stories. The theological criticism employed tests the narrative of Watership Down within the story-framework he has learned to see from his acquaintance with Christian theology.

I think this essay is a good example of the first aspect of good theological criticism — criticism which takes the life-defining dynamics that the practice of theology has brought to their attention in order to see similar dynamics at work in the stories it examines.

Bruegemann’s unique approach to Old Testament theology is relevant in a different way. Certainly it doesn’t function as an example of theological criticism of films, but what it does do is offer a largely expanded view of what theological criticism could deal with in its second aspect.

If we take it to be true that besides examining the dynamics of story-shaped worlds, theologians are also uniquely fitted to compare stories because their original subject is itself a story, then suddenly Christ-figure-hunting comes into perspective. Essentially this overly employed comparison seeks to take one (albeit central) aspect of the Christian mythology and argue that this aspect is borrowed, stolen, or unwittingly employed in a popular story. The ensuing critique — insofar as it manages to be a critique rather than a teenage excuse to see an otherwise forbidden movie, or a disgusting attempt to allegorize a film such that one can experience it “sanctifyingly” or some such rot — is essentially a comparison of stories. This practice could be hugely expanded in two important ways.

First, why does theological criticism have to seek only to “find Christian themes,” essentially to baptize whatever elements of popular life the critiquer in question wants to consume? The motivation behind such baptisms are dubious at best. Are Christians afraid that unless they wrench a story out of its own context to make it a lesson that could have come from their own tradition they will be corrupting themselves? Perhaps they are not confident or committed enough to the Christian story to face the possibility of competing stories. At any rate, I would argue for more legitimate, careful, and detailed comparison, and not just the identification of Christ figures for general baptismal purposes.

Second — and here Bruegemann comes in — is the Christ event the only aspect of the Christian story worth comparing? One of Bruegemann’s central (and most valuable) purposes in his Old Testament Theology, is to search out what kind of rhetorical assertions Israel makes at various times about Yahweh. In the excellent historical preface to this work, he examines the arguments of those who would rescue the Old Testament as the Jewish Bible, those who would deconstruct the text with regard to its dealing with women, those who would understand the text against the conservative and power-maintaining tradition as descriptive of a liberating God, etc. He doesn’t reject the insight of any of these perspectives, thereby creating an extraordinarily multi-faceted and deep account of Israel’s witness regarding Yahweh. According to Bruegemann, the “grammar” of this witness is characterized by “strong verbs dominated by the subject of the verbs who is an active agent [Yahweh], effecting changes in various direct object” — in other words, Israel witnesses in stories about what she claims that God has done. What Bruegemann — and serious theology in general — can contribute to theological criticism of films is the fact that the stories which define the Christian tradition have many more potential points of comparison than Christ figures.

How about the liberation? How about commandment, which provides a new way of life in the aftermath of liberation? ( — many contemporary films would fall short in this comparison, tending to focus on a plot of liberation in some form or other without giving sufficient indication of the supplanting new life, new creation, post-liberation order.) How about chaos and order, as witnessed to in the Christian tradition by Creation? I could go on, but you get my point. There are many more figures, aspects, and major plot moves to the Christian story than those which are typically utilized in theological criticism.

And so this is my provisional conclusion regarding the task of theological criticism of films: it needs to understand itself as analysis of the world-forming dynamics of story as the theologian has been educated in these dynamics by the study of theology, and it needs to engage itself comparing a much fuller view of the stories with which Christian theology has to do to a much more attentive view of the stories of the films it critiques.

Taking a break from only the second (I congratulate myself) all-nighter of this semester, I note the recent double-impingement of Dr. Johnson upon my life. First, I listened to the New York Review of Books’ podcast about the fellow, then I came across Jason Peters’ Front Porch Republic post about “Blogging and the Periodic Essay.”

While the latter contribution’s somewhat overly-satisfied, self-butt-kissing epiphany regarding the passing of batons may cause you to cringe, it has a point to make regarding the fact that when Johnson was pursuing (essentially) the same activity we bloggers are—periodically assaying to write—he was deeply more concerned both with the import and with the style of his remarks. One of the reasons Johnson is given the depressing title “moralist,” I would argue, is simply that he never wrote without a visibly rhetorical goal in mind. In other words, he wrote for reaction—in his case, the reaction of the student struck by the wisdom of the elders, which I am not sure is always the best reaction for a writer to seek. But at least he had a reaction in mind.

There’s a tendency in the blogosphere—not the best parts of it, certainly, but in the student, miscellaneous, and sometimes-useful parts of it, like this blog—to act as if our dialogic purpose removed our rhetorical responsibility. We want dialogue, we seek a community of discourse, we do not pronounce so much as solicit—all very nice. But that openness and tentativeness doesn’t make blogging worth our while. I think I’m prepared to say that we should only sit down to write if we have a responsibly rhetorical purpose in mind. In other words, even when we try to get a dialogue going, we should view that attempt as a rhetorical goal, we should measure its value, and we should match our means as perfectly to that end as possible. One of the reasons that, for example, the blogs in the Speculative Realism crowd, and the Object-Oriented Ontology crowd in particular, are so marvelously active, interesting, and worthwhile, is that they tend to have a definite program, a rhetorical thrust, even behind apparent miscellany. They are going somewhere together, not merely straggling along with aimless remarks about this or that book, or this or that idea.

I suspect that if Dr. Johnson had a blog it would be worth sticking in my RSS reader. Not necessarily because I would appreciate his “moralizing,” but because I would be willing to commit myself to think about his prose because he would have written it with customary purpose and decision. Would that I could always say the same about my prose.

My objections arise out of what I perceive to be the movement’s lack of clarity regarding the identity of the Word. On one hand, they affirm that the Word is the eternal second person of the Godhead, by whose power the world was created and is upheld, who was incarnated as Jesus the Christ. On the other hand, they identify the word, or gospel, as the message about the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Word. Sometimes they make the important point (Chapell does, p. 28) that Jesus and the message about him are a unity. Chapell even goes on to make the further important point that, “Scriptural truth is not a passive object for examination and presentation. The word examines us.” But he ruins, I think, the effect, in a sentence or two with this modification of his position, “Christ remains active in his Word, performing divine tasks that one presenting the Word has neither right nor ability personally to assume.” [Italics mine.] Here the gap appears, which gradually widens until we reach the actual practice of “expository preaching” that is supposed to have come out of this previous, robust theology of the Word.

Here is the practice, in Chapell’s own words [italics his]: “An expository sermon may be defined as a message whose structure and thought are derived from a biblical text, that covers the scope of the text, and that explains the features and context of the text in order to disclose the enduring principles for faithful thinking, living, and worship intended by the Spirit, who inspired the text.” (p. 30) A message that “covers,” “explains,” and “discloses.” Really? I suspect that Chapell may have committed an unintentional pun in that first verb “covers.”

I would like to cast my objections to this idea of preaching as a contrast between two preachers.

The first preacher is John the Baptist, bearing witness (or as Barth would say, pointing with his prodigious finger) to the arrival of the lamb of God.

The second preacher is Jesus, explaining the Jewish scriptures on the road to Emmaus, showing that all those words were about him.

Expository preachers would probably identify more with Jesus, explaining the whole Scriptures. But this is a problem. Remember, the message about Jesus and Jesus the Word are tightly bound. That’s what gives the events along Emmaus their irony: the Word is explaining that the Word is about the Word in his own Words. But this was not the gospel.  The gospel came in its full force when they realized who this mysterious learned stranger was, showing the men that this whole history and Jesus the Christ to whom it pointed was among them. Suddenly they, themselves, were put in relation to God by the living presence of Jesus—suddenly, it was as if all the revealing Jesus had performed upon the road was made relevant to them, because the object of that history stood among them.

Unfortunately for the expository preacher, congregations will never wake to see that their pastor is the one regarding whom he speaks. The gospel never comes if all the preacher does is explain that the whole Scripture is about Jesus.

John the Baptist, however, pointed. He bore witness with his words and baptism to the coming of Christ. He is different from Jesus, as a preacher, in that his response to the listening ear was not give himself but to point to Christ.

What’s the point of all this? Simply this: when Jesus preached, he gave himself, he was the Word, but when John preached he was not the Word—instead, he bore witness to the Word. This can also be seen in Peter’s sermon, in the teaching of Paul, etc.

What role does the preacher have in the work of the Word? A tradition as preaching-centered as the Reformed tradition (which most embraces expository preaching) should critically ask itself this question from time to time. Wrong answers can lead to practices that seem to support an identification of the preacher with the Word. When this falsehood is commonly believed, suddenly one of the great themes of the Reformation (to bring individual Christians back into contact with the Word of God) has been lost. People come to think and act as if the Word required a preacher to “activate” it.

On the other hand, expository preaching can carefully distinguish the authority of the preacher and the power of the Word such that preaching becomes chiefly a weekly exercise in public exegesis. I think this is common. To me this seems a massive fail because it completely neglects the necessity of the Witness, to whom the activity of preaching is essential for its finger-pointing power, and it treats the Word to all intents and purposes as if it were dead.

Take Chapell’s three verbs. He urges preachers to “cover” the scope of their text. He could not have implied the deadness of the Word better if he had tried. The very idea that any men, however holy, of whatever vast education and acute skills, could come to perceive (much less reformulate) the “scope” of any portion of Scripture defies its power to come with contemporary force as the present word of God to the church in any age. The scope of the text increases like the capacity of gmail: the scope of the meaning of the text is extended every instant because every instant it possesses the power to place the people of God who hear it into relation with the Grace and Judgment of God. He also urges preachers to “explain” their texts. With this verb I have less issue, except when, as so often, it is understood to mean that the role of the preacher is actually to relieve his listeners of any relation to the text. What comes in Scripture as the burning words of an inspired writer from God, can be turned into the historical curiosity of one historical party addressing another historical party, from which we can only learn by drawing moral lessons or searching for deeper principles. Finally, he urges preachers to “disclose” the “principles” that are, let’s be honest, hidden (as far as he is concerned) in the text. Why are they hidden? For the same reason that they need to be explained. Because they are assumed to be chiefly historical curiosities to be investigated (albeit well-chosen, even “inspired” historical curiosities).

What such an “expository” preacher very frequently ends up doing is wresting verses to fit a theology nowhere found in Scripture because it has been devised with the procrustean intent of “explaining” the otherwise uncomfortably jagged and powerful words of Scripture.

It should be noted that I am not objecting to exegesis, to historical understanding and criticism of the text of Scripture, or anything as anti-intellectual and un-literary as that. Instead, I am suggesting that these techniques simply do not achieve the purpose of preaching when they, by themselves, are put on display every Sunday. They should occur in every preacher’s study—and in every lay-person’s bedroom—in the study of Scripture. But when the witness stands to point his prodigious finger in the direction of the Word, something other than study is occurring. At that time, the people of God should be called to hear the Word as spoken to them, not as an historical discourse between now dead parties. In study, portions of Scripture must be read and interrogated as, for instance, a national epic written by Moses for the preservation and national self-consciousness of the nation of Israel. But in preaching, every portion of Scripture must come as from God to the people in the pews. This, and only this, bears witness to the living person of the Word, Jesus Christ, putting listeners into relation with that reality.

I respect expository preaching in terms of the enemies by which it defines itself. I, too, hate preachers who feel as if their purpose is to share their feelings about this or that passage of Scripture, or preachers who take as the theme of their sermons pop-psychology and political ideologies (like conservatism, for example). On this front, expository preaching wonderfully represents itself as rooted in Scripture, expository preachers as “servants of the Word.” But when such preaching becomes a vain-glorious “covering,” “explaining,” and—horror of horrors—”disclosing,” rather than a witnessing, a pointing, a tearing away of the veil that hides us from the face of God, then I add my voice to Kierkegaard’s cry, “kill the commentators!”—and, I add, “the weekly public commentators who pretend to be preachers!”

—Erasmus, Peregrinatio Religionis Ergo

I have just discovered the amusing and thought-provoking pleasure of reading Erasmus’s Colloquies. A sane but gentle mind, he sharply exposes what is foolish in his culture (especially religious culture) without ever ascending to the seat of mockers—a feat only those who have attempted gracious satire, and failed, can appreciate. Anyone who aspires to, or practices without aspiring to, the role of critic should study his example.

Either I totally fail to understand the concept of niche-blogging, or these three things intersect in a meaningful way.

My premise is that faith, culture, and theory intersect inevitably. The goal of this blog, consequently, is to consciously and publicly improve an activity everyone does anyway. Let’s glance briefly at each street on this intersection:

Faith. Everyone has it, the explicitly religious person, the atheist, the agnostic: assumed starting points for practical, moral, and theoretical points of view. For me, faith as an abiding element of human life doesn’t need to take a religious form to exist. It so happens that my faith carries with it a religious tradition, a public, social institution (the church), a sacred text, and a living community with shared projects. My faith also leads me to the conclusion that faith (as a universal human faculty) is integral to human life—whether the human in question participates in an organized religion or not. But I can argue this proposition apart from the standpoint of my faith and, consequently, it’s a useful premise for interacting with anyone, and a useful basis for mutual understanding.

Culture. I know the meaning of this word suffers from many competing definitions. I use it in a very large sense, to refer to the sum material, theoretical, and spiritual environment in which I find myself. The relation of faith to culture in this sense is as follows: faith is a visible and invisible part of culture, and, as I have described above, fundamental (in the form of my faith) to the perspective from which I observe that culture. But to say that I am interested in the intersection of faith and culture does not mean that I prefer to write about the faith elements observable within culture, but simply that I make a point of noticing the probable influence of faith on other elements of culture. Failure to notice this (inevitable) influence pervades cultural commentary, particularly because one popular fiction has it that faith shouldn’t influence certain elements of culture (notably politics, science, and education). Typically this fiction originates from outrage at the way one particular faith has influenced elements of culture in undesirable ways. But the influence of faith—in the universal sense I have described above—is inevitably present from every person in every element of culture; acknowledging its role is vital.

Theory. I use this word to indicate the results of the basic human drive to explain experience. Theories are a product of thinking. Other factors than reason certainly influence their formation, as well as which theories will appeal to us, but theories are necessary because of the presence of reason as an honored and determining factor in human life. The particular focus of this blog, then, has to do with theories about culture—especially literary and political culture—that maintain a sense of the influence of faith on that culture.

Another and more palatable explanation of my purposes could be this: I seek to offer principled commentary on public life, with an eye to the personal convictions of public agents.

This is my niche.

I realize that while I have may have laid to rest questions about my general purpose in blogging, I haven’t actually made very clear the content of my commentary. For example, does my affirmation of the role of faith in public life lead to Christian fundamentalist political views? It does not. But for the answer to this, and my take on lots of other issues, I encourage you to read the rest of the articles on this blog.

I am tempted to claim that education subverts ignorance. But that would imply that ignorance exists on its own, rather than as an lack of understanding. Actually, I’m comfortable with that.

Education subverts ignorance.

Students should always learn how polymorphous ignorance is. When they enter a classroom, they do not cease to confront ignorance; instead they confront a potentially more dangerous ignorance—ignorance coupled with information. A naieve student allows his professor to do what he (consciously or otherwise) would love to do—subvert the student’s understanding of things, and replace it with the professor’s.

Of course this dynamic of subversion is supported by an official ideology of education. Presumably, students come to college to learn, professors to teach. As if certain people were rendered capable of dispensing understanding because they found the means to afford a lot of charmed years behind ivy-covered walls, while others, having been less lengthily sheltered by the ivy-covered aforesaid, were naturally lacking in this transmissible commodity. In other words, an economic model of production and consumption underlies the garden variety classroom.

Personally, I would like to propose a culinary model of education.

In my model, education would be deemed successful, like baking, when done. Altitude, humidity, and the oven would largely determine the precise chronology of “when.” Similarly, in my model the conditions for education to occur would consist in assembling the right ingredients in the same location and heating them up (also stirring occasionally). For this heating up to occur properly, an exchange of energy both more substantial and more reciprocal than that found in most classrooms at present would have to occur. The common classroom would have to involve more information and more interpretation on both sides of the podium. A good class-ending would involve, not the rustle of anxious students preparing to make their escaping by hoisting bookbags to eagerly trembling shoulders, but the parting shots of intellectual combatants torn from their educational battle by the bell.

It may be objected that I present a dream of liberal arts education, leaving aside the requirements of the practical heavy-weights in the hard science departments. But I urge the following distinction in response: there is education, growth in understanding, and there is training, growth in technique. Even the chemistry department should involve (and does, whether it wants to admit it or not) growth in understanding; and even the English department (though some sadly abrogate their duty) should equip its students with the tradition-fashioned techniques to extend or shatter that tradition. Both departments involve concretely instantiated philosophical and moral questions, as well as prejudicial commitments to certain lines of investigation and certain canonical ideas and figures.

These questions, and these prejudices, are the stuff of understanding, and they should never be dispensed according to an economic model. Any intellectual gourmand will taste my point.

Our stomach grumble for the feast of knowledge. Since our cooks fancy themselves businessmen, we go hungry much of the time. But the oven, the classroom with its attendant texts and lectures, stands ready to be lit. And—here is the point I want to make—the knob for turning up the heat lies equally within reach of the student as of the professor. Go ahead and turn it. Subvert the answers. Consider even subverting the questions. Don’t let false roles, theologically maintained for ideological reasons, hinder your educational radicalism. Turn up the heat and pour on the oil.

… anti-autobiography means not just not writing your autobiography, an astonishly prevalent practice, but writing it in such a way as to outwit the prurience and immodesty of the genre by frustrating your own desire for self-display and the reader’s desire to enter your inner life.

Having just completed The Gatekeeper, I feel as if that sentence is the key to what Eagleton was doing. I understand, I think, some of the reasons one might opt to write an anti-autobiography.

Autobiographies create the same moral traps that journals do. I’ve ditched more journals in moments of self-disgust than I can count. On the one hand, I found myself agreeing, with R.L. Stevenson, that journals tended to become a “school of posturing and melancholy self-deception”; but on the other hand, I always felt a strong urge to accomplish something like the literary and spiritual monument of Jim Elliot’s journals. Elliot’s first entry famously includes the following passage:

What is written in these pages I suppose will someday be read by others than myself. For this reason I cannot hope to be absolutely honest in what is herein recorded, for the hypocrisy of this shamming heart will ever be putting on a front and dares not to have written what is actually found in its abysmal depths. Yet, I pray, Lord, that You will make these notations to be as nearly true to fact as is possible to that I may know my own heart and be able to definitely pray regarding my gross, though often unviewed, inconsistencies.

Admirable as Elliot’s sentiments undoubtedly sound, and even though the ensuing notations offer good reading, he hardly escaped the moral trap of immodesty and prurience. Perhaps some people can write journals candidly. But those of us with even the slightest delusions of grandeur, transform all our journals into autobiographies.

I suppose when I said earlier that journals and autobiographies create the same moral traps I should actually have said this: autobiography is the moral trap of a journal.

Given how disgusting and self-deceiving it is to surreptitiously write an autobiography in the form of a journal, who can face unashamedly the massive rudeness of writing one blatantly, openly, without apology?

In an essay on history, Hannah Arendt mentions two kinds of historical objectivity: first, objectivity in presenting multiple perspectives and interpretations of an event; second, objectivity in selecting what moments of history to record. Supposing that biography is a subset of history, then, and realizing how impossible the above-mentioned forms of objectiviy are even for the most meticulous and detached historians, we can definitively cast aside the hope of attaining any objectively historical idea of a person from their autobiography. In fact, as I recently read somewhere (I can’t remember where), most autobiographies are disguised (or not so disguised) apologia.

Consequently, autobiography presents us with a moral conundrum in its very name. Pretensions to presenting a history of the self by the self are, as Eagleton notes, immodest—and, he might have added, dishonest.

Hence, anti-autobiography.

But how does Eagleton accomplish this? The Gatekeeper is after all a book whose unifying theme is the experiences of Terry Eagleton. Or is it?

Good marxist that he is, Eagleton does not miss the opportunity to use even himself as a pretext for political commentary. The real purpose of the book seems to be hidden in front of us in the title. The Gatekeeper. Eagleton served as a gatekeeper in a Carmelite convent when he was a child. In the first chapter of the book, he fascinatingly describes his duties and the environment in which he performed them. He saw himself as an operator of the passages between two worlds—the virgin, self-immolating, magically-removed world of the nuns, and the rough, lower-class neighborhood in which both he and this other world existed. As the gatekeeper, Eagleton imports insight gained from both worlds to the other, where he uses that insight to caustically criticize each world. This dynamic continues for the rest of the book, as Eagleton uses his life as a pretext for fleshing out the various permutations of the role of the gatekeeper, or, we might as easily say, the critic.

Ultimately, in other words, I suspect that Eagleton wrote his anti-autobiography by way of presenting his notion of the critical role, complete with examples and theorizing on the subject.

In some reviews of the book, I have read complaints that readers leave it with almost no understanding of Eagleton himself. I suspect Eagleton would accept these complaints as compliments. I, for one, can only admire his revolutionary method of genre-subversion. There are other ways of avoiding immodesty and prurience—embracing the urge to apologia from which they develop, for example, and making no pretensions to biography, as John Henry Newman did in Apologia Pro Vita Sua. But Eagleton’s method is intriguing, and I am glad to have encountered it.