And the second question I would raise for our dialogue is: What is the appropriate separation between suffering and sadism? How do you depict and view actual torture without its sadism becoming pornographic? In the same EWTN interview, Mel Gibson admitted that “I don’t think it’s as brutal as it really was. I’ve stopped short of what I think probably really happened. However, it’s brutal, it is graphic.” Then comes this absolutely breath-taking and profoundly disturbing interchange. Raymond Arroyo: “There is a sense of beauty in the violence, and I don’t quite know if I’m expressing that correctly, do you sense that?” Mel Gibson: “Good, yes, I do, I mean that is a definite intent to do that. To make it lyrical, to make the violence lyrical. In a way, to find the beauty in it.” Despite those terrible formulations, the point is clear. Sacrifice equals suffering and so, to appreciate sacrifice, that suffering must be shown with exact and graphic violence.
Mel Gibson has insisted in writing and in that interview that the film is about the “love and forgiveness” of God. But his many other assertions point to a God of displaced retribution in which Jesus suffers vicariously the penalties due to us, they point to vicarious atonement in which Jesus must bear the punitive sufferings due to us. Which is his or our God? Ben, I do not consider that loving forgiveness and vicarious atonement are simply points on a divine continuum. I think of them as disjunctive options for my faith in God. My God is a God of loving forgiveness and merciful compassion, not a God of displaced punishment and vicarious atonement? Where do you stand, Ben, on that ultimate question of the character of our God?
—Dom
From: Ben Witherington III To: John Dominic Crossan Date: February 11, 2004
Dear Dom,
First, I should say that I share many of the concerns you express about Gibson's movie, which I have yet to see. There is indeed a difference between sacrifice and suffering, and to focus on the suffering rather than the sacrifice is in my view as well, a mistake. The recent Gospel of John movie did an excellent job in placing the focus where it should be—on the death of Jesus, not the preliminary agonies involved. If Jesus had not suffered all the indignities he went through before the crucifixion, but still died for our sins, our sins would still have been atoned for. It is, in short, the death of Christ—and not the degree or length of his suffering—that atones for sin. As someone who is a pacifist, I also agree with you that focusing on the violence done to Christ is putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable, unless the real point is to stress our collective guilt for what happened to Jesus. The one who had done no violence, suffered much violence without protest.
"If Christ's death was not both the necessary and sufficient means for the atonement of human sin, then God ...would be be guilty of child abuse." --Ben Witherington
But where we clearly part company is in your theology of the death of Jesus, and ultimately his theology of the character of God. Let's start with the latter. God, both in the Old and New Testaments, is depicted as holy and loving, or to put it another way, Holy Love. Another way of saying this is that he is both righteous and the one who sets right the sinner. He is just and also compassionate. It appears that you have a hard time holding these two seemingly incompatible attributes together, but you are not the first to do so. God does not check his righteousness or justice at the door when he acts in a loving and forgiving way. Indeed, the cross is that place where we see the harmonic convergence between the justice and the mercy of God, the holiness and the love of God, the righteousness and the compassion of God. To emphasize only one side of the divine equation is not to do justice to the character of God.
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