Further, I agree with you that "all Christians have deficiencies in their belief system." For example, 1 Timothy 2:11-15 on women or Romans 1:16-17 on gays are, for me, examples of such time-conditioned limitations. At times those deficiencies are simply matters for debate and tolerance but at other times they are matters for which conscience seems for me to demand rejection. I consider vicarious atonement to be transcendental child abuse and use that strong language to shock us into thinking about what we are saying (and seeing in Gibson's film). By the way, if Jesus himself believed in vicarious atonement — if by the fact of his death he had saved the sinning world — that dying prayer for his executioners' forgiveness would not have been necessary in Luke 23:34a.

I agree with you that even the nastiest name-calling in the New Testament is not theological anti-Judaism let alone ethnic anti-Semitism and that the abuse of something does not preclude its proper use. But that, like most of the media comments on Mel Gibson's film, avoids the true issue. The soft questions are whether he, his film, or even its possible effects are anti-Semitic. (No, No, and I do not know, Gibson responds truthfully.) Here is the hard question: What have you, Mr. Gibson, as a conscientious Christian who knows very well that the passion story has repeatedly grounded lethal anti-Jewish prejudice, done to cauterize that potential venom in making this film? My answer: Nothing, actually. He has, in my judgment, shown careless irresponsibility, culpable negligence, and even depraved indifference to the dangers of anti-Semitism here and abroad. If you juggle with dynamite you are accountable for collateral damage.

Mel Gibson has managed to breach every single one of the Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion issued by the U. S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1988. Example: "A general principle might, therefore, be suggested that if one cannot show beyond reasonable doubt that the particular gospel element selected or paraphrased will not be offensive or have the potential for negative influence on the audience for whom the presentation is intended, that element cannot, in good conscience, be used" (C.1.d).

I now return, as promised earlier, to suggest an alternative theology for faith in the sacrificial and saving death of Jesus. Please recall from our first interchange that I distinguish absolutely between sacrifice, suffering, and sadism.

About forty years ago the Second Vatican Council's declaration on religious diversity held "that Christ out of infinite love freely underwent suffering and death because of the sins of all, so that all might attain salvation" (Nosta Aetate, 4, my italics). I understand because of our sins to be a statement of core Christian faith but one that can be interpreted theologically as either for our sins in terms of vicarious atonement or from our sins in terms of corporate responsibility. I use that declaration simply to emphasize how because (faith) can be interpreted either as for (one theology) or from (another theology). That first option is your theology. Let me explain how I interpret the second option.

At the time Jesus was born, there was one human being already accepted by millions of people as Divine, Son of God, God, and even God of God. He was also hailed as Lord, Redeemer, Liberator, and even Savior of the World - the Roman emperor Octavian the Augustus. The core of Roman imperial theology was peace through victory which has always been and still is the norm or even the cutting-edge of civilization.

Jesus proclaimed the different Kingdom of a different God. He strode out of the heart of Judaism to announce that this Other Kingdom was not just imminent but already present and one could enter it by living here below in radical submission to the will of God. His mantra was not peace through victory but peace through justice, because, as Psalm 82:5 says, "injustice shakes the foundations of the earth." The first century C.E. would see, therefore, a clash between Octavian the Augustus and Jesus the Christ, between two incarnations of divinity, two alternatives for the future of our world, two possibilities for life under opposing visions of transcendence, and, therefore, two fundamental options for faith and union with God: peace by violent victory OR peace by non-violent justice.

We Christians (myself included) have sought to avoid God's challenge for two thousand years. When I became incarnate, says that God, Rome executed me publicly, legally, and officially, and not because it was particularly abnormal but because it was imperially normal. My quarrel, says that God, is with civilization itself and that is why it requires the radical vision of a New-Type-Of-Kingdom from my Jesus and a New-Type of-Creation from my Paul. To avoid saying that our God is on a collision course with civilization itself, we blame "the Jews" or at least their top-echelon priesthood, we blame the Romans or at least their lower-echelon governor, we even blame God or at least that divine plan of vicarious atonement. What are we trying to avoid?

The truth, for me, is that Jesus died from our sins or, better, from our Sin, that is, from the normalcy of human civilization which, historically, has always been unjust, oppressive, and imperial. When we walk out from "The Passion of the Christ" we must acknowledge that, if Jesus were alive in any capital of any empire, from Rome to Washington, he would be eliminated with extreme prejudice yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I die, Jesus might have said, as God's warning about the violent normalcy of civilization itself. Weep not for me but for yourselves and for your children.

With gratitude for our dialogue
and best wishes for yourself,
Dom