Jesus of Whoville

There are currently posters around the Princeton campus for a Faith film festival, and while arduous viewings of arthouse cinema from decades past would I'm sure be somehow rewarded, I've never been the Ingmar Bergman type. On the lower brow, even more tedious are most of Hollywood's self-conscious efforts at the faith film, for which we can be forgiven an exasperated, George Burns-inspired "Oh God." Conspicuous attempts at film faith (think The Truman Show or Bruce Almighty) are so much less satisfying than when, with an uncanny degree of frequency, faith comes as the unexpected surprise.

Horton Hears a Who was another such surprise, but distinguished itself not with hints or flickers of faith, but with an elaborate, extended theological message, by far the best I've encountered in a popular film. With proportions reminiscent of Lewis' The Great Divorce, the central characters (I remind you) are an elephant, and the microscopic world on a speck that the elephant communicates with, battles for, and for which he ultimately seems willing to die.

To recall a 2004 (ancient in blog years) millinerd theological post (my deconstruction of the parable departs a bit from Leslie Newbigin's), the idea of the elephant as God is a venerable tradition which the film brilliantly employs. The mayor of Whoville, who makes contact from his world with the elephant beyond it through a drainpipe of prayer, acts as a Christ figure; the giant hall of the mayor's descendants recall the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. The film's Trinitarian framework is completed with the Holy Spirit, who I would argue, makes an appearance through the film's prominent feature of sound.

Deaf to that sound is the town council, who serve as perfect Sadducees, ridiculing the idea of there being any elephant at all. Apocalyptic signs in Whoville (such as snow in summer) result either from the elephant's assuring Whoville of his presence, or from his battling against those who seek to destroy the speck. But for the Sadducees, such signs are merely an excuse for a kite flying contest. Strange as it may seem, Horton Hears a Who somehow recovers apocalyptic thought from the mists of Seminary sophistication, restoring its patent, palpable directness. In other words, when it comes to apocalypticism, I far prefer the clarity of Dr. Seuss to the resignations of Dr. Schweitzer.

The theological category of mystery is dangerously en vogue, but the scenario laid out by this film suggests that we should never pursue mystery for mystery's sake. Mystery can never mean obfuscation. The category is necessary due to temporary human incapacity for fathoming the contours of God's relation with our world - but mysteries will not always so remain. Horton Hears a Who somehow conveys the sheer physicality of faith: Big God, small world, real contact hindered by real difficulties. We will, one day, comprehend God's relation to our universe with as much intuitive sense as we understand the relation of the elephant to Whoville in this film. Whoville ears, eyes and senses just aren't big enough to discern the elephant (hence the need for mystery when describing him), but the elephant was definitely there; and "there," a Whoville word used to describe chairs, lamps and tables, barely does the pressing presence of such a massive being justice. Likewise, it's a small wonder that Moses only saw God's back.

Another of the film's more interesting feature is its unintentional commentary on religion in general. The elephant makes actual contact with Whoville, but this leads imitators to make up their own stories about tiny little worlds on specks. Imitating Horton, one creature posits "a world full of ponies who eat rainbows and poop butterflies." The difference of course is such worlds don't exist, and only make sense to the extent they are related to the actual world that Horton actually encounters. Likewise, a deluded man in Whoville who thought he was talking to a giant giraffe through a drainpipe would only be deluded. And while exposing this giant giraffe-delusion would fuel skepticism about a giant elephant, it would do nothing to change the fact that the elephant is still there. Faith is not a happy made-up story, but it can be. Faith, properly understood in this movie, is real contact with a real being, despite any vultures who get in the way, and despite the Richard Dawkins kangaroos who insist, "If you can't hear, see or feel something, it does not exist."

Of course the analogy breaks down, as God omnipotent is a good bit more confident than this rhyming pachyderm. Still, the elephant has spoken, and the Christian faith is poignantly summarized in the words, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one-hundred percent."

All the way back

Denise and I just returned from seeing Kurt Masur conduct the New York Philharmonic in a performance of what some call the finest piece of classical music ever written, the St. Matthew Passion. Lest that seem too urbane, a few nights before I saw 10,000 BC, the most historically inaccurate screenplay ever written (it should be retitled 15,000-2000 BC). That should restore my plebe cred.

At the close of the performance, the crowd was beside itself for Masur. His response to the applause was to lift up Bach's score and point to it. This was a fitting gesture, as Bach too was deferring in his Passion, musically lifting up Matthew's gospel, and pointing to it. Matthew, of course, is up to the same in his gospel, lifting up the Christ through prose, and pointing.

Masur to Bach to Matthew to Christ. Why stop short?

up from irony

Why not pick up where disputations left off?

Irony, a gluttonous parasite, unbelief at play, the banner of a generation. 60% of television, 80% of contemporary art, and 100% of the merchandise for sale at Urban Outfitters. Fortress against falsehood, but also truth. A declaration of adulthood that ends in permanent adolescence. A Simpsons episode that turns into Family Guy.

For those seeking faith in a culture salted with irony, it's water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

Icons and Absolutes

One irony of the postmodern fascination with icons is that the couch and candle crowd would likely be horrified at the theological firmness - the metaphysical guts - necessary to back them up. Rather than providing a break from the rigor of language and doctrine, icons are equally as binding. The Second Council of Nicea (787) insisted that the icon's purpose was,

in accordance with the narrative of the proclamation of the gospel, to ascertain the incarnation of God the Word, which was real, not imaginary.

Icons stand by the gospels as witnesses to objective, actual persons and events. The icon, properly understood, is no friend of ambiguity. Icons then are a trojan horse in the New Age giftshop. Be sure not to tell, but the icons for sale to disgruntled Evangelicals on that book table at the From Fundamentalism to Foucault conference, are smuggled absolutes.

A further irony of postmodern fascination with icons is that few things could be less conducive to the "visual turn" than classic postmodern thought. Consider Martin Jay's magisterial study, Downcast Eyes, a sweeping summary of which can be found in this whopper of a paragraph:

Virtually all the twentieth-century French intellectuals encountered on this voyage were extraordinarily sensitive to the importance of the visual and no less suspicious of its implications. Although definitions of visuality vary from thinker to thinker, it is clear that ocularcentrism aroused (and continues in many quarters to arouse) a widely shared distrust. Bergson's critique of the spatialization of time, Bataille's celebration of the blinding sun and the acephalic body, Breton's ultimate disenchantment with the savage eye, Sartre's depiction of the sadomasochism of the "look," Merleau-Ponty's diminished faith in a new ontology of vision, Lacan's disparagement of the ego produced by mirror stae, Althusser's appropriation of Lacan for a Marxist theory of ideology, Foucault's strictures against the medical gaze and panoptic surveillance, Debord's critique of the society of the spectacle, Barthes's linkage of photography and death, Metz's excoriation of the scopic regime of the cinema, Derrida's double reading of the specular tradition of philosophy and the white mythology, Irigaray's outrage at the privileging of the visual in patriarchy, Levinas's claim that ethics is thwarted by a visually based ontology, and Lyotard's identification of postmodernism with the sublime foreclosure of the visual - all these evince, to put it mildly, a palpable loss of confidence in the hitherto "noblest of the senses."

I think that might be about all of 'em. Small wonder that those who forget how to speak, soon forget how to see as well. If Martin Jay is right, Christians unduly adulating postmodernity might consider doing away with paintbrushes altogether, and pick up the Iconoclast's hatchet instead.

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References:
Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth Century Iconoclasm (p. 178).
Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (p. 588).

It was only a matter of time before SWPL did grad school.

To avoid these obvious pitfalls, one could hearken to the European University's monastic origins, mix in some spiritual discipline, and consider grad school a contemplative sort of enterprise. With the cloister-like graduate college of Ralph Adams Cram, not to mention the prominent motto, Princeton gives the notion at least some architectural endorsement.

update: Writes one commenter, "Divinity School is the worst. It's the new I-take-Psychology-to-figure-out-why-I'm-messed-up subject." Ouch.

Pictures to go with my post at FT today can be seen at the North American Churches group blog.

Also of interest regarding the Schaeffer legacy is the penetrating article by Molly Worthen in the current Christianity Today, which examines the present state (decline?) of L'Abri. She makes a keen observation about Christian buzzwords like "authenticity" and "experience":

When students say they seek authenticity, what they really want is certainty, an inner knowing. Convinced that they won't find it intellectually, many pursue that feeling of conviction through experience.

Are such buzzwords then just a new kind of absolute?

update: If you missed it the first time, once again, Schaeffer is mean and Guinness is gracious. But we do get some more dirty secrets, like "27 year old single man attracted to women." Scandalous.